Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies

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The language of walls along the Balkan route

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Journal: Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies

Manuscript ID WIMM-2016-0070.R1
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Manuscript Type: Original Article

refugee crisis, language of walls, public intellectuals, argumentation,

Keywords:
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border politics, Balkan route

Are border walls and fences becoming an increasingly accepted and

legitimate way of coping with the challenges of the refugee crisis and mass
migration in Europe? The paper addresses this question by examining how
Serbian and Croatian public intellectuals reacted to the dramatic impact of
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Abstract:
Hungary’s decision to fortify its southern border in September 2015. The
analysis of salient argumentative strategies reveals how their criticism of
wall building was embedded in specific discourses of values, historical
narratives, and the topos of ‘Fortress Europe’.
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Page 1 of 18 Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies

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4 The language of walls along the Balkan route
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8 1. Introduction
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10 In recent years, hundreds of thousands refugees and migrantspeople fleeing conflict in Syria,
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12 Afghanistan, Iraq and other war-torn areas have crossed South-Eastern Europe, along the so-
13 called Balkan route, in order to seek refuge in Western European countries. Faced with such
14 unprecedented influx, many countries have increased border controls and tightened their
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migratory regimes. In an attempt to mitigate the impact of the refugee crisis on their societies,
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17 some have also resorted to fortifying existing border barriers or to constructing new ones.
18 Despite having caused significant public concern and outrage, these developments reflect a
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19 worldwide tendency, i.e. the reappearance of border walls as means to safeguard and enforce
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21 state sovereignty in an era of mass migration (Vallet and David, 2012).
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TIn this respect, the European refugee crisis reached its culmination in mid-2015, when
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24 Hungary decided to build a razor wire fence at its border with Serbia in order to prevent
25 migrants from entering illegally. The closure of the border on 15 September had a dramatic
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impact on the situation of refugees, who were forced to remain in Serbia or to cross into
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28 Croatia in order to reach their desired destinations. It also had serious repercussions on the
29 countries involved, particularly Serbia and Croatia, which found themselves struggling to
30 respond to the needs and demands of growing numbers of refugees. Mounting tensions
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32 between the two neighbouring countries even escalated in a short ‘trade war’ in late
33 September.
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35 Apart from exacerbating international instability, Hungary’s decision to erect a border barrier
36 also spurred debates in Serbia and Croatia (and elsewhere) over the legitimacy, significance
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and viability of wall building as a way to cope with the ongoing refugee crisis. The purpose of
39 this paper is to investigate these debates in order to ascertain whether and to what extent the
40 ‘language of walls’ (see § 3 below) has become, or is likely to become, a socially and
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41 culturally ratified approach to addressway of addressing the challenges of mass migration.

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To this end, the study focuses on the reactions of Serbian and Croatian public intellectuals to
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45 the dramatic events of September 2015, under the assumption that intellectuals play a key role
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46 in legitimising (or delegitimising) social practices (Pels, 2000). The data consist of a sample
47 of relevant opinion pieces published in prominent online magazines and in the national press
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49 of both countries during that timeSeptember 2015. Drawing on the discourse-historical
50 approach to critical discourse analysis (Reisigl and Wodak, 2015; Wodak, 2011, 2015), and
51 specifically on the methodological framework for argumentation analysis elaborated by
52 Reisigl (Reisigl, 2014), I examine the argumentative strategies and topoi employed by the
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54 authors of said opinion pieces when advancing their standpoints on wall building and the
55 refugee crisis, . The advantage of this kind of analysis is that it allows the researcher in order
56 to discernshow how their individual viewpoints draw upon and intersect with broader
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discourses, cultural perspectives and historical narratives.
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3 The paper is divided in five sections, including this Introduction. Section 2 offers an overview
4 of the refugee crisis in Europe, focusing on the striking developments that took place along
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the Balkan route in mid-2015. Section 3 elaborates a conceptual and methodological
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7 framework for examining discursive practices of bordering. The results of the empirical
8 analysis are then presented and discussed in depth in section 4. In section 5, I summarise the
9 findings and draw the conclusions.
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12 2. The refugee crisis in Europe, the Balkan route and the dramatic
13 repercussions of Hungary’s border closure in September 2015
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15 Over the past few years, the number of people making the journey to Western Europe to seek
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refuge from poverty, persecution and armed conflict in their home countries – mainly Syria,
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18 Iraq, and Afghanistan – has increased dramatically. According to the International
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19 Organisation for Migration, over a million migrants and refugees arrived in Europe in 2015
20 alone (which compares with less than 300,000 arrivals for the whole of 2014). Apart from its
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22 serious humanitarian consequences, this massive influx of people sparked a major political
crisis, as European Union (EU) member states struggled to find a common strategy to ease the
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24 disproportionate burden carried by countries of first refuge (notably Greece, Italy and
25 Hungary). Moreover, in Western Europe the refugee crisis has led to the rising popularity of
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27 xenophobic, populist and anti-Muslim parties, as well as to heated debates about the
28 integration of immigrant populations.
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30 Most migrants and refugees have attempted to reach Western Europe crossing the
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31 Mediterranean Sea from Turkey to Greece and then travelling through Southeast Europe
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33 along the Balkan route, i.e. via the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Serbia into
34 Hungary or Croatia. Faced with hundreds of thousands of unwilling refugees trying to make
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35 their way into Western Europe, the governments of the region focused on providing short-
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term assistance rather than devising long-term strategies. Efforts were mainly directed at
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38 facilitating the shipping of refugees from one border to another, while several temporary
39 camps and transit centres were set up in border areas in order to meet the refugees’ immediate
40 needs. The situation, however, deteriorated quite rapidly, with many migrant families being
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forced to shelter in overcrowded and unhealthy conditions or in public spaces such as parks or
43 stations. International agencies (such as the European Commission and the UNHCR, among
44 others) responded by supporting local civil society organisations involved in providing
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emergency humanitarian aid, while. G growing public awareness of the issue, fuelled by
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47 increased media attention, also led to a groundswell of civic initiatives supportingin support
48 of the refugee cause.
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50 The refugee crisis reached its peak in the summer of 2015, when the number of migrants and
51 refugees arriving in Europe through the Balkan route soared to record levels. In the absence of
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53 a common European approach on migration management and asylum policies, the affected
54 countries were forced to adopted measures to contain the influx and further secure their
55 borders. The tightening of borders began on the southern leg of the Balkan route, as Bulgaria
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resumed the erection of a razor wire fence along its border with Turkey, while Macedonia,
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58 after repeated police crackdowns, sealed its border with Greece and declared a state of
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3 emergency at the end of August. Shortly after, border checks were also imposed by Germany,
4 Austria and Slovakia.
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6 At the end of June, the Hungarian government had openly blamed the EU for its inability to
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cope with the crisis, announcing a plan to secure the border with Serbia with a physical
9 barrier. The construction of a 175 km long double razor wire fence began in mid-July, and on
10 15 September Hungary officially closed its border with Serbia, thus cutting off the main entry
11 point into the EU via the Balkan route. As a result, the flow of refugees was diverted into
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13 Croatia, with more than 15,000 people streaming into the country over the next two days.
14 These dramatic developments sparked both international and domestic outrage, leading
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15 Croatia and Serbia to exchange accusations over sharing the burden of handling refugees. As
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Hungary announced the extension of its border fence along the border with Croatia, the
18 dispute between Croatia and Serbia escalated into a mini ‘trade war’, with each country
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19 putting a blockade on each other’s freight traffic for a week in latefrom 21 till 25 September.
20 The following months were marked by growing uncertainty and volatility, and, in Serbia, by
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22 fears that the country will become a sort of refugee buffer zone for EU countries, especially
since Austria and Slovenia also began to build barriers at their respective southern borders.
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25 The situation remained relatively fluid until March 2016, when Macedonia, Slovenia, Croatia
26 and Serbia imposed stricter border controls as the EU negotiated a controversial resettlement
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agreement with Turkey. This resulted in the de facto closure of the Balkan route. The refugee
29 emergency has thus been relocated to Europe’s external borders, and hence relegated to the
30 margins of public concern and political debate. One of the most striking aspects of this
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31 ‘normalisation’, however, is that border walls seem ever more likely to become an accepted
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33 and legitimate way of dealing with the challenges of global migration. This alarming prospect
34 is what the present paper is ultimately about.
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36 3. The language of walls: investigating the discursive dimension of border
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38 barriers
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40 This section provides an overview of current debates in border studies, focusing in particular
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41 on the notion that borders (and border walls) are not just material but also discursive
42 constructs but also discursive ones. Then, it presents the analytical framework used in the
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44 study.
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46 Conceptual framework: the discursive nature of borders

