‘Now you may see who an actual refugee is and who’s simply pretending to be one’ – since 24 February, everybody in Poland has heard this phrase at the least as soon as. White Ukrainian moms fleeing with their youngsters are seen as ‘actual refugees’, versus the iconography of ‘vicious migrants’, that’s, males with darker pores and skin throwing stones at border guards.
Within the wake of the humanitarian disaster on the Belarusian-Polish border in autumn 2021, the Polish public media, adopted by social media bubbles, unfold a race-based classification of refugees into ‘actual’ and ‘pretend’. The picture of pretend refugees, originating in earlier racist stereotypes, turned out to be very handy – it relieved the conscience of Poles from any reproach. In spite of everything, it was solely about the appropriate to guard the state border from ‘Lukashenka’s vacationers’.
The essential proper of human life to be protected receded into the background, obscured by the primordial Polish woods and a line of uniformed troopers. The psychological picture of race closed the Polish border in entrance of individuals ‘fleeing the unsuitable battle’ and battle, that within the Center East. These in search of refuge alongside the Belarusian border all through the winter and nonetheless as we speak are being pushed unscrupulously into the forest by Polish border guards. Volunteers are bypassing the bans imposed by the state of emergency to present the refugees any assist below the chilly Polish sky.
Not six months had handed for the reason that closure of the northern part of Poland’s jap border when, on its southern part shared with Ukraine, officers began carrying baggage and youngsters, escorting Ukrainians who had escaped from the battle into the care of hundreds of freely appearing and rightly admired volunteers. Western media instantly picked up on this distinction, deciphering it within the course of the racial criterion utilized in Poland within the therapy of refugees, additionally non-white refugees on the Ukrainian border.
A very powerful border matter was and is the Ukrainian exodus. Nonetheless, instantly after the Russian invasion began, western headlines aren’t targeted on the unprecedented solidarity motion, however on Poland’s ‘refugee apartheid’, to make use of Étienne Balibar’s time period. Whereas Western nations have accepted refugees from the Balkan and Mediterranean routes in recent times, even when much less willingly than they settle for Ukrainians, Poland’s jap border – uncompromisingly closed to ‘non-white refugees’ within the north and vast open to ‘white’ ones in its southern part – has targeted the twisted duplicity of European migration coverage like a magnifying glass.
Armed forces securing the fence on the Kuźnica border crossing the place hundreds had been relocated by Belarusian troopers. Photograph from 15 November 2021 by the Polish Territorial Defence Forces through Flickr.
From a rustic of refugees to a rustic for refugees
In a single day, Poland has reworked its greater than two centuries outdated infamous status as a serial refugee-producer right into a receiving nation, and has turn into the vacation spot of probably the most intensive refugee inflow in Europe since World Conflict II.
Displaced folks from Ukraine choose Poland not solely as a result of it’s bodily the closest, but additionally due to its cultural proximity and the household networks established by these beforehand termed ‘financial migrants’. Poland has additionally was a sufficiently enticing nation in financial phrases, a facet which is understandably absent from media analyses in the interim.
Media protection has highlighted the welcoming of practically two million folks below the roofs of often small jap European houses inside a dozen days, an occasion with out precedent within the historical past of world refugee actions. Polish hosts are passing the take a look at of humanitarianism with prime marks appearing from the grassroots, with marginal help from authorities buildings, which this time merely don’t intrude, quite than assist. David Harris, the CEO of American Jewish Committee reporting from Warsaw stated: ‘Right now we must always affiliate Poland with the spontaneous welcome of refugees who fled Ukraine in biblical proportions’.
This sudden change of Poland turning into a receiving state did, nonetheless, not erase the racist refugee criterion of the federal government. As an alternative, their consideration is extra drawn to the racist refugee criterion of the Polish authorities.
On the one hand, the western discourse operates on the axiomatic conviction that persons are equal earlier than the regulation. When examined towards this precept, the Herculean efforts of Polish civil society in placing its personal considerations on maintain to assist the practically two million refugees from Ukraine, is not going to erase the struggling of these refugee teams from the Close to and Center East at its borders.
However the selection of perspective can also be knowledgeable by a journalistic seek for sensationalism, and the stereotypical expectation of jap European dysfunction.
