Ignorance and Change: Anticipatory Knowledge and the European Refugee Crisis 9780815380696, 9781351212595

Citation preview

Ignorance and Change

Ignorance and Change analyses the European refugee crisis of 2015–2016 from the perspective of ignorance studies showing how the media, decisionmakers and academics engaged in the projection and reification of the future in relation to the crisis, the asylum system, and the solutions that were proposed. Why do recent crises fail to bring meaningful change? Why do we often see replication of the regimes of ignorance, inefficient knowledge and expertise practices? This book answers these questions by shifting the focus from the issue of change to our projections and expectations of what change will look like. Building on three comprehensive case studies, Poland, Hungary, and Romania, it demonstrates how ignorance and projectivity were essential for new Member States not only for managing the crisis but also for reaching a higher level of autonomy in relation to the EU. Employing an innovative interactional approach to ignorance, it bridges ignorance studies with sociology of future and migration research. Challenging the dominant interest in defining ignorance, it moves the focus from what ignorance is to what ignorance does. It incorporates the concept of future into ignorance studies and develops notions such as “projective agency,” “reification of the future,” “projection by proxy,” and “projectors of EU asylum policies.” The book provides an erudite background, comprehensive empirical research, and original tools of analysis for graduate students, researchers, and policy makers interested in crisis studies, public policy, ignorance studies, social theory, migration studies, and sociology of the future. Adriana Mica is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Social Prevention and Resocialisation, University of Warsaw where she leads the Research Unit on Action and Consequences. Her research interests include sociology of possibility and ignorance, sociology of failure, unintended consequences, and crisis management. She is the author of Sociology as Analysis of the Unintended: From the Problem of Ignorance to the Discovery of the Possible (2018).

Anna Horolets is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Warsaw. Her research interests include discourse analysis, Europeanization and migration studies. Her published articles have appeared in East European Politics and Societies and Leisure Sciences. Mikołaj Pawlak is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Social Prevention and Resocialisation, University of Warsaw where he leads the Chair of Sociology of Norms, Deviance and Social Control. His research interests cover new institutional theory, migration studies, and sociology of knowledge/ignorance. He is the author of Tying Micro and Macro: What Fills Up the Sociological Vacuum (2018). Paweł Kubicki is an Associate Professor at the Warsaw School of Economics where he leads the Department of Social Policy. He specializes in public policy analysis, particularly in disability studies, migration studies, and social exclusion. His published articles have appeared in Canadian Journal of Disability Studies and East European Politics and Societies.

Routledge Research in Ignorance Studies

Series editors: Matthias Gross is Professor and Head of the Department of Urban and Environmental Sociology, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, UFZ, Leipzig, Germany. Linsey McGoey is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Essex. Michael Smithson is a Professor in the Research School of Psychology at The Australian National University.

This timely series brings together cutting-edge scholarship in the emergent field of studies on the flipside of knowledge. It addresses the blossoming interest – within an increasing number of disciplines – in the uses and deployment of strategic not knowing, the right to nonknowledge, of forgetting, of producing and keeping secrets. From classical perspectives on the unknown to the most recent analyses in theology, brain research, decision-making, economics, political science, and science and technology studies, this interdisciplinary series will serve as an indispensable resource for both students and scholars. The Routledge Research in Ignorance Studies series places the study of ignorance in historical and interdisciplinary context. Sociology as Analysis of the Unintended From the Problem of Ignorance to the Discovery of the Possible Adriana Mica Hybrid Political Order and the Politics of Uncertainty Refugee Governance in Lebanon Nora Stel Ignorance and Change Anticipatory Knowledge and the European Refugee Crisis Adriana Mica, Anna Horolets, Mikołaj Pawlak and Paweł Kubicki

For more information about the series, please visit: https://www.routledge. com/Routledge-Research-in-Ignorance-Studies/book-series/RRIGS

Ignorance and Change

Anticipatory Knowledge and the European Refugee Crisis

Adriana Mica, Anna Horolets, Mikołaj Pawlak, and Paweł Kubicki

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Adriana Mica, Anna Horolets, Mikołaj Pawlak and Paweł Kubicki The right of Adriana Mica, Anna Horolets, Mikołaj Pawlak and Paweł Kubicki to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in- Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in- Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978 - 0 - 8153- 8069- 6 (hbk) ISBN: 978 -1-351-21259-5 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by codeMantra

In the memory of our friend and colleague, most unconventional, ironic and warm person, Arek Peisert (1978 –2019)

Contents

List of figures List of tables Acknowledgements Funding

xi xiii xv xix

1

Introduction

2

Ignorance: unexpected events and crises

17

3

Change in the regimes of ignorance

37

4

Crisis and ignorance

64

5

The European refugee crisis and the ignorance of framing

106

6

Projecting the European refugee crisis: Polish, Hungarian, and Romanian media

141

From categories to seeing like public policy: ignorance and change in Poland, Hungary, and Romania

185

Conclusions

227

Index

241

7 8

1

Figures

2.1 2.2 3.1 8.1

Ignorance and surprises, unexpected events, and crises Ignorance studies in relation to surprises, unexpected events, and crises Interactional model of change of ignorance in the context of unexpected events and crises Distribution of opportunities/roles in the general process of change of ignorance

23 24 56 232

Tables

3.1 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8

The house of the unknown, developed by Gross (2010, p. 71) The 2015–2016 European refugee crisis: multidimensional and multifaceted Common European Asylum System (CEAS): timeline (per Wagner et al., 2016, p. 19) Asylum and first-time asylum applicants by citizenship, age, and sex. Annual aggregated data (rounded) Results of the relocation programme by country of destination in October 2017 Contestation and ignorance-related effects in the academic research Ignorance-related effects of interaction between ignorance and framing in the media Use of metaphors in the media Ignorance-related effects of interaction between ignorance and legitimation/pre-legitimation in the media Ignorance-related effects of interaction between ignorance and policy framing in public policy Ignorance-related effects of interaction between ignorance and learning in public policy Politicization and mediatization in the Polish, Hungarian, and Romanian media Interactional multilevel analysis of ignorance and projection in the Polish, Hungarian, and Romanian media The refugee projective agency The projective agency aimed at the refugee agency The refugee projective agency aimed at Poland, Hungary, and Romania The projective agency of Poland, Hungary, and Romania aimed at the refugee agency The relocation projective agency The projective agency aimed at the relocation plan

41 66 69 70 75 88 114 116 120 127 133 147 149 156 159 165 168 171 173

xiv Tables

6.9

The relocation projective agency aimed at Poland, Hungary, and Romania 6.10 The projective agency of Poland, Hungary, and Romania aimed at the relocation plan 7.1 Ignorance-related effects of interaction between ignorance and various forms of knowledge 7.2 Mechanisms of projection in the media 7.3 Projections, futures, and asylum policy in Poland, Hungary, and Romania 7.4 Elaboration of projections in the asylum policy field in Poland, Hungary, and Romania 7.5 Ignorance change in the asylum policy field in Poland, Hungary, and Romania

175 177 188 193 203 204 221

Acknowledgements

A book that puts the European refugee crisis of 2015–2016 in the perspective of ignorance studies can immediately be suspected of displaying some flaws going back to two original sins in social sciences. Hubris (Elster, 2011, p. 168), the analytical overconfidence and arrogance of external observers, or researchers in general, on the one hand. And, to paraphrase Hirschman (1968, p. 117), the visiting-researcher syndrome, the ambition to heal and advise on unfamiliar realities upon short encounters, on the other hand. As for the first potential flaw, in our case, this manifests in usurping the right and self-styled ability to establish the limits of knowledge in society, as well as to point where and when the social actors recourse to ignorance. Meanwhile, the second flaw is primarily ethical. The refugee crisis, as any crisis, is a site of prolific academic production that attracts researchers with the significant organizational and financial resources being offered to study it. Studying crisis thus may be suspected as becoming a fashion, and a superficial one at that. The research on the European refugee crisis has already become a subject of such criticism. Cabot (2019), for instance, suggests that there was a business dimension of anthropological work in the asylum field, which, in the long run, contributes to the reproduction of the unjust refugee regime. Earlier on, and in relation to other crisis-related contexts, this criticism was powerfully voiced by Hirschman (1968; Bianchi, 2011) who coined the notion of visiting-economist syndrome to ethically and epistemologically problematize the research on Latin America and other “underdeveloped” regions. The challenge of writing this book, for us, was thus to do it in a manner that acknowledges and critically addresses the issues of academic hubris, visiting-scholar syndrome, and pragmatic incentives for fashions in research. We are far from declaring that we fully succeeded at this task. Yet we undertook conscious effort to at least partially smooth these potential flaws and not allow them to turn into cracks. For one, the academic hubris has been tamed by close cooperation in our team that has brought together backgrounds in sociology of ignorance, sociology of public policy change, discourse analysis, and anthropology and sociology of migration. Each of us, confronted with the knowledge and field experience of the other members,

xvi Acknowledgements

gained a degree of humility. At the same time, the visiting-scholar syndrome was tamed by our collaborative effort that involved the rootedness of each of us in their respective fields (forced migration, Europeanization, orientalism, public policy research, and crises and unexpected events analysis). We did our best to carry out research dialogically, taking seriously the region we study and relying on the expertise of people who know it well: Bálint Dóra, Márk Kékesi, Cosmina Paul, Bogdan Radu, and Barbara Tołłoczko, who did a significant part of the fieldwork. They not only assisted us with collecting and eliciting the data analyzed in this book but also generously shared with us the interpretative cues stemming from fieldwork and brainstormed the potential lines of analysis. We also benefitted greatly in terms of empirical insights as well as critical reflexivity from the participants in the Hungarian, Polish, and Romanian asylum policy fields. These experts of long standing who agreed to be interviewed in the course of our research provided us with their understanding of the policy responses to the refugee crisis in the three countries. More broadly, in this book, we tried to promote a study of ignorance that is inclusive and receptive to the specifics of the asylum policy field. We sought to develop cumulative knowledge about the European refugee crisis, doing justice to the previous research devoted to it, and having exploited not only the reflexive work on the ethical dilemmas the scholars are confronted with, but also the research that has been done on Polish, Hungarian, and Romanian involvement in the crisis. We thus acknowledge our gratitude to the researchers who worked in the field before us and with us, and who uncovered and challenged the logic of ignorance long before we did. We also would like to thank here Marta Olcoń-Kubicka ­ for her valuable contributions to the early-stage development of our project – her expertise in qualitative methodology having proved to be of an enormous help. This book grew out of the research project “Managing the European Refugee Crisis When There Is Lack of Consensus: Emergence of Strategies in Poland, Hungary and Romania” (DEC-2015/19/B/HS6/00080) funded by the grant of the National Science Center (Narodowe Centrum Nauki). We are indebted to the anonymous reviewers. They not only saw the potential of the project but were its first critics pointing to its inherent limitations and conceptual traps. The comments we received allowed us to refine its analytical framework and to be more aware of its normative dimension. Further, the serendipitous moments of collaborative work with the data were invaluable in drafting a manuscript proposal for the Routledge Research in Ignorance Studies series. The proposal has been positively received, and the constructive criticism of the Routledge anonymous reviewers allowed us to further refine the prospective book’s outline. The inclusion of the manuscript in the book series not only fulfilled our ambitions but also provided us with supreme intellectual support and advice from the editors of this brilliant series: Matthias Gross, Linsey McGoey, and Michael Smithson.

Acknowledgements xvii

The support for this project also came from the staff involved in the administrative project management. We are particularly indebted to Małgorzata Bojarska and Anna Mazurek who made it easier for us to navigate through academic bureaucracy. Our employers (the University of Warsaw in the case of Adriana, Anna, and Mikołaj, and the Warsaw School of Economics in the case of Paweł) provided us with work conditions and further support that allowed us to finalize this book. Our exploration of the change of ignorance was also highly dependent on our being part of the academic community. The sharing of ideas and commenting on the work of others rarely gets formal acknowledgement, while it is hard to imagine any research endeavour without the free exchange of ideas. We thus wanted to acknowledge with deep appreciation and gratitude all the occasions when we presented our work and received insightful comments and criticism, either during the formal sessions or informal conversations in the breaks: from internal discussions at our institutions, through seminars and workshops to conferences and congresses. Our work in progress was presented and received feedback at various seminars and workshops (for a full list of the conference and seminar presentations, see University of Warsaw, 2020). This made it possible to engage with the expertise associated with: Colorni-Hirshman International Institute, Centre of Migration Research at the University of Warsaw; Committee on Migration Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences; Department of Political Science at the University of Naples Federico II; Dutch Association for Migration Research; European Sociological Association; Max Planck Partner Group in Warsaw; Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford; Romanian Center for Comparative Migration Studies in Cluj-Napoca; Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE); and Workshops on New Institutionalism. It is not possible to list all the people with whom we discussed our work, but we would like to thank the following colleagues who provided us with advice or constructive critique: Jens Beckert, Jacqueline Best, Ciprian Bogdan, Saskia Bonjour, Toma Burean, Jeff Crisp, Anatolie Coșciug, Adrian Dohotaru, Gili Drori, Issy Drori, Adam Dudkiewicz, Agnieszka Dudzińska, Damon Golsorkhi, Felipe González, Ilene Grabel, Gary Herrigel, Iwona Jakubowska-Branicka, Paweł Kaczmarczyk, Marta Kindler, Michał Kotnarowski, András Kováts, György Lengyel, Michael Lounsbury, Sławomir Łodziński, Renate E. Meyer, Ann Mische, Michał Mizak, Jakub Motrenko, Krzysztof Niedziałkowski, Jocelyn Pixley, Wawrzyniec Potocki, Dorota Rancew-Sikora, Irena Rzeplińska, Lorenzo Sabetta, Marcin Serafin, Sabina Siebert, Nicoletta Stame, Akos Rona-Tas, Paola de Vivo, Peter Walgenbach, and Katarzyna Wyrzykowska. The help and expertise from people came also in the form of institutionalized collections of articles and books made available through libraries and search engines that try to render access to knowledge more egalitarian and

xviii Acknowledgements

a universal basis for emancipation. The writing of this book materialized for us in encounters and actual writing on the premises of such great collections as Warsaw University Library, network of the University of Ottawa Library, and Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford. During the work on the preparation of the manuscript for publication, the editors at Routledge, Emily Briggs and Lakshita Joshi, were of great help which cannot be underestimated. Michael Landry helped us with polishing the English of this volume. Emily, Lakshita, and Michael not only supported us in their professional capacity but also showed reassurance for our uncertainties and patience with inevitable delays. Without the oversight of these three editors, the book would have been less formally and stylistically coherent.

References Bianchi, A. M. (2011) ‘Visiting-Economists through Hirschman’s Eyes’, The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 18, 217–242. Cabot, H. (2019) ‘The Business of Anthropology and the European Refugee Regime, American Ethnologist, 46, 261–275. Elster, J. (2011) ‘Hard and Soft Obscurantism in the Humanities and Social Sciences’, Diogenes, 58, 159–170. Hirschman, A. O. (1968) Journeys toward Progress, New York, Greenwood Press. University of Warsaw (2020) ‘Results/Conferences and Seminars’, http://refugeecrisis.uw.edu.pl/results // Managing the European Refugee Crisis.

Funding

The research and publishing of this book was undertaken as part of the project “Zarządzanie europejskim kryzysem uchodźców w sytuacji braku konsensusu. Pojawienie się strategii w Polsce, na Węgrzech i w Rumunii” [Managing the European Refugee Crisis When There Is Lack of Consensus: Emergence of Strategies in Poland, Hungary and Romania] (DEC-2015/19/B/ HS6/00080), supported by National Science Center, Poland.

Chapter 1

Introduction

What does it mean today that unexpected events and crises are opportunities for change in the current “regimes of ignorance” (Dilley and Kirsch, 2015)? How does ignorance change in the context of proliferating unexpected events and crises? And why do recent crises fail to bring about meaningful change with regard to ignorance, and why do they instead enhance the mechanisms of strategic and epistemic ignorance? With this book we contribute to the study of change of ignorance by drawing attention to forms of projective knowledge that are triggered in the context of unexpected events and crises. We discuss the manner in which projections, expectations, and political and cultural imaginaries that are concerned with how crises and change are supposed to unfold impact on ignorance. We show how ignorance is intrinsically entangled with these forms of knowledge because it facilitates the projection of possible futures. At the same time the projection and anticipation of how the crises should unfold allow for the politics of ignorance to evolve. Nowhere are these “projective” (Mische, 2009, 2014) and “anticipatory forms of knowledge” (Mallard and McGoey, 2018) more visible than in the European refugee crisis. The future scenarios of its development simultaneously casted the projections and expectations of what changes in the asylum policy are possible, preferable, and permissible to be brought into existence. We document these processes by employing an interactional approach. We focus on the interaction between projection and ignorance in Hungary, Poland, and Romania. This allows us to see how the dynamics of the processes in these countries are caught between the European refugee crisis as an EU phenomenon, on the one hand, and the stakes of domestic politics and attempts of autonomization, on the other hand. In this book, we engage in a conversation with the proliferating ignorance studies (Gross and McGoey, 2015a) by advancing the point that we should focus on what ignorance does rather than on what ignorance is. So far, ignorance studies have made an impressive impact in terms of categorizing types of ignorance and building taxonomies. We contribute to this line of study by proposing to move to the next phase: the analysis of the interaction

2 Introduction

between ignorance and related forms of knowledge, projection in particular. The change of ignorance is not a story about ignorance solely but one about the interaction between ignorance and processes such as projection, expectation, and contestation. The study of change of ignorance thus entails us looking into how the forms of projective, anticipatory, and contestatory knowledge are involved in this process of change. We show that projection and ignorance interact in the context of contemporary crises. Such events translate into moments of elaboration of projections and of reification of new futures. In the context of unexpected events and crises, certain projections are institutionalized, while others are silenced, ignored, and marginalized. Let us start with the first question we addressed at the beginning of our work: What does it mean today that the unexpected events and crises are an opportunity for change in the current regimes of ignorance? Ignorance emerges as a decisive component of contemporary unexpected events and crises. Much is heard today about tensions that come out of the shadows or about problems and crises that were not initially recognized as pressing but which now cannot be ignored any longer. Consider the following examples: growing income inequality, critical issues in global health, climate change, migrant crises, challenges posed by shifts in the ethical valuation of humananimal relations, clashes between religious and secular worldviews, the rise of surveillance technologies, and the securitization of the state. All these illustrations indicate that the inability to block, mute, or ignore long-term social problems that were not solved effectively, or which are unsolvable, is more than rhetoric accompanying the risk and uncertainty in society. Actors (individual and organizational) are increasingly facing situations when they have to urgently deal with intractable problems that became pressing and cannot be ignored any longer. Still, if there is anything encouraging about the unexpected events or crises of contemporary society, it is the fact that these are opportunities for change. The unexpected events and crises occur as sequences of revelation of ignorance and acknowledging the unknown (Gross, 2010, p. 149). They open a window of opportunity (Kingdon, 2010) to trigger change in terms of producing new evidence, learning, awareness raising, and even advancing policy change. The assumption of unexpected events and crises as being partially caused by change as well as functioning as a window of opportunity to bring change in regimes of ignorance is quite prevalent. It is also something that the currently flourishing ignorance studies are well aware of, and take analytical pride in making explicit, either in the direction of indicating that such an encounter with ignorance takes place and change can be effected or towards indicating that a change of ignorance, although warranted and possibly haven taken place, did not actually materialize after all. Now we move on to the second question: How does ignorance change in the context of proliferating unexpected events and crises? The problems that cannot be ignored any longer are rarely those that social actors had been

Introduction 3

ignoring outright. Rather, they are issues that are complex and long-term but had been approached in a technocratic manner and tended to stay out of the spotlight for a considerable time. They were not publicly debated, but certain actors knew quite a lot about them. When some events start causing problems and eventually come out of the shadows, the possibility opens for moving beyond purely technocratic management and for promoting new solutions. At the same time, alongside acknowledging the opening up of the opportunities for change, ignorance studies recurrently point at instances of reproduction of ignorance in the aftermath of unexpected events and crises, especially in its strategic and epistemic dimensions. As evidenced by McGoey (2007, 2010), Davies and McGoey (2012), Mallard and McGoey (2018), ignorance facilitates the process by which, in the context of major failures or crises, the institutional conditions that led to failure in the first place are likely to be reproduced. Recent events such as the global financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the refugee crisis of 2015–2016 have both been linked with such instances of reproduction of ignorance (see Davies and McGoey, 2012; Horolets et al., 2020). The financial crisis, for instance, revealed forms of ignorance in how the experts interpreted economic phenomena and related to these paradigms. The change of ignorance for these experts, the relevant literature indicates, took the form of acknowledging the need to move to new theoretical models. Yet several observers indicated critically, neglect on the part of economists of the dysfunctions and inner tensions in their performative models and the flaws in their manner of applying knowledge remained unchallenged. In the language of ignorance studies, the strategic and epistemic facets of ignorance persisted. In a similar vein, the more recent European refugee crisis was linked to the overflow of vulnerabilities of the European Union asylum system. Still, several observers made the point, even though the fragility of the common asylum policy could not be ignored any longer as a result of the crisis, the ignorance of the important aspects of the refugee problem (human rights violations by some of the asylum policies, etc.) seems to reproduce, though in another form and with other issues at stake. This leads us to the third question: Why do the contemporary crises fail to trigger meaningful change in the regimes of ignorance while enhancing the mechanisms of strategic and epistemic ignorance? Due to the rupture, incoherence, and temporary chaos they produce, unexpected events and crises are almost naturally considered as opportunities for change. Such framing creates expectations that a radical and visible reconfiguration of the social world and power relations will surface in the context of contemporary crises. The change is expected not only to be big but also quite meaningful, radical, and quick. Such projections and expectations of change create an atmosphere in which in spite of, or perhaps due to the prospective enthusiasm and impatience with said change, the dynamics of transformation in all its complexity

4 Introduction

(Scholten, 2020) might be missed, or when what is perceived is mainly continuity (Grabel, 2018). In other words, we find ourselves in the context emblematically depicted by Hirschman (1971, p. 330; see Grabel, 2018, p. 42) as having a “special difficulty and reluctance to concede change except when it simply can no longer be denied.” In this book, we deepen the understanding of the contemporary manifestations of this tendency by underlining how they are related to the projections and expectations of change that are nurtured by defining any event as surprising, unexpected, or critical.

Scope of the book 1

The view of unexpected events and crises as windows of opportunity for change in the regimes of ignorance is a quite prevalent one, with undeniable potential for emancipation of social actors, which gives value to critical thinking. In this book, our aim is not as much to deconstruct this linkage but to take it under discussion, and indicate phenomena taking place in the social sciences in relation to the manner in which we perceive unexpected events and crises. To give one example, in ignorance studies, the window of opportunity standpoint is influenced by the close connection between the study of ignorance and unexpected events and crises. The latter constitute an essential component of contemporary ignorance research, which to a considerable extent is empirically built on surprises and disruptive occurrences. These, we underline, are different from risks and unintended consequences typically taken as empirical cases by earlier paradigms in social sciences, for instance. The fact that ignorance studies speak about the unexpected (Portes, 2000), and not about the unintended (Mica, 2018) or risk society (Beck, 1992, 1999), confers this field certain privileges. Ignorance, surely, is rendered more visible. One sees more clearly how the encounter with and realization of ignorance subsequent to unexpected events or crises unfolds. At the same time, the focus on unexpected events and crises renders ignorance studies subject to certain vulnerabilities. One of the aims of this book is to make more explicit that there is a kind of symbiosis between ignorance studies and the research sites this field embraces because of the so-called revelation of ignorance often discussed in such studies. We live today in a society of unexpected events and crises, rather than one of unintended consequences and risks. This plays well with the analytical and research needs of ignorance studies because it opens a venue wherein a variety of mechanisms of ignorance are revealed and highlighted in all their splendour. Ignorance is being discovered, confronted and ultimately transformed. This relation and the analytical ramifications that it inevitably involves, we argue, should be articulated in ignorance studies more explicitly.

Introduction 5

2

Another constitutive part of our argument is that the concept of the window of opportunity for change in the context of unexpected events and crises should be described more precisely in relation to ignorance. Besides creating certain projections and expectations of change, the formulation of a window of opportunity manifests distinctly in particular fields of knowledge production. To put it simply, it appears as if the window of opportunity is tantamount to a distribution of roles in the process of change. The media, for instance, are more frequently linked with the opportunity to raise awareness. Public policy – with the opportunity for policy change. Politics – with the opportunity for new agenda setting. Academic research – with the opportunity to produce new and critical knowledge. We suggest that the problem of change of ignorance should be sensitive to the differentiation in the distribution of opportunities across the fields of knowledge production. The overall change of ignorance materializes slower or faster depending on how these opportunities are framed, invested in, and supported with resources. The forms of knowledge elicited by the unexpected events and crises vary, too. Academic research, for instance, is expected to produce new evidence as well as contestation and critical thinking. Media, in their turn, are supposed to engage in framing and produce forms of legitimization for the narrative coming from the field of politics, while public policy is thought of as a source of policy framing and is expected to be involved in policy learning. These forms of knowledge allow the overall change of ignorance to emerge. At the same time, they set the change of ignorance on a certain treadmill, so to speak, and create certain projections and expectations in this regard. As a formula, opportunity for change is concerned not only with the potential for change but also with the forms of projective knowledge that emerge in relation to it. The forms of projective and anticipatory knowledge are triggered by the very nature of the unexpected events and crises, in the context of which the revelation of ignorance occurs. They have a performative and agentic potential in the sense of opening windows of opportunity to produce new evidence, to raise awareness, and to bring policy change in relation to learning and similar areas. Simultaneously, they provoke a certain impatience and contestation of the change which actually occurs. These forms of projective and anticipatory knowledge are simply too big, too ambitious, too impatient about change, and too ready to dismiss it. Various authors are currently working on developing an analytical framework for exploring this phenomenon of the tendency to dismiss change in the context of unexpected events and crises. Taleb (2007), for instance, opens up our eyes to the phenomenon of the black swans

6 Introduction

3

which are retrospectively believed to be anticipatable. Grabel (2018) discusses the continuity thesis in relation with the global economic crisis of 2007–2008. Best (2019a, 2019b) explores so-called unfailures, or quiet ­failures – that is, failures that seemed to be big, large scale, and meaningful but which eventually may disappoint their observers. Finally, Scholten (2020) considers public policy that has the tendency to derail and which is quickly contested in terms of the reactions it triggers. All these authors observe the same phenomenon of dismissal of change. Their work is ground-breaking and it presupposes analytical intuitions embedded in distinct theoretical disciplines. Our aim is to articulate in a more theoretically consistent manner that this observed tendency of dismissal of change occurs in relation to projective and anticipatory forms of knowledge that are triggered in the context of unexpected events and crises. This leads us to the last point concerning the scope of this book: the advancement of an interactional approach to the problem of ignorance change. We aim to advocate the need for a serious discussion about the projections, expectations, and contestations of change, and we hope to showcase this need by addressing the issue of the change of ignorance. Our approach will help to shed new light on the production and reproduction of ignorance. We will approach this not by filtering ignorance from the projections and biases accompanying these processes though but by treating the projections and biases as an integral part of change and by including them in the analysis. A change of ignorance, we argue, is not a story about ignorance undergoing change or not. It is rather a story about the interaction between ignorance and other forms of knowledge – projection, expectation, and contestation of change included. Instead of dealing with the problem of (meaningful) change by diminishing these forms, or separating ignorance from them, we propose embracing and including them in the analysis.

The interactional approach to the problem of ignorance may take varied forms. Within the framework of this book, we begin by exploring mainly the ignorance-related effects of the interaction between ignorance and forms of knowledge such as projection but also contestation, framing, legitimation/ pre-legitimation, and learning. We probe this interactional approach in relation to academic research, the media and public policy in the context of the European refugee crisis in Poland, Hungary, and Romania. Yet it must be emphasized that the interactional approach may move beyond the focus on ignorance per se. As we show in relation to projection, we are able to advance analytical and genealogical varieties of the interactional approach by focusing on the mechanisms of projection and the elaboration of new projections in the context of the crisis, as well as on the role of ignorance in these processes. The genealogical-cum-interactional approach in particular allows for the understanding that one of the main modalities in which

Introduction 7

ignorance changes in the context of the crises is by elaboration of new projections and the reification of new futures. This genealogical approach also has the great analytical advantage of bridging exploration of the future and the elaboration of possible futures (the projective dimension of agency), as illustrated by the pioneering work of Emirbayer and Mische (1998) and Mische (2009, 2014), with the currently proliferating ignorance studies, also in relation with migration (Boswell and Badenhoop, 2020). On the theoretical side, the interaction between ignorance and forms of projective and anticipatory knowledge means that in order to understand the change of ignorance, we have to zoom out from it. On the practical side, the interaction entails that if we want to change our ignorance – the way we think and talk about things – we have to change our future.

The European refugee crisis of 2015 –2016 In this book, we treat the European refugee crisis as a venue that allows one to explore the problem of change of ignorance both theoretically and empirically (see Kubicki et al., 2017; Horolets et al., 2020). We rely on a wide scope of research material that includes media discourse, interviews with participants in the asylum policy field and experts who were at the front-line of decision-making, research, and action during the crisis, as well as notes from study visits at several sites where the refugees were held or expected to stay. We study the change of ignorance by taking into account forms of projection, expectation, and contestation in a tumultuous context – the refugee crisis in general, and its materialization in Poland, Hungary, and Romania in particular. The refugee crisis of 2015–2016 pointed to several problems inherent in the European asylum system that could not be ignored any longer: the exhausted capacity of countries like Italy, Greece, or Malta to absorb the large numbers of arriving asylum seekers; the difficulty of sustaining the shared responsibility for asylum applicants across the EU according to the Dublin regulation; the transformation of Central Eastern European societies into immigration countries; the increasing demand for public debate on asylum policies; and the desperation and suffering of refugees undertaking their journey towards Europe.1 Although the refugees were fleeing through the Mediterranean Sea to Malta, Italy, and Greece for several years already, the problem was mostly ignored by the public before the crisis. Interested Member States and the EU were trying to manage the movement of the refugees by changing – mainly incrementally – the Common European Asylum System. The crisis indicated that the vulnerabilities and contradictions of the common EU asylum policy require that this policy be fundamentally re-thought, and that radical action be taken to change it. The study of the European refugee crisis in relation to general as well as more particular aspects and modalities of change in the regimes of ignorance

8 Introduction

is instructive. From the very beginning, this event was both interpreted in terms of knowledge and was associated with distinct assumptions of ignorance. The responsible social actors were called to formulate responses and they started to implement strategies for managing the crisis that were visible to European publics. Rather soon, though, they were reproached for not addressing the issue in all its complexity or for irremediably failing in their endeavour. The crisis opened the opportunity to influence change on several planes. It provoked the European institutions to come up with various solutions that materialized, for instance, in the introduction of mechanisms such as the relocation scheme and the hotspot approach. These responses, however, are oftentimes criticized for resting on the same assumptions that framed the refugee policy prior to the crisis. The manner in which the EU dealt with the crisis is considered to have been built on the premises of the initial asylum system, specifically, on the principle of the first country of entry outlined in the Dublin regulation. In terms of change of ignorance, the reform of the common asylum system in the EU appears to have been attempted in a manner that reproduced the initial (problematic) way of coping with the issue of increased mobility and movement of refugees. It also reproduced the ignorance concerning some of the essential problems that rendered the system dysfunctional and vulnerable over the years. If we stopped at this point, the European refugee crisis would appear to reproduce the continuity thesis that we have earlier presented as a typical narrative about change in the context of crises. Yet, we aim to make the point, we should try to make sense about this continuity by going beyond it. The strategies that the EU came up with seem to have led to the persistence of ignorance as discussed in the relevant literature. Yet the tendency to reproduce this ignorance notwithstanding, various acts of resistance and disagreement also took place. These led to challenges against the EU solutions, the raising of awareness regarding some of the initial vulnerabilities, and the visibility of instances of lack of unity and solidarity in the EU. For instance, the issue of refugees ceased to be ignored in Central and Eastern European societies, where a significant share of the population started to openly express anti-refugee sentiments. These changes ruled out the option of hiding the crisis behind public ignorance and made it harder to reach common EU agreement on how to manage the emergency. The more or less open resistance of the Member States from Central and Eastern Europe to the relocation scheme also called into question the regime of ignorance that supported the development of the asylum policy prior to the crisis. There are various aspects of the refugee crisis that make it appealing for the study of interaction between ignorance and various forms of knowledge. When reconstructing the position of Poland, Hungary, and Romania, for instance, we stumbled on the strong presence of the future in the media coverage of what was going on in Europe and in these three countries in particular. To our surprise, we learned much more

Introduction 9

about the future of the crisis, and what the journey of the refugees will entail for the European countries than about the present and the past of the asylum system, or about the war-migration nexus. More importantly, the future portrayed in the media often took conditional, imperative, or reified forms, which made it appear more factual than it actually was. Such stumbling on the future was a serendipitous moment when we realized that the “projective grammar” – to employ Mische’s (2014) term – could have an influence on the perceptions of the crisis and be consequential to the dynamics of the change of ignorance that constitutes the primary focus of this book.

Venues for further exploration The study of the ignorance-related processes in the context of the European refugee crisis allows us to formulate some theoretical proposals for advancing the ignorance studies in the following three areas. 1

2

With regard to the problem of change in the context of unexpected events and crises, we aim to give a further boost to the inclusion of the projections and expectations regarding the dynamics of change in the analysis. Importantly, these forms of projective and anticipatory knowledge are produced not only by rank and file social actors, so to speak, but by social scientists also. We thereby increase the self-reflexivity of our field by including the vulnerability of social research that is due to the specifics of research sites into the theoretical model of the study of change in the regimes of ignorance. We are thus analytically confronted with our own predicaments. With regard to ignorance studies, we aim to balance the existing analytical asymmetry by showing that the research of ignorance should be less focused on what ignorance is, and on whether it changes. Instead, we propose concentrating on what ignorance does, and how it interacts with other processes. Steps in this direction have already been taken in ignorance studies. Gross’s (2010) work on ignorance and surprise is probably the most illustrative case in this regard. Gross points to the inflation of taxonomies and definitions of ignorance and the need for a more integrative approach. Following his lead, we suggest further that instead of zooming in on ignorance, we should zoom out. We should see how ignorance interacts with other processes, and the anticipatory forms of knowledge in particular. The focus on the anticipatory forms of knowledge in our book has a double meaning. On the one hand, it is brought about by the empirical cases we have studied that confronted us with the significance of anticipatory forms of knowledge in the public discourse during the refugee crisis. Our interest in interaction is thus a way of following our intuitions and discovery of the future that we encountered at the very

10 Introduction

3

beginning of our study of change of ignorance in the context of the refugee crisis. On the other hand, our aim is to bring back the interest in the forms of knowledge into the study of ignorance. As matters currently stand, the meaning of ignorance is undergoing a shift from lack of knowledge to resource for action (Davies and McGoey, 2012; Gross and McGoey, 2015b). Although warranted and analytically quite prolific, this shift may also result in downplaying the role of knowledge, missing out on the relation between ignorance and various forms of knowledge, and obscuring the fact that ignorance may act as a tool for producing knowledge to begin with. The interactional approach we propose aims to render this relation evident, and infuse its exploration with analytical value. It is noteworthy that this interactional approach should not be taken to mean just another theory that is dedicated to highlight ignorance as such. As we will see, the breach of the analysis of ignorance is quite broad and comprehensive already. Nevertheless, we wish to make the point, we may still be interested in the emergence and dynamics of ignorance-related effects, in the articulation of forms of knowledge, or in the elaboration of new projections, expectations, and contestations in the society. All three types of study are interactional and speak directly about ignorance as long as we keep track of the manner in which ignorance advances and facilitates the unfolding of the forms of knowledge. We do not necessarily have to single out ignorance in order to research it. As far as the research of the European refugee crisis is concerned, our aim is to underline that the processes constitutive of the crisis are linked with the issue of production and reproduction of ignorance. This is not to say that the refugee studies have been blind to ignorance-related issues. Quite the opposite: there is a significant amount of academic and policy research that can be read as analysis of ignorance. While not always labelled as ignorance studies, the analytical exercise is there. This notwithstanding, we see the need to formalize this interest in the research on the refugee crisis as a way of establishing a dialogue between refugee studies (or more broadly migration studies) and ignorance studies. Such dialogue, we suggest, would serve the theoretical advancement of both fields.

The analytical part aside, there is a more normative tone that the study of ignorance usually entails and which in the case of the European refugee crisis has an exceptionally strong justification. This part has been recurrently underlined in the studies of the refugee crisis which speak, more or less straightforwardly, about ignorance. By adding the issue of how the refugee crisis is projected we wish to indicate an additional aspect of the reproduction of power relations in society. Power is not only about knowledge production and employment of ignorance but also about a hopeful and desperate

Introduction 11

pursuit of the future, its coordination and reification. This is exactly what the mechanisms of projection do. They allow one to gain and reproduce power via exercising the capacity of predicting the future and performatively impacting how the future will look. Beyond this, the power is reproduced through more subtle categorizations. On the one hand, there are those who aspire towards a certain future, chase this future, and project their way towards bringing it into existence. On the other, there are those who are in a position to demarcate the boundaries of what is possible with respect to this future and decide how much of it will be allowed to materialize. The European refugee crisis of 2015–2016 illustrates these complex dynamics all too well, and reveals the human tragedies underlying them. The mechanisms of projection interact with ignorance and produce ignorancerelated as well as power asymmetry-related effects. The crisis functions as both a break and an accelerator for projective agencies at the same time, and there is an inherent element of ignorance to it. The discussion of the manner in which projectivity, ignorance, and the reproduction/erosion of power interact in society is very complex. This pertains not only to individuals or institutions but also to the countries engaged in the refugee crisis. The subject matter and mechanisms of the projections that are elaborated, as well as the scope and role of ignorance during the refugee crisis has been contingent on the position in power configurations of the European countries. This was especially visible in the standpoints and actions undertaken by the new Member States, the “weak regulators of EU asylum policy” (Zaun, 2018), during the crisis. The projection and ignorance mechanisms manifest in these countries differently than in the case of the “strong regulators” of the EU, so to say. At the same time, there are also visible distinctions among the three countries we have selected for this study: Poland, Hungary, and Romania. All three of them are new EU Member States (Hungary and Poland joined the EU in 2004, and Romania in 2007), but despite many similarities between them, there are also differences that gain additional relevance in the context of this crisis. To begin with, Poland was never directly affected nor supposed to be affected by the refugee crisis. The only relation of this country to the crisis was through the relocation scheme. Hungary, in comparison, was on the route of the refugees going from Greece to Germany, and many of them passed through the country. Romania, like Poland, was not actually affected. Though there were some projections that the so-called Black Sea route was supposed to direct the movement of refugees from Turkey to the EU through Romania. Yet this scenario never happened, and Romania was only perceived as a potential country on the route. Here we arrive at the second key difference allowing us to make comparisons between the three states: how the future was projected in each of them. In Poland, the future that was initially projected was that the country would act in accordance with the relocation scheme drafted and designed by

12 Introduction

the EU. Soon, however, the topic became one of the key issues in the parliamentary election campaign and this led to increased politicization. As the new government that was formed relied mainly on politicians who strongly opposed the relocation scheme, a reformulation of the envisaged future was inevitable. In Hungary, then again, the future in terms of refusal to take part in the relocation scheme was elaborated very quickly and clearly, and there was no vacillation on the issue. Meanwhile, in Romania, as in Poland, there was a certain swing but in the opposite direction. Despite an initial episode of resistance, the Romanian government rather quickly agreed to the relocation scheme and the projected future was about the arrival of asylum seekers which required waiting and preparing. The three countries thus vary significantly in terms of the futures they elaborate in relation to the refugee crisis, as well as their positions towards EU asylum policy and its potential change. These differences allow us to analyze the interaction between these projective agencies and the effects thereof.

Structure of the book We develop our argument in six steps. Two chapters are mainly theoretical in nature, two are comprised of a meta-analysis of the existing empirical research findings, while the remaining two are devoted to a first-hand empirical analysis of the media coverage and asylum policy field in Poland, Hungary, and Romania. In the part devoted to theory, we make two main arguments. We begin with the presentation of the currently proliferating ignorance studies. We discuss the main lines of development and semantic shifts with regard to ignorance that these have brought (Chapter 2). We show that ignorance studies have been particularly active, though perhaps too much concentrated on how to define ignorance, which came at the expense of theorization of the characteristics of the research sites favoured in the exploration of ignorance. With the implicit effect that although the linkage between the revelation of ignorance and the unexpected events and crises is acknowledged, the ignorance studies do not yet critically reflect on the manner in which the unexpected nature of their research site impacts on how these depict ignorance. The unexpected is acknowledged and taken into the analysis – as we show in the assumptions held in the field that we identify. However, the ignorance studies have not yet developed a critical perspective on the unexpected, or on how the unexpected induces in ignorance studies certain projections and expectations regarding its object of study. In the following section, we are preoccupied with the problem of how change in the regimes of ignorance occurs in the context of unexpected events and crises in the form of opportunity (Chapter 3). We take this positive myth

Introduction 13

of change at face value and embark on trying to understand how this manifests in various findings in ignorance studies. We make sense of the differentiated picture and logic of interpretation especially in relation to the global economic crisis of 2007–2008. We show that in ignorance studies the dominant idea is that the opportunity for change in the context of the unexpected manifests first and foremost with regard to learning, there being less concrete transformation of ignorance, especially on the strategic and epistemic side. This inspires us to connect ignorance studies with recent discussions regarding the problem of dismissal of change and contestation of responses given to various episodes of crisis, and the voicing of doubts as to whether these were, indeed, unexpected to begin with. This provides an ideal ramp for us to launch our idea of studying change of ignorance in relation to these projective and anticipatory forms of knowledge. The aim is not to raise awareness and minimalize the effect of these projections, expectations, and contestations but to include these in the analysis in the form of an interactional approach. In the part of the book devoted to meta-analysis, we explore the existing findings in the relevant literature on the European refugee crisis of 2015–2016 in relation to forms of knowledge and ignorance in three distinct fields  – academic research, media, and public policy. We start from exploring the refugee crisis as an opportunity for change in the global asylum system (Chapter 4). We come across a surprising tendency for public opinion and even researchers to contest the refugee crisis, a phenomenon that emerges earlier than the responses to the crisis, which would not have had time to materialize and manifest. We show the forms this contestation takes and indicate the ways in which these instances do not only challenge ignorance but actually contribute to ignorance themselves, or are ineffective against the proliferation of ignorance. We proceed with the meta-analysis by exploring how existing research addressed the forms of knowledge connected with media and public policy in the context of the European refugee crisis (Chapter 5). The pattern that emerges points at notable difference between these two fields as far as forms of knowledge are concerned. The role ascribed to each (raising awareness vs. policy learning) projects the potential agency of the media and public policy in changing the regimes of ignorance. The meta-analysis allows us to apply an interactional analysis and to abstract ignorance-related effects of the interaction and feedback between ignorance and the identified forms of knowledge in the media and public policy. The ignorance-related effects we observe group themselves according to levels of manifestation that correspond to the categories we observed in the case of the forms of contestation in the academic research: cognitive, epistemic, and strategic, plus an additional incentivized layer in the case of public policy. The levels of manifestation of ignorance-related effects are not only correspondent with one another, allowing for comparative discussions of these effects, but also

14 Introduction

resonate with the interest drawn forth in the studies in strategic, manifest, and incentivized forms of ignorance. In the final part of the book, we turn to the first-hand analysis of the media and public policy in Poland, Hungary, and Romania in order describe and interpret the mechanisms of ignorance in relation to the projection of the refugee crisis in the new Member States. We combine our interest in the projective forms of knowledge and the future with the interactional perspective on the change of ignorance in the context of unexpected events and crises. By employing tools of discourse and semantic field analysis, we reveal the manifestation of projectivity in the media coverage of the refugee crisis (Chapter 6). We show that the unfolding of the refugee crisis takes the form of interaction and mutual contingency of distinct projective agencies, such as the agency of refugees embarking on their journey towards Europe and that of the EU attempting to manage and regulate this movement. What is more, we indicate that projection is not only about the future. This goes beyond the prediction of the future based on calculation and earlier experience. Projection is also a process of imagination, mapping, algorithmization, reconfiguration, and regulation of people, practices, and ideas. Upon the identification of the manifestation of projective forms of knowledge in the coverage of the refugee crisis, we proceed with the analysis of the interaction between projection and ignorance (Chapter 7). We make the point about the continuation of the analysis in a form that would go beyond the pure appetite for categorization that is intrinsic to social sciences and would upgrade the identification of ignorance-related effects that had hitherto been adopted in the book. We explore three modalities. First, we continue the categorical analysis in a form that makes sense of the ignorance-related effects of projection on a broader level in the media. Second, we introduce a more analytical angle by identifying various mechanisms of projectivity in the media and the role of ignorance in their unfolding in the context of the refugee crisis. Third, we advance a genealogical-cum-interactional approach which explores the elaboration of projections regarding the managing of the refugee crisis in Poland, Hungary, and Romania, and the manner in which asylum public policy interprets these dynamics in these three Member States. Conducted in this broadened form, the interactional approach allows one to not only see a certain feedback between the dynamics of elaboration of possible futures (Mische, 2009, 2014) and the change in the regimes of ignorance in these three countries but also to bridge the research of future projections with ignorance studies. The exploration of the articulation of projective and ignorance forms also allows one to establish the role of exogenous and endogenous factors in the creation of change in how these countries project their future in the context of EU asylum policy and how they change their ignorance. In the Conclusions section of the book, we make a final point about the importance of exploring what ignorance does, and not only what ignorance is. The change of analytical angle, we argue, allows one to understand how

Introduction 15

ignorance contributes to the elaboration, reformulation, and even reification of the futures in our society, as well as to realize the fact that the reformulation and reification of new futures not only has a direct impact on the regimes of ignorance, but this also triggers change. We highlight the opportunity to straightforwardly apply the lens of ignorance studies to the refugee crisis, and in particular to the ignorance-related actions of the new EU Member States during the crisis. In this respect, the important analytical gain being that we not only present a more complex and detailed picture of the dynamics of the weak regulators of EU asylum policy (Zaun, 2017) but also reformulate these Member States as projectors of the refugee crisis itself. The interactional multilevel approach is essential in making the theoretical and empirical strands of this research endeavour come together. The six chapters of the book are an exercise in self-reflexivity in the framework of ignorance studies and a contribution to the understanding of the mechanisms whereby the large-scale humanitarian disasters are projected and expected to unfold in contemporary societies.

Note 1 To designate the people who embarked on the dangerous Mediterranean journey, we use the general category of refugees. We employ asylum seekers and migrants only in situations when concrete categorizations are required (when discussing legislation or public policy schemes, for instance). This issue is discussed in detail in Chapter 4.

References Beck, U. (1992) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, London, Newbury Park, CA, Sage Publications. Beck, U. (1999) World Risk Society, Malden, MA, Polity Press. Best, J. (2019a) ‘Quiet Failures: About the Project’, jacquelinebest.com. Best, J. (2019b) ‘Neoliberalism’s “Unfailures”’, Brave New Europe, June 5 (Crossposted from the SPERI-Website). Boswell, C. and Badenhoop, E. (2020) ‘“What Isn’t in the Files, Isn’t in the World”: Understanding State Ignorance of Irregular Migration in Germany and the United Kingdom’, Governance, 13 April (E-pub ahead of print). Davies, W. and McGoey, L. (2012) ‘Rationalities of Ignorance: On Financial Crisis and the Ambivalence of Neo-Liberal Epistemology’, Economy and Society, 41, 64–83. Dilley, R. and Kirsch, T. G. (eds) (2015) Regimes of Ignorance: Anthropological Perspectives on the Production and Reproduction of Non-Knowledge, New York, Berghahn Books. Emirbayer, M. and Mische, A. (1998) ‘What Is Agency?’, American Journal of Sociology, 103, 962–1023. Grabel, I. (2018) When Things Don’t Fall Apart: Global Financial Governance and Developmental Finance in an Age of Productive Incoherence, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press.

16 Introduction Gross, M. (2010) Ignorance and Surprise: Science, Society, and Ecological Design, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press. Gross, M. and McGoey, L. (eds) (2015a) Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies, London, Routledge. Gross, M. and McGoey, L. (2015b) ‘Introduction’. In Gross, M. and McGoey, L. (eds) Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies, London, Routledge, pp. 1–14. Hirschman, A. O. (1971) A Bias for Hope: Essays on Development and Latin America, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press. Horolets, A., Mica, A., Pawlak, M. and Kubicki, P. (2020) ‘Ignorance as an Outcome of Categorizations: The “Refugees” in the Polish Academic Discourse before and after the 2015 Refugee Crisis’, East European Politics and Societies: and Cultures, 34, 730–751. Kingdon, J. W. (2010) Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies, Update Edition, with an Epilogue on Health Care, Boston, MA, Pearson. Kubicki, P., Pawlak, M., Mica, A. and Horolets, A. (2017) ‘Wyjście z cienia: Polityka uchodźcza w sytuacji kryzysu’, Polityka społeczna, 9, 22–28. Mallard, G. and McGoey, L. (2018) ‘Strategic Ignorance and Global Governance: An Ecumenical Approach to Epistemologies of Global Power’, The British Journal of Sociology, 69, 884–909. McGoey, L. (2007) ‘On the Will to Ignorance in Bureaucracy’, Economy and Society, 36, 212–235. McGoey, L. (2010) ‘Profitable Failure: Antidepressant Drugs and the Triumph of Flawed Experiments’, History of the Human Sciences, 23, 58–78. Mica, A. (2018) Sociology as Analysis of the Unintended: From the Problem of Ignorance to the Discovery of the Possible, London, Routledge. Mische, A. (2009) ‘Projects and Possibilities: Researching Futures in Action’, Sociological Forum, 24, 694–704. Mische, A. (2014) ‘Measuring Futures in Action: Projective Grammars in the Rio + 20 Debates’, Theory and Society, 43, 437–464. Portes, A. (2000) ‘The Hidden Abode: Sociology as Analysis of the Unexpected: 1999 Presidential Address’, American Sociological Review, 65, 1–18. Scholten, P. (2020) ‘Mainstreaming versus Alienation: Conceptualising the Role of Complexity in Migration and Diversity Policymaking’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 46, 108–126. Taleb, N. N. (2007) The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, New York, Random House. Zaun, N. (2017) EU Asylum Policies: The Power of Strong Regulating States, Cham, Palgrave Macmillan. Zaun, N. (2018) ‘States as Gatekeepers in EU Asylum Politics: Explaining the Non-Adoption of a Refugee Quota System’, JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 56, 44–62.

Chapter 2

Ignorance Unexpected events and crises

Over the recent decades, ignorance studies have managed to overcome their “somewhat tortured intellectual history” (Frickel and Edwards, 2014, p. 215) and marginalized status (at least in comparison to the sociology of knowledge) (Proctor, 2008). Ignorance studies have entered a new phase characterized by multiple theoretical framings and the diversification of research sites where they might be applied. The intellectual challenges and opportunities they pose for other disciplines having become more noticeable. As Gross and McGoey (2015) underline, ignorance studies have considerably advanced the understanding of the processes governing and reproducing social and racial inequalities in everyday life, as well as the mechanisms whereby the ideologies of domination and the narratives of justification are constructed. The authors of such studies have also made a shift towards exploiting the bright side or positive effects of ignorance. For instance, in the form of resistance and pressures towards equal opportunities and treatments, or strategies of preventing the negative impact of highly specialized and damaging if it were compromised information, such as medical and genetic data. Ignorance studies have gained insights in more subtle and mundane modalities in which ignorance is employed for political and ideological purposes, having demonstrated the instrumental value and usefulness of ignorance in the everyday strategies of unsettling the existing power balance and achieving a new equilibrium. Knowledge accumulation, critical thinking and the integration of existing taxonomies of ignorance are vital for the consolidation of ignorance studies. In this chapter, we outline the dynamics of these processes and sketch the main analytical framework for speaking about ignorance today. We focus on the added value and contribution of ignorance studies and highlight the reformulation of the modality in which ignorance is defined. We discuss how the proposed shift in meaning impacts the selection of sites for research and show that ignorance studies have a strong analytical connection with surprises, unexpected events, and crises. The predilection of ignorance studies for unexpected events and crises has been pointed at and analyzed by several authors. These instances of individual recognition notwithstanding, the analytical appreciation of these

18  Unexpected events and crises

particular research sites has not been voiced as a general statement about the whole field as such. We propose that it would be beneficial to formally recognize the importance of the focus on the unexpected events and crises in ignorance studies. We mobilize ignorance researchers to address – both at the analytical and normative levels – the implications of studying these instances and not others (such as unintended consequences and risks). In the last part of the chapter, we delineate the main assumptions that circulate in the field regarding the role of ignorance in generating unexpected events and crises. This is an exercise of systematization and articulation that allows us to understand the distribution of the narrative patterns circulating in ignorance studies, as well as to provide substantial argumentation for our proposal that the linkage between ignorance and the unexpected events and crises in the field is not accidental.

How do ignorance studies make sense of their recent revival? The recent advance of ignorance studies is remarkable not only because it makes a significant conceptual and analytical contribution but also because this intellectual project unfolds in a self-monitored and reflexive manner. In the following, we present the themes and assumptions to which the currently expanding ignorance studies are theoretically sensitive, and the conceptual achievements of which they are particularly proud. This allows us to appreciate the manner in which ignorance studies make sense of the relation between various dimensions of their development, and the aims they are tentatively approaching. Ignorance studies from the last two or three decades reflect awareness about their advancement, of what they borrow and reject from the initial framings, and of the direction in which they are heading. Smithson (2008, p. 209, 2015, pp. 385–387), for instance, ventures to summarize the dominant tendencies in the following way: ignorance is seen as a social construction that constitutes a pervasive element of social reality; it is neither always negative at the level of the social system, nor it is necessarily an inconvenience for social actors. Self-assessment, like the one undertaken by Smithson, fertilizes cumulative knowledge production and creates points of reference for ignorance studies. It reveals and at the same time sanctions the main lines along which ignorance studies develop. The self-assessment also allows one to understand how ignorance studies make sense of their recent revival and what elements are taken into account in such exercises of redefinition. The following themes occur with some frequency in the literature addressing the recalibration inside the discipline: • •

Ferment over ignorance; Shift in framing and levels of analysis;

Unexpected events and crises  19

• •

Typologization of ignorance; Relevance and dynamics of research sites.

In our attempt to draw the picture of their interplay, we are keen to reveal the manner in which ignorance studies understand their role, how they perceive their internal dynamics, and how they reflect on their relation with, and impact on, the contemporary world. Ferment over ignorance The proliferation of interest in ignorance over the last decades is probably the most visible change as far as the status of the broadly understood field of ignorance studies is concerned (Gross and McGoey, 2015, p. 1; Kirsch and Dilley, 2015, p. 6). This fact is even more perceptible due to the pride reflected in the ignorance studies regarding this expansion. Yet the frequent acknowledgments of this quantitative leap set aside, the attempts to understand its causes – fewer in number but equally symptomatic – are of particular interest. Smithson (1989, p. 264), for instance, offers a synthetic account about the “recent intellectual ferment over ignorance” suggesting that there could be three explanations for the phenomenon: first, the more poignant need to understand the consequences of technological advancement. Second, the politicization of risks in the contemporary world and the heightened temperature of the accompanying debates. Third, and this point was advanced by Smithson himself, the entering of a new phase in which various disciplines relate to the phenomenon of ignorance. We can observe, for example, a transition from the initially widespread strategies of annihilation and marginalization of ignorance to the strategies of management of and adaptation to ignorance. Kirsch and Dilley (2015, pp. 6–7), on the other hand, consider that the growth of ignorance studies is related to an increased circumspection about knowledge. The ferment reflects the fact that knowledge and expertise are more frequently treated as problematic, while the contemporary practices of education, information circulation, communication and manipulation are increasingly noticed, challenged and questioned. Observably, Smithson (1989) and Kirsch and Dilley (2015, pp. 6–7) advance accounts that are relatively different, though not necessarily mutually exclusive. Our intention, however, is to slightly shift the optics by drawing attention to the fact that ignorance studies have developed from the very beginning with rather normative and traditionally applied goals. Ignorance studies are burgeoning because some processes of the contemporary world, irrespective of whether substantial or ideological in nature, are commanding attention, intervention and social change. Ignorance studies perceive themselves as capable of providing a better angle on these processes, and to advance the emancipatory agenda from systemic forms of power and inequality in general.

