Families on the Border and “Families Without Borders”: Discourses on “Families” in the Context of the Crisis on the Polish-Belarusian Border

Abstract

Families, including those with children, constitute a significant group of people crossing the Polish-Belarusian border. The aim of this article is to analyse the discourse on the Polish-Belarusian border in the context of the place that the category of “family” finds in it, and what role and responsibility is assigned to children and parents. The theoretical framework for these reflections is primarily critical childhood studies. For this purpose, the author analyzed Polish-language online statements about the humanitarian crisis on the Polish-Belarusian border published between mid-August 2021 and the 1st of January 2023. The research included statements by institutional actors (e.g. Border Guard), media publications as well as public comments by social media users (Twitter). In the case of the humanitarian crisis on the Polish-Belarusian border, the term “family” is used in a variety of ways – from building a sense of symbolic solidarity (the “Families Without Borders” group), through referring this term to the presence of particularly vulnerable people among migrants, to attributing responsibility for the risks regarding the situation of children at the border to either parents or state institutions, depending on the discourse. Reflections on the Polish-Belarusian border seem to be part of the tensions related to the concepts of “family”, “parenthood” and “children”.