Celine Cantat

In 2015, the mass mobilities of refugees, many from Syria, towards Western Europe, were presented as a crisis threatening the integrity of nation-states. Whilst governments along the so-called 'Balkan route' increasingly responded with exclusionary measures, large-scale solidarity movements emerged and played a key role in assisting refugees in their journeys and settlement. All along the route, activists and volunteers (sometimes in loose collaboration with official relief organizations) established solidarity communities that tasked themselves with assisting people on the move. Their activities have been underpinned by discourses of solidarity and hospitality reflecting deep-seated popular beliefs about displacement, sanctuary and refuge-alternative narratives of what is today called asylum. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with solidarity and refugee groups in Greece, Serbia and Hungary, I examine the practices and discourses of refugees and those mobilized to support them along the 'Balkan route'.

Dans cet article, en nous appuyant sur le cas de la Hongrie, nous proposons de dépasser la lecture morale de la politique migratoire des pays du groupe de Visegrád et d’en analyser les fondements politiques et économiques. En revenant sur le processus d’intégration de ces pays au sein de l’Union européenne, nous montrons en quoi le positionnement anti-immigration du groupe de Visegrád est le produit de la transition de ces pays vers l’économie de marché et de leur entrée dans l’Union européenne. Nous proposons en outre d’analyser ensemble les mesures visant les migrants et celles prenant pour cibles d’autres catégories de populations, afin de souligner qu’elles relèvent d’une même économie morale capitaliste.

This chapter describes the production of a migration crisis in Hungary and examines the politics it authorizes. After providing context into the emergence of the discourse of crisis in Hungary, the chapter examines the mechanisms used by the Hungarian authorities to keep the crisis alive in spite of the limited number of people receiving asylum in the country. Finally, the chapter studies the connections between the “migration crisis” and the marginalization of other social groups, particularly Roma. It argues that both are connected to the adoption of capitalist modes of development underpinned by moral economies that rely on the production of various “others.”

In this chapter, I reflect on the politics of in/visibility that underpin the government of migrants and refugees by Hungarian authorities and assess how they contribute to and authorise an on-going process of disintegration of the already narrow social, political and economic space navigated by migrants and refugees in the country. First, I examine the spectacularisation practices deployed by the Hungarian government in relation to migration and borders, with a focus on the series of anti-migrant campaigns and the construction of border fences since 2015. I explore the way in which this hyper-visible spectacle of migration produces particular representations of the Hungarian state as the protector of a national public. Second, I reflect on the way in which these hyper-visible ‘events’ authorise the deployment of quieter processes of negligence and destitution towards refugees and asylum-seekers that directly contribute to the disintegration of the social, economic and political ties which migrants and refugees may build in the country. Finally, I examine instances of solidarity initiatives with migrants and assess the extent to which they undermine the political frames put forward by the Hungarian government and produce common spaces between established residents and migrants. Ultimately, this chapter seeks to contribute to our understanding of politics of (dis)integration in Hungary, in the context of a highly exclusionary, yet contested, process of nation-building.

Europe is more present than ever in the media and in political discourse.1 The recent decision by Britain to leave the European Union (EU) is perhaps the most serious blow to the European project yet. However, it is in continuity with a long series of popular consultations through which the EU project and its institutions have been repeatedly heavily criticised or outright rejected by people of its member states. In 2015, the Greek people rejected the EU’s bailout conditions en masse. But as early as 1992 and the Danish vote against the Maastricht Treaty, referendums suggested that the EU triggers at most a very weak sense of identification—and often downright hostility. In 2005, in both the Netherlands and France, people voted against the European Constitution. To avoid similar results, a referendum that should have been held in Ireland was cancelled. Yet a few years later, in 2008, the Irish rejected the Lisbon Treaty by 53 percent.

In spite of this clear democratic pitfall, crucial questions regarding the nature of the EU project, and the ideologies animating its trajectory and setting its goals, hardly ever seem to be raised. Official accounts of European integration by its architects and pro-EU politicians insist on presenting “Europe” as an internationalist or a post-national project, confining to the past the excesses of nationalism and national rivalries and promoting cooperation and friendship among its member states and their people. In turn, criticisms and rejections of the EU are only ever explained through accusations of nationalist insularism. Not only do these discourses betray profound class contempt, they also fail to acknowledge the persistent resonance of race and territory in the project and idea of “Europe.”

