Between Unity and Plurality: The Politicization and Securitization of the Discourse of Immigration in Europe

Abstract Immigration has always been at the heart of controversy in the history of human societies and, most recently, in the history of nation-states. The aim of this article is, first, to help get to the heart of the “problem” of mass migration in Europe by investigating how the “politicization” of migration is created at the national level and discussing the mutually conditioning relationships between public opinion, mass media, identity politics and fear in the evolution of immigration policy discourse in the Member States of the European Union (emphasis on the UK and Italy). Secondly, the article questions how and why the conceptualization of migration as a security concern has become dominant in European countries and whether there has been a shift between the way immigration is addressed in Member States’ policies and the way the European Union is now confronting the issue (post-Amsterdam treaty). Is the European Union approaching immigration with a “new vision”? Adopting a discourse-theoretical approach, the article argues that the inevitability of the politicization of immigration derives from the inescapable contradiction between democratic equality and plurality and that the discourse type of securitization of migration has emerged as the hegemonic discourse in the Member States, produced by the interplay of publics, media and governments and aimed at the preservation of existing power structures and socio-political boundaries. The article then concludes that the national discourse on immigration as a security concern is reflected and re-adopted (but carefully re-articulated) by the European Union.