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Paper short abstract:

The presentation deals with the Belarusian refugee crisis 2021 as it was perceived by the Belarusian villagers dwelling next to the EU border, analysing the diversity of their attitudes, ranging from cynical affinity and joint criticism to competition for the scarce resource of care and empathy.

Paper long abstract:

The presentation addresses the Belarusian refugee crisis of 2021 as experienced by the borderland locals on the Belarusian side. It draws on ethnographic and personal experiences, as I both personally originate from one Belarusian rural setting next to the EU border, and I did ethnographic fieldwork research in another one in 2019-2020.

The response to the crisis was predicated on the political and emotional genealogies of the recent developments in Belarus. For many of the more ‘progressive’ and pro-European urban people, usually having anti-regime attitudes, the common reaction was moral judgement and adoption of the ‘fortress Europe’ moral narratives. While seeing refugees as an accessory to the regime’s nefarious devices, many were emotionally devastated by the political repressions in the country, and hence hardly having much empathy to spare. ‘Why should I care about them? No one ever cared about me’, as it was often said. Amongst the rural dwellers, however, the reactions were often different, expressing more of a cynical affinity to recognise similarities of experiences of marginalisation, while also using the disastrous event to criticise Belarusian political reality rather than the moral aspects of irregular migration.

Drawing on the literature on class, power, and Europeanness, I demonstrate how the structure of reactions was based on the class experience of political violence and interaction with various interfaces of the state (both Belarusian and the EU), while also emphasising the role these diverse narratives in moral reproduction, serving as devices to deal with the perduring reality of disenfranchisement and political repressions.