Emancipation in a Reception System: Asylum-Seekers in Poland in a Security Grey Zone Between Liberal Democracy and Nation-State (original) (raw)
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From Reception to Integration of Asylum Seekers and Refugees in Poland
Routledge, 2022
This book sheds light on the complex experiences of asylum seekers and refugees in Poland, against a local backdrop of openly anti-refugee political narratives and strong opposition to sharing the responsibility for, and burden of, asylum seekers arriving in the EU. Through a multidimensional analysis, it highlights the processes of forced migrant admission, reception and integration in a key EU frontier country that has undergone a rapid migration status change from a transit to a host country. The book examines rich qualitative material drawn from interviews conducted with forced migrants with different legal statuses and with experts from public administration at the central and local levels, NGOs, and other institutions involved in migration governance in Poland. It discusses both opportunities for and limitations on forced migrants' adaptation in the social, economic, and political dimensions, as well as their access to healthcare, education, the labour market, and social assistance. This book will be of particular interest to scholars, students, policymakers, and practitioners in migration and asylum studies, social policy, public policy, international relations, EU studies/ European integration, law, economics, and sociology.
Defending the right to seek asylum – a perspective from Poland. In ‘Legal Dialogue’, 8 August 2018.
While the number of forced migrants moving out of conflict-ridden or otherwise troubled regions into relatively stable and safe parts of the world is higher than ever, the countries of destination are increasingly trying to prevent migrants from reaching their territories. Given the scale of forced displacement and current trends of tightening immigration policies, it should be expected that tragedies at the borders, similar to that recently witnessed in Europe, will become the norm rather than the exception and that new discourses and practices will continue to emerge, transforming territorial borders in various parts of the world into highly conflictual and politicised 'borderspaces'. This article is a contribution to the understanding of borders through a case study of the recent policy of 'closed doors' that Poland has adopted towards Russia's North Caucasus asylum seekers at the country's eastern border with Belarus, preventing them from entering the territory and claiming protection. It demonstrates that, through the process of 'bordering', power is no longer exercised only by the border guards at the crossing point in Terespol from where asylum seekers are being returned and that it is increasingly to be found in social practices that occur on both sides of the border, away from the clearance points. The article examines the various practices of resistance undertaken by the asylum seekers and other actors on several different levels in response to the changed reality at the border. It also analyses the meanings and discourses developed by Polish state actors in order to legitimise restrictive migration policies.
Departing or Being Deported? Poland’s Approach towards Humanitarian Migrants
Journal of Refugee Studies
Referring to the theoretical reflection on securitization in the area of forced migration and applying Barak Kalir’s concept of Departheid, we investigate policies and practices deployed by the Polish authorities to deal with humanitarian migrants. In particular between 2015 and 2021, in the Polish context, humanitarian migrants were usually equated with ‘bogus’ asylum seekers, ‘undeserving’ of protection or even the right to apply for it. With the increasing presence of Belarusian and, more recently, Ukrainian asylum seekers in Poland, two completely different state attitudes towards asylum seekers reaching Poland’s borders became visible. People directly fleeing Belarus and Ukraine were seen as deserving protection and support, and faced no obstacles in entering Poland through its eastern border. At the same time, non-White people forced to leave Asian or African regions in crisis, attempting to cross the border and to enter Poland remained ‘unwanted’—to be deterred or deported, a...
When the periphery comes to the centre: Mapping out the securitarian approach to migration in Poland
Annales Universitatis Paedagogicae Cracoviens: Studia de Securitate, 2022
The refugee definition has not evolved, adapted, or responded to socio-economic-induced displacement. As a result, migrants from countries where refugee displacement factors are interconnected with economic failure, political instability, and poverty are labeled as a security threat and undeserving of international protection in the European Union. Using Poland as a case study, the aim of the paper is to evaluate the migration approach taken by Poland in dealing with the migrant crisis at its border with Belarus. This evaluation will help answer the question: To what extent has Poland disregarded the European Union asylum laws by adopting a securitarian migration approach at its border with Belarus? To that end, the paper employs a typology of qualitative online methodology that incorporates web-scrapped extant data from institutions dealing with refugee policy and protection in and outside Poland. Expert opinion is further employed to consolidate desk research in mapping out the reasons Poland is securitizing the borders against migrants from the Middle East and Africa. The securitization of the Polish border for migrants from the Middle East and Africa is assessed as harsh, restrictive, and not in sync with the European Union’s asylum law. The paper concludes by providing a blueprint on how the securitization of borders should be balanced with a humanitarian approach that respects the migrants’ rights.