A political economy of the origins and process of European integration can help deconstruct official accounts of the European project. It reveals the complex and contradictory relationship between the EU and its member states and calls into question ideas of an “internationalist Europe”. It allows for an understanding of how official narratives of Europe and European identity have been constructed and mobilised in order to produce popular identification towards an unpopular European project. This ideological operation becomes particularly visible when assessing discourses of Europe from the perspective of the forms of marginalisation that they produce. I argue that official narratives of Europe have been based on a notion of European belonging premised on the idea of a distinct and recognisable European character that could set aside Europeans from non-Europeans. This is what I call the ideology of Europeanism. This narrative has led to the production of new figures of otherness at the regional level, among which the “migrant” has played a central role.

Recent mobilities towards Europe have been framed through a discourse of crisis. This discourse presents migratory movements as illegitimate and exceptional, and calls for the deployment of emergency measures in order to restore putative order and normality. In this article, I propose to think of mobilities beyond crisis. First, I challenge the notion that Europe is experiencing a migrant crisis by relocating recent mobilities in a larger history of confrontation between sovereign power and movement. Second, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with refugees and solidarity activists in order to bring to the fore wider histories of autonomous migrant struggles against Europe's borders and to uncover alternative accounts of identity and subjectivity that are being enacted within 'Europe'. Last, I examine the discourse of Mediterranean Solidarity mobilised by migrants and activists and assess the way in which it disrupts the dominant European geography of borders. This investigation allows us to perceive and assess existing forms of political and ethical community that transcend the citizen/non-citizen dichotomy and open up the possibilities of non-territorial imagination of identity and belonging.

This paper explores with the way in which individuals and groups supporting migrants in the European Union relate to and contest dominant narratives of European belonging and identity. First, I examine the emergence of an increasingly exclusionary discourse on European belonging produced by politicians of the EU and its member states. I argue that, faced with the difficulty – identified by Jacques Delors decades ago – that 'people do not fall in love with a single market', an ideological enterprise aiming at putting forward a notion of “Europeanity” was initiated by ideologues of the European Union. Discourses of Europeanity are underpinned by the idea of a coherent socio-cultural European self, which becomes the basis for legitimising the process of European integration. This process of has thus relied on attempts at identifying “Europeans” and at setting them apart from non-Europeans. It has led to the identification of new Others and , in this sense, I suggest that dominant discourses of European belonging share features with national identity building processes.

In the second part of this paper, I propose to look at the process of harmonisation of immigration and border controls in the EU as the expression of this exclusionary agenda and as the manifestation of a dominant notion of European belonging. I argue that the construction of 'Fortress Europe', which aims at securing the integrity of the territory of the EU, has been central to the continuation of European integration since the mid-1980s.

This process has however been contested. In the last part of this paper, I propose to examine the emergence of a transnational migrant solidarity movement in the EU and to explore whether this movement-in-formation has produced alternative visions and understandings of Europe. Drawing on findings gathered through a prolonged period of ethnographic fieldwork with pro-migrant groups in three EU member states (France, the UK and Italy), I investigate the narratives formulated by people acting in solidarity with non-Europeans in the EU. I conclude that this emergent movement has been increasingly articulated at the European level yet that it has not been integrated around alternative visions of Europe and European identity. I argue that this is due to tensions and contradictions generated by the European project. I explain this through a critical reflection about the process of European construction and the production of ideas about Europe.

I used to live in Yarmouk. It is Syria’s largest Palestinian refugee camp, home to about 150,000 Palestinians as well as hundreds of thousands of impoverished Syrians and Iraqi refugees. It lies a few kilometers south of Damascus and, until recently, was one of the centers of intellectual and cultural life in the Palestinian diaspora. As all those who once walked its lively streets and remember its myriad sounds and smells, I am now haunted by images of its ravaged buildings, children feeding themselves on grass and stray cats, and scrawny bodies starved to death.

