The geopolitics of hospitality

Photo: Grand Warszawski / Shutterstock

But while Polish and EU leaders have used the country’s hospitality to promote their stated commitment to a “European safe haven”, it is important to understand who (and where) has actually provided this much praised reception. As much as state representatives have hailed Poland’s unique contribution, it is in fact Polish cities, associations and individual citizens that have been doing the actual “work of reception”.

Bottom-up refugee reception

When Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski hosted the international “Stand Up for Ukraine” fundraiser on April 9th, he drew explicit attention to this fact. As Trzaskowski wrote in his editorial in The Economist, “in just a month the population of Warsaw increased by 17 per cent.” Over half a million of the more than 3.5 million refugees had either passed through or remained in Warsaw and the city mobilised in an extraordinary fashion. Whilst information points and reception centres were already set up on the first day of the Russian invasion, the main railway stations were adapted to assist arrivals with food, temporary shelter and medical help.

As Trzaskowski made clear in his plea, the great bulk of the material and administrative burdens associated with the Ukrainian arrivals’ reception and care was taken on by local, not national, authorities. Individual citizens came together to provide people help with official registration and the distributed government stipends granted to those hosting them. The city’s medical and social workers were, overnight, given over almost entirely to assisting the traumatised arrivals, while local schools began to integrate as best as they could the newly arrived children. The situation in Warsaw was also replicated in other large Polish cities such as Kraków and Wrocław.

In his piece in The Economist, the Warsaw mayor was adamant that this form of assistance was simply not sustainable, writing that “It has to be clearly stated that most of what you see in Poland is improvisation. It is a bottom-up process driven mostly by a dense network of co-operation between volunteers, charities and local governments who shoulder most of the relief effort. We cannot go on in this way. Two weeks ago, at the peak of the crisis to date, 30,000 people a day were coming to Warsaw. I had to call mayors of other Polish and European cities to beg for assistance. My friends sent buses in the middle of the night to relocate people.”

Several of the urban networks to which Trzaskowski appealed date back to Europe’s previous large-scale “reception crisis” following the summer of migration of 2015, when other large cities in Europe found themselves in a very similar situation. That transformative moment resulted in the emergence of a number of urban networks that are still active today. This includes the Solidarity Cities network, which provides both a forum for information exchange and direct assistance between cities in receiving and relocating refugees. Yet despite the emergence of such networks and forms of bilateral collaboration, migrant and refugee reception remains a field in which EU member states insist on retaining crucial competences and powers. In spite of the etymology, it is states, not cities, that grant citizenship. Various city initiatives to grant specific rights of “denizenship” to migrant populations have, indeed, frequently been faced with legal challenges.

It is striking, then, that in the “spring of migration” of 2022 it is urban actors like Warsaw’s mayor who have provided the bulk of the material assistance to those displaced by the war. Such figures do not possess any formal and legal role in refugee reception. However, it is often they who have most vocally insisted on going beyond generic notions of “hospitality” to the arriving refugees and have invoked, instead, the language of legal obligations, both national and EU-wide. We want to examine this important distinction in what follows, for it is not merely rhetorical.

Urban framings – national framings

Trzaskowski has in fact been the only leading Polish politician to explicitly speak of a “refugee crisis” that must be addressed. He is also the only one who has appealed directly to the EU authorities and other competent international organisations for assistance. The Warsaw mayor’s positioning – calling upon EU bodies and international organisations, as well as invoking systemic solutions, including the redistribution of refugees between EU member states – stands in direct contradiction to the way in which the Polish national authorities have been addressing the question of refugee arrivals.

If we examine both the official statements and social media posts of two key figures – Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and President Andrzej Duda – a quite different discursive framing is in fact evident. Any allusion to the notion of “crisis” is explicitly avoided, whether in relation to the exceptional numbers of refugee arrivals or the inability of state or local actors to assist them. Any mention of assistance from external actors is also carefully side-stepped, whether these are international organisations such as the UNHCR or the Red Cross, or the existing mechanisms of assistance offered by the European Union for situations such as this one.

Rather than drawing attention to the exceptional refugee arrivals, Prime Minister Morawiecki’s communication has focused instead on wider geopolitical agendas. Morawiecki’s #StopRussiaNow campaign is a case in point. This involved a concerted social media and billboard campaign (that drew criticism for its expense that could have been more usefully deployed to directly assist refugees). Although the stated focus of this campaign is to show how Poland has led Europe in its provision of humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, the figure of the refugee is merely incidental to the narrative, merely a symbol of Poland’s unique role in “shaking the conscience” of other (western) EU member states.