20  Unexpected events and crises

Shift in framing and levels of analysis While the ferment over ignorance appears to emerge spontaneously, the shift in the framing of ignorance is an intentional investment in ignorance studies. What kind of shift do we have in mind? Ignorance studies are generally undergoing a phase of noticeable and recurrent criticism of “knowledge-centered impulses,” to use Chua’s (2009, p. 332) phrase, meaning that there is a distancing from understanding ignorance merely as absence of knowledge. The degree of radicalism in the criticism of knowledge-related framing varies among different authors. Chua’s (2009) suggestion to see ignorance as more than absence of knowledge amounts to a weak version of this criticism, while McGoey’s (2012) new definition of ignorance – one that abandons its framing as a specific state of knowledge – is a more radical, and widely acclaimed, attempt to refute knowledge-centred approaches altogether. The bulk of work fashioning this criticism, regardless of its scope and degree, accentuates a transition in how ignorance is framed. It highlights the shift in meaning of ignorance, from definition A towards definition B; from the definition of ignorance as a lack of knowledge towards the definition of ignorance as resource for action. But there are other shifts in framing present as well, such as the turn towards a relational concept of ignorance. Smithson (1985), for instance, suggests departing from focusing on ignorance as the absence and inversion of knowledge and moving towards studying how ignorance is socially constructed (see Reser and Smithson, 1988; Smithson, 1989, 1990, 2008, 2015, p. 385). Bakken and Wiik (2018, p. 9), likewise, propose thinking about the functioning of ignorance in relation to social action. In addition, we also encounter mobilization towards emphasizing the normalcy and agency of ignorance. McGoey (2012, p. 553), quite representatively, envisages the shift from ignorance as a “barrier to consolidating authority in political and corporate arenas” to ignorance as an “organizational resource” and “productive asset.” Gross and McGoey (2015, p. 4), further, suggest viewing ignorance not as a deviant but as a regular social mechanism. This proposal might appear prosaic when taking into account that the regularity of ignorance does, indeed, manifest itself in everyday life. Yet, rooted in feminist and post-colonial theory, Gross and McGoey’s framing is far from banal since everyday knowledge and ignorance production are the mechanisms that best capture the epistemic implications of power relations and asymmetries. The work of postcolonial theorists offers illuminating examples of these linkages. The research of Mills (2007) on white ignorance, for instance, presents these mechanisms as “local and cognitive dysfunctions.” The studies of epistemic and agnotological bases of racial and colonial dominations by, for example, Alcoff (2007), Sullivan and Tuana (2007), and Bailey (2007), also provide important arguments in this regard. Bailey (2007), for example, writes about lasting institutionalized

Unexpected events and crises  21

habits of learning to “see the world wrongly” and the ways of maintaining support for this skewed vision. Worthy of note, the shift in the framing of ignorance is not only about the analytical rearrangement of the very definition of ignorance but also about conquering new levels of analysis. McGoey, for instance, moves incrementally towards an increasingly global angle. In a recent article, Mallard and McGoey (2018) speak about “ecumenical epistemology.” This notion, which shows ignorance as an “equally powerful political resource as k nowledge,” being interpreted as a step forward from agnotology (see Mallard and McGoey, 2018, p. 887). Typologization of ignorance Alongside the shift in framing and conquering of new levels of analysis, another process associated with the boost of ignorance studies is the proliferation of typologies and taxonomies of ignorance (cf. Roberts, 2015, pp. 360–361, 363–367; Bakken and Wiik, 2018; Roberts, 2018). This trend is indisputably triggered by the multiple meanings of ignorance and its semantic fuzziness, as well as by the conflation of ignorance with other processes such as uncertainty, vulnerability, or absence (Reser and Smithson, 1988, pp. 13–16; see Smithson, 1990, pp. 209–212; Bammer et al., 2008, pp. 294– 298; Smithson, 2015, pp. 387–389; Croissant, 2018, p. 330). A singular unequivocal definition of ignorance does not exist, and sometimes the very term causes confusion. Besides, there is an increasing number of terms apparently synonymous with ignorance, to name Nichtwissen and nescience as examples. This situation creates favourable conditions for the proliferation of taxonomies (Smithson, 2008, pp. 209–213). The manner in which the field reacts to the processes of typologization and interprets these is of interest in itself. One strategy, we reckon, stands for the systematization of existent typologies. Proctor (2008), for example, distinguishes three analytical frameworks for depicting the production of ignorance: ignorance as a native state (resource), ignorance as a lost realm (selective choice), and ignorance as a strategic ploy (active construct). Another strategy is the integration and temporalization of the types of ignorance in the analysis of other phenomena. Smithson (1990), for instance, makes an observation that existent taxonomies of ignorance in disaster studies should be drawn in relation to specific temporal stages such as preparedness and response. Gross (2010, p. 7), likewise, develops an integrated dynamic model to explain how “different unknowns can be chronologically related to one another.” Hence, we may assume, the ignorance studies are highly focused on ignorance itself, and less on the phenomena which are in relation to or have some interaction with ignorance. The studies basically zoom in on the very

22  Unexpected events and crises

process and its various types. The research is advanced by efforts to better define, synthetize, and interconnect ignorance, while the elements constitutive of the ferment over ignorance participate in this overarching process of rediscovery of what ignorance is. The detection of the bright side of ignorance and its adaptive and beneficial effects are a quite good example in this regard (Reser and Smithson, 1988, pp. 7, 10; Smithson, 1990, pp.  223–228, 2015, pp.  392–394; Bakken and Wiik, 2018, p. 2). Ignorance studies critically expose the hitherto dominant negative bias in the framing of ignorance (as well as uncertainty) and the attempts to overcome it (Smithson, 2008, pp. 216–218; on negative connotation, also of vulnerability, see Kuhlicke, 2015, p. 240; Roberts, 2015, p. 362; Janich and Simmerling, 2015, pp.  134–135). They show how, for instance, the negative bias towards ignorance is reproduced by exposing the purposeful nurturing and exploiting of doubts for commercial, political and ideological reasons (Frickel and Edwards, 2014, pp. 216–217). Ignorance studies extend the horizon of the perception of ignorance. But at the same time, we clearly observe, they do this by further keeping the focus on what ignorance is, at the expense of more general processes, such as what ignorance does for example. Relevance and dynamics of research sites The relation between the ignorance studies and various strategic research sites is yet another important element of the ferment over ignorance that has been granted significant attention in the field. There are two main terrains of exploration that are granted attention in ignorance studies. One pertains to surprises, unexpected events, crises, and disasters, while the other to decision-making, interactions, norms, and communications. Ignorance is a source of the unexpected, as well as of everyday interactions. This dual nature being revealed by both the sinusoids and jolts of the exceptional as well as by the dynamics of the regular and mundane practices. Regarding the relevance of unexpected events, it is illuminating to look at Reser and Smithson’s (1988) discussion of adaptive ignorance to the prospect of the nuclear threat and the impossibility of granting psychological reality to an event of such magnitude. The authors show “how ignorance rather than knowledge appears to be serving many functions, structuring an individual and social reality which is meaningful and palatable” (Reser and Smithson, 1988, pp. 8–9). In a similar vein, Smithson (1990, pp. 207– 208) makes the point that there are various reasons for coupling ignorance studies with disaster and prevention research. Disasters seem to result from ignorance, and they are frequently interpreted as unexpected events and crises. Moreover, the awareness in social sciences that action and decisionmaking unavoidably take place in conditions of uncertainty and ignorance is increasing.

Unexpected events and crises  23

Ignorance, still, is both produced and reproduced in the daily matrix of decision-making, interactions, norms, and communications. But this research site has come to be considered relatively late. With the shift in the definition of ignorance from the exceptional to the regular, the research sites seem to have moved along this route of normalization, too. As Gross and McGoey (2015, p. 4) put it, “ignorance needs to be understood and theorized as a regular feature of decision-making in general, in social interactions and in everyday communication.” The research sites are thus an important element of the ferment over ignorance. Yet we also see how the thinking in this respect is rather technical, at least when comparing it with the reflexive analysis of the definition of ignorance. The review of research sites is focused on the role played by ignorance in the unexpected, as well as on the manner in which surprises, critical events, and disasters provoke and reveal ignorance – both at the level of practice and research – see Figure 2.1. Smithson (1990, pp. 209, 212), for instance, when drafting a sociological framework for exploring ignorance in disaster studies, indicates that certain phases of disaster offer the possibility to encode ignorance. More generally, it seems that the revealing of nescience is an essential phase of the radical surprise. The latter blows up an entire system of reference schemes, routines, and expectations, as well as the validity and practicality of the tools used to construct, represent, and understand reality (Gross, 2007, p. 750; Kuhlicke, 2015, p. 242). Ascertaining the role of surprises and unexpected events for bringing ignorance into the open, however, neither exhausts the discussion about the relevance of such unexpected research sites for ignorance studies, nor does it fully explain the implications of the study of the unexpected for the field. And that is where this book comes in to further reflect upon ignorance studies.

Revelation

SURPRISES UNEXPECTED EVENTS

CHANGE OF IGNORANCE

CRISES Reproduction

Figure 2.1 Ignorance and surprises, unexpected events, and crises

24  Unexpected events and crises

Unexpected events and crises: the new society? There is plenty of methodological reflection about the relation between ignorance and the surprising, the unexpected and the critical in ignorance studies. Yet, in comparison with the general reflection on ignorance as a dependent variable, the other three elements are not discussed at a meta-level. Beyond the recently proposed move in the direction of the exploration of ignorance in decision-making and everyday interactions, there is no explicit statement as to the broader implications of the strong connection between ignorance studies and particular research sites. One of the hurdles on the way to the fully fledged meta-discussion concerning the strategic sites in ignorance studies seems to be the field’s own ongoing search for the legitimacy of its novel paradigm. The existent reflection is in the genre ignorance and research site A (Figure 2.1), rather than ignorance studies in relation to research site A (Figure 2.2). Ignorance studies as analyses of surprises, unexpected events, and crises, we suggest, would achieve higher theoretical sophistication should they pay more attention to the fact that the keyword in all these research sites is, no doubt, unexpected. Ignorance studies behave and function as if we were in an unexpected events and crises society. Although related, this is, nevertheless, different from Beck’s (1992, 1999) risk society and even world risk society. The unexpected society is also distinct from what a society of unintended consequences and accidents would entail. The question, Why the unexpected?, however, is not being addressed. To get an idea of what such an unexpected society entails, let us have a look at the work of Gross (2010), one of the main authors in ignorance and surprise studies. Gross advances an interpretation of the unexpected events inspired by the social theory of the knowledge society and by Georg Simmel’s work. He views the proliferation of both ignorance and surprises

Unintended consequences Accidents

SURPRISES UNEXPECTED EVENTS

CHANGE OF IGNORANCE

CRISES Risks

Figure 2.2 Ignorance studies in relation to surprises, unexpected events, and crises

Unexpected events and crises  25

not as mere side effects but as an inherent feature of contemporary society. Gross distances himself from the negative evaluation of the unintended and demonstrates that unexpected events can be seen as conducive to progress in society. He advances the interpretation of the outcomes as positive, or as “evaluated as positive or negative” (Gross, 2010, p. 36). These are all quite concrete analytical steps. When looking closer, however, we find that Gross often “conflates” (see de Zwart, 2015) the unintended and unexpected, despite his awareness that they are not one and the same thing (Gross, 2010, p. 186, footnote 29). The conflation, however, is not complete. Though slight, there is also a noticeable difference in the manner this author presents and plays with these concepts. Gross (2010, pp. 14–19) usually interprets the unintended and side effects negatively or as deviant in sociology and economy, while giving the unexpected a more positive connotation, or seeing it as both positive and negative. Thus, indirectly, Gross favours the unexpected over the other related terms. Gross turns out to shift from the unintended to the unexpected, even though what he wanted to change was the interpretation of the unintended outcomes solely (for a discussion of the general shift from unintended to unexpected in social sciences, see Mica, 2018). It is not unusual to come across the notions of the unintended, unanticipated, unexpected, and unforeseen in a conflated form (Baert, 1991, p. 203; de Zwart, 2015; Mica, 2018, pp. 77–80). Yet unexpected events and crises are something different than unintended outcomes and are even distinct from risks. Unintended consequences do not usually require an immediate and dramatic intervention as unexpected events do, or at least there is no expectation that such an intervention should automatically occur. Plainly speaking, unintended consequences are triggered by our actions despite, or counter to, our initial intentions. Unexpected consequences on the other hand entail those instances that were not foreseen. While the risks are macro-level unintended dangers of social intervention and consumption in the context of modernity and uncertainty, with a strong note of alienation. The sense of alienation, however, even in the rare cases when it accompanies unexpected events and crises, is of a different kind. It is less about estrangement and the perception of lack of influence on the sources of action, as it happens to be in the case of the risks or hazards that are suddenly imposed on the society, but more about things getting out of control, or processes that cannot be ignored anymore (see, e.g., the discussion about the neglect of growing health inequalities in social sciences in McGoey, 2017, p. 257). Therefore, the analysis of ignorance as a source of unintended outcomes and risks, and the contemporary interest in ignorance as a source of unexpected events and crises refer to distinct things, despite being seemingly tangential. Radical surprises, unexpected events, and crises are explained by reference to the complexity of the world, as well as the failure to react to, or

26  Unexpected events and crises

anticipate what is coming. Both explanations boil down to ignorance. This fact renders ignorance generic to unexpected events and crises. The centrality of ignorance is also the reason for focusing on initial default and neglect in the context of contemporary crises and for posing the rhetorical question, Why was there failure to anticipate or predict what happened? Hidden here is the intuition or feeling that the contemporary unexpected events and crises, the unforeseeable occurrences by definition, could have been foreseen. This is why the unexpected and surprises are revealing at so many levels. They confirm that there is a bias against ignorance and give off high expectations towards the institutions in the contemporary world. As indicated by Kuhlicke, ignorance-related questions arise, When the unexpected materializes into unforeseeable destruction, trauma and death, public scrutiny about failures and negligence is usually a consequence: someone or something needs to be made responsible and accountable. Were the drastic consequences not anticipatable or even knowledgeable in foresight? Why were warnings not made public, or steps taken to prevent the most severe impacts? Who is actually responsible for this mess? (Kuhlicke, 2015, p. 239) Surprises, unexpected events, and crises cause upheaval and disruption at the level of expectations and experiences (see Gaudet, 2015, p. 320). Nowhere was this confirmed more straightforwardly than in the inquiry triggered in the context of the financial crisis of 2007–2008 regarding how to include the unexpected and uncertainty in the existent economic models (Svetlova and van Elst, 2015, p. 349). Contemporary society is to a great extent about the proliferation of debate about unforeseen but foreseeable occurrences, and the dynamics of ignorance studies reflect this concern spectacularly. The preference for unexpected events and crises in ignorance studies makes us underline a few additional aspects. To begin with, although contingent, there is a match between the historical context and the dynamics of ignorance studies. The last two-three decades provided a host of amazing unexpected events and processes that ignorance studies were amply exploiting, while at the same time refurbishing themselves as a field. Next to this historical match stands an ontological and conceptual affinity. In unexpected events and crises, the reality of ignorance strikes us right away (see Figure 2.1). It manifests itself as a force limiting anticipation, as Merton (1936) suggested the role of ignorance is frequently seen. At the same time, there is a semantic shift. As pointed out by de Zwart (2015, pp.  285–288), the initial Mertonian term of unanticipated consequences used in the seminal essay from 1936 disappeared around the 1950s, or it was absorbed in the general concept of the unintended. Subsequently, Mica (2018, pp.  70–77) argued that the unexpected slowly replaced the unintended as

Unexpected events and crises  27

a key notion. This last reframing provides the coordinates of our current location and semantic usage. The fuzziness of the concepts discussed above allows the corresponding analytical frameworks to overlap without entering into a situation of competition. Yet the loose coupling does not mean the absence of boundaries. We aim to problematize and better understand the subject matter of ignorance studies, and further maintain that this will allow us to explain the underpinnings of the basic assumptions of these studies.

Ignorance and the unexpected: assumptions The counterfactual character of ignorance and its implicit normative nature renders certain assumptions about ignorance easily traceable in the accounts of surprises, unexpected events, and crises. Some of these assumptions have been disclosed in the literature discussing how social problems and their solutions are framed. Reser and Smithson (1988, pp. 9–10, 12–13), for instance, outline the assumptions about the human response to the nuclear threat that involve the issues of ignorance and uncertainty. In what follows, we continue this line of inquiry by abstracting and highlighting prevalent assumptions regarding the relation between ignorance and the unexpected. The exercise is worthwhile for a number of reasons. First, we gain insight into the logic of thinking about ignorance as a source of unexpected events and crises as well as of the knowledge-ignorance binary in ignorance studies. Second, we refine our intuition regarding the direction in which ignorance studies are heading. This is pertinent because, as previously discussed, the way we define ignorance acts as a tool of distinction in the field of ignorance studies, which is currently undergoing major redefinition. Avoidability of ignorance and predictability (post-mor tem) The “post mortem argument” (Merton, 1936, p. 898) entails that ignorance plays an important role in the emergence of unexpected events and crises via myopia or inattentiveness that could have been avoided should the social agents had known where to look. Merton pointed out that in the accounts of unintended and unanticipated consequences there is an observable tendency to treat ignorance as an all-explaining factor. He distinguished two forms: the “sheer tautology,” as in the argument “if we had only known enough, we could have anticipated the consequences which, as it happens, were unforeseen” (Merton, 1936, p. 898), and the overestimation of the role of ignorance which in fact is “but one of many factors” (Merton, 1936, p. 898). The post-mortem argument manifests quite vividly in the contemporary interpretations that hold that unexpected and high-impact events could have

28  Unexpected events and crises

been predicted. Taleb (2007, p. xviii) famously uses the term black swan to describe this pattern, indicating three characteristics thereof: singularity of occurrence (low predictability), high impact, and “retrospective (though not prospective) predictability,” the latter element coming quite close to what we herein discuss as a post-mortem. Taleb indicates that the black swan phenomenon occurs as a side effect of a more general cognitive schemata – “in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable” (Taleb, 2007, p. xviii). Interestingly, Taleb spots the black swan dynamics in a wide array of significant and extraordinary occasions. The examples he provides range from historical events (such as the rise of Hitler and the demise of the communist bloc) and crises (the market crash of 1987) to technological innovations (internet) and occurrences in one’s personal life. He senses that events of this kind are proliferating and taking over our lives, in comparison with the ordinary and less consequential ones. Although convincing and intriguing, the post-mortem argument entails only retrospective predictability of how ignorance works. It primarily deals with the past mistakes that could have been avoided and does not suggest what should be done in the future. A weaker version of the postmortem argument reverberates in the inquiry into the failure to predict recent episodes of highly unexpected events, such as the financial crisis of 2007–2008. Rather, often the question regarding the lack of predictability rests on the assumption that the events could have been predicted, which gives off its normativity. As in the case of stronger manifestations of the post-mortem argument, here too ignorance is presented as a mistake that could have been avoided, or at least it is decreed as such. Davies and McGoey (2012, p. 79), for instance, argue that the economic crisis events “were either unforeseen, or were conveniently deemed unforeseeable after they occurred.” Retrospective predictability seems to reflect the irremediable ex-post wish of coming to terms with the causes of an unexpected event. The retrospective foresight occurs almost naturally, as if it were a process of adaptation (cf. Kuhlicke, 2015, p. 239). It comes after the realization of nescience, and it is important to understand that there is very little chance, if any whatsoever, that the event could have been predicted beforehand. As Kuhlicke (2015, pp. 242–243) explains using the example and subsequent interpretations of the mid-XIX-century Mann Gulch Disaster in Montana, wherein 16 out of 19 firefighters lost their lives in a fire of unexpected length and scale, initial nescience is a condition of retrospective predictability, and vice versa. The impossibility of prediction notwithstanding, the imagination of everyday life and of academic endeavour allows, however, for the retrospective predictability to reproduce the likelihood of a phenomenon. The anticipatory forms of knowledge thus stand as an intrinsic feature of surprises, unexpected events, and crises in the contemporary world  – “All  kinds of

Unexpected events and crises  29

surprises are able to come out of the blue, although they can appear as anticipated post hoc” (Gross, 2010, p. 38). Correctability of ignorance The correctability assumption holds that ignorance plays an important role in the emergence of unexpected events and crises in terms of a myopia or inattentiveness, yet this could be remedied should the actors change the models used as the basis of their operations. Observably, this premise comes quite close to the post-mortem argument we discussed above. Both correctability and retrospective predictability assume that knowledge is usually the norm while ignorance is a terrible mistake revealed through an unfortunate event or situation. The correctability and the post-mortem assumptions indicate and overemphasize ignorance as a source of the unexpected events and crises. What is more, they are both counterfactual in the sense that they envisage an alternative. They indicate that the situation may as well have been different, and that there is knowledge available or that knowledge may be gained through further analysis. When assuming the correctability of ignorance, the retrospective projection is more attenuated, which also renders the tone less normative. We encounter here something along the lines of prospective predictability in the sense that it is assumed that the corrective action is possible and doable. Error correction can remedy ignorance by triggering a different mode of conduct and by gaining new knowledge (or a different type of knowledge), and is expected to have a positive impact. We see the correctability assumption surface in the interpretations of the sources of the financial crisis of 2007–2008 which point to some fallacies at the base of the models used by economics. Kessler (2015, pp. 339–341), for instance, indicates two dimensions in the debates regarding the economic crisis and the crisis of economics: first, “why economists did not see the crisis coming” (Kessler, 2015, p. 339) and second, the “role of economics in bringing about modern finance, that is, its performative power” (Kessler, 2015, p.  339). According to Kessler, the why question addressed the misconceptions in the models used by the economics. It was an issue that was correctible and debatable, and has thus been debated. The role question, however, implied the need for a much wider reflection, which was the reason for it having been overlooked. This fundamental difference between the two questions determined that although the crisis opened a window of opportunity for discussing both issues, the attention was captured only by the why question, while the performative role of economics continued to be ignored. We can herein speculate a bit why this turned out to be the case. Observably, the why question and the answer to it reflect not only the post-mortem argument but also an embedded correctability assumption. The question regarding the failure of economists to predict the crisis and the ways it was answered (e.g. “collective myopia” (Kessler, 2015, p. 339)) strike

30  Unexpected events and crises

a normative and a counterfactual cord at the same time. Though it contains elements of both retrospective and prospective prediction, overall, the issue of what should be done with ignorance in order for the situation to be ameliorated has high everyday and practical applicability significance. The role question has a correctability dimension also. In this case, however, the situation is more complex and requires a lot of reflection work to be done. What is to be corrected is not so straightforward and might also turn out to be revolutionary. The correctability assumption entails a certain reformatory logic and offers a solution, and this is probably why it has a degree of success. Yet it triggers criticism also. Acemoglu and Robinson, for instance, may be interpreted as offering a quite harsh critique of correctability in their review of major theories regarding asymmetries between countries in terms of prosperity and poverty. Along with the culture hypothesis and the geography hypothesis, Acemoglu and Robinson (2012, p. 45) discuss what they term as the “ignorance hypothesis” as illustrative of over-ambitious theories that simply “don’t work.” They criticize this latter hypothesis especially for what we herein interpret as a correctability stand – that is, it sees ignorance as both the source and the solution to the problem of poverty, in the sense that acting on ignorance would be sufficient for the improvement of social and economic conditions for development. The ignorance hypothesis differs from the geography and culture hypotheses in that it comes readily with a suggestion about how to “solve” the problem of poverty: if ignorance got us here, enlightened and informed rulers and policymakers can get us out and we should be able to “engineer” prosperity around the world by providing the right advice and by convincing politicians of what is good economics. (Acemoglu and Robinson, 2012, p. 67) Omnipresence of ignorance The omnipresence assumption involves the idea that ignorance plays an important role in the emergence of events and crises in terms of uncertainty and complexity, but the actors cannot correct or remedy this aspect. At most, they can try to handle it and be more aware of the unknown. Smithson’s (2008, p. 209) principle of ignorance as a “pervasive and fundamental influence in human cognition, emotion, action, social relations, and culture” illustrates this assumption quite well. Another example is the debate about the “inevitability of uncertainty” (Bammer et al., 2008, pp. 291–292). Observably, the omnipresence assumption turns the premises of the previous two assumptions – post-mortem and correctability – upside down. Herein, we are told, because of prevailing uncertainty and complexity, ignorance (and not knowledge) is the norm. This shift can be compared with the innovation brought by the representatives of risk theory to the framing

Unexpected events and crises  31

of the relation between imperfect knowledge, reflexivity, and unintended consequences. Giddens (1990), for instance, discusses how the attempts to extend knowledge and exercise reflexivity change the world we live in. As a result, the chances of narrowing the gap between the known and the unknown diminish. As argued by Mica, Peisert, and Winczorek (2011, p. 18), whereas Merton suggested that the unintended and unanticipated emerge in relation with “imperfect reflection,” Giddens and other risk theorists talk about “institutionalised reflection” instead. While the hypothesis of the omnipresence of ignorance has many facets to it and can be fruitfully explored from various theoretical vantage points, we claim that ignorance studies have a particularly valuable contribution to make in this respect. These suggest the introduction of the unknown and the unexpected into the cognitive schemes with which we operate. Ignorance studies claim that the unexpected occurs as unexpected because we fail to focus on the unknown, and in this way, they take us beyond the more generic thesis that the unexpected is beyond prediction. Taleb makes an interpretation of the omnipresence claim that is quite articulate in this respect. In essence, his critical reading of the black swan phenomenon suggests that such events should not be envisaged as extraordinary, unexpected, and rare occurrences. According to Taleb (2007, p. xxiv), what creates the unexpectedness in the first place is our false pretence of knowledge: the fact that we imagine we know much while, in reality, we know little. We train our minds to focus on the normal and inconsequential instead of the consequential events, which also leads to the creation of unexpectedness. Taleb induces us to focus on the unknown. Black Swan logics makes what you don’t know far more relevant than what you do know. Consider that many Black Swans can be caused and exacerbated by their being unexpected. (Taleb, 2007, p. xix) Whether the focus on the unknown and the unexpected works as a solution, in the sense of its ability to pre-empt the occurrence of the unexpected, remains to be discussed. An alternative would be that it just makes life more manageable, as in Taleb’s idea of the positive black swans. The final outcome of this discussion is uncertain because (as in the quotation above) there is always the risk of being caught in the vicious circle of reflexivity-related ignorance, wherein attempts to reduce ignorance lead to the expansion of it. Impossibility of (sheer) ignorance The impossibility assumption claims that although ignorance is presumed to have an important role in the emergence of unexpected events and crises, other factors are, in fact, at play, such as institutional pressures and even the interests of social agents.

32  Unexpected events and crises

The nuances and manifestations of the impossibility assumption are quite varied. What we may term as the weak impossibility assumption, for instance, comes across in interpretations that set their aim as providing objective and comprehensible interpretations. These do not exclude ignorance as an explanatory variable, they merely underline that there is a concatenation of factors that brought the observable state of affairs into play, and that their links cannot be reduced to ignorance. Merton’s (1936, p. 898) counterpoint to post-mortem predictability, for instance, nicely illustrates this point. Acemoglu and Robinson (2012, pp. 63–69), likewise, bring an alternative to the ignorance hypothesis in poverty research by underlining the “incentives and constraints” the politicians “face from the political and economic institutions in their societies” (Acemoglu and Robinson, 2012, p. 67). The strong impossibility assumption, on the other hand, surfaces in accounts that see ignorance less in terms of explanatory factors, but more as something social agents indulge in. We find here stated quite straightforwardly that the unpredictability and singularity of what happened is just a rhetorical and comforting device. As can be expected, the financial crisis of 2007–2008 was targeted by strong accounts of the impossibility assumption quite heavily. Žižek, for instance, suggests, “[t]he truly surprising thing about the […] financial meltdown is how easily the idea was accepted that its happening was an unpredictable surprise which hit markets out of the blue” (cited in Davies and McGoey, 2012, p. 66). Colander et al. (2009), in a similar vein, disagree with prevailing explanations of the financial crisis that uphold an ignorance and blindness assumption. They suggest that at closer inspection these accounts are vulnerable to criticism and “seem odd in retrospect” (Colander et al., 2009, p. 3). Colander et al. (2009, p. 4) rule out the “‘lack of understanding’ explanation” on the account that “financial engineers are extremely bright, and it is almost inconceivable that such bright individuals did not understand the limitations of the models.” What the authors regard as a more plausible explanation, instead, was that the engineers “did not consider it their job to warn the public” (Colander et al., 2009, p. 4). Sometimes, the strong impossibility assumption is so sceptical about the unawareness of actors that it starts acquiring a conspiratorial logic, to paraphrase Frickel and Edwards (2014, p. 216). Irrespective of the degree of suspicion, however, we should be aware about the two varieties of the assumption. In the weak form, ignorance is downplayed. While, in the strong one, ignorance is exaggerated though in a different form than in the assumptions we discussed earlier. The strong impossibility idea basically reveals the correctability assumptions as fraudulent. The social agents do not unknowingly engage in mistakes and the adoption of bad policies but do so in a knowable and sometimes even known way. The outcome, the impossibility assumption suggests, would have been different should the social agents have chosen not to ignore what was going on around them. Or, in an even more radical version, the outcome (whether initially predicted or not)

Unexpected events and crises  33

led to an unprecedented consensus about its unpredictability, and this is rather suspicious. What do the three assumptions – correctability, omnipresence, and impossibility – show regarding the relation between ignorance and the unexpected? To be sure, they confirm the ferment about, and interest in ignorance we talked about at the beginning of this chapter. There is a continuous localization of ignorance at the heart of surprises, unexpected events, and crises. There likewise is a preoccupation with determining the extent ignorance can, indeed, be held to have been the source and in what form. The three assumptions also endorse our intuition that the main narrative in contemporary social sciences is framed in terms of the unexpected events society, which is related to but also different from the risk society perspective. The correctability, omnipresence, and impossibility assumptions also challenge or wreak havoc with the very framing of the unexpected events and crises as unexpected. Except the correctability thesis, the other two assumptions do not offer much of a basis to infer that the revelation of change will lead to substantive changes in the regimes of ignorance. This is because this is rather impossible (the omnipresence assumption), because the situation is much more complex, or because the actors simply resort to ignorance as a strategic tool (the impossibility assumption). Our findings regarding ignorance studies prepare the discussion we hold in the next chapter on processes of projection, expectation, and contestation of change in the regimes of ignorance in the context of the 2007– 2008 financial crisis. We see that irrespective of how ignorance is defined (whether correctable, omnipresent, or concatenated with other elements or intentions), the expectation and projection of change is always there. This finding makes us infer that the various forms of knowledge in the regimes of ignorance have to do more with the manner in which the definition of events and crises as unexpected influences our perception, than with the dynamics of ignorance as such. This allows us to support and reiterate the general argument made in this chapter once more: ignorance studies should be reviewed not only from the point of view of ignorance, or its types, but also in relation to the contexts, critical moments, and occurrences wherein ignorance manifests or it is revealed. These contexts not only influence the dynamics of ignorance but also the manner in which we perceive and project the very processes of change that we study.

Conclusions In this chapter, we reviewed the analytical dimensions and conceptual refinements that are constitutive for the recent growth of ignorance studies. We showed that there are several themes that are recurrently problematized

34  Unexpected events and crises

and will feed this field in the future. They are predominantly focused on ignorance, for example on how it is or should be defined, and we argued that this direction of research has limitations. We suggested that the features of the research sites and case studies that appear in the current ignorance studies are of comparable relevance. As one of such sites we have singled out surprises, unexpected events, and crises, and stressed their cognitive and analytical relevance for ignorance studies. Still, while individual analyses appreciate the significance of unexpected-related research sites, a more general discussion of what this linkage means for the development of the theory is still missing. We know rather well what the implications are of various definitions of ignorance for ignorance studies. Yet we do not see the repercussions of the fact that ignorance studies share an analytical linkage with the unexpected society, to paraphrase Beck’s (1992) well-known term risk society. In this chapter, we also pointed explicitly to the relation between the unexpected and ignorance and presented in some detail the types of underlying assumptions used to conceptualize this relation in ignorance studies – correctability, omnipresence, and impossibility. In the remaining part of the book, we move forward and develop our approach in which we focus less on what ignorance is and what happens to it, and more on what ignorance does and how it interacts with processes of projection, expectation, and contestation in context of crises. The European refugee crisis of 2015–2016 which was constructed as an unexpected event in the public discourse and influenced the policy and politics of the European Union and its Member States is both illustrative and analytically challenging for our approach.

References Acemoglu, D. and Robinson, J. A. (2012) Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty, New York, Crown Publishers. Alcoff, L. M. (2007) ‘Epistemologies of Ignorance: Three Types’. In Sullivan, S. and Tuana, N. (eds) Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance, Albany, State University of New York Press, pp. 39–57. Baert, P. (1991) ‘Unintended Consequences: A Typology and Examples’, International Sociology, 6, 201–210. Bailey, A. (2007) ‘Strategic Ignorance’. In Sullivan, S. and Tuana, N. (eds) Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance, Albany, State University of New York Press, pp. 77–94. Bakken, T. and Wiik, E. L. (2018) ‘Ignorance and Organization Studies’, Organization Studies, 39, 1109–1120. Bammer, G., Smithson, M. and the Goolabri Group (2008) ‘The Nature of Uncertainty’. In Bammer, G. and Smithson, M. (eds) Uncertainty and Risk: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, London, Sterling, VA, Earthscan, pp. 289–303. Beck, U. (1992) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, London, Newbury Park, CA, Sage Publications.

Unexpected events and crises  35 Beck, U. (1999) World Risk Society, Malden, MA, Polity Press. Chua, L. (2009) ‘To Know or Not to Know? Practices of Knowledge and Ignorance among Bidayuhs in an “Impurely” Christian World’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 15, 332–348. Colander, D., Föllmer, H., Haas, A., Goldberg, M. D., Juselius, K., Kirman, A., Lux, T. and Sloth, B. (2009) ‘The Financial Crisis and the Systemic Failure of Academic Economics’, Univ. of Copenhagen Dept. of Economics Discussion Paper No. 09-03, SSRN Electronic Journal. Croissant, J. L. (2018) ‘Agnotology: Ignorance and Absence, or towards a Sociology of Things That Aren’t There’. In Meusburger, P., Heffernan, M., and Suarsana, L. (eds) Geographies of the University, Cham, Springer International Publishing, pp. 329–351. Davies, W. and McGoey, L. (2012) ‘Rationalities of Ignorance: On Financial Crisis and the Ambivalence of Neo-Liberal Epistemology’, Economy and Society, 41, 64–83. Frickel, S. and Edwards, M. (2014) ‘Untangling Ignorance in Environmental Risk Assessment’. In Boudia, S. and Jas, N. (eds) Powerless Science? Science and Politics in a Toxic World, New York, Berghahn, pp. 215–233. Gaudet, J. (2015) ‘Unfolding the Map: Making Knowledge and Ignorance Mobilization Dynamics Visible in Science Evaluation and Policymaking’. In Gross, M. and McGoey, L. (eds) Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies, London, Routledge, pp. 318–327. Giddens, A. (1990) The Consequences of Modernity, Cambridge, Polity Press, Oxford, UK, Basil Blackwell. Gross, M. (2007) ‘The Unknown in Process: Dynamic Connections of Ignorance, Non-Knowledge and Related Concepts’, Current Sociology, 55, 742–759. Gross, M. (2010) Ignorance and Surprise: Science, Society, and Ecological Design, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press. Gross, M. and McGoey, L. (2015) ‘Introduction’. In Gross, M. and McGoey, L. (eds) Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies, London, Routledge, pp. 1–14. Janich, N. and Simmerling, A. (2015) ‘Linguistics and Ignorance’. In Gross, M. and McGoey, L. (eds) Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies, London, Routledge, pp. 125–137. Kessler, O. (2015) ‘Ignorance and the Sociology of Economics’. In Gross, M. and McGoey, L. (eds) Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies, London, Routledge, pp. 338–348. Kirsch, T. G. and Dilley, R. (2015) ‘Regimes of Ignorance: An Introduction’. In Dilley, R. and Kirsch, T. G. (eds) Regimes of Ignorance: Anthropological Perspectives on the Production and Reproduction of Non-Knowledge, New York, Berghahn Books, pp. 1–29. Kuhlicke, C. (2015) ‘Vulnerability, Ignorance and the Experience of Radical Surprises’. In Gross, M. and McGoey, L. (eds) Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies, London, Routledge, pp. 239–246. Mallard, G. and McGoey, L. (2018) ‘Strategic Ignorance and Global Governance: An Ecumenical Approach to Epistemologies of Global Power’, The British Journal of Sociology, 69, 884–909.

36  Unexpected events and crises McGoey, L. (2012) ‘The Logic of Strategic Ignorance’, The British Journal of Sociology, 63, 533–576. McGoey, L. (2017) ‘The Elusive Rentier Rich: Piketty’s Data Battles and the Power of Absent Evidence’, Science, Technology, & Human Values, 42, 257–279. Merton, R. K. (1936) ‘The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action’, American Sociological Review, 1, 894–904. Mica, A. (2018) Sociology as Analysis of the Unintended: From the Problem of Ignorance to the Discovery of the Possible, London, Routledge. Mica, A., Peisert, A. and Winczorek, J. (2011) ‘Introduction’. In Mica, A., Peisert, A., and Winczorek, J. (eds) Sociology and the Unintended: Robert Merton Revisited, Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang, pp. 9–26. Mills, C. (2007) ‘White Ignorance’. In Sullivan, S. and Tuana, N. (eds) Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance, Albany, State University of New York Press, pp. 13–38. Proctor, R. (2008) ‘Agnotology: A Missing Term to Describe the Cultural Production of Ignorance and Its Study’. In Proctor, R. N. and Schiebinger, L. (eds) Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, pp. 1–35. Reser, J. P. and Smithson, M. J. (1988) ‘When Ignorance Is Adaptive: Not Knowing about the Nuclear Threat’, Knowledge in Society, 1, 7–27. Roberts, J. (2015) ‘Organizational Ignorance’. In Gross, M. and McGoey, L. (eds) Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies, London, Routledge, pp. 361–369. Roberts, J. (2018) ‘Luxury and Ignorance: From “Savoir-Faire” to the Unknown’, Luxury, 5, 21–41. Smithson, M. (1985) ‘Toward a Social Theory of Ignorance’, Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 15, 151–172. Smithson, M. (1989) Ignorance and Uncertainty: Emerging Paradigms, New York, Springer. Smithson, M. (1990) ‘Ignorance and Disasters’, International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters, 8, 207–235. Smithson, M. (2015) ‘Afterword: Ignorance Studies: Interdisciplinary, Multidisciplinary, and Transdisciplinary’. In Gross, M. and McGoey, L. (eds) Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies, London, Routledge, pp. 385–399. Smithson, M. J. (2008) ‘Social Theories of Ignorance’. In Proctor, R. N. and Schiebinger, L. (eds) Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, pp. 209–229. Sullivan, S. and Tuana, N. (eds) (2007) Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance, Albany, State University of New York Press. Svetlova, E. and van Elst (2015) ‘Decision-Theoretic Approaches to Non-Knowledge in Economics’. In Gross, M. and McGoey, L. (eds) Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies, London, Routledge, pp. 349–360. Taleb, N. N. (2007) The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, New York, Random House. de Zwart, F. (2015) ‘Unintended but Not Unanticipated Consequences’, Theory and Society, 44, 283–297.

Chapter 3

Change in the regimes of ignorance

Ignorance studies appear to be closely linked with unexpected events and crises, as these occurrences are critical moments when ignorance is revealed. It is implicit in the very definition of these circumstances that they involve not only a moment of rupture but also a confrontation between the known and the unknown, or between the known and what should have been known. Surprising and critical moments have the quality of bringing ignorance into the open and drawing attention to it. This mechanism works irrespective of how we understand ignorance – as a lack of knowledge or as a political and commercial resource. Unexpected events and crises are agnotophanies or ignorophanies – the manifestations and revelations of ignorance. In this chapter, however, we wish to focus on other forms in which the relation between the unexpected and ignorance manifests. We argue that surprising events and critical moments can also be viewed as occasions for acting in relation to what is revealed, and to bring about change. The unexpected not only makes us aware of our own ignorance but also opens the opportunity to react to it, and to change the manner in which we frame reality. This dimension, which we shall call the window of opportunity for change, is closely connected to the revelation of ignorance. Becoming aware of our own ignorance is what opens the window of opportunity, so to speak. Gross (2010, p. 149), for instance, points at this mechanism for the area of ecological design, by stating, “[a]cknowledging the unknown in an experimental approach should be perceived not as failure but as opportunity to learn.” In this chapter we offer a more comprehensive view on how unexpected events and crises are portrayed in ignorance studies as a window of opportunity to bring change in the existent regimes of ignorance (Kirsch and D ­ illey, 2015). We indicate that the unexpected occurs to act as an opportunity for change of ignorance when it is related to learning and knowledge-­gaining aspects. In the case of the strategic and epistemic forms of ignorance, however, the window of opportunity metaphor is more problematic. If anything, the strategic and epistemic types are rather prone to reproduce, as

38  Change in the regimes of ignorance

the analyses of the recent corporate scandals and financial crisis indicate. For this reason, we propose thinking about the crises also in terms of a matrix of possibilities. We mark in this way the phenomenon that while certain spaces of manoeuvre, mobilization, and reshuffling are opened, the dynamics are far from linear. This is why, in as much as the unexpected events and crisis are a story about opportunities and possibilities for change in the regimes of ignorance, they are also a reservoir of anti-opportunities and anti-possibilities in this regard. ­ The findings about the reproduction of strategic and epistemic ignorance also bring us back to the close connection we discussed between ignorance studies and unexpected events and crises (see Chapter 2). We thus argue that the reproduction diagnosis might be linked with the expectations, projections, and contestations of radical change that the unexpected nurtures, and which permeate the production and reproduction of ignorance in the context of crises. We propose including these processes in the analysis of crises in order to make the analytical framework more useful. Building on classical and more contemporary work on projections, possibilities, and the significance of change, we show the implications of this theoretical proposal for ignorance studies. By incorporating “processes of projection” (Emirbayer and Mische, 1998; Mische, 2009, 2014) and other “new forms of anticipatory knowledge” (Mallard and McGoey, 2018, p. 890) in our interpretative framework we facilitate a more comprehensive discussion of change of ignorance. In this way, we connect ignorance studies with the recent discussion of nonknowledge forms, as well as respond to the contemporary call for the situational and contextual analysis in this field (see Chapter 2). Consideration of the recent developments in ignorance studies allows us to postulate that we should focus more on what ignorance does than on what ignorance is. Ignorance studies are known for having developed quite nuanced taxonomies of ignorance. We should, however, take things to the next level and explain the interactions of ignorance with other social phenomena triggered by the unexpected events and crisis – projection, expectation, and contestation being cases in point.

Unexpected events and crises as opportunities When talking about change in the regimes of ignorance (Kirsch and Dilley, 2015), we refer to the alterations that occur in the manner in which ignorance emerges and interacts with other mechanisms that are related to knowledge and power. In the following section, we gain a perspective on how change is contingent on whether the context, which triggers the revelation of ignorance, is that of unexpected events or crises. This will allow us to support and reiterate the general argument made in the previous

Change in the regimes of ignorance  39

chapter: ignorance studies should (re)brand themselves not only in relation to ignorance, or specifically, types of ignorance, but also in connection with the contexts, critical moments, and occurrences where ignorance manifests or is revealed. Ignorance studies uphold the metaphor of the unexpected as an opportunity for change at a general level. A more detailed examination of this scholarship allows for the ascertaining of influences and patterns in the characteristics and circumstances of the situations in which ignorance leads to change. The findings may be summarized in four points: • • • •

Surprises, unexpected events, and crises as opportunities to learn; Production and reproduction of change as a matrix of possibilities; Structural factors, institutional pressures and anti-strategies as opportunities for strategic ignorance; Unexpected events and crises as reproductions of strategic and epistemic ignorance.

Unexpected events, crises, and surprises as oppor tunities to learn That the unexpected presents opportunities for change in the regimes of ignorance seems to be a matter-of-course and self-contained issue. Yet we should also note that this is the case mainly with regard to learning. Smithson (2015, p. 394), for instance, addresses the problem, “How does ignorance get destroyed or unmade?” while advancing a typology from two perspectives: “ignoramus” and “attributor”. From the point of view of the ignoramus, however, the unmaking of ignorance contains exclusively learning-related types of ignorance, that is, “knowledge-gaining” and the “serendipitous revelation.” It is only from the point of view of the attributor that the more strategic actions of unveiling ignorance are envisaged, such as “unmasking” and “consciousness-raising.” Gross (2010), by the same token, develops a theory of experimental integration of ignorance and surprise, where he addresses quite explicitly the opportunity issue yet only with respect to learning. He talks about the reinterpretation of the consequences and effects of deliberative action and planning in a way that can bring longterm benefits for a given project. Gross moves conceptually and analytically on the terrain of experimental integration of ignorance and surprise, within the broader theory of the knowledge society, and uses illustrations from landscape design and restoration projects. He proposes looking at surprising and unexpected events “as a basis for opportunity since they allow learning from the outcome of a surprise” (Gross, 2010, p. 42). Both Smithson’s typology of ignorance unmade and Gross’s experimental theory of ignorance and surprise work as explicit theories of unexpected

40  Change in the regimes of ignorance

events and crises as opportunities to bring about change. Yet they pertain to learning, and not to ignorance per se. Due to their capacity to raise awareness regarding various forms of ignorance, the surprising and unexpected events may act as opportunities to learn. Although quite close and convergent, these are however not the same as opportunities to bring about change in the regimes of ignorance. Production and reproduction of ignorance as a matrix of possibilities If the unexpected unequivocally brings about only the opportunity to learn, then what does this tell us in relation to the issue of ignorance change? What is the effect of the unexpected on the “production and reproduction of ignorance” (Kirsch and Dilley, 2015)? Ignorance studies offer intuitions concerning change in the regimes of ignorance that goes beyond learning. Yet this is more in the genre of a matrix of possibilities than of a window of opportunity, so to speak. Gross (2010, p. 71), for instance, draws (literally) a “house of the unknown” in order to depict how ignorance-related types can interact and chronologically succeed each other. He proposes the house metaphor in order to illustrate the succession of the forms of the unknown in the deliberative process – ignorance, nescience, non-knowledge, extended knowledge, and their derivatives. In this model, ignorance figures as a particular form of the unknown, wherein there is a certain knowledge about the unknown (Gross, 2010, pp. 68, 71). A change of ignorance does not quite work as a window of opportunity because there is a more regular or mundane reversion and chronological succession of the different unknowns. The model thus operates more as a horizon of the possible, a map of possible linkages, or house of possibilities than as a window that irrespective of whether open or not at least provides an idea of what this opportunity should be about (Table 3.1). We see Gross’s theory of experimental integration of ignorance and surprise to be representative of a double account. On the one hand, it is a theory of opportunity with regard to unexpected and surprising events as bases for learning. On the other hand, it is a theory of possibility when it comes to the matrix of linkages and chronological successions of the unknowns in social processes. We encounter a similar sequence in Kuhlicke’s (2015) evaluation of the dynamics of revelation of ignorance and identification of vulnerabilities in the context of radical surprises. The metaphor of the window of opportunity is useful for developing a theory of change as learning because of the dynamic character of knowledge production and accumulation in this context and the time limit put on its initiation. In contrast, the metaphor of the house is a better match for

Change in the regimes of ignorance  41 Table 3.1  T he house of the unknown, developed by Gross (2010, p. 71)

understanding the change in the regimes of ignorance because the chronological succession of the forms of the unknown are stretched in time, not always unidirectional and not obviously forceful. It appears easier to grasp the initiation of learning than the transition between the forms of the unknown. Certainly, this does not mean that the formula of change as a house (of possibilities) cannot be also applied to learning though. As we will see in the analysis of the European refugee crisis of 2015–2016 that we conduct later in this book (see Chapters 6 and 7), the learning story is not smooth and uncomplicated either. In a similar vein to other forms of ignorance, the unexpected events and crises rather trigger a reshuffling of possibilities: new knowledge is assimilated, indeed, yet old knowledge is neither entirely dismissed nor falsified. Instead of a simple process of learning we observe a complex interplay between learning, as well as the production and reproduction of ignorance at the same time. This notwithstanding, the change in terms of learning is a more institutionalized and materialized process than the change in the regimes of ignorance for instance. This is also because learning is a more obvious and self-directed process of nurturing progress and mobility that we are used to framing in terms of opportunities. We also see this being confirmed by the fact that there is a strong belief that unexpected events and crises open an

42  Change in the regimes of ignorance

opportunity for learning by revealing what is ignored and in consequence also create a path for change. Change of ignorance, on the other hand, is a more intricate and power-contingent phenomenon that has not yet become a clear and direct goal of public policies (though indirectly it certainly serves as a guide for policymakers). Structural factors, institutional pressures, and antistrategies as oppor tunities for strategic ignorance Though it makes sense to use the notion of opportunity mainly in relation to learning, rather than change of ignorance per se, there are also instances when the opportunity perspective fits the issue of ignorance almost perfectly. This, however, concerns emergence and not reproduction per se. We find instances of opportunity mainly in relation to the emergence of certain types of ignorance, rather than regarding the unmaking and changing of general ignorance. The study of strategic ignorance is quite illustrative in this regard. Strategic ignorance, understood as rational, systemic, and purposeful ignorance, is one of the main forms of the lack of knowledge currently analyzed (Bailey, 2007; McGoey, 2007, 2012; Freddi, 2017; Borrelli, 2018; Mallard and McGoey, 2018). One of the well-established researchers on this terrain, McGoey (2012, p. 570), for instance, defines it as the “deliberate effort to preclude, obfuscate or deflect knowledge from emerging.” She sees strategic ignorance as a resource employed by social actors in response to structural pressures as well as to controversies, such as corporate and bureaucratic scandals. Important for our discussion in this chapter, however, is that McGoey does not discuss the window of opportunity for change in the regimes of ignorance. If anything, the concept of strategic ignorance attests that the window of opportunity (for change of ignorance) stays closed or that its opening occurs with extreme difficulty. In her earlier work, McGoey (2007) indicates structural reasons and related unconscious motivations for the inability of the pharmaceutical regulatory body in Great Britain to expose the side effects of particular antidepressants. The regulator played a double role in the pre-marketing licensing of drugs as well as in the post-marketing audit, and thus depended on industrial fees for its maintenance. In addition, restraints such as the interdiction against divulging commercial information concerning licensing resulted in “anti-strategies” (McGoey, 2007, pp. 219–220) and pressures, all of which created perfect conditions for strategic ignorance to settle in. McGoey shows in this earlier work that strategic ignorance existed before and after the outbreak of the public controversies about the issue of antidepressant-related deaths. Therefore, the controversies have not provided an opportunity to change the regimes of ignorance, nor has the opportunity arisen automatically. In the cases she studies, the process within the regulatory body was hermetic and blocked by challenges all along. Yet recurrent investigations,

Change in the regimes of ignorance  43

media attention, and purportedly spontaneous actions of a number of the regulatory agency’s employees who decided to speak up eventually resulted in the issue being revealed. The emergence of strategic ignorance not only is concomitant with the factors that render change difficult but also creates the illusion of change – an illusion that blocks real change in the long run. In a similar vein, and building to a great extent on McGoey, Pénet (2018) documents, for instance, the emergence of risk ignorance as a strategic mechanism at the International Monetary Fund. Risk ignorance allowed for the launching of the lending programmes for Greece that had proven to be problematic, a situation of which the organization was well aware. The literature on strategic ignorance can be read as an explicit documentation of the structural factors and tacit motivations that create the window of opportunity for ignorance to emerge and to be maintained. More indirectly, it is also an analysis of the inherent difficulty of changing the strategic ignorance once it has institutionalized. In this sense, if it comes to change in the regimes of ignorance subsequent to corporate scandals and controversies, the study of strategic forms rather tells a story of change that is “non-becoming” (Scott et al., 2016), or of change that is becoming but at very slow pace and is marked by institutional impediments and frustrations. Unexpected events and crises as reproductions of strategic and epistemic ignorance The discussion about the emergence and persistence of strategic ignorance makes us realize that the surprises, unexpected events, and crises are not only about the opportunity to learn and the matrix of possibilities to bring a change of ignorance but, to a great extent, they are also about anti-strategies, anti-opportunities, and anti-possibilities. The revelation of ignorance creates fertile soil for change, but it also puts the inertia machine in motion. The window of opportunity might close very quickly, it might open only for selected social actors, or it might be open only with regard to certain types of ignorance. Nowhere is this more evident than in the critical readings on change of ignorance and the accounts targeting the specific forms of strategic and epistemic ignorance in the context of the 2007–2008 financial crisis. Davies and McGoey (2012), for instance, propose that the economic crisis created a breakthrough in terms of revelation of ignorance as lack of knowledge, yet it did not do the same for ignorance as a deployable political and commercial resource. They acknowledge the discussions about the limits of the models used by economists, as well as the calls for increased rationality, knowledge, and change of paradigms. Yet, they lament, there was no critical reflection about the manner in which ignorance has been used, how this has played an important role before and after the financial

44  Change in the regimes of ignorance

collapse in terms of it being “an albatross, a commodity and an institutional alibi to financial actors and the scholars who study them” (Davies and McGoey, 2012, p. 64). Kessler (2015), in a similar vein, discusses the prospects of change that have been prefigured in relation with the 2007–2008 financial crisis. He shows how the window of opportunity was opened: “[t]he last economic crisis provided such a moment, where change seemed possible and in which a debate flared up upon the limits of economic theory itself” (Kessler, 2015, p. 338). Yet, for a number of reasons, only some aspects of the models used by the economists received critical scrutiny. The other topic of relevance – the foundations and performative power of economics – was quickly “silenced” and “ignored” because of the inherent limits of the discipline’s reflexivity. The debate took seriously the first meaning but largely neglected to explore the second. What we can observe is that the call for more “realistic” models dominates the debate and that behavioural modelling and “empirical” experiments turn into the new mainstream. Yet this implies that the window of opportunity for a more substantive re-orientation of economics has already closed. (Kessler, 2015, p. 341) Both Davies and McGoey (2012) and Kessler (2015) line up the argument of the reproduction (Kirsch and Dilley, 2015, pp. 21–22) of ignorance subsequent to the global economic crisis. For Davies and McGoey, the ignorance is clearly strategic. The authors see ignorance as a practical tool and resource for action, with a clear tactical or wilful dimension. In the case of Kessler, on the other hand, ignorance appears as epistemic because of its linkage with the knowledge practices that are culturally and institutionally embedded, as well as the contradictions and pressures that emerge in relation to these. The difference between strategic and epistemic ignorance is similar to the difference between direct discrimination and unconscious bias. Strategic ignorance involves more or less purposive handling (ranging from connivance to manipulation) of what is known and unknown by others. It is also a tool of presenting knowledgeable actors as unknowers in order to avoid the responsibility for knowing (McGoey, 2019). Epistemic ignorance, on the other hand, describes how the practices of ignoring are reproduced and how actors are culturally framed not to know. It involves the issue of unequal distribution of power, relating to the conditions of ignorance not to the purposive use of it. Epistemic ignorance works together with the mechanisms of invisibilizing and silencing of social groups in order to reproduce knowledge and non-knowledge patterns that appear natural. Kuchinskaya (2014), for instance, speaks about the politics of invisibility in relation to the health effects of the Chernobyl disaster, while Menzel (2010) points to mechanisms of reinforcement of ignorance and

Change in the regimes of ignorance  45

reproduction of patterns of framing in the context of the 2007–2008 economic crisis. […] the concept of epistemological ignorance illuminates how many policymakers’ cognitive frames remain embedded in many of the political and institutional rationalities that have caused, and continue to replicate, the conditions of crisis, insulating elites while exposing the global poor and communities of color to harm. (Menzel, 2010)1 Both these forms of ignorance are recurrently associated with the idea of reproduction. For strategic ignorance, as we saw, this is because of the tendency to apply the same faulty or problematic methodologies and practices of action as well as of the persistence of power configurations in society. In the case of epistemic ignorance, however, it is because of deeper patterns of domination and discrimination in sites that deal with race, gender, body, and health-related scientific practices, as well as geopolitics (Tuana and Sullivan, 2006; Alcoff, 2007; Mills, 2007; Sullivan and Tuana, 2007; Sanabria, 2009, 2016; Kirsch and Dilley, 2015, pp. 9–10; El Kassar, 2018; Mallard and McGoey, 2018). The strategic and epistemic forms of ignorance have the characteristic that they are both not only difficult cases to conquer when the opportunity or possibility opens for change in the regimes of ignorance but also seem to be umbilically linked with the issue of reproduction, to the extent that unexpected events and crises occur rather as opportunities for reproduction than for shifts in these specific regimes of ignorance. To sum up the findings we synthetized thus far, it occurs that unexpected events and crises work as opportunities for change, but this is contingent, among other things, on the types of ignorance specific to each situation. The argument of the unexpected being an opportunity to learn appears to be most justified. In the case of the types of ignorance that appear in organizational forms of action, or deal with knowledge practices, however, the metaphor of opportunity stops being obvious. Change is not linear nor pre-arranged because of the strategic, structural, institutional, and cultural factors that hamper it, despite the fact that the overall climate for change might appear favourable. Alternatively, inertia and lack of mobilization as far as the actors are concerned can also get in the way of change of ignorance.

Failure of change vs. the perils of great projections The four propositions we abstracted regarding change of ignorance in the context of unexpected events and crises could be explained by invoking the

46  Change in the regimes of ignorance

general argument of “varieties of ignorance” (Abbott, 2010; see Nottelmann, 2016; Best, 2019a). Certain types of ignorance simply act differently than others. Yet, we claim, there is more to it. We discern here also certain projections and expectations of change which, when change is late or when it fails to quickly materialize, lead to an interpretation that stresses reproduction. The perception regarding the reproduction of strategic and epistemic ignorance is not only about reproduction per se but also about our projections regarding change of ignorance, and the inferences we make when change does not happen. In the following section, we explore the theme of projections and expectations of change more widely. We bring in accounts which scrutinize the problem of the alleged lack of (major) change in the context of the 2007–2008 financial crisis. On this basis, we make the point that the projections of change are at the very heart of the manner in which we think about unexpected events and crises contemporarily. They are partly triggered by the fact that these events are framed along the dimension of the unexpected which brings the spectrum of change closer and makes it look clear and inevitable. For this reason, we should approach the problem of change, ignorance included, by incorporating the projections and contestations of change in the analysis thereof. The problem of lack of (major) change in the context of the 2007–2008 global economic crisis is sociologically intriguing because this comprises issues beyond the dynamics of the crisis, which have to do with mechanisms of perception and framing of such events. Best (2016), for instance, originally puts forward a framing of the financial crisis as “contested failure” indicating a broader tendency to present contemporary crises in international development and international finance as failures, as well as a general preoccupation with the possibility of failure that such events trigger. Subsequently, however, Best modifies the direction of interpretation. The economic crisis is no longer considered a contested failure, but rather an “unfailure” (or “quiet failure”) – a new notion she brings in to capture the reality of high-profile failures that have not caused the radical changes one might have expected from the ruptures of such magnitude. First, I will suggest that, as in the case of international development, the 2008 financial crisis was not just a crisis but was also a particular kind of failure: It was a contested failure. […] Second, I will suggest that policymakers have become more preoccupied with the possibility of failure since the 2008 crisis – recognizing the uncertainties of the financial system and all too aware of the possibility of future crises. (Best, 2016, p. 40)

Yet economic failures – even very big ones – do not always have this kind of political salience. The 2008 global financial crisis began as a massive, highly public failure for contemporary neoliberal theory and practice. A decade on, however, what is most striking is how little the very evident failures of neoliberalism have translated into meaningful changes. This is not the first time that significant economic failures did not have

Change in the regimes of ignorance  47 the kind of political effects that we might expect. Such “unfailures” are actually a crucial, but often overlooked, part of our political economic history. (Best, 2019b)

The change in the status of the financial crisis from contested failure to unfailure is noteworthy. The transition, we suggest, is not accidental but connected to the fact that the meaningful changes projected by the heated debates regarding the epistemic foundations and risk practices in policymaking and financial governance have not materialized. The crisis debuted as a spectacular failure, yet it failed eventually to manifest the projections of meaningful change that were triggered in response to it. The framing of the 2007–2008 financial crisis as unfailure may seem to be just another instance of the phenomenon Grabel (2018) talks about in terms of the application of a general continuity thesis if it comes to the impact the financial crisis is held to have had. Both Best and Grabel reveal expectations of meaningful change in the context of the global financial crisis, as well as other similar events in international development and finance. Where do these expectations of big change come from? To a great extent, they are projections triggered by our imagination of what change should look like – as the substitution of one “ism” with another (Grabel, 2018, pp. 22–24) or as the “politics of big ‘I’ ideas” (Best, 2019c). Yet these projections are not spontaneous and irrational manifestations but effects of processes of learning and past experience of meaningful change. Grabel (2018, pp. 9–10), for instance, makes the point regarding the experience of earlier episodes of crisis when abrupt and radical change has occurred. There are at least three reasons why the discussion of unfailures (Best, 2019b) and of the continuity thesis (Grabel, 2018, p. 4) in relation to the 2007– 2008 financial crisis can help us to understand the process of change in the regimes of ignorance in which we are interested in this book. There are some similarities between the perspective holding that there was a lack of meaningful change in the political, economic, and public policy areas and the findings amounting to the production of strategic and epistemic ignorance. First, as in the case of the contestation of meaningful change in the context of the financial crisis, there is a strong normative component in the sociological findings of the reproduction of strategic and epistemic ignorance subsequent to this crisis. The research we discussed – Davies and McGoey (2012) and Kessler (2015) – is more than a scholastic exercise in identifying subtle sociological mechanisms for the production and reproduction of ignorance. This is a well-calibrated intervention to do away with the representations of the 2007–2008 financial crisis as having been caused by a lack of knowledge or lack of anticipation in relation to inappropriate economic models.

