The COVID-19 pandemic has created an impetus for action for governments and citizens, but these actions can be challenging to understand. As a riposte, we use The Populist Divide as a framework for understanding the patchwork of populist responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our approach brings nuance to how crises are framed dependent on the trust levels between actors, thus presenting populist relationships as determined by selective trust allocation and not necessarily one of fixed ideological paradigms. Additionally, we introduce activities as the response to a measure, whether accepting or even protesting, but ultimately consenting to the legitimate powers of the leaders imposing these measures. On the other hand, counterstrategies emerging as challenges to the legitimacy of the leaders themselves.

In this article, I aim to show how populism can be used as an analytical category to make sense of how anti-immigration claims are articulated in far-right political discourse. I will do this by giving examples of and drawing attention to how the anti-immigration claims are articulated via the populist divide, namely anti-elitism and people-centrism, and delve into the issue of which people are mobilised against which elite in articulatory practice. I use narrative analysis to link individual newspaper texts to dominant storylines of the nation (master narratives) in the continuous construction of national identity. The material is based on 169 articles published in the socially conservative online newspaper Samtiden between 2016 and 2022 on national identity. The results from the narrative analysis indicate that far-right populist discourse conveys nostalgia for a golden age and a cohesive and homogenous collective national identity, combining ideals of cultural conformism and socio-economic fairness against the fragmentary political agenda of different elites, spelling out a message that everything was better before.

De flesta politiska partier och flera experter hävdar att vi aldrig ska återvända till 2015 igen. Detta meddelande upprepas, både i media och i politiken. I kapitlet redogörs för dels policyförändringar i samband med mottagningskrisen 2015 och dels också om partiernas hållning och beslut i frågan. Vilka minnen vi håller oss kvar vid färgas av och färgar vad vi väljer att associera med 2015

The development towards the mainstreaming of extremism in European countries in the areas of immigration and integration has taken place both in policy and in discourse. The harsh policy measures that were implemented after the 2015 refugee crisis have led to a discursive shift; what is normal to say and do in the areas of immigration and integration has changed. Anti-immigration claims are today not merely articulated in the fringes of the political spectrum but more widely accepted and also, at least partly, officially sanctioned. This study investigates the anti-immigration claims, seen as (populist) appeals to the people that centre around a particular mythology of the people and that are, as such, deeply ingrained in national identity construction. The two dimensions of the populist divide are of relevance here: The horizontal dimension refers to articulated differences between "the people", who belong here, and the "non-people" (the other), who do not. The vertical dimension refers to articulated differences between the common people and the established elites. Empirically, the analysis shows how anti-immigration views embedded in processes of national myth making during and after 2015 were articulated in the socially conservative online newspaper Samtiden from 2016 to 2019. The results indicate that far-right populist discourse conveys a nostalgia for a golden age and a cohesive and homogenous collective identity, combining ideals of cultural conformism and socioeconomic fairness.

This open access book shows how the politics of migration affect community building in the 21st century, drawing on both retrogressive and progressive forms of mobilization. It elaborates theoretically and shows empirically how the two master frames of nostalgia and hope are used in local, national and transnational settings, in and outside conventional forms of doing politics. It expands on polarized societal processes and external events relevant for the transformation of European welfare systems and the reproduction of national identities today. It evidences the importance of gender in the narrative use of the master frames of nostalgia and hope, either as an ideological tool for right-wing populist and extreme right retrogressive mobilization or as an essential element of progressive intersectional politics of hope. 

After the fall of the Berlin wall and the end of the Cold War, a certain sense of optimism swept across Europe. Some 25 years later, everything seems radically different. With the considerable inroads made into mainstream politics by right-wing populist parties across the continent, there is no shortage of gloom and worry. Nevertheless, despite numerous examples of retrogressive forms of mobilization, there are also many cases of progressive mobilization. To capture this dynamic complexity, we posit politics as a site of struggle that constitutes an arena for the conflicting demands of the two master frames of nostalgia and hope. Following this logic of a polarized political terrain, the volume is divided into three parts that address both right-wing populist politics across Europe (Part I) and politics beyond party politics through either retrogressive mobilization (Part II) or emancipatory initiatives (Part III).

This chapter examines differences in the discourses on migration from two socio-economically similar countries—Denmark and Sweden. It employs the notion of conventional discourse to show how cultural identity and welfare politics intersect in the policy debates and blogospheres of the two countries. It also shows that a discursive shift had already occurred in the mainstream political discourse in Denmark before the 2015 refugee crisis—a discourse in which the dominant view is that cultural diversity is incompatible with social cohesion and thus a perceived threat to the welfare system. The same line of thinking is prevalent in Denmark’s blogosphere. In contrast, Sweden’s cultural issues have been consistently associated with redistributive policies in the mainstream political discourse, and these vary along the Left versus Right ideological cleavage. However, in Sweden’s blogosphere, welfare chauvinism and opposition to multiculturalism appear to be equally as strong as in Denmark.

This chapter describes current changes in migration flows and politics in Sweden, before presenting and discussing the reactions to these changes in civil society – the mobilization of both pro- and anti-migration sentiments – which reflect the polarized sentiments towards immigration in Swedish society.First, this report conveys information about migration flows to Sweden before, during and after the refugee reception crisis of 2015. In 2016 in particular, Sweden had a major intake of asylum seekers, which prompted new legislative measures to manage this. Second, we emphasize transformations in the party-political landscape before, during and after the refugee reception crisis of 2015. In this period there was also a rhetorical shift in mainstream politics, heralding an emphasis on security in order to protect the Swedish model. The mainstream-right bloc was also split in two. Third, we study the actions and reactions in response to these changes in civil society. The everyday experiences of problems with integration stand in contrast with international norms of solidarity. We conclude that the crisis enabled a window of opportunity for the mobilization of both pro- and anti-migration sentiments in civil society.

In this article, we analyse the connection between media exposure and opinion polls for political parties or "the media influence". We compare two parliamentary periods in Sweden: 2006-2010 and 2010-2014. Our results show that the media is important for the anti-immigration party, the Sweden Democrats (SD) in the first period. This is not the case, or at least less so, for the other parliamentary parties. In the second period, media exposure wanes in importance for explaining poll fluctuations as well as shifts from national to regional media for the Sweden Democrats. These findings are in consonance with previous research which underlines that the media's influence on electoral performance differs before and after the party has crossed the electoral threshold to the national parliament.