Matteo Salvini’s communication during the pandemic: The immigration issue and the de-legitimation of political opponents

Abstract

Following the critical discourse analysis approach, this article intends to highlight how the anti-immigration perspective is (re)produced within the Facebook page of the Italian political leader Matteo Salvini during the pandemic scenario between March 2020-March 2021. Quantitative and qualitative analysis have been applied to Salvini’s posts and users’ comments aiming at identifying the linguistic strategies that contribute to instrumentalizing the emergency and aim to reinforce the process of “securitization” of national borders as well as the re-legitimation of national identities. Findings suggest that the main discursive strategies used by the political leader do not include migrants as a danger for the spread of the virus. Rather, Salvini systematically organized the migratory narration on negative campaigning blaming political opponents and recontextualized the moralization of borders. The contribution helps to reveal how the anti-migration discourse is reproduced during the COVID-19 outbreak and how the politicization of the migration serves as a context for the normalization of migrant’s exclusion.