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48 The proliferation of border barriers as a response to the mounting influx of refugees along the
49 Balkan route is by no means a unique or isolated case. On the contrary, it reflects a worldwide
50 tendency that has begun in the early 2000s, that is, the fortification and securitisation of
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52 borders as a way to protect state sovereignty against global phenomena such as migration and
53 terrorism. As Vallet and David (Vallet and David, 2012; Vallet, 2014) point out, the fall of the
54 Berlin Wall in 1989, and the subsequent advent of an international system where the principle
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of state sovereignty seemed bound to wane, had “left little reason to expect a return of the
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57 wall” (Vallet and David 2012: 111). Reality, however, turned out to be very different. The
58 9/11 terrorist attacks and the rise of migration flows sparked a dramatic surge in wall building
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3 around the world, mostly undertaken by democratic governments. As a result, Vallet and
4 David conclude, wall building has been reestablished and sanctioned as a legitimate strategy
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to control state borders.
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This conspicuous tendency has not only attracted growing scholarly interest among
9 geographers and political scientists, but has also catalysed a paradigm shift in how borders are
10 conceptualised. FirstlyTo begin with, the ‘borderless world of flows’ envisaged by advocates
11 of globalisation has abated in the face of the resurgence and persistence of strategies of
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13 territoriality (see Sack, 1986). Although current deterritorialisation discourses have enabled us
14 to interpret borders in a less deterministic way than in the past, it has become clear that the
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15 ‘hard’ and often coercive nature of their material embodiment cannot and should not be
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underestimated. Secondly, and most importantly, an epistemological shift has taken place in
18 the way borders are theorised. As Newman has argued in a seminal article (Newman, 2006),
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19 borders have come to be understood as the contingent manifestation of broader and highly
20 dynamic processes of bordering, and also as institutions that need to be constantly managed,
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22 maintained, and socially reproduced (see also Anderson and O’Dowd, 1999; Williams, 2003;
Paasi, 1998).
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25 A fertile way of looking at borders from within this new paradigm is the one proposed by
26 DeChaine in his 2009 study of ‘alienisation discourses’ on the USA-Mexico border.
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DeChaine considers bordering to be a social ordering practice whose primary function is to
29 designate, produce and govern the space of difference. Bordering, he maintains, “influences a
30 community’s ways of seeing and experiencing itself, its members, and those deemed to be
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31 outside or unworthy of membership” (DeChaine, 2009: 46). The concept that borders have
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33 social, cultural and political significance has indeed become a central tenet in border studies,
34 particularly within critical scholarship focusing on the ambivalences underlying border(ed)
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35 subjects and identities. More generally, there is now widespread agreement among
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geographers, sociologists and political scientists alike that borders are inevitably loaded with
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38 symbolic, cultural, historical, political and ideological, often contested, meanings, and that
39 such meanings may arise from a variety of social practices, discourses and narratives (Paasi,
40 1999; Newman and Paasi, 1998; Andersen, Klatt and Sandberg, 2012; Bhabha, 1990).
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42 The notion that processes of bordering involve the articulation of various and often conflicting
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44 discourses, narratives and related identities is fully consistent with one of the fundamental
45 assumptions of critical discourse studies (CDS), i.e. that discourse and social reality are
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46 mutually constitutive, and that discursive practices may have major ideological effects,
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helping produce and reproduce unequal power relations (Wodak and Meyer, 2015). Indeed,
49 much CDS scholarship has traditionally focused on issues of inclusion/exclusion,
50 discrimination, prejudice, racism and xenophobia (see, among others, Reisigl and Wodak,
51 2001; Wodak, 2015), particularly in regard to refugees, immigrants and asylum seekers (see
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53 KhosraviNik, 2010 for an overview; see also Pohl and Wodak, 2012). It is only in recent
54 years, however, that researchers have begun to attend to the discursive nature of bordering,
55 mainly prompted by the resurgence of border walls in Europe. This new momentum is well
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epitomised by Ruth Wodak’s exhortation to investigate what she termed the language of
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58 walls, i.e. the discursive practices of renegotiation of inclusion and exclusion of migrants and
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3 refugees, and related border politics, in the European context as well as worldwide (Wodak,
4 2014).
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6 Methodology of the study: why focus on intellectuals and argumentation
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8 The present study contributes to this emerging research agenda by investigating the discourses
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10 that accompanied and shaped the progressive closure of borders to refugees and migrants
11 along the Balkan route. Its purpose is to map the public debate over the construction of border
12 barriers in response to the refugee crisis, in order to determine whether and to what extent this
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bordering (and hence social ordering) practice has achieved cultural acceptance and social
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15 legitimacy in the societies affected. To this end, I consider a specific case study. The case
16 concerns the reactions of Serbian and Croatian public intellectuals to the escalation of the
17 crisis in September 2015, when Hungary completed the construction of the border barrier with
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Serbia, thus diverting the flow of refugees into Croatia. Focusing on this situation of
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20 heightened uncertainty provides a unique opportunity to inquire into the beliefs, perceptions
21 and attitudes about the refugee crisis and border walls that are (or have become) prevalent in
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the Serbian and Croatian societies. This, in turn,, which in turn may shed light on the impact
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24 of the refugee crisis in the broader European context.
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26 Being based in the DHA, the proposed discourse-analytical framework has an
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27 interdisciplinary character, in that it integrates key concepts from current scholarship in

