Border anxieties: populist emotional politics at internal EU borders

ABSTRACT

Along the internal EU border between Germany and Poland, border discourse has increasingly turned to issues of crime and insecurity, with voices speaking up for more controls and border closures. This paper analyses the way in which such border-related statements show features of populist communication by contextualizing this example within a wider discussion on the issues of populism in relation to emotions and space. The argumentation supports the use of concepts of populism in political geography as it has a high potential of analysing discourses of othering, reordering and re-bordering and of highlighting the emotions within these processes.

KEYWORDS:

• Political geography
• emotional geography
• border
• security
• populism
• European Union

1. Introduction

Around the globe, debates have significantly multiplied on populism. Triggered by flare-ups of populist acts in many places and in ever shorter intervals, the effects of its appearances have been discussed vigorously in a growing variety of disciplines. Political geography has also latched onto the subject, especially regarding notions of nationalism and territorialization (Casaglia et al., 2020; Lizotte, 2019). Simultaneously, there has been some questioning of whether the lens of populism is actually useful in social research, ranging from claims that it is being applied slightly arbitrarily (e.g. Feustel & Bescherer, 2018) to criticism of the growing and often unchallenged popularity of the term in political and social research and its debates. Authors, such as Halikiopoulou (in Bonikowski et al., 2019), have warned that the term populism should not be used as a buzzword to describe a variety of phenomena that are inherently different from one another.

Recent political developments show a continued urgency for studying how political aims are fought for with what politics and means – particularly regarding the effects and mechanisms of populism. ‘At last everyone understands that populism matters’; Kaltwasser et al. began their 700-page handbook on populism in 2017 with these words. Clearly, a series of events over the last two decades, such as the politics of Viktor Orbán, Geert Wilders, Jair Bolsonaro or Donald Trump, have pushed populism to the forefront of public debates and research. Recent observations on populist denial and blame-shifting during the COVID-19 pandemic, and various articulations of alleged information and truth during the war on Ukraine in 2022 have added additional urgency to questions of such political communication. These developments have also shown the dynamic character of populism: its actors have become more diverse and its communication has unfolded its power across a wider political spectrum, complicating formerly relevant poles of left and right.

Scientific debates have taken up the changing appearances of populism. Attempting to grasp its various modes of functioning, attention has been shifted to its detailed characteristics and means in different contexts. In particular, there has been an increase in studies on spatial rhetorics in populist discourse. Such research partly follows up on long-established research on discourses of right-wing movements (e.g. Berg & Üblacker, 2020; Mullis, 2019; Wodak, 2015) or discourse-oriented analyses of election geographies (Deppisch, 2021; Lau & Redlawsk, 2006). Along with the increasing spread of the use of populist communication across a wider political spectrum, the search is continuing in how to apply conceptual work on populism to the studied phenomena with appropriate, empirically based methods.

This is where this paper sets in. Following recent works that point out the strategic and emotional character of populist communication (e.g. De Vreese et al., 2018; Moffitt, 2020; Wirz, 2018), this paper focuses on discussing and exploring features of populist communication and their interconnectedness in one of the most sensitive fields of political discourse in our times: discourses at the nexus of borders and security. Based on a comprehensive analysis of media coverage of the German-Polish border, the case is made that the use of concepts of populism has a potential to reveal tendencies of othering, reordering and reordering in current spatial politics and discourses, particularly by highlighting the emotional aspects of discourses that evoke links between the border and security. In this way, these concepts can add relevant insights and extensions to the ongoing trend of political geographical discussion to seriously consider emotions in shaping the geopolitical and everyday political spatialities of our times (Militz, 2019; Pain, 2010; Williams & Boyce, 2013).

In order to explore the strategic character of populist communication more deeply, the focus is placed on three elements that Rancière (2017) elicited as particularly relevant in populist communication: (1) it directly addresses the people; (2) it creates an argumentation of distance from the state, positioning government and elites as ignorant of the people; and (3) it uses narratives of identity and fear of the other. The third section of this paper takes these features as a structure to discuss how populist communication has a power to purposefully entangle questions of space with emotional elements, and arrives at the conclusion that the field of borders and security represents a particularly clear, vivid and emotionally laden theme for convincingly employing populist elements of communication.

Recent media coverage on the German–Polish border is analysed to explore this communication more concretely. Representations of this border in public discourse have undergone a considerable change since the Schengen Agreement and subsequent openings of the border in 2007. From a place highlighted for its integration and cross-border cooperation, representations of this border have increasingly shifted to portray borders as places of crime and insecurity in the past decade, often using a very polarizing, dramatic language. The reactions of governments to the still ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the many border closures along the way have fuelled such discourses of fear and distrust (e.g. Casaglia et al., 2020; Renner et al., 2022).

