With: Nataliya Gumenyuk (Kiyv), Andrii Portnov (Berlin), Andreas Umland (Kiyv), Marta Orosz (Berlin), Zuzana Stevulova (Bratislava), and Jakub Demyk (Warsaw)
The workshop will be held in the framework of the Berlin-Brandenburg Ukraine Initiative (BBUI) in cooperation with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Osteuropakunde e.V. (DGO).
The results of Slovakia’s recent parliamentary elections were surprising to both Slovaks and the international community. After running a seemingly strong anti-immigration campaign, far-right parties got a sizeable number of seats. Though some of the Eastern European countries are not the main destination for the refugees, anti-immigration rhetoric has become an issue for Poland, Slovakia, the Baltic States, Ukraine and Russia, where, according to its mass media, the refugee crisis is equaled with ‘the end of Europe’. Eastern European countries, one could argue, which have claimed and received solidarity from Western European countries for a long time, are now breaking with that same principle of solidarity. At this workshop we will explore (1) how the Eastern European far-right and nationalists use globalization and migration in their political campaigns, (2) how mainstream politicians incorporate anti-immigration mood into their political campaigning in order to compete with the far-right, and (3) how the general public is perceiving the impact of the refugee crisis. We will also discuss the role of the Soviet legacy on perceiving the “others” in Eastern European societies.
Schedule:
02:00pm – 02:15pm
Andrii Portnov and Nataliya Gumenyuk: Welcome and Introduction
02:15pm – 03:45pm
Zuzana Števulová: Slovakia and the So-called “Refugee Crisis”
Marta Orosz: Right-wing Populism Goes Mainstream
Jakub Dymek: National Sovereignity and the Erosion of the Centre: The Refugee Crises from a Polish Perspective
4:00pm – 06:30pm
Andreas Umland: Putin’s Russia as an Alternative Europe: Conservatism, Eurasianism and Traditionalism in Moscow’s Current Official Discourse
Andrii Portnov: The ‘Refugee Crisis’ as a Concept and Challenge for Russian-speaking Germans
06:30pm
Nataliya Gumenyuk: Closing Remarks and Discussion
Reception
Participants:
Zuzana Števulová is an immigration and asylum lawyer and director of the Slovak NGO The Human Rights League. She founded and led several public advocacy campaigns dedicated to raise awareness on refugee and immigrant-related issues. Zuzana Števulová was awarded the 2016 International Women of Courage Award for fighting for the rights of refugees and migrants during Europe’s migration crisis. Her presentation “Slovakia and the So-called ‘Refugee Crisis’” will explore how politicians from almost all parties misused the refugee issue.
Marta Orosz is a Berlin-based Hungarian journalist. She works on a long-term investigation on TTIP for the investigative newsroom Correctiv.org and contributed to other cross-border projects revealing illegal trafficking of refugees. “Right-wing Populism Goes Mainstream” will explain how state-financed anti-immigration campaigns managed to influence public opinion: anti-immigrant attitudes have never been so strong in Hungary as today.
Jakub Dymek is a Polish journalist and editor of Krytyka Polityczna in Warsaw, Poland. He was nominated for the Grand Press Prize in 2015 for his work on CIA secret interrogation facilities in Poland. He will speak on the “National Sovereignity and Erosion of the Centre: The Refugee Crises from the Polish Perspective”.
Andreas Umland is a German Kiev-based political scientist and historian specializing in contemporary Russian and Ukrainian history. “Putin’s Russia as an Alternative Europe: Conservatism, Eurasianism and Traditionalism in Moscow’s Current Official Discourse” will discuss how the refugee and other crises in the EU are instrumentalized to present the Russian state as a counter-model to Western society.
Andrii Portnov is a historian of modern Ukraine and the initiator of the Berlin-Brandenburg Ukraine Initiative (BBUI), as well as a Long-term Fellow of the Forum Transregionale Studien. “The ‘Refugee Crisis’ as a Concept and Challenge for Russian-speaking Germans” will discuss the issues of European (and, particularly, East European) solidarity in the face of the ‘refugee crisis’, arguing that ‘crisis’ is maybe not a proper word in this context, and how the issue is exploited among the Russian-speaking community in Germany.
Please rsvp should you be able to attend: bbui@trafo-berlin.de.