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Photo: “20151030 Syrians and Iraq refugees arrive at Skala Sykamias Lesvos Greece 2“, by Ggia licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Hue modified from the original

Newth, George. “Rethinking ‘Nativism’: Beyond the Ideational Approach.” Identities, August 18, 2021.

Abstract

Existing ideational approaches to nativism tend to conflate the concept with nationalism, xenophobia and populism, as well as overlooking the role of racism and racialisation in the process of constructing the non-native ‘out-group’, against the native ‘in-group’. Inspired by the Discourse Theoretical approach to populism, this article offers a significant conceptual contribution to studies on the far right by interpreting nativism as a racist and xenophobic discourse structured around an exclusionary vision of the nation. This conceptualisation helps identify how xenophobia, nationalism, racism and racialisation all contribute to nativist discourse, how nativism can be clearly demarcated from populism, and how nativist arguments can be articulated by parties beyond the far right.

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The Illiberalism Studies Program studies the different faces of illiberal politics and thought in today’s world, taking into account the diversity of their cultural context, their intellectual genealogy, the sociology of their popular support, and their implications on the international scene.