Students of party preferences on migration issues often considered the extreme-right parties as the sole ‘owners’ of these issues. Furthermore, they believe that their electoral success has an important influence on the preferences of other (mainstream) parties, mainly regarding law and order aspects of migration. This paper challenges this classic vision of party preferences in migration. With the help of a quantitative analysis of party manifestos in Belgium and Italy, this paper demonstrates that, even if extreme-right parties are indeed leading the debate on migration, their ownership on the issue is not as clear as expected. Migration is also significantly emphasized by other parties, which are also influenced by the electoral strength of the extreme-right party.