This paper examines the relation between cohesion policy (CP) and perceptions of the European Union (EU) in Hungary. It does so through a cultural political economy approach that sets out to think together, on the one hand, a political economy analysis of cohesion policy in the EU in general and in Hungary in particular and, on the other hand, a set of narratives about understandings and perceptions of the EU collected through interviews with people involved in designing and implementing cohesion policy in Hungary. The key argument developed in this paper is that CP was always characterized by a double objective: while it was mobilized in order to promote economic and social cohesion across EU member states, it also came hand in hand with a push towards further market liberalization. Moreover, the implementation of CP in member states also intersects with and is shaped by national administrative and political contexts. This paper thus studies how the deployment of CP in Hungary has been associated both with an intensive process of economic liberalization and a strong drive toward administrative and political centralization. Narrative interviews conducted with people involved in various ways in the design and implementation of CP in Hungary reveal how the combination of an EU policy with ambivalent objectives and a problematic implementation context has meant that CP has contributed to negative perceptions of the EU in Hungary.

Context: Migration studies and policymaking. The final deliverable of the MigSol project was supposed to be a set of policy recommendations related to solidarity with and by refugees and migrants along the Balkan Route. As I look back at MigSol's field sites and assess both the research process and the policy issues it evidenced, the task of writing a standard policy brief appears arduous. This is in part because the gap between knowledge produced on migration and policymaking, both at the national and European levels, is so huge that writing a policy brief seems futile. For instance, there have been countless policy recommendations formulated by a range of researchers, NGOs and field actors on how EU border and migration policies should be reformed to prevent systematic rights violations at the borders. Yet they have not had any significant impact on European policymaking in the area of migration, where border reinforcement and the deployment of measures to securitise and control mobilities remain the main objectives of policymakers. Even research funded by the same actors than those designing some of the most important policies in the domain, such as the European Commission, is hardly taken into consideration when it criticises the migration and border policies implemented by the EU. Moreover, over the years spanning between the proposal submission and the project completion, drastic changes have occurred on the ground. Those are part due to the continuous implementation of punitive policies targeting migrants and those supporting them by EU institutions and member-states. These policies include, among others, migrant detention and deportation, the further externalisation of EU border control and the creation of hotspots to contain migrants at the border of the EU. In other words, the general policy framework of the EU in the area of asylum and immigration is such that the conditions for the forms of solidarity work that MigSol investigated are becoming constantly more strenuous. Additionally, over the last few years, the criminalisation of solidarity practices towards migrants has drastically intensified, leading to the effective dismantlement of the sites and practices investigated by MigSol. The picture that fieldwork and post-fieldwork observations conducted under MigSol draw is the following:

This paper reflects on the politics of spectacularisation that underpin the government of migrants and refugees by Hungarian authorities and on the extent to which solidarity initiatives with migrants and refugees can challenge dominant anti-migrant narratives in the country.

First, the paper examines the deployment of a ‘border spectacle’ by the Hungarian government. It explores the way in which a hyper-visible spectacle of migration is produced, which establishes particular representations of the Hungarian state as protector of a national public and articulates a discourse of desirability and order that justifies an exclusionary agenda. The paper also reflects on the way in which these hyper-visible ‘events’ authorise the deployment of more quiet processes of negligence and destitution towards refugees and asylum-seekers. Indeed, while the spectacle produced by the Hungarian government presents itself as a series of isolated ‘performances’, they in fact stand in continuum with a range of less visible practices that directly contribute to the unweaving of the social, economic and political ties migrants and refugees may build in the country.

Against this background, the paper moves on to explore solidarity movements with migrants and refugees that have emerged in two Hungarian border cities, Szeged and Pécs, and assesses the extent to which they have counteracted the official anti-migrant narrative set through the border spectacle. The paper argues that a key way in which pro-migrant movements in Hungary have destabilised dominant framings of migration as an obscene spectacle and a crisis has been through a de-centring of migration. In other words, it is by asserting connections between migrant-related struggles and other struggles that volunteers and activists have at times successfully challenged the discourses of crisis and the processes of Othering deployed by the government in relation to migrants and other vulnerable groups.

