Euroscepticism and othering in the EU migration crisis 2015/16: analysing patterns of discourse in the European Parliament

Abstract

In summer 2015, the European Union (EU) faced an unprecedented migration crisis, when hundreds of thousands of people crossed the external borders of the Union. This caused a debate not only about the humanitarian dimension of the crisis, but also about the question of whether migration policy should be increasingly organised at the EU level, with more burden sharing among the member states. Throughout the crisis, the countries of the Visegrad Group were particularly vocal in opposing common EU approaches towards solving the crisis, especially when this meant accepting migrants on their own territory.
This dissertation examines the linkage between Euroscepticism and processes of othering in the context of the migration crisis by analysing the statements of the Visegrad deputies in the European Parliament (EP) debates in migration in 2015/16. The main argument of this study is that the migration crisis provoked a dual conflict in which (1) migrants as other initiated a critical evaluation of who is and can be part of Europe and (2) EU measures, such as the relocation mechanism, touched on the very essence of nation-state competences. To support this argument, this thesis examines how the representatives of the EP describe the 'migrant other', as well as how they make use of these references, or rather, what conclusions they draw from this European integration.