Based on this analysis, covering a set of media reports on the German–Polish border of the last two decades, an argument is made that conceptions of populism, due to their focus on strategic fear-evoking and exclusionary argumentation, can contribute greatly to discourse-oriented studies in political geography and border studies. In the next paragraphs, populism will first be conceptualized as a strategic tool of communication, followed by a discussion of Ranciere’s main characteristics of such a strategic communication focussing on its specific relation to space and emotions. Based on this conceptual understanding, the empirical case will be introduced and analysed, demonstrating the high potential of the concept of populism to reveal the strategic power inherent in entanglements of space and emotion in political communication, and to dissect the political ideas that are transmitted along its main themes. Following on from these considerations, the analysis shows in which way the border-security nexus as a topic is prone to function specifically well for the strategic communication of political aims through populist discourse.

2. Why populism? Populism as a concept and tool

Concepts of populism have emphasized various elements that define it over time. In the middle of the last century, the term ‘populism’ was used to describe a type of political leadership or the interaction of a government with its people (e.g. Rancière, 2017). In more recent debates, it has shifted increasingly towards a description of a strategy or style used by various actors in the political arena. In this sense, it describes mainly a construction that uses the polarization of the ‘elite’ and ‘people’ to achieve certain goals (Kaltwasser et al., 2017). While populist actions are generally criticized for this strategic use, there has also been some discussion on whether bringing up previously ignored issues important to the ‘people’ to the elite – or more specifically, politicians – can also be considered as a ‘democratic corrective’, as Bonikowski et al. (2019, p. 59) have discussed. However, while a focus on the populus as the people in a basic historical sense of all the human beings opposite a perceived elite can be seen as a well-meaning and democratic intervention (e.g. Feustel & Bescherer, 2018), the demarcation of a ‘people’ evokes questions of its definition and delimitation. In a number of observable cases, the term shows exclusive rather than inclusive tendencies, making it rather problematic (Bernet et al., 2019; Canovan, 1984). As a consequence, debates about the rise of populist phenomena have urged authors to point out and discuss the contested meaning of ‘the people’ in relation to populism (e.g. Feustel & Bescherer, 2018), and revive a search for ‘the people’ as such (Badiou et al., 2016; Lizotte, 2019).

What becomes evident in recent scientific discussion is the characterization of populism as a tool rather than an ideological orientation, a style of communication used to transmit certain content, often very successfully (De Vreese et al., 2018; Guillem et al., 2017; Moffitt, 2020; Wirz, 2018). This conceptualization also dominates explanations by Laclau (2014) or Stavrakakis (2014), who underline the essentialist and naturalizing character of populist communication, for example, by its principles of integrating differentiated groups under an umbrella of ‘the people’ or constructing the divide between ‘we’ and ‘the other’ in a simplifying way.

This conception of populism as a style of politics brings tactics and stylistic instruments into the focus of the analysis, as well as the question of who uses populism, in what ways and for which aims. It is useful as a means of not prejudging populist actors and relegating them to the extremist ends of the political spectrum, and it opens possibilities for analysing populism in all the ways it is enacted, performed and used.

For the purpose of this paper, and while not ignoring that populism as a ‘politics’ can be discussed in various ways, the focus here is laid on populism as a strategic communication style. The discussion will, therefore, concentrate on features of populist communication, with a specific attention for spatial and emotional dimensions.

3. Features of populist communication: anchors of space and emotions

Rancière (2017, p. 97) identifies three elements or features of the strategic character of populism, where it is understood as discourse or communication. He describes it as a communication style that:

• directly addresses the people,

• advances the argument that governments and elites are egoistical and serve their own interests rather than the people’s, and

• uses identitarian narratives that produce fear of the other.

The last feature hints particularly at two themes that – with a closer look at all three features – seems relevant across the use of this communication: space and emotions. The interaction of populism and space is increasingly discussed by scholars (e.g. Casaglia et al., 2020; Lizotte, 2019). Some of this work focuses predominantly on the geography of instances of populism, aiming to give explanations for apparent concentrations of populist activities in certain places or regions (e.g. Gordon, 2018; Shoshan, 2016). Marginalized people and marginalized, or peripheralized places on all scales should be thought of together in this respect. As Lizotte (2019) points out: ‘Spatial voting patterns are revealing that populist resentment is not simply a matter of material deprivation, but of places expressing their fear and outrage about potential futures in which they are economically and culturally irrelevant’. In comparison to the geographies of instances of populism, the particularly spatial aspects of populist rhetoric seem to have been less researched so far (for an exception, see Lizotte, 2020). A closer look at populist discourses shows that space appears to be of relevance in populist communication in several ways, and is mostly used to mark and define aspects of belonging and distances or differentiations.

