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Article published In: Radical Right-Wing Populism and Borders: Positioning antagonistic discourses in the (de)bounded spaces of power
Edited by Christian Lamour and Oscar Mazzoleni
[Journal of Language and Politics 23:3] 2024
► pp. 323–347

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A fence of opportunity

On how Vox’s radical right populist narratives frame and fuel crises in the border between Spain and Morocco

ORCiD logo with link | Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

This article was made Open Access under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license through payment of an APC by or on behalf of the author.

Published online: 7 March 2024
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https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.23083.oli
Abstract
This article deconstructs the parliamentary discourses regarding two migratory incidents in Ceuta, May 2021, and Melilla, June 2022, when hundreds of people attempted to cross the fences that separate Morocco from Spain. Most of them were immediately deported, many injured, and several died. This analysis compares the density of populist, anti-populist, re-bordering, and de-bordering references in forty-five speeches at the Spanish Congress regarding both tragic events. Vox speakers articulate a distinct discourse that instrumentalises these incidents to convey a sense of existential crisis and to (re)define a populist right-wing political identity based on moral hierarchies, a homogenising conception of society and the exclusion of a dangerous “other.” Meanwhile some parties applied a populist logic to promote de-bordering views and others combined re-bordering and de-bordering claims without imposing a populist frame. This was an opportunity to exhibit a progressive sense of place in borderlands contrasting with Vox’s reactionary one.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The border as a territorialised space of power: An inclusion or exclusion tool?
  • 3.Tragedy at the southern gates
  • 4.Data and methodology
  • 5.(Re/De)bordering discourses and the populist logic of articulation
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
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Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Martín, Juan Carlos & Alessandro Indelicato
2025. Mapping Spanish Political Landscape on Migration: A Sentiment and Topic Analysis of Manifestos Ahead of the 2024 EU Election. Representation 61:4 ► pp. 575 ff. DOI logo

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