28 border studies (as discussed above), but alsoas well as theoretical notions of the social role of
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30 public intellectuals, who are the main focus of the analysis. In particular, it builds on Pels’
theory of intellectual spokepersonship (Pels, 2000), which contends that public intellectuals
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32 have an inherent capacity to shape the way people think about themselves and the world
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insofar as they speak for certain social groups, interests or idea(l)s. Contrary to the
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35 commonplace (and often clichéd) notion that public intellectuals have lost much of their
36 social and political relevance in the contemporary world, in previous research (Author, 2015)
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I have demonstrated how in the case of post-Yugoslav societies such as Croatia and Serbia
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39 they successfully promote and frame public debate on relevant and critical issues, such as the
40 renegotiation of national identities after the breakup of Yugoslavia, the socio-economic
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41 hardships of transition to liberal democracy and capitalism, and the uncertainties stemming
42 from the process of integration into the EU. Although it would be an overstatement to say that
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44 intellectuals have the power to directly influence politics and decision-making, I maintain –
45 drawing on Bourdieu’s notion of symbolic power (Bourdieu, 1991) – that they can indirectly
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46 shape social reality by modifying the representations that social actors have of it, thus
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contributing to forming people’s beliefs, attitudes and responses. Therefore, the focus of the
49 present study is justified by the assumption that public intellectuals can play a key role in
50 articulating and legitimising certain discursive practices of bordering and related social
51 identities.
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In order to capture Croatian and Serbian intellectuals’ viewpoints on the significance and
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55 implications of wall building as a bordering practice in the context of the refugee crisis, I shall
56 focus on a specific genre: the opinion piece. The choice of focusing on this more ‘traditional’
57 genre rather than on digital discourse is motivated by the notion, convincingly put forth by
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3 Keren and Hawkins (Keren and Hawkins, 2015), that the digitally mediated public sphere,
4 despite its abundance of voices, discussion and access, is often devoid of the familiar
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characteristics of intellectual and expert discourse, such as the emphasis on epistemic
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7 hierarchies as the basis for claiming authority and credibility, and the provision of evidence to
8 substantiate viewpoints. Therefore, although their position of supremacy in orienting public
9 opinion might have been partly undermined by talk shows, blogs, and social media at large, I
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11 maintain that editorials and opinion pieces remain a privileged site where certain
12 representations (or truths) about society are articulated, promoted and legitimised.
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14 The data for empirical analysis consist of a sample of editorials, op-eds, commentaries and
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15 interviews which were published in selected print and online media during the escalation of
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the crisis, that is, from late August through September 2015. In order to ensure the balance
18 and representativeness of the sample, I have selected 14 media outlets with different cultural-
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19 political leanings and which appeal to various audiences. For Croatia, I included the daily
20 newspapers Večernji list, Jutarnji list and Novi list, the weekly magazine Novosti and the
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22 online portal Lupiga. Večernji list and Jutarnji list are the two most widely read Croatian
newspapers, representing respectively mainstream conservative and liberal views; Jutarnji list
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24 is a highly-regarded regional newspaper published in Rijeka, known for its anti-nationalist
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and independent stance. Novosti, founded in 1999 by the Serb National Council, focuses
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27 mainly on issues related to the Serb minority in Croatia; lastly, Lupiga is an online platform
28 promoting grassroots news and progressive political views. For Serbia, I included the daily
29 newspapers Politika, Danas, Večernje novosti and Blic, the weekly magazines Vreme and
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NIN, and the online portal Peščanik. Launched in 1904 as Serbia’s first modern and civic-
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32 oriented newspaper, Politika enjoys a reputation for impartial political analysis and fact-based
33 reporting; Danas is a left-oriented paper promoting European integration, human rights and
34 the protection of minorities; Večernje novosti and Blic, on the other hand, are two popular
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36 tabloid newspapers that cater to mass, non-elite audiences; Nedeljne Informativne Novine
37 (NIN) and Vreme are authoritative, high-quality magazines addressing political and current
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38 events; originally a radio show, since 2008 Peščanik is also a website featuring critical essays
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and editorials by prominent authors on topics of current interest in the political, social and
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41 cultural spheres. Finally, the regional online magazine Tačno.net, based in Bosnia-
42 Herzegovina, was also included due to its prestigious columnists and the popularity it enjoys
43 among both Serbian and Croatian publics.
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The initial sample, which included a total of 115 opinion pieces variously related to the
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47 ongoing refugee crisis, was submitted to thematic analysis (van Dijk, 1991; see also
48 Krzyżanowski, 2008) in order to filter out those texts in which wall building does not figure
49 among the main topics. The downsizing procedure was designed in such a way as to ensure
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51 balanced distribution across all the media outlets. The final dataset consists of 50 opinion
52 pieces (including 3 interviews and 3 editorial board’s comments) by 43 different authors.
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54 The empirical analysis focuses on the argumentative strategies and topoi that the authors of
55 these texts employ when advancing standpoints about the significance, value and legitimacy
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of wall building in the context of the refugee crisis. Topoi are broadly defined as recurrent
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58 content-related conclusion rules, that is, as argumentative patterns that are typical for specific
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3 fields of social action (Reisigl, 2014). This kind of analysis, Reisigl maintains, can provide
4 insight into the specific character of discourses by highlighting controversial claims,
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justification strategies and ideologies, and also by linking certain topoi to broader discourses
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7 and narratives. In the scope of the present study, the analysis is oriented precisely towards
8 showing how situated viewpoints draw upon and intersect with broader discourses of
9 bordering, practices of inclusion and exclusion, as well as historical narratives of migration
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11 and refugees.
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13 4. Croatian and Serbian public intellectuals debating border walls and the
14 refugee crisis: recurrent topoi and argumentative strategies
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This section begins with an overview of how the intellectual debate in Croatia and Serbia
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18 evolved in response to the escalation of the refugee crisis in September 2015. It then explores
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19 the argumentative strategies employed in the opinion pieces included in the final sample. from
20 the sample, focusing on how these shape the meaning and significance of wall building in the
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22 context of the refugee crisis.
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24 Mapping the debate
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26 Three distinct phases of the debate can be identified. The first phase corresponds to the period
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27 from the beginning to mid-September, when the construction of the so-called Hungarian wall
28 had already entered its final stage. The analysis indicates that during this phase both Croatian
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30 and Serbian authors were only mildly critical of Hungary’s decision. In Croatia they tended to
frame their opposition to the project in the context of a broader criticism of Western Europe’s
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32 apparent reluctance to take responsibility for the refugees;. T this attitude was often
33 accompanied by a concern about how Croatia should treat migrants and refugees entering its