In addition to spatial aspects, features of populist communication also contain emotional dimensions, such as the strong persuasive power of this type of communication and its quite comprehensive application of fears, insecurities, dangers and vulnerabilities (e.g. Beland, 2020; Canovan, 1984; Wodak, 2015). Political psychology and political science, in general, have paid attention to this particular connection for some time and with growing interest in the last few years (Cossarini & Vallespín, 2019; Demertzis, 2006, 2019; Lau & Redlawsk, 2006). Research by Lau and Redlawsk (2006) on voting behaviour, for instance, suggests that emotions bias the way in which we filter and process information and, thus, influence our subjective attitudes and political beliefs. In a similar direction, Guillem et al. (2017) have looked specifically at the relations of emotions with voting behaviour in Spain, revealing anger as a decisive emotion supporting individual choices for populist parties. Sociology and communication science have also increasingly put effort into revealing the particularly successful techniques of populist communication in touching its recipients emotionally (e.g. Wirz, 2018), especially revealing the emotionally persuasive power of new right movements and right-wing populist communication regarding questions of ethnic amd religious identity or nationality (e.g. Salmela & Von Scheve, 2017). A growing body of work explains how this emotional power can, for a considerable part, be explained by elements of the style of communication. Bonansinga (2020), for instance, points out the subjective dimension of populist communication – its trait to address subjective constructions of meaning, as a successful tactic, while other authors have focused on the production of anger (e.g. Nguyen, 2019; Wirz, 2018) or engagement of masculinity (Roose, 2018) as helpful strategies of populist communication.

Following the work of both Lazarus (2001) and Wirz (2018) on core relational themes of emotions, part of the success of populist rhetoric is ascribed to the themes that are typically addressed in it. Constructing a negative image of the elite and its shortcomings, for instance, will trigger feelings of insecurity and fear, while a powerful call for action and initiative by a populist leader, as for example, former U.S. President Donald Trump demonstrated on several occasions, will most likely prompt emotions of hope and pride (Wirz, 2018).

Regarding an analysis of populist communication, this means that both the persuasive power of populist communication emerging from its emotionally touching style and its use of recurring themes of anti-elite opposition, (in)security and fear should be kept in mind. In the following, I will discuss the features of populist communication suggested by Rancière regarding affective elements of typical populist themes, with a particular focus on the role of borders and bordering in populist communication.

3.1. Directly addressing ‘the people’

According to Rancière’s overview, populist communication uses a style that bypasses elites and directly reaches the people. Keeping in mind the dilemma of contested definitions and scopes of ‘the people’, this section discusses the populist focus on the people, while paying particular attention to the selectivity of its contents and the emotionality of its style.

For individuals to recognize the communication directed at them, the content of that communication must speak to their problems. As Marine Le Pen stated so vividly in this respect – and to an extent in a normative way – populism means ‘to defend the people and especially the forgotten ones against the elites’ (Müller, 2016, p. 12, transl. by the author). The territorialized narration of peripherality or marginality is used to bring issues from the ‘edge of the society’ back into ‘the centre of attention’. The link between populist communication and the thesis of left-behind places has also been examined more closely by a number of authors. As an example, Gordon concludes that the majority of such connections become visible on a micro level of individual attitudinal factors that are unevenly found among people and places, and that it is not so much a currently or just recently experienced concrete situation of economic loss that makes places and their people particularly prone to populist communication but rather a longer-term structural history of deprivation and loss can have a lasting effect on individual attitudes of people living in certain regions or places (2018, p. 22).

Other authors have looked at how feeling deprived or marginalized in society can lead to a relative openness towards populist communication. The research so far points out that while there is an observable geography to support (right-wing) populist ideas that may point to so-called left-behind places, the actual support beyond the perceptions of such places or their macro socio-economic data is to be studied in-depth and on the individual level. As far as some studies reveal, it is much more the populist narrations and imaginations building on ‘being left behind’ than the actual social-economic situation of individuals that, on a macro-scale level, appear to be related to election results (e.g. Förtner et al., 2019; Mullis, 2019). Along with constructed references to places being allegedly left-behind, a basis for belonging to the ‘people’ addressed is created, a ‘here’ is established as a safe place or home to protect (Schwell, 2019, p. 35).

Within populist constructions of assumingly being left behind, the topic of borders offers a particularly fruitful and vivid focal point. People in border regions are per se located at the geographic (topographic) margins of a territorial nation-state. This can be used in statements that produce a divisional narrative of ‘we here at the margins’, while governments and elites are depicted as the ones far away in the centre who do not know the problems of the people. With populist discourses turning to the problems of people that feel unseen or left behind, inhabitants of border regions can feel the attention that is paid to their lives particularly well.

3.2. Distance to the state – positioning governments and elites

Rancière discusses populist communication’s tendency to claim that governments and elites are more focused on their own interests than on those of the ‘common man’ as a major characteristic. In this sense, populist communication makes use of a rhetoric of dichotomy (Feustel & Bescherer, 2018, p. 6), by simplistically dividing political space between elites and ordinary ‘folk’ (Panizza, 2017, p. 409). The polarization between the people and the elite is often highlighted with spatial imaginations that emphasize the distance between these groups, for example, ‘we here locally’ and the state or politicians who are positioned ‘far away’.

