The Swedish Social Democratic Party (SAP) has successfully framed a dramatic shift in their refugee policies during the migration crisis without giving the impression of abandoning their ideology, claims Gregg Bucken-Knapp in a book on the refugee crisis.
A new book is released today at the Austrian Academy of Science in Vienna that covers how national governments and societies in the EU have handled the refugee crisis. Gregg Bucken-Knapp, professor at the School of Public Administration at the University of Gothenburg, has contributed with a chapter entitled “From “Open Your Hearts” to Closed Borders: Sweden, the Refugee Crisis and the Role of Discourse”. There he shows how the SAP went from open to closed boarders without giving the impression of abandoning their core principles of solidarity. Furthermore, he shows how a similar logic has been central to SAP’s framing efforts in the past. While Social democratic policies may change, claims of solidarity remains constant.
The book is entitled “The Migrant Crisis: European Perspectives and National Discourses” and has ISBN 978-3-643-90-802-5