Slovak Migration Policy since 2015

The thesis focuses on mapping Slovak migration policy since 2015. It is based on the assumption of a domestic political approach within migration policy theories that emphasize the central role of political parties. Given the time frame, the thesis covers three electoral periods: 2016–2020, 2020–2023, and 2023–2027. The analysis itself targets normative (party and government documents), actual (legislation), and perceptual (public opinion) types of data. For the documents, a framing analysis method was used, while the analysis of adopted legislation was conducted through qualitative content analysis. Public opinion was analyzed based on a synthesis of already published surveys without the collection of original primary data. Each type of data is systematically compared across the three periods and then synthesized to provide a comprehensive overview of Slovak migration policy. The first electoral period was dominated by a securitization discourse combined with nationalism, as well as elements of xenophobia and nativism. During the second electoral period, governments approached migration as a security risk, but rather pragmatically and technically, through border control measures along with elements of humanitarian discourse. In the 2023–2027 period, although the xenophobic rhetoric receded compared to the SMER–SD government post-2016 elections, it was replaced by the framing of migration not only as a security issue but also as a matter of national defense. Moreover, instead of ideological opposition to migrants, a higher level of Euroscepticism emerged. Compared to the OĽaNO-led government, SMER–SD governments also showed a greater presence of restrictive legislative measures. As for public opinion, negative attitudes toward migration prevailed in Slovakia even before the migration crisis. After the crisis broke out, public sentiment radicalized further, increasing the mobilization potential that SMER–SD and SNS successfully exploited in their 2016 election campaign. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Slovak public opinion initially showed strong support for the acceptance of refugees. However, this support gradually declined, and Slovaks eventually expressed the highest level of skepticism toward Ukrainian refugees within the V4 and among the highest in the EU. This thesis contributes new insights into the study of contemporary Slovak migration policy, which has so far received limited attention in academic literature. The inclusion of normative, actual, and perceptual data has enabled a more faithful comparison of individual periods and a more comprehensive view of policy in the studied timeframe. The thesis also partially attempted to challenge the absolute conformity of the post-2016 coalition’s policy with democratic standards and EU policy as stated in the academic literature and contributed to the discussion on current governance in Slovakia.