In all probability it’s additionally tough to speak the huge humanitarian reflex of taking in strangers below one’s roof. The refugees of earlier years have been primarily directed to particular centres in western Europe. This was the results of an motion organised on the state degree quite than a grassroots exercise, as within the case of Poland. On this article, allow us to have a look at the Polish discourse in just a little extra element, as a result of on the coronary heart of the bias lies not solely the picture of race, but additionally the gender of the refugees.
The trope of moms with youngsters
Within the first week of the battle, the Polish authorities despatched a dozen buses to the western border carrying Ukrainian refugees from the Kharkiv space. These have been the primary displaced by the battle to succeed in the west of Poland. When the buses arrived at evening within the cities of Gubin, Slubice and Kostrzyn alongside the Oder River, residents bewildered by the disembarking non-white college students began to ask: ‘The place are the moms with youngsters?’
Nobody was requested to welcome them of their houses; these refugees have been positioned in class sports activities halls. Very quickly, a spontaneous hysteria erupted on-line and on the street towards the ‘pretend Lukashenka refugees’ who had tricked the Poles and, regardless of the fence erected by the federal government on the border with Belarus, took benefit of the tragedy of the Ukrainians to enter Poland. These chargeable for accepting refugees within the cities cited fearing public anger.
Outraged residents demanded the resignation of the college principals who had allegedly put the youngsters in peril. Just a few hours later the one hint of the Asian and African college students from Kharkiv have been empty bunks. They’d been taken to the closest railway junction to move again east to Warsaw, the place they acquired help from their nations’ embassies and consulates. Why they weren’t instantly transported to the capital, however transported to the German border is are anybody’s guess.
The general public response to the worldwide college students is extra truth than guesswork. It reveals the spectacular results of the racist propaganda of the Polish public media, which had been labelling refugees of color as brokers of the Kremlin and zoophiles, potential sowers of terrorism and Islamism, and definitely of laziness. Conserving Syrians, Iraqis or Cubans trapped within the forests of jap Poland takes its toll of indifference to invisible human struggling.
However it’s now not only a bodily barrier, but additionally a psychological one, grown out of the worry and hatred of the opposite, cultivated by authorities messaging. These come up robotically on the sight of a non-white younger individual, particularly when male. Authorities propaganda and its derivatives is one factor. Nevertheless it appeared to have but to beat the barrier of impartial particular person human conscience.
Not solely racial, but additionally gender prejudice
Prejudice lies not solely within the perceived race of the refugees, their cultural and non secular affiliation, but additionally of their gender, damaged down into a number of motifs. Firstly, on this mythology, actual refugees are solely girls with youngsters.
That is indicative of the thought, certainly the expectation, that the refugee is a human being who’s absolutely dependent and reliant on exterior assist, not an energetic determine of 1’s personal survival. It additionally codes girls as passive members, mere victims of occasions.
Most of the folks fleeing the Close to and Center East don’t correspond to the European picture of passive and defenceless refugees, as a result of they’re younger males (in actuality about 70% males to 30% girls). And males, in contrast to girls, are culturally assigned the position of energetic topic.
Within the nationalist imaginary, males are presupposed to struggle for his or her nation, identical to the Ukrainians, and never ‘cowardly run away’ – the second motif of gender bias. Right here, with the spectacular heroism of the Ukrainian women and men troopers, a number of details are ignored. Males are obliged by regulation to stay in Ukraine. The regulation continues to be in power on this war-torn nation.
Many of those males, and many ladies for that matter, sincerely consider within the trigger for which they’re preventing within the common state military and as volunteers. It’s clear to them, as it’s to the entire free world, that they’re preventing on the appropriate aspect. These males who remained outdoors Ukraine or who managed to go away it after the battle broke out (for good causes, one has to guess) – are shamed from the security of the peaceable dwelling fronts below the NATO umbrella.
Refugees from Syria or Afghanistan weren’t fleeing the rule of regulation. They didn’t flee from serving in a state military that may struggle to defend their values and family members. The state with which they’d establish with doesn’t exist. Their nations are in chaos and anarchy.