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35 own territory. In Serbia, on the other hand, the issue seems to have received comparably little
36 attention, with emphasis being placed on the humanitarian dimension of the crisis rather than
37 on its political aspects.
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39 The second phase covers the periodgoes from mid-September, when the Hungarian wall was
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completed, until the 21st of September, when the rising tensions between Croatia and Serbia
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42 over the cross-border movement of refugees led the Croatian government to launch a ‘trade
43 blockade’ against Serbia. In this phase, the stances of both Croatian and Serbian authors
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became much more radicalised. In Serbia, the dramatic aftermath of Hungary’s decision
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46 fuelled intellectuals’ distrust of Europe’s capacity to effectively address the refugee crisis,
47 leading many of them to reject Hungary’s (and by extension Europe’s) defensive attitude as
48 unjustified, hypocritical or plainly wrong. In Croatia, Hungary’s border closure elicited a
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convergence towards more critical, and often antagonistic, stances towards the EU due to its
51 apparent inability to orchestrate and enforce a common approach to the crisis. Subsequently,
52 as the relations between Croatia and Serbia deteriorated, anti-European stances were
53 overshadowed by renewed concern over the local impact of the crisis.
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The third phase, which goes from the 22nd until the end of September, corresponds to the
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57 outbreak, course and aftermath of the aforementioned ‘trade war’. The stances adopted by
58 Serbian intellectuals and commentators in this phase appear to be quite ambivalent: while
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3 some dismiss the animosities between Croatia and Serbia as a symptom of the two countries’
4 supposed ‘backwardness’ with respect to Western Europe, others applaud Serbia’s ‘mature’
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and ‘civilised’ attitude in the face of Croatia’s perceived ‘provocation’. A common theme to
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7 several opinion pieces is the appreciation for Serbia’s considerate treatment of the refugees,
8 which is often contrasted with the hard-line and recalcitrant approach taken by some EU
9 countries, primarily Hungary. Croatian commentators, on the other hand, seem to turn a blind
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11 eye to the dispute with Serbia, preferring instead to reinvigorate their criticism of Hungary’s
12 border closure and incite the ruling elites and the public to show goodwill towards the
13 refugees entering the country.
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15 This cursoryinitial overview clearly indicates that both Croatian and Serbian authors were
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largely opposed to the Hungarian wall, and were generally critical of the fortification and
18 securitisation of borders as a way to cope with the influx of refugees and migrants. The next
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19 section examines the argumentative strategies that they employed to support these
20 standpoints.
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The apparent crisis of European values versus the persistence of universal ones
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The most immediate and conspicuous result of the analysis of the argumentative strategies
26 employed by Croatian and Serbian authors is the great predominance of argumentation based
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27 on human values. Nearly one in four arguments about border barriers and the refugee crisis, in
28 fact, rests partially or entirely on topoi whose content relates to the domain of ethical values,
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30 such as humanity, solidarity, tolerance and so forth. These topoi have the following basic
form:
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33 Topos of (human) values: if X is (not) consistent with values A, B, C, then X is good/bad, or
34 should (not) be done.
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36 In the light of the dramatic humanitarian impact of the refugee crisis, this finding is hardly
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surprising. What is interesting to observe, however, is the way in which values are qualified,
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39 specifically whether they are invoked as universal absolutes or rather as constitutive
40 principles of certain polities, notably Europe and the European Union (i.e. as ‘European
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41 values’). The advantage of orienting the analysis toward this distinction is that it can shed
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43 some light on how the refugee crisis might have fuelled processes of renegotiation of
44 European values, narratives and identity in the societies under examination.
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46 The analysis of the opinion pieces published during the first phase of the debate, that is, prior
47 to the completion of the Hungarian wall, indicates the predominance of topoi related to
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humanity and solidarity, which are mainly conceived as universal and civilisational values. I
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50 shall illustrate this with two examples. The first is a statement given by law professor
51 Goranka Lalić Novak in an interview with Portal nNovosti: “countries that consider
52 themselves to be part of the civilised world [...] must allow refugees to enter their territory and
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54 to access the asylum system”.i Here, a claim of normative rightness is justified through the
55 conclusion rule if a country consider itself to be civilised, then it must help refugees, which
56 forms a topos of humanity as a civilisational value. The second is an appeal made by
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columnist Željko Pavićčević to his fellow (Serbian) citizens in an editorial published on
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3 Tačno.net: “[if] we are not in a position or do now want to host somebody at our home, let us
4 not make derogatory or malicious comments about those who have done so, showing by their
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own example how simple and beautiful this is.”ii The conclusion rule underlying this
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7 normative claim is that solidarity acts are simple and beautiful, therefore those who perform
8 them are worth of appreciation, which corresponds to a topos of solidarity as a universal
9 value.
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11 As stated above, the second phase of the debate was marked by a radicalisation of stances: the
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13 completion of the Hungarian border barrier exacerbated the critical attitudes of public
14 commentators from both Serbia and Croatia, emboldening them to become more vocal against
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15 Hungary’s blockade and to denounce Europe’s inability to effectively address the refugee
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crisis. The magnitude of this radicalisation becomes fully apparent if one examines how
18 values are discursively construed and embedded in argumentation in the opinion pieces
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19 published in this period, as compared to those published previously. While topoi of humanity
20 and solidarity as universal and civilisational values are still quite frequent (particularly in
21
22 claims asserting a collective moral obligation to help the refugees), most value-based
argumentation is now predicated on the perceived decline of the so-called European (or
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23
24 Western) values. A new topos emerges, which I propose to call the topos of the crisis of
25
European/Western values.
26
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28
This topos occurs to a similar degree, and is used in analogous ways, in both Croatian and
29 Serbian opinion pieces. I shall illustrate this point with a few examples taken from each
30 country, starting from Croatia. In an opinion piece aptly entitled Schengen’s agony, Europe’s
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31 death, journalist Denis Romac criticises Europe’s hard-line approach to the refugee crisis as
32
33 being antithetical to the principles enshrined in the Schengen Agreement, which, he argues, is
34 widely regarded as the culmination of the process of European integration and as the true
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35 hallmark of European identity.iii His stance resonates with that of his colleague Branko Mijić
36
from Novi list, who maintains that “by eliminating Schengen, its own bloodstream and the
37
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38 very meaning of its existence, that is the free movement of people and goods without borders,
39 the European Union is eliminating itself”.iv Philosopher and political commentator Nino
40 Raspudić, on the other hand, draws an opposition between universal values and the EU as a
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41
42 failed moral authority to which the Croatian elites wrongly continue to submit: “Our own
43 ‘nerds’ still haven’t realised that the EU has fallen apart on this issue [the refugee crisis], so
44 they [...] keep saying that we need to pass the ‘test of humanity’ [...]. Before whom should we
45
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take a test of humanity? Who are we still learning from?”.v