48  Change in the regimes of ignorance

Why does this perception have to be corrected? Davies and McGoey (2012) and Kessler (2015), as we saw, believe that the financial crisis has revealed knowledge and epistemic components and has raised ignorancerelated questions. Yet, they signal, the discussion ended up focusing on the wrong type of ignorance. The implications of this can be observed even further. Pénet (2018, p. 1033), for instance, recognizes in the financial crisis the contemporary tendency to frame policy failures as “epiphanies, as Kuhnian moments of collective lucidity during which people realize that expertise informing policy was wrong.” Second, as in the case of the crisis as failure talk that pops up in the debates regarding the financial crisis, observation of the reproduction of strategic and epistemic ignorance also converges with similar failure talk itself. McGoey, as we saw, invariably integrates in the bigger picture the reproduction of strategic ignorance and the reinforcement of failure in relation to institutionalized methodologies, systemic practices, and high-profile crises (see McGoey, 2007, 2010; Marres and McGoey, 2012). Third, just like the contestation of meaningful change in the context of the financial crisis, the findings regarding the reproduction of strategic and epistemic ignorance also operate with projections and expectations of how this change should look. The observers of the change of ignorance induced by the global financial crisis record meticulously the vagaries in how economists explicate the world as well as the change in ignorance that has not happened in its aftermath. As in the case of the discussion of meaningful change on political, economic, and public policy terrains, the analysis of change of ignorance is premised on projections that such change will happen and that it will be big. The earnestness and depth of these projections is directly observable in the disappointment with the lack of change in the regimes of ignorance. A situation when change occurs but is smaller than projected is similarly disappointing. So is the situation when change emerges in relation to other dimensions of ignorance that have been considered less relevant. The focus on the lack of substantive change of ignorance is not simply a response to the crisis as an epiphany thesis. It is loaded with expectations of how the change should have occurred. Yet where do these projections of meaningful change of ignorance originate in ignorance studies? We would probably not be wrong to assume that to a certain extent they are echoes and reflections of our projections of meaningful change at the political, economic, and public policy levels. But our ignorance-related projections are also the outcome of envisaging the revelation of ignorance as a moment that opens the opportunity for change at various levels, ignorance included. The revelation of, and clash with ignorance occurs as an opportunity for change because of the unexpected nature of these acts of revelation, which come to play a similar role as the

Change in the regimes of ignorance  49

epiphanies of inappropriate models of knowledge that Pénet (2018, p. 1033) talked about in relation to the financial crisis. Crises as radical and extreme unexpected events trigger projections on various fronts. The word crisis in itself means an abrupt and sudden change in circumstances; therefore, it appears natural that a meaningful change of a comparable scale will come along. Ignorance scholars project or expect something in relation to the unfolding of the global financial crisis, as do those who denounce the lack of meaningful change in political regimes, economic paradigms, and public policy measures. Crises are projected as opportunities for change by academics, observers, and social agents alike. Yet the events’ capacity for change and the actors’ projection of change do not necessarily overlap. Some unexpected occurrences or crises may actually open the window of opportunity for one type of change (e.g. learning), while they are expected to bring about another (e.g. incremental institutional change). The focus on what is projected to change may prevent observers from noticing the changes that are actually unfolding. Similarly, the projection of a certain scale of change may render social actors less perceptive with regard to the changes that may manifest on a different scale. Both Best (2019c) and Grabel (2018), for instance, argued that the incremental and small changes in the context of the financial crisis as well as other so-called unfailures went unaccounted for. The expectations of a particular type and magnitude of change affect the focus of our research, our formulation of research questions, and our choice of methods. In the case of the ignorance research on the global financial crisis, for example, the change was expected to be radical, comprehensive, systemic, and structural. The projections and expectations constitute a point of reference against which the amplitude of change is evaluated to begin with. Change is measured contingent on the initial projection of change. The description of change in the regimes of ignorance is not neutral. It is not normative and value free. Depending on the emotional and normative engagement of the author, the projection of change may become or be absorbed into legitimate and guiding research questions, but it may also cause a strong bias. As we saw in the preceding chapters, ignorance research is currently developing in relation to processes and phenomena that have the quality of taking us by surprise. The projection of change is provoked by the surprising and unexpected nature of these phenomena, and it is a trigger for inquiry into the problem of change. Our projections and expectations influence the types of change for which we are searching. A change in ignorance is associated with unexpected events and crises to the same extent as processes such as learning, problem solving, gaining autonomy, emancipation, and the creation of new institutions. All these processes have been shown to benefit from a window of opportunity that occurs as a result of such events.

50  Change in the regimes of ignorance

It is worth noting that the observers’ awareness that change is rather improbable (e.g. because of the complexity of the events) does not prevent the projections and expectations of change from emerging. The three assumptions regarding the relation between ignorance and unexpected events and crises that we discussed in the previous chapter – correctability, omnipresence, and impossibility – indicated that the perspective of crisis as (unexpected) revelation or epiphany of ignorance is not universal in ignorance studies (Chapter 2). Only the correctability assumption entails a dynamic of the revelation of ignorance that is unexpected, and which leads to change towards the adjustment of models of knowledge. Here, the unexpected events and crises work as an epiphany and the projections of change, we may infer, are quite legitimate. In the case of the omnipresence and impossibility assumptions, on the other hand, it is either assumed that ignorance is institutionalized, that reality is too complex, or that the actors ignore aspects of reality in a wilful manner. In this chapter, the scenario of crises as revelations of ignorance that lead to change, or crises as epiphanies, does not fit entirely because ignorance is not something that can be adjusted by remodelling but is something that has structural, strategic, and epistemic foundations. Hence, we may infer, the projections of change in the regimes of ignorance should also reflect our projection of ignorance characteristics. Interestingly, however, they do not. At least in the ignorance impossibility model that is quite well represented in this chapter, we see that this is not the case. McGoey, for instance, is a well-versed author on the terrain of strategic ignorance. This notwithstanding, McGoey’s projections and expectations of change in the context of the financial crisis are in no way diminished. Quite on the contrary.

Integrating projectivity in the problem of change of ignorance To associate unexpected events and crises with opportunities for radical change is so commonsensical that one can mistakenly take their concomitancy for granted. We have big expectations with regard to change in the regimes of ignorance brought about by crises, because their unexpected nature – even in cases when the change is incomplete – creates a mirage and imaginary of change. When the anticipated change does not happen, the failures and the crises are refuted, or even ignored. Is there a way out of the vicious circle? One option, and this path has been taken by Best (2019c) and Grabel (2018), is to be stubborn about change and to demonstrate that some kind of transformation, nevertheless, happens. Change does not have to be big in order to be meaningful; small shifts can

Change in the regimes of ignorance  51

also be transformative and productive. Both Best and Grabel propose, for instance, to reframe the problem of change in the context of the 2007–2008 financial crisis by shifting from the logic of change as the substitution of big “I” ideas or “isms” to instead think of change as incremental and lowerscale mechanisms and responses. To recapture the logic and significance of these unfailures, we need to shift our attention away from the politics of big “I” ideas – like Neoliberalism and Keynesianism – and focus instead on the more mundane practices and devices that key policymakers in the United States and United Kingdom used to try to transform their economies in the late 1970s and early 1980s. By doing so, we will begin to appreciate how fraught and contested the early days of neoliberalism were, and to recognize the complex politics of quiet economic failures both then and now. (Best, 2019c)

It needs to be reemphasized one last time before concluding this introductory chapter that […] the myriad innovations that I examine in subsequent chapters […] do not come close to displacing neoliberalism top to bottom. They do not sufficiently counter the power of the global financial community […] But the innovations do amount to something  – to the evolution of a system of financial governance that encompasses both neoliberal and decidedly non-neoliberal features, and that is altering the geographical reach, influence, and internal governance of key actors. (Grabel, 2018, p. 23)

In the case of the 2007–2008 financial crisis and the instances analyzed by Best and Grabel in relation to unfailures and the continuity thesis, it seems the tracing of small and incremental changes is a reasonable approach. Indeed, it emerges from their accounts quite convincingly that the projection of radical and comprehensive change hampers the capturing of the possibilist and incremental side. On the other hand, we should not automatically extrapolate to other cases also, as radical and comprehensive change does take place. Taleb (2007, p. 11), for instance, has a very different vision of change  – “Histories and societies do not crawl. They make jumps”  – noticing that it is rather “we, (and historians)” who “like to believe in the predictable, small incremental progression.” How do we reconcile these two different points? The safe and proper thing to do, is to integrate both radical-comprehensive and possibilistincremental models of change. These genres of change do not in practice exclude each other, and we should not picture them as mutually exclusive. Although the projections, expectations, and contestations of radical change may block the appreciation of a myriad of smaller changes, in practice both types of change may occur simultaneously. Better than deciding which type of change occurs, we should integrate these processes in the analysis.

52  Change in the regimes of ignorance

We thus propose that there is one more complimentary option to the one proposed by Best and Grabel. The vicious circle of studying something that we ourselves project and expect to happen in a certain way can be overcome by including the very processes of projection, expectation, and contestation as the context in which the change that we study occurs. In this way, we provide analytical content to these processes by admitting that they amount to much more than a cognitive bias. Change, whether radical-meaningful or possibilist-incremental, in the context of high-profile crises cannot be separated from the practices and mechanisms that project how change should occur. They are not narratives and symbolic acts that can be set aside from what constitutes the subject of the analysis. Just the contrary, the projections of the future in the context of disturbing occurrences such as crises materialize in practices and institutions that facilitate, bring about, hamper, or ignore change. We thus propose integrating the work of Best and Grabel but approaching the issue differently. In our perspective, at stake is not so much proving that change occurs, even if less visibly, but demonstrating that it occurs in the context of, and under the impact of processes of projection, expectation, and contestation. Our proposal is not meant to suggest that the approaches of “mundane practices and devices” (Best, 2019c) or “productive incoherence” (Grabel, 2018) are analytically incomplete. It is rather to acknowledge explicitly the ultimate impact of projectivity-related processes not only on the perception of change but also on the very context of change. In this way, we move from proving whether change exists or not – and how meaningful it is – to showing how change occurs and how social actors relate to it (e.g. by becoming obsessed or disappointed with change, or ignoring it altogether). This shift of perspective will allow us to see the reported lack of meaningful transformations subsequent to unexpected events and crises as a part of the experience of change and as an indication that change actually occurred. The study of projection of change So far, we addressed the significance of the processes of projection, expectation, and contestation of change mainly in dialogue with Best (2019c) and Grabel (2018), as these two authors offered a straightforward diagnosis of the perception of unfailures and the continuity thesis in relation to the 2007– 2008 financial crisis. The story of projection, however, goes beyond this. In the following section, we broaden and clarify more of the theoretical basis that we propose. One of the first and most original instances of what we herein articulate as the problem of projection and contestation of change is without doubt Hirschman’s (1971, 2013) possibilism. Grabel (2018, pp. 22–24, 29–54) acknowledges this analytical influence on her endeavour to win recognition

Change in the regimes of ignorance  53

for the theory of incoherent and incremental changes. Possibilism is a perspective that differentiates between abrupt and incremental changes, acknowledging the tendency to consider mainly abrupt change to be meaningful. Hirschman’s theory underlines the great expectations in relation to interventions in the area of planning and public policy. It reveals the prevalent pattern of looking for radical and systemic change, and argues, instead, in favour of paying attention to more incremental, local and experimental evolutions. Possibilism is thus a counter-theory for the cases in which there is seemingly no abrupt change, or the policy agenda is such that grand plans are considered to be dangerous. While Grabel integrates possibilism in her critical discussion of the continuity thesis, she focuses primarily on Hirschman’s insights concerning incremental change. Our proposal, however, is to further explore the implications of possibilism with respect to the processes of projection, expectation, and contestation of change. This appears particularly timely since in sociology the phenomena of projectivity and expectability have recently started to be treated more systematically. Social sciences increasingly acknowledge the importance of projecting the future and holding expectations in relation to social institutions and other aspects of social reality. This conceptual turn has created a favourable context for the development of theoretical ideas such as projections of the future (Emirbayer and Mische, 1998; Mische, 2009, 2014; Wagner-Pacifici, 2009), imaginaries and expectations (Cross, 2014; Beckert, 2016), and aspirations (Appadurai, 2013, 2016; Ortner, 2016). Emirbayer and Mische (1998, p. 970), for instance, list projectivity as one of the “constitutive elements of human agency,” together with “iteration” and “practical evaluation.” They circumscribe analytically the future orientation of agency and offer a base for subsequent studies in this direction, such as de Holan, Willi, and Fernández’s (2019) analysis of the impact of emotions on the construction of projective agency in context of extreme poverty. Mische (2009, 2014), continuing this focus on future, indicates how the imaginative phenomenon is at the root of everyday rituals and interactions as well as more exceptional sites of intervention and debate, such as social movements, public policy, and expertise. She calls them “‘sites of hyperprojectivity,’ that is, sites of heightened, future-oriented public debate about possible futures” (Mische, 2014). Beckert (2016), on the other hand, describes macroeconomic forecasts, technological projections, and consumption stimuli as the carriers of “fictional expectations” that underlie capitalist dynamics and fervour. Beckert and Bronk (2018a, see 2018b), in a similar manner, discuss the combination of imaginative, algorithmic, and narrative technologies in coping with uncertainty in economic life. Theory development on projection, expectations, and uncertainty in sociology (and cognate disciplines) is vibrant, with the sub-field of new economic sociology having partly reconstituted itself around these notions.

54  Change in the regimes of ignorance

Through the lens of these approaches, contemporary crises and contested failures occur as sites of hyperprojectivity, wherein fictional expectations about the direction and mechanisms of change become the triggers of action and intervention. They are not just contested failures but also contested projections, or projections that lost their legitimacy – the “promissory legitimacy,” Beckert (2020) talked about. Not only is meaningful change expected to be the effect of crises, but also the trigger of the fresh and powerful projections that will mark the beginning of a new world or order of things. Projections prescribe for the imaginaries what the future should be like in the context of unexpected events and crises. Projection processes enter crises because they inevitably trigger actions aimed at finding solutions and paths for development. These interact with ignorance, strategic and epistemic ignorance in particular. The manner in which crises and the responses taken are defined and projected is contingent on the current stratification and power relations in society. Strolovitch (2013, p. 167), for instance, points at ignorance-related mechanisms for the reproduction of social inequalities in the context of crises. He argues that the state of exceptionality and emergency is attributed to the moments when the otherwise widespread problems hit the privileged classes. The projection prioritizes and legitimizes the interventions aimed to remedy the predicament of the dominant groups (and it is carried out on their behalf), while underprivileged groups continue to be ignored and excluded from the interventions. Each of these crises, I argue, reveals different facets of the ways in which the power, normativity, and privilege of those perceived to be affected by economic hard times serve (1) to construct some economic troubles as “normal” and others as “crises”; (2) to prevent economic problems related to structural inequalities from being treated as crises by dominant political actors and institutions; and (3) to shape ideas about the ostensible solutions and ends to economic crises. (Strolovitch, 2013, p. 167) Mallard and McGoey (2018, p. 890), in a similar vein, speak about the emergence of original forms of anticipatory knowledge in governance, international politics, social movements, public policy, international organizations, and the media. Crisis-related projectivity, we argue, can be seen as one of such forms that “go beyond fact-based approach to global problem-solving” (Mallard and McGoey, 2018, p. 890). In some contexts, projectivity manifests itself more pointedly than in others. Mallard and McGoey (2018, p. 894), for example, argue that the anticipatory practices adopted after the 9/11 attacks by the institutions involved in counter-terrorism policy departed radically from the more traditional “probabilistic and fact-based reasoning” that had been used in risk management, for example, in the insurance field (see Aradau and Munster, 2011;

Change in the regimes of ignorance  55

Mallard and Lakoff, 2017). Sunstein (2003; Sunstein and Zeckhauser, 2011), similarly, in a discussion of “probability neglect”, suggests that such forms of anticipatory knowledge blur the boundaries between the fact-based knowledge, truth, probability, and plausibility regimes, and result in emotional decision-making and governance. They contribute to the ignorance of alternative words or of the degree of probability and discourage evaluation and debate. Depending on whether it is triggered by crises, risks or disasters, projectivity as an “imaginative generation by actors of possible future trajectories of action” (Emirbayer and Mische, 1998, p. 971), or a form of anticipatory knowledge, will unfold in a different manner (Aradau and Munster, 2011, p. 6). It may also serve different purposes, as Mallard and Lakoff demonstrate with regard to the techniques of prospection in national security. Moreover, projectivity may overlap, conflate, or be constitutive of other practices, such as a “preoccupation with failure” (Best, 2014), “preparedness for the next emergency” (Lakoff, 2007), securing and imagining (Aradau and Munster, 2011), or calculation (Beckert and Bronk, 2018b). As far as ignorance is concerned, projectivity and the related forms of anticipatory knowledge go beyond an essential “fact-based approach” (Mallard and McGoey, 2018, p. 890). They interact with the regimes of truth and untruth, likelihood, probability, and plausibility as discussed by Mallard and McGoey (2018), and contribute to the reproduction of strategic and epistemic ignorance. From what ignorance is to what ignorance does We suggest looking at unexpected events and crises as occasions when the processes of change projection emerge. They can be seen as possibilist instances wherein productive incoherence (Grabel, 2018) manifests. Yet the feature of productive incoherence does not fully explain the complexity of the phenomenon. The projection of change (be it in relation to learning, ignorance, problem-solving, or a change of methodological approach) is also an important characteristic. The projection of change is so institutionalized that influencing it in itself becomes a political, ideological, and commercial resource. By calling the incoherence that appears after crises productive, Grabel wanted to emphasize that it creates results and facilitates transformation. In a similar sense, we claim, the projection of change is productive too. It is now time to incorporate projectivity and related forms of anticipatory knowledge in the model of ignorance production and reproduction in the context of crises – Figure 3.1. We depart from the inquiry into the change of regimes of ignorance as such. But instead of focusing on whether change occurred or not, we rather aim to reveal the ignorance-related effects of the interaction between ignorance, various forms of knowledge

56  Change in the regimes of ignorance

Revelation of ignorance, epiphany

Expectation

UNEXPECTED EVENTS CRISES

Projection

Contestation

CHANGE OF IGNORANCE

Learning, reproduction of strategic and epistemic ignorance

Figure 3.1 Interactional model of change of ignorance in the context of unexpected events and crises

and institutional processes. Such a perspective is in line with Gross and McGoey’s (2015, p. 4) observation that one should study ignorance in order to stress its “situational and ‘regular’ character.” Just that, we wish to emphasize, the situational dimension surfaces not only in the everyday and ritualized settings but also in more exceptional sites of ignorance, such as unexpected events and crises. These contexts trigger specific revelations and epiphanies, and one of their particular features is the emergence of processes of change projection and expectations regarding their dynamics. Best (2014, 2019b) observes that one of the main characteristics of the crises in international finance and development is the “preoccupation with failure”. We argue, complementarily, that the unexpected events and crises also trigger a preoccupation with change, with the character and social meaning of it. In the following paragraphs, we analyze how acknowledging this preoccupation may advance our research practice in ignorance studies and what the theoretical and normative implications are of this fact. The switch of attention to the features of the research site wherein change is projected and expected to appear allows us to see that the issue of change in the regimes of ignorance outgrows and surpasses the problem of ignorance as such. The perspective on ignorance is thereby expanding. In the

Change in the regimes of ignorance  57

analyses  of change of ignorance that we reviewed in the first part of this chapter, the focus zoomed in on ignorance. When the inquiry into the change of ignorance operates only with the variable of ignorance, the analytical tools and the analytical perspective are oriented or circumscribed by the question of what ignorance is. This is why, sooner or later, in the articles on ignorance in the context of the 2007–2008 financial crisis the topic of how we define ignorance was addressed. We propose an alternative approach. Instead of zooming in on ignorance, we should zoom out from it. Instead of asking what ignorance is, we should ask what ignorance does. In this sense we align with Bakken and Wiik’s (2018, p. 3) idea of going beyond the definition of ignorance and concentrating instead on its relations with the outside, and on how these relations unfold in organizations. Thus, the question of ignorance turns out to be not so much conceptual or analytical but methodological. But rather than placing a definition on ignorance, the question is how ignorance can be observed. It is like playing the Devil’s advocate. (Bakken and Wiik, 2018, p. 3) The research on what ignorance does and the manner in which it associates with other processes does appear, one way or another, in the literature on ignorance and surprise (Gross, 2010), ignorance and vulnerabilities (Kuhlicke, 2015), and ignorance and uncertainty (Smithson, 1989), to name a few examples. Yet this approach has not yet been explicitly articulated and formalized. This is why, instead of going to the next level and connecting ignorance with other processes and phenomena, such as other forms of knowledge, for the most part, researchers of ignorance continue to conceptualize ignorance in terms of taxonomies. We propose that by looking at ignorance in relation to other mechanisms, a more comprehensive picture of change in ignorance subsequent to crises can be obtained. In this way, the focus on ignorance as a key variable is maintained, while the processes unfolding in the related fields of interaction are also included in the account. Studying changes of ignorance in this interactional manner allows one to grasp the bigger picture. How can we deal with the internal differentiations within ignorance in this case? More specifically, how can we conceptualize the shift from ignorance as an absence of knowledge, or a fact-based phenomenon, to ignorance as a resource of action in organizational or political contexts? The approach we propose in terms of zooming out from ignorance allows for the integration of this shift since it embraces thinking in terms of resources. There is one reservation, however: we do not quite abandon ignorance as a lack or absence of knowledge in our approach. Crises function as fact-revealing phenomena that affect actors’ behavior as well as ignorance as a resource of

58  Change in the regimes of ignorance

action. Therefore, especially for crises, ignorance as a lack of knowledge is a pertinent perspective. Ignorance as an absence of knowledge and ignorance as a productive force constitute two framings that are not mutually exclusive (cf. Roberts, 2015, p. 361). Just because we learn to appreciate ignorance as a productive force does not mean that ignorance as an absence of knowledge has become outdated as a theoretical construct, or that it has been compromised. Smithson’s proposal to tie the existing taxonomies of ignorance in disaster studies to specific temporal stages, such as preparedness and response, runs along these lines. He shows that ante- and post-disaster stages should be accounted for in particular because they include “encoding the state of our (lack of) knowledge” (Smithson, 1990, p. 212, see 223–228). Thus, while ignorance as a lack of knowledge is clearly not a universal framing, it is also not a framing that can be easily discarded. Besides, an attempt to think about lack and absence slightly differently is worthwhile. The proposal of Croissant (2018) to link ignorance with absence (e.g. “sociology of things that aren’t there”) and to understand it in a broader context is insightful in this respect. She sees ignorance not only as a lack of knowledge or absent knowledge but as a specific “form of non-knowledge,” alongside “alternative, controversial, illusive, rejected, or otherwise erroneous knowledges […] which are not matters of absence per se” (see Machlup, 1980; Croissant, 2018, p. 329). The integration of processes of change projection into the analysis of change in the regimes of ignorance in the context of crises allows us to revise our understanding of the concept of ignorance as absence, and to frame it in relation with other forms of non-knowledge or anticipatory knowledge. The impulse to research ignorance as an organizational and political resource has created a certain conceptual distance from ignorance as a lack of knowledge, and the latter framing has started to be viewed as outdated. We perceive that this shift has been too hasty. Even if the field has moved beyond fact-based approaches – both in theory and in practice – ignorance-related processes cannot be totally disconnected from the presence or absence of knowledge. Mechanisms of learning, discovery, revealing, silencing, or leaving in the dark contain fact-based and evidential knowledge components. Even Mallard and McGoey’s (2018) ecumenical epistemological perspective is based on understanding the manner in which truth and ignorance recombine, redefine, and influence each other in the field of global governance. Thus, there is a need to go beyond the definitions and taxonomies of ignorance and to turn to studying its relationship with other processes and forms of non-knowledge or anticipatory knowledge, even if this implies being less accurate and specific about what ignorance is. Another gain from our model is that we maintain the agency of ignorance, and at the same time see it as an object of action. By revealing the

Change in the regimes of ignorance  59

ignorance-related effects of interaction between ignorance and other processes we are able to grasp how ignorance is entangled, how things are done to it, and how it does things to other processes in its own turn. Davies and McGoey (2012), for instance, show how ignorance developed before the financial crisis in a silent and adaptive form, and it is used in the context of the crisis as a tool for providing legitimization and authentication for the lack of foresight. Thus, we reckon, the types of ignorance are not only succeeding one another but create something that can be called tricky dynamics. The types of ignorance build on and influence each other and do so almost in a path-dependency manner.

Conclusions Unexpected events and crises open the window of opportunity for change. In general, this also pertains to ignorance. Yet it is important to understand that there are some variations as to where and whether such an opportunity arises and why. In this chapter we have argued that the discussion about change in the regimes of ignorance in the context of unexpected events as crises is quite nuanced. We abstracted certain patterns of envisaging this dynamic in ignorance studies and this allowed us to make some inferences as well as advance new analytical ideas. First, thinking in terms of a matrix of possibilities rather than a window of opportunity is more suitable when approaching change in the regimes of ignorance. Second, the problem of change in ignorance studies overlaps with the one of reproduction – the persistence of strategic and epistemic ignorance in the context of the 2007–2008 financial crisis being a particularly loud and fascinating topic. Third, ignorance studies seem vulnerable to processes of contestation of change of the kind documented to appear in relation to the financial crisis more generally. The contestations do not, however, respond to the situation in the field so to say but are linked with the processes of projection and expectation of change triggered by the very definition of the 2007–2008 crisis as crisis and unexpected. Taking these findings as a point of departure, we have encouraged ignorance studies to integrate the processes of projection and the related forms of anticipatory knowledge into the model of change of ignorance in the context of unexpected events and crises. We have argued for a model of change in terms of ignorance-related effects of the interaction between ignorance and processes of projection, expectation, and contestation. We have also discussed the theoretical and methodological adjustments that this approach entails for the practitioners in ignorance studies. Such as the change of focus – from what ignorance is to what ignorance does – as well as change of approach – from zooming in on ignorance to zooming out.

60  Change in the regimes of ignorance

Note 1 Observably, Menzel uses the notion epistemological to describe what herein we refer to as epistemic. We prefer, however, to use the word epistemic and to employ the notion of epistemological ignorance for the instances denoting what is “cognitively inaccessible” (Rescher, 2009, pp. 100–101; Croissant, 2018, p. 7).

References Abbott, A. (2010) ‘Varieties of Ignorance’, The American Sociologist, 41, 174–189. Alcoff, L. M. (2007) ‘Epistemologies of Ignorance: Three Types’. In Sullivan, S. and Tuana, N. (eds) Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance, Albany, State University of New York Press, pp. 39–57. Appadurai, A. (2013) The Future as Cultural Fact: Essays on the Global Condition, London, Verso Books. Appadurai, A. (2016) ‘Moodswings in the Anthropology of the Emerging Future’, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 6, 1–4. Aradau, C. and Munster, R. van (2011) Politics of Catastrophe: Genealogies of the Unknown, London, New York, Routledge. Bailey, A. (2007) ‘Strategic Ignorance’. In Sullivan, S. and Tuana, N. (eds) Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance, Albany, State University of New York Press, pp. 77–94. Bakken, T. and Wiik, E. L. (2018) ‘Ignorance and Organization Studies’, Organization Studies, 39, 1109–1120. Beckert, J. (2016) Imagined Futures: Fictional Expectations and Capitalist Dynamics, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. Beckert, J. (2020) ‘The Exhausted Futures of Neoliberalism: From Promissory Legitimacy to Social Anomy’, Journal of Cultural Economy, 13, 318–330. Beckert, J. and Bronk, R. (2018a) ‘An Introduction to Uncertain Futures’. In Uncertain Futures: Imaginaries, Narratives, and Calculation in the Economy, Oxford, Oxford University Press, pp. 1–36. Beckert, J. and Bronk, R. (eds) (2018b) Uncertain Futures: Imaginaries, Narratives, and Calculation in the Economy, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Best, J. (2014) Governing Failure: Provisional Expertise and the Transformation of Global Development Finance, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Best, J. (2016) ‘When Crises are Failures: Contested Metrics in International Finance and Development’, International Political Sociology, 10, 39–55. Best, J. (2019a) ‘Varieties of Ignorance in Neoliberal Policy: Or the Possibilities and Perils of Wishful Economic Thinking’, Leverhulme Lecture, University of Sheffield, February 6. Best, J. (2019b) ‘Neoliberalism’s “Unfailures”’, Brave New Europe, June 5 (Crossposted from the SPERI-Website). Best, J. (2019c) ‘Quiet Failures: About the Project’, jacquelinebest.com. Borrelli, L. M. (2018) ‘Using Ignorance as (Un)Conscious Bureaucratic Strategy’, Qualitative Studies, 5, 95–109. Croissant, J. L. (2018) ‘Agnotology: Ignorance and Absence, or Towards a Sociology of Things That Aren’t There’. In Meusburger, P., Heffernan, M., and Suarsana, L. (eds) Geographies of the University, Cham, Springer International Publishing, pp. 329–351.

Change in the regimes of ignorance  61 Cross, J. (2014) Dream Zones: Anticipating Capitalism and Development in India, London, Pluto Press. Davies, W. and McGoey, L. (2012) ‘Rationalities of Ignorance: On Financial Crisis and the Ambivalence of Neo-Liberal Epistemology’, Economy and Society, 41, 64–83. El Kassar, N. (2018) ‘What Ignorance Really Is. Examining the Foundations of Epistemology of Ignorance’, Social Epistemology, 32, 300–310. Emirbayer, M. and Mische, A. (1998) ‘What Is Agency?’, American Journal of ­Sociology, 103, 962–1023. Freddi, E. (2017) Strategic Ignorance and Social Institutions, Dissertation for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Ph.D., in Economics, Stockholm School of Economics. Grabel, I. (2018) When Things Don’t Fall Apart: Global Financial Governance and Developmental Finance in an Age of Productive Incoherence, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press. Gross, M. (2010) Ignorance and Surprise: Science, Society, and Ecological Design, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press. Gross, M. and McGoey, L. (2015) ‘Introduction’. In Gross, M. and McGoey, L. (eds) Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies, London, Routledge, pp. 1–14. Hirschman, A. O. (1971) A Bias for Hope: Essays on Development and Latin America, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press. Hirschman, A. O. (2013) ‘Political Economics and Possibilism’. In Adelman, J. (ed) The Essential Hirschman, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, pp. 1–34. Kessler, O. (2015) ‘Ignorance and the Sociology of Economics’. In Gross, M. and McGoey, L. (eds) Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies, London, Routledge, 338–348. Kirsch, T. G. and Dilley, R. (2015) ‘Regimes of Ignorance: An Introduction’. In Dilley, R. and Kirsch, T. G. (eds) Regimes of Ignorance: Anthropological Perspectives on the Production and Reproduction of Non-Knowledge, New York, Berghahn Books, pp. 1–30. Kuchinskaya, O. (2014) The Politics of Invisibility: Public Knowledge about Radiation Health Effects after Chernobyl, Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press. Kuhlicke, C. (2015) ‘Vulnerability, Ignorance and the Experience of Radical Surprises’. In Gross, M. and McGoey, L. (eds) Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies, London, Routledge, pp. 239–246. Lakoff, A. (2007) ‘Preparing for the Next Emergency’, Public Culture, 19, 247–271. Machlup, F. (1980) Knowledge: Its Creation, Distribution, and Economic Significance, Volume I, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press. Mallard, G. and Lakoff, A. (2017) ‘How Claims to Know the Future Are Used to Understand the Present: Techniques of Prospection in the Field of National Security’. In Camic, C., Gross, N., and Lamont, M. (eds) Social Knowledge in the Making, Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press, pp. 339–377. Mallard, G. and McGoey, L. (2018) ‘Strategic Ignorance and Global Governance: An Ecumenical Approach to Epistemologies of Global Power’, The British Journal of Sociology, 69, 884–909.

62  Change in the regimes of ignorance Marres, N. and McGoey, L. (2012) ‘Experimental Failure: Notes on the Limits of the Performativity of Markets’, working paper. Martin de Holan, P., Willi, A. and Fernández, P. D. (2019) ‘Breaking the Wall: Emotions and Projective Agency under Extreme Poverty’, Business & Society, 58, 919–962. McGoey, L. (2007) ‘On the Will to Ignorance in Bureaucracy’, Economy and Society, 36, 212–235. McGoey, L. (2010) ‘Profitable Failure: Antidepressant Drugs and the Triumph of Flawed Experiments’, History of the Human Sciences, 23, 58–78. McGoey, L. (2012) ‘The Logic of Strategic Ignorance’, The British Journal of Sociology, 63, 533–576. McGoey, L. (2019) The Unknowers: How Elite Ignorance Rules the World, London, Zed Books Ltd. Menzel, A. (2010) ‘Crisis and Epistemologies of Ignorance’, APSA 2010 Annual Meeting Paper. Mills, C. (2007) ‘White Ignorance’. In Sullivan, S. and Tuana, N. (eds) Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance, Albany, State University of New York Press, pp. 13–38. Mische, A. (2009) ‘Projects and Possibilities: Researching Futures in Action’, Sociological Forum, 24, 694–704. Mische, A. (2014) ‘Measuring Futures in Action: Projective Grammars in the Rio + 20 Debates’, Theory and Society, 43, 437–464. Nottelmann, N. (2016) ‘The Varieties of Ignorance’. In Peels, R. and Blaauw, M. (eds) The Epistemic Dimensions of Ignorance, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 33–56. Ortner, S. B. (2016) ‘Dark Anthropology and Its Others: Theory since the Eighties’, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 6, 47–73. Pénet, P. (2018) ‘The IMF Failure That Wasn’t: Risk Ignorance during the European Debt Crisis’, The British Journal of Sociology, 69, 1031–1055. Rescher, N. (2009) Ignorance: On the Wider Implications of Deficient Knowledge, Pittsburgh, PA, University of Pittsburgh Press. Roberts, J. (2015) ‘Organizational Ignorance’. In Gross, M. and McGoey, L. (eds) Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies, London, Routledge, pp. 361–369. Sanabria, E. (2009) ‘Alleviative Bleeding: Bloodletting, Menstruation and the Politics of Ignorance in a Brazilian Blood Donation Centre’, Body & Society, 15, 123–144. Sanabria, E. (2016) ‘Circulating Ignorance: Complexity and Agnogenesis in the Obesity “Epidemic”’, Cultural Anthropology, 31, 131–158. Scott, S., McDonnell, L. and Dawson, M. (2016) ‘Stories of Non-Becoming: NonIssues, Non-Events and Non-Identities in Asexual Lives’, Symbolic Interaction, 39, 268–286. Smithson, M. (1989) Ignorance and Uncertainty: Emerging Paradigms, New York, Springer. Smithson, M. (1990) ‘Ignorance and Disasters’, International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters, 8, 207–235. Smithson, M. (2015) ‘Afterword: Ignorance Studies: Interdisciplinary, Multidisciplinary, and Transdisciplinary’. In Gross, M. and McGoey, L. (eds) Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies, London, Routledge, pp. 385–399.

Change in the regimes of ignorance  63 Strolovitch, D. Z. (2013) ‘Of Mancessions and Hecoveries: Race, Gender, and the Political Construction of Economic Crises and Recoveries’, Perspectives on Politics, 11, 167–176. Sullivan, S. and Tuana, N. (eds) (2007) Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance, Albany, State University of New York Press. Sunstein, C. R. (2003) ‘Terrorism and Probability Neglect’, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 26, 121–136. Sunstein, C. R. and Zeckhauser, R. (2011) ‘Overreaction to Fearsome Risks’, Environmental and Resource Economics, 48, 435–449. Taleb, N. N. (2007) The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, New York, Random House. Tuana, N. and Sullivan, S. (2006) ‘Introduction: Feminist Epistemologies of Ignorance’, Hypatia, 21, vii–ix. Wagner-Pacifici, R. (2009) ‘When Futures Meet the Present’, Sociological Forum, 24, 705–709.

Chapter 4

Crisis and ignorance

We have thus far made the point that there is a certain synergy between the currently increasing number of ignorance studies and the institutionalization of the research of surprises, unexpected events, and crises in social sciences. It is best visible through the following sequence: the unexpected triggers a sharp revelation of ignorance, which in turn opens an opportunity for change. Yet our contention is that such a vision is partial since it only problematizes ignorance-related processes, while the unexpected is taken for granted. Thus, it is pivotal to explore in greater depth the unexpected nature of the processes tackled in ignorance studies, and in particular to discover what this unexpectedness entails for the study of ignorance change. Ignorance studies have been nimble in demonstrating how change of ignorance has to be studied in relation to their various types as well as to the broader structural and institutional circumstances. This notwithstanding, ignorance research tended to be impatient and disappointed with the lack of meaningful change in the regimes of ignorance (Dilley and Kirsch, 2015), especially in the study of the 2007–2008 financial crisis. We tried to give a broader theoretical sense to this impatience by linking our findings with the adjacent discussions about the general tendency to dismiss meaningful change subsequent to the financial crisis (Chapter 3). We made the point that these processes alert us to the high intensity and recurrence of projective processes subsequent to unexpected events and crises in our society. Therefore, in order to study the production and reproduction of ignorance (Kirsch and Dilley, 2015) we have to be aware what expectations and projections of change manifest currently. Change in the regimes of ignorance occurs in the contemporary world in connection to anticipatory forms of knowledge, which are triggered by unexpected events and crises. In accordance with this analytical predicament, we proceed in this chapter with an analysis of the 2015–2016 European refugee crisis as a site where the production and reproduction of ignorance unfolds in relation to processes of projection, expectation, and contestation. We draw

Crisis and ignorance  65

a broader picture of the contextual embeddedness of the European refugee crisis in other processes unfolding in Europe and globally (related to politics, economics, culture, and spatial mobility) and link the crisis analytically to ignorance-related processes. Our analysis evolves in three steps. First, we present asylum seeking and migrant mobility which posed a challenge to Europe at various levels. Thereafter, we analyze the crisis in terms of a window of opportunity for bringing change in the regimes of ignorance regarding the global refugee crisis and the challenges of the increased mobility of people. Finally, we systematize patterns of contestation of the crisis in the academic research and close with a discussion of the ignorance-related effects of the interaction between ignorance and processes of contestation.

The European refugee crisis of 2015 –2016 The European refugee emergency is a multidimensional event with various “fronts of crisis” (Pastore and Henry, 2016). Although the unprecedented movement of refugees that lead to the 2015–2016 crisis indisputably involves the agency and autonomy of the actors themselves, the crisis is usually presented as manifesting broader global processes. Attention is directed especially to the complexity of mobility (cf. Tazzioli and De Genova, 2016; Scholten, 2020), the vulnerabilities of the European Union (EU) migration and asylum regime (Medecins sans Frontieres, 2016, p. 8), the economic and political instability triggered by the economic crisis, the conflicts and violence in the Middle East (such as the Syrian Civil War), and the responsibility of Europe in the war-migration nexus (Tazzioli et al., 2016, p. 25). The impact of the crisis is likewise multidimensional. Triandafyllidou (2018, p. 200), for instance, uses the term of “multiple ‘crisis’” in order to capture this multilayered impact (see also Crawley et al., 2016, p. 12). Tazzioli and De Genova (2016, p. 3), in a similar vein, point at the “ordinarily unquestioned manifold and transversal reality of the multiple ‘crises’ that coexist alongside the purported ‘migration’ or ‘refugee crisis’ in (and of) ‘Europe.’” The multiplicity of the refugee crisis also reveals itself in its changeable characterization – see Table 4.1. The crisis is not always or exclusively depicted as humanitarian; it is also viewed as related to public policy, European solidarity or leadership, even as a crisis of Europe, or of Europe understood as a project and institutions, such as the Schengen Area. Pastore and Henry (2016; see Crawley and Skleparis, 2018), for instance, talk about a crisis of the “European migration and asylum regime.” Heller et al. (2016) signal that the crisis is being depicted at the same time “humanitarian” as well as one of “border control” and of the “Schengen zone.” Crawley (2016, p. 13), makes the point that the crisis is “not a reflection of numbers” but “rather a crisis of political

66  Crisis and ignorance Table 4.1  T  he 2015 –2016 European refugee crisis: multidimensional and multifaceted Dimensions Magnitude crisis (sharp rise in the number of refugees crossing the Mediterranean to Europe) Humanitarian crisis Solidarity crisis Cooperation crisis Value crisis, compassion crisis, moral crisis Public policy crisis Europe’s crisis The EU crisis, the Schengen Area crisis Asylum system crisis, border regime crisis

solidarity.” McConnell et al. (2017, p. 5), in a similar manner, conclude that the “so-called ‘migration crisis’ has far more to do with the current state of the European Union […] than it does about the realities of contemporary migration,” while Staples (2019) makes a case about the crisis of solidarity which was triggered by the relocation schemes the EU proposed in September 2015 as response to the crisis. This resonates with Sirriyeh’s (2018, p. xi) idea of the “crisis of cooperation” within “a wider European crisis,” and the “compassion crisis” that unfolded. The crisis and the European asylum system We reconstruct the chain of events by focusing on a particular dimension of the crisis – its interaction with European asylum regulations and practices. Before getting started, however, a certain semantic clarification is due. We use throughout the book the notion of the European refugee crisis in order to denote the state of emergency induced in the years 2015–2016 by the highly mobile masses that arrived in Europe. To designate the people who embarked on the dangerous Mediterranean journey we use the general category of refugees. We employ asylum seekers and migrants only in situations when concrete categorizations are required (when discussing legislation or public policy schemes, for instance). As we show in the second part of this chapter, the refugee crisis has been contested from several angles, the terminological and semantic aspects being particularly targeted. Still, as underlined by Triandafyllidou (2018, p. 200) the notion of a refugee crisis “allows us to refer to this set of events in a concise way.” And we need this terminological coherence in order to be able to address the interactions and ignorance-related effects in a pertinent way. On the other hand, there are also instances when the usage of the refugee notion, if applied, risks creating more confusion than coherence, such as in the case of relocation. In these instances, the notion of asylum seeker is appropriate.1

Crisis and ignorance  67

Although the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) has been subjected to objections in the past (Gallagher, 2002), it never happened on the scale of the heated debates on necessary changes that were triggered by the 2015–2016 refugee crisis. Earlier, especially in the new EU Member States, subsequent policy provisions were introduced in a technocratic manner; the implementation was carried out without major problems, and it neither encountered resistance nor attracted much public attention (Kubicki et al., 2017). Below, we briefly outline the reasons why CEAS, despite frequent amendments and improvements, was unprepared for the 2015–2016 crisis. The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951), signed in Geneva on the 28 July 1951, is the foundation of modern international policy towards refugees. The Convention accomplishes a number of things: the introduction of the definition of the refugee (Article 1), the listing of the basic rights of refugees and the obligations of the host countries (right to work, education, and the obligation to meet basic living needs), as well as the prohibition of the penalization of illegal entry (Article 31). The 1951 Refugee Convention also emphasizes the importance of international co-operation: CONSIDERING that the grant of asylum may place unduly heavy burdens on certain countries, and that a satisfactory solution of a problem of which the United Nations has recognized the international scope and nature cannot therefore be achieved without international co-operation. (see Preamble in The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, 1951) The division of responsibilities in the course of international cooperation, however, was not agreed on. Attempts to develop cooperation were, and still are, the cause of tension in the international refugee protection system. Looking back historically, we may point to the way the 1951 Refugee Convention was implemented as the root cause of inefficient systemic solutions under EU policy and of belated and rather unsuccessful reactions to the ongoing migration crisis. From the EU perspective, the general documents referring to refugee policy include the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, with Article 18 stating the legal framework for the guarantee of the right to asylum: The right to asylum shall be guaranteed with due respect for the rules of the Geneva Convention of 28th July 1951 and the Protocol of 31st January 1967 relating to the status of refugees and in accordance with the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. (see Article 18 in Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (2012/C 326/02), 2012)

68  Crisis and ignorance

On the other hand, Article 19 ensures the safety of a person who was removed, expelled, or extradited to a country where a claim is made: a serious risk that he or she would be subjected to the death penalty, torture or other inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. (see Article 19 in Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (2012/C 326/02), 2012) The EU regulations on migration are largely influenced by the Schengen Acquis (1985). This gradually abolishes restrictions on freedom of movement and border controls within the EU (with the possibility of their temporary restoration in exceptional situations), while clarifying the regulations concerning its external borders. The question of who should carry out the asylum procedure and on what terms is also clarified (Articles 28–38). Another document of great relevance and directly related to the subject of refugees is the Dublin Convention signed on 15 June 1990 (see also Hurwitz, 1999), adopted independently of the Schengen Acquis. Created because of the concerns about the possibility of an increased influx of refugees and the problems with processing some of the already submitted applications, the Dublin Convention addresses the following issues: • • •

The so-called refugees in orbit, or the refugees unable to find a state willing to examine their asylum application; The refugee’s freedom of choosing a country of application (“asylum shopping”); The submission of applications in several member states in order to increase one’s chances of success.

The Dublin Convention which first came into force on 1 September 1997, was later replaced by the Dublin II Regulation that came into force on 1 September 2003, and the Dublin III Regulation that came into force on 1 January 2014 in all EU Member States with the exception of Denmark. The Dublin regulations specify that, in principle, the state responsible for examining an asylum application should be the first EU Member State whose border has been crossed by an applicant. Provisions related to family reunification and the protection of minors constituted exceptions to this rule. The beginning of the CEAS implementation can be dated to the 1999– 2004 period – see Table 4.2. The purpose of creating CEAS was to achieve harmonization of asylum law within the EU on the basis of common minimum standards. The purpose of the second stage of CEAS implementation, taking place in 2005–2013 (strictly speaking, over the years 2009–2013), was to create a common asylum procedure and a uniform protection status in

Crisis and ignorance  69 Table 4.2 Common European Asylum System (CEAS): timeline (per Wagner et al., 2016, p. 19) Adopted Implemented Asylum policy tool 2000 2001 2003

2000 2001 2003

2004 2005 2010 2011 2013 2013

2004 2006 2011 2013 2014 2015

Eurodac Regulation: Council Regulation (EC) No 2725/2000 Temporary Protection Directive: Council Directive 2001/55/EC Reception Conditions Directive: Council Directive 2003/9/EC Dublin II Regulation: Council Regulation (EC) No 343/2003 Qualification Directive: Council Directive 2004/83/EC Asylum Procedures Directive: Council Directive 2005/85/EC European Asylum Support Office Regulation: Regulation (EU) No 439/2010 Recast Qualifications Directive: Directive 2011/95/EU Dublin III Regulation: Regulation (EU) No 604/2013 Recast Eurodac Regulation: Regulation (EU) No 603/2013 Recast Reception Conditions Directive: Directive 2013/33/EU Recast Asylum Procedures Directive: Directive 2013/32/EU

individual EU Member States. This process mainly involved updating and expanding existing policy tools. The main institution responsible for carrying out the asylum policy is the European Asylum Support Office (EASO), established in 2010, as well as the European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union (Frontex), created in 2004, and later in 2016 transformed into the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (still known as Frontex). The CEAS system, negotiated with great effort even up until 2015, turned out to be inadequate in crisis situations. The very assumption behind the Dublin system, that all EU Member States provide a similar procedure for processing applications and offer comparable living conditions, proved to be problematic because it neglected the inherent disparities within the EU. In the 1990s, when the Dublin system was being constructed, the condition of comparability might have stood a chance, whereas at the beginning of the 21st century, after waves of EU expansion, this was, however, certainly beyond reach (see Costello and Mouzourakis, 2016). The new EU Member States were not able to offer labour market and welfare opportunities similar to those of core Member States in the north of the continent. The Dublin system has often been criticized for being useful for the core EU Member States for keeping refugees at the periphery of the EU (Zaun, 2017). In 2015, the visibility of the inability of EU Member States to efficiently provide help to migrants, and the media reports on the deaths of refugees at sea forced the EU to introduce ad hoc solutions for dealing with the crisis, while individual Member States, in their own turn, began to advance their

70  Crisis and ignorance Table 4.3  A  sylum and first-time asylum applicants by citizenship, age, and sex. Annual aggregated data (rounded) GEO/TIME 2012 EU 28 Germany Greece France Italy Hungary Poland Romania Sweden

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

335,290 431,095 626,960 1,322,845 1,260,910 712,235 646,060 77,485 126,705 202,645 476,510 745,155 222,560 184,180 9,575 8,225 9,430 13,205 51,110 58,650 66,965 54,265 60,475 58,845 70,570 76,790 91,965 111,415 17,335 26,620 64,625 83,540 122,960 128,850 59,950 2,155 18,895 42,775 177,135 29,430 3,390 670 10,750 15,240 8,020 12,190 12,305 5,045 4,110 2,510 1,495 1,545 1,260 1,880 4,815 2,135 43,855 54,270 81,180 162,450 28,790 26,325 21,560

Source: Dataset by Eurostat (2019).

separate solutions. All this has called into question the possibility of maintaining a unified European asylum policy. Beyond the impact on the EU migration policy, the refugee crisis also translated differently in terms of burden-sharing by the EU Member States. Responsibilities related to the registration and offering of immediate help and assistance for refugees fell to a great extent on the border states, that is, Greece and Italy, or on the states situated along the route to the main targeted destination countries (primarily Germany but also France and Sweden), such as Hungary. Table 4.3 presents the number of people who arrived in each country and submitted asylum applications. In the period of the crisis, however, many migrants arriving to Greece were submitting their applications neither in Greece, their first country of arrival, nor in the countries north of Greece whose borders they were crossing on the way to Germany or Sweden. They refrained from submitting an application in light of the Dublin regulations, which would oblige them to stay in the country where they applied. Therefore, the numbers provided by the table are smaller than the actual arrivals and transfers of people. During 2015, for instance, approximately one million people arrived in Greece, yet only 13,205 submitted applications for international protection in this country. The European refugee crisis: reconstructing the chain of events How did the crisis of 2015–2016 evolve? What was the starting point of the chain of events that culminated in what came to be known as the European refugee crisis?

Crisis and ignorance  71

The sequences and series of occurrences may be worked out infinitely, and we can go back in time to the Treaty of Versailles or even the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453. There is a clear war-migration nexus here that is easier to expand than to undercut. The 1980s–2000s conflicts in Afghanistan, Eritrea, Somalia, and Sudan constituted a significant source of forced migration. The 2011 Arab Spring, with its protests in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Syria, and a number of other countries, also radically disrupted the already volatile political equilibrium in North Africa and the Middle East. As a consequence of the Arab Spring, a civil war started in Syria that involved the use of chemical weapons, the persecution of civilians and destruction of cities, such as Aleppo (Majed, 2014). This resulted in a large number of people fleeing from Syria to the south, mostly to Lebanon and northward to Turkey. In 2015 there were approximately 2.7 million Syrians in Turkey (Kaymaz and Kadkoy, 2016). As we may expect, the war-migration nexus also has a quite observable political dimension. The various belligerents of the Syrian conflict, for instance, are supported from the outside. Iran backs the Shiite military groups. Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, openly supports President Bashar al-Assad while being perceivably satisfied that the conflict destabilizes the region close to the EU and major oil sources. While Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the autocratic leader of Turkey, likewise does not hesitate to use the tragedy of Syrian refugees as a tool of exerting political pressure on European countries. In 2012 Greece erected a fence at its land border with Turkey, which led to the sea route from the Turkish coast to the proximate Greek islands (such as Lesbos or Kos) becoming an alternative option for the people intending to reach Europe. The number of attempts to reach Lampedusa – an Italian island close to the Libyan coast – has also increased. In 2014, the number of asylum applications submitted in EU countries has doubled from 335,290 in 2012 to 626,960 – see Table 4.3. In 2015, the trend of increasing journeys across the Mediterranean continued. The figures point to 1,032,408 Mediterranean Sea arrivals to Italy, Cyprus and Malta, and sea and land arrivals to Greece and Spain. The most common countries of origin of the refugees were Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Eritrea, Somalia, and Sudan (Triandafyllidou, 2018, p. 3). The journeys were taken with inadequate safety provisions and in perilous conditions, such as overloaded boats ran by smugglers (Crawley et al., 2017) with the disastrous outcome of 3,771 people reported dead or missing in 2015 alone. With regard to 2015, we can point to several dates, or turning points, for the asylum policy of the EU and its member states. On 20 April 2015, the EU foreign ministers met in Luxembourg and drafted the first plan to tackle the disastrous events happening around the Mediterranean Sea and to fight the criminal groups carrying out human trafficking – here, for instance, the

72  Crisis and ignorance

idea of relocation was for the first time put on the table.2 The meeting of the EU foreign ministers was organized soon after the information about the reported death of approximately 800 migrants who attempted to cross the sea from Libya to Italy had been publicized. The revealing of this information accounted for one of the “official” opening events of the situation that later became constructed as the refugee crisis. During May–June 2015, the EU institutions and the EU Member States were intensively negotiating the possible policy responses to the emergency situation, which at that time was already starting to be reported by the media as a crisis. In May, the European Commission proposed the relocation of 40,000 asylum seekers from Italy and Greece over two years. On 17 June 2015, Hungary decided to erect a fence on its border with Serbia which also happens to be an external border of both the Schengen Area and EU. Next, on 26 June 2015, the EU Member States agreed to relocate the asylum seekers from Italy and Greece. All this while the media were reporting the dramatic arrivals of people by insecure dinghies to Greek islands situated close to the Turkish coast throughout the summer. Late August–early September 2015 constituted the most eventful period of the crisis. On 24 August 2015, Germany announced that it was not going to return the Syrian asylum seekers under the Dublin regulation. This controversial decision of Chancellor Angela Merkel amounted to an overt neglect of the rules which constituted the cornerstone of CEAS. Three days later, on 27 August, the bodies of 71 refugees were found in a truck abandoned by the roadside in Austria. During the last two days of August, refugees started the now well-known protest at the Budapest Keleti train station against the refusal of Hungary to let them board the trains to Austria without travel documents issued for the Schengen Area. Hungary eventually allowed the migrants to cross the Austrian border. In the first week of September, approximately 20,000 refugees arrived at Vienna where they started the final leg of their journey to Germany. On 2 September 2015, the most iconic image of the European refugee crisis was published – the picture of Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old boy of Kurdish origin whose body was found washed ashore along the Turkish coast. Alan Kurdi drowned together with his mother and brother in their attempt to get to Greece by crossing the sea. The picture was republished by virtually every media outlet in Europe and beyond. It had a huge impact in terms of mobilization and exerting the social pressure to come up with some solution for the crisis. The relocation scheme The EU tried to formulate a solution to the European refugee crisis on multiple levels and it advanced various measures in this regard. One of the most debated, was the decision of the European Commission to impose the

Crisis and ignorance  73

emergency relocation scheme. The scheme envisaged mandatory relocation quotas for distributing the asylum seekers away from the EU frontline Member States (Greece and Italy). It developed into a quite contested issue, a crisis event even which engaged the new EU Member States from Central and Eastern Europe. The scheme revealed the difficulties of advancing burden-­ sharing solutions in response to the crisis when states have incentives to contest and challenge these (Trauner, 2016; Triandafyllidou, 2018, p. 201; Zaun, 2018). The proposal came in two steps. First, as we mentioned, in May 2015, and second, in September 2015, when the European Commission proposed the relocation of 120,000 asylum seekers from Italy and Greece over the next two years. According to this second implementation package, each EU Member State was assigned an obligatory quota of migrants to receive. The details of the plan were set in Council Decision (EU) 2015/1601 of 22 September 2015 Establishing Provisional Measures in the Area of International Protection for the Benefit of Italy and Greece (2015). The second implementation package was immediately refused by some of the EU Member States (Hungary). While in others, it triggered an intense debate about their involvement in the common asylum policy (such as Poland). No doubt, politically it was an important turning point, and one that triggered quite a few ignorance-related processes also.3 In November 2015, the first asylum seekers were relocated from Italy and Greece. Hungary openly announced that it would not accept any relocated asylum seekers. During the end of March and beginning of April 2016, significant changes were proposed for CEAS (European Commission, 2016a). These included an automatic and obligatory mechanism of asylum seeker relocation, which would significantly modify the Dublin system. The changes also included rules of cooperation with non-EU states and plans for the resettlement of refugees recognized outside the EU. Hungary reacted with the organization by Orbán’s government, on 2 October 2016, of a kvótareferendum [referendum on quotas] to decide whether the country should accept the asylum seekers or not.4 Alongside relocation, the EU also looked for other solutions to the European refugee crisis. During the autumn of 2015 the EU held talks with Turkey that resulted in the EU-Turkey joint action plan, signed on 29 November 2015 (European Commission, 2015). This document was supported by the EU-Turkey Statement of 18 March 2016 (European Commission, 2016b). The EU declared it would provide financial support to Turkey towards covering the costs of hosting refugees on its territory, and the EU also granted Turkey the status of a safe country, thus allowing the return of asylum seekers to Turkey from EU Member States. The action plan further established that the EU agrees to resettle one Syrian refugee from Turkey for each asylum seeker returned to Turkey (Hofmann, 2016). It is worth noting here that the efforts to keep the refugees out of the EU, in Turkey or

74  Crisis and ignorance

later in Libya can be also interpreted as an active triggering of ignorance. The conditions and situation of refugees outside of the EU are more easily ignored by the media or social activists. Pushing the crisis out of Europe is a strategy of ignoring just another humanitarian crisis happening somewhere out there. The political tensions regarding the relocation plan and the contested debates around the European refugee crisis started to cool off in 2016. The relocation plan accepted on 22 September 2015, was set for two years and was supposed to be completed by 26 September 2017. Yet the last individuals were still in the relocation procedure in May 2018, when the European Commission announced that the relocation plan was a success because 96% of asylum seekers eligible for relocation were relocated (European Commission, 2018, p. 17). Though 96% may sound like quite a good result, it does not, in fact, mean that 160,000 asylum seekers were relocated. The 96% reflects the share of asylum seekers who qualified as eligible for relocation. Overall, the benchmark for success marked by this figure had apparently been set quite low, when one takes into consideration how many people arrived in Italy and Greece and were in need of assistance as well as how they were determined to be eligible for relocation.5 It is interesting that the European Commission has never published any final report on the relocation programme. Though it reported scrupulously on the progress of the programme during its course – it published altogether 15 reports – its last published account (European Commission, 2017) came out at the beginning of September 2017, which was before the expected end of the programme. The figures in Table 4.4 demonstrate that less than 30% of the number of legally foreseen asylum seekers were relocated in comparison to the initial 2015 plan. The discrepancies between the EU Member States are significant, too. Malta received more asylum seekers than it was assigned. Finland and Ireland fulfilled their assignment almost fully. Poland and Hungary received none, while Romania accepted 17.4% of the asylum seekers it was assigned, which was still quite significant if compared to other countries in the region (e.g. Slovakia 1.8% or the Czech Republic 0.4%). The dynamic of accounting for the relocation plan illustrates rather pointedly that it is apparently easier to establish the moment when the crisis started, even when the dates are somewhat arbitrarily set by policy documents or tragic events, than to establish when the crisis finished. Crises rather fade away. They are gradually less and less reported in the media. The organizations expected to manage a given crisis also invest gradually less effort in dealing with it. In the case of the refugee crisis, the European Commission at some point simply stopped producing reports concerning the main tool of crisis management – the relocation scheme. A crisis is a period of intensive attention to a phenomenon, its key events and aftermath.

