The British Nationalist Right and the Gendering of Anti-migration Politics

Abstract

In recent years, particularly since EU enlargement in 2005 and the start of the economic and financial crisis in 2008, immigration has increasingly become a main source of concern within the wider population and a political cleavage. It was the second most important concern for voters in the 2010 general election, after the economy but above unemployment, and a key point in the Brexit referendum, while in the 2017 election, it featured high in the electoral debates. Similarly, immigration is a key topic in right-wing nationalist parties, contributing to the framing of their political agenda and their success. These parties prioritize immigration as a pressing political issue, regarding it as a cause of economic competition and a threat to national identity and security. Based on 36 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with female members and supporters of UKIP, the BNP, and the EDL carried out between September 2013 and December 2014, this chapter examines how women on the nationalist right frame migration and turn it into a political issue. In particular, it looks at the perception of migration in terms of “mass migration”; the perception of its impact on the labour market and the welfare state; and how migration is linked to the EU. These dimensions are examined with an emphasis on the gender perspective, that is, on the ways nationalist women activists assess the implications of migration for women in these three areas.