46
47
48
The topos of the crisis of European/Western values also occurs in arguments put forth by
49 Serbian authors. For instance, in a commentary published in Danas, historian and political
50 analyst Nikola Samardžić openly proclaims the crisis of European values, arguing that its
51 pervasiveness depends on “the unplanned, chaotic and unwished-for importation of a system
52
53 of values which is the negation of European freedoms and tolerance.”vi Sociologist Aleksej
54 Kišjuhas takes this point even further, calling into question the very foundations of Western
55 civilisation: “as we today erect walls and barbed wire fences, as we arrest, segregate,
56
stigmatise, expel and negligently drown or kill new migrants and their children on the soil of
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3 Western civilisation, the following question arises: who are the barbarians, and who the
4 civilised ones?”.vii
5
6 Although largely predominant during the second phase of the debate, the topos of the crisis of
7
8
European/Western values is virtually absent from the opinion pieces published in the third
9 phase, that is, during and after the ‘trade war’ between Croatia and Serbia. Apart from Nikola
10 Belić’s editorial for Politika, which deplores Europe’s ‘anti-European’ attitude by stressing
11 that “there is more of that European spirit in Serbia than in the neighbouring EU countries”,
12
13 tThe analysis of value-based argumentation, in fact, indicates a clear shift back to
14 argumentative strategies similar to the first phase, with topoi of humanity and solidarity as
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15 universal/civilisational values being predominant.
16
17 In conclusion, a salient discrepancy can be observed in how values are discursively
18
constructed and embedded in argumentation: whereas universal values (of humanity and
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19
20 solidarity) are largely invoked as stable ethical norms, European/Western values tend to be
21 represented as being in crisis. The occurrence of the topos of the crisis of European/Western
22
values, however, appears to be highly context-dependent, as it reaches its peak just after the
ee
23
24 completion of the Hungarian border fence and rapidly decreases a few days later. This
25 suggests that the intellectuals’ apparent disillusionment with the European project was in fact
26 the product of fleeting disgruntlement rather thanand not a substantial critique.
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27
28 History repeating: refugees from the Yugoslav wars, the Iron Curtain and Nazi
29
30 concentration camps
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32 The second most common form of argumentation concerning wall building and the refugee
33 crisis is argumentation based on history, which occurs in slightly less than half of the texts
34 from the sample21 out of 50 opinion pieces. Scholars adhering to the discourse-historical
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35
36
approach share a distinct focus on the historical context as a key dimension in the
37 interpretation of texts, hence the topos of history is among the best defined and most
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38 substantiated argumentative schemes. Reisigl and Wodak (Reisigl and Wodak, 2001: 80) have
39 provided a detailed definition of it:
40
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41 Topos of history: because history teaches that specific actions have specific consequences,
42
43 one should perform or omit a specific action in a specific situation (allegedly) comparable
44 with the historical example referred to.
45
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46 In the opinion pieces from the sample, this topos occurs in three main forms. The first is the
47 topos of history of refugees from the Yugoslav wars, which posits a parallel between the
48 ongoing refugee emergency and the consequences of the violent dismemberment of
49
50 Yugoslavia in the 1990s, (which produced between three and four million refugees and
51 internally-displaced persons). The second is the topos of history of concentration camps,
52 which is used to repudiate the construction of border fences as being reminiscent of Nazi
53
extermination camps. In a similar vein, several authors reject border walls by means of a third
54
55 topos, i.e. the topos of history of the Iron Curtain, which refers to the devastating impact that
56 the East-West division had on Europe’s development and prosperity.
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3 Among these three variations, i.e. the topos of history of refugees from the Yugoslav wars, is
4 by far the most frequent (approximatelyabout one third of all instances of history-based
5
argumentation). It typicallyends to occurs in claims of normative rightness, specifically insuch
6
7 as appeals to adopt certain attitudes or undertake certain actions with regard to refugees. Its
8 basic structure is we should help refugees because i) we have a history of helping refugees, or
9 ii) we were refugees ourselves. A vivid illustration of this argumentative scheme appears in
10
11 the essay entitled Short history of Croatian solidarity, written by well-known Bosnian writer
12 Miljenko Jergović for Jutarnji list.viii The piece can be regarded as forming a single
13 (enthymemic) argument in which the exhortation to help refugees, which is elegantly left
14
implicit, is supported by a wealth of historical evidence based on the following conclusion
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15
16 rule: Croatia has an important history of solidarity towards refugees, therefore it should
17 continue to practice it.
18
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19 Another salient example of the use of this particular topos is found in the editorial There once
20 was a Europe by renowned writer Aleksandar Hemon.ix In the passage below, Hemon
21
22 encourages the people from the former Yugoslavia to empathise with the refugees drawing on
their own past experience in the Yugoslav wars:
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23
24
25 Our people, of course, should remember their own refugee Golgothas [...]. Our people should
26 remember how much the help and support they got from good people wherever they wound up
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27 meant to them, as well as their own desperation in times when they did not know where to go,
28
knowing that they were not able, or allowed, to go back.
29
30
As shown in the examples above, the topos of history of refugees from the Yugoslav wars is
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31
32 predominantly used to make appeals to solidarity and compassion towards the refugees. It
33 should be noted, however, that in a few cases the reference to the refugees from the Yugoslav
34 wars is framed (implicitly more often than explicitly) in nationalistic terms, as refugees are
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35
36 assumed to be ‘our’ refugees, that is, people from ‘our’ own ethnic or national community.
37 Although this disposition may be considered a rather innocuous manifestation of banal
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38 nationalism (Billig, 1995), there is one specific case in which existing animosities seem to
39
come to surface. In an editorial entitled A Europe of coal, steel and blood,x in fact, Serbian
40
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41 journalist Ratko Dmitrović casts doubt on Croatia’s capacity to host refugees by making a
42 sarcastic reference to the country’s wartime responsibilities: “Croatia has had significant
43 experience and great success in expelling people, whereas accepting those who have been
44
45
expelled is more of a challenge. They didn’t practice that very much during Operation
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46 Storm.xi”
47
48 The second most frequent variation of the topos of history is the topos of history of
49 concentration camps, which can be deconstructed as follows: no (border) fences preventing
50
migrants and refugees from travelling should be built, because fences were also used in Nazi
51
52 extermination camps. The most conspicuous illustration of this argumentative strategy is
53 found in Marijan Vogrinec’s opinion piece Humanity in a military helmet.xii In the passage
54 below, Vogrinec condemns the plan to set up transit camps for refugees by exposing the
55
56 hypocrisy and dangers of using euphemistic terminology:
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3 [Nobody] has the right to forcefully lock [refugees] up behind barbed wire fences, in
4 concentration camps with seemingly humane designations. Both Hitler and Pavelić also used
5 to call their death factories concentration camps [...] even though young and old people were
6 being killed in them, and entire nations were being brutally and genocidally exterminated.
7
8
The author employs the topos of history of concentration camps also in another editorial
9
10 entitled A test of conscience for our civilisation.xiii In the following passage reported below,
11 he associates the Hungarian razor wire fence (which at the time was still under construction)
12 to the fences used in Nazi extermination camps by means of a powerful allusion: “Hungary is
13
14
hastily erecting a two-hundred-km-long barbed wire fence along its border with Serbia (a high
Fo
15 voltage one, like in Auschwitz and Dachau?) so that not a single refugee worm could slip
16 through.”
17
18 Another clear illustration of this specific topos appears in The masks have fallen by well-
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19
known Croatian columnist Marinko Ćulić.xiv He argues that Hungary’s border fence has
20
21 earned the country the status of most xenophobic and heartless country in Europe, because it
22 has “triggered associations with the former inter-bloc walls, across which the Hungarians
ee
23 themselves were among the first to escape, and even with the barbed wire fences of Nazi
24
25 concentration camps, through which as a rule it was impossible to escape.”
26
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27 The reference to “inter-bloc walls” in the previous excerpt is an instance of the third variation
28 of the topos of history, namely the topos of history of the Iron Curtain. Its basic structure is
29 the following: the Iron Curtain had a devastating impact on Europe’s development and
30
prosperity, therefore no such barriers should ever be established. The two most vivid
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31
32 illustrations of this topos appear in the opinion pieces written by two famous writers,
33 Aleksandar Hemon and Miljenko Jergović. In the passage below, Hemon combines it with a
34 topos of European values to shore up his general exhortation to welcome refugees:
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35
36 I [...] remember how at the end of the last century, and of the Cold War, refugees trekked
37
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away from Romania and Ceaușescu’s madness, how the Hungarians broke through the
38
39 cordons at the border, how there were hundreds of thousands of them in refugee camps, how
40 the Berlin Wall fell under the onslaught of people, and how Europe, at least up to its debacle
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41 in Bosnia, seemed to be unique in terms of freedom and democracy [...].xv

