Jaffe, SethClough Marinaro, IsabellaMovileanu, Daniela Roxana2024-09-262024-09-262019Movileanu, Daniela Roxana. "Radical Right-Wing Populism and the European Migration Crisis: Explaining The Transformation of the Lega between 2013 and 2019". BA Thesis, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy. 2019.https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14490/355Thesis (B.A. in International Affairs, Minor in Philosophy)--John Cabot University, Spring 2019.Between 2013 and 2019, Matteo Salvini, Italy’s radical-right populist leader, successfully transformed the Lega from a regionalist into a nationalist party. This transformation culminated in June 2018 with the formation of a coalition government led by the Lega and the anti-establishment Five Star Movement. Salvini’s electoral success was mainly determined by his emphasis on immigration during the electoral campaign. By 2018, voters regarded the Lega as the only party capable of stopping irregular migration to Italy and of opposing the European Union. Salvini skillfully built such image of his party during the so-called European migration crisis begun in late 2013. With this context as a premise, this thesis investigates the following question: What is the role played by the migration crisis in Lega’s transformation into a national party? The research conducted in the thesis shows that the migration crisis offered Salvini a vehicle for channeling anti-immigrant, Eurosceptic, nationalist, and sometimes xenophobic sentiments. To show why this is the case, the thesis analyzes the policies adopted by the EU and by the Italian government in response to the migration crisis and Salvini’s rhetoric in reaction to them. Such analysis is mainly based on material gathered from politicians’ social media accounts and from the main left- and right-wing Italian newspapers. While recognizing that immigration is not the raison d'être of radical-right populist parties, this thesis suggests that it acted as a major catalyst for success in the Italian context.vi, 59 pagesenAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Emigration and immigrationGovernment policyInternational relationsSecurity InternationalPopulismLega nordMatteo Salvini, 1973-Thesis