‘A brother is more than a neighbour’: Symbolic boundary work in Czech pro-migration discourse

ABSTRACT

Since 2015, the latest so-called migration crisis has become a major discursive topic in the EU, even in countries like Czechia, which have not received many migrants, refugees, or asylum seekers. While researchers have looked at anti-migration discourses in the country, highlighting the ways in which symbolic boundaries around migrants are brightened, there exists a gap in looking at the other side, namely, how migrant rights advocates legitimate the potential acceptance of migrants, refugees, or asylum seekers. In this article, we adopt a cultural sociological approach to explore how two Czech initiatives to accept refugees, including Syrian orphans, variously blur and solidify symbolic boundaries. Our findings show that the migrant rights advocates involved in these two initiatives, who gained the attention of decision makers, follow mainstream discursive narratives, legitimating the acceptance of refugees based on similar arguments and symbols (both religious and security based) as those instrumentalised by the opponents of migration.

KEYWORDS:

• Symbolic boundaries
• boundary work
• refugees
• Czechia
• migrant advocacy
• cultural sociology

Acknowledgments

This research was financially supported by the student research project ‘Migration and Mobility: Cultural Sociological Perspectives’, project number MUNI/A/1378/2020. We also thank the members of the Center for the Cultural Sociology of Migration at Masaryk University for their helpful feedback and constructive criticism.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Formerly and also known as the Czech Republic, there has been a recent push to use the name Czechia. The United Nations officially adopted the name in May 2016 (UNTERM, n.d.).

2 The official designation for a non-EU national or stateless person below the age of 18 who arrives on the territory of the EU is unaccompanied minor (Official Journal of the European Union, 2011). In this article, however, we primarily use the term orphan, as articulated by the campaign itself.

3 Messing and Ságvári’s (2019, p. 9) ‘Rejection Index’ denotes the ‘share of those who would reject any migrants coming from poorer countries outside Europe without consideration’.

4 Most are organised under the umbrella of the Consortium of Migrant-Assisting Organisations (Consortium). These NGOs focus on the integration of MRAS living in Czechia (e.g. Organisation for Aid to Refugees, Inbáze), or they focus on humanitarian aid outside of Czechia (e.g. We Help People on Run, People in Need). The third main endeavour includes educational and research activities in the field of international migration (e.g. The Multicultural Center Prague, Atlas of Today's World).

5 These are not the only initiatives advocating for MRAS in Czechia. There were events organised by the Consortium or other NGOs such as a demonstration in December 2014 (Migraceonline.cz, 2014). The initiative Hlavák was also established as a result of the migration crisis. However, these events or demonstrations have rather a one-time character, or they focus on integrating and helping migrants, as in the case of Hlavák. Moreover, these initiatives did not garner significant attention from decision-makers.

6 The biweekly magazine Monitor is published with the ecclesiastical approval of the Archbishopric of Prague.

7 However, as part of the project, only 89 refugees arrived by March 2016. Twenty-five accepted refugees refused Czech asylum and travelled to Germany on April 1, 2016, another 8 went back to Iraq on April 7, and another 16 also refused Czech asylum and travelled to Germany on April 14. For these reasons, the project was cancelled by the Czech government on April 7, 2016 (NF G21, ca., 2017). Just 34 from the 89 Iraqi refugees remained in Czechia as of January 2017 (ČT24, 2017).

8 It is not necessarily overlooked by those who advocate on behalf of MRAS. For example, see Brožová (2020).

9 None of these actors are part of the Consortium referred to in Footnote 4. The results of our analysis are thus not generalisable to all migrant rights advocates in Czechia.

10 Another way to look at this moral hierarchy is to consider Alexander’s (2006) differentiation of civil and non-civil spheres of social life. The religiously infused sociocultural boundaries employed here, originating from the non-civil sphere of religion, demonstrate the limits of boundaries formed outside of the solidaristic and inclusive civil sphere. We are grateful to one of the anonymous reviewers for pointing this out.

11 Indeed, Czech culture, customs and language were a high priority in the integration process. NF G21 highlights that ‘above all’, after a two-month introduction to Czech culture, the refugees would then go through ‘an intensive six-month course of Czech language teaching, starting with at least 400 lessons’ (NF G21, ca., 2017).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Masarykova Univerzita: [grant number MUNI/A/1378/2020].