The European Migrant Crisis and the fortune of right-wing populist parties

Abstract: In 2015, Europe faced one of the most extensive refugee flows since the Second World War. The situation forced European Governments to take actions on immigration issues to handle the increasing inflows of asylum seekers. We draw on Meguid’s theory on party strategies to examine whether mainstream parties policies of immigration affects the public support of right-wing populist parties. Simultaneously, we include theories claiming that the amount of asylum seekers is crucial to public support of right-wing populist parties. These theories are the basis of our study when examining what may be fueling the success of right-wing populist parties in Sweden, Denmark, France and Italy. Our empirical findings concludes that there are no monocausal connection between mainstream parties’ strategies and the amount of asylum seekers. The outcomes are variating between the examined countries. However, levels of immigration are in most cases more essential than strategies used by mainstream parties to affront with migration issues. Mainstream parties policies seemingly plays a more insignificant role when the asylum reception is extensive. Accordingly, our conclusion is that multiple variables need to be included to completely determine what impacts of right-wing populist parties public support.