South African Parties Hardly Politicise Immigration in Their Electoral Manifestos

Abstract

To what extent do political parties in South Africa politicise immigration? We systematically analyse the party manifestos of all major parties in post-apartheid South Africa, using two separate approaches of content analysis: coding all sentences about immigration individually, and coding the electoral manifesto overall using a 'checklist'. Although we can expect high politicisation of immigrants in new democracies, most party manifestos do not treat immigration at all. If parties in South Africa treat immigration in their manifestos, they tend to take relatively inclusive positions, focus on immigrant integration rather than immigration control, and use instrumental frames. It appears that the nation-building project of a post-apartheid South Africa has not led to an increased politicisation of immigration by political parties qua parties, although individual politicians certainly play a role.

Beyond the Usual Suspects and Towards Politicisation: Immigration in Quebec’s Party Manifestos, 1991–2018

“…In answering this question, this article takes into account that the drivers of politicisation and the political outputs stemming from politicisation are strongly contingent on context (Carvalho and Ruedin 2018 ). As little is known about the immigration partisan space in which the parties of Quebec operate and their polarisation when it comes to immigration, this article studies provincial party manifestos since 1991, using a sentence-by-sentence codebook (Ruedin and Morales 2017 ; Ruedin 2019 ) and a multidimensional grid to map party positions on two axes (see Appendix C ). First is an immigration policy axis, determined by a liberal-restrictive continuum, which considers immigration volume, origins, and types.…”

“…Party manifestos are widely used in comparative research on immigration polarisation: they signal parties’ positions regarding immigration in a context of electoral competition (Ruedin and Morales 2017 , 2). They also present the considerable advantage of allowing for a retrospective analysis of partisan proposals (Ruedin 2019 , 208). For this article, French language manifestos have been collected from the POLTEXT platform, which provides a database of all Canadian electoral manifestos.…”

“…To do so, a sentence-by-sentence codebook (see Appendix C ) was used to position each engagement on immigration on the immigration policy (‘restrictive-liberal’) and jurisdiction (‘Canada-Quebec’) axes. This method has been proven to be robust and efficient in identifying immigration party positions, while allowing for nuances (Ruedin and Morales 2017 ; Ruedin 2019 ). Using this approach makes it possible to map how political parties position themselves within the political space and to trace the evolution of their position over time.…”

Understanding xenophobic hate crime in South Africa

“…On the whole, political parties in the country tend to ignore (as far as is possible) the issue of xenophobia. If the issue is discussed at all in the current climate, according to an analysis of South Africa's major political party manifestos by Ruedin (), it is often framed in inclusive terms with a focus on immigrant integration and community cohesion. Although individual politicians certainly push anti‐immigrant agendas, it would appear that the writers of policy documents tend to be quite progressive in their approach.…”

The Politicization of Immigration and Integration at the Subnational Level: Electoral Campaigns in Ontario and Quebec

“…We examined both electoral platforms and public statements by party representatives in mass media for each provincial election within our period of study. When exploring the politicization of IIP, scholars tend to either explore electoral platforms (Xhardez and Paquet, 2021; Ruedin, 2019) or political claims in mass media (van der Brug et al, 2015; Carvalho and Duarte, 2020; Urso, 2018). We maintain that electoral platforms allow us to accurately evaluate parties’ positions on IIP (see also Ruedin and Morales, 2019).…”