42
43 In his editorial Jergović makes a similar point, i.e. that Europe should refrain from building
44 walls and fences against refugees, by constructing a symbolic opposition between the Iron
45
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46 Curtain and ideals of freedom and democracy.xvi The argument, which stretches over a
47 significant portion of the article, rests on historical evidence related to the removal of
48 Hungary’s border fence with Austria in May 1989, which eventually led to the fall of the Iron
49
Curtain and the end of the Cold War. The implicit conclusion rule is that it would be wrong to
50
51 erect walls and fences because democracy and freedom in Europe have been achieved
52 precisely by demolishing barriersthem.
53
54 Broadly speaking, the predominance of history-based argumentation in the examined opinion
55 pieces demonstrates how the past can be effectively (and selectively) mobilised to make sense
56
57 of, and cope with, present challenges and uncertainties (see Heer, Manoschek, Pollak and
58 Wodak, 2008). As the analysis of recurrent topoi has revealed, Croatian and Serbian
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3 intellectuals tended to embed the ongoing refugee crisis in narratives of the past focusing both
4 on defining aspects of Europe’s history and identity, such as the Holocaust and the East-West
5
divide, and on collective memories of the conflicts of the 1990s. While narratives of the
6
7 former type are quite concordant and undisputed, experiences and memories of the recent
8 wars appear to be more susceptible to be transposed into narratives of victimhood and trauma
9 that sustain national identification (see Wodak, de Cillia, Reisigl and Liebhart, 2009).
10
11
Fortress Europe: shifting the burden of the refugee crisis
12
13
Besides argumentation based on values and history, several authors among those examined
14
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15 criticise Europe’s (or rather the EU’s) approach to the refugee crisis on the grounds that it
16 involves an unwarranted shift of the burden of responsibility to the countries located at its
17 external borders, such as Croatia and Serbia. This sort of criticism resonates strongly with the
18
notion that the EU has progressively externalised migration and asylum management to its
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19
20 neighbouring countries, which has gained currency in the scholarly debate (see for instance
21 Triandafyllidou, 2014) as well as in policy-making arenas. Drawing on a popular way of
22
stigmatising the increasingly restrictive and often exclusionary migration and citizenship
ee
23
24 policies adopted by EU countries, I propose to call this argumentative scheme the topos of
25 Fortress Europe. Its basic structure can be expressed as follows:
26
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27 Topos of Fortress Europe: if a certain political decisions or acts involves an unjustified or

