Security first: New right-wing government in Poland and its policy towards immigrants and refugees

Abstract

The so-called refugee crisis in 2015 coincided with the Polish parliamentary electoral campaign. The effect of it was—for the first time in Poland—the introduction of migration policy to the political agenda of the right-wing and populist political parties on a massive scale. They presented migration as an issue of security—both national and cultural, direct and symbolic. The new government, acting since the end of 2015, included immigration and asylum issues into their political programme as a key element of national security. Their discourse about refugees is usually based on the differentiation: us and them. And ‘them’ are pictured as evil, dangerous, Muslim terrorists. The new government and its authoritarian style of governing has introduced a number of initiatives designed to deprive individuals of immigrant rights (like in the new so-called Antiterrorist Act from the mid of 2016, based on which every foreign citizen could be put under surveillance without any court control) or to stop refugee influx on the Polish territory in any way—directly from their country of origin (new amendments to asylum law are trying to introduce border and accelerated procedures) or under the UE resettlement and relocation programme (Poland is one of 3 EU Member States—along Hungary and Austria—that hasn’t relocated anyone). In this paper I will present in more detail the legal changes described above, their consequences and the so-called rationalities presented by the government.