The Enemy in My House: How Right-Wing Populism Radicalized the Debate About Citizenship in France

Abstract

When Emmanuel Macron won the French presidential election against the right-wing populist Marine Le Pen in 2017, relief swept European liberals. Yet, how was it possible for a candidate like Le Pen to come this far? This paper aims at analyzing the shifts in France’s political discourse about “Frenchness” that made such a candidature possible. Our hypothesis is that narratives that originated within the right-wing populist Front national/Rassemblement national, were adopted by more moderate politicians and became the new “normal”. This effect was facilitated by waves of securitizations of migration and terrorism, which further shifted the discourse to more nationalist positions. To uncover those shifts, we analyzed the discourse on the 2010 and 2015/2016 debate about new legislation that would allow the strip French nationals of their citizenship. We included parliamentary debates as well as official statements from all parties represented in the Assemblée nationale and media coverage by Le Figaro and Le Monde. Our analysis shows, how even in countries that are not (yet) governed by populist leaders, these shifts create dangerous ideational spaces for right-wing populists. While the empirical focus of this paper lies on France, we argue that our findings can be generalized to a certain degree and shed light on the facilitating condition for the raise of populism.