28 unfair shift of the burden of responsibility from Europe’s centre to its periphery, then theyit
29 should be condemned.
30
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31 This topos occurs in nearly one out of five opinion pieces, with a quite similar distribution
32
33 across the Croatian and Serbian segments of the sample. As a way to illustrate the variety of
34 its linguistic manifestations, I shall present and discuss three examples. The first one is taken
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35 from a commentary by Marko R. Petrović published in Serbian tabloid Blic on 15 September,

36
37
the day Hungary officially closed its border with Serbia.xvii Petrović condemns Hungary’s
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38 decision as part of a broader plan by the EU “to make its borders almost impenetrable to
39 refugees, to dub nearly every immigrant a criminal and to return them to Serbia”, which, he
40 contends, would put the country “between the devil and the deep blue sea.” The topos of
On

41
42 Fortress Europe is embedded in this last metaphor,xviii which is intended to convey in a
43 dramatic fashion the nature of Serbia’s predicament.
44
45 The second example is taken from Schengen’s agony, Europe’s death by Croatian journalist
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46 Denis Romac, which was published in Novi list immediately after Hungary’s border
47
48
closure.xix Like his Serbian counterpart, Romac also places Hungary’s attitude in the broader
49 frame of Europe’s reluctance to take full responsibility for the refugees. His critique,
50 however, is more substantial:
51
52 It is a bit hypocritical in this case to stress Hungary’s negative example, because we would
53 lose sight of another important fact: the entire EU is extremely unfriendly to the refugees, and
54
the Schengen system, which allows the removal of inside borders, rests precisely on tight
55
56 borders and barriers to the outside, which is why we rightly talk about ‘Fortress Europe’.
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2
3 According to Romac, the issue is structural rather than contingent. The often-praised opening
4 of borders within the EU, he suggests, depends precisely on the fortification and securitisation
5
of its outer frontier. In other words, he regards the construction of walls and other types of
6
7 barriers to immigration as being constitutive of the EU, and not merely as a policy dictated by
8 convenience.
9
10 The third and last example comes from Neighbours, an editorial written by Serbian journalist
11 Vuk Mijatović for Večernje novosti during the Croatia-Serbia ‘trade war’.xx In this passage,
12
13 the author criticises Hungary’s closure as proof that Europe seems to have surrendered its
14 proclaimed fundamental values: “What kind of good neighbourly relations are we talking
Fo
15 about if walls are built, borders are closed [...] as soon as things get a bit more serious? Where
16
17
is European solidarity when your only plan for refugees is to ‘dump’ them to your neighbours
18 and, possibly, lock them up hermetically?”. The topos of Fortress Europe emerges both from
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19 the rhetorical questions and from the use of connoted expressions such as ‘dump’ and ‘lock
20 them up’, which convey a clearly negative judgment of Europe’s attitude.
21
22
The analysis of argumentative patterns based on the topos of Fortress Europe indicates that
ee
23
24 the refugee crisis has led many public intellectuals, in Serbia and Croatia alike, to
25 problematise the complex relationship between national and supra-national sovereignty in the
26 context of European integration. What is particularly interesting to notice is that, in spite of
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27
28
the fact that Croatia is a EU member state and Serbia is not, authors from both countries are
29 equally concerned about the detrimental impact of the EU’s progressive externalisation of
30 border management and control, which they largely perceive as an unfair shift of burden onto
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31 their own societies.