Spatial metaphors of distance are used by populists to express the people’s feelings of being misunderstood, unrepresented or simply invisible to the elite. The symbolic construction of ‘we, the people’ quite often marks the suppressed part of society, whose needs are not being taken seriously by elites or the establishment (Panizza, 2017, p. 411). Whether the objects of criticism are identified as economic, political or cultural elites (Bonikowski et al., 2019, p. 60), physical and figurative distance remain dominant rhetorical devices in populist communication.

With the tropes of peripheries and borders, populist communication makes use of obviously noticed marginal locations to underline a politically and socially perceived marginal position within a state’s politics and a distance to central decision-making. Two examples underline this particular position.

1. As the COVID-19 pandemic has reminded many border region inhabitants, the everyday life of people at borders can change tremendously with geo- or biopolitical decisions of either de- or re-bordering. Suddenly separated or, at least, confronted with strong border crossing regulations and limitations, the elites’ decisions cut through the daily routines of many, often to the point of endangering their livelihoods (see Renner et al., 2022).

2. The debordering processes at the internal Schengen borders over the last few decades have led to a noticeable reduction of state border control and surveillance. As borderlands remain sites where state sovereignty is exercized, a lack of visible control can quickly feed narratives of lost state control (see Beurskens & Miggelbrink, 2017). Regarding a perceived lack of state-led security, we can see examples of the commodification of securitization and ‘re-coding’ of the border as an uncertain living environment in the U.S. (Kurz & Berry, 2015, p. 160; Sementelli, 2020, p. 108), and in Europe, on a much smaller scale, with security devices being promoted and sold in border vicinities in order to take security at the border into your own hands (Beurskens et al., 2016). Such phenomena are also discussed as a hollowing-out of the state, setting the stage for more private solutions for border securitization measures (Sementelli, 2020, p. 104ff).

In both contexts, the people in border regions can be addressed populistically as the ignored victims of measures of the state government and elite, to politically mobilize them.

3.3. Narratives of identity and fear

Populist communication is strongly related to producing difference and distance – not only towards so-called elites but even more so towards strangers. As Rancière summarizes this aspect, one of the most ascribed features of populist discourse is its incorporation of narratives of identity and fear of the other. Or as Rooduijn (in Bonikowski et al., 2019, p. 73) puts it, populism focuses on an in-group in the form of a defined people. This obviously implies the existence of an out-group as well, with both constructed groups taking various forms, depending on the ideological context of the communication. Combined with nationalist thought, in right-wing and conservative movements, for instance, populist discourses seize upon the territorial nation-state as a means of identifying a ‘we’ inside its boundaries and ‘others’ outside. This relates to what Lizotte describes as an ‘increasing territorialisation of populist discourse itself as dissatisfaction with globalisation’s mobilisation of people, capital, and culture – […] – is expressed through calls to spatially isolate, close off and withdraw’ (2019, p. 139).

As an example of the discursive construction of the relationship to outsiders, in this case, in the context of perceived crime, Walters wrote of populist demonizations of feared others that are used to build and legitimize support for strengthening and securitizing borders (2002, p. 320). The migratory events of the last decade have tended to spur on populist discourses containing fear of the other (e.g. Aldhawyan et al., 2020), triggering mentions of re-bordering as a means of self-protection. As Schwell points out with the example of Austria, populist nationalist communication is particularly successful in promoting the necessary protection of an allegedly endangered national community by using the narrative of a ‘threatened border’ (2019, p. 43). Mašanović even more clearly speaks of a ‘war of emotions’ (2020, p. 11) used by right-wing populists to argue for re-bordering and exclusion. The involvement of fear in border politics has increasingly become an object of scientific debate, for example, in research on the U.S.-Mexican border (Correa-Cabrera & Garrett, 2014; Miller, 2014; Williams & Boyce, 2013), with many observing a strong shift in border-related discourses from questions of integration and cooperation to issues of security after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 (e.g. Kurz & Berry, 2015; Sementelli, 2020).

While the divisions between insiders and outsiders clearly become intertwined with the territorial limits of the nation-state, populist communication moves beyond this naturalization. Populist attention is directed against any transnational integration and particularly at the outsiders within the state, often marked as a threat to the nation, particularly since perpetuated globalization processes and wider migration movements have diversified nation-states’ societies. The antipluralist character of populist discourse is agreed upon by many authors (Bonikowski et al., 2019; Müller, 2016). While some warn about equating populism and nationalism conceptually, their close relationship is acknowledged, nevertheless, at least as far as the characteristic tendency ‘to divide the world into “us” and “them”’ using the borders of the nation-state as the dividing line between these groups (Rooduijn in Bonikowski et al., 2019, p. 73).

This othering element of populist discourse relates to the aforementioned feature of aiming at the deprived and their insecurities. Based on such fears and uncertainties, populist discourse often calls for regaining security and control. While defining risks (e.g. of crime) in vivid and emotionalized forms, and attaching them to ‘the other’, extraordinary forms of securitization, including closed borders, are legitimized. Through such discourses, populism often offers an implicit transformation of vague insecurities and uncertainties into defined risks that can be opposed or dealt with (Zinn, 2004), for instance, through extraordinary measures of spatial control, a feature that will not fail to attract followers.

