UCHODŹCY Z UKRAINY W PRYWATNYCH DYSKURSACH OSÓB GOSZCZĄCYCH ICH W SWOICH DOMACH
REFUGEES FROM UKRAINE IN THE PRIVATE DISCOURSE OF PERSONS HOSTING THEM IN THEIR HOMES

Summary/Abstract: The article seeks to provide a picture of forced migrants from Ukraine among those who took refugees into their homes following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The author bases her findings on an analysis of 30 individual semi-structured qualitative interviews conducted for the project “Private hosting and support for refugees from Ukraine” between the start of April and end of May 2022. Using the theory of securitisation, she demonstrates how the respondents constructed their image of the migrants in relation to two aspects of the securitisation discourse: cultural alienation as a threat to and as a burden on the welfare system, threatening to upset the wellbeing of the host society. She also analyses whether the respondents compared the image of refugees from Ukraine with the highly securitised image of the migrant from countries of the Middle East and Africa. She found that the respondents did not use the apparatus of securitisation discourse in constructing their image of forced migrants from Ukraine. Above all they saw the Ukrainians as war refugees who should be helped due to the dramatic situation they were in. They considered them culturally close, and did not form their image in terms of a threat to cultural identity. Although some Ukrainians were described as having a sense of entitlement, they were not considered a burden to the welfare system. Among the respondents a group emerged of those who compared the migrants from Ukraine with those from the Middle East and Africa, recognising the latter as a threat. Their construction of the migrant image was based on elements of nationalist discourse, gender roles, and the neoliberal discourse on labour and unemployment

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