https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038518757952
Sociology
2018, Vol. 52(3) 612­–618
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0038038518757952
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‘Crisis’ and Migration in
Poland: Discursive Shifts,
Anti-Pluralism and the
Politicisation of Exclusion
Natalia Krzyżanowska
Örebro University, Sweden
Michał Krzyżanowski
University of Liverpool, UK
Abstract
This essay illustrates the extent to which crisis has had an impact on public perceptions and
discourses of contemporary migration in Poland. We focus on the actual moment of the ‘coming
together’ between crisis- and immigration-related discourses and argue that this connection has
arisen as part of the recent political strategies of Poland’s right-wing populist government ‘Law
and Justice’ (PiS) party. The strong anti-immigration and anti-refugee rhetoric orchestrated by PiS
across the Polish public sphere has also played a pivotal role in countenancing xenophobic as well
as outright racist sentiments in wider Polish public discourse and society.
Keywords
Anti-refugee rhetoric, crisis, discursive shifts, migration, Poland, public sphere
Crisis and Immigration in Poland
This essay aims to briefly illustrate the extent to which crisis has had an impact on public
perceptions and discourses of contemporary migration in Poland. The central premise of
the article is that the link between migration and crisis was, for a long time, absent from
the Polish public sphere. As discussed below, this link was introduced only very recently
– more specifically in the context of Europe’s so-called ‘refugee crisis’ in 2015 – as part
of a politically motivated, strategic move to promote anti-immigrant views by the current
right-wing populist governing party, Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość – PiS).
Corresponding author:
Natalia Krzyżanowska, Department of Sociology, School of Humanities, Education & Social Sciences,
Örebro University, Fakultetsgatan 1, SE-70182 Örebro, Sweden.
Email: natalia.krzyzanowska@oru.se
757952SOC0010.1177/0038038518757952SociologyKrzyżanowska and Krzyżanowski
earch-article2018
Essay
Krzyżanowska and Krzyżanowski	 613
Our particular interest here lies in the actual moment of the ‘coming together’between
crisis- and immigration-related discourses, and in showing how human mobility has
come to be perceived and discursively constructed, even if not outright labelled, as a
form of ‘crisis’. This process was neither straightforward nor, at least initially, explicit.
Hence, while the word ‘crisis’ was incorporated into official and apparently neutralsounding
language (for instance, in discussions about EU asylum seeker relocation quotas
set in 2015), it would eventually become increasingly related to progressively radical
views against refugees and immigration in general.
The recent establishment of the connection between crisis and immigration has
also led to the creation of new turns of phrase including, most notably, that of ‘kryzys
migrancki’ (migrant crisis). Alongside the other and more neutral-sounding ‘kryzys
migracyjny’ (migration crisis), the former term is now used in both public and private
discourses in Poland, not only to describe certain events (such as the increase in refugees
arriving on southern European shores during 2015) but also to express negative
attitudes about migrants in Poland. ‘Migrancki’ as a word is, in fact, somewhat unusual
and carries implicit negative connotations through associations with words such
as, inter alia, ‘dyletancki’ (dilettante) or ‘oszukański/oszukancki’ (bogus). Hence, narrations
about Europe’s recent ‘refugee crisis’ have enabled the formation of a variety
of imaginaries based upon exclusionary, ethno-nationalist and even Islamophobic
views that have, in turn, served to strategically politicise the topic of immigration in
contemporary Poland.
A cursory historical analysis of the use of the word kryzys, however, reveals that the
above development is a new phenomenon in Polish public discourse. In fact, general
references to kryzys had previously been somewhat limited and if the term was used at
all it was mainly associated with economic, political or socio-economic variations of
crisis. Such was the case in post-war communist public discourse in which any aspect of
economic downturn or related socio-economic distress was defined as ‘crisis’ by the
communist propaganda, also in order to minimise the role of the regime’s flawed policies.
For example, on the few occasions that food rationing was introduced during the
1980s, this was invariably legitimised by the unspecified notion of ‘crisis’, which
deflected attention from the consequences of macroeconomic and industrial policies
(Grala, 2005). The very same logic persisted well into the post-1989 period of transformation.
Successive periods of internal economic adversity – especially during the institutionalisation
of the free-market system and accelerated modernisation of the early
1990s (Alexander et al., 2004; Ziółkowski, 1999) – were narrated in terms of kryzys in
both political and media spheres. Unsurprisingly, the 2008 global financial and economic
crisis turned ‘kryzys’ into a more sustained topic of public debate but here the common
argument was that this was an extraneous, international crisis that had a rather limited
political and economic impact on Poland (Krzyżanowska, 2012a).
Anti-Pluralism and the Shift from Emigration to
Immigration
The recent establishment of the connection between crisis and immigration needs to be
understood as the upshot of two very important ‘discursive shifts’(Krzyżanowski, 2018).
First, it is vital to see this connection not as part of an ongoing tradition of talking about
614	 Sociology 52(3)
‘crisis’ as such but rather as the evolution and perpetuation of a longstanding anti-pluralist
stance in Polish society (Starnawski, 2003). At its roots, this stance is eminently political.