3.4. Borders as a populist nexus of space and emotions

When reflecting on the characteristics of populist communication and its contents within frames of politics and space, populism and borders, or bordering practices, seem to be made for each other. The close relationship of populist communication and borders can be observed in a number of ways. As the discussion of elements of populist communication has shown, this communication style works particularly well in relation to discourses and practices of othering and bordering. In a variety of social contexts, populist communication adds to separation and securitization.

But also, the term ‘border’ and the idea or imagination related to it, play a particular role as a tool. The theme of borders is most notable in functional arguments separating a ‘we’ from ‘the other’. As much as they produce marginal spaces constructed as being distant from the core of the state, including the need to be brought back to the attention of central decision-making, they also play an essential role in marking dissimilarity and underlining a fear of the other. Borders offer a clear and easily transferable focus for differentiations. As a concept of separation, the border, therefore, is a perfect mediative tool to underline the necessity of closing-off the people, or outsiders. This is especially so in politically right-wing oriented popular discourse (see Wodak, 2015). Borders, in this respect, constitute a clear and easily transferable mechanism for producing boundaries between incompatible difference, as popular examples from Trump’s speeches and Orbán’s Hungarian politics show (e.g. Lamour & Varga, 2020). The phenomenon of borders has a long tradition of being related to questions of space and emotions, identity issues and fears (e.g. Paasi, 2001; Schwell, 2019; Van Houtum & Pijpers, 2007), all of them aspects that appear to be relevant themes of populist communication.

Along with these themes, borders also stand out as a focus of emotionally laden discourses on securitization. Security concerns have risen over the last few decades and become a popular focus of public attention, particular in relation to occurrences such as the attacks of 9/11, larger migration flows or the COVID-19 pandemic. Populists have picked up these issues widely and used them for their own aims (see Inglehart & Norris, 2016; Kinnvall, 2018); borders and re-bordering, at least on an abstract level, being perceived as offering a solution to many security-related problems.

Taking these ideas further, I argue that the nexus of space and emotions in populist communication becomes particularly visible in communication regarding borders and security. As the analysis in the next section will showcase, the dissection of features of populist communication with its typical themes and elements of style can contribute to revealing the particular connection of space and emotion. As the case study material demonstrates, this approach can make understandable the populist political communication style’s persuasive power, affecting peoples’ attitudes, sense of belonging and everyday orientations in a highly emotional way.

4. Populist communication and the German–Polish border

4.1. An internal border of the European Union

International borders within the current territorial lines of the European Union (EU) have undergone various changes over the course of the past and current century – and so have generated debates and discourses. From the 1950s onwards, the idea of European integration has dominated the topic of European borders, especially the internal borders between member states of the growing EU. Integration politics affected borders and border regions, so-called Euroregions, were established and institutionalized in order to facilitate cross-border interaction in various fields, ranging from, for example, national parks to cross-border universities, transport infrastructures and medical care.

At the German–Polish border, the decisive change took place in the year 2007, with Poland joining the Schengen space. Growing cross-border integration has been witnessed at the border between Germany and Poland over the past decades (Opiłowska, 2021; Stokłosa, 2015). Issues of separation and securitization seemed to have been largely moved elsewhere with sweeping reductions of border controls at internal Schengen borders from the mid-1990s onwards and at this border in the early 2000s. Border police have been withdrawn to the EU’s external borders and checks take place only randomly at selected places, such as highways.

Nevertheless, abandoned border checkpoints and infrastructure have left behind a cognitive vacuum. Everyday life at international borders can generally be marked by feelings of instability, fuzziness and arbitrariness (e.g. Schwell, 2021). Living at the margins of central decision-making, being subject to far-away geopolitical decisions of de- or re-bordering, and an often less stable economy subject to processes of peripheralization are of particular relevance for inhabitants’ anxieties. There is no shortage of entangled feelings of insecurity, especially in the peripheral regions of Eastern Germany, due to the consequences of this transformation of borders and a widespread perception of being left alone by elites and politicians (e.g. Kollmorgen, 2020). Discourses of fear and crime can be witnessed within this ambivalent setting along one of the EU’s internal borders, in which proximity to the border makes up a central element.

4.2. Border crime as popular security issue at the German border to Poland

During the last decade, a number of press articles, media reports and online comments have covered tales about crime in the Eastern border regions of Germany. Stolen bicycles, cars, agricultural machines and even cattle have dominated headlines. An apparent trait of the reports is the clear positioning of the border as a relevant factor and the implication of these thefts being a cross-border phenomenon. This particular new tendency has also become visible in a strongly growing articulation of the term ‘border crime’ (‘Grenzkriminalitaet’), which had been almost non-existent in German media before the introduction of Schengen in 2007 (Beurskens et al., 2016). As a term, it cannot be found in legal frameworks or police statistics, yet it serves well to describe events or even fears and threats that are thought to be related to the border, including the idea that the other sides of the border – and its people – are the ones to blame.

