Ever since the beginning of the so-called refugee crisis in 2015 politicians from the Visegrad group states have been infamously vocal in their aversion to the asylum seekers (and economic migrants as well). This is despite the fact that their respective countries were among the least affected by refugee movements.

In this brief the authors claim that through their remarkably negative rhetoric the policymakers in question managed to securitize the issue of migration. By virtue of portraying migrants and asylum seekers as a threat to their countries’ state and societal security, they managed to convince the public that migration poses a great danger to both the wellbeing and very existence of their countries. As a result, they could portray themselves as defenders of the people’s safety, sovereignty, and culture, and draw political capital from uniting the electorate against “the other”.