Political Culture, Securitization and Differential Reception: Poland, Greece and the Geopolitics of New Migration Routes

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 reconfigured European migration governance, producing a paradox: rapid, rights-based reception for people fleeing Ukraine under the EU’s Temporary Protection regime, alongside persistent or intensified deterrence towards other mixed flows at Europe’s external borders. This paper explains how such “dual portfolios” of inclusion and exclusion can coexist within the same polity by specifying a political-culture mechanism that links framing to concrete reception outcomes. Focusing on Poland and Greece (February 2022–August 2025), we combine comparative process tracing with frame/discourse analysis of elite speech, parliamentary debates, official communiqués and policy instruments, and ideologically balanced media coverage. We triangulate these materials with oversight, judicial and IO/NGO reporting and semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders in both countries (central government, implementing agencies, local authorities, NGOs, and journalists). We find that historically sedimented repertoire cues (proximity/kinship, deservingness, and “border-as-shield” statecraft) structure which frames resonate with key audiences and translate into distinct administrative tempos: accelerated status–work–services pathways for Ukrainians versus negative-tempo instruments (access restrictions, buffer-zone governance, deterrence practices) for other entrants. Feedback from outcomes then stabilises or perturbs these portfolios—economic incorporation signals in Poland and legality/accountability shocks in Greece. The contribution is a mechanism-based account of selective (de)securitization suited to an EU context of simultaneous normalisation and hardening.