Bridging Copenhagen and Paris: how Hungarian police accept anti-immigrant discourse

ABSTRACT Integrating the discursive and practice-based approach to securitisation, this article explores how the police function as the audience of securitising discourse. Taking the Hungarian case of border control, it looks into how the police accept and buy into anti-immigrant discourses of the political elite. Based on a questionnaire survey of Hungarian police officers, it demonstrates the potential of discursive legitimation in shaping officers’ understanding of mass migration. It describes the ways in which attitudes and hence, arguably, practice can be conditioned by securitising discourse. The overall aim of the article is to advance the understanding of the narrative dimension of power struggles between police and the political elite, and how that structures the field of border security. Critical security scholars have pointed out that police filter securitising discourse based on their professional dispositions and preferences. However, the Hungarian case seems to suggest that discourse may, in fact, influence dispositions themselves.