The boundaries of grievability

When do migrant lives matter to political representatives in Slovakia

Bibliographic Data

ID5602015
AuthorsMária Mokrá (0009-0005-7020-250X, Comenius University Bratislava, corresponding author), Ivana Rapoš Božič (0000-0001-6605-1765, Masaryk University)
Year2025
Volume52
Issue9
Pages1-20
Publication date2025-10-14
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueNew Community (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0047-9586 • E-ISSN: 1469-9451
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/1369183x.2025.2564867
OpenAlexW4415177578
LanguageEN
References cited44

The responses of Central European countries to the mid-2010s migration ‘crisis’ and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 have been strikingly different, moving from strong anti-migrant stances to a wave of solidarity. Do these differences imply a shift in the political discourse on migration? We explore this question through the boundaries of grievability, a newly developed theoretical framework that adopts Butler’s concept of grievability for the cultural sociological analysis of political discourse on migration. This framework allows us to inductively uncover the conditions under which human lives matter. Focusing on the case of Slovakia, we show that the differentiated responses to migrants arriving in these two periods are in fact sustained by the same boundaries of grievability that locate them on opposing sides, based on their perceived: (1) ethnoracial closeness; (2) legitimacy of suffering; (3) economic contribution; and (4) contribution to the project of ‘Europeanness.’ The uneven allocation of grievability reflects complex hierarchies in which the migrants are posited in relation to each other, as well as to the native-born population. Based on our findings, we argue that the responses of Slovak political representatives to migration must be contextualised by the country’s ambiguous positioning within the hierarchy of Europeanness

Ethnic group · Immigration · Politics · Transnationalism · Migration and Labor Dynamics · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Populism, Right-Wing Movements

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