Political Discourse on Ethnic Minority Issues

Abstract

In this article, commonalities and differences in the discourses of the right and the extreme right on ethnic minority issues in the Netherlands and France are examined. The investigation is carried out from an interdisciplinary and comparative discourse analytical perspective. The examined data include parliamentary debates, political speeches, interviews and articles in the time period 1990-97. The analysis shows that a majority of the investigated political actors - in particular of the extreme right, but also of the right - contribute to the representation of immigrant groups, first, as an out-group; second, as different or even deviant; and, third, as threatening. In France, however, a rather explicit ant-immigrant discourse appears to be more common and mainstream when compared to the Netherlands during the period under study.