SECURITY FIRST – NEW RIGHT-WING GOVERNMENT IN POLAND AND ITS POLICY TOWARDS IMMIGRANTS AND REFUGEES
Surveillance & Society, 2017
The so-called refugee crisis in 2015 coincided with the Polish parliamentary electoral campaign. The effect of it was—for the first time in Poland—the introduction of migration policy to the political agenda of the right-wing and populist political parties on a massive scale. They presented migration as an issue of security—both national and cultural, direct and symbolic. The new government, acting since the end of 2015, included immigration and asylum issues into their political programme as a key element of national security. Their discourse about refugees is usually based on the differentiation: us and them. And 'them' are pictured as evil, dangerous, Muslim terrorists. The new government and its authoritarian style of governing has introduced a number of initiatives designed to deprive individuals of immigrant rights (like in the new so-called Antiterrorist Act from the mid of 2016, based on which every foreign citizen could be put under surveillance without any court control) or to stop refugee influx on the Polish territory in any way—directly from their country of origin (new amendments to asylum law are trying to introduce border and accelerated procedures) or under the UE resettlement and relocation programme (Poland is one of 3 EU Member States—along Hungary and Austria—that hasn't relocated anyone). In this paper I will present in more detail the legal changes described above, their consequences and the so-called rationalities presented by the government.
Deusto Journal of Human Rights, 2020
Over the last two decades, the securitization of borders and human mobility has become a more “high profile” issue in academia. The general consensus is that in Western countries policies on migration have been increasingly adopted through security concerns. Such a statement brings together a broad and complex set of issues: migration, asylum, cross border crimes, external and internal security, to mention some of them. Therefore, in this book, Léonard and Kaunert recognize the need to refine the analysis and undertake the arduous task of decoding the realm and functioning of the securitization process on the specific area of asylum policy in the European Union (EU).
2018
This article investigates the unequal treatment of asylum seekers across the European Union (EU). In particular, this article explores the way in which Directive 2013/33/EU (the “Reception Conditions Directive”) itself allows for the creation of different categories of asylum seekers who enjoy variable reception conditions as a result. This runs counter the stated objective of the Reception Conditions Directive to harmonise reception conditions in the EU. The fragmented treatment of asylum seekers has become more acute with the current “refugee crisis”, which has highlighted the deficiencies inherent in the reception system created by the Reception Conditions Directive. This article hypothesises that this is caused by the underlying double objective of the EU reception system, namely, to protect the fundamental rights of asylum seekers, while preventing secondary movements within the EU. Examining both the situation at the EU level and in three EU Member States, the article shows th...
Border security and asylum rights: The questionable construction of a European asylum regime
The 2015 European refugee crisis highlighted some inherent shortcoming in European migration and asylum policies. Hundreds of thousands of people moving across the borders of Schengen and seeking international protection were quickly classified by the highest institutional offices of member states as " irregular migrants " , they were associated with threats such as organized crime and terrorism and they have been exposed to the risk of being criminalized. These official reactions are both the consequence and the reflection of the Eu-ropean asylum system. A regime that has been created in almost thirty years-from the Schengen agreement to the most recent immigration conventions-on the basis of an obsession for border security which, on the one hand, led to the approval of increasingly restrictive immigration and asylum policies, and, on the other hand, have transformed asylum seekers from victims of political persecution , wars, natural or human disasters to disguised economic immigrants or " false refugees ". Two interesting interpretations of this trajectory have been provided by Valluy-who explains it as the result of a competition between three political ideological views-and Huysmans-who analyzes it in terms of a classical securitization process. In the last part of our paper, we briefly address three main points: 1) the generative power of borders; 2) the need to critically reconsider the vocabulary we as scholars use to analyze human mobility; 3) the link between the European immigration policy framework and the reworking of a European cultural and ethno-racial identity.
2017
The 'refugee crisis' poses a big challenge for the European Union, especially since its peak in 2015. During the last years, migrant, asylum seekers and refugees are increasingly considered a threat to the countries inside the Schengen area, a matter of national security, seen as potential terrorist threats to the society, which view is created in the political arena. This qualitative study focuses explicitly on unaccompanied migrant, asylum seeker and refugee minors in the European Union and tries to determine which processes around this security discourse are of influence to their situations. An overview of the relevant EU policies is given, together with the techniques that are used to apply them. A theoretical framework is constructed from the concepts of securitisation, governmentality and bare-life, used as a lens for analysis. Empirical data during a case study is gathered from a field visit to the illegal settlements in Nord-Pas-de-Calais in France to better understa...