Paper Short Abstract:

The Polish-Belarusian border has become a battleground for different understandings of human rights, humanitarianism and national security. Both right-wing and centrist-liberal governments implemented strict border regimes. These policies challenged the relationship between border security, human rights and humanitarianism.

Paper Abstract:

Since 2021, the Polish-Belarusian border has become both a symbolic and practical battleground for different understandings of human rights, humanitarianism and national security. The authorities portray migrants’ attempts to cross the border as a threat to the state. Measures have been taken to prevent ‘illegal’ crossings: a metal barrier has been erected, deportations have been normalised, and civil rights in the border area have been temporarily restricted, including the right to assistance for those who have already managed to cross. This led to many deaths in the border area. A government described as a right-wing nationalist used Islamophobic rhetoric that met the definition of cultural racism/apartheid. The government, which won the 2023 elections on a platform of restoring democracy, abandoned xenophobic arguments but did not change the border regime. War-like exceptionalism continues and is accepted by the EU. This fact suggests that legitimising discourses are secondary to ‘Fortress Europe’ and the modern nation-state’s political, social and economic rationale. By violating rudimentary human rights, those in power ignore moral appeals – raised by humanitarian aid groups, civil rights activists, and the Roman Catholic Church – to extend humanitarian aid to people caught in the cogs of international politics. Didier Fassin (2011) argues that in the modern state, in the triangle of border control–humanitarianism–human rights, humanitarianism replaces human rights, which, according to Hannah Arendt (1949), refugees are deprived of. Polish and, increasingly, European authorities not only abolish human rights but also present securitisation and humanitarianism as incompatible and mutually exclusive.