Crisis and ignorance  75 Table 4.4  R  esults of the relocation programme by country of destination in October 2017 Country

Commitment Places formally Number of legally pledged relocated foreseen refugees

Austria Belgium Bulgaria Croatia Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Hungary Ireland Italy Latvia Lithuania Luxembourg Malta Netherlands Poland Portugal Romania Slovakia Slovenia Spain Sweden United Kingdom Norway Switzerland Lichtenstein

1,953 3,812 1,302 968 320 2,691 0 329 2,078 19,714 27,536 0 1,294 600 0 481 671 557 131 5,947 6,182 2,951 4,180 902 567 9,323 3,766 0 0 0 0

50 1,530 1,070 316 205 50 0 396 2,128 6,940 13,250 0 0 1,152 0 627 1,160 545 205 2,825 100 3,218 2,182 60 579 2,500 3,777 0 1,500 1,530 10

15 997 50 78 143 12 0 141 1,975 4,468 8,479 0 0 552 0 321 382 430 148 2,442 0 1,496 728 16 217 1,279 2,276 0 1,509 1,237 10

Total

98,255

47,905

29,401

Percentage of relocated persons in relation to legally foreseen (%) 0.8 26.2 3.8 8.1 44.7 0.4 42.9 95.0 22.7 30.8 0.0 92.0 66.7 56.9 77.2 113.0 41.1 0.0 50.7 17.4 1.8 38.3 13.7 60.4

29.9

Source: Šelo Šabić (2017, p, 6),

The attention weakens bit by bit and the subject fades away again to the sphere of public ignorance, or it just normalizes. This is why, perhaps, the European Commission has not yet delivered the final report summarizing the outcomes of the application of its key policy tool – the relocation scheme. The refugee crisis, which revealed the weaknesses of CEAS, became an opportunity to adjust and improve the asylum policy, as well as to strengthen solidarity in the EU. Yet the change took a different turn. The

76  Crisis and ignorance

unveiling of the international protection policy rendered the asylum seekers an object of politics in a number of countries (Kubicki et al., 2017). The process of relocation turned out rather negatively as a test for European solidarity. Zaun (2018, p. 45), for instance, referred to it in terms of “unsuccessful EU policy-making or a ‘non-decision’.” The discussion of how to design European asylum policy still continues at the moment when this book is being written.

Revelation and change of ignorance Let us recall the four assumptions we discussed as recurrent in ignorance studies as they relate to the significance and potential of unexpected events and crises to open an opportunity for change (Chapter 3): • • • •

Surprises, unexpected events, and crises as opportunities to learn; Production and reproduction of change as a matrix of possibilities; Structural factors, institutional pressures, and anti-strategies as opportunities for strategic ignorance; Unexpected events and crises as reproductions of strategic and epistemic ignorance.

Based on these propositions, we embark on approaching the issue of the production and reproduction of ignorance (Kirsch and Dilley, 2015) in the context of the European refugee crisis of 2015–2016. Ignorance has been addressed frequently and tackled multidimensionally in the research on the refugee crisis, in a few instances even in an explicit manner (see Nassar, 2014; Stel, 2016; Pénet, 2018; Nassar and Stel, 2019; Scheel and Ustek-Spilda, 2019). By analyzing the scholarship related to the refugee crisis from the vantage point of the four assumptions, we entertain some illustrative and evaluative objectives. The analysis allows us to bring the findings about the change of ignorance resultant from the refugee crisis closer to ignorance studies by creating an integrative analytical ground. Another important aspect, ignorance studies receive feedback in this way through their application to a new research site. Not only do we clarify what ignorance studies can bring to the systematization of these findings, but we also discover what the refugee crisis of 2015–2016 can contribute to ignorance studies, by means of posing challenges to its premises or offering new venues for theory development. The refugee crisis as an oppor tunity Earlier in this book we made the point that – if nothing else – the unexpected events and crises certainly open a window of opportunity for

Crisis and ignorance  77

learning (Chapter 3). One can clearly observe how unexpected occurrences, surprises, and crises manifest as ignorance-changing events, granted that change is understood as an impact on ignorance exerted by the revelation of knowledge (even the knowledge about the presence of ignorance) and evidence production. In this case, what changes is the ignorance commonly understood as the lack of knowledge and the (presumed) lack of awareness. The change is achieved through the filling of the epistemic gap and the exposure of ignorance. The unexpected events and crises are opportunities for learning because the knowledge that is revealed can be actively taken up by social actors, and new possibilities of change may thus be created or discovered. The number of people attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea has increased. The migration routes have diversified: refugees were taking not only the Central route (from Libya to Italy) but increasingly also the Eastern route (from Turkey to Greece). The number of deaths at sea among the refugees has also grown. All this put sea crossings in the spotlight and attracted attention from political and media actors, as well as from civil society and social movements (Sirriyeh, 2018, pp. 3–7). In the case of the refugee crisis, too, the production of knowledge, bringing to light evidence and the revelation of ignorance has been one of the first features to be noticed and described by its observers. Media attention and political debates on the topic have been instrumental in this respect, as was the bottom-up reporting on the refugee experience by civil society actors, artistic communities as well as the refugees themselves. The production of knowledge assumed the form of revelation of ignorance, exactly as it is presented in the general model by Gross (2010). But it should be specified that the revelation also concerned what could no longer be ignored, what used to be ignored more or less tacitly, and not only what is ignored (due to misrepresentation, or pure nescience). That is, the revelation also indicated that the global refugee crisis that had been ignored for some time could no longer be ignored (for instance, the war-migration nexus, politics-migration nexus, asylum policy-migration nexus). Its reach went beyond the elements of crisis that emerge unexpectedly (such as the dramatically rising number of casualties from the journey on the Mediterranean Sea towards Europe). The knowledge that emerged and the evidence that was revealed appeared as something that was present yet had been ignored in relation to broader geopolitical relations, or which continues to be ignored or misrepresented more or less purposively. Certainly, it is quite difficult to disentangle the tacit state ignorance from the contextual and structural nescience. As also indicated by Boswell and Badenhoop (2020), the state also engages in forms of ignorance (“denial”, “resignation” and “elucidation”) of its own limited knowledge or capacity to cope with certain problems (such as irregular migration). This notwithstanding, the element

78  Crisis and ignorance

of the refugee crisis as revelation of what could no longer be ignored emerges as quite poignant. Moreover, framing the movement of people through the Mediterranean and Aegean as  a human-trafficking ­ ­issue – and by extension blaming their deaths on malevolent traffickers – hides the role played by EU immigration policies. The hardening of the European Union’s borders, the militarization of enforcement, and the lack of safe routes for migrants is obscured; the blame is shifted squarely onto smugglers, who operate without consideration for the lives of their cargo, and onto migrants, who still decide to make the dangerous trip […]. (Jones, 2016, p. 27)

States have ignored the signs of the incipient crisis in order to put political pressure onto others – a strategy which has been employed by the states “pushing” migrants and by the states “pulling” migrants worldwide. (Schmiedel and Smith, 2018, p. 3)

Before that, the southern peripheral EU member states with the most central access to the Mediterranean  – Italy and Greece  – were the most affected, with other EU member states largely ignoring the problem […]. (Karolewski and Benedikter, 2017, p. 295)

The process has been gradually growing in strength for a long time and now has reached its climax. It was not completely unknown and did not appear out of the blue (Schmiedel and Smith, 2018, pp. 1–2). What was new was not the process as such but the fact that migrant mobility reached a tipping point beyond which it could no longer be ignored. This tipping point also changed the vocabulary. The process has now started to be called the refugee crisis or asylum policy failure (which has been pending for quite some time, or which could have been foreseen). The research on the refugee crisis describes the mechanisms which brought the process to the tipping point and contributed to the magnitude of its impact. First, the crisis materialized and externalized through the statistics about the accidents and border deaths in the Mediterranean (Steinhilper and Gruijters, 2018, p. 516). Second and closely related, the statistics of the sea crossings and tragic deaths at sea crushed the anticipations that migrant mobility would diminish with the deterioration of the weather conditions (Sirriyeh, 2018, p. 3). Third and extremely important, the high exposure and intensive circulation of the numbers in the traditional and social

Crisis and ignorance  79

media contributed to the visibility of the fact that the tipping point had been reached (see Lenette and Miskovic, 2018). This visibility was not only a tool of evidence revealing but also a means of experiencing the crisis, its magnitude and consequences. Visibility participated in the rising awareness about the phenomenon and in revealing what could no longer be ignored (Jones, 2016, p. 27). Death and visibility appear to be essential triggers for this change in ignorance. Also crucial, however, was that the visible deaths took place in Europe – “In contrast to bodies lost at sea, these migrants were already well within the boundaries of the EU and their deaths could not be ignored” (Jones, 2016, p. 20). This factor allowed for a window of opportunity to open, as the literature on the subject suggests. The geographic closeness of the unfolding crisis provided an air of urgency to the whole process and ultimately linked the perilous migrations across the Mediterranean with the long-term perspectives of Europe and the EU as ideas and institutions. Hence the reference to the movement of people as the European refugee crisis, Europe’s refugee crisis, and sometimes even Schengen crisis. In this sense it is interesting, and at the same time disturbing, that in the academic research the term refugee crisis is not uniformly employed. Instead we find discussed the Syrian crisis or the European crisis, for instance. The refugee’s flight is part of a single global process, yet it is compartmentalized into distinct instances depending on where it unfolds geographically. The refugee crisis functions as Syrian in literature before it reaches the borders of Europe. Once it begins unfolding on European territory it starts to be framed as European (see Nassar, 2014; Stel, 2016; Nassar and Stel, 2019). In this process of compartmentalization much more than pure semantics is at stake. Schmiedel and Smith (2018, p. 3), for instance, make the point that there is a shift from framing the crisis as a crisis for the refugees to seeing it as a crisis for the receivers. The crises which make refugees leave their countries have been muted, constructing the receivers’ migration crisis at the cost of the refugees’ crisis migration. Europe, then, occupies the center of attention, although it is states such as Syria, where the largest number of refugees currently come from, which are actually in crisis – a crisis to which European foreign politics contributed. (Schmiedel and Smith, 2018, p. 3) Apart from the factors already mentioned, the multidimensionality of the crisis in terms of values, unity, policies, and economy (Heller et al., 2016; see Sirriyeh, 2018, p. 3), makes the tipping point of the attempts to cross the Mediterranean Sea a perfectly relevant issue of the public debate. The window of opportunity to raise the awareness about migrant movement across

80  Crisis and ignorance

the Mediterranean Sea seems thus to appear in the context of the proliferating crisis talk that has facilitated its opening. The literature on the refugee crisis thus operates with the perception that the refugee sea crossings that culminated in 2015–2016 are not an entirely unknown and new phenomenon. The crisis revealed the existing mechanisms of ignorance and made them open to change, that is, ignorance was undergoing change inasmuch as the crisis could no longer be ignored. Another interesting thought is that the refugee crisis created an opportunity to engage with empirical evidence on an unprecedented scale, but this opportunity was seized on less frequently than might have been the case. This argument is reiterated continuously and critically, either as an indication that the opportunity to engage with empirical evidence was lost, or as a criticism that the way this opportunity had been used was unprepared and hasty. Steinhilper and Gruijters (2018), for instance, point out that the public, political, and academic debates on the causes and consequences of the border deaths made little use of the available information and data sources on the phenomenon. These authors link the ignorance of the relevant information in the debates on border deaths with these discussions’ highly contentious nature. Baldwin-Edwards, Blitz and Crawley (2018), in a similar vein, suggest that there “is a substantial ‘gap’ between the now significant body of evidence examining migration processes and European Union policy responses” (see Sirriyeh, 2018, pp. 19–20). They explain the decoupling of research and policymaking by the fact that these two areas were kept structurally separate by the epistemic assumptions and institutional practices each of them endorsed, while Cabot (2019) blames “the business of anthropology” for treating the human displacement of 2015– 2016 in the mode of urgency and crisis that is shared by humanitarian and security interventions. She believes that this mode contributed to the reinforcement of the European refugee regime rather than having produced new evidence. The refugee crisis and change in ignorance: possibilities and anti- possibilities The triggering of change in the context of the European refugee crisis has been documented in various domains such as border policies, mobilization for or against the refugees (Steinhilper and Ataç, 2016; della Porta, 2018; Feischmidt et al., 2019), and emotional regimes (Sirriyeh, 2018). There is also contestation of change, in the sense that visible transformation is lacking. Alternatively, it is stated that change is there, but it is seen as temporary, illusory, and sometimes even headed in the wrong direction. Trauner (2016), for instance, argues that instead of bringing about a new asylum policy the crisis reproduced and strengthened the old paradigm. This argument

Crisis and ignorance  81

recalls Grabel’s (2018) discussion about the preoccupation with the meaningful change of a large proportion in the context of the 2007–2008 financial crisis, and the continuity thesis thereof (Chapter 3). Indicating hence that the research of the problem of change in the refugee crisis context was likewise based on the same premises – the EU asylum policy should be replaced with a new paradigm, or a new “ism”. Slightly differently, Sirriyeh (2018) indicates that the 2015–2016 events opened the possibility of change in the existing emotional regimes, especially with regard to compassion. Yet, the author notices, while compassion was a surprisingly efficient emotion working for the advancement of restrictive immigration policies, it has failed to mobilize significant action in support of asylum seekers, although solidarity with them has indisputably emerged. Change thus is a topic that evokes mixed feelings, but there is a certain regularity in how the dynamics of change are addressed. The literature on the refugee crisis, overall, is more inclined to acknowledge change in selected practices and areas of the asylum system than in the asylum system as a whole. We should point out here the underlying assumption that change is or would be possible. The refugee crisis is framed as a potential turning point, and the research is aimed at uncovering whether the change has actually happened. The language of these studies concentrates on what is possible and not on the window of opportunity. The metaphor of opportunity does not totally disappear, it is ubiquitous when knowledge and evidence procurement and usage are analyzed, for instance. It can also be occasionally spotted in the discussions regarding change of the EU asylum policy (cf. Trauner, 2020). This notwithstanding, there is an observable employment of what, following Hirschman, may be termed possibilist framing. Change in the context of the European refugee crisis is an example of the dynamics of the possible. In this instance of the dynamics of the possible, the turning point and not the window of opportunity works as the operative term. In the case of the window of opportunity, the literature examines whether the expected or obvious change does or does not happen. With the turning point, the spectrum of change that is or is not possible is being explored. The dynamics of opportunity evolves through factual explanatory accounts, while the explanations provided by the epistemology of the possible are counterfactual. Guiraudon (2017), for instance, reaches the conclusion that “the 2015 refugee crisis was not a turning point.” This might sound like epistemology and dynamics of opportunity, but, in fact, the language is quite possibilistic. Guiraudon’s analytical modus operandi is to establish if the turning point was theoretically possible and then to explain why it did not become reality. In a similar vein, Sirriyeh (2018) discusses the change in the regimes of emotions in terms of a turning point and the conditions under which change could be possible. Both authors primarily address not the actual change but the

82  Crisis and ignorance

possibility of change – the shifts in the asylum policy or emotional regime that could have happened. To account for this dynamic between politics and policy, I first assess whether there could have been a change of policy following the paroxysm of media attention with the publication of the pictures of a boy lying lifeless on a Turkish beach in September 2015. Second, I outline a sociohistorical perspective on the development of a transnational field of EU border security whose stakeholders resist change. […] Third, I take stock of EU decisions adopted in 2015–2016, measures that show policy inertia and drift. (Guiraudon, 2017, p. 152)

Crises are not only about disruption and chaos, but can also be turning points that bring potential for transformation. This book is also concerned with these movements and moments of resistance […] such as the public response in Europe to refugees during the summer and autumn of 2015. There is an assessment of the possibilities and successes of such engagements with compassion to elicit change and resist restrictive immigration policies. (Sirriyeh, 2018, p. 11)

What Guiraudon’s and Sirriyeh’s approaches allow us to infer, however, is that the refugee crisis is not only an epistemology and evolution of possibility but also of anti-possibility. The authors not only explain why the change in policy or emotional regime might be possible but also what deters change. Along these lines, Guiraudon speaks of institutionalized practices, interests, and structural factors, while Sirriyeh points at time constraints as well as at mechanisms of political capture and fatigue. All these elements, we gather, are not only about the possibility of change but also about what we may term anti-possibility. The literature on the refugee crisis explores the emergence of the matrix of possibilities for change with transformative, emancipatory and maximizing potential as well as the mechanisms that render the fulfilment of change unlikely. In this respect, the direct and indirect reflections on the possibility of change with regard to the asylum policy (be it a shift in the epistemological status of the policy or in social emotions towards it) that the refugee crisis brought are of interest. Ignorance change can be captured indirectly when the transformation of other phenomena is examined. Vandevoordt and Verschraegen (2019), for instance, indicate that the institutionalization of the support for refugees provided by civil society may have dual implications as far as the expectations towards the state are concerned. On the one hand, it may render the state’s inaction or incapacity to act invisible and thus prevent articulation of criticism towards the state. On the other, it may increase the pressure for the state’ active participation because of the increased visibility of support (Pries, 2018; Feischmidt and Zakariás, 2019; Vandevoordt and Verschraegen, 2019). The epistemology of possibility and anti-possibility is characteristic for the study of the production and reproduction of ignorance, too. This is

Crisis and ignorance  83

especially true in the case of shared, permissible, strategic (willful) and epistemic types of ignorance. Before we tackle this problem however, let us obtain insight as to how these types of ignorance engrained themselves in the politics and practices of asylum seeking and migration, or at least what perspective on this matter the literature on the refugee crisis assumes. The EU asylum system: contradictions and ambivalence as an oppor tunity for strategic ignorance We saw in Chapter 3 how ignorance studies propose that structural and institutional conditions, in which divergent pressures, ambiguity and contradictions exist, create a structure of opportunity for strategic ignorance to settle in (McGoey, 2007). We observe these dynamics being captured in the research preceding the crisis and devoted to the ignorance-related aspects of the asylum system, as well as in the study of the European refugee crisis per se. Shuman and Bohmer (2007), for instance, examine the production of knowledge and ignorance in the asylum application process, which was enveloped by an atmosphere of suspicion. In their later work, they discuss how some aspects of asylum applicants’ stories become untellable in the context of the asylum interrogations among persons claiming persecution on the basis of gender or sexual orientation (Shuman and Bohmer, 2014). Much of the literature concerning asylum application procedure views ignorance as a contingent phenomenon. Yet there are also accounts that straightforwardly and explicitly present it as strategic also. Nassar (2014), Stel (2016), and Nassar and Stel (2019), for example, make a compelling argument about strategic institutional ambiguity in Palestinian irregular refugee camps in Lebanon and the Lebanese government policy addressing the Syrian refugee crisis. This literature builds directly on agnotology theory and aims to bring an analytical contribution to its development. In the research on the European refugee crisis, too, we encounter hints at as well as direct references to what can be termed strategic ignorance. Andrejč (2018, p. 58), for instance, discusses Slovenian prejudices regarding the refugees in relation to willful ignorance. The accounts of strategic ignorance prior to the crisis, however, refer to a different degree and to other facets of the phenomenon. Thus, we certainly come across what may be termed a strong account of strategic ignorance understood as a calculated initiative of action. Schmiedel and Smith (2018, p. 3), for instance, at one point of their argumentation incorporate Stefan Luft’s intuition on states deliberately ignoring the signs of the crisis with the purpose of exerting pressure and gaining political and financial leverage. This part of the authors’ account is purposive, rational, and full of borrowings from the narrative on political and power games. Yet a weaker version of strategic ignorance (that borders

84  Crisis and ignorance

with the epistemic we might add) also surfaces. Schmiedel and Smith (2018, pp. 1–2) likewise point at the structural features of the field that allowed not only the flaws of the asylum system but also the multiple tragedies to be ignored. In this part of their argumentation, the authors indicate the conditions and the structure of opportunity that facilitated the emergence of ignorance: National and international agreements which prevented migrants from entering the European Union allowed Europe to ignore the crisis, although the numbers of displaced persons are anything but decreasing. (Schmiedel and Smith, 2018, pp. 1–2) Despite being included in the same discussion, these two accounts of strategic ignorance are quite distinct. In the second account, the statement about the strategic character of ignorance is implicit or assumed because of the focus on the context of opportunity for ignorance and the epistemic conjecture which facilitated it. This statement reverberates in the work of Freddi (2017a, 2017b) on the avoidance of relevant information regarding the refugee crisis and the impact of social institutions, and in Scheel and Ustek-Spilda’s (2019) article that explores the practices which produce strategic ignorance about the unreliability of migration statistics. Building on McGoey’s work on strategic ignorance, Scheel and Ustek-Spilda assume the argument that these practices might be, after all, “unconscious” and “tacit.” The authors usually hesitate whether to present ignorance as a fully conscious strategy, since engaging with the strong version of the strategic ignorance argument might be interpreted as a sign of siding with conspiracy theories. This reproach, however, is bound to emerge sooner or later (see, e.g. Frickel and Edwards’s (2014, p. 216) comment on the conspiratorial logic within the sociology of ignorance). The refugee crisis as a production and reproduction of strategic and epistemic ignorance As we have demonstrated in Chapter 3, ignorance studies make a convincing argument about the reproduction of strategic and epistemic forms of ignorance in the aftermath of crisis. In the research on the refugee crisis, however, the key finding we encounter seems to be that the opportunity to ignore the crisis was lost, or at least temporarily endangered. What happens to ignorance once it is disclosed? How do (collective or individual) actors react to such events? In what sense ignorance is produced and reproduced in the aftermath of the crisis? The research on the refugee crisis contains findings on ignorance-related processes that can be useful in approaching this complex issue.

Crisis and ignorance  85

To begin with, the fact that the refugee crisis could no longer be ignored does not automatically imply that ignorance disappears altogether. The research of the crisis forcefully makes this point. Even if the crisis opens up the opportunity for learning, which results in knowledge production, the generated evidence might not be conducive to policy intervention or other action in the direction indicated by the learning process. Strategic (more or less conscious) ignorance and social institutions are often entangled in a complex knot of interdependencies that is not so easy to undo (cf. Freddi, 2017a, 2017b). As Schmiedel and Smith (2018, pp. 1–2) indicate, the restrictive policies of the European asylum system allowed for the reproduction of the ignorance about the hardships and tragedies encountered by the refugees. At the same time, the research on crisis demonstrates that there has not been a major paradigm shift in this system, and some states turned to even more restrictive border policies after the ignorance had been revealed (e.g. Estevens, 2018). Thus, the picture is complex: the possibilities and antipossibilities of change interact with one another in ways that are difficult to predict. What is more, apart from the already existing forms of strategic ignorance, other new forms have emerged. Arguably, the overt-strategic ignorance of existing EU asylum regulations is the most spectacular type in this regard. The ignorance of the Dublin regulation’s first-country-of-entry rule in order to facilitate the movement of refugees across other EU countries towards Germany and Sweden, or the ignorance of the rules on fingerprinting and registration are cases in point (Rozakou, 2017). As indicated by Trauner (2016, p. 319, 2020), these new overt and instrumental instances of ignorance are not innocent and they may lead to significant effects on the asylum system should they turn out to be persistent. By avoiding a paradigm shift in asylum policy, the EU has come to face a difficult situation: the implementation of the existing EU asylum rules may overburden southern member states while the perpetuated ignorance of these rules risks overburdening northern member states. (Trauner, 2016, p. 311) Finally, similar to strategic ignorance, epistemic ignorance is also being produced and reproduced. The research on the refugee crisis uncovers how the processes of knowledge production, categorization and learning about the refugee crisis are bound to result in new forms of epistemic ignorance. The cause lies in the processes of framing that leave the selected aspects of the crisis unrepresented and unattended. The effect of silencing, in its various more or less contingent and unintended forms, allows one to grasp the production of epistemic ignorance in full complexity. Freedman et al. (2017, pp.  7–8), for instance, in their study of the exclusion of “gendered experiences of men and women attempting to reach Europe,” present how

86  Crisis and ignorance

labelling the crisis political and not attending to its humanitarian dimension has produced silencing and ignorance-related effects. This confirms Freedman’s (2011, p. 129) earlier work on how the practices of framing the refugee question rely on and reinforce the representations of women and men already existing in society. With regard to the reproduction of epistemic ignorance, some research on the refugee crisis draws a link between the current imaginaries of the refugee crisis and the neo-colonial discourse, thus powerfully arguing that the current approach to the crisis reinforces colonial logic. The persuasiveness of these arguments is additionally strengthened by the fact that they refer to the narratives that come from the seemingly divergent epistemic ends, as the study of Holohan (2019) on mainstream media and non-governmental organizations demonstrates.

Above all, contestation Though not depicted as a crisis of ignorance explicitly, several elements in the unfolding of the European refugee crisis indicate that the aspect of revelation and acknowledging of ignorance (Gross, 2010) or epiphany (Pénet, 2018) did occur. First, hidden or tolerated unknowns (Daase and Kessler, 2007; Gross, 2007, 2010; Aradau and Munster, 2011; Roberts, 2015) could no longer be ignored. The crisis triggered remarkable knowledge production about the roots and effects of the political instability, the conflicts and violence in the Middle East and their sources and consequences in and on Europe, the amplitude of the migratory phenomenon, as well the vulnerabilities of EU collective actors and public policy initiatives that were designed to cope with it. Second, unknown unknowns (Kerwin, 1993; Gross, 2010, pp. 68–69) translated into stubborn known unknowns that challenged the legitimacy of the social actors associated with these – what Cabot (2016) identified as the experience of not knowing in anthropology took over other disciplines and public policy also. Third, uncertainty was transformed in predictable futures. The refugee crisis triggered sites of projectivity (Mische, 2014) if not sites of hyperprojectivity in some instance, as well as hot situations (Callon, 1998, pp. 260–264) regarding the nature of the crisis and its effects. It led to speculation about the amplitude of change and second-guesses about the nature of the impact and projections of how real change should look. All this, on the other hand, we may claim, was to be expected. We saw it already happen subsequent to the global economic crisis. What is striking about the European refugee crisis, however, is that it initiated a wave of contestation (Steinhilper and Gruijters, 2018), even with regard to its own status as a crisis. And, as we tried to show, the refugee crisis was considered to have diachronically penetrated several areas, as well as to have triggered knowledge production to a great extent. Yet, as Alcalde (2016) makes

Crisis and ignorance  87

the point rhetorically, “Even though not everyone shares an analysis of the causes and solutions, there is one issue where the agreement is practically unanimous: the refugee crisis is not actually a crisis of refugees.” The process of contestation of the refugee crisis has been noted and discussed, yet mainly in relation to its manifestation in the media, public discourse, and organizational and political fields. We review in the following section how this plays out in the relevant academic research of sociological and anthropological orientation that delivers critical insights and findings on ignorance-related effects in the unfolding, representing and managing of the refugee crisis. The scholarship on the refugee crisis is a relevant site for the study of contestation patterns because this is one of the most prolific terrains of knowledge production and revelation of ignorance, whether in overt or subtle ways. At the same time, the academic research is also at risk of contributing to the reproduction of effects of domination and exclusion in society (Cabot, 2016; Andersson, 2018; Cabot, 2019). Furthermore, there is also the fact that studying the patterns of contestation of crisis allows one to engage with the state of the art, and to do so in a critical fashion. Based on Alcade (2016), we identify four main levels of the criticism or contestation of the refugee crisis: the crisis part, the refugee part, the combination of the two, and the absence of knowledge about the sources and those responsible for the crisis. In the following analysis we focus on the first two dimensions of the contestation. One will target what we may term as the subject area of the crisis (most often refugee, migrant or migration), and the other will take issue with the crisis part of the equation. We treat these two dimensions as ideal types, identify two forms for each, and explore the logic of the contestation. In the concluding part of the chapter we discuss what ignorance-related effects these four forms are likely to indulge, and what modality may be abstracted from the scholarship to overcome these. The use of the category “refugee” (or “migrant”) is problematic One of the main forms of contestation we encounter concerns the categories used to describe the crisis, as well as the distinctions being made between existent categories – see Table 4.5. In the media and public debate this contestation often occurs as a rivalry between refugee or migrant. Illustrative in this respect are Al Jazeera’s choice to resign the usage of the word Mediterranean “migrants” (Apostolova, 2016) and the disclaimer used by the BBC when reporting on the crisis (De Genova et al., 2016, pp. 15–16). Apostolova (2016) and Crawley and Skleparis (2018) show how clear-cut clarifications lead to “categorical fetishism” in terms of differentiating between the people on the move and the legitimacy of their claims to receive protection.

88  Crisis and ignorance Table 4.5  C ontestation and ignorance-related effects in the academic research Modes of analysis/ Types and effects in the academic research dimensions of ignorance Type of crisis Crisis Cognitive

Epistemic

The use of the category “refugee” (or “migrant”) is problematic

The crisis was not a crisis but something else

A → “A” A crisis → B crisis A → “A” → B crisis

A crisis → failure of B A crisis → “unfailure of B” A crisis → {failure to deal with complexities of B → tendency to derail B → “A crisis”-“failure of B”]} → manifestation of C

Replacement of one categorical fetishism with another, simplification and exclusionary effects of knowledge

Contestation, tendency to dismiss change, reduction, complexification and heterogeneity of research objects

The narrative should be replaced

The crisis was a so-called crisis, calling it a crisis has certain effects

A crisis narrative → B A crisis → “A crisis” A crisis → A emergency/ crisis narrative manifestation of B/situation of B Simplification, missing out

Reduced alertness, downplaying, concern with discourse and language

In the scholarship on the refugee crisis, however, the refugee vs. migrant categorical fetishism is much less widespread. We rather encounter an epistemological criticism of the usage of the notion of refugee in general. It is argued, for instance, that the terms refugee and migrant encourage the perception of an extraordinary overflow on Europe, they anonymize the identity, autonomy and humanity of refugees, they reproduce regimes of domination (some of neo-colonial continuity), and they shift attention from the responsibility to provide an adequate response to the crisis from the European asylum policies (Alcade, 2016; De Genova et al., 2016; Cabot, 2019, pp. 267–268). This criticism further emphasizes that the categories operate with distinctions between the people on the move which do not adequately capture the complex reality, as well as that these are performative at the legal

Crisis and ignorance  89

level and impact the modality in which the refugees are perceived (Cabot, 2015; Alcade, 2016; Crawley and Skleparis, 2018). For example, Tazzioli and De Genova (2016, p. 3) point to the “misleading opposition between ‘genuine’ or ‘legitimate’ refugees and ostensibly ‘economic’ migrants.” Horolets et al. (2020), in a similar way, discuss the consequences of the culturalization of the refugee category. When categorical contestation occurs in the scholarship on the crisis this usually goes beyond the refugee vs. migrant debate. This shows that the crisis was not one of numbers per se, an unprecedented event of people on the move. It was rather linked to the European asylum policy (Alcade, 2016), political solidarity, values (Alcade, 2016; Yildiz et al., 2016), or even the European Union project (De Genova, 2016a). Interestingly, in the epistemological and critical account of the usage of the words refugee or migrant, we do not reach the level of an explicit substitution of terms. The replacement is rather symbolic, and it demonstrates distancing from the notions which are problematic by using quotation marks to denote something is so-called – that is, “refugee”, “migration”. Thus, the contestation does not bring a literal and concrete replacement for the word refugee or migrant. If literal replacement occurs, this takes the form of offering a wholly new term instead of using an existing one from the category of refugee crisis. Cabot (2019), for instance, talks about “displacement on Europe’s doorstep.” It is hard to tell what the sources are for this lack of a concrete replacement of the word refugee. It is noteworthy, however, that some of the authors who relate critically to the differentiations between refugee and migrant that are made in the public discourse do, as a rule, notice that such categorical fetishism is difficult to overcome. The risk of perpetuation of fetishism is always there. So where do we go from here? How do we […] engage with the problem of categories without ourselves indulging in a form of “categorical fetishism”? (Crawley and Skleparis, 2018, p. 59) The narrative should be replaced What we see as narrative contestation employs a critical and alternativeseeking mechanism similar to the problematic category type. The spectrum is quite broad – ranging from policy narratives to narratives of fear and compassion in traditional and social media (Hodalska, 2018; Burrell and Hörschelmann, 2019). The authors reveal simplification, exclusionary and policy effects of certain narratives, as well as of the debates between these. Tazzioli et al. (2016, pp. 27–28; see also humanitarian-security nexus in Andersson, 2017), for instance, show how the discourse of the humanitarian crisis may go hand in hand and actually support practices of mobility control, social segregation and space confinement in a complex process of enforcing discipline. Sirriyeh

90  Crisis and ignorance

(2018, p. 20), in a similar manner, indicates that the prevailing compassion discourse in the refugee crisis leads to “restrictive outcomes.” He argues instead for alternative versions that are “grounded in solidarity.” While Steinhilper and Gruijters (2018, p. 515) indicate that the debate between the two main narratives of deterrence and the humanitarian approach translates in effects of omission and disregard of “systematic information on the drivers and dynamics of border deaths.” Thus, the logic of contestation of narratives in relation to the crisis is quite similar to that of contestation of categories. Yet there is also a certain feature that stands out regarding narratives. The contestation comes as if from top to bottom, while in the case of the categories it was rather the other way around. The narratives are depicted as diffused, institutionalized, and comprehensive, which increases the chances that their potential exclusionary effects are real. Crawley and McMahon (2016), for instance, mobilize to search for alternatives to the “narratives of fear and hate” that they show to be occupying an increasingly dominant position in the political and media debates about the crisis. Given that at stake are narratives, which are more inclusive than categories, we observe also that the sense of emergency is quite acute, all the more so as the contestation captures paradoxical phenomena, tensions and ambiguities. The contestation of the humanitarian and compassion narratives is imperative because these have a dramatic and restrictive side, of which there is some awareness and even strategic nurturing. Unlike the categories, which are generally misleading, and may have quite problematic effects, the narratives are always problematic, and even dangerous. The crisis was not a crisis but something else Another type of contestation we encounter – again in terms of how to frame the events yet on a broader level than the use of categories – targets whether the term crisis should be used to begin with. The aim here is to show that the employment of this notion is not fully justified analytically given that, for instance, the 2015–2016 emergency amounts rather to a failed policy, or to an unexpected yet foreseeable sequence. In the case of the refugee crisis, the policies considered to have failed pertain to immigration, asylum and border control, at the EU and also national levels (Guiraudon, 2017). Crawley et al. (2016, p. 9) for instance, seek to deconstruct the “new” and “unexpected” framing by making the point of a “policy driven crisis sustained by the failure of the EU to put in place adequate and humane policies to deal with this unprecedented but also foreseeable movement of people.” Guiraudon (2017), likewise, talks about “policy feedbacks and policy failure as a self-reinforcing mechanism” subsequent to the crisis. Thus, the image we often encounter is that the failure of public policy has been going on for a long time, and that the crisis has even added

Crisis and ignorance  91

to it because the measures taken have actually continued and reproduced the initial policy regime and failure of politics. Failure occurs not only as the source of the crisis but also as its predestined present, and projected future. This context recalls the phenomenon of crisis as failure discussed by Best (2016), as well as her recently formulated instances of unfailures (Best, 2019a, 2019b), that is, failures revealed by crisis in economic and political arenas that do not lead to the expected meaningful change (see discussion in Chapter 3). The projection of perpetuation of failure in the case of the refugee crisis comes across as an alleged unfailure because the refugee crisis as a failure of asylum policy turns out to lack the potential for change or to have missed the momentum thereof. Scholten (2020) provides an illuminating interpretation of what may be termed as the issue of failure in the area of migration and migration diversity-related policy processes. Accordingly, it is a general characteristic of these policy processes that they seem to be “out of control,” this tendency originating in a “failure to come to terms with complexity.” Scholten terms this failure “alienation”, he discusses its various types, as well as indicates three corresponding manifestations: “‘crisis’ sensation” (as in the case of the refugee crisis), “contestation of (perceived) policy effects” (that is, failure), and “contestation of knowledge claims” (Scholten, 2020, p. 108). He advances an interpretation that is analytically quite crafty and resonates with his earlier framing of the crisis as “only the most recent manifestation” of the “transformation towards structurally high levels of mobility” (Scholten, 2018, p. 24) that Europe is currently experiencing. Embedded herein is a perspective distinct from the crisis talk that emerged in relation to the movement of refugees of 2015–2016. It is instead in the genre of the exploration undertaken by Tazzioli and De Genova (2016, p. 5) into the “productive dimension that the declaration of a state of ‘crisis’ of ‘emergency’ generates.” In other words, the perspective functions as an investigation which does not see the crisis as a trigger of failed and restrictive practices, but as an enabler of action on various levels. In a similar vein to Scholten (2020), Tazzioli and De Genova (2016, p. 5; see also Garelli et al., 2018) also propose framing the refugee crisis as a “constitutive struggle over mobility and space.” They draw attention to the “epistemic crisis” in relation to the “heterogeneity of practices of migration” as applied to Europe. In this contestation, we encounter how the refugee crisis is zoomed out to the level that it is linked with, or made constitutive of, processes of a global scale. This allows one to experiment with alternative framings as well as to engage in nexus building by going beyond the mobility-migration constellation. Tazzioli (2016, p. 25), for instance, argues that the mobility we witness is entangled with wars and military interventions that are partly reproduced also due to the engagement of Europe – the war-migration nexus. Riedner et al. (2016), in a similar vein, link the crisis and mobility with the economic

92  Crisis and ignorance

crisis and precarization more broadly, De Genova (2016b) addresses borders, while De Genova (2018) explores the issue of race. The current European migration “crisis” is not new and has not developed out of nowhere. It is the culmination and combination of, on the one hand, the growing restriction of legal channels of migration to Europe and securitisation of European borders […] and, on the other hand, huge instability and conflict in certain areas of the Middle East and Africa, in particular Syria, which are causing more and more desperate people to flee their countries and seek protection in Europe. (Freedman et al., 2017, p. 8) The crisis was a so-called crisis, calling it a crisis has cer tain effects Finally, there is the contestation about the employment of the “very language of ‘crisis’” (Tazzioli and De Genova, 2016, p. 3), about “crisis talk” and crisis narrative (Heller et al., 2016; Dines et al., 2018; McMahon and Sigona, 2018; Sirriyeh, 2018), and even “crisis chasing” (Cabot, 2019). We find stated herein not so much that the refugee crisis is not a crisis but that it is just the rendering visible of displaced persons and refugees in a new context of the crisis that has been unfolding with terrible effects for a long time already (Cabot, 2015, 2019; Alcade, 2016). A related argument one may find, but of a different sort, is that referring to the movement of refugees in terms of crisis is epistemically performative. Drawing on the work of crisis scholars such as Koselleck (2006, 2015), Agamben (2013) and Roitman (2013), the authors show that crisis talk leads to real consequences on public policy, social structure and held assumptions. They bring evidence regarding the construction of the image of a single event and unprecedented flow of people coming from outside and invading Europe (Crawley et al., 2016, p. 6; Heller et al., 2016, pp.  10–11; Bagelman, 2019) and the reproduction of cognitive patterns (also of neo-colonial type) specific to structural inequalities and asymmetries in relation to migration and crisis (Cabot, 2015, 2019). The authors also talk, on a more technical side, about the reinforcing of existent technologies and strategies for dealing with asylum seeking and irregular migration at the borders of Europe (Guiraudon, 2017; Cabot, 2019), as well as about the production of political narratives which foster emotional responses and/ or indulge the use of counter-invasionary tactics for controlling migratory processes in relation to the EU (Mainwaring and Brigden, 2016, p. 248). According to this contestation, the crisis organizes our perception and reaction to phenomena in contemporary migration. McMahon and Sigona (2018), for instance, consider that the crisis talk reproduces and legitimizes the modality in which the EU and EU Member States understand and

Crisis and ignorance  93

attempt to control the Central Mediterranean migration route. Meanwhile, Dines, Montagna, and Vacchelli (2018, p. 441) find in the joining of migration and crisis a good illustration of the broader phenomenon Roitman (2013, p. 3) talks about in terms of “kinds of work the term ‘crisis’ is or is not doing in the construction of narrative forms.” Accordingly, crisis in migration is a “narrative device,” and it is performative because the crisis occurs as a possibility-, opportunity-, and change-opener: “Crisis is posited as an epistemological impasse and is claimed to found the possibility for alternative futures” (Dines et al., 2018, p. 441; see Roitman, 2013, p. 4). This terrain of contestation is quite ample and complex. This is why, in the relevant literature we encounter so often quotation marks or adjectives used to denote so-called – “crisis” (McMahon and Sigona, 2018), “refugee crisis” (Andersson, 2018; Triandafyllidou, 2018; Župarić-Iljić and Valenta, 2019), “European refugee crisis”, “migration crisis” (Crawley et al., 2016; Crawley and Skleparis, 2018), and so-called “refugee” or “migration crisis” (Crawley et al., 2016; Tazzioli and De Genova, 2016; McConnell et al., 2017; Puchner et al., 2018). What distinguishes the contestation of the crisis as crisis from the categorical and narrative types, however, is that herein reframing does not explicitly follow. The cases when alternatives to the framing of crisis are given are quite rare. Triandafyllidou, although convinced of the crisis character of the refugee crisis – she even talked about a multiple crisis – uses “refugee crisis”, refugee crisis, and refugee emergency interchangeably. Meanwhile, Cabot, who advances an arduous critique of the crisis narrative, refers to displacement on Europe’s doorstep or borders instead. Other than this, however, what we usually encounter is the presentation of the context of contestation, and an obvious distancing from the notion of crisis through the usage of the quotation marks to denote so-called. This is more of a distancing from the word crisis than an explicit substitution per se. The intention to denote so-called in relation to the refugee crisis, even in contexts which do not explicitly debate whether this was a crisis or not, is a kind of pre-emptive measure against an epistemic mistake. The particularities we identified regarding the four types of contestation lead to certain findings as well as terrains for further exploration. First, there are two main modalities of relating to the unprecedented movement of refuges to Europe during the period 2015–2016 – cognitive and epistemic – see Table 4.5. This converges with the findings of Župarić-Iljić and Valenta (2019, p. 3) on two main framings of the crisis in the case of the Western Balkan corridor – “refugee and migration crisis per se” and a “specific type of politically and socio-culturally constructed, conveyed, and perpetuated discourse on crisis.” Second, the four forms of contestation presented herein as ideal types rarely manifest so purely. They are, in fact, quite integrated, with identifiable levels of correspondence. The engagement with crisis talk or crisis narrative,

94  Crisis and ignorance

for instance, produces/reproduces certain policy and political narratives (the need of intervention and control), a fact which is further linked with a specific modality of categorization (refugee and migrant crisis). In a similar vein, the categorical fetishism regarding refugee and migrant is not only descriptive but can also be viewed epistemically in relation to the broader crisis talk and narrative. Third, the contestation of the crisis aims to adjust certain mechanisms of frame and knowledge production. The refugee crisis acted as ignorance revealing. This triggered critical moments of learning about aspects that have either been ignored before or were not sufficiently in the spotlight to have had visibility. The moments of learning about the global refugee crisis, in their turn, acted as magnets for knowledge production (Cabot, 2016, 2019) and “politics of attention” (Guiraudon, 2017) for the media and academia, as well as for the field of politics and civil society. The knowledge production, however, is shown to lead to effects of simplification, exclusion and reproduction of logics specific to politics, public policy and even academics (see the discussion about refugee advocacy and anthropological research in Cabot, 2016, 2019). The contestation of crisis, in a similar vein, is not free of these effects either. Ignorance is produced and reproduced through contestation. The only thing that we seem to be able to do about it is to engage with the process reflexively, as well as to probe the boundaries of knowledge and ignorance by showing, for instance, what mechanisms related to ignorance are likely to be in place. We see how the category of refugee leads to misinterpretation. Likewise, we learn that the crisis talk is a narrative device with effects on knowledge, policy and strategies for coping. Andersson (2018, p. 222), for instance, documents how the refugee crisis is a trigger for policymakers, journalists and politicians seeking “knowledge on ‘unwanted’ migration and ‘what to do about it.’” While Cabot (2019, p. 264) shows how the attractiveness of crisis induces practices of chasing and replication in anthropological scholarship that sometimes lack preparation, insight and reproduce forms of symbolic violence and domination over the category of “the refugee” (for academic scholarship and the refugee crisis see also Andersson, 2018; Sukarieh and Tannock, 2019). Thus, it is quite transparent that the process of contestation is linked with an insight into varied mechanisms for the production and reproduction of ignorance. On the other hand, the contestation in itself is not free of such mechanisms either. This has effects in terms of production and reproduction of ignorance also. In the contestation which targets categories (the use of the category “refugee” is problematic), the risk of production and reproduction of ignorance occurs in relation with replacement of one categorical fetishism with another, simplification and exclusionary effects of knowledge. Both the contestation of categories (“refugee” is problematic) and the contestation of the narratives (the narrative should be replaced) aim to reveal realities of the debate that,

Crisis and ignorance  95

more or less purposively, are kept in the dark or are inadequately appropriated by existent categories or narratives. But these two forms are also vulnerable to the reproduction of simplification and exclusionary effects because of the tendency to come up with alternative categories and narratives. This is why Crawley and Skleparis (2018) and Cabot (2015) warn about the dangers of reproduction of fetishism, or the reproduction of the logic of replacement. In addition, contestation may also have missing out and ignorance effects because, as every battle, it tends to organize attention around the stakes of contention as such and to encourage thinking in terms of binaries. Steinhilper and Gruijters (2018, pp. 517–518), as we mentioned, show how the contentious nature of the debate between the deterrence and the humanitarian policy narratives is often entertained in its ideological and political aspects, while systematic and statistic information on the drivers and dynamics of border deaths is not exploited enough, even in the cases when this is available. The proposal to shift towards framing the refugee crisis as part of a nexus (the crisis was not a crisis but something else), to see its global contingencies and ramifications, and to go beyond the crisis as a single event is likewise rather vulnerable to effects of reduction, similar to the ones the crisis talk and narrative are associated with. While the proposal to shift narratives seems epistemically fair, and to have a broader critical appeal, we cannot not wonder whether in this way we do not become exposed to effects of complexification because of nexus-building as well as to the heterogeneity of objects of research. The nexus framing helps to understand the refugee crisis, but it also overgrows it as topic of research. Other processes have to be included too in the interpretative exercise and these require additional efforts and resources. This also raises the question where the nexus-building should stop, and at what point this becomes another research question altogether. In the broader contestation of the crisis as crisis (the crisis was something else), by reframing the refugee crisis as a failure of a public policy, the whole multidimensionality and multiplicity of the event gets reduced to one dimension by a process of obscuring potential sources which are not related to public policy. At the same time, the message is conveyed that the crisis can be dealt with by redesigning the public policy in a proper manner. An essential part of the sources that the framing of crisis usually entails (interdependency of global processes), for instance, might become trivialized in this way. Observably, in the contestation that indicates that the crisis was just an alleged, or so-called crisis, but still one with real effects (the crisis was a socalled crisis, calling it a crisis has certain effects), this process of trivialization of conditions of the crisis is even more likely to occur, though in a different form. Herein, at issue would be not so much the ignorance of the context

96  Crisis and ignorance

of the crisis, but a general attitude of relaxation regarding the event. If the crisis is merely a narrative device, the significance and priority of the events is implicitly reduced and likewise the perceived urgency of intervention. In addition, there is also the risk that the focus on discourse and language has the effect of downplaying the drama and experience of the crisis. It is worth noting, however, that this is a risk that some authors acknowledge explicitly and defend prospectively against (Tazzioli and De Genova, 2016, p. 4). Dines, Montagna and Vacchelli (2018, p. 446), observably have the intuition for this situation when warning that “it has never been our intention to see crisis as existing merely in discourse, but to recognize that it also differently refers to a real set of circumstances.” As we tried to show in this incipient discussion, the contestation of crisis produces new mechanisms related to ignorance, as well as it reproduces some of the ones it was fighting against. This process, however, is neither linear, nor automatic. It certainly occurs to us as inescapable at the moment, though. Ironies about self-stretched cognitive traps and biases are recurrent in the relevant literature on the European refugee crisis. We consider this fact as a good indication that critical thinking about contestation, production of knowledge and the position of knowledge producers is advancing. Our analysis in this chapter also strengthens our intuition that much of the ignorance that is addressed by the contestation of crisis is not so much of strategic, but rather of epistemic nature. It also shows that strategic and epistemic ignorance act a bit conjointly, and sometimes it is hard to think of one in separation from the other. Ignorance in relation to migration crisis is inevitable. This notwithstanding, the contestation of crisis plays the very important role of moving the boundaries of ignorance, engaging critically with it, and revealing the mechanisms this is contingent on.

Conclusions We started this chapter with the reconstruction of the CEAS and the events which were eventually constructed as the European refugee crisis of 2015– 2016. This social background allowed us to engage with the voluminous academic research that discusses various aspects of the refugee crisis and quite often contests the categories and narratives produced by the public and policy discourses. So far in this book we have made the argument about the prerequisite to study the production and reproduction of ignorance in the context of unexpected events and crises in relation to the projections, expectations, and contestations of change that these major disruptions trigger. The change in the regimes of ignorance that takes place in contemporary society is not something that happens in spite of our projections and tendencies to dismiss change. It is instead something that takes place in close relation to, and is contingent on, these projections and expectations. These forms of anticipatory knowledge  do  not

Crisis and ignorance  97

materialize only at the narrative and discursive level. They also penetrate the public policymaking infrastructure and organize action that is coordinated on these predictions. We embarked in this chapter on the analysis of the production and reproduction of ignorance in the context of the 2015–2016 European refugee crisis. We performed a sociological analysis of the modality of presenting the crisis in the academic research of sociological and anthropological orientation. We learned that there is an obvious discourse of contestation regarding the crisis talk and crisis framing of the refugee crisis. Interestingly, while this contestation obviously pushes and challenges the regime of ignorance around the refugee crisis and the mobility targeting Europe in general, there is also new ignorance being produced, or old ignorance being reproduced in the process. This fact is even relatively frequently acknowledged in the literature which points to a high level of reflexivity and critical engagement in this regard. The examination of the academic research on the refugee crisis seems to illustrate quite well that the change in the regimes of ignorance in the context of a crisis takes place in relation to processes of projection, expectation, and contestation, with structuration and feedback effects. On the other hand, we should not lose track of the fact that our exploration predominantly emphasized the dimension of contestation of crisis. Although elements of projection of the future of the crisis were present, these insights were more fragmentary. Interestingly, we also found that an extremely individualizing characteristic of the refugee crisis is the fact that mechanisms of contestation occur at a quite early stage. The contestation targets the crisis as such, and not only the materialization of public policy effects. The processes of contestation interact with ignorance in a manner that may be seen as reinforcing while concomitantly moving the boundaries of ignorance. Our review of the four forms of contestation is appealing because in the models discussed by Taleb (2007), Best (2016, 2019a), Grabel (2018), and Scholten (2020), it were the effects of various crises that were critically taken into discussion and not the initial crisis character of the events as such. Even Scholten’s model of public policymaking that has a tendency to derail, which he illustrates also with the refugee crisis, did not go as far as to talk about the contestation mechanisms at such an early stage. In the patterns identified by these authors, the crises, at most, are deconstructed retrospectively – after the anticipated changes of high magnitude did not materialize. In the refugee crisis, on the other hand, as we saw, the crisis character of the movement of refugees across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe was debated and contested from the very beginning, or while the crisis was unfolding, to the point that this contestation became so institutionalized that it does no longer even take place. It is just indicated through so-called signifiers which induce distance.

98  Crisis and ignorance

Thus, the projectivity in the case of the refugee crisis is a bit distinct, because there is not as much crisis sensation, which induces high expectations of change, but there is crisis contestation sensation and context – to paraphrase Scholten (2020) – altogether. This is a significant detail that we did not anticipate when we elaborated the theoretical idea of the need to include the projections and expectations of change in the analysis of the production and reproduction of ignorance in the context of unexpected events and crises (Chapter 3). Nevertheless, it came out in the review of the academic research. In the remaining part of the book we continue with the exploration of the ignorance-related effects of the interaction between ignorance and projection, as well as other related processes in the media and public policy. We move towards more empirically oriented analyses – the representation and attitudes about the relocation scheme and mandatory quotas – as well as focus on the new EU Member States for a change – Hungary, Poland, and Romania specifically. We obtain a good picture on the modality to research the production and reproduction of ignorance in domains that are distributed distinct opportunities (roles) in the more general process of change of ignorance in the context of crisis. Media – the role of raising awareness. Public policy – the role of policy change (in relation to policy learning). In addition, we also find that the ignorance and projection patterns vary across the countries engaged in the European refugee crisis. The distinction between strong and weak regulators of EU asylum policy (Zaun, 2017) being essential for understanding varieties of ignorance and projectivity in the refugee crisis.

Notes 1 National asylum regulations and the CEAS complex legal constructions. Consequently, the participants in the asylum field in each EU Member State are familiar with the legal categories and specific terminological jargon. For example, refugee – from the legal perspective – is the category applicable only to people recognized as refugees according to the 1951 Geneva Convention. The wider category of beneficiaries of international protection includes also people protected by national regulations implementing the CEAS – that includes the category of subsidiary protection or humanitarian protection. From the legal perspective, asylum seeker is the category of people who intend to be protected but their status is to be recognized. We are conscious of these nuances but for the sake of the book’s coherence we put them aside. Another reason for which we do not engage here in the debate about the proper use of the legal categories is that we wish to avoid “categorical fetishism” (Crawley and Skleparis, 2018) – see further discussion in this chapter. 2 The relocation plan as a policy tool was already implemented into CEAS in 2011 as a response to the larger number of arrivals to Malta. The small-scale programmes of relocations from Malta in the framework of EUREMA I and EUREMA II were implemented in 2012 and 2013 but were largely not noticed by the public in European countries.