32
33
34 5. Conclusion
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35
36 The dramatic escalation of the refugee crisis along the Balkan route, which culminated in
37 September 2015 with the completion of the Hungarian border fence and the subsequent
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38 dispute between Croatia and Serbia over the handling of refugees crossing into Croatia,
39
40 sparked intense debate in the societies involved. Drawing on the concept that discourses and
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41 narratives are constitutive of bordering practices, and on the assumption that intellectual
42 discourse is instrumental in legitimising or delegitimising social practices, the purpose of this
43
study was to explore the reactions of public intellectuals and commentators from Serbia and
44
45 Croatia, in order to determine whether the fortification of borders was (is) gradually achieving
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46 legitimacy as a way to cope with the challenges of migration in those societies.

47
48 The analysis of a selected sample of relevant opinion pieces published in September 2015 has
49 shown that both Croatian and Serbian intellectuals were largely opposed to the ‘Hungarian
50
51 wall’ and generally critical of Europe’s response to the refugee crisis. Detailed analysis of the
52 argumentative strategies employed to sustain such criticism has shed further light on how
53 discourses on wall building and the refugee crisis intersect and interact with discursive
54
practices of bordering and identity construction, politics of inclusion and exclusion, as well as
55
56 with historical narratives of refugees and migration.
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3 The first finding is that much criticism of wall building as an unacceptable way of dealing
4 with refugees is predicated on specific sets of societal values, which are either presupposed or
5
explicitly articulated in discourse. The authors under examination generally invoke values of
6
7 humanity, solidarity and tolerance; however, a clear distinction emerges between appeals to
8 universal human values, which are constructed as stable ethical norms, and appeals to so-
9 called European values, which on the contrary are represented as being in decline (although
10
11 this never develops into a radical questioning of the European project).
12
13 Secondly, many intellectuals support their anti-wall standpoints through recourse to history
14 and collective memory. Exhortations to welcome refugees are typically justified by reference
Fo
15 to past experiences of being or hosting refugees in the context of the violent breakup of
16
17
Yugoslavia, while border walls and fences are often associated with the tragedy of the
18 Holocaust and with the Iron Curtain as a symbol of Europe’s past divisions. As a result of this
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19 discursive reframing, new border narratives emerge which establish continuities between the
20 ongoing refugee crisis and specific historical events that are constructed as being constitutive
21
22 of national, regional or European identities. In this respect, it is worth noting how the legacy
of the wars of the 1990s, notably the experience of refugees, is largely drawn upon to promote
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23
24 neutral or reconciliatory perspectives rather than contentious or divisive ones.
25
26 The third key finding is the prominence of arguments stressing the issue of ‘Fortress Europe’,
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27
28
i.e. the inequitable shift of burden involved in the EU’s progressive externalisation of border
29 management and control to its southern vicinity (including Croatia and Serbia). In broad
30 terms, this suggests that the struggle over meaningful borders has extended beyond the inter-
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31 state level to encompass supra-state institutional, economic and political arrangements

32
33 (notably the EU and the Schengen area), where old borders are de-institutionalised while new
34 ones are created (see Paasi, 2009).
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35
36 The conclusion that can be drawn from these findings is that the construction of border walls
37
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as a strategy to exert control over the refugee and migrant population was (and arguably still
38
39 is) far from gaining substantial cultural acceptance and social legitimacy in Croatia and
40 Serbia. However, two remarks should be made. The first is that until the closure of the Balkan
On

41 route both Croatia and Serbia were countries of transit rather than countries of destination;
42 hence, refugees were generally not seen as posing a threat to social stability, which surely
43
44 favoured the spread of more tolerant and sympathetic attitudes towards them. The second
45 remark is that, as acknowledged above, intellectual dissent (such as the one documented here)
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46 usually has a quiteonly limited impact on politics and decision-making, so there is no

47
48
guarantee that the ruling elites of these countries will refrain from fortifying and securitising
49 their borders in the near future. However, since borders (and border barriers) are at once
50 institutions that need to be socially reproduced and sites of constant struggle over meaning
51 (see § 3), public intellectuals can certainly play a key role in shaping the way we perceive,
52
53 understand and relate to the ‘language of walls’, and hence our cultural, social and political
54 attitudes on the matter. This is why I believe their opinions and viewpoints deserve our
55 constant critical attention.
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4 Romac, D. (2015, September 16). Umiranje Schengena, smrt Europe. Novi list. Retrieved from:
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6 Mijić, B. (2015, September 18). Vlakovi bez voznog reda. Novi list. Retrieved from: www.novilist.hr
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7 Raspudić, N. (2015 , September 18). Migranti u Hrvatskoj: ispit humanosti ili test gluposti. Večernji
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Hemon, A. (2015, September 20). Bila jednom jedna Evropa. Peščanik. Retrieved from:
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16 Dmitrović, R. (2015, September 19). Evropa uglja, čelika i krvi. Večernje novosti. Retrieved from:
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18 Operation Storm (Croatian: Operacija Oluja) was the last major battle of the Croatian War of
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19 Independence, which caused 150,000 to 200,000 Serbs to flee the country.
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20 Vogrinec, M. (2015, September 22). Humanost pod vojničkom kacigom. Tačno.net. Retrieved from:
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22 Vogrinec, M. (2015, August 28). Civilizacija na ispitu savjesti. Tačno.net. Retrieved from:
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Ćulić, M. (2015, September 28). Maske su pale. Novosti. Retrieved from: www.portalnovosti.com
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Jergović, M. (2015, September 22). Njemci znaju čemu služi bodljikava žica. Ljudi nisu stoka. A
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Petrović, M.R. (2015, September 15). Čekić i nakovanj. Blic. p. 2.
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The literal translation of the original metaphor would be between the anvil and the hammer.
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32 Romac, D. (2015, September 16). Umiranje Schengena, smrt Europe. Novi list. Retrieved from:
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34 Mijatović, V. (2015, September 23). Komšije. Večernje novosti. Retrieved from: www.novosti.rs
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