Constructing Foreign Policy vis-à-vis the Migration Crisis: The Czech and Slovak Cases

Constructing Foreign Policy vis-à-vis the Migration Crisis: The Czech and Slovak Cases

Czech Republic

European Union

migration

securitization

Slovakia

The study examines contemporary discourses in two small CentralEuropean states, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. The aim is to analyzehow key domestic political players discursively construct foreign policy vis-à-vis the migration crisis. Securitization, a concept developed by theCopenhagen School, serves as an analytical framework for revealing thekinds of discourse being produced in the two countries. The analysis of thediscourse of the Prime Ministers from 2015 to 2018, indicates that in theCzech Republic and Slovakia foreign policy is being constructed around theissue of Europeanness (belongingness) and accommodation in the core-periphery spectrum. The article shows that the construction of externalthreats is done in different security sectors in each country, but in both itseems to promote the in-group coherence needed to affirm theirbelongingness to Europe, and it no longer happens on grounds of ethnicallydefined nations, but on grounds of the broader idea of civilizational Europe.

Tabosa, Clarissa

Czech Journal of International Relations; Vol. 55 No. 2 (2020); 5-23

2788-2993

2788-2985

10.32422/mv.55.2

Institute of International Relations Prague

2020-06-01

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0

application/pdf

eng

info:eu-repo/semantics/article

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Research Articles