Crisis and ignorance  99

References Agamben, G. (2013) ‘The Endless Crisis as an Instrument of Power: In Conversation with Giorgio Agamben’, Verso, June 4. Alcade, J. (2016) ‘Why the Refugee Crisis Is Not a Refugee Crisis’, Peace in Progress, 29, 1–6. Andersson, R. (2017) ‘Rescued and Caught: The Humanitarian-Security Nexus at Europe’s Frontiers’. In De Genova, N. (ed) The Borders of ‘Europe’: Autonomy of Migration, Tactics of Bordering, Durham, NC, Duke University Press, pp. 64–94. Andersson, R. (2018) ‘The Price of Impact: Reflections on Academic Outreach Amid the “Refugee Crisis”’, Social Anthropology, 26, 222–237. Andrejč, G. (2018) ‘Infiltrators, Imposters, or Human Beings? The Slovenian SocioPolitical Imaginary, Christianity, and the Responses to the 2015–2016 Migrant Crisis’. In Schmiedel, U. and Smith, G. (eds) Religion in the European Refugee Crisis, Basingstoke, Palgrave MacMillan, pp. 39–60. Apostolova, R. (2016) ‘Of Refugees and Migrants: Stigma, Politics, and Boundary Work at the Borders of Europe’, American Sociological Association Newsletter, September 14. Aradau, C. and van Munster, R. (2011) Politics of Catastrophe: Genealogies of the Unknown, London, New York, Routledge. Bagelman, J. (2019) ‘Sanctuary and Unsettling “the” Refugee Crisis’. In Menjívar, C., Ruiz, M., and Ness, I. (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Migration Crises, Oxford, Oxford University Press, pp. 742–758. Baldwin-Edwards, M., Blitz, B. K. and Crawley, H. (2018) ‘The Politics of Evidence-Based Policy in Europe’s “Migration Crisis”’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 45, 2139–2155. Best, J. (2016) ‘When Crises Are Failures: Contested Metrics in International Finance and Development’, International Political Sociology, 10, 39–55. Best, J. (2019a) ‘Quiet Failures: About the Project’, jacquelinebest.com. Best, J. (2019b) ‘Neoliberalism’s “Unfailures”’, Brave New Europe, June 5 (Crossposted from the SPERI-Website). Bohmer, C. and Shuman, A. (2007) ‘Producing Epistemologies of Ignorance in the Political Asylum Application Process’, Identities, 14, 603–629. Boswell, C. and Badenhoop, E. (2020) ‘“What Isn’t in the Files, Isn’t in the World”: Understanding State Ignorance of Irregular Migration in Germany and the United Kingdom’, Governance, 13 April, (E-pub ahead of print).

100  Crisis and ignorance Burrell, K. and Hörschelmann, K. (2019) ‘Perilous Journeys: Visualising the Racialised “Refugee Crisis”’, Antipode, 51, 45–65. Cabot, H. (2015) ‘Crisis and Continuity: A Critical Look at the “European Refugee Crisis”’, Allegra Lab: Anthropology, Law, Art & World (allegralaboratory.net), November 10. Cabot, H. (2016) ‘“Refugee Voices”: Tragedy, Ghosts, and the Anthropology of Not Knowing’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 45, 645–672. Cabot, H. (2019) ‘The Business of Anthropology and the European Refugee Regime, American Ethnologist, 46, 261–275. Callon, M. (1998) ‘An Essay on Framing and Overflowing: Economic Externalities Revisited by Sociology’. In Callon, M. (ed) Laws of the Markets, Oxford, Malden, MA, Blackwell Publishers/Sociological Review, pp. 244–269. Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (2012/C 326/02) (2012). Chrzanowska, A., Mickiewicz, P., Słubik, K., Subko, J. and Trylińska, A. (2016) ‘Na granicy. Raport z monitoringu dostępu do postępowania o udzielenie ochrony międzynarodowej na przejściach granicznych w Terespolu, Medyce i na lotnisku Warszawa Okęcie’, Analizy, Raporty, Ekspertyzy, 2 Warszawa, Stowarzyszenie Interwencji Prawnej. Costello, C. and Mouzourakis, M. (2016) ‘The Common European Asylum System: Where Did It All Go Wrong?’ In Fletcher, M., Herlin-Karnell, E., and Matera, C. (eds) The European Union as an Area of Freedom, Security and Justice, London, Routledge, pp. 281–318. Council Decision (EU) 2015/1601 of 22 September 2015 Establishing Provisional Measures in the Area of International Protection for the Benefit of Italy and Greece (2015). Crawley, H. (2016) ‘Managing the Unmanageable? Understanding Europe’s Response to the Migration “Crisis”’, Human Geography, 9, 13–23. Crawley, H., Düvell, F., Jones, K., McMahon, S. and Sigona, N. (2016) Destination Europe? Understanding the Dynamics and Drivers of Mediterranean Migration in 2015, MEDMIG Final Report. Crawley, H., Düvell, F., Jones, K., McMahon, S. and Sigona, N. (2017) Unravelling Europe’s ‘Migration Crisis’: Journeys over Land and Sea, Bristol, Chicago, IL, Policy Press. Crawley, H. and McMahon, S. (2016) Beyond Fear and Hate: Mobilising People Power to Create a New Narrative on Migration and Diversity, Coventry, University, Ben & Jerry’s. Crawley, H. and Skleparis, D. (2018) ‘Refugees, Migrants, Neither, Both: Categorical Fetishism and the Politics of Bounding in Europe’s “Migration Crisis”’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 44, 48–64. Daase, C. and Kessler, O. (2007) ‘Knowns and Unknowns in the “War on Terror”: Uncertainty and the Political Construction of Danger’, Security Dialogue, 38, 411–434. De Genova, N. (2016a) ‘The “European” Question: Migration, Race, and PostColoniality in “Europe”’. In Amelina, A., Horvath, K., and Meeus, B. (eds) An Anthology of Migration and Social Transformation, Cham, Springer International Publishing, pp. 343–356. De Genova, N. (2016b) ‘The “Crisis” of the European Border Regime: Towards a Marxist Theory of Borders’, International Socialism: A Quarterly Review of Socialist Theory, 150, 33–56.

Crisis and ignorance  101 De Genova, N. (2018) ‘The “Migrant Crisis” as Racial Crisis: Do Black Lives Matter in Europe?’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 41, 1765–1782. De Genova, N., Fontanari, E., Picozza, F., Soto Bermant, L., Spathopoulou, A., Stierl, M., Suffee, Z., Tazzioli, M., van Baar, H. and Yildiz, C. (2016) ‘“Migrant Crisis”/“Refugee Crisis”’. In De Genova, N. and Tazzioli, M. (eds) Europe/Crisis: New Keywords of “the Crisis” in and of “Europe”, Zone Books, Near Futures Online, pp. 15–21. Dilley, R. and Kirsch, T. G. (eds) (2015) Regimes of Ignorance: Anthropological Perspectives on the Production and Reproduction of Non-Knowledge, New York, Berghahn Books. Dines, N., Montagna, N. and Vacchelli, E. (2018) ‘Beyond Crisis Talk: Interrogating Migration and Crises in Europe’, Sociology, 52, 439–447. Estevens, J. (2018) ‘Migration Crisis in the EU: Developing a Framework for Analysis of National Security and Defence Strategies’, Comparative Migration Studies, 6. European Commission (2015) EU-Turkey Joint Action Plan. European Commission (2016a) Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council: ‘Towards a Reform of the Common European Asylum System and Enhancing Legal Avenues to Europe’. European Commission (2016b) EU-Turkey Statement: Questions and Answers. European Commission (2017) Report from the Commission to the European Parliament, the European Council and the Council: ‘Fifteenth Report on Relocation and Resettlement’. European Commission (2018) Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the European Council and the Council: ‘Progress Report on the Implementation of the European Agenda on Migration’. Eurostat (2019) Asylum and First Time Asylum Applicants by Citizenship, Age and Sex Annual Aggregated Data (Rounded), Dataset. Feischmidt, M., Pries, L. and Cantat, C. (eds) (2019) Refugee Protection and Civil Society in Europe, London, Palgrave MacMillan. Feischmidt, M. and Zakariás, I. (2019) ‘Politics of Care and Compassion: Civic Help for Refugees and Its Political Implications in Hungary – A Mixed-Methods Approach’. In Feischmidt, M., Pries, L., and Cantat, C. (eds) Refugee Protection and Civil Society in Europe, London, Palgrave MacMillan, pp. 59–99. Freddi, E. (2017a) Do People Avoid Morally Relevant Information? Evidence from the Refugee Crisis, Center Discussion Paper, Tilburg, Center for Economic Research. Freddi, E. (2017b) Strategic Ignorance and Social Institutions, Dissertation for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Ph.D., in Economics, Stockholm School of Economics. Freedman, J. (2011) ‘Women’s Experience of Forced Migration: Gender-Based Forms of Insecurity and the Uses of “Vulnerability”’. In Freedman, J., Kivilcim, Z., and Özgür Baklacıoğlu, N. (eds) A Gendered Approach to the Syrian Refugee Crisis, Abingdon, New York, Routledge, pp. 125–141. Freedman, J., Kivilcim, Z. and Özgür Baklacıoğlu, N. (2017) ‘Introduction: Gender, Migration and Exile’. In Freedman, J., Kivilcim, Z., and Özgür Baklacıoğlu, N. (eds) A Gendered Approach to the Syrian Refugee Crisis, Abingdon, New York, Routledge, pp. 1–15.

102  Crisis and ignorance Frickel, S. and Edwards, M. (2014) ‘Untangling Ignorance in Environmental Risk Assessment’. In Boudia, S. and Jas (eds) Powerless Science? Science and Politics in a Toxic World, New York, Berghahn, pp. 215–233. Gallagher, S. (2002) ‘Towards a Common European Asylum System: Fortress Europe Redesigns the Ramparts’, International Journal, 57, 375–394. Garelli, G., Sciurba, A. and Tazzioli, M. (2018) ‘Mediterranean Struggles for Movement and the European Government of Bodies: An Interview with Étienne Balibar and Nicholas De Genova’, Antipode, 50, 748–762. Grabel, I. (2018) When Things Don’t Fall Apart: Global Financial Governance and Developmental Finance in an Age of Productive Incoherence, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press. Gross, M. (2007) ‘The Unknown in Process: Dynamic Connections of Ignorance, Non-Knowledge and Related Concepts’, Current Sociology, 55, 742–759. Gross, M. (2010) Ignorance and Surprise: Science, Society, and Ecological Design, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press. Guiraudon, V. (2017) ‘The 2015 Refugee Crisis Was Not a Turning Point: Explaining Policy Inertia in EU Border Control’, European Political Science, 17, 151–160. Heller, C., De Genova, N., Stierl, M., Tazzioli, M. and van Baar, H. (2016) ‘Crisis’, In De Genova, N. and Tazzioli, M. (eds) Europe/Crisis: New Keywords of “the Crisis” in and of “Europe”, Zone Books, Near Futures Online, pp. 7–15. Hodalska, M. (2018) ‘#Humanity Washed Ashore. Visual Metaphors and Emotions in Social Media’, Zeszyty Prasoznawcze, 61, 209–223. Hofmann, M. (2016) ‘The Emergence of a New Foreign Migration Policy in Europe’, Vienna Migration Conference. ICMPD Working Paper 11. Holohan, S. (2019) ‘Some Human’s Rights: Neocolonial Discourses of Otherness in the Mediterranean Refugee Crisis’, Open Library of Humanities, 5, 1–27. Horolets, A., Mica, A., Pawlak, M. and Kubicki, P. (2020) ‘Ignorance as an Outcome of Categorizations: The “Refugees” in the Polish Academic Discourse before and after the 2015 Refugee Crisis’, East European Politics and Societies, 34, 730–751. Hurwitz, A. (1999) ‘The 1990 Dublin Convention: A Comprehensive Assessment’, International Journal of Refugee Law, 11, 646–677. Jones, R. (2016) Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move, London, New York, Verso. Karolewski, I. P. and Benedikter, R. (2017) ‘Europe’s Refugee and Migrant Crisis: Economic and Political Ambivalences’, Challenge, 60, 294–320. Kaymaz, T. and Kadkoy, O. (2016) Syrians in Turkey – The Economics of Integration, Istanbul, Alsharq Forum. Kerwin, A. (1993) ‘None Too Solid: Medical Ignorance’, Knowledge, 15, 166–185. Kirsch, T. G. and Dilley, R. (2015) ‘Regimes of Ignorance: An Introduction’. In Regimes of Ignorance: Anthropological Perspectives on the Production and Reproduction of Non-Knowledge, New York, Berghahn Books, pp. 1–28. Koselleck, R. (2006) ‘Crisis’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 67, 357–400. Koselleck, R. (2015) Critique and Crisis: Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press. Kubicki, P., Pawlak, M., Mica, A. and Horolets, A. (2017) ‘Wyjście z cienia: Polityka uchodźcza w sytuacji kryzysu’, Polityka Społeczna, 9, 22–28. Lenette, C. and Miskovic, N. (2018) ‘“Some Viewers May Find the Following Images Disturbing”: Visual Representations of Refugee Deaths at Border Crossings’, Crime, Media, Culture: An International Journal, 14, 111–120.

Crisis and ignorance  103 Mainwaring, Ċ. and Brigden, N. (2016) ‘Beyond the Border: Clandestine Migration Journeys’, Geopolitics, 21, 243–262. Majed, Z. (2014) Syrie, la révolution orpheline: essai, Paris, Actes Sud. McConnell, F., Kuus, M., Jeffrey, A., Crawley, H., Vaughan-Williams, N. and Smith, A. (2017) ‘Interventions on Europe’s Political Futures’, Political Geography, 60, 261–271. McGoey, L. (2007) ‘On the Will to Ignorance in Bureaucracy’, Economy and Society, 36, 212–235. McMahon, S. and Sigona, N. (2018) ‘Navigating the Central Mediterranean in a Time of “Crisis”: Disentangling Migration Governance and Migrant Journeys’, Sociology, 52, 497–514. Mische, A. (2014) ‘Measuring Futures in Action: Projective Grammars in the Rio + 20 Debates’, Theory and Society, 43, 437–464. Medecins sans Frontieres (2016) Obstacle Course to Europe: A Policy-Made Humanitarian Crisis at EU Borders, Medecins sans Frontieres, January, pp. 1–58. Nassar, J. (2014) The Syrian Refugee Crisis: A Reification of State Sovereignty in Lebanon?, Unpublished MSc thesis, SOAS, University of London. Nassar, J. and Stel, N. (2019) ‘Lebanon’s Response to the Syrian Refugee Crisis – Institutional Ambiguity as a Governance Strategy’, Political Geography, 70, 44–54. Pastore, F. and Henry, G. (2016) ‘Explaining the Crisis of the European Migration and Asylum Regime’, The International Spectator, 51, 44–57. Pénet, P. (2018) ‘The IMF Failure That Wasn’t: Risk Ignorance during the European Debt Crisis, The British Journal of Sociology, 69, 1031–1055. della Porta, D. (2018) ‘Contentious Moves: Mobilising for Refugees’ Rights’. In della Porta, D. (ed) Solidarity Mobilizations in the ‘Refugee Crisis’: Contentious Moves, Cham, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1–38. Pries, L. (2018) Refugees, Civil Society and the State: European Experiences and Global Challenges, Cheltenham, Northampton, MA, Edward Elgar Publishing. Puchner, K., Karamagioli, E., Pikouli, A., Tsiamis, C., Kalogeropoulos, A., Kakalou, E., Pavlidou, E. and Pikoulis, E. (2018) ‘Time to Rethink Refugee and Migrant Health in Europe: Moving from Emergency Response to Integrated and Individualized Health Care Provision for Migrants and Refugees’, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 15, 1100. Riedner, L., Álvarez-Velasco, S., De Genova, N., Tazzioli, M. and van Baar, H. (2016) ‘Mobility’, In De Genova, N. and Tazzioli, M. (eds) Europe/Crisis: New Keywords of “the Crisis” in and of “Europe”, Zone Books, Near Futures Online, pp. 28–34. Roberts, J. (2015) ‘Organizational Ignorance’. In Gross, M. and McGoey, L. (eds) Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies, London, Routledge, pp. 361–369. Roitman, J. L. (2013) Anti-Crisis, Durham, NC, Duke University Press. Rozakou, K. (2017) ‘Nonrecording the “European Refugee Crisis” in Greece: Navigating through Irregular Bureaucracy’, Focaal, 77, 36–49. Scheel, S. and Ustek-Spilda, F. (2019) ‘The Politics of Expertise and Ignorance in the Field of Migration Management’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 37, 663–681. Schmiedel, U. and Smith, G. (2018) ‘Introduction: Charting a Crisis’. In Schmiedel, U. and Smith, G. (eds) Religion in the European Refugee Crisis, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1–11.

104  Crisis and ignorance Scholten, P. (2018) ‘Beyond Migrant Integration Policies: Rethinking the Urban Governance of Migration-Related Diversity’, Hrvatska i komparativna javna ­upravai, 18, 7–30. Scholten, P. (2020) ‘Mainstreaming versus Alienation: Conceptualising the Role of Complexity in Migration and Diversity Policymaking’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 46, 108–126. Šelo Šabić, S. (2017) The Relocation of Refugees in the European Union: Implementation of Solidarity and Fear, Zagreb, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. Shuman, A. and Bohmer, C. (2014) ‘Gender and Cultural Silences in the Political Asylum Process’, Sexualities, 17, 939–957. Sirriyeh, A. (2018) The Politics of Compassion: Immigration and Asylum Policy, Bristol, Chicago, IL, Bristol University Press. Staples, K. (2019) ‘“The Problem with Refugees”: International Protection and the Limits to Solidarity’, International Politics, 56, 158–174. Steinhilper, E. and Ataç, I. (2016) ‘Escaping from Asylum to Act as Citizens: Political Mobilization of Refugees in Europe’, Open Democracy/ISA-RC-47: Open Movements. Steinhilper, E. and Gruijters, R. J. (2018) ‘A Contested Crisis: Policy Narratives and Empirical Evidence on Border Deaths in the Mediterranean’, Sociology, 52, 515–533. Stel, N. (2016) ‘The Agnotology of Eviction in South Lebanon’s Palestinian Gatherings: How Institutional Ambiguity and Deliberate Ignorance Shape Sensitive Spaces, Antipode, 48, 1400–1419. Sukarieh, M. and Tannock, S. (2019) ‘Subcontracting Academia: Alienation, Exploitation and Disillusionment in the UK Overseas Syrian Refugee Research Industry’, Antipode, 51, 664–680. Taleb, N. N. (2007) The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, New York, Random House. Tazzioli, M. and De Genova, N. (2016) ‘Europe/Crisis: Introducing New Keywords of “the Crisis” in and of “Europe”’, In De Genova, N. and Tazzioli, M. (eds) Europe/Crisis: New Keywords of “the Crisis” in and of “Europe”, Zone Books, Near Futures Online, pp. 2–7. Tazzioli, M., De Genova, N., Fontanari, E., Peano, I. and Stierl, M. (2016) ‘Humanitarian Crisis’, In De Genova, N. and Tazzioli, M. (eds) Europe/Crisis: New Keywords of “the Crisis” in and of “Europe”, Zone Books, Near Futures Online, pp. 25–28. The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951). The Schengen Acquis Implementing the Schengen Agreement of 14 June 1985 between the Governments of the States of the Benelux Economic Union, the Federal Republic of Germany and the French Republic on the Gradual Abolition of Checks at their Common Borders (1985). Trauner, F. (2016) ‘Asylum Policy: The EU’s “Crises” and the Looming Policy Regime Failure’, Journal of European Integration, 38, 311–325. Trauner, F. (2020) ‘A Multifaceted Crisis as an Opportunity and a Risk: The EU’s Long Struggle to Reform the Dublin System for Asylum Seekers’. In Wöhl, S., Springler, E., Pachel, M., and Zeilinger, B. (eds) The State of the European Union, Wiesbaden, Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden, pp. 257–274.

Crisis and ignorance  105 Triandafyllidou, A. (2018) ‘A “Refugee Crisis” Unfolding: “Real” Events and their Interpretation in Media and Political Debates’, Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 16, 198–216. Vandevoordt, R. and Verschraegen, G. (2019) ‘Subversive Humanitarianism and Its Challenges: Notes on the Political Ambiguities of Civil Refugee Support’. In Feischmidt, M., Pries, L., and Cantat, C. (eds) Refugee Protection and Civil Society in Europe, London, Palgrave MacMillan, pp. 101–128. Wagner, M., Baumgartner, P., Dimitriadi, A., O’Donnell, R., Kraler, A., Perumadan, J., Schlotzhauer, J. H., Simic, I. and Yabasun, D. (2016) ‘The Implementation of the Common European Asylum System’, European Parliament’s Policy Department for Citizen’s Rights and Constitutional Affairs, Brussels. Yildiz, C., De Genova, N., Jansen, Y., Soto Bermant, L., Spathopoulou, A., Stierl, M. and Suffee, Z. (2016) In De Genova, N. and Tazzioli, M. (eds) Europe/Crisis: New Keywords of “the Crisis” in and of “Europe”, Zone Books, Near Futures Online, pp. 34–42. Zaun, N. (2017) EU Asylum Policies: The Power of Strong Regulating States, Cham, Palgrave Macmillan. Zaun, N. (2018) ‘States as Gatekeepers in EU Asylum Politics: Explaining the Non-Adoption of a Refugee Quota System’, JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 56, 44–62. Župarić-Iljić, D. and Valenta, M. (2019) ‘“Refugee Crisis” in the Southeastern European Countries: The Rise and Fall of the Balkan Corridor’. In Menjívar, C., Ruiz, M., and Ness, I. (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Migration Crises, Oxford, Oxford University Press, pp. 366–388.

Chapter 5

The European refugee crisis and the ignorance of framing

Our analysis in this book is triggered by our desire to show that the problem of ignorance and change in the context of unexpected events and crises should be approached through an interactional framework. Ignorance does not change in itself, but it interacts with a series of social processes, which are themselves triggered by unexpected events and crises – such as projection, expectation, and contestation. In this chapter, we apply this interactional framework with the help of a meta-analytical exploration (Triandafyllidou, 2018, p. 200) of the findings of existent literature conducted with regard to the interaction between ignorance and forms of knowledge that are specific to media and public policy in the context of the 2015–2016 European refugee crisis. The analysis of the presentation of the European refugee crisis in academic research we conducted (Chapter 4) confirmed our intuitions regarding the interactional study of ignorance to some extent. This sequential event has triggered a wide range of processes of knowledge, as well as a critical discourse regarding the ignorance-related effects of these. This renders the refugee crisis illustrative of the revelation of ignorance and of how the opportunity to bring change in the regimes of ignorance arises and manifests. The refugee crisis allows, for instance, for the identification of forms of strategic and epistemic ignorance and thus to enter easily into a dialogue with ignorance studies. All this, certainly, fell within what can be considered as analytically predictable given what we already knew about ignorance and change from the relevant literature. There is an aspect about the refugee crisis, however, which exceeded our expectations regarding this research site. The refugee crisis was, first and foremost, contested. It is noteworthy that the forms of contestation were not only prolific but have also occurred at an earlier stage than recent discussions about projection and expectation of radical change in the context of unexpected events and crises would otherwise suggest. The refugee crisis began to contest its effects in terms of change from the very beginning. Part of this critical reflection was even oriented towards its status as a crisis – see the so-called crisis phenomenon around it. This makes us

The European refugee crisis  107

realize that the problem of change in the regimes of ignorance, and the accompanying contestation of it, displays an intriguing complexity that is contingent on the characteristics of the crisis, and the opportunities for change that this is projected and expected to trigger. What this entails for our interest in projectivity is two points worth emphasizing. First, the projective and anticipatory forms of knowledge are relevant to understanding the dynamics of the crisis; yet other forms, such as contestatory, may manifest and take precedence, too. Second, the problem of ignorance and change in the context of the refugee crisis does not manifest uniformly, but it is instead contingent on the particular domain and context where this occurs. The fact that the contestation mechanisms were so visible is surely a reflection of the characteristics of the refugee crisis. This wave of contestation, however, is also connected with the fact that we looked for explanations regarding the crisis in the academic research. This field, by definition, is oriented towards contestation and a critical perspective. If ignorance research were to be given a role in the process of ignorance and change, then this would surely be one of producing and contesting knowledge. Challenging the existent analytical frameworks and the manner in which these contribute to the reproduction of power relations in society is one of the main things that academic research is expected to do. To figure out what is happening at a broader scale and what the role of projection in all this is, we embark in the following sections on a double exploration of the problem of ignorance and change in the context of the refugee crisis. We move from academic research towards media and public policy. For each of these two domains, we first underline that they are depicted with distinct opportunities and roles with regard to change of ignorance in the context of crises. Media – opportunity to raise awareness. Public policy – opportunity for policy change. Furthermore, with regard to associated forms of knowledge, we document that in the case of media, the literature draws attention to processes of framing, as well as legitimation/ pre-legitimation, while, in the case of public policy, it underlines processes of framing and learning. Likewise, on the basis of the examination of the findings of existent literature on the refugee crisis, we abstract in the form of typology the ignorance-related effects of the interaction between ignorance and these forms of knowledge in media and public policy, respectively. We distribute these effects according to various dimensions of ignorance, which allows us not only to have a more general perspective on their overall profile but also to relate to the interest manifest in ignorance studies in the strategic, epistemic and incentivized modes of the production and reproduction of ignorance, as well as in cognitive biases and misrepresentations in general. The meta-analytical exploration allows us to advance with our interactional model of change of ignorance in several respects. We become aware of the commonalities and differences of how the problem of change of

108  The European refugee crisis

ignorance, and the opportunities in this regard that are triggered by crisis events, manifest across distinct domains (such as media and public policy). We gain a more integrated picture of the forms of knowledge which advance in the context of the refugee crisis and the ignorance-related effects of these. We see how these forms are context contingent. Framing, for instance, manifests in the media one way, while in public policy another way. The meta-analysis and the typologies of ignorance-related effects we build also allow us to establish a dialogue with the study of the refugee crisis that is ignorance-oriented even though this may not explicitly present itself as such.

Crisis as an opportunity to raise awareness In the model of change of ignorance outlined in Chapter 3 (Figure 3.1), we assumed that unexpected events and crises lead to a revelation of ignorance that may trigger societal change, mainly through an opportunity to learn. In the case of the European refugee crisis, we indicated that the emphasis was first and foremost on the opportunity to raise awareness: to produce empirical evidence of the refugees’ predicament and to engage with it. Is the opportunity to raise awareness something different from the opportunity to learn that authors such as Gross (2010) and Taleb (2007) discuss? Does one opportunity preclude another? Or are there multiple opportunities which operate simultaneously? The answer, we argue, is that there is an effect of multiple ignorancerelated opportunities and possibilities. The clash with ignorance and the revelation of ignorance manifest distinctively in specific social fields. Media, for instance, are associated with the opportunity to raise awareness; public policy – opportunity for policy change (see Chapter 7); politics – opportunity for new decision-making; academic research – opportunity for knowledge and critical thinking production (see Chapter 4); social movements – opportunity to carry out social change or to oppose it. Therefore, while all these social fields share the general logic of crisis and change of ignorance, when it comes to specifics, each has its own patterns and plays a distinct role in the overall production and reproduction of ignorance in the context of crises. If one would suggest that the European refugee crisis created an opportunity for the media to raise awareness about the refugees’ predicament, this suggestion might sound odd. A more typical depiction of this issue simply places the opportunity to raise awareness at the centre, while media are expected to be instrumental in realizing it. Yet both formulations are valid. The first one is premised on the media’s agentic role but appears unlikely or wrong for the same reason why the second is perceived as more typical or even attractive. We are used to expecting from the media that they will raise awareness, as we are used to being disappointed when they do not perform

The European refugee crisis  109

this role. However, we do not actually conceive of the media as beneficiaries of a window of opportunity. Let us examine in more detail what kind of awareness raising we have in mind and why we focus on the media. There are several reasons. The media are the main facilitators of the experience and contact with the refugee crisis so to say. They create visibility for the event (Chouliaraki and Stolic, 2017), they render the crisis real for individuals (Zaborowski, 2019). The media create the social and cultural imaginary of the crisis (d’Haenens et al., 2019). During the refugee crisis in the UK, for instance, “the dynamically evolving situation required citizens and politicians alike to rely on journalistic coverage in order to stay informed” (Zaborowski, 2019, p. 49). The knowledge and information delivered by the media have the potential to trigger awareness and mobilize action. It has been documented that the media have an impact on how the general public perceives the contemporary world, including migration processes, and how it acts on it (on the relation between the media and asylum acceptance rates see Koch et al., 2019). The media also influence the decision-making processes in politics (Pérez, 2017; Langdon, 2018, p. 92). It might be even speculated that the media are more influential than firsthand experience as far as change in attitudes is concerned. The media act as a whistle-blower revealing the shared, more or less unconscious, ignorance. It was due to the media that the vulnerabilities of the asylum seeking and refugee system could no longer be ignored. They facilitated the discovery, articulation, and coverage of the experiences and evidence regarding the unfolding of the crisis (see Krishna-Hensel, 2018). The press also contributed to the mediatization and politicization of crisis events. For instance, through various case studies Triandafyllidou (2018, p. 199) and Krzyżanowski (2018a, p. 79) demonstrated how these two processes were interacting and stimulating each other in the refugee crisis. The close association between the media and awareness raising is understandable given the informative, cognitive-affective, moral-normative, and mobilizing aspects of how the media operate. Yet we should keep in mind that awareness raising is neither automatic nor linear. It is contingent on the type of representation, among other things. Parater (2018a), for instance, speaks about the “failure of raising awareness for refugees in a world of data and disinformation.” She indicates the hindrance coming from the representation of people and processes as numbers in the coverage of the refugee crisis. Parater’s (see 2015) general view rests on the assumption that dry information is insufficient for awareness raising. Instead the media should supply audiences with experiences by appealing to their imagination, for example by using short high-impact videos that work as cognitive-affective magnets. Alternatively, she stresses, traditional communication should be substituted with strategic interaction with the general public in reliance on the science and research findings (Parater, 2018b). Parater’s endeavours of solving this problem indicate both the potential and the generic limitation

110  The European refugee crisis

of the media as a channel of information to raise awareness regarding the global asylum seeking phenomenon. The potential for raising awareness is contingent on how the media circulate information, on the textual and visual narrative that they build around the topic as well as on the social and political context they function within. This complex conditionality results in multiple possible outcomes: the media may or may not raise awareness; the awareness may or may not translate into a shift of framing, discourses, and representations; a shift of representations may or may not trigger active engagement. The relevant literature points to certain conditionalities, contingencies and mechanisms in this regard (see Sirriyeh, 2018). The resulting image is that the media are in an awkward position. On the one hand, we expect that the media will transmit accurate information and statistics but also understand that these do not suffice. On the other hand, complicating the framing beyond merely conveying accurate information is problematic because the media inevitably overexpose some issues at the expense of others. It means that there is a risk that awareness may be raised, yet in the wrong direction. Alternatively, even when the media manage to raise awareness, this might still not be sufficient to induce action. Raising awareness through the media entails certain dynamics of possibilities and anti-possibilities (see Chapter 4; see Alcade and Portos García, 2018). The opportunity to raise awareness and even to change things further may materialize at some moments but not at others. Why this is so and what features render certain visually loaded representations (e.g. shocking images) capable of raising awareness, interest, solidarity, compassion, and even engagement are the questions that continue to fascinate us. An equally intriguing matter is why other similarly dramatic representations only cause fatigue and pity. Langdon (2018), for instance, discusses the opening of possibilities for change in relation to the widely circulated picture of Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian boy of Kurdish ethnic background who drowned in the Mediterranean Sea on 2 September 2015. The image of the child’s body washed ashore in Turkey became iconic. Its circulation is associated with changes in public attitudes towards the crisis, the opening of a more compassionate framing, and the creation of scripts for potential empathetic attitudes (Langdon, 2018; Zaborowski and Georgiou, 2019). In a similar vein, Sirriyeh (2018) speaks about shifts in the regimes of compassion that were made possible by changes in framing triggered by the pictures of Alan Kurdi. Taking the analysis of powerful and shocking images a step further, Sajir and Aouragh (2019, p. 568) argue that such visual representations may be conducive to acts of solidarity but that there are certain contexts wherein this “can or cannot occur.” Sajir and Aouragh compare the two widely circulated images of young children in the context of the refugee crisis, that of Alan Kurdi and of Omran Daqneesh (the Syrian boy

The European refugee crisis  111

who was photographed in August 2016 semiconscious and covered in dust subsequent to an air strike on Aleppo). They demonstrate that although apparently both images had a similar dramatic potential, their publication has, nevertheless, led to distinct outcomes in terms of solidarity and active engagement. In comparison with other channels for raising awareness, such as a research-policy nexus, it is expected that the process will run faster through the media. The impact of the media is perceived to be more direct and instant. The media are not only expected to provide information and coverage but to also lead to a shift in the narrative about refugees and crises, and towards active engagement. It also seems that the problem of awareness raising is addressed in a binary fashion: either there is awareness raising that leads to active engagement and solidarity, or there is not. Alternatively, awareness raising and non-awareness raising may appear at different times – as disjunctive instances. The seemingly contradictory effects that were documented for the impact of the story and image of Alan Kurdi illustrate this point. The picture is argued to have been a “turning point,” to have led to a shift in the framing of the refugee problem towards a more open and humanitarian stand, even in public policy (Alcade and Portos García, 2018, pp. 161, 167; Andretta and Pavan, 2018, p. 310; Kleres, 2018, pp. 216–218; Sajir and Aouragh, 2019). Yet one may also find instances which indicate that this event did not actually bring the policy change that is warranted. The process of raising awareness by the media unfolds in relation to the mediatization and politicization of the refugee crisis that influences the perceptions of people as well as the policy responses and developments. The research on the media coverage of the refugee crisis indicates that this is greatly dependent on the rationale of the current political debate (e.g. Ghazal Aswad, 2019). The crisis is prioritized on the media’s agenda once it is politicized (Triandafyllidou, 2018, p. 210). Krzyżanowski (2018b, p. 99) and Krzyżanowski, Triandafyllidou, and Wodak (2018) speak in this sense about a “hybrid new discourse of politicization” in the context of the European refugee crisis. Accordingly, this new form is entangled in the legitimation and pre-legitimation of policy change in accordance with the “discursive shifts” in the representations of immigration (Krzyżanowski, 2018a). Triandafyllidou (2018, pp. 199, 207), on the other hand, pointed to “interactive relationships”. These legitimation, pre-legitimation and interactive mechanisms allow for the policy responses and the political discourses and actions to be normalized through processes of the media coverage. Aiming at awareness raising, the media can be caught up in these mechanisms to the extent that they will inadvertently start reproducing political discourses and interests. Such an understanding of the mechanisms related to the media coverage of crisis events can be combined with the observations of Parater (2018a,

112  The European refugee crisis

2018b) on the impact of experience-triggering communications. It follows that the dramatic events and influential images, such as those of Alan Kurdi, as well as the politically loaded crisis events, such as the building of the Hungarian fence on the border with Serbia (see Lekić-Subašić, 2018), appear to possess high potential for awareness raising and mobilization. And yet one should not rush into dismissing the weight and potential influence of the more mundane coverage either. The coverage of “eventless” everyday life during the crisis has its relevance, too. If not for anything else, such coverage may prepare the ground for awareness raising or awareness maintaining, once it has been raised. Awareness raising by the media in the context of the refugee crisis thus appears to be powered by two sources: the crisis situation and the discursive shifts coming from the fields of politics and public policy. The crisis situation comprises the crisis events and what we would like to call the everyday life of the crisis, or, to use Triandafyllidou’s (2018, p. 208) term, “wider period of refugee flows”. While the discursive shifts are like adrenaline shots coming from the field of politics which propel or strengthen the presence of specific topics in the public sphere. In the context of the European refugee crisis, the shifts came either in the form of bringing the global refugee problem into the spotlight (see Kubicki et al., 2017) or by reinforcing some of the earlier tendencies of immigration-related discourses and debates, such as restriction and border control. Krzyżanowski (2018b; see Krzyżanowska and Krzyżanowski, 2018), for instance, documents how in the case of Poland, the mediatization and politicization of immigration resulted in a situation wherein the media became a loud speaker and communication fertilizer for the discursive shifts towards “ethno-nationalist politics” taking place in the political arena (for similar processes in Austria see Rheindorf and Wodak, 2018; for the UK see Langdon, 2018, p. 95). Yet, not only does the political struggle influence the media representations of the refugee crisis, but the overall context is of importance, too. For instance, in the UK in 2014 refugees were presented as people who have to be removed from the country. While in Australia they were presented as people who have to be kept out, the focus being therefore more on border security in the Australian case (Parker, n.d.). The crisis situation and the discursive shifts are elements of context which influence to a great extent whether the window of opportunity to raise awareness during the crisis opens, when it opens, how wide it opens and for how long it remains as such. Yet these two components do not close the list of factors influencing the possibility for raising awareness. The activities of social movements and non-governmental organizations also are relevant, as well as the attitudes and actions of rank-and-file citizens in favour or against the refugees. While these factors, too, exert influence on the media, we will not further delve into their workings due to the limitation of space but move forward with the problem of ignorance and change.

The European refugee crisis  113

Framing, legitimation/pre-legitimation, and the epistemology of ignorance Having discussed in the previous section the elements of contingency in awareness raising by the media, we can now move to presenting the ignorance-related processes triggered by the refugee crisis. In this section, we delineate the ignorance-related effects of the interaction between ignorance and the other media-specific processes of crisis representation and conceptualization. We conduct a meta-analysis (Triandafyllidou, 2018, p. 200) of the findings of existent literature on the dynamics of framing and legitimation/pre-legitimation and establish a dialogue between this research and ignorance studies. Ignorance-related effects of the interaction between ignorance and framing The literature on the media coverage of the 2015–2016 European refugee crisis suggests that ignorance interacted with a variety of processes in the context of the crisis. Among them, the processes of framing appear to be highly significant for the production and reproduction of ignorance. Gamson and Modigliani (1987, p. 143) defined the media frame as “a central organizing idea or story line that provides meaning to an unfolding strip of events […]. The frame suggests what the controversy is about, the essence of the issue.” The frame can also be conceived of as a perspective that favours particular understandings (Lawlor, 2015, p. 329). Thus, intrinsically framing mechanisms involve ignorance, for something is being emphasized at the cost of something else being backgrounded or forgotten. In relation to the refugee crisis, the tenets of the media framing analysis are found particularly relevant. Matar (2017, p. 295) points in this regard to the ramifications of the processes of description, categorization and representation in terms of “understanding what the story is on migration, and the way we perceive migrants and refugees.” Having emphasized the significance of framing, we would like to point out that the impact of the media on public policy and public opinion is not linear and unidirectional but unfolds through the (sometimes tacit) forms of mutual influencing and constituting (Anderson, 2017, p. 8). Ignorance figures highly, though not always explicitly, in much of the research on framing in the media coverage of the refugee crisis. The ignorance-related effects of framing in the media can be abstracted in relation to three levels of the discussion: cognitive, epistemic, and strategic – see Table 5.1. These three modes of analysis recall the dimensions we discussed in the context of the identification of mechanisms of contestation of the refugee crisis in the academic research in the previous chapter (Chapter 4). They also reverberate the interest in ignorance studies in the cognitive (e.g. Arfini and Magnani, 2016; Arfini, 2019), epistemic (e.g. Alcoff, 2007; Peels

114  The European refugee crisis Table 5.1 Ignorance-related effects of interaction between ignorance and framing in the media Modes of analysis/ dimensions of ignorance

Effects in the media

Cognitive

Selection, abrupt transition and cut of sequences, reduction of complexity, involuntary silencing, underrepresentation Categorization, essentialization (as othering), reduction (to numbers), neglect of diversity Attribution, negative and danger-oriented bias, neglect of probability

Epistemic

Confusion, ambiguity, dissonance Construction of perspective from an outside position (commitment to difference), distant suffering Reproduction of the epistemology of ignorance, mediation

Strategic

Strategic ignorance, speculative ignorance

and Blaauw, 2019), and strategic (e.g. McGoey, 2012) types and dimensions of ignorance. How should we distinguish between the cognitive, epistemic, and strategic modes of analysis? We have ascribed to the cognitive type the ignorancerelated effects that have to do with the manner in which the media represent the crisis, the interpretative angles they favour, and the biases they display. On the other hand, we have depicted as epistemic the effects that have roots that run deeper than what we may depict as fallacies of representation, being related to historical processes and institutional configurations that go beyond particular actors or the media. While we have considered strategic the effects that occur if not outright purposive and overt, then at least tolerated, shared, and hidden (see Chapter 3). Certainly, the boundaries between the three modes of analysis are quite blurry, and there are some effects which may theoretically be ascribed to more than one mode of analysis, or dimension of ignorance. We applied a quite easy test to facilitate the delimitation: Can the ignorance effect be countered? How long and how much effort would it take to change the narrative behaviour and the coverage of the media? Can the ignorance be made public? Would the actors be willing to change their behaviour outright? The cognitive dimension Three types of ignorance-related effects can be identified in relation with the cognitive dimension in the literature: selection, categorization, and attribution. The first type, the selection effects, are frequently addressed, yet also with a certain degree of understanding and sympathy. These effects are visible

The European refugee crisis  115

in that the accounts about the refugee crisis usually begin with the moment of displacement, they depict the increase in arrivals as unexpected, and leave various aspects of the problem simply not covered. The media accounts also reduce the complexity of the crisis and migration reality, and use certain types of resources, voices or experience at the expense of others, especially at the expense of the refugees themselves (d’Haenens et al., 2019; Zaborowski, 2019). A sense of obligation to certain actors only slightly balances the overall voice asymmetry. Chouliaraki and Zaborowski (2017), for instance, follow Couldry’s (2010) idea of “voice as value” and discuss giving voice to social actors in a distributive “process of recognition.” In a similar vein, Langdon (2018) speaks of the “fickleness of the media, whereby certain human interest stories become the hooks upon which an article is hung, while many more people suffer without voice or media attention.”1 Such speaker-led aspect involves the media endorsing certain perspectives on the basis of the position held by the actors who are given voice rather than of the content and value of what these actors communicate. As observed by Ferreira (2018, p. 64) in relation to the securitization process of migration: “Sometimes the person who presents the discourse is more important than the speech itself.” For instance, a speaker representing the national security institution (such as a minister of defence) gets to frame the perception of refugees because of the fact that she represents an institution associated with the threat/security nexus. The selection, abrupt transition and cut of sequences, as well as the reduction of complexity effects are quite recurrently and concretely being depicted in the analysis of the media coverage. Yet the selective ignorance is also seen as an ignorance sine qua non, almost presented as an inevitability, given the contingencies and limitations of the framing process. As a rule, what is presented in a story is there at the expense of what is left out of it. Hence, some of the authors display empathy to the media’s predicament. in Europe it may seem that migration crisis news frames are “broken”, but, it may be more accurate to say that the “completeness” of any frame, especially in crisis news can only ever be partial, temporary, and unstable. (Moore et al., 2018, p. 92) From the perspective of ignorance studies, such statements can be read as an acceptance of the fact that the media cannot but produce ignoranceridden accounts of crisis events, and that their vision is necessarily limited. At least, it is acknowledged that this fact is an open secret. Thus, the media can be blamed for each instance of omission (and become a scapegoat of misrepresentation of the crisis), yet, to a certain extent, the media omissions are also perceived as a norm.

116  The European refugee crisis

At first glance, the second cognitive type, the categorization effects, appears somewhat similar to the one we just discussed. Yet there is a significant difference in how they operate. The categorization and related essentialization (as othering) or neglect of diversity are not as much (unintended) results of objective constraints (e.g. a lack of time to collect all relevant data or lack of space to present it). But they are purposeful, though sometimes automatic or taken for granted, processes of classification, labelling, and interpretation. These ignorance effects render the refugees as representatives of a category of persons with identical attributes, which is different and other than the category to which readers belong. Alternatively, it may result in refugees being simply perceived as numbers. Importantly, researchers suggest that essentialization (as othering) may occur both when showing refugees as victims (women with children) and depicting them as a threat (young men) (Zaborowski, 2019). The othering occurs by means of impersonalization (Ghazal Aswad, 2019), or genericization (representing a migrant as a member of a group or class whose acts are an outcome of the group’s feature and not of an individual’s decisions). In the context of the othering frame, significant attention has been also paid to the metaphoric expressions used to describe refugees and asylum seekers (see Table 5.2). The third cognitive type, the attribution effects, may be seen as a specific, rather extreme, exacerbation of the categorization effects. The attribution and related danger-oriented bias occur in relation to the interpretative frames that the relevant literature indicates to be dominant in the press coverage of the refugee crisis: securitization, othering, and dehumanizing. The relevant literature makes the point that the “moralizing” coverage of the refugee crisis notwithstanding (see Triandafyllidou, 2018, p. 214; cf. “cosmopolitan framing” in Langdon, 2018), the overall framing seems to rest predominantly on alarmist, essentialist, and sensationalist patterns, and even animal metaphors. Table 5.2 Use of metaphors in the media Metaphors in the media f lood, deluge, tide, swamp (Parker, 2015, p. 7; Holmes and Castañeda, 2016, p. 18) torrent (Langdon, 2018, p. 99) insect or pest (Anderson, 2017) swarm (Langdon, 2018, p. 96) infectious disease, epidemic, plague (Boukala and Dimitrakopoulou, 2018) animal or gang-like group: roaming pack of migrants (Langdon, 2018, p. 98) military references: invasion (Anderson, 2017; Langdon, 2018, p. 99) theological references: biblical proportions, biblical exodus (Langdon, 2018, pp. 96 –97)

The European refugee crisis  117

The association of refugees with security or a criminal threat, essentializing them as a source of political destabilization has effects of ignorance because of the reproduction of danger-oriented bias in a non-reflexive manner. Such bias is problematic not only on the accounts of the increased emotionality, fear, and uncertainty that the coverage triggers. It also changes the way audiences think about the future: possible scenarios (e.g. a terrorist attack) become reified as possible or almost certain, while the low probability of them actually materializing is ignored. Such mechanisms are insightfully depicted by Sunstein (2003; Sunstein and Zeckhauser, 2011) as neglect of probability. They also recall what Dalton, Rüschenpöhler, and Zia (2018) describe as “planning failure” and “imagination failure”. The two are “behavioural biases” that narrow actors’ aspirations, the way they see their world, and the resources they consider to be available for exploitation. While probably not being the main source of these biases, the media certainly transmit and reinforce them. The epistemic dimension It is now time to turn to the ignorance-related effects of the epistemic variety. While in the previous sub-section we primarily looked at how the media represent the crisis, the following discussion will primarily unravel how the media are predisposed to think about the crisis and how, most probably, they go along with this modality of thinking and thus reinforce it. This causes a macro effect similar at times to the phenomenon of “pluralistic ignorance” (Prentice, 2007). This predisposition is epistemic, and there is certainly an unconscious, or semi-conscious aspect to it. In light of the advancement in ignorance studies we cannot, however, fail to highlight the fact that there most certainly is, if not an approval or acceptance of the broader premises that guide our framing of the world, then at least a tacit and shared behavioural adherence to these principles in the sense of refraining from undermining them. The strategic aspect is visible, thus, more in the strategic lack of actions that would undermine these epistemic pillars, than in strategic acts of enactment. These effects point to a certain internal struggle in the media, to their inner tensions as well as their interpretative frames as a form of inhabited ignorance. Three manifestations can be distinguished here: confusion, construction of perspective from an outside position and reproduction of the epistemology of ignorance. The first epistemic type, the confusion effects, is probably the most striking. Alongside the recurrent findings suggesting that the coverage of the crisis is highly selective and full of pejorative framings of the refugees as a group, the relevant literature also indicates that the press is thoroughly permeated by a tension between compassionate impulses led by the ideas of universal human rights, on the one hand, and moral panic or security threat

118  The European refugee crisis

fears, on the other. As described by Matar (2017), the media appear to be highly confused and polarized (see also Anderson, 2017, pp. 7–8). The cause lies in that the media depict human suffering, on the one hand, as well as the physical materializations and large-scale consequences of the displaced people’s movement, on the other. The confusion and contradiction are created by the phenomenon of general interest, the coverage of which relies on the same values in order to legitimize the perspectives and frames of opposing natures (see politics and contradictory recourses to compassion in Sirriyeh, 2018). The next epistemic type, construction of perspective from an outside position, points at the same inherent tensions. When representing refugees, even with the best intentions, the media automatically approach the depicted realities from a distanced position. The experiences are transmitted by an outside observer, which quite often limits the effects of raising awareness to the phenomenon of “distant suffering” (Boltanski, 1999; Chouliaraki, 2006; Sirriyeh, 2018). Chouliaraki and Stolic (2017, pp. 6–7), for instance, referring to Boltanski (1999) and others, pointedly demonstrate how this position of a distanced observer experiencing “generalized pity” reduces the refugees to their biological life and erases the contextual link with the world of the observer, for example with “the failure of international politics and Western structure of governance.” The third sub-type, reproduction of the epistemology of ignorance, departs from the internal tensions of the media and describes directly the boosting of inhabited ignorance, the augmentation of it (see Chapters 2 and 3). This analysis concerns, for instance, the modes of refugees’ depiction before the crisis. The tendency of representing migrants and refugees negatively in the press has long been the feature of the media coverage in Europe and elsewhere (O’Brien, 2003; Gabrielatos and Baker, 2008; McKay, Thomas, and Kneebone, 2012; Esses, Medianu, and Lawson, 2013; Lawlor and Tolley, 2017; Krzyżanowski, 2018b). Despite being a prolonged humanitarian disaster, the 2015–2016 refugee crisis did not avert this tendency, on the contrary, crisis events caused an upsurge of negative representations of both migrants and refugees. Yet the epistemic ignorance is more profound. The deep-seated ignorance in the context of the refugee crisis stems from the imaginaries of the Middle East and Muslim world that have evolved historically. It is the ignorance inherent in the orientalist logic that the term “West” was employed to distinguish the “East” in order for the cultural conquest to pave the way for a military colonial conquest (see Said, 1978). In the literature on the refugee crisis media coverage, the connections between the strong impact of dramatic images that raise awareness and the reproduction of orientalist imaginaries is clearly observed. Bozdag and Smets (2017) and Ibrahim (2018), for instance, do not deny that the powerful images of Alan Kurdi created a debate. However, they also detect that these pictures reinforced

The European refugee crisis  119

the existing representations and framings of refugees, and reproduced the epistemology premised on the radical difference of refugees’ humanity from that of a Westerner, or on the deficiencies in the humanity they purportedly have. The strategic dimension The ignorance-related effects of the interaction between ignorance and framing are quite pointedly identified in the literature on the media coverage of the refugee crisis. The researchers are also aware of the fact that ignorance in the media has further ignorance-related effects on politics and public policy as well as on the general public. It is noteworthy that although sometimes the ignorance regarding certain aspects of the refugee crisis borders on strategic ignorance and speculative ignorance, the media also have an image of being victims of ignorance. The media are responsible for awareness raising and the authors we reviewed reveal themselves as spokespersons of the general frustration that the media do not manage to live up to this standard. Yet it is rarely considered that failure to raise awareness is purposive or conspiratorial on their part. Rather, the media are seen to further transmit ignorance that they take for granted either because of the inherent limitations of the news format or due to the media’s interlinkages with politics, or simply because of the particularities of the communication or how the news is constructed. Ignorance-related effects of the interaction between ignorance and legitimation/pre-legitimation Framing figures prominently among the media-specific processes related to politics, but other forms of knowledge are presented too. The literature on the media coverage of the European refugee crisis seems sometimes to consciously go beyond the focus on framing and tries to underline something else worthy of attention. Krzyżanowski, as we pointed out, talks about discursive shifts (2018a) and legitimation/pre-legitimation (2014) processes. The latter mechanism is particularly relevant to ignorance since it has been originally coined to describe the process whereby substituting experience with expectations becomes a source of legitimacy (of a journalistic practice) (Krzyżanowski, 2014, pp. 346–347). Pre-legitimization contains valuable cues as far as ignorance-related effects are concerned, epistemic ignorance in particular. Two main ignorancerelated effects of the interaction between ignorance and legitimation/ pre-legitimation stand out: reinforcement of the epistemology of ignorance and selective enactment (Table 5.3). The first type, the reinforcement of the epistemology of ignorance, occurs in relation to the fact that legitimation and pre-legitimation of policy change

120  The European refugee crisis Table 5.3 Ignorance-related effects of interaction between ignorance and legitimation/pre-legitimation in the media Modes of analysis/dimensions of ignorance

Effects in the media

Epistemic

Reinforcement of the epistemology of ignorance, mediation Selective enactment of ideas and imaginaries

occur through various “mobilizing and politicizing concepts” such as humanitarianism, security, diversity, and protectionism (Krzyżanowski et al., 2018, pp. 1, 8). Therefore, apart from contributing to the institutionalization of policy change, these forms of legitimizing knowledge also reinforce and mediate the epistemology of ignorance. It means that not only do legitimation and pre-legitimation processes rely on particular meanings and framings (see Triandafyllidou, 2018) but also that the framings as such may be triggered by processes of legitimization, and especially pre-legitimization, since in the latter case the expectation precedes experience. The second type, the selective enactment of ideas and imaginaries, has been hinted at by Krzyżanowski (2018a, p. 77) when analyzing the politicization and mediatization of the refugee crisis in Poland. Krzyżanowski argued, in particular, that the top-down mediatization of the political discourse and politicization of the media by the right-wing political party Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (PiS) [Law and Justice] relied on “shooting out” and then progressively implanting certain “ideas” and “imaginaries” in the public debate. These ideas and imaginaries were of a distinctly xenophobic and anti-immigrant nature, and thus promulgated an anti-refugee logic, or strategic stance, in the context of the crisis. In this case, the strategic nature of the effects of ignorance is observable beyond a doubt. The enactment of the epistemic ignorance is selective, but this is also strategic in the sense that part of the political game is to agitate the status quo and employ deeply rooted frames, biases, and sentiments which have potential as political tools.

Crisis as an opportunity for policy change Asylum policy is the main domain of action in terms of advancing responses and attending to the 2015–2016 European refugee crisis, as well as broadly governing irregular migration. It is hard not to agree with van Nispen and Scholten (2017, p. 81) that “[t]imes of crisis, such as the financial and economic crisis and, more recently, the migration crisis, open windows of opportunity for agenda setting and policy change.”

The European refugee crisis  121

In the earlier part of this chapter, we discussed how the European refugee crisis triggered an opportunity for awareness raising as well as for producing empirical evidence about the humanitarian disaster exacerbated in part by contemporary increased mobility, and the migration-war nexus, and engaging with it. We might expect that the awareness raising and revelation of ignorance will be most palpably consequential for the asylum policy domain, and that policy intervention will take advantage of new knowledge. Yet, as noticed by van Nispen and Scholten (2017, p. 81), this may not be the case. The opening of new possibilities and opportunities is never straightforward, and the opportunity for policy change and for learning do not come concomitantly but may unfold along separate trajectories: the added value of policy analysis and utilization-focused evaluation is often more contested during crises: do crises provide opportunities for the utilization of expert knowledge and policy learning in order to punctuate policy deadlocks and to induce policy innovation or do crises rather inhibit opportunities for the utilization of expert knowledge and policy learning because of political contestation and establishment of a clear political primacy? (van Nispen and Scholten, 2017, p. 81) It is possible that policy change will be guided by the revelation of the vulnerabilities in existing policies and unfold as a learning process. Yet policy change may also advance based on its proven “remarkable capacity […] to ignore knowledge and expertise when it contradicts policy assumptions at the level of problem definition” (Scholten, 2017). The dynamics are quite ambiguous and uncertain. The relation between revelation of ignorance, awareness raising, and policy developments is not linear. The asylum policy field has reacted to the refugee crisis, and the reaction contained an element of ignorance revelation. In this sense, we can talk about the contingency of policy change on the crisis situation (crisis events, in particular) that is similar to the mechanism of awareness raising by the media. Crisis events, for example the building of the 175-km-long razor wire fence at the border with Serbia by Hungary in September 2015, directly led to asylum policy developments that are quite well documented. Still, the very emergence of policy developments and their direction are greatly contingent on discursive shifts (Krzyżanowski, 2018a) emanating from the governmental powers. Indisputably, some instances of ignorance revelation are so acute that they trigger radical policy changes almost automatically. This was the case of the dramatic images of Alan Kurdi. In the general evolution of the crisis and beyond such dramatic events and strong images (Parater, 2018a, 2018b), however, the translation of the crisis situation is mediated and supported by the political domain. This is why some reactions appear to be delayed, or there

122  The European refugee crisis

are gaps between the revelation of ignorance and production of knowledge, on the one hand, and the policy responses, on the other. In the context of the refugee crisis, the influence of politics on policy change appears to be rather decisive, especially considering the documented politicization of the immigration issue even in countries where this topic was rarely addressed in public debate prior to the crisis. Krzyżanowski (2018a) and Krzyżanowska and Krzyżanowski (2018), as we already indicated, show that the policy responses to the European refugee crisis took place in the context of the politicization of immigration, with discursive shifts in politics and policy that are legitimized and pre-legitimized by the media. Relatedly, Triandafyllidou (2018), in this sense, discusses the evident interaction between policy developments and media and political discourses. This author also points at a shift in policy responses. At a certain point, there was a turn from the attempts to find solutions to the unexpected mass movement of people (such as the relocation plan) to using the crisis as an excuse for the advancement of restrictive measures. For other authors the politicization of immigration took place even before the 2015–2016 refugee crisis. Balch (2018), for instance, points at the politicization of “intra-European movement” in the XXI century, and suggests that the policymaking on mobility inside Europe had been carried out against the backdrop of the political changes and conflicts occurring in North Africa in 2010–2011, and in Syria and Iraq before that. These conflicts, which triggered forced migration processes, were treated as crisis situations and presented as a menace coming from outside. They encroached on the solidarity among the European Union (EU) Member States and negatively affected the practices of free movement within the Schengen Area. The European refugee crisis further stirred these points of contention and resulted in the reinforcement of mobility restrictions, resumption of border controls and erection of fences (the case of Hungary is illustrative in this respect). In this sense, the crisis created an opportunity to do so: the “migrant crisis was blamed” (Balch, 2018, p. 168) for these measures. While the discursive shifts are, no doubt, extremely helpful in making sense of policy change in the context of the European refugee crisis at both the EU and national levels, there are other contextual elements which deserve consideration. Due to politicization, policy developments come to be seen not solely as responses to the crisis but as restrictive measures driven by political interests that use the crisis as a justification (cf. Triandafyllidou, 2018, pp. 206–207). This framing gains even more currency due to the fact that policy responses were predominantly directed towards mobility restrictions and securitization, the episodic attempts of loosening restrictions and creating possibilities for the displaced people notwithstanding. Thus, politicization presents itself as a dynamic and agentic process, which at the same time may appear more influential than it really is. Applying an interactional perspective (such as we and Triandafyllidou use) increases the susceptibility

The European refugee crisis  123

to such framing, because it focuses on the effects of policy change manifestation subsequent to the fields’ interaction. The public policy change, however, is not only about interaction and reinforcement but also about contingency. The role of the asylum status of the country, of domestic politics, and even of learning are decisive in this respect. In the refugee crisis, too, public policy change was contingent on political elements such as the timing of elections, the power play between left and right forces in the political field, actual contact with refugees, the volume of asylum applications received, and electoral pressures in favour of or against refugees (Wodak, 2015; Triandafyllidou, 2018; Zaun, 2018). It is also important to realize that while the turn towards mobility restriction and securitization in the public policy management of the refugee crisis appears to have been rather thorough, it was not centrally planned to a significant degree nor was it organized around a single common interest. In this sense, Brekke and Staver (2018, p. 2163) speak about the “renationalisation of migration policies in times of crisis” in contrast to the expected yet unfulfilled “collective action in the field of asylum regulation.” Likewise, Ferreira (2018, p. 67) indicates how the policy responses at the EU level were not run smoothly or coordinated in a linear fashion. Instead, they looked more like continuous and renewed sequences of mobilization by the European Commission and quasi-betrayals by Member States, which sought to accommodate their “own political interests.” From a different perspective, Zaun (2018) advances a comprehensive analysis of the manner in which mechanisms that undercut responsibility-sharing between the Member States decreased the confidence and amplified the humanitarian crisis of the refugees trapped in the process. Hungary, certainly, is one of the main countries which played the role of the generic solidarity-breaker in the collective management of the European refugee crisis. But we can also interpret the actions of Hungary and the other Member States which looked for ways to advance their political interests in terms of gaining autonomy in their relations with the EU. While considering this fact does not rule out the discursive shifts perspective, it allows one to better understand the country-specific stakes of politicization that go beyond the asylum policy change or are due to it. What additional meanings are at play in this process? What we term the politicization of immigration as autonomization is related to the processes of the renationalization of asylum policy, which Brekke and Staver (2018) point at using the case of Norway. Yet autonomization has distinctive features because it is aimed at rebalancing or reworking the power relations and differentiation within the EU; it is future oriented. Zaun (2017, p. 3), for instance, indicates how EU asylum policy reiterated the asymmetry between weak regulators, such as the Member States in Southern and Eastern Europe, and strong regulators, the North-Western EU Member States who previously coordinated EU asylum policy.

