Discourses of “Europeanness” in Asylum Practices in the Postcolonial Context

Abstract

This article examines the impact of ethno-racial factors on perceptions of refugees and asylum practices in the European postcolonial context. Using Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) the authors analyse “Europe for Europeans” public discourse against the backdrop of the 2015-2016 migration crisis, the humanitarian disaster on the Polish-Belarusian border in 2021 and asylum seekers’ influx in spring 2022. The study shows that attitudes to refugees and their “right” to asylum in a European country are impacted by ethno-racial markers of applicants. Such discursive practices call into question one of the understandings of Europeanness, namely Europe as the embodiment of advanced political ethics, since European political discourse has recently positioned a refugee from the Middle East and North Africa as an “alien” “non-European,” thus normalizing threats to human life in allegedly “uncivilized” parts of the world. This normalization is consequently affecting the decision making in asylum process. The problematization of discursive aspects of asylum allows us to expand DHA to the international sphere, where different national models and cultural contexts collide, allowing us to talk about the influence of discursive practices on the political decisions in international relations. The evolution of the concept of asylum in the postcolonial context is considered in connection with the ideology of Europeanism, which is currently in the process of formation. Although ideas about Europeanness have undergone major transformations, this study shows that a systematic study of the entire range of conceptual meanings of this discursive object has not yet been carried out. Thus, Europeanness is either interpreted as a set of desired social ideals and values, or, reductively, as a quality associated exclusively with European institutions in their current form. Both interfere with the postcolonial debate about the nature of “Europe” and “Europeanness” in the postcolonial world.