(Non)responsibility for Refugees – Communicating about the Belarusian-Polish Border (2021–2023)

Bibliographic Data

ID21983515
AuthorsLidia Zessin-Jurek (0000-0002-7701-7340, Czech Academy of Sciences, Masaryk Institute and Archives, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume49
Issue3 (189)
Pages101-119
Publication date2024-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueStudia Migracyjne – Przegląd Polonijny (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2081-4488 • E-ISSN: 2544-4972
PublisherUniwersytet Jagiellonski - Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellonskiego (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.4467/25444972smpp.23.031.19146
OpenAlexW4392917998
LanguageEN
Citations received8
References cited29

Given that two dramatically different refugee regimens have developed along Poland’s eastern border, this essay explores the social conditions and discourses that facilitate such a radically different treatment of people. The Polish state’s violation of human rights on the Belarusian section of the border and the celebration of these rights on its Ukrainian section have become part of media spectacles. This text analyses both the technical and content-related issues of communication about migrants and refugees from the Global South. It includes typologies of attributional biases in the media towards people on the move, discusses their functions and the ways towards a normalisation of violence. The final section historicises the current negative responses to refugees and sets them in the wider context of the uneasy obligations imposed on the “West” by its professed values. In doing so, this essay touches upon questions not only of a sense of social responsibility, but also of actual responsibility for the people who have died in Polish forests and rivers

Advertising · Business · Geography · Human rights · Political science · Refugee · Sociology · Ukrainian · European Politics and Security · Law · Migration, Health and Trauma · Migration, Refugees, and Integration

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