Who is a ‘true refugee’? Polish political discourse in 2021–2022

Abstract

For many years, Poland was a country of emigration, not immigration and even the ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015 did not affect the reality on the ground in any real way. However, the situation changed as a result of the activities of the Belarusian regime backed by Russia, which in 2021 began to transfer migrants to the borders with the European Union as part of its hybrid operations. As a result, thousands of people have crossed the borders and hundreds have been stranded in the border zone. In response the Polish authorities reacted by introducing a pushback policy, a state of emergency in the border area and the construction of a border wall. The attack of the Russian Federation on Ukraine forced over 14 million people to leave their homes, about 6 million of whom fled to other countries, including Poland. In the face of the exodus of the Ukrainian population, Poles spontaneously rushed to help them, and the previous anti-immigrant discourse of the ruling party changed dramatically – these refugees became ‘poor’ and worthy of help. The article analyses two language corpora from scratch referring to the crises in question, which consist of speeches by members of the Law and Justice party (pol. Prawo i Sprawiedliwość) during the meetings of the lower house of parliament. A combination corpus linguistic and Critical Discourse Analysis methodologies was used. The results indicate the differences in the discourse of the ruling party in the face of each of these crises, as well as the political motivations related to them.