Narrating Crisis and Continuity in Migration Debates in the Visegrád States

Abstract

On February 24, 2022, Slovak Prime Minister Eduard Heger declared that Slovakia would accept all people fleeing Russian military aggression. A broad alliance of NGOs called “Kto pomôže Ukrajine?” (Who will help Ukraine?) formed practically overnight in order to join forces to provide humanitarian, psychological, and legal aid to people arriving from Ukraine. The Polish government decided simultaneously not to reject anyone crossing the Polish-Ukrainian border. Hungary, in turn, offered protection to Ukrainians and to third-country citizens residing in Ukraine, while Czechia, though it does not border Ukraine, increased bus and train service to the Polish-Ukrainian border in order to facilitate transportation for those in need (Czechia has been a significant destination of Ukrainian labor migration for several decades). In under forty-eight hours, a consensus emerged across the Visegrád states that Ukrainian refugees were entitled to unconditional support, uniting not only governments across party divisions but also local and national authorities, police services, and civil society actors in one massive humanitarian effort. Leaders of several political parties called on the population to show compassion for the individuals and families that had become victims of cruel and unwarranted aggression.1This wave of solidarity inevitably evokes flashbacks and comparisons to 2015 when an unprecedented surge of arrivals of asylum applicants from Africa and the Middle East, especially Syria, triggered reactions across the Visegrád group that stand in stark contrast to those in 2022. Political leaders in all of the aforementioned countries vehemently rejected accepting any refugees. As a semiofficial political alliance of Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, and Hungary, the Visegrád group voiced its categorical opposition to the European Commission’s planned quotas, foreseeing a distribution of refugees among EU states in order to unburden countries at the Schengen border, especially in the Mediterranean. In contrast to the attention given to the horrifying fate of Ukrainian war refugees, the suffering of individual refugees from Africa and the Middle East did not feature prominently in this debate. Rather, issues of broad geopolitical appeal were negotiated, such as the sovereignty of nation states as against the EU or the connection between colonial pasts and the present responsibility for global conflict and inequality. Another noticeable difference is that, though there was a surge of refugees passing through Hungary during the summer of 2015, very few were resettled in any of the Visegrád countries while the debate between the EU and its member states unfolded.The current crisis developing in Central Europe as a result of the war in Ukraine, and the wave of solidarity with the Ukrainian people that has swept through the region since February 24, has complicated both the politics and popular understanding of migration and the refugee question in ways that are still evolving as we write and that will no doubt resonate in debates on the issue for a long time to come. On the one hand, the broad willingness to help Ukrainians has been interpreted in the media as proof that the Visegrád states are neither xenophobic nor incapable of expressing solidarity with others and that they are, instead, selfless and capable of helping refugees so long as this assistance and openness occurs on their own terms. On the other hand, the collective response by Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and Czechia has also been used to argue quite the opposite, that Visegrád societies are indeed racist and ignorant of larger geopolitical contexts and are only willing to extend a helping hand to those closest to themselves geographically, culturally, and racially.2 Of course, a direct comparison of “the summer of migration” and the war in Ukraine is problematic, in part because the Visegrád countries find themselves in an entirely different political (and geographical) position with respect to global events in early 2022 as compared to 2015. It is also important to note that many of the individuals and organizations that took on the difficult but necessary work of feeding and accommodating refugees at the Ukrainian borders were the same ones who helped refugees back in 2015, using their connections and expertise from that time to muster aid very quickly and with limited government support in the first few days of the crisis.3Despite the obvious limitations, a comparison of the responses of 2015 and 2022 leads to an important observation, namely, that the issue of flight and asylum holds a special significance in political debates in Visegrád countries: debates that not only trigger broad public engagement but also forge deeply emotional arguments demanding resolute political action. Conversations on refugees clearly trigger a crisis mode of speech and action. Ever since the publication of Hannah Arendt’s seminal study The Origins of Totalitarianism, scholars of refugees have been aware of the challenge that the existence of refugees poses to the very notion of the nation state. Built on the principle of the exclusivity of citizen rights, states often end up framing the anomalous, “exceptional” status of refugees in negative terms, and in particular as a threat or crisis.4 As anthropologists Max Gluckman and Victor Turner have noted, crises are social occasions that function as points of reckoning at which entire societies question their past, present, and future, although possibly arriving at widely divergent conclusions.5 Crisis is also a governmental device that endows those who wield power with increased degrees of leeway and authority and that can conceal long-term trajectories and the responsibility for current problems by fashioning them as sudden, unforeseeable eruptions of misfortune.6 In other words, crisis and continuity are mutually entangled in complicated ways. A crisis mode demands legitimizing and explanatory frames, which often encompass the recounting and appropriation of history; at the same time, precedents or long-term developments are often ignored or hidden in order to stress the “exceptionality” of the current situation.Written prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the contributions to the thematic cluster in this issue examine the impact that narratives of both