They might attempt to struggle towards the phobia of the despots, however the wars of their areas have been tribalized. The state military grew to become a fraction, with many militias preventing each other and being supported by highly effective neighbouring states. As proven by the case of Syria, whose infrastructure and military are within the fingers of the pinnacle of state, beholden to a violent friendship with Vladimir Putin, and never freedom fighters like Volodymyr Zelensky.
How are younger folks supposed to hold out this struggle towards the whole lot and something? These wars are with out guidelines: with troopers on the bottom being ‘irregular fighters’ not topic to the Geneva guidelines for prisoners of battle or different worldwide safety.
Mass executions, the usage of chemical weapons, rape are direct penalties of this anarchy.
There are additionally many highly effective worldwide actors within the area working towards the person civilians’ want for peace and freedom: Turkey, Iran, and above all Russia, which has been wreaking havoc there for a decade. Because of Putin’s involvement within the area, there is no such thing as a construction left for the youth to struggle for, and no charismatic leaders of freedom below whom they’re prepared to die for the appropriate values. The battle crimes of those regimes in Syria are happily not but matched by the battle in Ukraine, and let’s hope they by no means will. These would freeze the blood in our veins if we bothered to take an curiosity in them.
Few Europeans take the difficulty to grasp the geopolitical state of affairs of those refugees who have been mere youngsters themselves when battle broke out of their nation.
The parable of abandoning girls and youngsters
A 3rd fable is that the younger males who flee for Europe abandon their wives, moms and youngsters to the violence from which they save solely themselves. The same false accusation towards was raised towards younger Jewish refugees from Poland who tried to flee from the Germans in WWII, suspected of leaving the weaker ones ‘to the mercy of the crematoria’.
In actuality, each refugee motion has its personal dynamics, conditioned by the situational context. The households of as we speak’s younger refugees from the Close to and Center East first moved on to neighbouring nations, fairly just like the tens of millions of displaced Ukrainians do proper now.
However these Center Jap households ended up been dwelling in camps for years, with no motion, no improvement and no hope of a greater future. It was as much as younger folks, bodily match sons, who have been despatched on the damaging path of crossing to Europe, to attempt for a greater future and to interrupt the despairing stagnation of the camps.
Those that had already began their very own households usually left with their wives and youngsters or made use of the instrument of household reunification, as soon as they reached security in Europe. Alongside the Belarusian border, in Michałów, Narewka and Białowieża, there is no such thing as a scarcity of youngsters sleeping on bedding below the open sky.
They don’t get any toys, nor juice, they heat themselves round bonfires in a spot the place, 83 years earlier, Jewish refugees fleeing from the Germans lived below the open sky in a strip of no man’s land fenced off from the opposite aspect by the Soviets. This coincidence of refugee geography is uncanny, it’s a devastating repetition of historical past.
A final vicious argument says these males should not all fleeing from battle zones, quite they arrive to Europe ‘solely’ for a greater life. Both they won’t work or, worse nonetheless, they may work and take jobs away. Sure, the Cubans or Eritreans should not escaping battle however repression, Iraqis not battle however from inside terror, whereas Afghans go away behind each battle and excessive poverty.
On this narrative, a European has a pure proper to hunt a greater life and materials standing – a Pole in Germany, a Lithuanian in Nice Britain. An Asian or African man on the threshold of his grownup life, their world turned inside out by the geopolitics and the historical past of European colonisation, must humbly endure repression, terror and distress.
The Polish authorities and enormous sectors of public opinion deserve the strongest and most uncompromising media criticism for his or her racist refugee coverage, and the shortage of empathy for the non-Ukrainian refugees who proceed to danger and lose their lives on daily basis on the maritime and forest crossings of Europe’s borders. However this can be a phenomenon that far transcends this nation. It’s well-nigh common in Europe (and elsewhere). Due to this fact, it’s extra appropriate to talk of a normal European selectivity, of the double requirements vis-á-vis refugee coverage.
The western conscience tends to pick its regret in accordance with conventional racial and gender standards that obscure consideration of the plight of particular person human beings.
The writer is a member of the analysis staff of the ERC-Venture ‘Unlikely Refuge? Refugees and Residents in East-Central Europe within the twentieth Century’ (grant settlement No 819461).
