Impact of Extreme Right Parties on Immigration Policy

Mainstream Party Strategies Towards Extreme Right Parties: The French 2007 and 2012 Presidential Elections

“…The UMP's accommodative approach towards the FN was successful in the first round of the 2007 presidential elections, after Sarkozy collected 31 per cent of the vote with the support of more than 11 million French citizens, whilst Le Pen obtained a mere 10.4 per cent (representing 3,834,530 votes; Bell and Criddle 2008). Le Pen's 2007 result represented the FN's worst electoral performance in a presidential election since 1974 and a substantial decline compared with the electoral peak of 16.9 per cent of the vote obtained in 2002 (Carvalho 2014). The FN's electoral contraction benefited the centre-right candidate, with polls indicating that 26 per cent of Le Pen's 2002 voters transferred their electoral support to Sarkozy (Mayer 2007).…”

“…In the context of diminishing party membership and the decline of partisan loyalties across Europe, political competition became increasingly centred on the personality of party candidates (Poguntke and Webb 2005). Past research suggested that public preferences at the electoral level became ever more contingent upon the perception of the candidates' personal traits and their ability to implement the proposed electoral pledges (Carvalho 2014;Mayer 2007). Therefore, the influence of the UMP's and the FN's candidates' public images on the efficiency of the French centre right's strategic options at the selected ballots is the third hypothesis examined in this research.…”

“…Parallel to this, Sarkozy's proposals regarding immigration control sought to neutralize the FN's threat of dividing the right-wing electorate in the first round of the 2007 election (Carvalho 2014). At a party convention entitled 'Selected Immigration, Ensured Integration', Sarkozy (2005) announced the objective of increasing the share of labour immigration to the detriment of 'unwanted inflows' (family reunion and asylum).…”

“…The FN leader campaigned against globalization, expansion of communitarianism and uncontrolled immigration (FN 2007). Sarkozy's proposal for a selective immigration policy was opposed, with the defence of zero-immigration policies alongside the deployment of national preference programmes regarding access to the labour market that would favour national citizens (Carvalho 2014). At the same time, the centre-left candidate of the Parti Socialiste (PS -Socialist Party), Segoléne Royal, failed to deploy an adversarial strategy towards the UMP's shift onto far-right ground.…”

Symbolic struggles over solidarity in times of crisis: trade unions, civil society actors and the political far right in Austria

“…Conflicts have emerged over the different meanings and forms of solidarity in which the far right promotes exclusivist solidarity along ethnic and national lines (Carvalho 2014). In Hungary, for example, the extreme-right party Jobbik actively engages in solidarity actions for the poor, but limits its help to the ethnic in-group.…”