Territorializing threats in nationalist populist narratives: an Italian perspective on the migration and Covid-19 crises

ABSTRACT

This article explores the capacity of ‘territorialising threats’ expressed by nationalist populist parties by reinventing and replicating the geopolitical ability to speak in territorial terms exploiting emergencies to advance nationalistic claims. We focus on the Italian case exploring the narratives and political positions on borders and sovereignty adopted by the Lega party during 2019, when the ‘crisis’ was related to migration flows, and in the first half of 2020, when the Covid-19 emergency reached its first peak in Italy. Our aim is to contribute to the effort of political geographers to unveil the spatial methods of nationalist populism.

KEYWORDS:

• Populism
• bordering
• Covid-19
• ‘migration crisis’

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Analysed newspapers include: La Repubblica, Il Corriere della Sera, Il Giorno, Il Giornale, Libero, La Stampa. Besides, we also consulted online news agencies.

2 ‘Manipulite’ or ‘Tangentopoli’ was a famous investigation into bribes and corruption that, in the early Nineties, led to the fall of several local administrations and the incarceration of many public and political figures both at the national and local levels.

3 ‘The Lega Nord reached its peak with 10.2 percent of the vote in the 1996 general election, before declining to 3.9 percent in 2001’ (Tarchi, 2008, p. 85)

4 In 2020 Matteo Salvini is facing two trials in Italy, accused of abduction in relation to the prohibition of the docking of NGO vessels.

5 Formerly a term for a leper hospital, now commonly used to describe a situation where many are sick.

6 Data are available at the following link: https://elezionistorico.interno.gov.it/index.php?tpel=C&dtel=04/03/2018&tpa=I&tpe=A&lev0=0&levsut0=0&es0=S&ms=S

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anna Casaglia

Anna Casaglia is professor of political geography at the University of Trento. Her interests concern bordering processes and mobility, the spatial outcomes of injustices and power relations, the securitization of the climate crisis, popular geopolitics.

Raffaella Coletti

Raffaella Coletti, PhD in Economic and Political Geography, is Researcher at the Institute for the Study of Regionalism, Federalism and Self-Government of the National Research Council of Italy (CNR) of Rome. Her research interests include the territorial assumptions and impact of EU policies, multi-level governance, practices and policies of cross-border cooperation, the geographies of populism and nationalism, popular geopolitics.