Radical right parties in Europe and anti-immigration: The construction of anti-immigration discourse in the context of security themes

International migration has been one of the most significant elements in Europe?s social and economic transformation after the Second World War. However, in the political and social structures of today?s Europe, there is a dramatically increasing trend of framing migration and casting a role for migrants in relation to security concerns. One of the most influential actors in this process of constructing such approaches to migration and migrants are radical right parties through their use of anti-immigrant and populist policies.This dissertation reveals that anti-immigrant policies in Europe result from a process of securitization, and that, within this process, radical right parties have been formulating discourses and approaches through a construction process by using some common security themes. These security themes can be classified as national security, economic security, cultural security and internal security. The frequency with which radical right parties use these themes may vary according to the specific historical, social and cultural characteristics of a particular country. The impact of these differences is studied in this dissertation by first developing a framework to analyse the securitization process and by analysing two radical right parties that achieved election success with their anti-immigrant policies: Freedom Party of Austria ( FPÖ) from Austria, and Sweden Democrat (SD) from Sweden.The findings of this research indicate that the challenges facing post-industrial European society, such as transformations in production modes, globalisation and integration, have led to a questioning of the European social state model and welfare state model by opening them into discussion. In this regard, international migration has been serving as a ?field of challenge? and a ?case study? for these discussions. As a result, as with its other major policies and strategies, Europe certainly needs to re-define its? immigration policies and integration strategies. However, national and supra-national differences in terms of the speed, efficiency and inclusiveness with which this process of re-definition is being carried out, have been triggering and strengthening oppositional voices to migration in European countries.Keywords: International Migration, European Union, Securitization, Radical Right Parties