Poland: the dog that didn't bark (on Ukrainian refugees) begins to growl

Xenophobic politics in Poland and the Russia-Ukraine War

I’ve suggested in a previous post that the lack of an organized xenophobic outcry against the five million or more Ukrainian refugees in the EU since the 2022 Russian invasion is a metaphorical “dog that didn’t bark,” a definite sign that the 2015-16 refugee “crisis” in Europe was a crisis of xenophobic politics, not of a problem that the EU didn’t have more than enough resources and administrative resources to manage adequately.

The 20015-16 “crisis”

But the 2015-16 and the 2022-23 situations overlapped in time with other major crises. In 2015-16, it was the years-long euro crisis that morphed into a sovereign-debt crisis and reached its most intense moment in 2015 in a showdown between the “Troika” (European Commission, European Central Bank, IMF) and the Greek government of Alexis Tsipras. German Chancellor Angela Merkel pushed successfully for a draconian austerity program to be imposed on Greece. In the public debate over the measure, leaders in the wealthier countries promoted an ugly narrative of nationalist stereotypes against Greece and other nations hard hit by the debt crisis. A popular stigmatization of those countries was to call them PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain).

Simultaneously with this nationalistic and ethnically tinged trashing of fellow European nations, a large surge of refugees from places like Syria and Libya both devastated by civil wars that also involved the blundering meddling of both the US and Russia started arriving in the EU.

Merkel was successful in marketing herself as a humanitarian-minded leader on the refugee situation. But because of the ugly nationalist position she had pushed on the debt crisis, Germany was in no position to persuade other EU members to handle the refugee influx the way it should have been handled, as a shared EU effort. So Germany took by far the largest number of those refugees, a national solution instead of the European solution it should have been. While nationalist leaders like Viktor Orbán in Hungary and the leaders of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party in Poland used nationalist rhetoric against both the refugees and Germany to increase their domestic appeal and distance themselves from the basic requirements of democracy and the rule of law that are part of the basic laws and principles of the European Union.

But Merkel also outsourced even more of the refugee problem to Türkiye, which even now is host to around 3.5 million refugees, most Syrian and Kurds. Without going in details here, in a deal negotiated by Merkel, the EU paid Türkiye to house refugees and to limit their entry into the EU through Germany. In an ugly irony, the country that the EU decided to punish most severely for the debt crisis, Greece, was also the most important EU country that had to deal with the increase in refugees.

The 2016 EU-Türkiye deal was largely designed by Gerald Knaus, the Austrian immigration expert who continues to be one of the best-informed and most perceptive critics of the failures of EU refugee policies and a staunch critic of xenophobic demagoguery in the EU.¹ The 2016 deal was a practical solution consistent with international law. But as Knaus has always stressed, it was designed to by an interim arrangement that needed to be supplanted by a new, comprehensive, and realistic policy. Instead, the EU essentially let it die on the vine.

Polish elections create uncertainty over Poland’s Ukraine policy

The 2022-23 refugee situation takes place in the context of the Russia-Ukraine War.

Shaun Walker reports on how the PiS-led Polish government of President Andrzej Duda is talking about ceasing arms to supplies to Ukraine and creating barriers to Polish grain being shipped through Poland:

Poland welcomed more than 2 million refugees in the first weeks of the war and millions of Polish people helped out with housing and other volunteer support for displaced Ukrainians.

This all makes the intensity of the rhetoric in the rift over grain imports harder to understand, but it may have more to do with internal politics in Poland than with real issues between the two capitals.

Polls suggest parliamentary elections on 15 October will be an extremely close-run race, and the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party is looking for boosts to its support wherever possible.

“This is primarily about the election and the motives are quite clear,” said Wojciech Przybylski, the editor-in-chief of the journal Visegrad Insight. PiS is hoping to “flex a muscle with their key electoral groups”, he added, including those involved in agriculture in the east of Poland, who have been most affected by the influx of Ukrainian grain.² [my emphasis]

That report gives a clue that Poland’s well- advertised willingness to accept Ukrainian refugees may not be all its cracked up to be. Volunteer support for refugees and people allowing them to stay in their houses is great and generally praiseworthy. But even in wealthier EU countries with more consistent rule of law, refugees in those situations are sometimes exploited by being forced to work at low wages or worse.³

The government of the host needs to have a central role in verifying the condition in which refugees are living and also the legal history of people offering shelter in their homes for refugees. Making sure refugees are properly treated should be first of all a governmental responsibility.

The PiS government is also promoting an anti-refugee referendum not aimed particularly at Ukrainian refugees. Poland’s government “is well-known for its extremely restrictive position on immigration from Muslim and African countries — while being accepting of refugees from European countries such as Ukraine.”⁴

How long it takes before that kind of xenophobia is more widely directed against Ukrainian refugees remains to be seen. One benefit of their status as “displaced persons” instead of asylum-seekers is that they aren’t so easy to stigmatize as “illegal migrants” or freeloaders looking to live off European welfare systems. But the flip side is that the controlling EU designation as “displaced persons” covers a three-year period with an endpoint in early 2025. But the lack of any near-term prospect for peace in Ukraine, the host countries including Poland need to prepare for the likelihood that a large number of the Ukrainian “displaced persons” are likely to be long-term residents.⁵

A recent Polish scandal also provides a reminder that corrupt officials can find a way to directly profit from xenophobic politics. “Poland’s President Andrzej Duda said Thursday [September 14] he was awaiting the results of an investigation into allegations that Polish consulates sold temporary work visas to migrants for thousands of dollars.”⁶ Grifters gonna grift.

Polish President Andrzej Duda

1. Knaus describes the EU-Türkiye deal in: Knaus, Gerald (2020): Welche Grenzen brauche wir? Zwischen Empathie und Angst-Flucht, Migration und die Zukunft von Asyl, 182-190. München: Piper Verlag.

See also: Alexander, Robin (2018): Die Getriebenen.Merkel und die Flüchtlingspolitk: Report aus dem Innern der Macht, 251-275. München: Penguin Verlag.

2. Walker, Shaun (2023): Poland’s ruling party pivots away from Ukraine in attempt to shore up votes. The Guardian 09/21/2023. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/21/poland-ruling-party-pivots-away-from-ukraine-pis> (Accessed: 2023-24-09).

3. Leistner, Alexandra (2023): 'Ukraine refugee porn' raises risks for women fleeing the war Euronews 17-Jan-2023. <https://www.euronews.com/2023/01/17/ukraine-refugee-porn-raises-risks-for-women-fleeing-the-war> (Accessed: 2023-24-09).

4. Vopicelli, Gian (2023): Poland prime minister floats migration referendum with grim video. Politico EU 08/13/2023. <https://www.politico.eu/article/poland-mateusz-morawiecki-float-migration-referendum-video-election/> (Accessed: 2023-24-09).

5. Brickner, Irene (2023): NGOs und Karner uneins über künftigen Umgang mit Ukraine-Flüchtlingen. Der Standard 25.09.2023. <https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000188354/ngos-und-karner-uneins-ueber-kuenftigen-umgang-mit-ukraine-fluechtlingen> (Accessed: 2023-27-09).

6. A cash-for visas scandal hits Poland’s anti-migration government, weeks before elections. PBS Newshour 09/14/2023. <https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/a-cash-for-visas-scandal-hits-polands-anti-migration-government-weeks-before-elections> (Accessed: 2023-24-09).