In President Andrzej Duda’s communication, the focus lies with Poland’s compassion and solidarity towards their “dear brothers and sisters”. Polish actions are thus not only guided by its legally-binding obligations to those seeking refuge but also by its “charitable” national “disposition”. In Duda’s words, Poland plays an “important role in supporting refugees fleeing the Russian invasion”, a role that in Duda’s framing draws on Poland’s unique historical identity and its geographical proximity: “We try to help as much as we can, if only by making sure that women and children from Ukraine – wives of those who are fighting in Ukraine in defence of their homeland – find shelter, find a safe haven in Poland, in Polish homes, in Polish institutions; as close to Ukraine as possible, so that when the war ends, they can return there.”

Very similar appeals are evident in Morawiecki’s communication, which also invokes the image of Poland as the hospitable and brotherly protector of women and children. As Morawiecki has repeatedly noted, Poland was the first “safe haven” in the EU determined to provide “our Ukrainian neighbours with the best possible aid” and save Ukrainian “women, children and entire families” from Russian aggression. In the communication of both these political figures, Poland is an exceptional actor bound not only by duty but also a broader historical and geographical “destiny” to stand guard at the borders of the collective “European home” and protect those who seek shelter within it.

Exceptional mission

Such discursive framing of Poland’s role by Duda and Morawiecki may appear at first glance simply the sort of lofty proclamations that state leaders often engage in. Yet the choice of terminology adopted to describe those arriving in Poland in the spring of 2022 – from “women and children” to “brothers” and “neighbours” – is not at all coincidental.

Indeed, when addressing a European or international audience, Morawiecki (and to a somewhat lesser extent Duda) describes those crossing the Polish Eastern border as those seeking refuge from war and genocide in a region bordering the European space. The prime minister also describes Poland as a model EU member state embodying the fundamental European values of solidarity, security and democracy through its reception of those fleeing the violence, and one that should serve as an example to others (the stated aim of Morawiecki’s contested billboards was to “break through the wall of European indifference”). Morawiecki indeed views himself as leading both Poland and Europe in “helping Ukraine with humanitarian, military and political aid” and pledging to “count on the EU as well, which must introduce tough sanctions and provide systemic funding to help refugees” and “prove that it is a continent of peace and freedom”. President Duda has similarly noted on various occasions that “Today, Poland is the leader in aid to Ukraine” and is “once again showing what solidarity means”.

However, outside of the international and European arena, in communication aimed at Polish citizens, and especially that directed at the Law and Justice electorate, such hospitality towards “refugees” is carefully presented as aid to “our neighbours”, “brothers and sisters” and “women and children” above all else. Both Morawiecki and Duda’s rhetoric has tapped into the traditional themes of a historical relationship between oppressed Poles and Ukrainians, as well as the romantic nationalist understanding of a strong and masculine Poland lending a helping hand to Ukrainian women in need of protection. This seeks to justify Poland’s openness and hospitality towards “others” entering, traversing through, and seeking refuge in Poland as exceptional and linked to a unique historical and geographical condition. There is no mention of any sort of systemic, EU-wide assistance mechanism, as this is a “burden” gladly borne by Poland.

This discursive framing is important for it not only presents the hospitality shown to Ukrainian refugees as exceptional and part of Poland’s longer historical “mission”, but it also serves to distinguish the assistance granted to those crossing the Ukrainian border from those attempting to cross from Belarus.

Legal obligations

As noted above, the distinction between “hospitality” to brothers and the legal obligations of the Polish state to all those seeking refuge (whether holding Ukrainian citizenship or not) is not just a discursive one. It also brings with it real material effects. Hospitality depends on the willingness of the host to be generous, and it is ultimately able to side-line legal commitments to the rights of refugees. As migration scholar Jonathan Darling has argued, the language of hospitality “is always conditioned by the right to select, classify and limit [such] hospitality”. The ability to select “who to be hospitable to” is indeed a key determinant when states adopt a language of hospitality for describing their obligations to provide refuge. In the Polish case, it has been a key determinant in promoting the forms of hospitality extended to refugees from Ukraine while denying, often very violently, the rights of those seeking to enter Poland through the border with Belarus.

