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Will the nationalist parties please stand up?

Updated: Mar 20, 2019



Increased globalization plus the movement of people across borders has coincided with rising mainstream nationalism in different parts of the world.


Written by: Annika Miller, Zaynab Berety, Lidiya G Michael, and Shannon Saul


“I'm a nationalist, okay?” I’m a nationalist. Nationalist... Use that word." ― President Donald J. Trump





In recent years, the world has seen a rise in the prevalence of nationalist political leaders and ideological groups. This has spurred political debates on an international level and garnered media attention. A clear theme has emerged in international politics in recent years of anti-immigrant sentiment and the electoral success of right-wing political leaders. Increased globalization plus the movement of people across borders has coincided with this mainstreaming of nationalism in different parts of the world.


Anti-immigrant and nationalist sentiment is not a new concept by any means, but the popular nationalist groups emerging across the globe are becoming more influential and are difficult to ignore. We studied the emerging nationalist politics in several states and came to some alarming conclusions.


In White Backlash: Immigration, Race, and American Politics, the authors argue that issues of immigration are leading to greater ethnic divisions in the United States. They propose a theory of “Immigration Backlash Politics” which is that in the U.S., as immigration has become increasingly discussed in the public sphere, white America has grown anxious about changing demographics and has responded by moving further right on the political spectrum. This is more clearly understood when viewing the current U.S. administration; Donald J. Trump represents this shift and has been able to implement nationalist policies in regards to immigration. We found that the current Secretary of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen, has used negative language towards immigrants and talked about the need to protect American values. Nielsen is implementing the of the Trump administration while embodying this right-wing, nationalist ideology.


Large waves of immigrants from neighboring countries such as Venezuela have played a large role in the nationalist uprising in South American countries. Brazil and Colombia both had elections this year, and both have some of the highest numbers of Venezuelan migrants, and both elected far-right leaders. Some may say that this is a coincidence but the evidence says otherwise. Nationalism grows out of fear and the idea that you need to protect your country from people or ideas that will make life harder. This fear stems from things such as rising unemployment rates, causing immigrants to take the blame for stealing jobs. After analyzing unemployment rates from the world bank pre-Venezuelan influx and post-Venezuelan influx, the data shows that both countries had a stark rise in unemployment rates. We ruled out total GDP, crime rates, and the percentage of people in the country who are currently immigrants as other potential causes, as these factors either had a positive change or little to no change. The fear of losing jobs to immigrants made citizens in both of these countries more willing to elect a far-right leader, who promised to keep immigrants from taking away their livelihoods.


In two European countries, Germany and Sweden, we looked at the rise in Syrian migrants that have applied to live in the European Union (EU). Within the past 4 years, the EU has encouraged countries to accept Syrian applicants in order to provide refuge to help relieve the stress countries like Jordan and Turkey have taken on from the great numbers of Syrians fleeing their country. We found a correlation between Germany and Sweden’s high acceptance rate of applications and a rise in elected nationalist political parties. Between the years of 2015-2018. Both Germany and Sweden accepted greater than 9 out of 10 of Syrian migrant applications. During this same time frame, both countries also experienced a significant rise in nationalist party support with a 7.9% increase in Germany and a 4.6 % increase in Sweden. We were able to rule out other potential variables such as GDP per capita for this rise, as they remained stagnant during this time period. When a country experiences a high rate of immigration, citizens of that particular country tend to favor nationalist values and beliefs.


Finally, nationalism has plagued African Countries as well with civil wars and internal conflicts causing thousands to flee to nearby borders. Libya and Angola are two countries that have experienced a surge of refugees in their countries. There is usually a fear that when immigrants of any kind come into the country things start getting worse. Crime rates, overall wealth of the country, and a substantial increase in population. We chose to primarily focus on the number of deaths and protests in the country and try to see if there is a relationship that exists with the increasing number of overall immigrants and refugees. We found that was there no real correlation for both Libya and Angola between an increase in violence and the number of immigrants and refugees. We also examined other possible causes of anti-immigrant sentiment such as a loss of GDP or having too many people in the country, which also showed no negative correlation. In fact it was shown that GDP had actually increased during one of the largest refugee influx years in Libya in 2012. Miseducation plays a large role in the increase of nationalism as a lot of what people believe about immigrants are myths.


As the world becomes more and more globalized, countries all over the world will continue to experience increased rates of immigration. Shown through our examples, rising levels of nationalism exist across various parts of the globe. Although we are unable to conclude that increased rates of immigration are the direct cause for rising nationalism, we can argue that it is one of many factors that contributes to it. This is all evidence that further research needs to be completed on the effects of nationalism as it continues to become more prominent in an interconnected world.



Additional Sources Used:


https://ucdp.uu.se/#/exploratory


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