Ontolojik güvenlik vaadi olarak sosyal politika: Danimarka ve Polonya'da tarihsel mitlerden popülist fantezilere

The main purpose of this thesis is to account for the growing transformation of the welfare state into a moral and exclusionary entity across diverse European countries in the context of recent demographic pressures posed by globalization, immigration and depopulation. In this connection, this thesis offers a novel theoretical link between social policy and ontological security in which the narrative performativity of right-wing populism is central in understanding the legitimization of exclusionary policy turns across different welfare regimes. Through the cases of Denmark and Poland, as representative of dissimilar historical trajectories, ontological security regimes and welfare traditions, it is argued that right-wing populist actors in both countries have instrumentalized social policy as an instrument of 'reassurance' by promising 'anxious' subjects potentially powerful mechanisms of identification and differentiation at times of uncertainty. In explaining this theoretical link, this study foregrounds the role of 'affective temporality' as a powerful narrative element that can enhance the emotional and ontological appeal of populist social policy discourses. Accordingly, by proposing Lacanian psychoanalytic contributions to the relationship between populism and ontological security, it is argued that populist social policy narratives frequently draw on historically-rooted insecurities, emotions, myths, desires and fantasies in legitimization of policy changes. In particular, it has been argued that populist actors frequently link the past, present and future into a simplified, emotionally charged, desire-infused fantasmatic narratives about the national welfare, thereby promising 'anxious' subjects stronger degree of ontological security. This study therefore argues that such storytelling, which draw on a historical and fantasmatic temporality, is an important populist discursive strategy for understanding the legitimization of exclusionary/moralistic social populist policy transformations in Denmark and Poland across the wider political spectrum. This research is based on critical narrative analysis of social policy texts, written or spoken, produced by right-wing populist actors in Demark and Poland under the demographic pressures posed by globalization between 2008-2022.