ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the descriptive trends regarding the politicisation and framing of immigrants in the plenary debates of the Czech and Slovak parliaments between 2013 and 2017. It starts by presenting the (mostly) descriptive results regarding the salience dimension of politicisation of immigrants and shows how salient they were in the plenary debates in the examined period and how their salience changed over time and varies across countries. The chapter continues by looking at the actor expansion dimension of politicisation and investigating who the politicians who make immigrants salient in their plenary speeches are. This investigation includes examining the association of politicians’ government/opposition affiliation with their immigrant-related speech-making. The last dimension of politicisation – polarisation – is assessed next. The polarisation of debates regarding immigrants and their temporal variation are discussed. Finally, the next part evaluates the extent of the overall politicisation of immigrants in the Czech and Slovak plenary debates. The second section of the chapter then examines the framing of immigrants in the political debates in both countries, and looks at the overall framing trends, and the differences across time, the two countries, and their political parties, as well as whether the framing used to represent immigrants was used positively or negatively. The chapter concludes by summarising its main findings