124  The European refugee crisis

The autonomy-gaining dimension of the actions of the states which seemed to diverge from the EU collective response to the crisis should not be overlooked. The crisis cannot be fully understood without the consideration of the relation between the weak and the strong EU Member States that lies at its very origin. Neither can we omit the fact that the strong regulators continued to direct the collective response during the height of the refugee crisis as well, for instance, by designing policy instruments such as the relocation plan (Zaun, 2017, p. 13). In this context, the refugee crisis provided an opportunity, if not to break from this asymmetry, then to at least renegotiate some of its terms. This is why the affair of the mandatory relocation quotas, this “case of unsuccessful EU policy-making or a ‘non-decision’” (Zaun, 2018, p. 45) is oftentimes presented as a power and strategic game between the more influential and the less influential Member States in EU asylum policy and politics. In this way we see that the policy responses at the EU level seem to have established a state of, more or less temporary, productive incoherence, to use the term proposed by Grabel (2018) in relation to the global economic crisis. This notion is used originally to depict the state wherein the centralization and common framework for action is being lost and even questioned. In the case of the policy responses to the refugee crisis, the relevant research recurrently highlights the loss of solidarity of action among the Member States. During the refugee crisis, instead of a centralized EU-channelled policy response there are fragmented country responses, which seem to undermine the EU rationality and modus operandi. The crisis gave certain states the opportunity to express their political autonomy against the background of EU asylum policymaking. In the context of the European refugee crisis, the presence of politically loaded processes is thus a key element of asylum policy change. The crisis not only opened the opportunity for policy change but also for political change at both the domestic and EU levels. The second factor that had influence on the asylum policy change in the context of the crisis is the capacity building and financial aid. Although this issue is less exposed in the research on the media coverage of the crisis than certain discursive shifts, in the policy field the financial aid used for capacity building and development in and outside the EU was an instrument for controlling the movement of irregular migrants coming to Europe even before the crisis (Baldwin-Edwards et al., 2018; Crawley and Blitz, 2019). In the context of the refugee crisis, the financial aid and other forms of assistance acquired new meanings and possibilities for strategic usage not only by the EU as a whole but also by the governments of particular states. The states of Central and Eastern Europe, which, following Zaun (2017), we refer to as weak regulators of EU asylum policy, adopted different strategies in this respect. The EU funds for migration, asylum policy and integration allocated by the European Commission assisted and facilitated

The European refugee crisis  125

Romania’s loyalty to the EU-proposed solutions to the crisis (Vasile and Androniceanu, 2018). On the other hand, Poland and Hungary have purposefully resigned from some forms of EU financial assistance and designed their own programmes for aid and capacity building, such as Poland’s programme in terms of helping on the spot. While during the refugee crisis in Europe there were plenty of instances when asylum policy change at the EU and national levels unfolded as a missed opportunity to learn, learning was also strongly present, we suggest. The refugee crisis, for instance, offers a good illustration for the process of policy change through learning about policies pursued in other countries (Zaun, 2017, pp. 221, 230–231) as well as imitation. The proliferation of local bordering practices (Baldwin-Edwards et al., 2018, pp. 2145–2146; Togral Koca, 2019a; 2019b) subsequent to Hungary’s original initiative started a sequence of learning-imitation by other countries that is hard to miss. Learning, in this sense, stops being an element of context and contingency for the occurrence of public policy change but is a process which actually carries out the change. Not only did the Hungarian border fence divert refugees and other migrants into countries that had previously received few arrivals, and were therefore ill-equipped to respond, but more importantly this action set the scene for further coercive attempts at border management across the EU and among its neighbours. […] At the same time, one by one, Greece’s western neighbours followed Hungary’s example and closed their borders. By 8 March 2016, all the Balkan borders were closed for asylum seekers wishing to exit Greece. (Baldwin-Edwards et al., 2018, pp. 2145–2146)

Framing, learning, and the politics of ignorance Following the interactional model for the analysis of ignorance change in the media undertaken earlier in this chapter, we now embark on the analysis of the ignorance-related effects of the interaction between ignorance and relevant forms of knowledge in the asylum policy field in the context of the 2015–2016 European refugee crisis. Our point of departure is a metaanalytical systematization of the existent research findings. We indicate that the available literature allows us to grasp quite well the production and reproduction of ignorance in relation to the processes of framing and learning. As in the case of the media analysis, we discuss here ignorancerelated effects, and not the positive or negative value these effects have. Although in some instances the aspect of value is also touched on, they should not be taken for a comprehensive analysis of the normative dimension of these processes.

126  The European refugee crisis

Ignorance-related effects of the interaction between ignorance and policy framing As in the case of the media, we are inclined to say that the process most recurrently highlighted and documented with regard to public policy in the refugee crisis is framing. This statement might sound like a hasty generalization, unless its several aspects are clarified. First, the framing of policy is vitally different from media framing, despite the fact that both share certain common features. In media studies, the locus of interest is in the construction of the reported phenomena and their exposition in various media outlets. The frames employed in the coverage of the refugees are broadly discussed by media studies (Lawlor and Tolley, 2017; Ramasubramanian and Miles, 2018). In the policy analysis, the frames constructed by the media and intercepted by politicians occur as an important context for the policy process. Yet the policies are formulated in a different textual form (normative acts, strategies, white books, policy statements, intervention projects, etc.) and expressed by public officials and civil servants who are involved in the implementation of policies, and not in the political debate. Penninx and Garcés-Mascareñas (2016, p. 20), significantly, define the policy frame as a “reconstruction of the problem definition of a policy issue, including the underlying assumptions of the problem’s causes and possible remedies for it.” These authors advance a theory of policy frames that builds on Schön and Rein’s (1994) work, and which was conceptualized in relation to the framing of policies towards migrants. The categorizations concerning migrants are key building blocks of policy framing. They contain assumptions as to what should be done about immigration, and moral valuations portraying this phenomenon in terms of problem/opportunity. In the case of migrants, policy framing entails defining who is wanted and who is not wanted, who is a foreigner, who is a temporary guest, or who is a permanent member of the society. Second, the relevant literature on the European refugee crisis discusses more directly and explicitly the issue of public policy change rather than that of the shift in the framing of asylum policy and immigration per se. Policy framing is rarely the main focus of the literature we review in this section, especially if compared to research on the media coverage of the refugee crisis. The references to policy framings appear more haphazardly; their analysis is intermingled with other issues, which makes the exposure of policy framing comparatively vaguer. Still, the ignorance-related effects are quite richly documented in this body of research, and even a strategic component is emphasized. Otherwise, the research of public policy change and shift of policy framings during the refugee crisis seem to identify ignorance effects in relation to the modes of analysis we observed in the case of the media. Though, as we will see, these occur configured in a different fashion, the strategic part being much more visible as well as the fact that

The European refugee crisis  127 Table 5.4 Ignorance-related effects of interaction between ignorance and policy framing in public policy Modes of analysis/ dimensions of ignorance

Effects in public policy

Cognitive

Exclusion, discrimination, overlooking of needs Differentiated acknowledgement

Epistemic

Confusion, ambiguity, dissonance, misplaced perception Neglect of specific types of emotions Refashioning-overlooking, implementation, reproduction of epistemology of ignorance

Strategic

Strategic ignorance

Incentivized

Incentivized ignorance, ignorance of ignorance

the proximity of the political aspect renders the effects of ignorance as politically incentivized – see Table 5.4. The cognitive dimension The cognitive mode of analysis we notice in the research of public policy in the context of the refugee crisis behaves similarly to the cognitive approach we discussed in the case of the media. Even the ignorance-related effects we abstracted resemble those in the media. We find exclusion and differentiated acknowledgement in the case of public policy (see Table 5.4), while we encounter selection, categorization, and attribution in the case of the media (see Table 5.1). There are slight differences though. To a certain extent, the variances occur because the public policy forms are infused with agency, impregnated by the strategic, decision-making, and implementation dimensions of public policy. In the case of the media what occurs as selection manifests in the case of asylum policy in the manner of exclusion that aligns with existing political imperatives and discursive shifts. Another source of differentiation is the fact that the asylum policy field has worked out, more or less knowingly, specific mechanisms of ignorance in relation to its mode of operation. The neglect of specific types of emotions, on the epistemic level, is a good example in this regard. The literature reveals that public policy has a complicated relationship with emotions in general. It attempts to compartmentalize. Yet this is endangered in the context of the refugee crisis when emotions – such as fear – contribute to public policy changes and shifts in framing.

128  The European refugee crisis

This makes us realize that in the case of ignorance-related effects of interaction between ignorance and policy framing in the context of the European refugee crisis it is quite difficult to come across forms that are not politically incentivized. In the case of the effects in the media, the linkage with the field of politics was also present but it was of a different nature. The media legitimized and pre-legitimized certain discursive shifts because they are epistemically very close to the field of politics and its framing of the situation. In the case of public policy, however, the situation is different. Its role is to implement and materialize discursive shifts from the field of politics and political agenda setting. Certainly, a considerable part of public policy is quite technocratic, and herein the politically incentivized aspect is more relaxed. Before the refugee crisis, for example, in Poland, Hungary, and Romania, the management of immigration was largely technocratic. In the research on public policy change in the context of the refugee crisis, however, such technocratic elements are not markedly represented. The processes of the politicization of immigration inevitably pushed the politically incentivized aspects to the surface. Returning to the ignorance-related effects on the cognitive level, the first kind, what we term as exclusion, occurs because of the inherent simplification and reduction of complexity, pressures on asylum practices (fast tracking), specificity of techniques and procedures of operation and registration, as well as managing of migration and mobility through categorization (see Vradis et al., 2018). All this reinforces categorization with exclusion effects. Kofman (2019; see Baldwin-Edwards et al., 2018, p. 2151), for instance, shows that the usage of vulnerability as a criterion for distinguishing between distinct categories of asylum seekers (for accommodation outside the camp, relocation), and privileging some of them is not neutral or gender-blind. This leads to inclusion and exclusion contingent on how vulnerability is defined as well as on how the population is aggregated. Policy frames organize the knowledge about a given issue and at the same time organize the ignorance about its other aspects. A policy frame allows one to focus on some aspects of the picture and to cut out others. We see what is within the frame. Framing is the first step of the ignorance management process and it goes hand in hand with practices of calculation or shedding light. Thus, as in the case of selection in the media, we might expect that the relevant literature will find something inevitable in framing coming along with ignorance. For several reasons, however, this is not the case. The research on public policy change in the context of the refugee crisis does not see the exclusion effects as inevitable or understandable, but rather as a result of organized incompetence or of shared, strategic and incentivized ignorance. They are not conceptualized as a lack of possibility or capacity to provide comprehensive framing. The root of the problem is rather located in the inadequate assumptions about sources of displacements (Baldwin-Edwards et al., 2018, pp. 2152–2153), a lack of proper tools

The European refugee crisis  129

and practices (Crawley and Skleparis, 2018, p. 52), or even a lack of will (Baldwin-Edwards et al., 2018, p. 2148). The second type of ignorance-related effects at the cognitive level, differentiated acknowledgement, occurs in relation to the fact that much of the ignorance effects of public policy responses in the context of the refugee crisis occurs in relation to methodological and operational frames that orient policy and social intervention. Ignorance is prescribed and comes in a package with these practices and techniques. The differentiated acknowledgement operates according to these very principles. As noticed by Triandafyllidou (2018, p. 211), the governmental institutions and border guards relate and react to the mobility towards Europe as a legal fact – the “Dublin Regulation that establishes the safe country principle  […] is de facto interrupted.” The public policy field does not react to crisis events indiscriminately. It instead differentiates types of social events and chooses which to react to. In this manner legal events are prioritized over actual events. The epistemic dimension The ignorance-related effects discussed immediately above are directly related to the cognitive mode of analysis of ignorance in public policy in the context of the European refugee crisis. We should point out, however, that they cannot be circumscribed to the cognitive dimension solely. These effects of ignorance also relate to interests as well as to the deeply rooted assumptions and taken-for-granted premises of public policy. Their form also betrays the inner contradictions and continuous struggle with uncertainty in this field. The cognitive dimension overlaps with the epistemic dynamic of ignorance in public policy, or at least they appear close because of the incentivized component. In relation with the epistemic mode of analysis, we identified three types of ignorance-related effects: confusion, neglect of specific types of emotions, and refashioning-overlooking. Certainly, the first and the third types are reminiscent of the confusion and reproduction of the epistemology of ignorance that we have discerned in the media analysis. There are some distinctions, though. The confusion in the case of the media was rather the result of conflicting representations and externalization of mixed feelings, for example the focus on the refugees as opposed to the focus on the needs of Europe. In the case of public policy, Scholten (2020, p. 108) captured this type of internal contradiction in relation with the “tension of mainstreaming versus alienation in policy dynamics under conditions of complexity.” Indeed, in relation to public policy we rather encounter contradictions that are more tolerated, shared, and strategic, rather than the expression of an internal conflicting concern (cf. Baldwin-Edwards et al., 2018, p. 2152).

130  The European refugee crisis

Such tolerated manifestation of confusion and contradiction in the case of asylum policy is, for example, the counter-intuitive usage of specific emotions. Sirriyeh (2018), for instance, documented how the political and public policy shifts built to a certain extent on the recontextualization of compassion. Instead of an emotion that leads to the inclusion of refugees, we encounter an emotion that legitimizes restrictive developments. As this case suggests, the confusion comes from the reinterpretation of emotions once these get political, rather than from the externalization of internally conflicted logic. In this manifestation, the confusion effects are linked with the fact that the public policy field is itself designed to be devoid of emotions, technocratic. This is to be able to embrace only the emotions that are institutionalized via politics such as fear or specific types of compassion (see Sirriyeh, 2018). Another manifestation of confusion we find documented in the literature concerns the strategic and incentivized ignorance we discussed at the beginning of this section. As we indicated, the refugee research seems to suggest that there is a time lag on how long strategic and incentivized ignorance can evolve into the open. Such manifest and purposive employment of ignorance leads to side effects that such open neglect of existing rules entails. The ignorance of the EU asylum rules by various states, and the ignorance of ignorance by the stronger regulators, or their own participation in these breaches have, for instance, led to the formation of confusion and misplaced perception of a permissive and more open policy and practice towards the refugees (Trauner, 2016, p. 319). Going forward to refashioning-overlooking, we saw that in the case of the media this entailed the reproduction of the epistemology of ignorance in the context of the refugee crisis. For instance, the negative bias in the depiction of migrants and refugees, or the reinforcement of orientalist logic when making sense of the crisis. In the context of public policy, things very much stay the same. The depiction of ignorance effects starts from the analysis of certain assumptions that are held in the field, and less from deciphering the deeper level of the narrative. Legislation, the policy agenda and agreements, for instance, are shown to reproduce assumptions about the factors influencing migration. The crisis framing is associated with the refashioning of the asylum policy as a compassionate humanitarian act and not as a duty, which is considered as reinforcing a racialized logic. The strategic dimension The fact that public policy entails to a great extent taking some form of action means that the strategic and purposive dimension of policy is not only observably present but also formalized. According to ignorance studies, the moments of breaches, scandals and crises do not directly break the patterns of ignorance. This is due to the fact that, paradoxically, the crisis

The European refugee crisis  131

reinforces the initial problematic practices, methodologies and power relations (for an in-depth discussion of the issue, see Chapter 3). In the literature on the policy change during the refugee crisis, we come across a similar perception. Due to the framing of the crisis as crisis, the shared ignorance of the vulnerabilities of the asylum system before the crisis is reproduced subsequent to the large displacement of refugees (Baldwin-Edwards et al., 2018, pp. 2148–2149). In the context of European refugee crisis, strategic ignorance is the result of framing the policy responses in terms of emergency, crisis, and securitization as well as border management, national sovereignty, and social cohesion (Boukala and Dimitrakopoulou, 2018; Brekke and Staver, 2018; Ferreira, 2018). This framing is seen as engaging with negative and dehumanizing emotions and being representative of political emotions such as fear (Esses, Medianu, and Lawson, 2013; Anderson, 2017). The incentivized dimension The close proximity of public policy to the domain of politics, through distinct conditioning and capturing mechanisms, allows one to see that this field is politically incentivized in the sense that the policy agenda formulated reverberates political interests, of shorter or longer term. The incentivized ignorance emerges as a newly produced ignorance that was triggered by the crisis setting in order to deal with the refugee crisis. This is explicit, manifest and instrumental. Ignorance as incentivized action occurs in the context of the refugee crisis as employment of ignorance according to the interests of the actors involved – be they organizational or political – as well as its deactivation when the situation and correspondent interests changed. In the sense employed herein, incentivized ignorance is slightly different than the meaning given to it by McGoey (2019) – interest in not knowing about certain issues, for example illegal practices linked with subordinates. The mechanism, however, is basically the same. The interest of social actors keeps the ignorance going/not going, be it in an open or hidden fashion. In the context of the refugee crisis, incentivized ignorance played an important and overt role in the advancement of initial policy reactions that required instant management of the great number of people. In the initial phase of the crisis, incentivized ignorance, and ignorance of ignorance were both working. Ignorance of certain rules of the EU asylum policy were essential in order to deal with the crisis in its early stage. This was the case of ignoring the Dublin principle of first-country-of-entry by the Southern states in order to allow the refugees to move towards Germany and Sweden  (e.g. Rozakou, 2017). Ignorance of ignorance, on the other hand, allowed the advancement of what may be termed as EU collective cooperation without solidarity – to paraphrase Cook, Hardin and Levi’s (2005) term

132  The European refugee crisis

“cooperation without trust” – in the responses to the unprecedented movement of refugees across the Mediterranean. Yet this doubled regime of ignorance could have been maintained only as long as it did not wreak havoc with the EU policy responses and schemes that began to be implemented and required support from the Member States. This is why, once the more concrete EU responses and plans of action were clarified, the initial ignorance of certain EU rules (such as regarding the registration of refugees) became a disturbing factor. In 2015, Germany’s acceptance of the southern member states’ disregard for the Dublin rules has been central for avoiding a humanitarian tragedy within Europe. […] By avoiding a policy change of higher order, the EU has come to face a difficult situation: the implementation of the existing EU asylum rules may overburden southern member states while the perpetuated ignorance of these rules risks overburdening northern member states. (Trauner, 2016, pp. 321–322) The strategic dimension of ignorance-related effects of interaction between ignorance and the framing of asylum policy in the context of the refugee crisis is thus documented from different angles. And we find both the reproduction of initial (shared and latent) strategic ignorance as well as the production of new, sometimes even manifest, forms of incentivized ignorance. The ignorance-related effects of the interaction between ignorance and learning From an analytical point of view, public policy change appears to be in a slightly more advantageous position than the media. Here the research has gone beyond framing in analyzing the influential processes that shape this field. Considerable attention has been awarded, as we saw, to learning. The expertise and knowledge production in the context of the refugee crisis is probably one of the most spectacular and multidimensional areas. It is worth noting that parallel international organizations like the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) step in in producing knowledge on the crisis. The IOM establishes a new data center in Berlin, the GDAC-IOM, with the main aim of assembling and producing data on all migration and refugee crises but particularly on what is labelled “the Mediterranean crisis.” (Triandafyllidou, 2018, p. 211)

The European refugee crisis  133

To link ignorance and learning in an interactional manner may be perceived as unusual, especially in relation to the events of the migration crisis, in which the relevant literature indicated a certain gap between policy learning and policy change. Yet it is right here where policy framing research has located some hotspots of ignorance, building on similar research before the crisis. Two main types of ignorance-related effects stand out: problem alienation and filter bubble – see Table 5.5. They both occur in relation to the epistemic dimension of ignorance. The first type, problem alienation, as synthetized by Scholten (2020), has been frequently discussed in public policy research as a failure to approach a given problem in a way that relates to the expertise and existent knowledge in an area, or to implement such competence in a rather symbolic manner. Scholten strengthens the analytical role of complexity in the strategic research of the processes of alienation. He suggests that in public policy there are conflicting instincts for acting on complexity, such as embracing it (mainstreaming), or being estranged from it (alienation). These mechanisms, we infer, pertain to the ignorance-related effects of framing rooted in the internal contradictions at the epistemic level. One can also see them as symptomatic of the manner in which crisis-related facts, events and processes are treated generally – not only problem alienation but also inhibition of utilization of expert knowledge. There is a gap between public policy evidence and learning and public policy change, the latter being rarely unproblematic and smoothly effectuated. The second type of ignorance-related effects indicated by the reviewed literature on learning, filter bubble, occurs as a specific type of mainstreaming that is, to a certain extent, the inverse of alienation. This effect stems from embracing complexity and trying to deal with asylum policy problems that surfaced in the context of the refugee crisis. The action relies on appropriating expertise and experience, but it simultaneously creates path dependencies in public policy. Triandafyllidou and Ricard-Guay (2019, pp.  115–116), for instance, indicate that “academic and policy debates may seem Eurocentric, not sufficiently engaging with parallel policy and Table 5.5 Ignorance-related effects of interaction between ignorance and learning in public policy Modes of analysis/ dimensions of ignorance

Effects in public policy

Epistemic

Problem alienation, inhibition of utilization of expert knowledge, gap between public policy evidence and learning and public policy change Filter bubble, selection

134  The European refugee crisis

research developments in other world regions.” The same Eurocentrism also occurs in the manner in which responses to the crisis were framed, with a neglect of migration movements and emergencies taking place in other regions, for instance (Straubhaar, 2015; Cioban, 2016). Interestingly, one may add, this manner of action is reproduced at lower levels. Regional and local asylum policy responses repeat and reinforce the initial patterns of learning in the national asylum policy field. When the transmission of expertise and learning takes place, this legitimizes certain geopolitical relations and confirms hierarchies in the EU asylum policy field. We depicted the effects of problem alienation and filter bubble in relation to the epistemic dimension of ignorance. These tendencies have structural causes and reflect agenda-setting and prioritization coming from the political field. Still, while the incentivized component is present, these ignorance effects are also linked to other processes such as the stratification of various paradigms in social sciences. In this sense, the mode of analysis is inherently epistemic. The authors conclude that there is a substantial “gap” between the now significant body of evidence examining migration processes and European Union policy responses. This gap is attributed to three main factors: the long-standing “paradigm war” in social research between positivist, interpretivist and critical approaches which means that what counts as “evidence” is contested; competing knowledge claims associated with research and other forms of evidence used to construct and/or support policy narratives; and, perhaps most importantly, the politics of policymaking, which has resulted in policies based on underlying assumptions and vested interests rather than research evidence, even where this evidence is funded directly by European governments. (Baldwin-Edwards et al., 2018)

Conclusions The problem of ignorance and change in the context of unexpected events and crises seems to lend itself quite well to the interactional approach that we aim to develop in this book. It occurs however that the array of processes and forms of knowledge with which ignorance interacts is quite broad and varied. Only some of these knowledge processes are of the anticipatory kind, such as the projection processes that constitute the main focus of this book. This chapter aimed to follow our intuition that the forms of knowledge with which ignorance interacts in the context of unexpected events and crises is contingent not only on the type of domain we are talking about but also on the opportunities and roles that specific domains receive in the new situation. For instance, academic research in relation to

The European refugee crisis  135

the production and challenging of knowledge, media as awareness raising, and public policy as policy change. This is why in the foregoing analysis of the presentation of the 2015–2016 European refugee crisis we stumbled mainly into contestation in the relevant literature. Coming into contact with the academic research, we had no way to get around contestation and critical thinking. We therefore embarked in this chapter on an extended meta-analytical exploration of two more fields: media and public policy. The aim was that based on the findings of relevant literature on the manner in which these two domains reacted to the European refugee crisis to be able to identify what forms of knowledge emerged as relevant, as well as the nature of the ignorance-related effects of the interaction between ignorance and these. The research proved meaningful on several levels. We applied the interactional mode of analysis to the ignorance effects that are observable in both the media and public policy in the context of the European refugee crisis. Based on the findings of relevant academic research, we had access to the interaction of ignorance with framing and legitimation/prelegitimation in the case of the media, and with framing and learning in the case of public policy. The ignorance-related effects we abstracted indicated particular modes of analysis (such as cognitive, epistemic, strategic, and even incentivized), with some of these effects being comparable between the two domains. While this all looks convincing, and the interactional model of analysis of ignorance seems to have passed the test, we cannot overlook that we seem to have lost touch with the projective forms of knowledge that we stressed were relevant in the first part of this book. Where is projection in the context of the refugee crisis? How does this manifest? And why does the relevant literature not discuss it more dynamically? These questions will be elaborated on in the following two chapters, with the help of empirical investigation regarding the production and reproduction of ignorance in relation to the relocation and mandatory quota debates in the context of the refugee crisis in Poland, Hungary, and Romania.

Note 1 This broader argument was concluding his analysis of Agha’s (2015) story published in the Independent which was devoted to her cousin who died when crossing the Mediterranean Sea.

References Agha, Z. (2015) ‘All My Cousin Wanted to Do Was Flee the Horrors of Syria, but He Ended up Drowning in the Sea; Just Because He Was a Migrant Doesn’t Mean His Life Was Worthless – Geography Was the Only Difference between Us and Him’, Independent, April 21.

136  The European refugee crisis Alcade, J. and Portos García, M. (2018) “Refugee Solidarity in a Multilevel Political Opportunity Structure: The Case of Spain”. In Della Porta, D. (ed) Solidarity Mobilizations in the “Refugee Crisis”: Contentious Moves, Cham, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 155–182. Alcoff, L. M. (2007) ‘Epistemologies of Ignorance: Three Types’. In Sullivan, S. and Tuana, N. (eds) Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance, Albany, State University of New York Press, pp. 39–57. Anderson, B. (2017) ‘The Politics of Pests: Immigration and the Invasive Other’, Social Research: An International Quarterly, 84, 7–28. Andretta, M. and Pavan, E. (2018) ‘Mapping Protest on the Refugee Crisis: Insights from Online Protest Event Analysis’. In Della Porta, D. (ed) Solidarity Mobilizations in the “Refugee Crisis”: Contentious Moves, Cham, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 299–324. Arfini, S. (2019) Ignorant Cognition: A Philosophical Investigation of the Cognitive Features of Not-Knowing, Cham, Springer. Arfini, S. and Magnani, L. (2016) ‘Cognitive Autoimmunity: Knowledge, Ignorance and Self-Deception’, Logic Journal of IGPL, 24, 612–627. Balch, A. (2018) ‘The Politics of Intra-European Movement’. In Scholten, P. and van Ostaijen, M. (eds) Between Mobility and Migration: The Multi-Level Governance of Intra-European Movement, Cham, Springer, pp. 161–180. Baldwin-Edwards, M., Blitz, B. K. and Crawley, H. (2018) ‘The Politics of EvidenceBased Policy in Europe’s “Migration Crisis”’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 45, 2139–2155. Boltanski, L. (1999) Distant Suffering. Morality, Media and Politics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Boukala, S. and Dimitrakopoulou, D. (2018) ‘Absurdity and the “Blame Game” Within the Schengen Area: Analyzing Greek (Social) Media Discourses on the Refugee Crisis’, Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 16, 179–197. Bozdag, C. and Smets, K. (2017) ‘Understanding the Images of Alan Kurdi with “Small Data”: A Qualitative, Comparative Analysis of Tweets About Refugees in Turkey and Flanders (Belgium)’, International Journal of Communication, 11, 4046–4069. Brekke, J.-P. and Staver, A. (2018) ‘The Renationalisation of Migration Policies in Times of Crisis: The Case of Norway’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 44, 2163–2181. Chouliaraki, L. (2006) The Spectatorship of Suffering, London, Sage. Chouliaraki, L. and Stolic, T. (2017) ‘Rethinking Media Responsibility in the Refugee “Crisis”: A Visual Typology of European News’, Media, Culture & Society, 39, 1162–1177. Chouliaraki, L. and Zaborowski, R. (2017) ‘Voice and Community in the 2015 Refugee Crisis: A Content Analysis of News Coverage in Eight European Countries’, International Communication Gazette, 79, 613–635. Cioban, S. (2016) ‘Refugee Crisis – Between EU Identity and Eurocentrism’. In Markowska-Manista, U. (ed) The Interdisciplinary Contexts of Reintegration and Readaptation in the Era of Migration – an Intercultural Perspective, Warsaw, Akademia Pedagogiki Specjalnej, pp. 19–51. Cook, K. S., Hardin, R. and Levi, M. (2005) Cooperation without Trust?, New York, Russell Sage Foundation.

The European refugee crisis  137 Couldry, N. (2010) Why Voice Matters: Culture and Politics after Neoliberalism, London, Sage. Crawley, H. and Blitz, B. K. (2019) ‘Common Agenda or Europe’s Agenda? International Protection, Human Rights and Migration from the Horn of Africa’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 45, 2258–2274. Crawley, H. and Skleparis, D. (2018) ‘Refugees, Migrants, Neither, Both: Categorical Fetishism and the Politics of Bounding in Europe’s “Migration Crisis”’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 44, 48–64. Dalton, P. S., Rüschenpöhler, J. and Zia, B. (2018) ‘Aspirations of Small-Scale Entrepreneurs: Evidence from Urban Retailers in Indonesia’, DFID Working Paper, Tilburg University. Esses, V. M., Medianu, S. and Lawson, A. S. (2013) ‘Uncertainty, Threat, and the Role of the Media in Promoting the Dehumanization of Immigrants and Refugees’, Journal of Social Issues, 69, 518–536. Eurostat (2019) Asylum and First Time Asylum Applicants by Citizenship, Age and Sex – Annual Aggregated Data (Rounded), Dataset. Ferreira, S. (2018) ‘From Narratives to Perceptions in the Securitization of Migration Crisis in Europe’. In Karakoulaki, M., Southgate, L., and Steiner, J. (eds) Critical Perspectives on Migration in the Twenty-First Century, Bristol, EInternational Relations, pp. 57–73. Gabrielatos, C. and Baker, P. (2008) ‘Fleeing, Sneaking, Flooding: A Corpus Analysis of Discursive Constructions of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the UK Press, 1996–2005’, Journal of English Linguistics, 36, 5–38. Gamson, W. A. and Modigliani, A. (1987) ‘The Changing Culture of Affirmative Action’, Research in Political Sociology, 3, 137–177. Ghazal Aswad, N. (2019) ‘Biased Neutrality: The Symbolic Construction of the Syrian Refugee in the New York Times’, Critical Studies in Media Communication, 36, 357–375. Grabel, I. (2018) When Things Don’t Fall Apart: Global Financial Governance and Developmental Finance in an Age of Productive Incoherence, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press. Gross, M. (2010) Ignorance and Surprise: Science, Society, and Ecological Design, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press. d’Haenens, L., Joris, W. and Heinderyckx, F. (eds) (2019) Images of Immigrants and Refugees in Western Europe. Media Representations, Public Opinion and Refugees’ Experiences, Leuven, Leuven University Press. Holmes, S. M. and Castañeda, H. (2016) ‘Representing the “European Refugee Crisis” in Germany and Beyond: Deservingness and Difference, Life and Death’, American Ethnologist, 43, 12–24. Ibrahim, Y. (2018) ‘The Unsacred and the Spectacularized: Alan Kurdi and the Migrant Body’, Social Media + Society, 4, 1–9. Kleres, J. (2018) ‘Emotions in the Crisis: Mobilising for Refugees in Germany and Sweden’. In Della Porta, D. (ed) Solidarity Mobilizations in the “Refugee Crisis”: Contentious Moves, Cham, Palgrave MacMillan, pp. 219–242. Koch, C. M., Moise, I., Helbing, D. and Donnay, K. (2020) ‘Public Debate in the Media Matters: Evidence from the European Refugee Crisis’, EPJ Data Sci., 9, 12. Kofman, E. (2019) ‘Gendered Mobilities and Vulnerabilities: Refugee Journeys to and in Europe’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 45, 2185–2199.

138  The European refugee crisis Krishna-Hensel, S. F. (ed) (2018) Migrants, Refugees, and the Media: The New Reality of Open Societies, London, New York, Routledge. Krzyżanowska, N. and Krzyżanowski, M. (2018) ‘“Crisis” and Migration in Poland: Discursive Shifts, Anti-Pluralism and the Politicisation of Exclusion’, Sociology, 52, 612–618. Krzyżanowski, M. (2014) ‘Values, Imaginaries and Templates of Journalistic Practice: A Critical Discourse Analysis’, Social Semiotics, 24, 345–365. Krzyżanowski, M. (2018a) ‘Discursive Shifts in Ethno-Nationalist Politics: On Politicization and Mediatization of the “Refugee Crisis” in Poland’, Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 16, 76–96. Krzyżanowski, M. (2018b) ‘“We Are a Small Country That Has Done Enormously Lot”: The “Refugee Crisis” and the Hybrid Discourse of Politicizing Immigration in Sweden’, Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 16, 97–117. Krzyżanowski, M., Triandafyllidou, A. and Wodak, R. (2018) ‘The Mediatization and the Politicization of the “Refugee Crisis” in Europe’, Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 16, 1–14. Kubicki, P., Pawlak, M., Mica, A. and Horolets, A. (2017) ‘Wyjście z cienia: Polityka uchodźcza w sytuacji kryzysu’, Polityka Społeczna, 9, 22–28. Langdon, N. (2018) ‘Empathy and Othering: Framing Syria’s Refugee Crisis in the British Press’. In Karakoulaki, M., Southgate, L., and Steiner, J. (eds) Critical Perspectives on Migration in the Twenty-First Century, Bristol, E-IR Publishing, pp. 91–111. Lawlor, A. (2015) ‘Framing Immigration in the Canadian and British News Media’, Canadian Journal of Political Science, 48, 329–355. Lawlor, A. and Tolley, E. (2017) ‘Deciding Who’s Legitimate: News Media Framing of Immigrants and Refugees’, International Journal of Communication, 11, 967–991. Lekić-Subašić, Ž. (2018) ‘The Balkans Route: Media and Refugee Crisis in Europe’. In Krishna-Hensel, S. F. (ed) Migrants, Refugees, and the Media: The New Reality of Open Societies, London, New York, Routledge, pp. 81–120. Matar, D. (2017) ‘Media Coverage of the Migration Crisis in Europe: A Confused and Polarized Narrative’, IEMed. Mediterranean Yearbook, 292–295. McGoey, L. (2012) ‘The Logic of Strategic Ignorance’, The British Journal of Sociology, 63, 533–576. McGoey, L. (2019) The Unknowers: How Strategic Ignorance Rules the World, London, Zed Books Ltd. Mckay, F. H., Thomas, S. L. and Kneebone, S. (2012) ‘“It Would Be Okay If They Came through the Proper Channels”: Community Perceptions and Attitudes toward Asylum Seekers in Australia’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 25, 113–133. Moore, K., Mike, B. and Iñaki, G.-B. (2018) ‘Saving Refugees or Policing the Seas? How the National Press of Five EU Member States Framed News Coverage of the Migration Crisis’, Justice, Power and Resistance, 2, 66–95. van Nispen, F. K. M. and Scholten, P. W. A. (2017) ‘The Utilization of Expert Knowledge in Times of Crisis: Budgetary and Migration Policies in the Netherlands’, Contemporary Issues of Policy‐Making Across Europe, 3, 81–100. O’Brien, G. V. (2003) ‘Indigestible Food, Conquering Hordes, and Waste Materials: Metaphors of Immigrants and the Early Immigration Restriction Debate in the United States’, Metaphor and Symbol, 18, 33–47.

The European refugee crisis  139 Parater, L. (2015) ‘7 Videos Guaranteed to Change the Way You See Refugees’, UNHCR/Innovation Service, June 26. Parater, L. (2018a) ‘The Failure of Raising Awareness for Refugees in a World of Data and Disinformation’, The Arc, December 14. Parater, L. (2018b) ‘How Science Can Improve Communications about Refugees and Humanitarian Innovation’, The Arc, December 14. Parker, S. (n.d.) ‘“Unwanted Invaders”: The Representation of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the UK and Australian Print Media’, eSharp, 23, 1–21. Peels, R. and Blaauw, M. (2019) The Epistemic Dimensions of Ignorance, New York, Cambridge University Press. Penninx, R. and Garcés-Mascareñas, B. (2016) ‘The Concept of Integration as an Analytical Tool and as a Policy Concept’. In Garcés-Mascareñas, B. and Penninx, R. (eds) Integration Processes and Policies in Europe, Cham, Springer International Publishing, pp. 11–29. Pérez, C. R. (2017) ‘News Framing and Media Legitimacy: An Exploratory Study of the Media Coverage of the Refugee Crisis in the European Union’, Communication & Society, 30, 169–184. Prentice, D. A. and Miller, D. T. (1996) ‘Pluralistic Ignorance and the Perpetuation of Social Norms by Unwitting Actors’, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 28, 161–209. Ramasubramanian, S. and Miles, C. (2018) ‘Framing the Syrian Refugee Crisis: A Comparative Analysis of Arabic and English News Sources’, International Journal of Communication, 12, 4488–4506. Rheindorf, M. and Wodak, R. (2018) ‘Borders, Fences, and Limits – Protecting Austria From Refugees: Metadiscursive Negotiation of Meaning in the Current Refugee Crisis’, Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 16, 15–38. Rozakou, K. (2017) ‘Nonrecording the “European Refugee Crisis” in Greece: Navigating through Irregular Bureaucracy’, Focaal, 77, 36–49. Said, E. W. (1978) Orientalism, New York, Pantheon Books. Sajir, Z. and Aouragh, M. (2019) ‘Solidarity, Social Media, and the “Refugee Crisis”: Engagement Beyond Affect’, International Journal of Communication, 13, 550–577. Scholten, P. (2017) ‘The Limitations of Policy Learning: A Constructivist Perspective on Expertise and Policy Dynamics in Dutch Migrant Integration Policies’, Policy and Society, 36, 345–363. Scholten, P. (2020) ‘Mainstreaming versus Alienation: Conceptualising the Role of Complexity in Migration and Diversity Policymaking’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 46, 108–126. Schön, D. A. and Rein, M. (1994) Frame Reflection: Toward the Resolution of Intractable Policy Controversies, New York, Basic Books. Sirriyeh, A. (2018) The Politics of Compassion: Immigration and Asylum Policy, Bristol, Bristol University Press. Straubhaar, T. (2015) ‘Towards a European Refugee Policy’, Intereconomics, 50, 238–239. Sunstein, C. R. (2003) ‘Terrorism and Probability Neglect’, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 26, 121–136. Sunstein, C. R. and Zeckhauser, R. (2011) ‘Overreaction to Fearsome Risks’, Environmental and Resource Economics, 48, 435–449.

140  The European refugee crisis Taleb, N. N. (2007) The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, New York, Random House. Togral Koca, B. (2019a) ‘Local Bordering Practices, Refugees, and Civil Society: The Case of Berlin’, Geographical Review, 109, 544–561. Togral Koca, B. (2019b) ‘Bordering Practices across Europe: The Rise of “Walls” and “Fences”’, Migration Letters, 16, 183–194. Trauner, F. (2016) ‘Asylum Policy: The EU’s “Crises” and the Looming Policy Regime Failure’, Journal of European Integration, 38, 311–325. Triandafyllidou, A. (2018) ‘A “Refugee Crisis” Unfolding: “Real” Events and Their Interpretation in Media and Political Debates’, Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 16, 198–216. Triandafyllidou, A. and Ricard-Guay, A. (2019) ‘Governing Irregular and Return Migration in the 2020s: European Challenges and Asian Pacific Perspectives’, Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 17, 115–127. Vasile, O. and Androniceanu, A. (2018) ‘An Overview of the Romanian Asylum Policies’, Sustainability, 10, 1–22. Vradis, A., Papada, E., Painter, J. and Papoutsi, A. (2018) New Borders: Hotspots and the European Migration Regime, London, Pluto Press. Wodak, R. (2015) The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Populist Discourses Mean, London, Sage. Zaborowski, R. (2019) ‘Between the Vulnerable and the Dangerous: Representations of Refugees in the British Press’. In Thomas, T., Kruse, M.-M., and Stehling, M. (eds) Media and Participation in Post-Migrant Societies, London, New York, Rowman & Littlefield International, pp. 49–60. Zaborowski, R. and Georgiou, M. (2019) ‘Gamers versus Zombies? Visual Mediation of the Citizen/Non-Citizen Encounter in Europe’s “Refugee Crisis”’, Popular Communication, 17, 92–108. Zaun, N. (2017) EU Asylum Policies: The Power of Strong Regulating States, Cham, Palgrave Macmillan. Zaun, N. (2018) ‘States as Gatekeepers in EU Asylum Politics: Explaining the Non-Adoption of a Refugee Quota System’, JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 56, 44–62.

Chapter 6

Projecting the European refugee crisis Polish, Hungarian, and Romanian media

This book contributes to the advancement of social research on the production and reproduction of ignorance subsequent to unexpected events and crises. We argue that change occurs in relation to various forms of knowledge – such as projection, expectation, contestation, framing, legitimation, and learning. We wish to sensitize ignorance studies to this fact, and to advance the study of interaction between ignorance and projection in particular. We study not what ignorance is but what it does, and we do this interactionally, meaning that we shift the interest from whether ignorance changes, to how it interacts with and is influenced by various processes. From whether ignorance (re)produces, to how the production and reproduction of ignorance is interlinked with other processes in the evolution of contemporary crises. In our theory, we build on an interactional model of ignorance change in the context of unexpected events and crises (see Chapter 3, Figure 3.1). To illustrate how it works, we have selected the 2015–2016 European refugee crisis as a research site. The meta-analysis of the relevant literature on the crisis allowed us to examine how the dynamics of the refugee crisis and ignorance changes manifest in the academic research, media and asylum policy (Chapters 4 and 5). We learned that the European refugee crisis provides a good illustration of ignorance-related effects in relation to processes of contestation (in academic research), framing and legitimation/pre-legitimation (in the media), as well as framing and learning (in asylum policy). This allowed us to practice and perfect our interactional approach to ignorance change as well as to prepare the terrain for the study of interaction between ignorance and projection that is the primary focus of our book. With this chapter, we explore how projectivity and ignorance interacted in the context of the European refugee crisis. Per Emirbayer and Mische (1998, p. 962), we consider projectivity as a “capacity to imagine alternative possibilities,” an essential element of agency, while, following Mische (2014), we define projection as a prediction or call for action to bring possible futures into effect, or an expression of emotions regarding these futures. We thus

142  Projecting the European refugee crisis

begin to develop a certain sensitivity to, and adapt notions such as projective agency and future-oriented agency (Martin de Holan et al., 2019) to describe selected phenomena in the context of the refugee crisis. In terms of methodology, we move from a meta-analysis of existent findings (cf. Triandafyllidou, 2018) to an interactional multilevel first-hand analysis. We study the coverage of the refugee relocation plan in the Polish, Hungarian, and Romanian media. The relocation scheme was drawn up by the European Council in September 2015 (see Chapter 4). It presupposed mandatory quotas, which quickly turned into a contentious issue. The relocation plan became a crisis event that put to test the cooperation between the member states towards providing a unitary response to the crisis, and it changed the politics of migration in the region. It led to a battle of framing and to circuits of legitimation and pre-legitimation in the media (Krzyżanowski, 2014; Krzyżanowski et al., 2018). The relocation plan also created “sites of projectivity” and “futures in action”, to use the terms coined by Mische (2009, 2014). We aim to reveal that the media representations of the crisis operate as deployments of projective agencies, and that the media frequently return to the mechanisms of projection in the coverage of the crisis. This section is devoted to understanding these mechanisms. Although we do not directly refer to ignorance here, we treat the projectivity of the media as one of the important conditions of action and inaction in the public policy field and as a source of ignorance-related effects. The analysis of public policy in the following chapter allows us to expose the internal dynamics of the materialization of the media’s projectivity during the refugee crisis. In essence, these are the dynamics of what ignorance does. This chapter permits us to notice and address several issues. In the media, the 2015–2016 European refugee crisis is represented as an interaction of various projective agencies, which are exercised by the refugees as well as by European Union (EU) Member States and EU organizations and actors. These projective agencies are multidimensional and mutually contingent. They entail not only acting towards possible futures but also embarking on and navigating the journey towards a better life (agency of the refugees), managing the movement of refugees (agency of the Member States), institutionalizing the mechanisms of distribution and algorithmization (agency of the EU), or taking part in the relocation efforts (agency of the Member States). Projection is thus not only a prediction of the future based on calculation and earlier experience but also a process of imagination, mapping, and reconfiguration of people, practices, and ideas. Although overall the stories told by the Polish, Hungarian, and Romanian press add up and are rather similar, they differ in the particular interpretation of the projective agencies. The representations of relocation are contingent on the national political context in Poland, Hungary, and Romania, on their experiences with refugee movements, and on the stand

Projecting the European refugee crisis  143

taken towards relocation and related policies. The analysis of the production and reproduction of ignorance in the context of the refugee crisis in Poland, Hungary, and Romania exposes some characteristic features. These patterns of media representations make sense in the countries considered to be weak regulators (Zaun, 2017) of EU directives, and EU asylum policies in particular. Though, in the case of the strong regulators (Zaun, 2017) one should expect the processes of projection to unfold differently.

The study design Media are, to a great extent, involved in mechanisms of projection. As we saw in the previous analysis (Chapter 5), framing in the media has been facilitating, embedding, and orchestrating the coverage of the 2015–2016 European refugee crisis. The coverage has referred not only to the actual characteristics of the refugees and of the crisis but also to the actions of the refugees or the development of the crisis in the future. Media not only represent the crisis or legitimize and pre-legitimize policy change but also project the future of the refugee crisis and the future of Europe. The issue of crisis projection, distinct from framing and legitimation/ pre-legitimation, is at times touched on in the research we have analyzed. Yet the empirical evidence of its presence is not translated into categories of analysis and is not explicitly presented as a distinct mechanism of the media’s coverage of the crisis. Even when projection is sporadically mentioned, it primarily takes the meanings of attribution of blame, transposition of anxieties and negative emotions, or (dis)placement of the sources of the crisis. For instance, with regard to the German press Holzberg, Kolbe, and Zaborowski (2018, p. 547) argue that the sources of the crisis were projected “onto migration itself” rather than onto “the war in Syria or in the violent conflicts and economic deprivation in the Middle East or North Africa.” In a similar vein, Matar (2017, p. 292), referring to Hall’s (1978) understanding of how “moral panic” works, views projection as a mechanism whereby the more general fears and anxieties of the general public are channelled by attributing their cause to a particular group – the refugees (cf. Langdon, 2018). Our understanding of projection, however, is somewhat different. As we have already indicated, following Emirbayer and Mische (1998) and Mische (2009, 2014), we see projection as a prediction of possible futures, a call for action to bring these possible futures into effect, or an expression of emotions about these. We see projectivity as a feature of the refugee crisis media coverage that was lying in plain view but was rarely noticed. For example, Holzberg, Kolbe, and Zaborowski (2018, p. 534) note that the German press has focused on the “advantages and disadvantages that refugees are assumed to bring to their host country.” We contend that the phenomenon of projection – in the sense of “futures in action” (Mische, 2009) – has been an ever-present dimension of the refugee

144  Projecting the European refugee crisis

crisis. The well-known declarations with regard to coping are excellent examples of projection so understood. Whether it is the German Chancellor Angela Merkel saying Wir schaffen das [we will also manage this situation],1 or the Swedish state arguing that it “could no longer ‘cope’ with the large volume of incoming refugees” (Krzyżanowski, 2018b, p. 101), the mechanism is the same. A certain state of affairs is projected, future turns into action, and, through one scenario or another, we are made to accept as a fact what the future of the refugee crisis will look like. Interactional multilevel approach Studying futures in action usually poses a set of methodological challenges. As Mische (2009, 2014) has aptly put it in her pioneering studies of the future in politics, we face an intriguing question: How can one study something that has not happened yet? Mische finds the solution in the analysis of the “externalization” of the future in spoken or written texts, attitudes, and material forms. Serendipitously, we stumbled on such externalizations right at the outset of our study when looking for the mechanisms of production and reproduction of ignorance in the press representations of the crisis. We have noticed that in the media the statements acknowledging ignorance are few and far between, or they are camouflaged. The conditionality, inevitability and prediction of how the future of the crisis will evolve were much more exposed than the struggles with uncertainty. So while Mische was looking for externalizations of the future and found them in narratives, grammar, and materialized forms, we were trying to understand the mechanisms whereby ignorance is produced and reproduced in the media, and stumbled on the active manifestation of these futures. What we found in our research material was a rather wide range of projections of the future. We have also gotten the impression that the coverage and debates about the refugee crisis do not as much try to predict the future, as they simply reify it. Finding the forms of projection and ignorance in the media coverage of the European refugee crisis motivated us to develop what we call an interactional multilevel approach. In this analytical procedure, the interaction between ignorance and projection in the media is tackled in a progressive manner. The theoretical model we developed sensitized us to the importance of temporality, future and anticipation in particular. The perspective of critical discourse studies (e.g. Wodak and Chilton, 2005; van Dijk, 2011; Fairclough, 2013), which we adopted for the first-hand analysis of the media, confronted us with the material externalizations (cf. Mische, 2014) of the future that were fixed in grammar and semantics of language. It also allowed us to notice the references to the future in the hidden presuppositions and legitimation strategies (van Leeuwen, 2008) and narrative structures (De Fina and Georgakopoulou, 2012) of the media texts. We have relied on critical discourse studies as an overarching methodological framework (Wodak and

Projecting the European refugee crisis  145

Meyer, 2001; Wodak and Krzyżanowski, 2008), since it best allows for the combination of the analysis of the basic linguistic form of media coverage as well as its semiotic and argumentative structure with the interpretation of the texts’ relatedness to the wider dynamics of societal context (Widdowson, 2004; Bielecka-Prus, 2012). Language can be imagined as a layered structure rising up from primary phonetic, morphological and semantic units, going through grammar and syntax rules and assembled in whole texts which can be analyzed in relation to others. While analytically distinguishable, each layer is intrinsically linked to the others. In discourse analytical methodology one proceeds by switching between these layers and searching for the interconnections and dependencies between them (e.g. see Fairclough, 2001 for exemplary “steps for analysis”; Wodak, 2001). This research path has been applied for the study of the refugee crisis media coverage by, for example, Krzyżanowski (2018b), who combines study at the entry level (representations in grammar and semantics, framing) and the in-depth level (legitimation strategies). The adjective multilevel that we use for describing our analytical approach thus signals our selective, gradual, and purposeful movement between the layers of discourse in order to trace the ignorance-related effects of projection in media coverage. The other adjective that characterizes our approach is interactional. In this respect, we took the cues from an incipient discussion of discourse interactivity offered by Triandafyllidou (2018) who conducted a meta-analysis of the relations between “real” events and media interpretations during the refugee crisis. In essence, the “interactive link between factual events and related representations and speech events” (Triandafyllidou, 2018, p. 199) is shorthand for one of the basic purposes of critical discourse studies: the uncovering of how text and context are mutually constitutive and how the relations of power are unfolding through their interactions. The term interactive emphasises that the discursive-social practice is dynamic, and its potential outcomes are multiple and involve different actors. Ignorance participates in these dynamics and can be grasped by employing the methods of discourse analysis. In this chapter, we integrate Triandafyllidou’s perspective with a minor modification: we use the notion interactional instead of interactive in order to strengthen the facets of meaning pointing at social practice, action, and change. The approach allows us to capture the dynamics of interaction between the processes of projection and various forms of ignorance that are triggered by the refugee crisis. Three case studies: Poland, Hungary, and Romania There are a number of reasons behind our choice of exactly these three countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Primarily, we wanted to illustrate

146  Projecting the European refugee crisis

the existence and significance of the context of projectivity in countries that appear to be less principal decision-makers with regard to EU directives and EU asylum policy. We aim to contribute in this way to the decentralization and pluri-dimensionalization of the angle on the 2015–2016 European refugee crisis, which continues to be framed in excessively close and exclusive association with Western Europe, or the strong regulators of EU asylum policy. The epistemic ignorance of the global refugee crisis of the strong regulators and the epistemic ignorance of the weak regulators are two different things. The former reinforces the orientalist logic of action, while the latter is boosted by the wish to prove autonomy or to at least catch-up with the stronger players. In certain instances, the countries from Central and Eastern Europe even seem to have surpassed their status as weak regulators of EU asylum policy. Some of them have certainly started to act at least as trend-setters in asylum policy, if not as strong regulators. Hungary, for instance, built a highly controversial fence at its border with Serbia which provoked a series of other fence-building initiatives. By analyzing the media in Poland, Hungary, and Romania we wish to emphasize and explore this aspect of autonomization further. Poland, Hungary, and Romania have each had their own responsive trajectory towards the European refugee crisis, and the relocation scheme in particular. During the crisis only Hungary was geographically situated along the route of the asylum seekers moving from Greece to Germany, while Poland and Romania (at least until the moment when encounters were made possible by the relocation scheme) cannot be said to have had direct contact with the refugees arriving from the Middle East and Africa, and the potential use of these countries’ resources by this group of refugees would be negligible (Triandafyllidou, 2018, p. 199). This difference notwithstanding, the crisis has been intensively mediatized in all three countries. The processes of crisis politicization and the diffusion of the related antiimmigration rhetoric have also surfaced, though in a varying degree – see Table 6.1. It is noteworthy that in the case of Poland, Hungary, and Romania, the politicization and mediatization triggered by the crisis is discontinuous with the manner in which the immigration and refugee problems used to be approached in the past. With the exception of some marginal episodes of antiimmigration rhetoric in Hungary, the immigration and refugee problems were rather absent from the public debate in these three countries (Kubicki et al., 2017; Krzyżanowski, 2018b). The 2015–2016 European refugee crisis has brought a significant change in this respect – migration is no longer publicly ignored. The crisis opened a window of opportunity for the mediatization and politicization of immigration and asylum seeking. Hungary, and even Poland and Romania, made use of this opportunity fully, though in different

Projecting the European refugee crisis  147 Table 6.1 Politicization and mediatization in the Polish, Hungarian, and Romanian media Country

Contact with the waves of refugees

Pre-crisis Politicization Mediatization Relocation politicization in the context in the context involvement and of the crisis of the crisis mediatization of immigration

Poland

Indirect – potentially through schemes of relocation

Absent

High, mediatized

High, top-down

No involvement, no open refusal

Hungary Direct – country located on the Western Balkan route

Marginal

High, mediatized

High, top-down

Open refusal

Romania Indirect – eventually through schemes of relocation

Absent

Moderate

Moderate

Initial refusal followed by acceptance and mobilization (preparation for)

ways. In Poland, the refugee crisis coincided with parliamentary elections and became one of the main subjects of the electoral campaign (Kubicki et al., 2017; Jaskulowski, 2019). It acted as a trigger for the politicization of immigration and allowed for the channelling of negative attitudes in the public sphere. The then main opposition party, the right-wing populist Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (PiS) [Law and Justice], jumped on this opportunity and made it serve the party’s political goals. Krzyżanowski (2018b) suggests that by converging anti-refugee framings with the rhetoric of islamophobia, euro-scepticism, and historically rooted anti-Semitism, this party successfully exploited the issue through top-down mediatization in both traditional and online news media. In Hungary, the issue of migration was already politicized before the summer of 2015. Paradoxically, the politicization of migration was initially connected to emigration more than immigration. Immigration was not often discussed in Hungarian political discourse prior to the European refugee crisis (Szalai and Gőbl, 2015), and if it was, the context was primarily economic. The rise of Fidesz-KDNP pártszövetség [Fidesz–KDNP Party Alliance] to power in 2010 was facilitated by the global economic crisis, and Viktor Orbán, who has been Prime Minister since 2010, launched a rhetoric campaign that was primarily built on anti-elitism (Palonen, 2018, p. 314). Melegh (2016) uses the term “demographic nationalism” to describe the Hungarian policymaking trends with respect to migration. He sees this

148  Projecting the European refugee crisis

phenomenon reflected, among other things, in the “segregated immigration system” that evolved from the mid-1990s onwards. The system privileged immigrants of Hungarian ethnic background over other immigrants and nationals of minority ethnic groups. It was only with the opening of the Balkan route that immigrants powerfully entered the political and media discourse. Demographic nationalism, which was not strongly linked with the immigration issue previously, was radicalized and directed against the asylum seekers. The shift most notably manifested itself in the government-­ designed National Consultation campaign on “Illegal immigration and terrorism” (April–July 2015), which proved to be particularly influential in the context of “limited political and media pluralism” (Bajomi-Lázár, 2019). As Bocskor (2018, p. 561) observes, with the unfolding of the crisis, “the economic narrative was largely dropped and the attention got redirected towards cultural and security questions.” In Romania, the refugee crisis became mediatized but not as politicized as in Poland and Hungary. The positions towards relocation were certainly used as rhetorical ammunition in the political field and this can be clearly seen in the media in the form of criminalization and securitization narratives (Corbu et al., 2017; Marinescu and Balica, 2018). Relocation scheme as a crisis event In this book, we focus on what ignorance does rather than what it is. Our approach to media coverage is interactional with a special focus on the processual and contingent character of ignorance production and reproduction. Thus, as far as methodology is concerned, the choice of the period of analysis takes precedence over the choice of the newspapers as such. In other words, regardless of the particular newspaper selection, it has been pivotal for us to select the media coverage that is produced during the crisis events (Triandafyllidou, 2018, p. 208)2 – see Table 6.2. The first crisis event that had an impact on all three countries we study is the launch of the relocation scheme introduced by the Council Decision (EU) 2015/1601 of 22 September 2015 establishing provisional measures in the area of international protection for the benefit of Italy and Greece (2015). As it happens, this also coincided with the immediate aftermath of the decision to close the Hungarian border with Serbia (15 September 2015). The relocation crisis event was triggered by the recommendation of the European Commission in May 2015 to relocate 40,000 refugees3 from Italy and Greece, followed by an additional decision concerning 120,000 refugees from Italy and Greece in September of the same year. The proposal instantly attracted debates about how to cope with the crisis as well as with the polarization among the Member States and breaches of European solidarity and responsibility-sharing (Zaun, 2018). What is important from our perspective is that the countries of Central and Eastern Europe were among those vociferously challenging and contending the EU decision. These same

Projecting the European refugee crisis  149 Table 6.2  I nteractional multilevel analysis of ignorance and projection in the Polish, Hungarian, and Romanian media Country

Crisis events

Poland

22 September–22 European Council October 2015 decision creating the relocation scheme 1 April–9 May 2016

Hungary

Polish Parliament resolution – disagreement with relocation scheme European Commission’s suggestion of financial penalties

Keywords

Verb forms

Refugees, asylum seekers

Predictive

Relocation, relocation and 22 September–22 European Council October 2015 decision creating the resettlement, acceptance relocation scheme

Imperative Subjunctive

19 September–19 Referendum on October 2016 relocation Romania

22 September–22 European Council October 2015 decision creating the relocation scheme 23 February–24 March 2016

Arrival of first relocated refugees

countries incidentally were occupying a weak and apparently submissive position in European asylum policy regulation prior to the crisis. Subsequently, however, Poland, Hungary, and Romania took limited or no part in the relocation, although each applied a different strategy. Poland did not officially refuse participation in the relocation programme, nor did it fulfil its pledge. The story is quite complex and related to the politicization of immigration as well as to the timing of national parliamentary elections that took place on 25 October 2015. Early in the process the Polish government led by the liberal-conservative party Platforma Obywatelska (PO) [Civic Platform], expressed reservations regarding the relocation scheme introduced by the European Commission. Ultimately, however, the government declared involvement in the scheme. Poland began to support the EU plan for coping with the crisis and at the EU Summit (22–23 September 2015) it agreed to admit 6,200 refugees as part of the wider scheme that envisaged the relocation of a total of 160,000 refugees to the EU Member States by September 2017. The shift that followed came with the PiS victory in the October 2015 parliamentary elections. Although initially agreeing to

150  Projecting the European refugee crisis

continue its participation in the relocation scheme (by pledging to receive 100 refugees at the outset), the PiS government procrastinated on actually receiving them, pointing to the difficult running of qualification procedures as an excuse, and eventually interrupted the process altogether in April 2016. The latter decision was taken on the grounds of imperfect screening procedures and principles of national security (Szczerbiak, 2017). Hungary openly refused and then conditioned its participation in the relocation programme. This country opposed the relocation scheme more decisively and linearly than Poland did. The dynamics can be explained by the fact that during the refugee crisis Hungary held the keys to the Schengen Area along the so-called Western Balkan route, and has been a transit country for the refugees on their way to Western Europe. In addition, the crisis reached a high level of politicization rather early in 2015. Already in Spring 2015, the politicians heatedly debated the unexpected movement of refugees coming from Greece through Serbia to Hungary’s doorstep. By mid-September 2015, the barbed wire cordoning off Hungary from Serbia was already erected (the decision on this issue had been taken in June 2015), and the construction of the fence at the Hungarian-Croatian border was in progress. Against the backdrop of anti-immigration rhetoric and restrictive asylum policies, the Orbán government’s approach to relocation was a definite no go camouflaged under conditional statements that linked participation in the relocation plan to the will of the Hungarian society via the Hungarian referendum on the issue. Both the rhetoric and governmental position were constant in this regard (Šelo Šabić, 2017). Romania, on the other hand, took part in the relocation programme, yet the refugees “refused to stay” or even to “come here” (as it was quasi-openly formulated in the media and public debates). Unlike Hungary, Romania was a potential country of transit for the refugees, or one in statu nascendi (a new immigration route allegedly opening up at the Black Sea), rather than a real one. Romania’s position in the EU also sets it aside from the other two countries since it is not yet included in the Schengen area. These two contextual factors pushed Romania into the position of being an EU Member State awaiting refugees (Vasile and Androniceanu, 2016, 2018). The national asylum policy was changed in order to prepare the country for the scenario of an unexpected influx of displaced people. Romania’s actions towards the relocation scheme perfectly mirror its expectation of and preparedness for receiving the refugees. At the same time, it should be pointed out that, unlike Hungary’s anti-refugee and anti-relocation position, the refugee-awaiting position did not emerge in Romania in a linear manner. Just like Poland, Romania initially refused to participate in the European Commission’s relocation scheme. Similarly, acceding to participation in the scheme followed the country’s initial refusal. Yet, unlike its

Projecting the European refugee crisis  151

Polish counterpart, once Romania accepted the scheme, it became involved with full dedication and even can be seen as a leader among all the countries of Central and Eastern Europe with over 17% of the plan fulfilled.4 Yet this figure also signals the partiality of Romania’s success with relocation, since, as a poor country in the EU, it hit the wall of its unattractiveness for refugees (Vasile and Androniceanu, 2018) and this lack of appeal has always been in the background. Sampling We have focused on two crisis events for each country. As we already mentioned, the first crisis event – the relocation scheme and introduction of mandatory quotas – is identical for all three countries. The period covered is 22 September–22 October 2015. Already over this period the contemporaneous reactions to the introduction of the relocation scheme in the media of the three countries allowed for some variation between them to register. In order to account in more detail for the differences in the interpretation and response to the relocation policy in each country, the second crisis event selected for the analysis was country specific – see Table 6.2. The following periods have been selected for each country: •

• •

Poland, 1 April–9 May 2016: the resolution of the Polish Parliament, in which disagreement with the EU relocation scheme is stated (1 April 2016); European Commission’s suggestion that that financial penalties would be applied to countries who did not act according to the scheme (“pay-to-not-play” option) (4 May 2016); Hungary, 19 September–19 October 2016: the referendum related to the EU’s migrant relocation plans (2 October 2016); Romania, 23 February–24 March 2016: the arrival of the first refugees to the country according to the relocation scheme.

