Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
International Webinar Digital Inequalities, Madrid, İspanya, 08 Aralık 2022
The
European Union (EU) has been trying to have a common asylum and migration
policy since the 1970s. However, different interests and policies of member
states prevent the Union to produce a functioning asylum and migration policy. Diverse
policies create inequality between the host community and refugees in terms of
the protection of human rights. In addition to that, the nationality of
refugees seems to matter for the EU, and this results in inequality among
refugees. This paper seeks to discuss the unequal treatments of the EU for
refugees, with a comparison between the perceptions for Syrians and Ukrainians
in the eyes of European political elites. Digital public sphere has been an
important instrument of this preferred standpoint. The paper argues that
discourses of European political elites in the digital platforms show that
Ukrainians are regarded as the victims of Russian attacks, but Syrians are
potential terrorists. The EU has searched for third states, namely safe third
countries like Turkey to send back the Syrians; but Ukrainians are welcomed and
granted with temporary protection status. Methodologically the paper will
follow discourse analysis over the speeches of political elites in the EU member
states and bureaucrats of the Union. It is aimed to make an analysis over the
speeches given between 2015 and 2022, since the migration flows from Syria to
Europe has been more intensive since 2015 and the war in Ukraine started in
2022.
Keywords:
Syrian refugees, Ukrainian refugees, digital public sphere, the European Union