The Analysis of the Hungarian Government’s Discourse towards the Migrant Crisis: A Combination of Securitization and Euroscepticism

Since the Syrian crisis, migration has emerged as a rising and permanent discussion ofEuropean politics that has both created diversity and caused obstacles in the attitudes and policyorientations across the member states. In addition, the migrant crisis opened a space for Euroscepticactors to exploit it as an issue for politicization and securitization. Eurosceptic discourse has framedthe migrant crisis as a threat to national, economic, cultural and internal security, bringing itssecuritization aspect into question. In this respect, new security measures, such as border controlsand detention, and a discourse that employs anti-migration themes have become visible in manymember states. The focus of this study is to analyse Hungary’s overall position and policy orientationstowards the crisis in order to deconstruct its main messages, identify the interlocutors and the reasonsbehind particular perspectives. In this descriptive content analysis, more than 160 official documentshave been thoroughly examined. It was observed that in opposition to the European migrationgovernance, Hungary has gone through a securitizing discourse as the first theme. The second themeis that due to Brussels’ policy preferences, which are characterized to be anti-democratic andunlawful, and believed to have created a civilization disaster, Budapest has exhibited a Euroscepticstance. Hungary’s overall position and policy orientations towards the migrant crisis are concludedto be the combination of securitization and Euroscepticism. Accordingly in the last theme, Hungary’sproposed solution to the migrant crisis, which was framed as a threat, is ‘stopping’ it by initiatingnew security measures.