More often than not, stories have been linked to statements on insufficient security in these relatively open Schengen border regions. As along other internal Schengen borders, also here the border control points were abandoned and police units partly moved elsewhere. The perceived desecuritization coming along with these changes has made residents of these regions highly sensitive to the perception that cross-border crime is out of control.

The ways of discussing border crime at the German–Polish border are often highly emotional b, which can be seen not only in media but also in political speeches. In some places, the perceptions of fear of border crime have motivated civilians to join the police in their work or to form militias (Beurskens et al., 2016; Beurskens & Miggelbrink, 2020).

Using the conceptual framework introduced in the previous section, the sections below will look at media statements regarding crime along the German–Polish border more closely in order to understand better in what way and with the help of which features these notions of crime and fear at the border are used in a populist manner to push forward reactionary political themes and practices of bordering and othering.

4.3. Methodological approach

This analysis was based on media communication regarding border crime at the border between Germany and Poland.¹

A corpus of newspaper articles was used that contained material from nine German newspapers. The papers were chosen to represent a range between major nation-wide daily papers as well as local and regional daily press; but also along criteria regarding data availability. Regarding political stands, most of the papers are positioned in the mainstream with rather serious reporting, with both tendencies towards progressive papers (e.g. Die Tageszeitung) as well as rather conservative positions (Welt, BILD) being included as well. The data retrieved for this analysis cover a time span between 2006, chosen as a beginning as the year just before the transition to regulations of an internal Schengen border at the German–Polish border, and 2018. The articles were selected by searching for the term ‘border crime’ (Grenzkriminalitaet); consequently, the articles selected reflect a part of border discourse that includes discussions on insecurity and unwanted border-related practices.

For the analysis of populist style within communication-related to border and security, an analytic selection was made of segments of these newspaper articles that address security issues, emotions or expectations, insecurity, statements that carried spatial attributions, border imaginations and any segments of articles containing direct quotations This selection was made following a first content analysis of the material and detecting populist attributes in segments on these themes. The focused corpus contained about 200 segments. A content analysis utilizing this material identified segments that carried characteristics which are normally referred to as populist communication. The focus lay on the features of a style discussed earlier that, (a) directly addresses the people, (b) argues that governments and elites are egoistical and serve their own interests rather than the people’s, and, (c) uses identitarian narratives that produce fear of the other (Rancière, 2017, p. 97).

The analysis of these segments focused on recognizing specific arguments that can be ascribed to populist border discourse, with the help of a differentiated coding scheme reflecting aspects of the features of populist communication discussed previously. After coding, a condensed number of 63 segments remained for further analysis. The evidence from the statements will be discussed in the following paragraphs.

4.4. Directly addressing ‘the people’

When addressing the topic of border crime, the German newspapers and the original voices of politicians cited in them focus clearly on the people’s sorrows and problems. The deteriorating situation of crime along the German–Polish border is described emotionally as ‘dramatic’ (B_20130812²), ‘frightening’ (B_20100727) and even ‘exploding’ (LR_20120228), and ascribed as endangering well-being at the border in both economic and social terms. Increasing crime rates are related directly to proximity to the border:

The people of Spremberg [a place close to the border in the federal state of Brandenburg] see themselves confronted with a considerable rise in crime. According to the police, the proximity to the border […] plays an important role in this. (LR_20140925)³

In such statements, residents of borderlands are marked as the main victims of the border crime phenomenon since their close proximity to the border heightens their probability of being affected by border crime. These representations validate citizens’ perceptions of their problematic situation. This victimization narrative also takes place in an indirect way. Incidents of criminal acts influence the overall feelings of safety among residents in a negative way, making their life even harder. Based on this often-made diagnosis, the border is described as a dangerous place that needs a lot more protection than it has: ‘We need more presence of police to also increase the feeling of safety’, said a local politician in 2013 (LR_20140711).

Representing the border as a place of crime needs to be seen as a process of recoding this interior border of the EU from a place of cross-border integration and growing together to an unsafe area. This is a rather severe tendency, especially for places along this border that have grown much more entangled over the last few decades.

Guben and Gubin [twin cities] need each other. But when the number of thefts climbs and endangers the development of the economy and tourism, when citizens don’t feel safe anymore, then this problem needs to be addressed in politics. (ND_20110715)

The mobilization of more control and protection powers turns first and foremost to politicians and asks that a lot more attention is paid to the problems in these seemingly neglected places. This is an example of how the territorialized narration of peripherality or marginality is used to bring issues from the ‘edge of the society’ back into ‘the centre of attention’, thereby supporting overall aims of reactionist politics. In most cases, larger numbers of police personnel are asked for. In some statements, though, mobilization addresses another segment of society, the residents themselves:

In addition, Buttolo [Minister of the Interior, Saxony] is also sending 57 volunteers of Saxony’s security guards (Sicherheitswächter, a function established for civilians to support the police with additional patrols) to the border. They should strengthen the subjective feeling of safety. (taz_20080403)

Mobilizing citizens for securitization plays an important role in discourses on border crime. Increasing debates on these issues were followed in many places by events on how to protect your belongings with better alarm systems or DNA-marking techniques. There is one political party that makes clear that it takes these problems of the local population much more seriously than others. Gauland, member of parliament for the AfD (Alternative for Germany) party, states: ‘We want a lot more police, otherwise we will have to start thinking of closing the border with Poland at short notice’ (HB_20141013).

