'Refugee crisis' in political discourse: Italy, Hungary, Turkey

This thesis focuses on a comparative research question on how political discourse and approaches to refugees/immigrants are constituted by political parties over time. The Refugee Crisis case, which has a long history since the onset of the riots, provides comprehensive and consistent data to understand the approach to refugees in the selected countries. There is a gap in the relevant academic literature on comparative analysis of Italy, Hungary and Turkey concerning the migration issue. The unit of analysis in the context of the research are the general election manifestos of the political parties of the selected countries. The content analysis method was used to analyze and compare the migration issue in the general election manifestos (2006-2018) before and after the refugee crisis in the case countries in order to reveal the constructed perception. The migration / immigrant / refugee / asylum discourses of the general election manifestos were associated with political attitudes. The transformation of the issue of migration into the perception of imagined refugees has been studied. In this context, content related to the categories of populism, refugees and refugee crisis, securitization, xenophobia / Islamophobia, Euroskepticism in the election manifestos was analyzed using mixed methods to explain the attitudes and perceptions of these countries and parties regarding migration.