It stems from the fact that both before and after 1989 Poland had never experienced
the development of a western-style polarisation between ‘left’and ‘right’positions in the
political spectrum (Markowski, 1997; Zarycki, 2000). Moreover, despite some efforts,
Polish post-1989 civil society has remained, on the whole, weak and continues to be
largely ineffectual in counteracting politically driven, anti-pluralist visions (Ekiert and
Kubik, 2014).Accordingly, just like elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe (Azmanova,
2009; Krzyżanowska, 2010, 2012b), the views and ideologies existing in Polish society
often cannot be easily classified as, say, ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’. They have mainly
been encapsulated and articulated in an array of hybrid political positions, including that
of the current PiS government, that have often been underpinned by neoliberal and/or
anti-pluralist agendas.
This particular situation has effectively contributed to the lack of development of a
deliberative public sphere in Poland after 1989 and has meant that many anti-pluralist or
exclusionary imaginaries propagated by the political establishment have ultimately
become normalised in Polish society in the absence of any contestation or counter-discursive
positions. As a result, Polish politics has remained the key locus for the articulation
of various ideological worldviews that have sought to dictate how issues such as
social and cultural diversity are defined and (should be) perceived.
Second, the emergent discursive link between immigration and crisis constitutes a
significant break with the traditionally strong emphasis on emigration in the Polish collective
imagination. This switch was particularly unexpected in the wake of Poland’s EU
accession in 2004, which saw Polish emigration once again assume a prominent position
in national debates as several million Poles left the country for western and northern
European states (although, significantly, none, or at least very few, of the related processes
was interpreted as a ‘crisis’).
Importantly, the hegemonic role of emigration in shaping ideas about mobility in
Poland has always been framed strongly in culturalist and ethno-nationalist terms.
Relatively little attention has been paid, for instance, to the class-based character of outward
migration (for a notable exception, see Thomas and Znaniecki, 1927) or to the fact
that various deep-seated discriminatory patterns in the Polish society (e.g. anti-Semitism)
were often at the roots of different waves of emigration. At the same time, few have
been concerned to grapple with Poland’s internal cultural diversity (or, in most cases,
acute lack thereof). This has ultimately had a profound influence upon the post-1989
Polish public sphere and, crucially, has left the national media ill-prepared for addressing
migration and multiculturalism (Krzyżanowski, 2014) or indeed many other forms of
pluralism or diversity.
From Anti-Pluralism to Anti-Immigration: The Case of the
‘Refugee Crisis’
As already noted, Europe’s so-called ‘Refugee Crisis’that has evolved since 2015 has not
only brought about an unprecedented increase in the quantity of news items about migrants
and refugees but has also been one of the main reasons for a qualitative change in Polish
public discourse that has translated into a notable radicalisation of exclusionary views.
Krzyżanowska and Krzyżanowski	 615
These changes have been fuelled by the governing Law and Justice party that has been
intent on introducing and championing an anti-immigration agenda in Poland, at the same
time as advancing its already entrenched set of isolationist, Eurosceptic and ethno-nationalist
positions (Krzyżanowski, 2018). By drumming up fears about refugees and asylum
seekers – as Islamic ‘intruders’ who have arrived en masse during the Refugee Crisis and
who are now ready to ‘invade’ Christian Poland (see below) – the PiS government has
sought to increase opposition towards the EU and thereby legitimate Poland’s unwillingness
to accept any refugees as part of its legal commitment to the EU’s relocation programme.
Poland’s quota of asylum seekers relocated from Italy and Greece was set at
6182 refugees, but as of late September 2017 Poland was, besides Hungary, the only
member of the programme that had still not admitted a single person.1 The government’s
refusal to comply with the programme resulted in the European Commission launching a
legal case against Poland as well as Hungary and the Czech Republic in June 2017.
It is interesting to note that the politicisation of the arrival of asylum seekers in Europe
by Polish politicians during this period rarely made mention of the word ‘crisis’ unless
this was coupled with ‘immigration’. Moreover, the bulk of the discursive representation
focused less on the usual understanding of crisis (such as the overcrowded conditions on
islands in Greece or the tensions on borders in south-eastern Europe) than on the alleged
implications that this movement of people would potentially pose to Poland and Polish
society. This was done by deploying the classic topoi of populist anti-immigration rhetoric
(Reisigl and Wodak, 2001): presenting migrants as a threat and as arriving in great
numbers, emphasising their purported criminality and aggressiveness, or claiming their
readiness to destroy Christian civilisation.
A key moment that epitomised the politicised discussion of immigration during this
period was a speech delivered by the chairman of the Law and Justice Party, Jarosław
Kaczyński, during the debate held in the Polish Parliament on 16 September 2015 that
followed ‘The Prime Minister’s Statement on the Immigration Crisis in Europe and Its
Repercussions for Poland’. In it, Kaczyński famously spoke of the dangers of immigration,
made a string of outlandish Islamophobic accusations and argued that the lack of
controls on immigration elsewhere in Europe, and especially in the key EU member
states, had resulted in social unrest and tensions. The speech provided an outline of his
diagnosis of the ‘crisis’ facing Europe and the array of repercussions that this external
situation could eventually have upon Poland.