In this paper, I present some of the findings emerging from my PhD research, which is concerned with the discourses and practices of pro-migrant organisations in the European Union (EU). This topic deals with fundamental questions addressing the core of the European project: the extent to which the European Union welcomes and accommodates non-European migrants can indeed be conceptualised as a test-case for claims of a post-national and cosmopolitan Europe. Soysal (1994), for example, has argued
on numerous occasions that, in western European societies and under the pressure brought about by the experience of post-war immigration, national citizenship is losing ground to a more universal model of membership grounded in a deterriorialised notion of personal rights. In this perspective, European citizenship, perceived as a post-national relation between a new form of political entity and the residents of its territory, has been upheld as possessing a great potential for challenging the national concept of citizenship and providing protection and rights outside the framework of the state-citizen relationship. My PhD research proposes to examine such claims by, first, interrogating the nature of the European Union and the associated notions of European identity and citizenship and, second, looking at the types of mobilisation emerging in support of migrants and the impact of these mobilisations on dominant notions of Europeanness

Through a series of empirically and theoretically informed reflections, Opening Up the University offers insights into the process of setting up and running programs that cater to displaced students. Including contributions from educators, administrators, practitioners, and students, this expansive collected volume aims to inspire and question those who are considering creating their own interventions, speaking to policy makers and university administrators on specific points relating to the access and success of refugees in higher education, and suggests concrete avenues for further action within existing academic structures.

Dans cet article, en nous appuyant sur le cas de la Hongrie, nous proposons de dépasser la lecture morale de la politique migratoire des pays du groupe de Visegrád et d’en analyser les fondements politiques et économiques. En revenant sur le processus d’intégration de ces pays au sein de l’Union européenne, nous montrons en quoi le positionnement anti-immigration du groupe de Visegrád est le produit de la transition de ces pays vers l’économie de marché et de leur entrée dans l’Union européenne. Nous proposons en outre d’analyser ensemble les mesures visant les migrants et celles prenant pour cibles d’autres catégories de populations, afin de souligner qu’elles relèvent d’une même économie morale capitaliste.

In 2015, the mass mobilities of refugees, many from Syria, towards Western Europe, were presented as a crisis threatening the integrity of nation-states. Whilst governments along the so-called ‘Balkan route’ increasingly responded with exclusionary measures, large-scale solidarity movements emerged and played a key role in assisting refugees in their journeys and settlement. All along the route, activists and volunteers (sometimes in loose collaboration with official relief organizations) established solidarity communities that tasked themselves with assisting people on the move. Their activities have been underpinned by discourses of solidarity and hospitality reflecting deep-seated popular beliefs about displacement, sanctuary and refuge—alternative narratives of what is today called asylum. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with solidarity and refugee groups in Greece, Serbia and Hungary, I examine the practices and discourses of refugees and those mobilized to support them along the ‘Balkan route’.

Over the past decades, and across different contexts worldwide, migration has become inseparable from a narrative of crisis. This article analyses the connection between migration and crisis. It proposes a migration as crisis framework, designed to understand and analyze the emergence of this specific perception of migration, on the basis of an interplay between social “subjective” constructions of reality and “objective” migration dynamics. Migration as crisis rests upon a fragmented, changing, and contested assemblage of events, representations, and practices, which in turn call for specific ways of governing migration. The link between migration and crisis can be activated or not, and may or may not be correlated with empirical realities. By engaging with migration as crisis (rather than migration crisis), the article denaturalizes and historicizes the relationship between migration and crisis, and unpacks the processes through which key actors (including media, policymakers, civ...

The European Union funds extensive academic research with the potential to inform humane and effective border policies. Yet evidence-based immigration policy is undermined by the EU’s increasingly repressive border regime. How do we make sense of this contradiction? And which transformations are needed to address it?

