Skip to main content

Nested Portlets Nested Portlets

Web Content Display Web Content Display

Skip banner

Web Content Display Web Content Display

An article by Artur Gruszczak published in „Politics and Governance”

An article by Artur Gruszczak published in „Politics and Governance”

We are pleased to inform that an article titled ‘’Refugees” as a Misnomer: The Parochial Politics and Official Discourse of the Visegrad Four by Prof. Artur Gruszczak, Chair of National Security, Institute of Political Science and International Relations, was published in the journal „Politics and Governance” (Thematic Issue: Migration and Refugee Flows: New Insights), 2021, vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 174-184.

We are pleased to inform that an article titled ‘’Refugees” as a Misnomer: The Parochial Politics and Official Discourse of the Visegrad Four  by Prof. Artur Gruszczak, Chair of National Security, Institute of Political Science and International Relations, was published in the journal „Politics and Governance” (Thematic Issue: Migration and Refugee Flows: New Insights), 2021, vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 174-184.

„Politics and Governance” (ISSN: 2183–2463) is an open access journal published by the Cogitatio Press and indexed in  SCOPUS, Web of Science, DOAJ and other databases and archives. Its impact factor is 2.061 (Clarivate Analytics, 2020); SCOPUS CiteScore is 3.3 (2020). It is ranked in the best quartile (Q1) in the category Sociology and Political Science (according to SCImago Journal Rank 2020).

Abstract: Attitudes towards migrants and refugees are created and reflected at the level of public policies, as well as in local communities which cultivate traditional approaches and a specific worldview. The refugee crisis in Europe in the mid‐2010s showed how public opinion translated into voting behaviour and became a source of strength for nationalist anti‐immigrant movements and parties across the continent. East‐Central Europe was no exception, regardless of the absence of a long‐term, massive inflow of refugees. Nevertheless, the migration crisis created a new political narrative which exploited deeply rooted resentments, complexes, and fears. This article aims to analyse the official policy responses to the refugee crisis in the four East‐Central European countries: Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, which together constitute the so‐called Visegrad Four. It puts the emphasis on the discriminatory practice of misnaming the refugees, which became deeply anchored in the political discourse of these countries. Based on a qualitative content analysis supplemented by the findings of public opinion polls, the argument developed in the article is that reluctant and defensive attitudes towards the refugees have been determined by the revival of parochialism as a radical reaction to the challenges of global trends and supra‐local processes. The theoretical framing of the refugee problem is built on politicization, in connection with the concept of parochialism, seen from political and social perspectives, and the meaning of the use of the misnomer as a policy instrument. The article concludes that the migration crisis petrified traditional cleavages at the supra‐local level, reinforcing simultaneously the sense of parochial altruism and hostility towards “the other.”

DOI: https://doi.org/10.17645/pag.v9i4.4411