Blame as a phenomenon in discursive strategies: the case of political discourse about the refugee crisis at Poland-Belarus border in 2021

The refugee crisis that broke out during 2021 at the Eastern border of the European Union and achieved its peak in November 2021 was accompanied not only by massive media coverage, but also by a rhetoric “struggle” among the political representatives of the main actors involved: the European Union, the Belarusian executive (esp. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko), but also the representatives of the executive of Russian Federation and the representatives of Polish government (EU member country most effected in this crisis). The paper builds theoretically and methodologically on the existing research of the phenomenon of “blame” in discursive strategies of political actors. This research (e.g. Hansson 2017 and 2018, Hinterleitner 2017 or Hart 2016) has often focused on such phenomena as the strategies of blame assignment and/or blame avoidance in the discourse of governmental and/or oppositional actors within particular state-political system. This paper aims to contribute to this research in the fields of international relations and also security studies (the refugee crisis at Poland-Belarus border was called by many commentators as another manifestation of “modern hybrid war”). The paper will explore political discourse of responsible representatives of the EU (European Commission and European Council) and the executives of Belarus, Russian Federation and Poland, concerning the refugee crisis at the border between the EU and Belarus during the period from spring 2021 to the end of 2021. The textual analysis will be built on the basis of discourse-historical approach. The two-step analysis will include: 1) the qualitative content analysis devoted to dominant narratives included in the public speeches (statements, press conferences, medial outputs) of the responsible representatives of the above-mentioned actors; 2) in-depth discourse analysis focused on discursive strategies of the actors, i.e. argumentation schemes; denying; framing/positioning; strategies of social actor and action representation; legitimation and manipulation strategies. Contextual dimension, which influenced the motivations of the actors involved, will be also taken into the account: i.e. the differing nature of the actors involved (actors representing both democratic and non-democratic governments; state-actors and actors representing the international organization “sui generis” – the European Union); the context of on-going tensions in relations between the West/the EU on one side and Russia and its allies (Belarus) on the other side, the role of hybrid and information campaigns in these relations; the overall sensitivity of the topic of refugee crisis in the EU context.