Brothers and barbarians: Discursive constructions of ‘refugees’ in Russian media

Abstract

This article maps the unexplored terrain of representations of refugees in Russian media, using discourse theory and the concepts of subject positions and symbolic boundaries to analyse these representations. The research questions are: Who are the refugees? What discourses do they feature in? What kinds of symbolic boundaries do these representations maintain? This study analyses the three Russian newspapers Izvestija, Novaya gazeta and Rossiiskaya gazeta, focusing on how, between 1 January 2014 and 31 December 2015, these newspapers came to employ the term ‘refugee’ for persons from Ukraine and for those from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Analysis of the subject position of ‘refugee’ in discourses about security, humanitarianism, integration and nationalism reveals contrasting images of refugees from Ukraine and MENA refugees. The latter are represented as ‘threatening’ and ‘alien’: symbolic boundaries are maintained between Russians and these refugees as well as between ‘superior’ Russia and ‘inferior’ Europe. In contrast, refugees from Ukraine are often presented as similar to Russians. Nationalist discourse merges with security, humanitarian and integration discourses, creating contrasting symbolic boundaries between these two groups of refugees and Russians. Refugees are classed as ‘preferred’ or ‘non-preferred’ migrants on the basis not of their situation, but their ethnicity.

Public discourse on refugees in social media: A case study of the Netherlands

“…The analysis of the discourses in which the refugee is the subject, highlights that the different ways of talking about refugees shapes the political decision-making process. For this reason, refugees can be represented as a threat to the security of the host state, impostors or victims in need of assistance (Moen-Larsen, 2020; Sajjad, 2018). Symbolic boundaries also emphasise the subject’s position such as who is threatened by refugees.…”

“Suitcase – shelling – Russia”: narratives about refugees from Ukraine in Russian media

“…Although there exist some studies published in Russian (e.g. Chervinskaya 2014; Antip'ev 2016, 2015;Podlesnaya and Khomutova 2016;Gulina and Poznyak 2018;Kuznetsova 2018), this article fills a gap in the English-language literature, where only a handful of recent studies have focused on refugees from Ukraine (Lassiala 2017; Myhre 2018; A 'Beckett 2019;Moen-Larsen 2019). In addition, this article makes important contributions to two research fields -Russia studies, and refugee studiesby nuancing the literature on Russian media representations of the conflict in Ukraine, and by addressing the implications of national narratives for refugee reception in a country.…”

“…3 In Russia, in recent years there has been a tendency to distinguish between "preferred" and "non-preferred" migrants -Slavs (for example, Ukrainians), in the former group and Muslims from Central Asia in the latter (Abashin, 2017, 27, 31;Lassila 2017, 61-63). This tendency is evident in a new study of Russian refugee representations in (Moen-Larsen 2019, showing contrasting depictions of refugees from Ukraine and refugees from the Middle East and North Africa.…”

“Victims of Democracy” or “Enemies at the Gates”? Russian Discourses on the European “Refugee Crisis”

“…Studies of media representations of the European "refugee crisis" have generally concentrated on the European media: German (Vollmer and Karakayali 2018), British (Goodman, Sirriyeh, and McMahon 2017), Polish (Krzyżanowski, Triandafyllidou, and Wodak 2018;Krzyżanowska and Krzyżanowski 2018), Austrian (Greussing and Boomgaarden 2017;Rheindorf and Wodak 2018), and Scandinavian (Hovden, Mjelde, and Gripsrud 2018). Little has been published in English about Russian interpretations of the crisis (however, see Kalsaas 2017;Braghiroli and Makarychev 2018;Moen-Larsen 2020a). The focus has been on the general media discourse on refugees and on how Russia has used the "refugee crisis" to reenter the European political scene.…”