| Abstract: | Against the background of research on Italian parliamentary debates on immigration, ter Wal looks at the ideological positions of the extreme-right Alleanza nazionale (AN) concerning both immigration and integration policy. In order to unravel the ideological implications she focuses on examples of various rhetorical strategies enacted in speeches by several of the party's MPs: including stategies of self- and other-presentation, and of justification and causal explanation. This analysis shows how the AN manages to propagate an ideology of ethnic nationalism that eschews the egalitarian norms and cultural pluralism necessary for full participation by migrants. The AN's transformation and re-interpretation of the meaning of the key values of equality andsolidarietàfunction as a justification for the restriction of migrants' rights. Speakers shift the perspective from immigrants' problems to the socio-economic problems of Italians in order to recommend a policy of 'the own people first'. While the AN's discourse thus continues to build on traditional extreme-right beliefs and claims, on the other hand it also espouses New Right ideologies of cultural relativism. Moreover, unlike that of radical-right parties, the AN's discourse does not express blatant forms of ethnic prejudice in the form of stereotypical beliefs and negative representations of immigrants' personal characteristics, nor does it blame immigrants, who are rather represented, and sympathized with, as victims. The moderation of and internal contradictions in its discourse makes the AN difficult |
