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Article published In:
Radical Right-Wing Populism and Borders: Positioning antagonistic discourses in the (de)bounded spaces of power
Edited by Christian Lamour and Oscar Mazzoleni
[Journal of Language and Politics 23:3] 2024
► pp. 369–390

‘They will not survive here’

Bordering, racialisation, and nature in the politics of the Finnish populist radical right

ORCID logo | University of Oulu
To justify the hardening of borders the populist radical right sometimes uses environmental rhetoric to frame migrants as a threat. The radical right’s environmental politics has been analysed through a focus on state borders, but less attention has been paid to the (re)production of bordering within and beyond the nation-state and to the racialising effects of such rhetoric, in other words how racial differences and hierarchies are (re)produced and justified through language on nature. Drawing on geographical literature on bordering and nationalism and postcolonial theory, this article investigates the semantic structures that convey the racist messaging. The article argues that the ‘racialized Other’ is bordered from the ’green’ homeland and Western space by utilising determinist conceptions of nature, through animalistic and environmental disaster metaphors, and by mobilising an idea of the environmentally conscious Finn as the opposite of the littering migrant.
Keywords: anti-immigration, nativism, the Finns Party, neo-racism, migration, geography, postcolonialism
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Nature in the politics of the populist radical right
  • 3.The Finnish Context
  • 4.Methodology: Speaking with politicians and party activists
  • 5.Bordering of the racialised Other through the language on nature
    • 5.1‘Natural’ territorial borders
    • 5.2Imagining non-Western spaces
    • 5.3‘Green’ homeland
    • 5.4Protecting the homeland’s purity from the pollutants
  • 6.Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 17 April 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.23085.pie
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