Jan Kovář: Debating Immigrants and Refugees in Central Europe. Politicising and Framing Newcomers in the Media and Political Arenas

Abstract

Ivana Rapoš Božič reviews Jan Kovář’s ambitious, comprehensive, and meticulously researched book. According to Rapoš Božič, Kovář explores the politicization and framing of one of the last decade’s most polarizing and widely debated socio-political issues: migration. He focuses on two Central European countries—Czechia and Slovakia—and their distinct arenas of media and political debates. Through this complex comparative research design, Kovář aims to tackle several shortcomings of previous studies on the politicization and framing of immigrants, such as their dominant focus on Western Europe, lack of a cross-national comparative perspective, and tendency to favor the analysis of media discourse over that of its political counterpart. His book successfully achieves these aims and also does much more: it offers a nuanced and multilayered understanding of the politicization and framing processes of migration in two countries located in a region whose hostile approach to migrants and refugees during the so-called mid-2010s European migration crisis has attracted the interest of many migration scholars. Rapoš Božič reads the book from her perspective, which inevitably pushes the book to another promising point of debating migration—that is, the construction of the European East-West divide. This reading is informed by her disciplinary background in cultural sociology and qualitative research methods, as well as her close professional and personal ties to both of the countries under study. From this specific position, she praises several aspects of the book but also raises some critical remarks.