Abstract

The paper examines hate speech directed at international migrants within Russian political discourse. Populist politicians and far right primarily deploy such rhetoric, according to a common assumption. However, in the Russian context, hate speech functions as a tool actively deployed by the authorities to legitimise the tightening of migration policy. While in Western democracies hate speech remains largely a resource for oppositional and far right seeking to enter the political mainstream, contemporary Russia exhibits a fundamentally different configuration: the rhetoric of exclusion towards migrants is systematically reproduced by actors representing institutional political discourse including federal officials, and members of parliament. Drawing on the methodology of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and securitisation theory, and utilising an empirical corpus comprising transcripts of State Duma sessions, official statements by government members, and public addresses by governors, the author demonstrates that hate speech against migrants is not a peripheral phenomenon but a component of the policy of migration securitisation. The analysis reveals that this discourse is (a) articulated by political actors holding formal authority; (b) constructed upon the collective representation of migrants as a source of criminal, economic, and sociocultural risks; and (c) grounded in stereotypes that frame migration as an existential threat. Russian research on hate speech has traditionally focused on the linguistic analysis of discriminatory speech tactics and strategies, primarily as they appear in media, Telegram channels, and the regional press. Western scholarship, by contrast, tends to embed the phenomenon of hate speech within macro-political theories of securitisation and welfare chauvinism, examining anti-migrant rhetoric as a tool for legitimising power and channelling social discontent in contexts of illiberalism. However, both Russian and Western studies exhibit a persistent research gap: empirical analysis has largely been confined to either media discourse or oppositional rhetoric, while the statements of institutional actors wielding formal authority remain insufficiently studied. By focusing on official sources, this paper aims to close that gap. Through this analysis, the study not only provides empirical evidence of how xenophobic rhetoric operates within Russia's institutional discourse, but also refines the application of securitisation theory to illiberal regimes. On a practical level, these findings could inform the work of NGOs, human rights advocates, and policymakers seeking to develop effective counters to migrantophobia, for instance, by identifying the specific discursive patterns that need to be challenged or by highlighting the mechanisms through which discriminatory practices in the public sphere can be addressed.