Twenty-First Century Populism: The Spectre of Western European ...

France 171
Kitschelt, 1995: 103, 276), not least because of the increased salience of the
immigration issue in several Western European countries (Solomos and
Wrench, 1993: 4). For FN voters, immigration has always been first on their
list when asked to explain their party choice and electoral studies regularly
show that anti-immigrant attitudes are a key factor in predicting who will
vote for the party (see e.g., Rydgren, 2003b; Mayer, 1999; 2002).
The fact that immigration was politicized, which increased popular xenophobia
to the point where it came out into the open, clearly created a favourable
situation for RRP parties. Moreover, according to many surveys, a
majority in most West European countries have held immigration-sceptic
views since the early 1990s (Betz, 1994: 103; EUMC, 2001). In France, this
situation was already apparent in 1985. In a survey, nearly 75 per cent agreed
with the statement that ‘one does not feel secure in areas with many immigrants’,
50 per cent agreed that ‘immigrants are an important cause of criminality
in France’, and nearly 50 per cent agreed that ‘every time a foreigner
takes a job in France, it is at a Frenchman’s expense’ (Ignazi, 1996: 70).
Furthermore, in two polls taken by SOFRES in November 1984, 68 per cent
wanted to stop further immigration, 25 per cent wanted immigrants to ‘go
back where they came from’, and 66 per cent thought that there were ‘far
too many North Africans in France’ (Bréchon and Mitra, 1992: 68). These
attitudes remained at roughly the same level throughout the 1980s and
1990s (Mayer, 1999: 137). However, it should be noted that the proportion
of voters that favoured the departure of immigrants before integration
decreased by almost 10 percentage points to 38 per cent between 1998 and
2002 (Balme, 2002).
The politicization and framing of the immigration issue
The Front National did not, of course, politicize immigration all by itself.
Although it incorporated anti-immigration themes within its ideological
core in the 1970s, the party was far too small and marginalized to be able to
politicize the issue. In addition, although the intellectuals of the Nouvelle
Droite (in particular Alain de Benoist) formulated a xenophobic ideology of
‘the right to be different’ during the late 1970s, they too were not in a position
to politicize the immigration issue by themselves.
After liberation in 1945, the question of immigration hardly entered the
public realm for three decades. Instead, immigration policy was worked out
in collaboration between experts and politicians. Immigration policy was a
technical issue rather than a politicized one. However, the consensus to
keep immigration a ‘technical issue’ started to change in the 1970s. In 1974,
shortly after Valéry Giscard d’Estaing had been elected president, the government
announced that further immigration would temporarily cease.
Three years later, it confirmed that this temporary suspension would be made
permanent. In addition, the government sought to reduce the existing