crisis and continuity have had on the responses of Visegrád countries to the issue of migration and, more particularly, on the question of refugees, especially as this played out in the wake of the events of summer 2015. Situating their analyses in local, regional, and historical context, the three articles and the commentary essay explore both the politics and popular understanding of migration and the refugee question. Taken together, the articles reflect upon the following questions: How are historical narratives introduced into the public debate on migration, and by whom? How do they evolve over time, and what lessons are they supposed to transmit? How, in turn, does history as a scholarly discipline relate to lay knowledge and opinion? Lastly, what role do professional historians play in contemporary political conversations? A focus on history, and on how it is written and recalled, contributes to an understanding of discourses on migration at both the national and EU level that goes beyond simplistic assertations of illiberal backsliding and xenophobia. Such an approach helps in particular by taking unique local histories and their long-term impact on popular local configurations of migration and asylum into account. Each Visegrád state has experienced its own inward or outward migratory movements. Past governmental structures, demographic developments, and historical trauma influence the way migration is discussed at a respective location. At the same time, the historical angle also helps us to explore both historical and contemporary interconnections within the region. The articles in this thematic cluster thus look at memories of historical events that are shared by several countries in the region and their varied interpretations in different national contexts. They also explore how (assumed) historical parallels and a shared political subjectivity based loosely on the rejection of Western European approaches to migration have led to the emergence of a particular Visegrád resistance within the EU, although the appearance of the four nations as a collective political actor in 2015 was rather fragile and short-lived.The arrival of over a million refugees in the EU in 2015 and 2016, and the national and Europe-wide political controversies that ensued, marked a turning point, one in which the discourse on refugees and asylum seekers jumped to the center of attention. Previously, legislation on migration and asylum was discussed as part of the negotiations around EU accession, and while some countries had received significant numbers of refugees after the dissolution of the Soviet Union or during the violent conflicts in the Balkans, public interest remained rather marginal. This all changed very quickly in 2015, which is why contributors to this cluster focus directly on the debates triggered by the influx of refugees in summer 2015 or take them as the backdrop from which to look even further into the history of migration and into the place of refugees in the historical imagination of the people of the region.In the first article of the cluster, Michal Frankl focuses on the anti-migration ideas of Czech historian Jaroslav Pánek, taking them as a vantage point to reflect upon the admixture of nation-centered history and conspiracy in anti-refugee campaigning and on the impact that historians have on public opinion. He describes how Pánek has backed his staunch opposition to the European treatment of the migrant “crisis” by heralding the purportedly exceptional trajectory of Central European “civilization” (devoid of original sins like slavery and colonialism) and by speculating about the ominous powers and hidden interests which supposedly threaten this civilizational accomplishment by orchestrating a mass movement of people into Europe. Frankl traces Pánek’s radicalization over the course of his career and shows how his crafting of a “usable past” with regard to contemporary challenges fits seamlessly into populist-nationalist and protectionist projects in the region, especially those of the Czech prime minister at the time, Andrej Babiš, who enthusiastically shared Pánek’s assessments.Eva-Maria Walther’s article examines how particular episodes of Slovak history have been mobilized, tweaked, and twisted to corroborate certain normative positions toward refugees. The history of Ottoman “oppression” and accounts of the centuries-long “unsuccessful” effort to integrate the Roma minority into Slovak society are cautionary tales often told by refugee opponents. Refugee supporters, by comparison, commemorate Slovak emigration and the “multicultural” capital Bratislava in the early twentieth century to demonstrate that accepting migrants is both a moral obligation and a familiar task for Slovaks. Despite their contrary implications, these arguments share a common thread in that they understand cultural difference as something that is not trivial but rather meaningful and in need of careful management. They are thus both compatible with those discursive formations which frame the arrival of refugees as a “crisis” demanding resolute action.The third article by Lidia Zessin-Jurek and Ágnes Kelemen takes the opposite approach and traces the changing significance and interpretation of a particular movement of refugees over the course of the twentieth century. In 1939, despite being an ally of Nazi Germany, Hungary accepted tens of thousands of Polish war refugees, also saving hundreds of Polish Jews from persecution in the process. This episode has been “rediscovered” in both countries several times throughout the twentieth century, each time by different actors with different intended messages and political rationales. For instance, the socialist regime used the episode to prove that Hungary’s devotion to fascist ideology was both inconsistent and incomplete. The story later became crucial for coming to terms with Hungary’s role in the Holocaust. Dissident circles in the late socialist period, in turn, investigated the story of Polish refugees in Hungary during World War II to foster relationships between the political opposition in both countries. In 2015, the story of Polish refugees was partly used as a rebuttal to accusations of Hungarian selfishness; however, as the authors point out, the general absence of this experience in public discussions as an example of Hungarian hospitality and openness to strangers is particularly striking.In her concluding commentary essay, Katherine Kondor