As my six-week research period comes to a close, I'd like to share the progress I've made and how I plan to proceed from here.

To summarize my topic: I'm studying anti-immigrant rhetoric in Italian politics and how right-wing politicians spread fears that immigration will harm the Italian economy. 

In my last post, I described how I'd finished taking a sample of the social media posts of prominent right-wing Italian politicians. Additionally, I had decided to focus on claims that immigration will cause higher unemployment of native Italians. My goals at the time were to identify key arguments within the social media posts I'd gathered and to conduct an analysis of the unemployment data I'd sourced. 

Since then, I've made progress on both the rhetorical and economic parts of my project. I've discovered that politicians very often argue against any government assistance going toward immigrants by creating a false dichotomy; they try to convince their audience that by working on immigration policy, opposing politicians are inherently disregarding the needs of unemployed Italians. I've also been able to access Italian data from the EU Labour Force Survey, which has been incredibly helpful. It's allowed me to look at employment data that is separated by gender, age, education level, citizenship status, and other very helpful classifiers. I've been working closely with my advisor to decide which factors will be the most helpful in discovering how immigration from non-EU countries impacts the employment of Italian citizens. I've assembled various data sets into charts and gotten comfortable analyzing these graphs in search of patterns. 

During my final week of research, my plan is to return to some of the sources I consulted at the beginning of this six-week period, specifically those that discuss xenophobia in Italy and the development of right-wing parties in recent years. These sources will help me better understand the context surrounding the social media posts and inform the analysis I'll include in my research paper. Additionally, I'll continue working with my advisor to finalize my economic data analysis. 

Finally, here is a draft of my research abstract. I expect it to change slightly once I finalize my economic data analysis. I'm excited to be able to add my findings and conclusions! 

Project Title

Fact or Finzione?: Interrogating Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric in Italian Politics

Abstract (Draft)

Over the last ten years, anti-immigrant rhetoric has become ubiquitous in the political speech of right-wing Italian politicians, particularly rhetoric that instills fears of immigration worsening the unemployment of Italian citizens. A close reading and analysis of politicians’ social media posts demonstrates how their rhetoric creates a false dichotomy between the needs of immigrants and of native citizens. Additionally, the study conducts a statistical analysis to estimate the short-term effects of immigration on employment of native Italian adults. I further explore whether these effects differ across their education levels. The study concludes by comparing these results with the narratives propagated by right-wing politicians.