4.5. Distance to the state – positioning governments and elites

Emphasizing the problems of the people in borderlands, their feelings of unsafety and demanding more police is closely related to establishing these citizens as living at a certain distance from the state and its elites. One component of such a discourse is the description of feeling misunderstood, ignored and left behind. Press articles and statements describe how citizens in the borderlands notice the rise in border crime and the retreat of police simultaneously. There is talk about unanswered inquiries and insufficient police investigation. Since a lot of theft is related to company equipment and agricultural machinery, residents of rural areas particularly raise their voices: ‘We businessmen feel let down and ridiculed by federal politics’ (resident, Kerkow, Brandenburg, in W_20120213).

The vice-head of the farmers’ league in Saxony also complained. She explained that farmers feel left alone and expect more support from the government. Rather disillusioned, she did not have much hope that a few stolen cows would be considered a reason to reinforce the police presence in the borderland (ND_20170829). She described how the thefts undermine citizens’ feeling of safety and spoke of a feeling of powerlessness, of unnerved residents who feel left behind by the state and police: ‘It’s almost utter mockery that the cries for help of frightened citizens and businessmen who fear for their existence trail off without effect’ (resident, in S_20150613).

Some statements relate this feeling of being left behind to other insecurities in place in these eastern borderlands of Germany. As parts of the former German Democratic Republic, the population in these areas has witnessed years of often difficult economic and social transformation that for many, especially in such peripheral places, have meant unemployment and economic decline. It was ‘woefully underestimated, that here among these citizens, numerous resentments towards their eastern neighbours overlap with fears of being neglected by the state’ (ND_20151029), a statement claims.

The distance to the state that is established in these discourses is expressed in a clear division between us here and elites, politicians or members of the government there, far away. This division and relative positioning are underlined by naming places of political decision-making at the federal state or the EU level: A resident states that ‘Here in our places police numbers are cut short and in Berlin, nobody cares’ (S_20140818).

The ignorance by the state regarding the problems and sorrows on the local level at the border is related to another sentiment: a strong sense of state failure. Feeling the gap between local pain and insufficient support or political action, the state is blamed for ignoring a serious problem and not dealing with it in the way they should. Security is seen as a main task of a sovereign state and many had directed their expectations and demands to state politics – and have been disappointed by the politicians’ unwillingness to take action: ‘In [the federal state of] Brandenburg, politicians of all parties promise to protect citizens from thieves better. But almost no political party is trusted here any longer’ (Z_20140911).

Some inhabitants feel motivated to take things into their own hands, resulting from the distance by the state, and the sensed and perceived failure of politicians to address the problem in an effective way.

But we want the police to show more power here. That is why we put pressure on the regional governments. Politics are lagging behind regarding reality. Even if a criminal is caught red-handed here, he just needs to take a few steps to get away across the border. Until politicians have made the decision to act, we have a few citizens here that take a closer look around. (ND_20140629)

An inhabitant has used 600 metres of barbed wire and bear traps to, in his words, build a ‘border safety installation’. He says:

There are no alternatives. I don’t care about injuries. Otherwise, the thieves won’t learn. I have asked the Ministry of the Interior for help several times. We, just as many inhabitants here, feel left alone. Now we have to help ourselves. (B_20120405)

4.6. Narratives of identity and fear

The topic of feeling left alone by the state quite often appears to be entangled with another major and most sensitive topic of populist discourse: the highlighting and intensification of discourses of othering. The argument of being far away from the centre of the state and its attention is turned into an argumentation of ‘we here at the fringes, left to defend our country against the outside world’.

The Minister of the Interior of Saxony explained in a European Parliament debate on a higher frequency of border controls between the Czech Republic and Germany: ‘We won’t let Saxony become a stomping ground for criminals, no matter whether they come from the Czech Republic or other countries’ (B_20100309). Crime, in this statement, is clearly ascribed to people with foreign origins, while ‘we’ appears to relate to people that live in Germany, implicitly described as honest and upright.