In selecting particular news outlets for analysis, we have relied on the relevant literature as well as on the advice of experts from each country who indicated the newspapers they perceived as influential during the refugee crisis period. We aimed to come up with a sample diversified along ideological lines: conservative vs. liberal, or right-wing vs. left-wing. We have also aimed to cover different types of news outlets: quality vs. yellow press, newspapers vs. internet news portals. The three sets of data are comparable across countries, at least to the extent allowed by the differences in the media systems between these – such as a higher degree of party parallelism and foreign ownership in Hungary (Castro Herrero et al., 2017, p. 4807) and the differentiated dynamics of the development of these

152  Projecting the European refugee crisis

systems during the studied period (Bárd and Bayer, 2016). The following 12 newspapers were analyzed: • • •

Poland: (1) Gazeta Wyborcza (GW) (quality press), (2) Gazeta Polska Codziennie (GPC) (quality press), (3) Fakt (F) (yellow press), and (4) Onet.pl (news portal); Hungary: (1) Népszabadság (N) (quality press), (2) Magyar Nemzet (MN) (quality press), (3) Blikk (B) (yellow press), and (4) Index.hu (I) (news portal); Romania: (1) Adevărul (A) (quality press), (2) Gândul (G) (quality press), (3) Click! (C) (yellow press), and (4) HotNews (HN) (news portal).

The sample allows one to trace, illustrate, and differentiate ignorance and projection-related mechanisms, as well as the interaction between them. It is, however, less representative of the process of politicization, which at least in Poland and Hungary, took quite a radical turn. We will return to the conditionality between projectivity and politicization, and the related ignorance effects in the following chapter wherein the insights of representatives of the asylum policy field are presented (Chapter 7). Future projections through the lens of semantic field analysis We undertook a qualitative study of semantic fields to explore how the possible futures of the European refugee crisis and the dynamics of the public policy responses to it are projected in the media coverage. The particular choices of which units and layers of discourse to study were guided by the characteristics of the material itself, in a bottom-up fashion, as well as by the features of selected units and layers of discourse. The semantic field has proven to be a valuable analytical category due to its intrinsic links to projectivity: The basic assumption of the semantic-field model is that the generation of meaning is not only an internal, cognitive process, but also a projective process, which generates a semantic dimension in objects and environment. (Hardy, 1997, p. 163) The semantic fields were reconstructed for two thematically selected keywords (and their context-specific synonyms): (1) “refugees” and “asylum seekers,” and (2) “relocation,” “relocation and resettlement,” and “acceptance.” The rationale behind choosing these two keywords is that they are central to both the perspective of crisis and expectation and the perspective of managing migration processes and policymaking. At the same time, they represent

Projecting the European refugee crisis  153

different levels of abstraction and subject type, thus they would cover different cognitive levels and allow us to construct a more detailed picture of how ignorance operates media and how media discourse and policymaking galvanize one another. For each keyword, a six-dimensional coding (definition, equivalent, opposition, association, action, and action towards) was carried out. This procedure allowed us to grasp the ways in which these two keywords were constructed semantically: substantially and relationally. The semantic structure of keywords corresponded with the projection of the crisis and relocation onto the social-political reality. Simultaneously, the keywords were used as a tool in the selection of the research material. Either of the keywords “refugee” or “relocation” should appear in an article’s content in order for the article to be included in the study. With the use of all these criteria, 969 articles were selected for analysis. Within the semantic fields, we paid attention to the grammatical forms pertaining to irrealis moods and future temporalities. The insights from Mische’s (2014) perceptive analysis of futures in action5 were inspirational in this undertaking. The way she combines the study of projective verb forms with the unpacking of future-related narrative structures is particularly instructive. Mische distinguished three types of verb forms: predictive (“a statement of the likelihood that something will happen in the future, often associated with an assertion about causality, conditionality or sequence”), imperative (“a call to action of some sort so as to bring a future possibility into existence”) subjunctive (“an expression of […] orientation […] in relation to a possible, but uncertain, future”). (Mische, 2014, p. 459) We are also indebted to Dunmire’s (1997, 2011) research on naturalization of the future in the media. This author focuses on how projected events are linguistically constructed to appear as factual accounts of the social world. However, unlike Dunmire (1997), who looks into nominalization strategies and demonstrates how the removal of temporal references turn a projection into an event that bears the features of factuality, we work with temporality and modality in order to show that they, too, are capable of linguistically and cognitively transforming guesses and predictions into descriptions of facts. In our analysis, we discern the projective verb forms that have pragmatic links with knowledge and non-knowledge (cf. Dancygier, 1999) in order to establish the imaginaries and narratives of the future that they create and their interaction with ignorance. We thus proceed from the analysis of semantic and grammatical features of projectivity in the media texts to the study of their interaction with the texts’ narrative structure, intertextual references, and socio-political context.

154  Projecting the European refugee crisis

The semantic field analysis has immediately brought two issues to our attention. First, projectivity is quite intrinsic to media coverage, and it manifests in various ways in relation to the European refugee crisis. The media embark on projecting both at the level of depicting future-planning actors (projective agencies) and representing possible or planned futures (mechanisms of projection). Second, media coverage does not extract and present the movement of the refugees or the relocation scheme separately in Poland, Hungary, and Romania. Instead, we learn about the experience of multiple Member States and have access to an assemblage of various projective agencies, the refugee agencies being the most exposed type. Seen this way, the Polish, Hungarian, and Romanian episodes of relocation and patterns of projection are the building blocks, out of which the bigger European media narrative of the crisis is constructed. Such a perspective would make them appear rather discrete – and limited to national issues, though. Instead, the national “varieties” (Hall and Soskice, 2001) of crisis representations in the media also include, as their intrinsic part, the attempts of telling a more general story for the whole of Europe. These general stories, told by the media in particular countries, offer the contexts in which the national projections are located, and they give insight into the interplay of projective agencies. In what follows, we focus on capturing how projectivity manifests in the media. We proceed in two steps. First, we reconstruct how the representations of the refugees unfolded both as a more general European story and in relation to Poland, Hungary, and Romania, more specifically (Subchapter 6.2). Second, we do the same with regard to relocation – we show how the accounts of the scheme have a double character and depict what happens at the level of EU and of the three Member States, particularly (Subchapter 6.3). For each subchapter, we used the tools of sematic field analysis (Robin, 1980), particularly focusing on the syntagmatic relations within the keywords’ semantic fields (i.e. “subject’s actions” and “actions towards a subject,” where each keyword is understood as a subject (Porzig, 1971)). In the subsequent analysis, the coded material has been further processed in order to establish what semantic relations are characteristic for general and particular contexts. In each subchapter, in the presentation of the findings at the general EU-related level, we combine the material from all three countries and do not accentuate country differences, while in the analysis of the national varieties of representations regarding refugees or relocation, the material from Poland, Hungary, and Romania is treated separately and presented comparatively. We thus aim at grasping how the general story of the refugee crisis emerges as an interplay of projective agencies as well as at demonstrating the differences in the representations of these projective agencies in the three countries that are due to their distinct experiences and stakes in the relocation scheme.

Projecting the European refugee crisis  155

Refugee journeys and futures: projectivity and agency narrowed down The refugee projective agency vs. the projective agency aimed at the refugee agency – the general picture In the media, the refugee agency has an obvious projective character. The refugees undertake and navigate a journey, they target a better life in Europe, while also realizing/reifying a future that we predict that they will bring about. The projective agency of the refugees is enacted in relation to two elements: the journey (towards Europe, European Union (EU), more developed countries of Europe) and the targeted future (better life), the latter also having a counterpart in the reified future (what they will do/cause). These two types of projective agency are entangled and often presented as one. The refugees escape an unbearable reality. Guided by their imagination of and expectations regarding the Western world, they embark on and navigate a very dangerous journey across the Mediterranean. The journey is quite rational and purposive; it brings the refugees closer to the countries of destination and thus contributes to the effort of making the imaginary better life a reality. Interestingly, the subjective dimension of the refugee projective agency is doubled almost by an objective evaluation of what their agency brings along (want to postpone the refugee status procedure, will bring their [numerous] families over, will be a threat to European values). In this evaluation the future is not possible (as in Emirbayer and Mische, 1998; or Mische, 2009, 2014), nor is it targeted as in the refugee projections and imaginations, but simply reified – see Table 6.3. Media present the refugees in transit. The refugees escape the world of suffering or limitations and go along clearly defined routes, they pick, avoid or go through transit countries, they try to reach and eventually arrive at the projected destinations, most often the wealthier countries of the EU, Germany in particular. The Syrians want to get to Europe at all costs, particularly to Germany. In the internet, they look for Arabic-language maps and for information on how to reach the Old Continent by the sea route. [P_01.10.2015_GPC1]6 The media stipulate that the refugees prefer certain countries over others, which has an effect of creating categorization and distinction between the countries of destination, countries of transit, countries unattractive for refugees, and countries best to be avoided altogether. Many countries on the Balkan route, for instance, are seen as “just transit points for most immigrants heading to countries with high economic stability such as Germany and Sweden” [R_23.02.2016_G1]. The transit of the refugees is marked by

156  Projecting the European refugee crisis Table 6.3 The refugee projective agency Projective agency

Phrasing in the media

Embarking on, and navigating the journey

Hope Embark, wait, come, arrive, drowned, died Submit asylum applications, will be stuck Risk their lives, go along, walk, pay large sums of money to the smugglers, board trains/buses. First entered the territory of Greece, are blocked, are waiting for trains and buses to take them to the West, did not stay in the country, registered and subsequently disappeared, goal is to get to Europe, are waiting on trains to be taken towards Austria, people heading towards Germany, after receiving refugee status from the Czech Republic fled to Germany, want to get to Europe at all costs, particularly to Germany, move further to the countries of Western or Northern Europe “Holland, Germany, Sweden? It makes no difference!” Plan “to reach the Old Continent by the sea route”, want to go away from Teheran, try to figure out how to pass by Hungary, consider alternative routes through Croatia or Romania They are blocked at the borders of Greece with Macedonia, they have not been able to obtain asylum, began to return to their country of origin, expelled but not yet deported, can then easily disappear They have since moved to other countries Enter illegally, cross illegally Broke the Croatian police cordon and about 4 –5 thousand passed further into Croatia, another mass fight between migrants in Germany, fight Have expectations, protest, hope the border will be (re)opened, protested at the central bus station Protest, demand Change their routes, change the direction of travel Expect a new migration route to the sea instead of the Balkan route, refuse to leave Idomeni, risked their lives and crossed a river to reach North Macedonian territory

Bringing of the targeted future into existence/Reif ication of the future

Look for better life People in search of safety An average of 100 people come to the tent camp every day, while only 10 –20 go further for a better life Will be able to break the internal EU and particular Member States’ regulations, want to postpone the refugee status procedure Will bring their [numerous] families over Will be a threat to European values, threat to European women

Projecting the European refugee crisis  157

both uncertainty and stubbornness of projections and decisions. The refugees attempt to fulfil their projections (succeed, arrive, get there), sometimes they fail (they die, they drowned), and rather often they are also caught in limbo (wait, are being blocked). The refugee projective agency is contingent on their location on the mapped route (the refugees embark vs. they arrive) and the particular time when media coverage is offered. In the initial period of irregular transports towards Germany, for instance, the refugees wait for buses to take them to the West, they board the trains. Once the refugee crisis in Greece began to emerge in the second half of 2016, however, the refugees are being blocked, or they fail to obtain asylum. The first period we studied, that is, September–October 2015 (one month after the decision to enact the relocation policy was made), coincided with the uncertainties of irregular border arrangements and turbulent relations among the EU Member States and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe that are not part of the EU (in various configurations). Through the media coverage, one can thus witness how Hungary closed its border with Serbia, how Croatia tried to negotiate its cross-border refugee movement with Hungary, or how Germany changed its mind regarding its welcome politics, while Austria began to make statements regarding a possible return of refugees to Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary. The media depict and/or construct the ways refugees and their actions are entangled in these decisions and relations. At the beginning of the crisis, the refugees had an array of possibilities to change their route (change the direction of travel). With the closing of the Balkan routes, however, the possibilities were narrowed and the refugees sought alternative, predominantly irregular, routes towards North Macedonia. In the meantime, the dynamics of stagnation and waiting caused by the closure of the irregular border openings, that is, those that allowed the refugees to move towards Germany (via Serbia/Croatia, Hungary, and Austria), led to situations in which the refugees became impatient and angry because their projection and expectation that they would be allowed to move on could not be realized (impatient, desperate, disappointed, have expectations, protest, hope the border will be (re)opened). The media suggest that the refugees had hope. The belief in the possibility of starting a new and better life in Europe triggered their projective agency, to begin with. Yet their hopes were often crushed, and more so as the crisis progressed. The projective agency is not only about the journey and the targeted future but also the “orientation” and “subjective stance” (Mische, 2014) during the whole process. The refugees observably projected their journey in relation to “socially expected durations” (Merton, 1984) and reacted with nervousness when it was delayed. The refugees were attempting to cross the borders as if they were trying to overcome the challenges on the route towards their selected possible future. They knew their rights but they also broke the law and sometimes crossed borders without authorization, illegally (enter illegally,

158  Projecting the European refugee crisis

cross illegally), especially in the cases when the reality of the closed borders did not match their projections, or when they became desperate. A new law came into force today in Hungary: three years in prison for everyone who crosses the border illegally. […] Haydar and Jafar have already realized that no one wants them in Hungary. […] But they still wait. “We sit in a dark tent and try to figure out, how to pass by the country, whose leader said that he does not want any more Muslims at his place.” Shall they go to Croatia? Maybe Romania? But then what is next? [P_03.10.2015_GW6] The increased anxiety sometimes takes the form of emancipation. The acts of resistance and contestation undertaken by the refuges are aimed at overcoming the challenges and limitations (wired fences and restrictive regulations) imposed by the European states. The refugees not only transited and waited but also lost their patience, protested, broke through the border and voiced expectations regarding their possible worlds. A caveat is needed here, for not all media present the refugee projective agency as dignified. Some prefer to draw attention to the agency than can be qualified as wrongful and aggressive, a criminalization framing coming to the fore in these cases. The agency of the refugees is then presented without contextualization – we just read about deprivation, desperation, or waiting. Such media images participated in portraying the refugee projective agency as unruly and threatening. The projectivity has one major application in this case – the present behavior is treated as a predictor of the future. The refugees projected and navigated their route in a feedback manner. Their projective agency interacted with the projective agency of the Member States, and the latter tried to manage the refugee movement in conformity with commonly accepted solutions. The media offered the representations of the dynamics that these projective agencies create. There is an interaction and contingency, for instance, between the journey of the refugees and the increasingly restrictive practices of border crossing, the changes in asylum policies as well as the words and deeds of various political actors – see Table 6.4. The projective agency of the Member States has different dynamics. The media suggested that the refugees conflated the projection of their journey with that of their targeted future (the better life in Europe). The projective agency aimed at the refugees, however, was initially narrated as playing along with, and supporting, the refugee projective agency. The European countries irregularly opened their borders allowing people on the move to simply pass further towards Germany, and they even prepared trains especially for this purpose (transporting, escorting to trains with Vienna direction, distributing, allowing to move forward, taking to the trains). The statement made by Chancellor Angela Merkel, more than anything else, acted to

Projecting the European refugee crisis  159 Table 6.4 The projective agency aimed at the refugee agency Projective agency

Phrasing in the media

Management (of the refugee movement)

Hosting, receiving Transporting, escorting to trains with Vienna direction, distributing, allowing to move forward, taking to the trains Agreements regarding the number of refugees the countries will take in, violation of agreements Border incident Diplomatic disputes Change transfer routes, turn corridors, plans to return them, the last refugees who could cross the borders, return illegal immigrants The speeding up of the process of expelling immigrants who are not entitled to asylum Borders closed, checks, raising of wired fence, restricting the flow, managing the large flow of persons The closure of the Balkan route Blocking the refugees at the borders, sending the refugees back to Turkey, the provision of financial assistance to Turkey to limit the transit of immigrants to Western Europe Maintenance of the Balkan route closed, redirection of refugees to makeshift camps on fields or stadiums, limiting the number of refugees allowed to enter the territory, resending Stoppage of the crossings of the Aegean and destruction of the business model of traffickers Management of the migratory flows and of the fight against the criminal networks Ignorance of Dublin rule New rules, schemes Agreements (categorization, conditioning, redirection) for the reduction of the flow of refugees towards Europe Agreement that should contribute to a significant reduction or even a halt of the flow of illegal migrants entering Turkey from the EU Deal with Turkey regarding the reduction of the number of illegal immigrants coming to Greece

Delimitation of conditions of possibility/ Reif ication of the future

Wir schaffen das [we will also manage this situation], do not have the capacity, Chancellor Merkel saying that Germany cannot absorb all Are prepared, are not prepared Want, do not want Will have to identify, to register and to fingerprint Those who are not granted asylum will be returned Who will be sent back to Turkey Guaranteeing an individual processing of the asylum application and the means of appeal against an expulsion

160  Projecting the European refugee crisis

empower the refugee projective agency and confirmed that undertaking the journey and the realization of the targeted better life in Europe, indeed, converge – Wir schaffen das [we will also manage this situation]. This strategy, however, was soon substituted by a more conditional and regulative approach (borders closed, checks, raising of wired fence, restricting the flow, managing the large flow of persons, the closure of the Balkan route). The media presented the Member States as they began to question the refugee agency. The projective agency of the countries entails progressive disentanglement, control and conditioning of the refugee projective agency in terms of embarking on the perilous journey across the Mediterranean in order to secure a better life. The media presented how the European countries evolved towards counteracting the refugee projections. Alternatively, they set the conditions that had to be met in order for the journeys of the refugees to converge with their targeted futures. The management of refugee movement increasingly legalized and conditioned the projective agency of the refugees, and thereby started controlling their future, as well as the future of the EU. Chancellor Angela Merkel has rejected pressures to control this wave of refugees, inter alia by strengthening border controls and introducing a threshold for receiving refugees in the country. Instead, she exerted pressure to adopt a highly criticized pact, which provides for the sending of asylum seekers back to Turkey. [R_21.03.2016_G1] The projective agency of the Member States was non-linearly heading towards the conditioning, categorization and regularization of the refugee movement. The relocation scheme and the EU-Turkey deal illustrate this tendency. There is a shift from the initial strategy that allowed irregular yet predictable border crossings to a strategy involving the regulated yet restricted management of the movement in conformity with specific legal acts. The projective agency of the Member States materialized in both of these strategies, which in their turn intervened with the refugee projective agency. The message conveyed in the media was that these strategies constituted the tools for engaging and securing the projective agency of specific Member States, depending on their particular interests. The relocation scheme, for example, is a mechanism whereby the countries are obliged to make a pledge. While the EU-Turkey deal emerged from negotiations as an exchange, a fixed agreement regarding the procedures of displacement and relocation. The projective agency vested in the management of the refugee movement, as in the case of refugee projective agency in terms of their journey, is contingent on and determined by the projections and expectations of what other countries do, will do, or should do. This interactional and

Projecting the European refugee crisis  161

contingent dynamic occurred both in the irregular openings as well as in the regulated closings of routes and imposed restrictions. The steps taken by Hungary to close its border (either with Serbia or Croatia) produced a domino effect in relation to other border incidents. Each border closure (or even declarations of intent in this regard) was followed by responses from the neighbouring Member States (in the form of acts or statements) that attempted to balance the projected confusion and gain some degree of control over the future. Initially Zagreb held that – unlike Hungary – they would not block the way to the refugees, who predominantly wanted to get to Austria and Germany. The government quickly changed their mind, however, when Slovenia, [which] is situated on the [refugees’] route, declared the closure of Slovenian-Croatian border. [P_ 25.09.2015_GW] The projectivity regarding the behavior of the neighboring Member States constitutes a tool for dealing with uncertainty. It allows for the management of the refugee movement to continue – be it in a permissive or restrictive way. Slovenia, for instance, upon the decision of Croatia to reroute the refugee movement in its direction (subsequent to the closing of the HungarianCroatian border) began to condition its acceptance of the refugees on the decision of Austria and Germany to do the same. At the peak of the irregular crossings towards Austria and Germany, the countries made various agreements regarding the number of refugees they would take in. The supposed infringements of these agreements led to a series of border disputes. These actions disorganized the whole management and put the patience of the refugees caught up in waiting to the test. In both cases, what had been violated and what the actors try to recover are the projections that would allow them to coordinate their actions. We have so far discussed the projective agency of the European countries mainly in terms of management of the refugee movement. This agency, however, is also concerned with the future. It appears to be a direct response to the refugee projective agency that tries to bring into existence the targeted future of access to a better life in Europe. There is a certain dialectic here. The Member States responded to the plans of the refugees in terms of what they were prepared to offer. Media narratives about a country’s capacity for taking in refugees are projections in a double sense. First, they confirm the already existing potential for receiving refugees while indicating the risk of overburden (as in the Wir schaffen das statement made by Chancellor Merkel, which signals that an extra effort is required and at the same time provides reassurance that it will be made; followed by her stating that Germany cannot absorb all refugees). Second, they point at the resources that are not yet confirmed, or to the doubts about the potential for accepting the

162  Projecting the European refugee crisis

refugees (as in the statements made by some of the new Member States – are prepared, are not prepared, want, do not want). “Mrs Merkel invited the immigrants but now she pulled the handbrake saying that Germany cannot absorb all immigrants [who left] for economic reasons”, said Grabar-Kitarovici, according to The Daily Telegraph. [R_23.09. 2015_H5] “We have to send a clear signal, that we cannot afford accepting everyone” – explained Trzaskowski [Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs in PO-PSL cabinet]. “There should be a plan that would stop the influx of economic immigrants.” [P_23.09.2015_GW4] In the media, the future envisaged by the European countries was conceptualized in terms of the plans of the refugees concerning these countries as well as in relation to what the populations of these countries want to be a part of. There was a continuous close monitoring of attitudes and the results of various opinion polls, for instance. The most profound example of this tendency was the Hungarian referendum regarding relocation, the so-called quota referendum. The projections of the European countries are indicative of the role assumed by specific actors in the refugee crisis and their standpoints in key matters. Thus, it is not without significance that Germany stressed the issue of the capacity for coping, Romania was preoccupied with preparedness, while Hungary undertook an institutionalized exploration of whether the population supported the mandatory quotas scheme. The future targeted by the refugees was confronted with the projections, orientations and emotions of the European countries towards it. The refugee projective agency worked to bring a targeted future into existence, while the projective agency of EU countries functioned towards the refugee agency as a delimitation of conditions of possibility. The European actors behave as political clairvoyants. In the media, the countries predicted what would happen at certain points in the management of the movement of the refugees or the individuals whose asylum applications were rejected (will have to identify, to register and to fingerprint, those who are not granted asylum will be returned, will be sent back to Turkey). As the crisis unfolded, conditionality and sequentiality (if-then logic) became a typical feature of the media coverage. It became a particularly pronounced feature of the narratives on the regularization of the refugee movement and it also allowed the reification of the future to advance. For every Syrian immigrant taken back in [by Turkey], one will be distributed [to the] EU directly from Turkey. [R_08.03.2016_G2]

Projecting the European refugee crisis  163

The European countries took an emotional stance in their projections. At the beginning, they were taken by surprise and overwhelmed by the arrival of the refugees. Gradually, the highly emotional attitude was replaced by a less affective managerial stance. The transformation was orchestrated by the changes towards higher regularization in the asylum policy and practices. The emotional dimension of the projective agency of the European actors extended not only onto the refugees but also onto other countries or EU institutions. The countries involved in the border disputes, for instance, were portrayed as feeling betrayed because their neighbors did not meet the expectations born out of the irregular agreements regarding the number of refugees allowed to cross the border. The refugee projective agency vs. the projective agency aimed at the refugee agency – the refugee crisis in Poland, Hungary, and Romania Following the European refugee crisis in the Polish, Hungarian, and Romanian media inevitably reveals some distinctions in terms of interpretation given to the refugee projective agency. This is certainly related to the fact that each of these countries experienced the crisis in its own way – if at all (see the discussion of whether Romania experienced the refugee crisis in Chapter 7). Hungary is the only one of the three countries that is a point on the route the refugees travel along (stream like a real flood, five thousand cross over here every day). The media suggested that the refugees consider Hungary to be a point of transit, and thus make use of its status as an external border of the EU. At the same time, the refugees ignore Poland since it is neither situated on the route from the Balkans to Germany nor it is included in their projections of the future, unlike Sweden or Germany.7 Finally, the refugees treat Romania as an unattractive potentiality, or as a sporadic perilous point of transit, which does not seem to be worth the risk because it lacks the assets as well as the physically, economically, or geopolitically beneficial conditions that would render it attractive. Migrants do not stop by us. If we were [one of] the Schengen Member States, it would have been possible for some of the flows to pass from Greece through Bulgaria and Romania. [R_21.10.2015_A5] Focusing on divergences allows us to better grasp the bigger picture of the crisis rather than inducing fragmentation. In what follows, we concentrate on the significant differences suggestive of the uniqueness of experiences, expectations and projective agencies in the three countries. Referring to Hall and Soskice’s (2001) work on the varieties of capitalism as well as Abbott’s (2010) and Best’s (2019) work on the varieties of ignorance, this chapter may

164  Projecting the European refugee crisis

be framed as a work on varieties of refugee crisis in the period of 2015–2016. And these, as we will see, are inevitably connected with respective varieties of ignorance and varieties of projectivity. In the media, the refugees treated the three countries differently in their projections of the journey to Europe and their targeted future there (see Table 6.5). The phenomenon of the varieties of refugee crisis is particularly palpable in this issue. Poland is not on the route, Hungary is on the route (though it is clearly threatened with closure), while Romania is not on the route (even though it might become part of the route in the future, this is an unattractive scenario from the viewpoint of the refugees). In the case of Poland, the lack of agency of refugees is due to the country’s geographical position, backwardness, and/or the weak welfare system of the country. Herein, the refugee projective agency very rarely refers to the journey, and mostly focuses on the targeted future (the search for a better life). When refugees are presented as envisaging their better life in Poland, frequently a normative stance is applied, which demonstrates the attempts to temper the refugee agency by subsuming it to the Polish imaginaries about the good life and social order (will have to respect Polish law, will have to respect Polish culture and values). With regard to Hungary, however, when the actions of the refugees take the form of projective agency they unfold as irregular crossings from Croatia and Serbia towards Germany (via Austria), and subsequent border incidents (use Hungary as transit, majority set out to move on towards the border, they went further). The projective agency as journey occurs as a fluid transition, as replacement (X number comes in and X number goes out) facilitated by the trains which transport the refugees further, or as irregular openings of the border (move on, far more go through the country but we don’t see it). The projective agency also transpires in the emotions of desperation, when the refugees remain in overcrowded camps, and impatience or anger, when the refugees lose patience because of endless waiting and uncertainty (impatience, protested to let them on the buses to the Hungarian border, demanded to open the border). Similar to the general story of the European refugee crisis in the media, once the border situation changed and the irregular transports to Germany were stopped, the projective agency as transit and journey became depicted as transgressive and illegal. Thus, the meaning is changed from planning that is supported by shared complicity to dangerous fantasies that are contentious. In contrast to Hungary, but in a similar manner to Poland, the actions of the refugees in relation to Romania were also lacking, an issue of absence by omission (the refugees avoided Romania although there were some sporadic cases of refugees arriving in the past). But we also encounter the refugee agency as non-agency, as agency that is not realized, a story of “non-becoming”, to paraphrase Scott (2016). The non-becoming manifests several times in the case of Romania. The refugees in Romania appear as an  enforceable

Bringing of the targeted future into existence/Reif ication of the future

Embarking on and navigating the journey

Projective agency

Will have to respect Polish law Will have to respect Polish culture and values (enforced prospect, by third parties) Will not want to assimilate, will not want to stay, will not want to come to Poland, will run away because of xenophobia

Will introduce their sensitivities in public spaces, will introduce sharia law, will want to introduce their own customs, will take our jobs, will be able to bring their families, will flood us

Do not take Poland into consideration as their destination

Check maps to find best connections

Use internet to check the routes

Want to reach Finland

Started a fight –

Crossed the border illegally, attempts to cross illegally

Losing of patience, clashes Impatience Have expectastions, protest, hope the border will be (re)opened Protested to let them on the buses to the Hungarian border, demanded to open the border

Use Hungary as transit, majority set out to move on towards the border, they went further, travelled further to other Member States, are waiting for trains and buses to take them to the West, travelled to more wealthier countries

Migration has an effect

Stream like a real flood, are flooding Move on, the camp is full, 5 thousand cross over here every day, far more go through the country but we don’t see it

Attempt to figure out how to make their way to Western Europe avoiding Hungary

Try to get out of the camp in Roszke and continue journey to the West

Hungary

Poland

Phrasing in the media

Table 6.5  T he refugee projective agency aimed at Poland, Hungary, and Romania

Whether they will want to work in a country where even the natives do not agree to do so

Black Sea as a new migratory route

The decision of the Austrian authorities to send 5,000 immigrants to other states, including Romania and Bulgaria (enforceable prospect, by third parties)

Migrants do not stop by

Romania

166  Projecting the European refugee crisis

prospect (by third parties) – an indirect possible enactment, in the best-case scenario, that opens collaterally due to the redirection of refugee movement by other countries (e.g. the request of Croatia for Serbia to send the refugees towards Romania and Hungary because of Zagreb being overwhelmed). Or they are an unrealistic prospect – such as in the reported possible scenario of the opening of a new immigration route at the Black Sea. This projection, however, is volatile and unstable. In spite of the episodic news suggesting that the refugees potentially consider this route, the projection of the Black Sea as a new migratory route to Europe has no actual traction probably because of the difficult physical conditions. It is only when the system of relocation starts to be implemented, that the projective agency of the refugees takes a form that would be actualized in the future in Romania. The relocation of the first group of refugees creates the conditions for turning this projective agency into direct experience. Yet the actual presence of the refugees in the country (the first group that arrived in 2016 counted less than 20 persons) does not trigger public or political mobilization due to the very low numbers. Paradoxically and ironically, Romania’s own preparations for the relocation plans turn out to have had more concrete effects (acts of opposition to the opening of centres, for instance) than their presence per se. Regarding the targeted future in the refugee projective agency, the differences between Poland, Hungary, and Romania become blurred. In this respect, the three countries seem to be equally unattractive (want to get to a wealthier country). Yet there are also some local distinctions. In the case of Poland, to take one example, the future targeted by refugees is perceived distinctively in relation to the ideological divide between the newspapers, and we encounter double-fold representations. It is also noticeable that the future targeted by the refugees overlaps with the actions that they perceive will be undertaken in the future. In essence, the targeted future becomes a reified future. Conservative media, for instance, presented refugees’ actions in the future as overtly aggressive and threatening to Poland (will introduce their sensitivities in public spaces, will introduce sharia law, will want to introduce their own customs, will not want to assimilate, will take our jobs, will be able to bring their families, will flood [overpower, outnumber] us). In this case, the refugee projective agency appears at the same time potent (high plausibility of making their plans happen either due to high volitional power or high numbers) and menacing (evil intent). The liberal press, on the other hand, presented a scenario of absence that is somewhat similar to Romanian media reactions, but at the same time accentuated not the economic or geopolitical incapacity of Poland but its ideological and cultural backwardness (will not want to stay, will not want to come to Poland, will run away because of xenophobia). The actions undertaken by refugees in the three countries thus takes distinct forms, and especially in the case of Poland and particularly Romania,

Projecting the European refugee crisis  167

it rather manifests as lack of agency or non-agency. This notwithstanding, the refugees are generally portrayed as actors of projective agency. Especially in the two countries that are not situated on the route mapped out by the refugees, but also in Hungary, the media coverage invariably included other countries that are physically situated on the actual or projected route. In this way, even if the local refugee agency is absent, or it fails to manifest, the European or even global refugee agency is always present. Even if, this might de facto pertain to Serbia, Croatia, or Germany, for instance. Moving to discuss how the media portray the projective agency of Poland, Hungary, and Romania aimed at the refugee agency, we see that this is contingent on various elements, such as the experience of contact with the refugees, which is either direct or indirect (see Table 6.6). The projective agency of Poland, for instance, is clearly contingent on the refugee agency in relation to their targeted future. The management of the movement of the refugees entails initial preparation for a future possible relocation. This type of projective agency on the part of Poland is presented in terms of the future legal or moral obligations (e.g. will have to secure them housing, should provide with support). The volitional stance is diminished in the former case and augmented in the latter case, which is more normative. Clear mechanisms of future reification are discernible here. The projective agency of the country, which is based on obligations, interacts with both the framing of burden and the framing of responsibility or care, thus taking on positive and negative values in parallel. The projective agency of Poland that emerges as more normative, on the other hand, is more univocally negative. It is formulated in interactive terms, thus presupposing a higher level of agency on the part of the refugees. It involves direct threats to refugees (will pacify them, “we will kick them out”), being aimed in essence at preventing the arrivals of the refugees to Poland and at avoiding all forms of direct contact. In addition, the media also cover projections that are directed towards finding substitutes for the arrival of the refugees from the Middle East and Africa (e.g. accepting Ukrainians, as refugees, to the country; or providing social support for internal disadvantaged groups, such as the homeless or single mothers). The projective agency of Hungary, in comparison, is oriented towards the refugee agency understood as both journey and transit that exists at present. It develops in reaction to what is happening in the country at a particular time, and not to what might happen or will happen in the future, that is, it is aimed at the refugees who are waiting at the borders, and not at those who might be relocated to Hungary in the future. The media allow one to see how Hungary shifts from initially allowing the refugees to pass through to subsequently erecting the barbed wire fence. The initial irregular permission of passage and the subsequent border closure redirected the projective agency of the refugees altogether. The country opened its borders, closed or planned to close the Balkan migratory route, and built fences and started

168  Projecting the European refugee crisis Table 6.6 The projective agency of Poland, Hungary, and Romania aimed at the refugee agency Projective agency

Management (of the movement of refugees)

Phrasing in media Poland

Hungary

Romania

Polish government agreed to accept two thousand refugees

Transports, pass on

The mobilization of the authorities began

Hungarian fence on the Serbian border

Polish Border Guard officials Boat yes, fence will go to North Macedonia/Greece no to help in checking Yet still refugees’ identity Refugees have to be checked Need to stop the wave/influx, have to discourage Make them leave the area Call to action against a highly probable risk/ Reif ication of the future/Preparation for a possible yet uncertain future

Supports the acceleration of Turkey’s EU accession negotiations and visa liberalization

Will not allow refugees to settle on Polish land, will kick them out from Poland

Orbán: There can be no goal for refugees to adopt a European life

Cannot turn away from refugees, should help them, will create conditions for them to find jobs

Common border protection

Will have to be quickly integrated, will have to abide by Polish norms and values or penalties will be applied Will bring over, will give visa, will provide with welfare support

Would follow the organization of a refugee camp

An EU force must be created to protect Greece, and Hungary is ready to take part More nuanced perception of the Hungarian government in the Czech media

Waits Has to prepare Resources

Projecting the European refugee crisis  169

mobilizing in the direction of defending the European borders outright. The management of the movement of refugees is progressively directed towards closing the possibility of entering Hungary (see the closure of its borders with Serbia and Croatia). Hungary thus manages the movement of the refugees directly. The projective agency of this country targets the agency of the refugees as something that is material, observable and directly experienced. The situation changed when the country managed to remove itself from the projected route of the refugees. The irregular transit passage no longer goes through its territory and the country puts itself in a dubious legal position by marking its external borders with no transit signs. Hungary thus is especially active and engaged in the managing of the direct movement of refugees, but has to deal with the lack of legitimacy of its actions. The country is observably driven by a sense of necessity, by a feeling that it is under pressure to act, as well as by a heroic mission. Other countries, we read in the media, are either beginning to openly acknowledge that Hungary is right, or that they agree tacitly with Hungary, but for various reasons they are afraid to openly acknowledge it. The projective agency of Romania, just like that of Poland and Hungary, has also undergone some interesting transformations. The management of the refugees’ movement does not occur in this country directly. But this is, nevertheless, a future that might be realized, and several actors prepare for it and try to bring it forward (as in the Croatian request for redirecting the refugees towards Romania, or the EU mechanisms of relocation). In this sense, the projective agency of Romania is reminiscent of Poland’s. Both countries manage the movement of refugees by preparing for something that will take place in the future. Yet, unlike Poland, Romania initiated a series of preparations for the arrival of the refugees. Although it initially voted against the relocation scheme, overall it acts according to the EU guidelines, and it prepares to accept the refugees. Poland, on the other hand, after an initial phase of management as preparation, decided to cease participation, although it does not do so formally. In the media, Romania is presented as a country preparing and waiting for the refugees, which results in the country’s inclusion in the circuit of the crisis. The refugee crisis is not happening outside Romania anymore, but also inside the country. This change is, however, accompanied by a great deal of uncertainty and insecurity as to whether Romania is or will be considered attractive by the refugees as well as to whether they will remain in the country or move further. Interestingly, the start of the relocation programme and the actual arrival of the first group of refugees to Romania did not result in greater certainty about Romania’s status. In contrast, the relocation programme as a plan triggered some negative emotions among the general public and some local actors who started to express their opposition to the arrival of the refugees, or more exactly, to locating the reception centres in their communities.

170  Projecting the European refugee crisis

Enforcing a binding future: projectivity and uncertainty of relocation Our scope when embarking on the coverage of the European refugee crisis in the Polish, Hungarian, and Romanian media, was to demonstrate that it evolved to a considerable extent in conditions of projectivity. We wanted to catch and prove the presence and manifestation of forms of anticipatory knowledge, and to show that these are as relevant and vibrant as the typically documented forms, such as framing, learning, contestation, and legitimization. What became noticeable from the beginning, is not only that projectivity is present in the crisis but that the crisis as such is a story of interacting and contingent projective agencies. The first part of this chapter documented the interaction between the refugee projective agency and the projective agency aimed at the refugee agency in the context of what emerges as the European refugee crisis, as well as what we may term by analogy as “Polish,” “Hungarian,” and “Romanian” refugee crises, respectively. In the following section, we continue with the depiction of the projective agency of relocation, as well as towards relocation, as presented in the Polish, Hungarian, and Romanian media. The relocation projective agency vs. the projective agency aimed at the relocation plan – the general picture Relocation is a policy instrument aimed at the transfer of asylum seekers from the first countries they arrived at within the EU (primarily Italy and Greece) to other EU Member States. The projective agency of the relocation entails two forms: establishment and algorithmization of a new system of action, and enforcement of a binding future – Table 6.7. The projective agency as establishment and algorithmization of a new system of action entails basically a mechanism of distribution that is aimed at alleviating the pressure on frontline Member States by transferring asylum seekers to new destination countries. This agency is projective because it aims to initiate and regulate the responsibility-sharing between the EU countries. The strategies put forward by the EU, the European Commission in particular, to ensure the enrolment of the EU countries are complex. In the media, the relocation obliges the Member States to accept a certain number of refugees (frequently called quotas), while it ignores the opposition of some countries from Central and Eastern Europe, and it also sets off to negotiate, once it surfaces that the EU countries procrastinate in the fulfilment of their pledges. The relocation manages the enrolment of the EU countries in a scheme which designs and entails a more even distribution of refugees and responsibility-sharing. It obliges the Member States to respond to the crisis and act in a certain way. The relocation projective agency focuses on numbers, and it operates through algorithms. The distribution mechanism within the relocation scheme

Projecting the European refugee crisis  171 Table 6.7 The relocation projective agency Projective agency

Phrasing in the media

Vote Establishment and algorithmization of a Ignores the opposition of the four states from Eastern Europe new system of action Brings divisions between East and West Urge to speed up the process, urge to speedily apply the relocation commitments, urge to respect the Brussels decision on the distribution of refugees The system might work if there is a strong political will Numbers, percentages Mandatory quotas Proposal, first package, second package, schemes Temporary system, gossip regarding a permanent relocation system, automatic relocation system First transfer of refugees: X asylum seekers New target: Y immigrants relocated/month Enforcement of a binding future

Obligation to house refugees, obligation to accept a share of migrants Calls on the Member States to respect the Brussels decision on the distribution of refugees Possibility of cutting off structural funds to Central and Eastern European countries who refuse refugee quotas Possibility of having a permanent relocation mechanism

consists of normative (responsibility-sharing) and technocratic (algorithms) dimensions. Yet these two dimensions are unequally exposed in the media, with the algorithm part having an obvious tendency to take precedence. The relocation debate actually forms an interface of algorithmization. We are updated constantly on the numbers that a particular country was supposed to accept initially, the numbers it is currently projected to take, and the changing numbers it is expected to be obliged to take in the future. Regarding its social significance, the projective agency of the algorithmic type goes beyond bare technicalities and shapes the character of the distribution mechanism. Through this projective agency, relocation presents itself as a temporary measure. At the same time – through other projections and expectations – it acquires mandatory character. When the initial concentration on numbers evolves towards a focus on percentages, relocation becomes a forward-looking project that combines high uncertainty about the future with the obligatory character of participation, which makes it even more emotionally and axiologically charged. The projective agency of relocation as establishment and algorithmization of responsibility-sharing aims to establish, coordinate and regulate the projective agency of EU countries. Relocation puts pressure on these actors to take a pledge. Its projective agency ensures statements of future

172  Projecting the European refugee crisis

engagement on the part of the European countries that would be the basis for expecting certain behaviours. The promissory and binding engagements condition by providing pre-established agency. The projective agency of relocation is not omnipotent; however, it is dependent on the political will of the European countries. Formal commitments do not form a sufficient basis for predicting how these countries will actually behave in the future. Thus, the emotional context of the relocation is marked by the interplay of certainty and uncertainty. It is important to emphasize the emotional and axiological character of the projective agency of relocation, as well as of the projective agency of the European countries involved in this scheme. As presented in the media, the relocation enforces and obligates, while the countries, especially Central and Eastern European Member States, react with either forced compliance, open or suppressed frustration, or resistance. The axiological reactions are triggered by the combination of the mandatory character of relocation and its indeterminate extension into the future. European Member States thus demonstrate their support or resistance to the designed mechanisms of responsibility-sharing among the countries. Romania, for instance, is convinced about the inevitability of the relocation scheme, yet it considers its duty to take a stand and vote against the second relocation proposal. Meanwhile, Hungary goes as far as to condition its participation on the decision taken by its Parliament, and ultimately by the contentious referendum it organized on the issue. Observably, the emotions triggered by relocation are as much about the projective agency of relocation as they are about the projective agency aimed at relocation. The relocation projective agency as an enforcement of the binding future (in the form of quotas) provides feedback in the form of actions of loyalty or betrayal by the Member States as well as by the refugees. These actions go beyond discourse and attitudes and take a material form. By voting against the relocation programme, for instance, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia not only present their subjective stand regarding the future that is supposed to be an outcome of the relocation but also declare resistance and undertake counteractions, some of which later take the form of legal contestation (e.g. Hungary and Slovakia subsequently challenge the relocation scheme at the European Court of Justice) – see Table 6.8. The relocation plan as a distribution mechanism is designed to enforce official pledges regarding the mandatory quotas. In practice, the relocation process has been regulated sequentially on the basis of the actions of the Member States in the sense of implementing or sabotaging it. The country agency is thus both projective and performative. The Member States taking part in the relocation scheme are projected to take various actions, such as sending the data regarding their resources and capacity for receiving refugees. When they fail to do so, or there are delays, the relocation mechanism

Projecting the European refugee crisis  173 Table 6.8  T  he projective agency aimed at the relocation plan Projective agency

Phrasing in the media

Taking of actions to implement/resist/ sabotage a new system of action

Opposition towards, rejection, critical stand, challenging, contestation “Betrayals” (by the refugees) Some countries are delayed in sending detailed information on reception centres to Brussels, which is essential for the efficient organization of the first transfers Opposition to relocation took the form of antiimmigrant hysteria X country will take action against this issue at the Court of Justice of the EU Proposals of extension to the global level X country has decided to take in Y refugees

Acceptance/ rejection of the binding future

Voted for, voted against, abstained, initially opposed the plan Intends to receive, agree, are committed to receiving Member States which do not agree, will not apply

is strained. By the same token, the refugees are projected to be relocated in accordance with the algorithm of distribution and mandatory quotas. Yet some media suggest that the refugees have to agree to go to a selected destination country. Thus, the agency of relocation is viewed as conditional, and this conditionality opens a window of opportunity for EU countries (or, allegedly, the refugees) to claim that this is not working. There is no better illustration that relocation fails to work than the fact that through this September, almost 4,947 people have travelled from Greece and Italy mainly to Western countries. [H_26.09.2016_MN2] Despite the imposed numbers and binding procedures, the media report many cases of negotiations about numbers, speculation about changes to numbers or statements about self-imposed ceilings as a deterrent against a possible increase of the quotas in the future. France will not take in more than 30,000 refugees, which it has committed to receive in the next two years. [R_25.09.2015_H3] There are also proposals for extending the scope of relocation plan’s applicability. Hungary, for instance, proposed a system of quotas at the global level that would deal with the asymmetries and effects of migration brought about

174  Projecting the European refugee crisis

by the unfair historical processes. The projective agency of the EU countries refers to the binding future with which relocation is also linked. The countries accept or reject this future. By embarking on the relocation plan, either by implementing or sabotaging the system of action, the countries design their position with regard to the prospects of sharing responsibility evenly among the European countries. These projections sometimes refer to their loyalty to the EU writ large as well as with other political bodies, such as the Visegrad Group. They are accompanied by discussions about the political position of a given country in the EU and in the region. Apart from the political future, the projections also refer to the EU countries’ capacity to host refugees, their calculated thresholds and imposed limits as well as the state of the preparations (to accommodate the first group of refugees), for instance. These projections are emotionally laden, too. The relocation projective agency vs. the projective agency aimed at the relocation plan – the refugee crisis in Poland, Hungary, and Romania As in the case of the refugee projective agency, or the projective agency aimed at the refugees, the media coverage in the three countries allows one to see the relocation scheme more generally, at the European level, but also in Poland, Hungary, and Romania in particular. In what follows, we will go deeper into the national logic of each country. In the story of the refugee crisis in Europe, the projective agency of the three countries stands out because of the various sequences of opposition to the relocation system that they put forward – see Table 6.9. The relocation agency aimed at Poland, Hungary, and Romania is presented in the national media as inducing a sense of dutifulness in these three countries, and enforcing if not a pledge for relocation as such, then at least a formal acceptance of the results of the majoritarian vote in the European Commission. As a mechanism of distribution, the relocation integrates the three countries in the scheme of responsibility-sharing. Even if it mainly does so formally, that is, at the level of the projected future, the mechanism of relocation enforces the participation of the three countries in the scheme. In this sense, the relocation enforces a binding future onto the three countries, and it does so by ignoring the position the three countries take in this matter. The relocation plan also results in the prospect of materialization of the refugee projective agency on the territory of Poland and Romania, and of refugees’ renewed contact with Hungary. This is why some actions taken by these countries consist of accepting or rejecting this binding, yet unfulfilled, future, of attempting to implement or sabotage it. The presence of the refugees in these countries is a binding future, yet it is also a future that is uncertain, delayed, or simply not yet happening. Neither Poland nor

Enforcing a binding future

Institutionalization and algorithmization of a new system of action

Projective agency

Approve a plan to distribute 120,000 refugees while the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia voted against it

Poland will have to implement a relocation plan, will have to accept some 6,200 refugees

May claim that so far almost nothing has happened to make the majority decision a reality

X numbers might arrive, arrived

Would receive

Was assigned X refugees

Romania

The threat of cutting structural funds if Have to accept a few thousand, Defeated by the vote Poland does not agree on relocation despite not voting for the “quota” Forced to participate Warsaw will be under pressure, Poland legislation Will be forced to will have to obey EU regulations Took note of the majority participate (should the decision without any hysteria, The quotas set now by the scheme scheme extend into the nothing they can do about EU will bind Poland to take in significant future) law, EU law implementation is numbers of refugees in the future Vote against the decision, mandatory, another question is although he knew he whether they would really open would not be able to their door block this decision

The EU prepared a draft of a voluntary allocation [system], in which Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia would have to take approx. 80 Syrians from Turkey per month, in total

The limit which is negotiated for the current situation will not be binding for Whether they will really keep the the future waves of migration door open to the 6,162 asylum Will be stretched over two years, will seekers assigned to them against their will be financed from EU funds

Hungary

Poland

Phrasing in the media

Table 6.9  T he relocation projective agency aimed at Poland, Hungary, and Romania

Projecting the European refugee crisis  175

176  Projecting the European refugee crisis

Hungary engage in the scheme. In fact, the two countries seriously plan actions aimed against it. Romania, on the other hand, has no certainty about the arrival of the refugees despite the country’s engagement in the scheme – see Table 6.10. In the case of Poland, relocation as an object of action is projected initially as something that needs to be rejected or refused. Once the plan for relocation comes into force, the projections move to the need for rejecting it, complaining about it or taking legal action against it (especially in 2016). The projected actions towards relocation are more in the genre of postponing or negotiating than direct rejection or questioning on legal grounds. The projective agency of Poland is made conditional on the actions and preparations of other Member States. Subsequent to the first pledge, for instance, Poland is portrayed as encountering obstacles in carrying out the procedures foreseen by the relocation scheme while getting ready for cooperation at the hotspots. There is a threat that there will be people having links with terrorism among the refugees accepted by the EU countries, explains [Ministry of National Security]. […] Greece and Italy have problems with verifying the identity of people who are to come to our country. [P_13.04.2016_F] Sometimes, the projection of action is counterfactual: “decision about relocation may have been delayed”; or it is conditional, in the form of an if-then statement about what is going to happen. After the Polish government declared its intention of formal withdrawal from the relocation plan using the terrorist attack in Brussels in March 2016 as a justification, the newspapers often drew the projection that high fines are to be expected, should Poland actually withdraw: “If we do not fulfill the relocation obligations, we will have to pay 7 billion zloty” [P_02.05.2016_F]. What stands out in the case of Poland, in the projections which focus on the course of the implementation in particular, is that the agency is to a great extent about ensuring control over the unfolding of relocation (Poland will manage relocation, will be able to control the process of acceptance, will be able to ensure that procedures are fulfilled, should take a hard stance on controlling the fulfilment). The projective agency of Poland is to a great extent a power game – initially, at the level of internal party politics, and subsequently at the level of international relations (or relations between Poland and the EU, specifically). Hungary, on the other hand, is presented as acting differently towards relocation. Although the country makes all efforts to block the relocation programme, it also applies more long-term strategic thinking to the whole situation. As far as the acceptance of refugees is concerned, the agency of Hungary is highly conditional. Initially, it premises the enrolment in the

Projecting the European refugee crisis  177 Table 6.10  T he projective agency of Poland, Hungary, and Romania aimed at the relocation plan Projective agency

Taking of actions to implement/ resist/sabotage a new system of action

Phrasing in the media Poland

Hungary

Romania

The Polish government will not take in any refugees [after terrorist attacks in Brussels], wants to block the obligatory character of taking the refugees in

Recommendation of global quotas

First cohort of refugees Strategic exercises

Postulates there should be no automatism in accepting refugees, does not agree on automatism

Parliament would decide whether to accommodate the nearly 1,300 asylum seekers Accession to the quota system dependent on adequate protection of Hungary’s southern borders

Will consider the possibility of postponing the implementation, will try to “buy itself out” of the scheme Acceptance/ rejection of the binding future

Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz has made a binding promise to take in 7,000 refugees The proposition about quotas is an April Fool’s Day joke, it is unacceptable to offer money for people’s lives

Opposition towards, rejection, critical stance, challenging, contestation Voted against The Parliament will decide Purpose of the referendum – whether or not to admit migrants should be decided within national boundaries The quota has no ceiling You have to defend yourself

Plans of building camps and centres

Acceptance of the cohorts of refugees, voted against but will implement it Begins the mobilization, getting ready from a logistic point of view, getting prepared for the arrival of refugees Does not agree with the mathematical division of the mandatory quotas by vote It will not take part, takes part Romania must be a European country Romania made a mistake when it voted against the scheme It has only 1,500 accommodation places, has 6 centres and organized 2 camps

178  Projecting the European refugee crisis

relocation plan on the security of its borders. It also points to the need for the relocation plan to be legitimized by the Hungarian Parliament, and ultimately by the popular vote – the quota referendum it organized on the issue. The agency of Hungary towards relocation is to negotiate its conditions, to delegitimize, downplay, delay as well as to manipulate its terms, as the example of the idea of the global refugee quotas illustrates. If the projective agency of Poland comes across as power-oriented, with strongly emotional overtones, the projective agency of Hungary comes across as future-centred, strategy-oriented and imperative. It involves counterfactual thinking and animates debates about the hotspots, that the country has a direct interest in, although it refuses to have them on its territory. After the decision of the European Council from 22 September 2015, Hungary became a voice advocating the protection of the external borders of Schengen, and this projective agency, we learn, resonates with the considerations made by other important politicians, such as Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council. Hungary drew attention to the protection of the Greek border, claiming that Greece did not have the needed capacity. So, Hungary urged European countries to step in, or in the case there is no support for such an endeavour, to build a corridor to Germany directly. This agency of Hungary, we see, goes beyond the issue of relocation. It is not easy to tell, however, what the relation is between its agency aimed at relocation and that aimed at European asylum policy issues, more broadly. It is not clear whether the issue of relocation is only an element of a larger task of planning the defence of the European borders by Hungary, or the broader issues of asylum and security in Europe are used tactically in order to advance the projective agency of Hungary aimed at the particular issue of relocation. Hungary both undermines the relocation scheme by questioning the notion that other countries will participate in it and launches an imperative rhetoric campaign regarding the urgent need to speed up the securitization of the Greek border. Hungary also pushes the finalization of the Turkey-EU deal, thereby aiming to undermine the very premise on which the relocation policy is based, that is, the statement about the movement of refugees towards Europe. Hungary speculates what other countries will do and closely observes the game of the four countries who voted against relocation. Hungary is thus incorporated in the bigger picture but is also set aside. With the exception of the Fico government – which immediately threatened to take the case to the European Court of Justice –, the leaders of the reluctant Member States took note of the majority decision without any hysteria. They could have hardly done anything else given that the EU law is at stake and its implementation is mandatory. Another question is whether they will indeed keep the door open to the 6,162 asylum

Projecting the European refugee crisis  179

seekers assigned to them against their will, or they trust that this whole thing will come to nothing. [H_26.09.2015_N] The emotions accompanying Hungary’s actions towards relocation are also quite specific. The country seems to possess a sense of mission towards both Europe and its own people. Its self-righteousness rests not only on the feeling of duty to protect the external EU borders but also on the need to secure approval for its actions from the Parliament and from the population. Hungary is also depicted as acting strategically and as forward-looking with respect to other countries’ positions and moves. Thus, its standpoint on the issue of refugee movement is contextualized and legitimized. In the debate about the quota referendum, the criticism by the European Commission concerning the validity of the voting is pre-empted, and attention is redirected towards the inculcation of the official position, which victoriously proclaimed that 98% voted against the compulsory relocation quota. The position against the relocation quota bears features of a heroic, visionary, and strategic stance. The projective agency of Romania aimed at relocation largely replicates its actions towards refugees. It mostly takes the form of preparation. Interestingly, although Romania voted against the relocation plan, once the European Council vote was taken, the country moved towards full submission and acceptance of the conditions imposed by the EU. This fact is explained in the media by the legal authority of the Council and the general principle of respecting EU decisions. Yet Romania also struggles to make sense of this shift. Its agency in this respect is thus counterfactual, as is that of Hungary, but unlike in Hungary it is rather retrospective and not projective. The projectivity of Romania’s agency manifests itself on a different plane: the country expects the refugees to come and it prepares for their arrival. If Hungary’s projective agency is counterfactual and strategic, the projective agency of Romania is more about planning and coordinating the relocation scheme locally. Romania also appeared to be mired in these preparations. Its agency is projective, yet different from that of Hungary or Poland. This is vested in the sense of carrying out a pre-established future that the country had been assigned by the EU. Similar to Hungary, Romania also has a sense of mission, but its significance is linked with a proper execution of the preparations and proving to be a good EU Member State, not with challenging EU decisions.