This paper reflects on the politics of spectacularisation that underpin the government of migrants and refugees by Hungarian authorities and on the extent to which solidarity initiatives with migrants and refugees can challenge dominant anti-migrant narratives in the country. First, the paper examines the deployment of a ‘border spectacle’ by the Hungarian government. It explores the way in which a hyper-visible spectacle of migration is produced, which establishes particular representations of the Hungarian state as protector of a national public and articulates a discourse of desirability and order that justifies an exclusionary agenda. The paper also reflects on the way in which these hyper-visible ‘events’ authorise the deployment of more quiet processes of negligence and destitution towards refugees and asylum-seekers. Indeed, while the spectacle produced by the Hungarian government presents itself as a series of isolated ‘performances’, they in fact stand in continuum with a range of less visible practices that directly contribute to the unweaving of the social, economic and political ties migrants and refugees may build in the country. Against this background, the paper moves on to explore solidarity movements with migrants and refugees that have emerged in two Hungarian border cities, Szeged and Pécs, and assesses the extent to which they have counteracted the official anti-migrant narrative set through the border spectacle. The paper argues that a key way in which pro-migrant movements in Hungary have destabilised dominant framings of migration as an obscene spectacle and a crisis has been through a de-centring of migration. In other words, it is by asserting connections between migrant-related struggles and other struggles that volunteers and activists have at times successfully challenged the discourses of crisis and the processes of Othering deployed by the government in relation to migrants and other vulnerable groups.

Through a series of empirically and theoretically informed reflections, Opening Up the University offers insights into the process of setting up and running programs that cater to displaced students. Including contributions from educators, administrators, practitioners, and students, this expansive collected volume aims to inspire and question those who are considering creating their own interventions, speaking to policy makers and university administrators on specific points relating to the access and success of refugees in higher education, and suggests concrete avenues for further action within existing academic structures.

This study investigates the practices and discourses of groups and networks supporting migrants in the context of the construction of the European Union (EU) and the Europeanisation of immigration and border controls. Its main objectives are: (1) to engage in critical examination of the European political project and the discourse of European belonging that has sustained its construction and consolidation; (2) to observe whether novel contentious practices have emerged to respond to multi-scalar developments associated with harmonisation of immigration-related policies; and (3) to investigate narratives of pro-migrant groups and networks. The project mobilises ethnographic research focused on pro-migrant organisations and networks in three European Union member states: France, Italy and the United Kingdom. It analyses testimony from participants involved in solidarity initiatives and assesses their perspectives on Europe and European belonging. This study draws on insights from a ra...

In 2015, the mass mobilities of refugees, many from Syria, towards Western Europe, were presented as a crisis threatening the integrity of nation-states. Whilst governments along the so-called ‘Balkan route’ increasingly responded with exclusionary measures, large-scale solidarity movements emerged and played a key role in assisting refugees in their journeys and settlement. All along the route, activists and volunteers (sometimes in loose collaboration with official relief organizations) established solidarity communities that tasked themselves with assisting people on the move. Their activities have been underpinned by discourses of solidarity and hospitality reflecting deep-seated popular beliefs about displacement, sanctuary and refuge—alternative narratives of what is today called asylum. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with solidarity and refugee groups in Greece, Serbia and Hungary, I examine the practices and discourses of refugees and those mobilized to support them along t...

The final chapter of this book concludes by reflecting on the various ways in which new civic actors and practices invite us to rethink protection. The second point may be labelled rethinking humanitarianism and solidarity. The intensive involvement of a range of new actors, including people with activist background and political biographies, in providing support of a humanitarian nature to refugees has important implications both for the humanitarian field, which boundaries are being contested and redrawn, and for pro-refugee activism which is being reshaped through its involvement in practices traditionally looked down upon. Finally, the conclusion would like to offer further reflection on a theme that traverses most, if not all, chapters of this volume, namely the relation between volunteer work, politics and state responsibility.

This chapter describes the production of a migration crisis in Hungary and examines the politics it authorizes. After providing context into the emergence of the discourse of crisis in Hungary, the chapter examines the mechanisms used by the Hungarian authorities to keep the crisis alive in spite of the limited number of people receiving asylum in the country. Finally, the chapter studies the connections between the “migration crisis” and the marginalization of other social groups, particularly Roma. It argues that both are connected to the adoption of capitalist modes of development underpinned by moral economies that rely on the production of various “others.”