Constructing Foreign Policy vis-à-vis the Migration Crisis

Abstract

The study examines contemporary discourses in two small CentralEuropean states, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. The aim is to analyzehow key domestic political players discursively construct foreign policy vis-à-vis the migration crisis. Securitization, a concept developed by theCopenhagen School, serves as an analytical framework for revealing thekinds of discourse being produced in the two countries. The analysis of thediscourse of the Prime Ministers from 2015 to 2018, indicates that in theCzech Republic and Slovakia foreign policy is being constructed around theissue of Europeanness (belongingness) and accommodation in the core-periphery spectrum. The article shows that the construction of externalthreats is done in different security sectors in each country, but in both itseems to promote the in-group coherence needed to affirm theirbelongingness to Europe, and it no longer happens on grounds of ethnicallydefined nations, but on grounds of the broader idea of civilizational Europe.