reflects on the ways in which the refugee question has intersected with the illiberal politics of Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz-led government in Hungary since 2015. Looking in particular at how both Orbán and his party have mobilized negative tropes regarding non-European refugees in the lead-up to the federal elections in Hungary in spring 2022, Kondor illustrates how populist fears of a migrant invasion have been used to support Fidesz’s claims that they are acting in defense of Christian Europe. For Orbán and his supporters, actions taken by the government to stem the flow of refugees and asylum seekers from the Middle East in 2015 and 2016 (and then again in the wake of the COVID outbreak in 2019 and the influx of Afghan refugees in 2021), marked a continuation of Hungary’s historical mission as a defender of European culture and civilization. As Kondor argues, these historically informed narratives have been wielded by the Orbán regime not only to stoke fears over the supposed Islamification of Europe but also to paint supporters of the EU project as traitors to their people and to their heritage.Analyzing the distinct historical events and particular debates that together form the backdrop against which contemporary discussions on refugees have unfolded, the contributions to this thematic cluster cover some common topics. Each of the articles explores the ways in which (certain) historical narratives converge with political rhetoric and further analyzes how certain pasts are either buried or rediscovered according to what is politically opportune. Since historical narratives in this sense need to be unequivocal—promoting either the acceptance or rejection of refugees in a particular situation—their popular and political deployment often happen at the cost of historical depth and differentiation. Frankl’s article forcefully shows that not even distinguished experts are immune to this selective perception when they are emotionally invested in a political program. Another key point in this light is the recent shift to populist-nationalist politics. As the articles clearly show, xenophobic sentiment in each of the Visegrád countries definitely preceded the public outrage of 2015, but politicians consciously instrumentalized and amplified the growing interest in ethno-national identity and the desire for cultural purity, not least in order to capitalize on the leverage that a “crisis mode” provides for governments.Another important dimension that many of the conversations on refugees have in common is the juxtaposition of historical trajectories of domination and subjugation. Within this matrix, the Visegrád countries locate themselves on the side of the oppressed. Whether it was at the hands of the Ottomans, the Habsburgs, the Hungarians (in the Slovak case), the Nazis, or the Soviet Union, the people of the region see themselves as having been forced to succumb to foreign powers for large parts of their history. Distancing themselves from former colonial and imperial powers like Great Britain, France, Germany, and Russia, the Visegrád countries have assumed a very particular—and even exceptional—position within current debates on the postcolonial global order. As recently sovereign and thus purportedly “innocent” states, the Visegrád countries have positioned themselves as victims rather than perpetrators of past injustices—and can thus feel less morally obliged to atone for past misdeeds by accepting refugees. Related to this is the conviction that the nations of Central and Eastern Europe have developed a superior approach to managing diversity and migration. Extraordinary care and hospitality for strangers is a recurring trope in the countries studied in this cluster, as, for example, when Polish refugees were welcomed in Hungary during World War II. Claims of peaceful multi-ethnic coexistence are likewise powerful, with carefully constructed memories of places like prewar Bratislava juxtaposed with the alleged recklessness and indifferent openness of Western countries.As in the past, historical narratives continue to play an important role in the response of the Visegrád countries to Ukrainian refugees in 2022. People refer to history to declare their long-standing friendship and special connections with and compassion for the people in Ukraine, not least to thwart accusations of racism made by those who have noticed the alleged change of heart since 2015. They refer to the territorial reshufflings and changing borders that have left their imprint on today’s identities and relations with the people in these borderlands.7 Poles recall the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which contained large parts of today’s Ukraine in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, while Hungary, Czechia, and Slovakia can claim special ties with the region of Carpathian Ruthenia, which belonged first to Hungary until the signing of the Trianon Treaty in 1920 and then to Czechoslovakia before it was ceded to the Soviet Union in 1945. Another frequent statement has to do with the self-positioning on the side of the historically oppressed mentioned above. Visegrád countries claim to be particularly capable of empathy for Ukraine’s desperate situation. The Nazi attack on Poland in 1939 and the Soviet military crackdowns on reform/revolutionary movements in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 are obvious points of reference. As one Polish volunteer at the Ukrainian border was quoted as saying, “we know what war means,” a sentiment apparently shared by civil societies across Central and Eastern Europe.8 In sharp contrast to responses to the “refugee crisis” in summer 2015—and similar to the Hungarian acceptance of Polish refugees during World War II—the initial reaction to the current surge of Ukrainian refugees clearly suggests that an alternative subjectivity with regard to migration is possible to imagine for the Visegrád states. However, other dynamics are currently at work that slow down or even revert this development and increase reservations against Ukrainian refugees, such as traditionally close (economic) bonds with Russia, the relatively large impact of Russian (dis)information campaigns, as well as concerns over the negative impact that large numbers of refugees might have on local populations.9 It remains to be seen, then, whether the region will retain its newly found status as a safe and open haven of shelter and refuge.