This article explores whether the development of a common European asylum policy, and the construction of a directive on minimum standards for the granting of refugee status, is dominated by a security discourse. In such a security discourse, asylum is considered a cross-border threat to the realization of the internal market and the internal stability of Member States. While the social construction of asylum as a problem puts pressure on the traditional humanitarian framework on which international refugee protection is being based. The tension between these two approaches seems to result in a restrictive European common asylum policy, with a focus on control and prevention of migration into the EU. In this article, we analyse the tensions between the security and the humanitarian discourse in primary and secondary sources, using the model of Laclau and Mouffe. We conclude that while creating a common asylum policy, a securitization process is present.

The decline of traditional class voting is at the centre of the Class Politics debate. From the framework of traditional class analysis a labourer’s right wing vote appears ‘unnatural’. A right wing vote is thought to damage the interests of the economically precarious groups. This paper attempts to understand the phenomenon of so-called unnatural voting behaviour starting from the populism concept. From a theoretical literature study we analyse the relationship between populism and attitudes regarding the economic left-right cleavage. We argue that right-wing populism appeals to a cry for equality, yet at the same time mobilises this sentiment against the institutions of the welfare state. In that way populist right parties succeed in attuning their economic discourse to the socio-economic attitudes of broad layers of the population, including economically precarious categories. The empirical relevance of this hypothesis is tested on the case of Flanders.