Säkerhetisering och ideologi - En kvalitativ studie av svenska partiers principiella organisationstryck före och efter migrationskriser

Sammanfattning: Migration and refugee policy is a contested subject in Swedish politics. Several academic studies argue that the discourse among political parties securitized the subject of migration and refugee policy post 2015 and the subsequent migration crisis. Yet, these studies do not investigate whether the core ideological values of the parties are affected by securitization. The aim of this paper is to examine whether there has been a shift in the internal ideological foundations of the parties or not. The intention of this paper is to bring light to the dynamics of ideological change within political parties and how political crisis events affects its internal principal ideas. This study uses a qualitative research method in the form of a content analysis to study party documents, such as programmes and election manifestos, from two Swedish political parties, Arbetarpartiet Socialdemokraterna and Moderata Samlingspartiet. The results of this study show that the two parties generally have refrained from securitising immigration and refugee policy in their party documents. The study concludes that ideological and principal foundations of political parties is difficult to change. Political crisis does seem to affect the characteristics of the policies the parties advocate, but not their core values. The ideological bedrock of political parties seems open enough for minor policy changes and shifts.