Reports on crime in border regions tend to follow a clear identitarian rhetoric: ‘we are attacked by the others’ based on national belonging, the ‘others’ being Eastern Europeans. This spatial stigmatization of ascribing experienced acts of crime to people from the neighbouring countries repeats itself in many forms:

Mainly Eastern European thieves have turned the German villages near the border crossing point Küstrin-Kietz into their self-service store and take everything that is not particularly secured: tools, high-quality gardening appliances, bicycles, cars, even large farm machinery. (W_20140322)

While turning the question of crime and security into a matter of identity, narratives show a nationalist framing. In this way, these border-related observations turn into easily reusable narratives for repeated populist arguments. A pensioner in his late-50s explains: ‘Border crime is constantly rising. Just on New Year’s Eve, brutal Poles came through Görlitz and beat up everything that got in their way’ (B_20110112).

Suspicion and distrust in this context have turned into anxieties that feed resentment and fears of the other. Those fears find their expression in an emotional style of statements directed at the outside of the national territory, against people of neighbouring countries.

5. Populist border discourse? Summary and outlook

Border-related discourses are a main pillar of orientation in bordering processes and life at borders generally. While border-related representations within the EU were dominated for a long time by themes of integration and cross-border cooperation, the analysis of recent public media communication on the German–Polish border reveals a discourse quite opposite to those values. The internal border is covered according to a new narrative in a variety of media articles discussing issues of security and crime in border regions, that of fears and insecurities.

Following conceptual frameworks of populist communication, certain features in these border-related discourses focusing on the German–Polish border regions can be observed within the. The analysed segments show how such border representations are addressing the people in an emotionally convincing style, how governments and other elites are positioned as distant and egoistical actors who do not care about common interests, and how an identitarian rhetoric relates perceived crimes and spatial aspects through practices of spatial stigmatization and othering. Thus, tendencies of populist communication can be observed in this kind of border discourse that even contains mobilizing appeals for individual acts of securitization and vigilantism. Along with changing representations of the border in media and communication, a whole set of practices of securitization and re-bordering have emerged at the German–Polish border in order to cope with fears, protect oneself and one’s belongings, ranging from marking territories of safety measures as places in which ‘We protect ourselves’ to patrolling the areas in patrol teams of non-state actors that act in cooperation with local police (Beurskens & Miggelbrink, 2020).

While populism remains a contested concept within social science analyses and is criticized particularly for being used arbitrarily, this discussion points out the close relationship of a lot of populist communication with themes of borders, bordering and othering. With security debates having generally grown in the post-9/11 era and during the COVID-19 pandemic, and border politics and discourses increasingly turning to questions of securitization, the differentiated settings of insecurities at and in relation to borders appear to form a fertile ground for populist communication. By such discourses, a populist style of arguing or communicating often offers an implicit transformation of uncertainties into defined risks and clear counter measures.

As a main outcome and contribution to further debates on populism, bordering and Political Geography, the analysis has shown along detailed examples, how the theme of borders functions in populist arguments separating a ‘we’ from ‘the other’ in a twofold way: addressing the distance to the ‘others’ or ‘elites’ of the state almost simultaneously with marking dissimilarity towards the ‘others’ across the border. This double functionality of emotionally separating and othering make borders a particularly clear and easily transferable focus for differentiations as we find them so prominently in populist discourse.

The example of populist communication strategies regarding the discursive handling of developments at the German–Polish border shows that political geographies generally, and studies of borders particularly, can add valuable explanatory power by a more decisive turn to emotional aspects and effects. As the attention for fears and anxieties has been rising in recent border related studies (e.g. Correa-Cabrera & Garrett, 2014; Schwell, 2019; Van Houtum & Pijpers, 2007; Williams & Boyce, 2013), the lens of the concept of populism and its communication features offers a useful expansion of analytical schemes for highlighting the emotional characteristics of discourses of othering and re-bordering. By connecting with studies on the particular relations of emotions and reactionist/right-wing populist communication that have emerged over the past years, including their concepts and methods (e.g. Hochschild, 2018), political geographies and border studies can more explicitly contribute to the exposure of such communication strategies of bordering and othering, and thus considerably add to the understanding of currently emerging xenophobic and rebordering practices around the world.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Kirsi Pauliina Kallio, Christopher Lizotte and two peer reviewers for their valuable comments and support during the development of this paper.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) [grant number BE 6164/2-1].

Notes on contributors

Kristine Beurskens

Kristine Beurskens is a senior researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography in Leipzig, Germany, where she coordinates the research group ‘Geographies of Belonging and Difference’. Her research concentrates on processes of bordering, with a particular focus on the nexus of political geography, geographies of (in)security and emotions.

Notes

1 The empirical material was collected within the research project: “(In-)Security at the internal Schengen border. Security practices of state and non-state actors at the German-Polish border (2018–2022)”, carried out by the author together with Judith Miggelbrink (Technical University of Dresden) and Nona Renner (Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography).

2 References of the newspapers cited contain an abbreviation of the newspaper title and the date. The following abbreviations are used: B – Bild, LR – Lausitzer Rundschau, ND – Neues Deutschland, taz – Tageszeitung, HB – Handelsblatt, W – Welt, S – Der Spiegel, Z – Die Zeit.

3 All citations stemming from media material in this section have been translated from German to English by the author of the paper.