The boundaries of grievability : when do migrant lives matter to political representatives in Slovakia?
| Autoři | |
|---|---|
| Rok publikování | 2025 |
| Druh | Článek v odborném periodiku |
| Časopis / Zdroj | Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies |
| Fakulta / Pracoviště MU | |
| Citace | |
| www | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369183X.2025.2564867 |
| Doi | https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2025.2564867 |
| Klíčová slova | Boundaries of grievability; hierarchy of Europeanness; migration; neoliberalism; racialization |
| Popis | The responses of Central European countries to the mid-2010s migration ‘crisis’ and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 have been strikingly different, moving from strong anti-migrant stances to a wave of solidarity. Do these differences imply a shift in the political discourse on migration? We explore this question through the boundaries of grievability, a newly developed theoretical framework that adopts Butler’s concept of grievability for the cultural sociological analysis of political discourse on migration. This framework allows us to inductively uncover the conditions under which human lives matter. Focusing on the case of Slovakia, we show that the differentiated responses to migrants arriving in these two periods are in fact sustained by the same boundaries of grievability that locate them on opposing sides, based on their perceived: (1) ethnoracial closeness; (2) legitimacy of suffering; (3) economic contribution; and (4) contribution to the project of ‘Europeanness.’ The uneven allocation of grievability reflects complex hierarchies in which the migrants are posited in relation to each other, as well as to the native-born population. Based on our findings, we argue that the responses of Slovak political representatives to migration must be contextualised by the country’s ambiguous positioning within the hierarchy of Europeanness. |
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