Still ongoing, yet by now largely absent from media discussions, the flow of refugees from “the Global East” attempting to cross the Polish-Belarusian border and seek asylum in the EU has been described by Polish authorities as more than a “migrant crisis”. Instead, it has been presented as a “weaponisation of migration” and a form of “hybrid warfare” conducted with the bodies of migrants, aiming at the destabilisation of the Polish state. In the #WeDefendEurope promotional video released in November 2021, Prime Minister Morawiecki called for support from other EU states to “stop the evil threatening Europe”, which he also described as “our common home”. The “evil” invoked by Morawiecki here involved the instrumentalised “invaders” caught in the “hybrid war” taking place on the Polish-Belarusian border, “which Alyaksandr Lukashenka, with the back room support of Vladimir Putin, has declared against the entire European Union”. Morawiecki described the flow of migrants as “a political crisis created for a special purpose”, noting that it was not “an ordinary migration crisis” as the situation on the border with Belarus might appear “from a distance”.

As various scholars, journalists and activists have noted, however, such a framing of this “other” migration as “instrumentalised”, “weaponised” and “perilous” moves discussion away from Poland’s legal obligations to provide asylum to those fleeing war and persecution in countries such as Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen and Egypt. Legal scholar Grażyna Baranowska has argued that the border regime put into effect from August to October 2021 was in direct “violation of Poland’s international obligations and inconsistent with domestic law”. Yet Polish state discourse all through the autumn of 2021 to the following spring spoke of “dangerous young men” at the Belarusian border who were not “real refugees” like those arriving from Ukraine. After all, they were not “women and children” needing protection and assistance. They were simply “illegal migrants” or “economic migrants”, opportunistic and instrumentalised by Lukashenka’s regime, and as such not eligible for the Polish state’s altruism and charity.

Discourse of hospitality

In examining the migration crisis on the Belarusian border in autumn, it is also important to note that while Morawiecki appealed in broad terms for “EU support” in countering the “hybrid warfare” being waged on Poland’s borders, he and the Polish state repeatedly refused actual material support in managing the migration flow, from both EU bodies such as Frontex and international organisations such as the UNHCR.

Why was such assistance refused? By framing the crisis on the Belarusian border as exceptional and war-like (not as a “refugee crisis”), Polish leaders hoped to keep it outside of the existing legal frameworks governing migration and asylum in the EU. Such a framing indeed served to both discursively and materially evade Poland’s legal obligations of refuge to those attempting to cross its border. All the while, the continuous rejection of physical and military European help served to uphold Poland’s self-image as a resilient and independent member of the Union, destined and able to guard its borders.

Today, Polish state leaders’ avoidance of the term “refugee crisis” to refer to the mass arrivals of those fleeing war in Ukraine is also problematic. This is not so much for its aversion towards the term “crisis” (a term that also comes with its own multiple dangers) but that of “refugee”, a term that comes with distinct legal obligations. 

Using the frame of hospitality to describe the reception of refugees from Ukraine, as both Morawiecki and Duda insist on doing, serves to distinguish between those who do and do not deserve Polish hospitality. It also blurs the Polish state’s legal obligations regarding international protection and the principle of non-refoulement. As such, it fails to recognise all refugees as holders of legitimate rights and grants actors (states, cities or individual citizens) the choice of whether (and for how long) to dispense charity, rather than uphold Poland’s legally binding obligations under international and EU law.

The investment made in the heavily emotional appeals of Morawiecki and Duda would indeed be better spent in providing stable and more long-term solutions to the reception of Ukrainian and other refugees on behalf of the Polish state, rather than relying on the actions of cities and citizens. But here, too, the performative discourse of hospitality seems to take precedence over actual support. As PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczyński has repeatedly noted, Poland does not intern its “neighbours” and “brothers” in refugee camps. This leaves local actors like Warsaw’s mayor and individual citizens to provide the actual material spaces of reception for Ukrainian refugees, beyond state leaders’ grand appeals to “a shared history”, “brotherhood” and a “common European home”.

This piece was first published as “Przestrzenie ochrony uchodźców: geografie przyjmowania i “gościnności” w Polsce podczas “wiosny migracyjnej” w 2022 r” on the 2021/2022 Almanach of the Concilium Civitas, Warsaw.

Natalia Barszcz is an MA researcher at the University of Amsterdam, currently completing her degree in European Policy.

Luiza Bialasiewicz is a political geographer and professor of European Governance at the University of Amsterdam, where she also directs the Amsterdam Centre for European Studies.

Poland, refugees, Ukraine, War