If anyone says this is not true, then let’s look around Europe. Take Sweden, for example, where
there are 54 areas of this country under Sharia law, where the state has no control […] What is
going on in Italy? Churches are taken over and at times are treated as toilets. What is going on
in France? Non-stop fights, Sharia law introduced and even patrols checking whether this is
observed. The same is the case in London and even in Germany, usually the toughest of places.
Do you really want the same thing to happen in Poland: that we stop feeling at home in our own
country? Is this what you want?2
Such arguments would be frequently repeated in Kaczyński’s subsequent speeches and
those of other PiS functionaries, and would reverberate across social media and traditional
media outlets. In the process, these politicians effectively defined the issues at
616	 Sociology 52(3)
stake with regard to the ‘kryzys migrancki’ and contributed to the rise of anti-immigrant
discourse in Poland (Krzyżanowski, 2018).
Certainly, the politicisation of migration was not only confined to the political sphere
but was also perpetuated by the national media that openly supported the Law and Justice
government’s positions. For example, in the same week that Kaczynski delivered his
infamous speech, two Polish conservative weeklies Do Rzeczy (A Matter of Fact) and W
Sieci (In the Net) ran a number of articles and editorials on what they called the ‘immigration
crisis in Europe’. Having both published relatively little on immigration up until
this point, the two magazines now featured blatantly racist images on their covers:3 in the
first case an aerial view of a large group of Arab-looking migrants, mainly young men
but also a few women wearing head scarves, who attempt to press forwards; in the second
case a photomontage of three stereotypical Muslim males leaning on what looks like
a red and white Polish border post, all of whom are dressed in Middle Eastern robes with
one wielding a machine gun and another clutching menacingly an ensign with a white
crowned eagle on a red background, in other words Poland’s national coat of arms. The
accompanying headlines were similarly unsubtle: over the large group of people are
emblazoned the words ‘Those are invaders not refugees: Let’s close Poland’s borders’
while beneath the three men is the simple warning ‘They’re coming!’. Moreover, both
magazines included several articles that made conspicuous use of the word ‘crisis’ in
conjunction with ‘migrant’ or ‘migration’ (kryzys migrancki/migracyjny): a clear indication
about how the connection drawn between these two dimensions had rapidly become
an established and unquestioned truism in media and public discourse.
Since 2015, the connection between crisis and migration has become persistent to the
point that the relatively neutral ‘kryzys migracyjny’ and the negatively charged ‘kryzys
migrancki’ are now used almost interchangeably in public discourse, especially in PiScontrolled
and sympathetic media.4 This, again, carries significant implications: it allows
the negative meanings and connotations to be widely accepted or ‘normalised’
(Krzyżanowski and Ledin, 2017) as such linguistic compounds spread into the wider
public sphere and eventually turn into key elements of public language about pluralism
and diversity.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or
not-for-profit sectors.
Notes
1.	 For information regarding EU relocation quotas and numbers of admitted asylum seekers
per member state (as of late September 2017), see https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/sites/
homeaffairs/files/what-we-do/policies/european-agenda-migration/press-material/docs/
state_of_play_-_relocation_en.pdf.
2.	 For a full transcript of Kaczyński’s speech in Polish, see http://sejm.gov.pl/Sejm7.nsf/
posiedzenie.xsp?view=1&posiedzenie=100&dzien=1.
3.	See http://www.wirtualnemedia.pl/artykul/okladki-w-sieci-do-rzeczy-i-super-expressuprzeciw-uchodzcom-karnowski-po-prostu-nazywamy-problem
(last accessed 6 October
2017).
Krzyżanowska and Krzyżanowski	 617
4.	 See, for example, https://wiadomosci.wp.pl/mariusz-blaszczak-o-wyborach-w-niemczechwplyw-kryzysu-migracyjnego-na-wyniki-6169719928182913a;
http://www.polskieradio.pl/5/3/
Artykul/1595709,Plan-UE-i-Turcji-na-papierze-Do-przezwyciezenia-jest-wiele-przeszkodanaliza
(last accessed 6 October 2017).
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Natalia Krzyżanowska is a Research Fellow at Department of Sociology, Örebro University,
Sweden. She is also affiliated to the Poznań University of Economics, Poland. She has worked and
published extensively on critical-sociological analysis of ‘crisis’ in contemporary public spheres,
including from a gender perspective and while analysing urban practices and politics of commemoration.
For more information, see https://www.oru.se/english/employee/natalia_krzyzanowska.
Michał Krzyżanowski holds a Chair in Communication and Media at the University of
Liverpool, UK. He is also affiliated to Örebro University, Sweden, where he has held a Chair
in Media and Communication Studies since 2013. He is one of the leading scholars in critical
618	 Sociology 52(3)
discourse studies and, inter alia, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Language and Politics. He
has published extensively on right-wing populist politics and anti-immigration rhetoric in
Central and Eastern Europe and beyond. For more information, see https://www.liverpool.
ac.uk/communication-and-media/staff/michal-krzyzanowski or https://www.oru.se/personal/
michal_krzyzanowski.
Date submitted November 2017
Date accepted December 2017