CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2017
| Author | Wodicka, Anna |
|---|---|
| Title | Negotiating East/West & North/South: Borders and boundaries in Austrian asylum politics 2015-16 |
| Summary | In the literature dealing with European migration policy a critical intersectional analysis that understands migration control in relation to nationalism is mostly missing. With my thesis, I aim to fill this gap and analyze shifts in the construction of the Austrian nation from summer 2015 to spring 2016 through a feminist lens. Over the course of half a year, Austrian asylum politics saw radical changes, from open borders policies and a rhetoric of humanitarianism to the initiation of the closure of the ‘Balkan route’, which was accompanied by a language of securitization. Through an interdisciplinary approach and working with Critical Discourse Analysis I look at governmental media work, policies and legal changes of that time to see how the borders and boundaries of the Austrian nation are (re)produced. Building on theoretical insights from feminist perspectives on nationalism, biopolitical theory and postcolonial studies and combining them with historical-materialist approaches within migration studies, I show how the legitimation of migration policy making builds on gendered, liberal and racialized tropes, figuring in the ‘economic migrant’ - ‘war refugee’ binary. Fundamentally, I argue that across the transition the nation was coherently reproduced by the government, situating the Austrian nation on East-West and North-South axes. With a European context, I aim to demonstrate how discussions of migration policies work to differentiate Austria as ‘Western’ and thus morally superior from Hungary and the Balkans, and how this distinction revolves around the topics of smugglers and fences., I argue that for the formation and maintenance of ‘Austria’ with a global context fundamentally relies upon the racist (post)colonial mobilization of ‘Europeanness’ and ‘humanity’. As such, asylum politics are directly connected to national and supranational political agendas through gendered mechanisms intertwined with economic and racialized arguments and thus their analysis gives insight into modern European nationalism. |
| Supervisor | Helms, Elissa; Rajaram, Prem Kumar |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2017/wodicka_anna.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2021, Central European University