The Refugee in International Law

The recent trend in East Central European jurisprudence is that courts apply an ethnocultural understanding of identity, thereby putting European integration in peril. Although the EU is clearly committed to shared values and principles, Article 4(2) of the Treaty on European Union emphasizes that “the Union shall respect the national identities of the Member States.” Due to the recent migration flow in Europe, the Member States are currently attempting to (re)define themselves and offer a legal definition of identity. East Central European Member States, by labelling ethnocultural national identity as constitutional identity, apply Article 4(2) as a means of derogating from some of their obligations under EU law. Despite the vast literature available on national identity and its role in EU law, little attention has been paid to the recently emerging trend of judicial reinvention of identity in East Central Europe. This is what this Article offers. It focuses on the Visegrad Group, which consists of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. The Visegrad countries (V4) are united in their views on rejecting migrant relocation quotas in the EU and define their exclusionary constitutional identities accordingly. The main subject of the Article is the relevant case law of the V4 constitutional courts. These courts have the authoritative role in enforcing nation-state policies based upon ethnocultural considerations. The Article provides a comparative-analytical description of the judicial interpretations of constitutional identity in these countries based on which we can better understand the recent East Central European trend of disintegration.

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The Rise of an Ethnocultural Constitutional Identity in the Jurisprudence of the East Central European Courts

This article discusses how an illiberal regime within the European Union (EU) can hinder the mobilization of citizens and civil actors by creating an atmosphere of “ambiguity”. In our analysis, we first discuss the Hungarian constitution of 2011, which provides the driving force of the regime, and next using the example of the migration crisis show how this atmosphere of ambiguity is created. We argue that although there is no physical violence present, opponents of the regime are disheartened to act because of the general atmosphere relying on the logic of constitutional othering, dividing the world into its enemies and friends and shifting from the rule of law to ruling by law. While the regime’s gaudy campaigns against immigrants, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the Central European University, the EU or George Soros are omnipresent, we aim to go deeper and highlight the mechanism through which the regime manages to discourage citizens from voicing their discontent.

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Constitutional othering, ambiguity and subjective risks of mobilization in Hungary: examples from the migration crisis

The so-called refugee crisis has had a profound effect on discourses all over Europe. While the issue of migration is a contested one everywhere, discourses are quite different in Central Eastern Europe than in the ‘old’ EU countries. A sharp increase in the number of refugees crossing Hungary during 2015, coupled with the Hungarian government’s agenda-setting strategy, led to a powerful and public anti-migrant campaign which sought to frame asylum-seekers as external threats to the country. While this campaign was by and large unchallenged by the Hungarian parliamentary opposition, the Two-Tailed Dog Party, a mock Hungarian political party, launched a counter-billboard campaign, attacking the governmental discourse. Taking the latter as a case of digitally supported civic action, the paper first discusses two theoretical problems related to digitally enabled social movements: the problem of voice, and the problem of participation. In both areas techno-pessimist authors have made strong claims: namely, that the internet creates ‘echo chambers’ that function as discursive enclaves, and that it leads to ‘slacktivism’ – a form of feel-good activism without significant impact. Afterwards, the paper presents the case of the Hungarian counter-billboard campaign and through the examination of its repertoire of activities reevaluates the above claims. It argues that the campaign’s action repertoire innovatively connected acts of feel-good activism in order to address wider audiences. With the help of the counter-billboard campaign, people with minority opinions were given a platform and visibility in the public. It also challenged official statements about the governments’ campaign through revealing inconsistencies in government communication. Through a process of mimetic engineering the original messages were altered and mocked in a satirical manner and the outcomes were brought back to the streets of Hungary. The campaign used an innovative combination of several low-cost activities, which proved to be a successful strategy. On a deeper level, the counter-campaign challenged hegemonic views about public discourse. The campaign effectively contrasted the government’s one-to-many, top-down approach to political communication with one that relied on many-to-many communication and a bottom-up approach.

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Repertoires of Contention and New Media: The Case of a Hungarian Anti-billboard Campaign

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Imagination, Hope and the Migrant Journey: Iraqi Asylum Seekers Looking for a Future in Europe

The study describes Hungary's policy towards asylum seekers and refugees in the tense period of 2015–2016 before and after the erection of fences at its southern borders of Hungary. It offers a theoretical explanation of the legal measures and practical actions. After briefly reviewing the factual basis, that is the magnitude of the movements and the number of decisions taken in the EU and in Hungary and the pertinent legal changes in 2015–2016 it elaborates the theoretical fundaments. Securitization majority identitarian populism and crimmigration are invoked as explanatory frames. The paper then reassembles the factual elements under six headings showing them in a new light. These are: denial, deterrence, obstruction, punishment, free riding constituting lack of solidarity and breaching the law (international, European, domestic). Finally the question is raised if all these moves are compatible with the duty of loyal cooperation of Member States with each-other and the EU as prescribed by article Article 4 (3) TEU.

Boldizsár Nagy

Papers

Hungarian Asylum Law and Policy in 2015–2016: Securitization Instead of Loyal Cooperation