Parliamentary Debates on Refugees and Migration in Italy: An Analysis of Justification Discourses

Abstract

Politically and socially polarizing issues like immigration or Europe’s financial crisis are leading to increasing party divisions in numerous European countries. Some scholars hypothesize that this is not just an issue of polarization, but the emergence of a new societal cleavage: the transnational globalization cleavage. Even though the salience and perceived gravity around transnational issues are increasing, no extensive analyses along the new cleavage have been made of parliamentary debates. This thesis attempts to close the identified research gap by following the method of Drewski and Gerhards (2023). Its analysis focuses specifically on justifications in the Italian parliamentary discourse to identify whether the globalization cleavage is indeed emerging in the country’s party system. Results largely confirm the presence of this cleavage, which could lead to an increasing reevaluation of original cleavages, and to a further analysis of new conflict lines.