Conclusions In this chapter, we have explored the manifestations of projectivity in the media coverage of the European refugee crisis in three Central and Eastern European countries. This exploration has had at least two distinct purposes.

180  Projecting the European refugee crisis

First, it was aimed at verifying if such projective forms actually emerge in the context of the crisis. This aspect is particularly important given that the relevant literature on the refugee crisis directs its attention to framing, legitimation, learning, and contestation but rarely discusses the role of projective forms of knowledge. We, nevertheless, followed our intuitions about the significance of projectivity in the refugee crisis, both going against the dominant tendencies in the existing research and supplementing earlier findings. Second, this exploration provided an opportunity to present a fuller account of the 2015–2016 refugee crisis by demonstrating how it unfolded beyond Western Europe. By including Central and Eastern European countries in the picture, we refine the meaning of the adjective European in the description of this crisis. This aspect is particularly relevant given that at different levels and by different actors the phenomena occurring during the refugee crisis but not related to Western Europe have been rarely taken seriously and viewed as anything of consequence. While the refugee crisis has triggered new projective agencies (those of the refugees, relocation scheme or reactions to both), most of them have been directed towards Western Europe. The focus on Western Europe has translated into other countries being perceived as transit points or as destinations to be avoided altogether (as had been the case in the refugee projective agency related to the journey, or in the projectivity aimed at the management of the refugee movement). While the distinction between “the West” and “the rest” has been sensible for many actors during the refugee crises, we, nevertheless, suggest it should not be treated as unchangeable and stable. Our analysis has revealed that, among other things, the crisis has also opened opportunities for destabilizing this dichotomy. In this chapter, we have demonstrated that the countries along the transit route also became important players whose agency had to be reckoned with. The European refugee crisis had important effects even in the Member States with practically no direct contact, or minimal contact, with the refugees. In order to explain the paradoxical trajectory of crisis-related changes and power games, in which Central and Eastern European countries played a role, we have adopted the notion of projective agency. It describes the actions aiming to bring into existence a targeted future. The notion of projective agency helps to explain how various actors interact during the refugee crisis in order to negotiate which futures are possible, what the conditions are for these futures to be achieved, and for whom they are achievable. The projective agency also gives insight into the process of reification of the future that constitutes probably one of the most intriguing findings of this chapter. We witness two dynamics. The energy of various projective agencies, on the one hand – how these evolve, and change — and the stabilization, regularization and reification of the future that is mainly done by the EU and is aimed at the agency of the refugees as well as that of the European countries.

Projecting the European refugee crisis  181

The projective agencies are uneven and go beyond the conventionality of the future. They are inherent both in the refugees’ decisions to embark on a dangerous journey along a planned route and in the EU attempts to institutionalize the relocation scheme. The differentiation of projective agencies not only demonstrates their complexity but also reveals the power asymmetries between different actors: the refugees and the Member States; or the weak and strong regulators of asylum policy within EU. At the same time the interactional multilevel analysis of the projective agencies has demonstrated the contingency of these distinctions. Due to an interplay between different projective agencies, the stronger regulators of the asylum system are, nevertheless, contingent in their actions on the commitments and political will of the weaker regulators, and even of the refugees. Projectivity not only helps in planning and coordinating future action but also in challenging the status quo, and executing agency under the conditions of otherwise limited resources. It may become a powerful tool of inclusion or exclusion.

Notes 1 The actual phrasing used by Chancellor Angela Merkel was Wir haben so vieles geschafft – wir schaffen das. According to an article in Politico and other common translations, the English meaning of the sentence is “We have managed so many things — we will also manage this situation” (Delcker, 2016). 2 In contrast to this, in Chapter 7 we primarily aimed to ensure the inclusion of all social and political actors who acted towards the crisis in order to capture the logic of politicization comprehensively. 3 For the sake of simplicity we use the term refugee here. Legally, the immigrants included in the relocation scheme were asylum seekers and the procedure for recognizing one’s refugee status (or other form of international protection) was expected to be conducted in the destination state of the relocation plan. 4 See Chapter 4 in order to put this figure in comparative perspective with other countries of CEE and Western Europe. 5 Mische’s original text speaks of the measurement of future projections in the online documents of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development and the accompanying “People’s Summit,” held in Rio de Janeiro in June 2012. 6 The first letter in the article’s description points at the country (P, H, R), the following figures present the date when it was published (DD.MM.YYYY), and the last letters constitute the particular newspaper’s abbreviation; if there is a number following this abbreviation, it identifies the exact article in cases where there is more than one article from this source on this date in the corpus. The translations from the originals in respective national languages into English are by the authors of this book. 7 It is worthwhile to remember that for many years Poland has had the highest proportion of discontinued cases of international protection procedures. The reason was that migrants were leaving Poland for a new destination in Western Europe before their case was finally adjudicated. The common explanation is that the migrants did not perceive Poland as a place offering opportunities for permanent resettlement (Pawlak, 2013).

182  Projecting the European refugee crisis

References Abbott, A. (2010) ‘Varieties of Ignorance’, The American Sociologist, 41, 174–189. Bajomi-Lázár, P. (2019) ‘An Anti-Migration Campaign and Its Impact on Public Opinion: The Hungarian Case’, European Journal of Communication, 34, 619–628. Bárd, P., Bayer, J. and Carrera, S. (2016) A Comparative Analysis of Media Freedom and Pluralism in the EU Member States, Study for the LIBE Committee, European Parliament’s Policy Department for Citizens’ Rights and Constitutional Affairs, Brussels. Best, J. (2019) Varieties of Ignorance in Neoliberal Policy: Or the Possibilities and Perils of Wishful Economic Thinking, Leverhulme Lecture, University of Sheffield, February 6. Bielecka-Prus, J. (2012) ‘Problem kontekstu w teoriach komunikowania społecznego’, Studia Socjologiczne, 1, 19–37. Bocskor, Á. (2018) ‘Anti-Immigration Discourses in Hungary during the “Crisis” Year: The Orbán Government’s “National Consultation” Campaign of 2015’, Sociology, 52, 551–568. Castro Herrero, L., Humprecht, E., Engesser, S., Brüggemann, M. L. and Büchel, F. (2017) ‘Rethinking Hallin and Mancini Beyond the West: An Analysis of Media Systems in Central and Eastern Europe’, International Journal of Communication, 11, 4797–4823. Corbu, N., Buturoiu, R. and Durach, F. (2017) ‘Framing the Refugee Crisis in Online Media: A Romanian Perspective’, Romanian Journal of Communication and Public Relations, 19, 5–18. Council Decision (EU) 2015/1601 of 22 September 2015 Establishing Provisional Measures in the Area of International Protection for the Benefit of Italy and Greece (2015). Dancygier, B. (1999) Conditionals and Prediction: Time, Knowledge, and Causation in Conditional Constructions, Cambridge, New York, Cambridge University Press. De Fina, A. and Georgakopoulou, A. (2012) Analyzing Narrative: Discourse and Sociolinguistic Perspectives, Cambridge, New York, Cambridge University Press. Delcker, J. (2016) ‘The Phrase That Haunts Angela Merkel’, Politico, 19 August. Dunmire, P. L. (1997) ‘Naturalizing the Future in Factual Discourse: A Critical Linguistic Analysis of a Projected Event’, Written Communication, 14, 221–264. Dunmire, P. L. (2011) Projecting the Future through Political Discourse: The Case of the Bush Doctrine, Amsterdam, Philadelphia, John Benjamins Pub. Co. Emirbayer, M. and Mische, A. (1998) ‘What Is Agency?’, American Journal of Sociology, 103, 962–1023. Fairclough, N. (2001) ‘The Discourse of New Labour: Critical Discourse Analysis’. In Wetherell, M., Taylor, S., and Yates, S. J. (eds) Discourse of New Labour. A Guide for Analysis, London, Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage and the Open University, pp. 229–266. Fairclough, N. (2013) Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language, London, Routledge. Hall, P. A. and Soskice, D. W. (eds) (2001) Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage, Oxford, New York, Oxford University Press. Hall, S. (ed) (1978) Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order, New York, Holmes & Meier.

Projecting the European refugee crisis  183 Hardy, C. (1997) ‘Semantic Fields and Meaning: A Bridge between Mind and Matter’, World Futures: The Journal of New Paradigm Research, 48, 161–170. Holzberg, B., Kolbe, K. and Zaborowski, R. (2018) ‘Figures of Crisis: The Delineation of (Un)Deserving Refugees in the German Media’, Sociology, 52, 534–550. Jaskulowski, K. (2019) The Everyday Politics of Migration Crisis in Poland, Cham, Palgrave Macmillan. Krzyżanowski, M. (2014) ‘Values, Imaginaries and Templates of Journalistic Practice: A Critical Discourse Analysis’, Social Semiotics, 24, 345–365. Krzyżanowski, M. (2018a) ‘“We Are a Small Country That Has Done Enormously Lot”: The “Refugee Crisis” and the Hybrid Discourse of Politicizing Immigration in Sweden’, Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 16, 97–117. Krzyżanowski, M. (2018b) ‘Discursive Shifts in Ethno-Nationalist Politics: On Politicization and Mediatization of the “Refugee Crisis” in Poland’, Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 16, 76–96. Krzyżanowski, M., Triandafyllidou, A. and Wodak, R. (2018) ‘The Mediatization and the Politicization of the “Refugee Crisis” in Europe’, Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 16, 1–14. Kubicki, P., Pawlak, M., Mica, A. and Horolets, A. (2017) ‘Wyjście z cienia: Polityka uchodźcza w sytuacji kryzysu’, Polityka Społeczna, 9, 22–28. Langdon, N. (2018) ‘Empathy and Othering: Framing Syria’s Refugee Crisis in the British Press’. In Karakoulaki, M., Southgate, L., and Steiner, J. (eds) Critical Perspectives on Migration in the Twenty-First Century, Bristol, E-International Relations Publishing, pp. 91–111. Marinescu, V. and Balica, E. (2018) ‘New Media Clues and Old Journalistic Habits: Representing the Refugees in Romanian Media’, Journalism, OnlineFirst. Martin de Holan, P., Willi, A. and Fernández, P. D. (2019) ‘Breaking the Wall: Emotions and Projective Agency under Extreme Poverty’, Business & Society, 58, 919–962. Matar, D. (2017) ‘Media Coverage of the Migration Crisis in Europe: A Confused and Polarized Narrative’, IEMed. Mediterranean Yearbook, 292–295. Melegh, A. (2016) ‘Unequal Exchanges and the Radicalization of Demographic Nationalism in Hungary’, Intersections, 2, 87–108. Merton, R. (1984) ‘Socially Expected Durations: A Case Study of Concept Formation in Sociology’. In Powell, W. W. and Robbins, R. (eds) Conflict and Consensus: A Festschrift for Lewis A. Coser, New York, The Free Press, pp. 262–283. Mische, A. (2009) ‘Projects and Possibilities: Researching Futures in Action’, Sociological Forum, 24, 694–704. Mische, A. (2014) ‘Measuring Futures in Action: Projective Grammars in the Rio + 20 Debates’, Theory and Society, 43, 437–464. Palonen, E. (2018) ‘Performing the Nation: The Janus-Faced Populist Foundations of Illiberalism in Hungary’, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 26, 308–321. Pawlak, M. (2013) Organizacyjna reakcja na nowe zjawisko: Szkoły i instytucje pomocowe wobec uchodźcow w polsce po 2004 r., Warszawa, IPSiR UW. Porzig, W. (1971) Das Wunder der Sprache, München, Francke Verlag. Robin, R. (1980) ‘Badanie pol semantycznych: Doświadczenia ośrodka leksykologii politycznej w Saint-Cloud’. In Głowiński, M. (ed) Język i społeczeństwo, Warszawa, Czytelnik, pp. 205–282.

184  Projecting the European refugee crisis Scott, S., McDonnell, L. and Dawson, M. (2016) ‘Stories of Non-Becoming: NonIssues, Non-Events and Non-Identities in Asexual Lives’, Symbolic Interaction, 39, 268–286. Šelo Šabić, S. (2017) ‘The Impact of the Refugee Crisis in the Balkans: A Drift Towards Security’, Journal of Regional Security, 12, 51–74. Szalai, A. and Gőbl, G. (2015) ‘Securitizing Migration in Contemporary Hungary’, Working paper, Center for EU Enlargement Studies, Central European University, Budapest, November 30. Szczerbiak, A. (2017) ‘How Is the European Migration Crisis Affecting Polish Politics?’, LSE European Politics and Policy (EUROPP) Blog, July 6. Triandafyllidou, A. (2018) ‘A “Refugee Crisis” Unfolding: “Real” Events and their Interpretation in Media and Political Debates’, Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 16, 198–216. van Dijk, T. A. van (ed) (2011) Discourse as Structure and Process, London, SAGE. van Leeuwen, T. (2008) Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis, Oxford, New York, Oxford University Press. Vasile, O. and Androniceanu, A. (2016) ‘Dynamics of Migration in Romania and Management of Financing Instruments’. In The European Proceedings of Social & Behavioural Sciences (EpSBS), Future Academy, pp. 1059–1067. Vasile, O. and Androniceanu, A. (2018) ‘An Overview of the Romanian Asylum Policies’, Sustainability, 10, 1–22. Widdowson, H. G. (2004) Text, Context, Pretext: Critical Issues in Discourse, Oxford, Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Wodak, R. (2001) ‘The Discourse-Historical Approach’. In Wodak, R. and Meyer, M. (eds) Methods of Critical Discourse Studies, London, Sage, pp. 63–94. Wodak, R. and Chilton, P. A. (eds) (2005) A New Agenda in (Critical) Discourse Analysis: Theory, Methodology, and Interdisciplinarity, Amsterdam, Benjamins. Wodak, R. and Krzyżanowski, M. (eds) (2008) Qualitative Discourse Analysis in the Social Sciences, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan. Wodak, R. and Meyer, M. (2001) Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, London, Sage Publications, Ltd. Zaun, N. (2017) EU Asylum Policies: The Power of Strong Regulating States, Cham, Palgrave Macmillan. Zaun, N. (2018) ‘States as Gatekeepers in EU Asylum Politics: Explaining the Non-Adoption of a Refugee Quota System’, JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 56, 44–62.

Chapter 7

From categories to seeing like public policy Ignorance and change in Poland, Hungary, and Romania

Throughout the book, our interest in the interaction between ignorance and various forms of knowledge led to the identification of a number of ignorance-related effects of mutual contingency. This categorical approach is something that has already been acknowledged in relation to the generic field of ignorance studies (Smithson, 1990, 2015; Gross, 2010). Certainly, as several authors indicate, the production of new types and typologies of ignorance is not something undesirable in itself. Yet it may lead to automatism of classification, unless we are aware of this risk and try to integrate our findings within a broader exploration of the logic of ignorance and of related forms of knowledge. In this chapter, we test empirically and analytically the modalities of dealing with the proclivity towards categorizations in the framework of the interactional approach. In the first instance, we explore how the proliferation of typologies in ignorance studies can be capitalized by way of integrating the ignorance-related effects we identified in a broader dynamic and logic of ignorance. Afterwards, we point to two alternative analytical paths for this focus on categorizations – the articulation of mechanisms of knowledge and the genealogy of various stages of knowledge evolvement, and the role of ignorance in these. Empirically, we continue our exploration of the interaction between ignorance and projection during the 2015–2016 European refugee crisis. We reveal the decisive role of ignorance in the formulation of new projections in the context of the crisis. Focusing on Poland, Hungary, and Romania allows us to capture the processes of elaboration and reformulation of asylumrelated projections in contexts in which forced migration entered the public agenda relatively recently and there was a reset of domestic and European Union (EU) asylum policies. We reconstruct the processes of reformulation of projections in the context of the European refugee crisis on the basis of the insights from the participants of the asylum policy fields. We show that in the case of Poland, Hungary, and Romania, the reformulation of future projections actually overlapped with the elaboration of these projections because of the fact that asylum policy had recently entered the public debate.

186  Ignorance and change

We discuss how the rapid evolvement of the elaboration and reformulation of future-oriented projections amounts to a reification of the future. The latter results in the neglect of other possible worlds that the participants from public policy are quite keen to draw attention to. In this manner ignorance unfolds, simultaneously challenging and redrawing the conditions that made it possible. The genealogy of interaction and mutual contingency between ignorance and projection leads us to the most important finding of this chapter, and even of the entire book most probably. Change in the regimes of ignorance is contingent on the pace and conditions in which we elaborate new futures and reformulate existing ones. In the context of the European refugee crisis, this entails that the applicable ignorance has changed to the extent to which the countries we analyzed were able to embark on elaborating new futures, and to stick with these new projections. In the case, however, they abandon these new futures, or the new futures are reified hastily, the regimes of ignorance either change superficially or they embark on a new logic too quickly.

Ignorance effects and projectivity – categorization and beyond The interactional model of analysis we employed in this book allowed us to not only identify ignorance-related effects in various fields – academic research (Table 4.5), media (Tables 5.1 and 5.3), and asylum public policy (Tables 5.4–5.5) – but also to discuss these effects in relation to three dimensions of ignorance (cognitive, epistemic, and strategic), and an additional one for public policy (incentivized). We may further apply the interactional approach to the first-hand analysis of projection in the media coverage during the crisis in Poland, Hungary, and Romania that we initiated in the foregoing chapter (Chapter 6). As one may already guess, this will allow us to further identify the ignorancerelated effects of the interaction between ignorance and projection in relation to various dimensions. Before taking this step, however, we should ask ourselves why our interactional analysis has demonstrated a proclivity to establishing taxonomies, all the more so as our stated aim with this approach was exactly to shift the focus from what ignorance is to what ignorance does. Are categorizations intrinsic to the interactional approach we have proposed? Are they the only modality of interactional analysis there is? Answering these questions will allow us to establish whether categorizations are an overarching tendency of social sciences or a distinguishing feature of this field related to the characteristics of ignorance as its subject – its widespread character and indeterminacy. The answer, clearly, is that both factors are at work. As observed by Abbott (2001), there is a tendency towards fractal development in social sciences. The growing complexity of categorizations participates in the

Ignorance and change  187

processes of evolvement of new scholarly disciplines or research fields because these complex taxonomies allow for the creation of some distance from the already existing domains. At the same time, ignorance as an analytical notion is both obvious and blurry, too general and too diverse in its manifestations. Ignorance calls for delimitation and circumscription, when taken as a subject matter of a research field. Especially so at the background of the advanced research on risk, uncertainty and forms of knowledge that problematize the meaning of ignorance. How should we deal with the proclivity towards categorizations? How can we make use of it, while taking a critical stance in the same time? Our answer is that the interactional approach can be categorical as long as it is an informed choice that has a solid analytical footing. Following Smithson (1990, 2015) and Gross (2010), we should integrate the ignorance-related effects of the interaction between ignorance and forms of knowledge into a bigger picture. For the European refugee crisis of 2015–2016, for instance, we can access the logic of ignorance in the media in the context of the crisis, as manifested in relation to various forms of knowledge – see Table 7.1 (for academic research see Horolets et al., 2020). We can integrate the ignorance-related effects discovered through the meta-analytical examination of existing findings in the relevant literature on framing and legitimation/pre-legitimation in the media coverage of the refugee crisis (Chapter 5) with those indicated by the first-hand analysis of projection in the Polish, Hungarian, and Romanian media (Chapter 6). The comparison of ignorance-related effects in relation to framing with those linked with projection, for instance, allows one to see that these effects are quite similar in both cases. We encounter, for instance, strategic ignorance, categorization, essentialization, and even reproduction of the epistemology of ignorance in relation to both types of interaction. Ignorance thus appears to be reinforced through the interaction with various forms of knowledge. Yet there are also other findings worthy of attention. As we have recurrently pointed out in this book, politics and politicization are reported to have played an important role in the production and reproduction of the effects of ignorance in the case of the European refugee crisis. The academic research we reviewed indicated a close link between politicization and mediatization (Krzyżanowska and Krzyżanowski, 2018; Krzyżanowski, 2018a, 2018b) (see Chapter 4). The link operates, for instance, as a feedback system between the two, or a capture of the media by politics. In our examination of projection, however, the media reproduce the political discourse through projection by proxy. This means that rather than creating their own projections, the media borrow the projections from the political field via quotes and paraphrases and, through editing, mould them into an engaging story. The media act as a medium that simply delivers various types of content, including political, sometimes with a critical comment. In this manner, they do not appear overtly politicized in the sense

188  Ignorance and change Table 7.1 Ignorance-related effects of interaction between ignorance and various forms of knowledge Modes of analysis/ dimensions of ignorance

Effects in the media

Cognitive

Selection, abrupt transition and cut of sequences, reduction of complexity, involuntary silencing, underrepresentation

Framing

Legitimation and Projection pre-legitimation –

Categorization, essentialization (as othering), reduction (to projective agency – hope)

Categorization, essentialization (as othering), reduction (to numbers), neglect of diversity

Effects of simplification, attribution Neglect of uncertainty, ignorance of ignorance, neglect of probability (by proxy, by editing)

Attribution, negative and danger-oriented bias, neglect of probability

Epistemic

Confusion, ambiguity, dissonance Construction of perspective from an outside position (commitment to difference), distant suffering

Reinforcement of epistemology of ignorance, mediation

Neglect and the overpowering of uncertainty, effect of certainty

Selective enactment of ideas and imaginaries

Construction of a perspective from an inside position

Reproduction of the epistemology of ignorance, mediation Strategic

Strategic ignorance

Neglect of diversity, divergence

–

Reproduction of the epistemology of ignorance, mediation (by proxy) Strategic ignorance (by proxy, by editing)

of being under the direct influence of certain political actors, as in the case of the capture or vulnerability to discursive shifts (Krzyżanowski, 2018a; Krzyżanowska and Krzyżanowski, 2018) indicated in the literature on framing. The mechanism we identify is rather reproduction, through quotations, of the most prominent framings and projections used by politicians. When doing so, the media may be suspected of strategically ignoring certain

Ignorance and change  189

aspects of the refugee crisis, while, in fact, the reproduction of ignorance in this case unfolds predominantly unintendedly, and the selection of content is carried out at the level of the political power-play in the first place. The ignorance-related effects of interaction between projection and ignorance in the media are politically incentivized, and the proximity between the media and politics biases the press towards a politically specific focus on the future. Yet the extent to which the processes of projection are caused solely by the politicization of the media (understood as both tuning in with the main lines of political debate and ascribing excessive importance to the political realm) is still an open question. The second element that emerges from our comparison is that the ignorance-related effects manifest through various layers – cognitive, epistemic, and strategic. The effects of ignorance in the epistemic dimension are probably the most clearly visible. In the case of framing, the process of giving voice in the media is asymmetrically targeting various categories – the refugees were sometimes presented, but the politicians more so. As argued by Reisigl and Wodak (2001, pp. 48–52), the problem of giving voice unfolds also at the level of actor representation strategies – such as aggregation (representing actors as a group, e.g. using numbers, percentages), indetermination (representing actors as anonymous individuals or groups with unclear boundaries, e.g. using pronouns), and individualization (representing an actor as a particular individual, e.g. indicating personal details). Refugees, for instance, occur as many, or the media may point out one of the refugees, while politicians are frequently presented by their last name and attributed particular statements. In the case of assuming (giving) projective agency, the situation is similar. The projective agency of the refugees, in spite of some instances of individualization, is usually generalized, linear, taken for granted or presented in the form of action-reaction to external challenges to their journeys. The projective agency of politicians, on the other hand, is contextualized or there are attempts to make sense of it. Leaving the problem of accessibility to respondents aside, one cannot underestimate the ignorance effects in the epistemic dimension. Refugees are framed as demographic variables or indiscriminate masses, while politicians are identifiable people with names and posts whose words are directly quoted. In this way, the imbalance of power is not only reproduced but also petrified through the epistemic dimension of ignorance. The same happens with the projective agency. Refugees display an agency that is self-evident, stubborn and irrational at the same time. Their agency fails or does not fail in the attempt to reach a better life in Europe. At the same time the course of their journey (do they make it/do they not make it) effects indirectly on how their motivation and journey is valued. Beside the epistemic dimension of ignorance, the strategic dimension is particularly intriguing, yet difficult to pin down. As we discussed in Chapter  5, the relevant literature usually perceives the media as ignoring

190  Ignorance and change

many things as well as being a source of ignorance themselves. Yet it rarely blames the media for this and considers them to be a naïve facilitator or a victim of ignorance reproduction rather than a corrupted pawn of politicization. Our first-hand analysis of the manifestation of projection in the media, likewise, has not brought a clear answer to whether the media use ignorance strategically or their negative bias in the representation of the refugee crisis is an outcome of their proximity to the political field. What is evident, however, is that the clearly visible mechanisms of excessive projection appear rather strategic and conscious. They most probably stem from the tendency of the media to simplify and to attract attention by revealing sensational content and by stirring emotions. The question regarding strategic ignorance in the media is also a matter of agency, nevertheless. On the basis of the findings presented in Chapter 6, we can suggest that the media are quite agentic in employing ignorance as a resource. As we have already indicated, the mechanism of reification of the future reverberates in peculiar forms that combine paraphrase and overstatement, resulting in reinterpretation. In the title of news items, the media present reified futures, which – if one reads the whole article – occur to be taken out of context, exaggerated or inaccurately paraphrased. Instead of adequately summarizing the facts presented in the article, the title overemphasizes some aspects of the story and in this way creates a distorted projection of the future. The ignorance herein is strategic. Yet the strategic character is not as much an intent, as it is an outcome of the peculiar combination of ignorance-related effects of interaction between projection and ignorance and media rules for editing news stories – strategic ignorance (by editing). The Romanian media illustrate this process of strategic ignorance as an unintended outcome very well. In the depiction of the Croatian-Slovenian conflict, for instance, the one-night incident at the border when refugees were forced to stay exposed to the rain because of the diplomatic dispute between the two countries, is presented in the title as a situation that has indeterminate duration. The title is a clear overstatement that produces the impression of a continuous present that reaches into the future and fixes it.

Title:

Content:

Thousands of immigrants are staying at the Balkan borders in the cold and mud.

The countries contradict each other on the number of refugees to be accepted by each […] Thousands of exhausted immigrants, including many women and children, spent the night in the rain and cold in the Balkans, while the countries quarrel over managing the large influx of people. (R_20.10.2015_A3)

Ignorance and change  191

In the presentation of the proposals for change in the logic of relocation, the mechanisms of future reification are even more striking. In a similar vein to the story about the Croatian-Slovenian conflict, the title presents the proposal made by the European Commission as a regulation that has already taken effect. Title:

Content:

The refugee crisis. The EU exchanges mandatory quotas with mandatory percentages. Romania will receive another 20,000 refugees.

The presidential advisor Leonard Orban declared at Adevarul Live that that the number of refugees allocated to Romania by Brussels, 6,200, is close to being suspended. There are talks regarding a permanent relocation mechanism. The European Commission (EC) proposal is already made, at a technical level the discussions have already started. Suddenly, we no longer talk numbers, 6,200 refugees [the rate imposed on Romania out of a total of 120,000 refugees], but we talk percentages. For example, according to the proposal made by the Commission, Romania would receive 3.9% of the total number of refugees entering the EU. (R_21.10.2015_A6)

The mechanisms of projection by proxy and reification of the future thus show that media do not have to be an ally of the political field in order for the process of politicization to unfold, and for the ignorance-related effects related to it to be produced. It simply suffices that media do their job in delivering a good story, and in this way, they also exercise their agency. The ignorance in the case of the media is oftentimes strategic. Yet this is not necessarily because the media made it their purpose to manipulate and to obscure relevant aspects of the reality. The strategic character may appear as an unintended outcome because the media present and project the reality by proxy due to how they edit and present their news content and coverage. Another aspect that surfaces when we integrate the ignorance-related effects into the bigger picture is that some of these effects are recurrent across the interaction of ignorance with distinct forms of knowledge. The effect of reproduction or the reinforcement of the epistemology of ignorance appear, for instance, to be universal. What is likewise interesting to note, however, is that some ignorance-related effects appear in a reversed form, so to speak, across the interaction of ignorance with various forms of knowledge. In relation with the same epistemic dimension, for instance, in the case  of the

192  Ignorance and change

interaction between ignorance and framing we identify the construction of perspective from an outside position (commitment to difference), and distant suffering. In the case of the interaction between ignorance and projection, on the other hand, we rather see the construction of perspective from an inside position. The difference between the effects does not necessarily suggest that, unlike framing, projection has the tendency to shorten the affective distance between the audience and the refugees in the media coverage of the crisis. This distance that stands in the way of an empathetic attitude, or of an empathic attitude which triggers engagement may by all means be reproduced. Projection, however, has the quality of pragmatically integrating the social actors, that is, it shortens the distance through mechanisms of spatialtemporal displacement and integration (which we will describe in more detail below). The result being that despite no or very limited direct contact with refugees in countries such as Poland and Romania, the crisis is still projected as a situation taking place inside each country, it is presented to be actually taking place there. Another instance of such inverted dynamics concerns uncertainty. The academic research on framing in the media coverage of the refugee crisis, for instance, suggests effects in terms of confusion, ambiguity, and dissonance. In our study of the interaction between ignorance and projection, however, we encountered neglect and the overpowering of uncertainty. One of the aspects that could explain this fact is the wide distribution of conditional and reified projections in the coverage of the management of the refugees’ movement by the EU Member States and in the enforcement of their compliance with the relocation scheme. As we showed in the presentation of projective agencies in the media and which we will also document in the following part of this chapter, the projections regarding the future, at least in the case of politics and public policy, have the tendency to materialize in relation to certain paths, while targeted reified futures tend to delineate themselves and trigger certainty. When the media, via projection by proxy, insert statements regarding these targeted and reified futures directly in their accounts, they create an effect of certainty, wherein mixed feelings, counterfactual thinking, and ignorance are overpowered. This dynamic can be disturbed when the politicians and experts quoted by the media express uncertainty themselves. Yet whether they do so or not is contingent on the local model and dynamics of politics, among other things. The projections regarding the future that is on the agenda to be implemented by public policy occur subsequent to a process of concretization, materialization, and reification. As one may expect, this process is to a great extent based on ignorance. At the same time, projectivity, too, facilitates ignorance in its evolvement by overpowering it and thus keeping it in the shadows. The two interact.

Ignorance and change  193

Mechanisms of projection in the media The interactional study of ignorance can unfold beyond a clear and explicit focus on ignorance effects, though. In this subchapter, we propose a modality of interactional analysis that explores the mechanisms of knowledge, and the role played by ignorance in these. We distinguish mechanisms of projection in the media coverage of the refugee crisis in Poland, Hungary, and Romania that create the perspective of interaction and mutual contingency of projective agencies and that also concomitantly happen to be highly reliant on ignorance. We claim that the media representation of the refugee crisis in this manner is the outcome of mechanisms of projection such as assumption of projective agency, spatial-temporal displacement and integration, and reification. Ignorance has not only been a product of these mechanisms of projection but also their fuel. The analysis presented in Chapter 6 gave us insights into how projectivity manifests in the media under analysis. In this subchapter, we explore why it manifests the way it does. The agency of refugees or the relocation scheme appears projective because the media represent these actors and the crisis itself this way (assumption of projective agency). In addition, the media shuffle, displace and integrate experiences and scenarios regarding the refugee crisis from different countries creating in this way a basis for the deployment of these projective agencies (spatial-temporal displacement and integration). The media contribute to the elaboration and stabilization of specific futures in relation to the crisis creating in this manner a landmark or a grand finale, wherein all these projective agencies are eventually dissolved (reification of the future) – see Table 7.2. The first mechanism, assumption of projective agency, has similarities with the instances of implicature depicted in linguistic pragmatics (Levinson 1983, pp. 97–166) or acting “as if” a described reality were true initially discussed in literary fiction and economic theory and recently also in economic sociology (Beckert, 2016, pp. 61–94). Implicature describes the process of inference that allows the receivers of a message to grasp its meaning beyond the exact words that are communicated. Implicature is open to interactions with ignorance, especially when the so-called maxims, or principles, that Table 7.2 Mechanisms of projection in the media Mechanisms in the media Assumption of projective agency Spatial-temporal displacement and integration Reif ication of the future Projection by proxy Counterfactual thinking Ignorance of ignorance

194  Ignorance and change

guide inference (Levinson, 1983, p. 101; cf. Grice, 1978) are breached. The mechanisms that unfold when the media ascribe projective agency to the refugees or to the European countries resemble the logic of implicature. When the media represent refugees as actors who embark on the journey across the Mediterranean in the hope of a better life, or when they represent the European countries as actors who attempt to control the flow of refugees by forward-looking schemes, the readers are drawn into taking the projective agencies of these actors as something given and real. The media assume their projectivity. They act as if the behaviour of actors in the context of the refugee crisis is projective and oriented towards the future. Importantly, besides working as a fictional projective agency of various actors – to paraphrase Beckert’s (2016) term “fictional expectations,” – the implicated and as if projected agency created by the media materializes. This is used as an explanation of certain actions, such as in the depictions of the bus drivers who were waiting for the masses of refugees to appear at the border in order to transport them towards Austria. The power of implicature and as if is such that the projective agency has real consequences. The second mechanism, spatial-temporal displacement and integration, appears to play a significant role in the coverage of the refugee crisis, and the relocation scheme in particular. In Poland, Hungary, and Romania, the reportage of the refugee crisis was dominated by accounts of crisis unfolding in other countries, such as Germany, Serbia, Turkey, or Sweden. Several factors might have contributed to the prominence of this feature. One could be the lack of first-hand experience with the asylum seekers from the ongoing migratory movement in Europe in the study periods. Even in Hungary, the country situated on the so-called Western Balkan Route along which the asylum seekers moved, the media would frequently choose to focus on different countries in the coverage of the crisis in the study periods. This, however, is not necessarily related to the fact that from summer 2015 onward the closure of the borders and the confinement of asylum seekers in detention centres have effectively removed the refugees from the public eye. The spatial-temporal displacement and borrowing of experience in the press projections, we argue, has additional motivations beyond the factual deficiency in first-hand contact with the refugees. In one of the Hungarian articles from 2015, for instance, the experience of Germany and the UK (e.g. growing inequalities that are allegedly linked to high immigration) has been translated into an expectation of what might happen in Hungary in the future, should it get involved in the reception of refugees (H_20.10.2015_MN2). In this way, the spatial projection has been intrinsically linked to a temporal projection. The present or recent past of distant countries is treated as the quite probable future of Hungary. The differences between the socio-economic position and welfare systems of Hungary and these countries has thus been kept out of sight or ignored, such as in the case of the issue whether the relation between immigration

Ignorance and change  195

and social inequalities is a relation of causality or one of mere correlation. The projecting of the experience of other countries onto the future of Hungary has the (unintended) epistemic effect of limiting the number of future scenarios available for public debate. It narrows down the range of framing possibilities in representing host society-refugee interactions. Simultaneously (and also perhaps inadvertently), this projection draws parallels between Hungary and Western European countries and renders them equal at cognitive and symbolic level. The question of whether the media achieved these goals inadvertently or had planned to achieve them remains open. The peripheral position of the three Central and Eastern European states could be seen as another reason why spatial-temporal displacements are rather prominent in the material. What is also important to account for, however, is that the mechanism of spatial-temporal displacement can also be seen as a form of integration, and not just as an illicit borrowing or appropriation of the experience and future from more developed countries. The displacement also creates a certain common reality. The sequential nature of the coverage encourages integration. This effect is especially visible in the representations of border crossings and the measures taken to tighten border control. The media provides comprehensive coverage of what is happening in the proximity of the respective countries, for example refugee movements and irregular (yet projected) crossings along the Croatian-Serbian border, or the temporary (yet again projected) transports with refugees heading to Germany. These representations have a quite visible component of displacement. They create a story in which the refugee crises unfolding in one country overlap with the logic of the broader migratory routes and dynamics of refugee movements across borders. The final effect is that the presence of the refugees is not a condition sine qua non for experiencing the refugee crisis. Romania, for instance, experienced the route of the refugees only as a potentiality, because of the spectrum of relocation. Nevertheless, the continuing coverage of the crisis indirectly integrates Romania into the whole picture, and it strengthens the story of the refugee crisis as a crisis happening in this country also. The third mechanism of projection, reification of the future, occurs in the depiction of projective agencies in the media of all three countries but most prominently in Hungary and Poland. We use the term reification here not in the Marxist sense of the commodification of human relations, which has been famously re-worked by Lukács, who also used the concept of “phantom objectivity” (1971, pp. 83–110; cf. Honneth et al., 2008). Berger and Luckman’s (1967) idea that people tend to experience the conventional as the objective and inevitable has provided us with some inspiration. Yet our usage of the term reification is closest to its vocabulary meaning that refers to treating something abstract or imaginary as a real thing, and we exploit primarily this meaning from the vantage point of ignorance studies.

196  Ignorance and change

Reification of the future is thus understood as a cognitive and social process for treating a scenario or a possibility of future events and processes as a reality that already exists and has a material form, so to speak. This occurs as quite similar to the acting as if, just that reification is more performative, and it has a political and epistemic influence in terms of bringing these futures into existence, or presenting them as binding. In our view, the reified futures produced by the media coverage of the crisis become the objects or reference points that create opportunities for policy action. Importantly, the reification opens up possibilities for affective political mobilization since it allows for emotional engagement with the future by giving it a concrete or material form. The Polish press is quite illustrative of how the reification of the future works. In the following excerpt delivered at the height of the relocation policy talks, for instance, several numbers are discussed and one of the then opposition politicians, Adam Bielan, is quoted criticizing the coalition government of the Platforma Obywatelska (PO) [Civic Platform] and Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe (PSL) [The Polish People’s Party] for agreeing to the quotas in Brussels. The conflict in the Middle East, particularly in Syria and Iraq, will not end soon. In Syria alone 8 million people had to leave their homes due to military combat, including 4 million who fled abroad. It means that we talk today not about thousands but about millions of refugees who are trying to get to Europe […] If the EU would relocate them on the basis of the same principle as those 66 thousand, up to 100 thousand fugitives might get into Poland. And, as Bielan holds, the number of 100 thousand has to be multiplied by 4 or 5, because each of the refugees according to law will be able to bring her/his family. So, the result could be that in two or three years we may have half a million people [refugees] in Poland. (P_25.09.2015_F) The concentration on numbers fits with what other scholars have already found about the representation of the refugees during the crisis: people are reduced to numbers and thus dehumanized. The sheer magnitude of the figures given in the text inscribes this excerpt within a threat-oriented frame and questions the deservedness of the refugees (see ignorance-related effects of the interaction between ignorance and framing in the media, Chapter 5). The reference to the unidentified “law” in Bielan’s words is quite characteristic. It questions the legitimacy of protection: this is granted not in the name of human solidarity but due to the working of some anonymous formalistic law. There are also some slight twists which might be conducive to misinterpretation, such as when the number 66 thousand (the quota for all the EU countries) is co-located with 100 thousand (as a potential quota for Poland

Ignorance and change  197

in the future). Besides the formation of the semantic field of relocation, this association may also lead one to think that Poland alone has already subscribed to receiving 66 thousand refugees, which was not the case. The future-orientedness of the narrative is another element that we should pay attention to. Bielan talks primarily about the future. In doing so, he swings between the modal verbs that signify an uncertain future or the probability of a particular future scenario (would, could, may), the ones that designate a future that is certain (will be able to bring their families), and the imperative forms (has to be multiplied) that render the potential future imminent. This discursive mechanism not only involves a neglect of probability framing (see ignorance-related effects of the interaction between ignorance and framing in the media, Chapter 5), and reflects the twin processes of mediatization and politicization, it also constructs a reified future. In other words, a situation that is – at its best – a rough guess of politicians about the future is constructed discursively in such a way (and is so socially positioned by becoming a part of the news article) that it is treated as something that actually exists. It can function as an object of engaged public concern and the impetus for political action. All three mechanisms we have discussed – assumption of projective agency, spatial-temporal displacement and integration, and reification of the future – contribute to bringing the projective agencies into existence. There is, however, also another part of the projectivity manifesting in the media which relates not as much to what the media do but how the media do it. In this sense the already discussed projection by proxy is arguably most relevant. This supports the mechanisms we identified because in the process of transmission and coverage of different situations the media always contribute additional content and introduce modifications. They present, for instance, probabilistic and conditional statements as a clear issue. The second mechanism that advances projectivity is counterfactual thinking. Some of the projections constructed by the media are counterfactual and primarily aimed at presenting alternative scenarios of the future or alternative paths of change. As mentioned in the foregoing analysis of projectivity in the media coverage of the refugee crisis (Chapter 6), the Romanian authorities and the media came across as particularly counterfactual in the context of the relocation debates by concentrating on alternative courses of action. The Romanian President, for instance, is quoted as criticizing the current government for agreeing to the quota system without much negotiations: “Romania would have had arguments, if it would have put up a fight.” (R_22.09.2015_A1). The use of the conditional phrase indicates here the work of projective mechanisms. The reification of the future and the counterfactual thinking seem to have contrasting relations with ignorance per se. The reification of the future, if anything, seems to be a perfect neglect and elimination of ignorance from

198  Ignorance and change

the picture. Counterfactual thinking, on the other hand, while not straightforwardly bringing ignorance and uncertainty back in, reveals a certain strategic mobilization of ignorance as well as the battle between relevant futures. Mische (2014) uses the term sites of hyperprojectivity to characterize such debates over possible futures, indicating that these are arenas where the elaboration of future projections takes place. In the case of the refugee crisis, the counterfactual thinking notwithstanding, what we seem to encounter are rather sites of progressive reification of the future, than arenas of debate. This picture might be linked to the projective agency of the European actors in relation to the refugee journey. These actors manage the refugee movement, they devise a mechanism of distribution, and they regularize the irregular movement with the help of asylum procedures. The future projections are not as much debated as they are regularized and legalized. This facilitates the process of reification of the future to a great extent. When suggesting that the refugee crisis has triggered sites of progressive reification of the future we do not mean that the processes of reification progressed linearly, or that there were no debates taking place. Yet the rapid pace at which reification progressed overpowered the processes related to the forms of knowledge production and overwhelmed the imaginary of social actors.

Future projections in the making: Polish, Hungarian, and Romanian asylum policy In this third type of analysis, we approach the interaction between ignorance and projection genealogically, with a focus on the elaboration of future projections in the context of the European refugee crisis. The analysis is based on the same interactional assumptions that we advanced throughout this book. However, instead of looking at the ignorance-related effects as a particular outcome we focus on the genealogical and processual part of the story. We are interested less in identifying concrete ignorance-related effects, and more in capturing the role of ignorance in the elaboration and reformulation of future projections and of similar forms of anticipatory knowledge. We reconstruct how ignorance and projectivity play out in the process of elaboration of reified and targeted futures. The account is very much in the sense of what ignorance does. It allows us to see how in the context of the refugee crisis, ignorance is not only present – in the sense of identifiable effects – but it also does things. It facilitates the elaboration and even reification of future projections. In terms of analytical structure and intuition, this genealogical-cuminteractional type of analysis builds on Mische’s (2014) analysis of future projections in the debates regarding sustainable futures and the green

Ignorance and change  199

economy. Mische (2014, p. 2), as we discussed, treats these debates as sites of hyperprojectivity, that is, “sites of heightened, future-oriented public debate about possible futures.” She looks at how the possible futures are elaborated in contexts marked by interventions, debates, and deliberations in relatively unsettled times, a term she employs based on Swidler (1986, 2001). Our exploration herein follows Mische’s lead, while also incorporating some changes. Mische’s work, for instance, is at the level of narrative and grammar and aims to capture the manifestation of projectivity in texts that materialize in connection with a highly deliberative context. Ours, however, is more at the level of genealogy-cum-interaction, and interested in the processes of elaboration, negotiation, and mobilization regarding future projections. For this purpose, we bring in and aim to document the point of view of representatives and experts in public policy on asylum from Poland, Hungary, and Romania on the process. We try to see what and how public policy is seeing the entire process of elaboration of future projections in the context of crises and makes sense in relation to it – to paraphrase Scott’s (2008) seminal formula “seeing like a state”. Another point in which our analysis differs from that of Mische is that although we, like her, are interested in debates about possible futures in unsettled times, our research site is, nevertheless, one of crises. We thus expect that at stake is elaboration anew, or a reformulation of existing future projections, rather than elaboration per se. Still, the fact that our field research was conducted in Poland, Hungary, and Romania has the effect that the work of elaboration that Mische presents is quite visible here also. As stated in the foregoing presentation of Poland, Hungary, and Romania (Chapter 6), the issue of migration and asylum has entered the cycle of mediatization and politicization in these countries mainly due to the refugee crisis. The future projections on asylum, even if they existed before, did not enjoy a contested public presence or such appearances were taken for granted – following the EU letter for example. As Zaun (2017) pointed out, these countries counted as weak regulators of EU asylum policy. Once, however, the refugee crisis broke out, Poland, Hungary, and Romania became more actively engaged in the responses formulated by the EU, with Hungary explicitly behaving as a strong regulator even. This process entailed, to a great extent, the elaboration of future projections. Some of these projections were already present and needed to be remade. But there are also new situations which have emerged, and which required the solicitation of a great deal of effort to elaborate as an original act. Also worth mentioning is the fact that in line with our findings on the manifestation of projectivity in the media coverage of the refugee crisis in Poland, Hungary, and Romania, we understand the projections in the context of the refugee crisis as having an orientation area wider than the future per se. In the case of the refugees, for instance, the projections are not only predictions of the future, or attempts to bring a possible future

200  Ignorance and change

into existence. They are also embarking, mapping and navigating a journey, moving on a route, for instance. Although in this chapter we mainly focus on future projections, it is important to be aware that these manifest in relation to various dimensions that are related yet also distinct. The purpose of our fieldwork was to reconstruct how the refugee crisis and relocation are framed by the relevant actors in the asylum policy field and where projectivity is located in all this. We were interested in establishing whether there is a perception of paradigm change (Hall, 1993) or frame shift (Scholten, 2011) – whether there is an imposed necessity to reset the asylum agenda in terms of the futures that are being projected or reified, that is, a projection reset. We wanted to find out what the process of materialization of new projections is contingent on, as well as what the main processes interacting with ignorance are, and the dynamics of these encounters. We conducted interviews with informed specialists who were involved in the asylum policy field in the three countries long before the refugee crisis began. These specialists are located at the intermediate level in the power hierarchy, so to say. The participants were selected from organizations like immigration agencies, ministries responsible for migrant integration, border police, key non-governmental organizations, and key municipalities. They were all practitioners of the field with expert knowledge and experience, working either directly with refugees but more often in the governance of asylum policy. Their knowledge about the forced migration and asylum policies is more complex and based on direct experience than the knowledge of journalists, politicians and members of the general public. The interviews were conducted after the crisis when the political situation in regard to the refugee migration in these three countries somehow stabilized. We aimed to have about 20 interviews conducted in each country. Yet, due to the low response rate that we registered for our requests sent to Hungary – most probably because of the high level of politicization of the topic1 – this number was reached only for Poland and Romania. Whereas, in the case of Hungary, our researchers in the field conducted only half. This, on the other hand, gave the impetus to conduct interviews at the Hungarian-Serbian border, thus opening a path for exploring the national administrations-local authorities-local communities nexus. We also took this up with regard to Romania, having conducted interviews with actors engaged in asylum policy at the local level (in relation to an accommodation centre for asylum seekers) or in the debates around the opening of accommodation centres in the community. The selection of participants in each country was a consequence of the architecture of the national asylum policy field. In the case of Romania, for instance, it was more relevant to focus on the local level where the EU relocation scheme was implemented and where the local participants of the asylum policy field were involved in the process. Herein, because the asylum field is smaller, the involvement of local participants has more influence on the overall field.

Ignorance and change  201

It is worth noting that we conducted interviews at a time when the situation had already become stabilized, meaning that the discursive shifts, the frame changes, and the projection resets have already occurred. The changes in asylum policy and the materialization of new futures were prelegitimated and already happened, while the anti-immigrant attitudes of the large share of the Polish, Hungarian, and even Romanian society have been perceived as something irreversible in the nearest future. The future became reified as we presented it in the previous chapter. Observably, the media construction of the future influences the situation in the field. The normalization of the situation in the asylum policy field two years after the crisis also means that at the moment of conducting the interviews there was no place for “hot situations” (Callon, 1998, p. 266) and ad hoc interpretations of the reality anymore. The participants had been already involved in countless debates about the refugee crisis and its aftermath. The theorization in the field already occurred (Greenwood et al., 2002), so the answers to the questions were usually expressing well thought out views on the issue, which were able to draw the trajectories of elaboration of new futures in the asylum field. Nevertheless, the fact that the future projections stabilized also might have impacted the retrospective presentation of their elaboration in a somewhat linear fashion, a fact to which we paid due attention when analyzing the interviews. From this we noticed that the participants in the asylum field engage in counterfactual thinking themselves and thus have unintentionally countered our methodological worries. Another element we needed to pay attention to is that the framing and projection of possible futures by the participants in the asylum policy field represent the official line of their respective organizations. This may have an impact with regard to the manner in which they project the future, what kind of future they project, and how these actors interpret the interaction between ignorance and projection in their own turn. Crisis as projection reset The fact that the crisis, indeed, brought about a new context is essential for understanding the interaction between ignorance and projection. An important part of this new context is about the opening of possibilities that are related to knowledge and ignorance. The crisis then is not so much an opportunity for change, as it is a new context which contains opportunities for change, as well as whole series of practices, models and, above all, projections that need to be elaborated anew. The crisis is a reset that mobilizes projective agency of various kinds with the scope of establishing what the situation is, what the targeted future is, and what the actors are able to do about it or what they want to do about it. In the case of Poland, Hungary, and Romania, the dynamics of the processes of looking to establish what the new future is present certain common

202  Ignorance and change

elements yet also dissimilarities. What all three countries have in common, however, is the experience of the projection reset. Poland, Hungary, and Romania were all three put in the situation where they had to decide what exactly their situation in the context of the European refugee crisis is, what their experience with the movement of the refugees is, and what the future they are heading towards is – see Table 7.3. At the macro European level, what determined the projection reset was certainly the perceived lack of capacity for coping with the movement of the refugees travelling across the Mediterranean. At the national level of the three countries, however, as we discussed already, direct contact and experience of the need to cope with the movement of the refugees concerned only Hungary. This notwithstanding, the situation in all three countries changed. And this happened quite quickly. The crisis was experienced not only in terms of coping and managing the refugees’ movement but also as a reshuffling of local asylum policy in these three countries. This is why in our fieldwork the story of the EU refugee crisis comes out as a story of the remaking of domestic asylum policy. Depending on the situation, this is experienced as a step forward or a disruptive reshuffling. Projection emerges as a critical element in the managing of the crisis. It appears not only in the context of what the crisis is but also what its possible and envisaged futures might be. This is not only with regard to what is done at some point as a reaction but also the preparation of concrete responses to possible futures. In Poland, for instance, the crisis led to projective agency such as preventing the binding future (the arrival of relocated refugees) from happening. In a similar scenario to the cognitive mechanism of neglect of probability signalled by Sunstein (2003; see Sunstein and Zeckhauser, 2011) in relation to political risks that trigger fear and result in a demand for preventative action despite a low probability of happening, the electoral campaign reified the future of refugees in Poland as danger. It triggered fearmongering and thus allowed the new government to present itself as a shield that does not allow this future to manifest. In Hungary, on the other hand, the agency of national authorities targeted not as much a binding, possible, or reified future but a change of events happening in real life – the movement of the refugees on the territory of the country. This agency was likewise projective but more in the sense of managing the movement of the refugees – their navigated and mapped journey towards Europe – as well as of protecting the borders of Europe. Meanwhile, in Romania the crisis translated into actions of preparation and waiting that were linked with its decision to support the implementation of the relocation plan. The agency was projective because preparation and waiting are intrinsically oriented towards a reified future, trying more or less actively to bring it about or assume a smooth translation towards it. The new futures at the level of the asylum policy field did not emerge and develop in a linear fashion, however. In the case of Poland and Romania,

Shift (as reinforcement) of anti-immigration, decoupling, noncompliance with EU asylum directives, radically restrictive

Acceptance of EU binding future, elements of sabotage

Acceptance of EU binding future, implementation

Hungary Technocratic compliance, decoupling, and non-compliance with EU asylum directives

Romania Technocratic compliance with EU asylum directives

Shift (as reinforcement) of compliance with EU asylum directives

Shift, increasingly restrictive, decoupling from EU asylum directives

Convergent futures, acceptance of EU binding future, action of implementation

Technocratic compliance with EU asylum directives

Poland

Asylum policy change in the context of the crisis

Pre-crisis projections and futures

Pre-crisis asylum policy

Country

Politics (discursive shifts)

Change contingency

Acceptance of the EU binding future, elements of contestation, implementation of the system of action, preparation for implementation

Politics (discursive shifts), European Commission (nonrefundable funds)

Politics (discursive Acceptance of the shifts), status as future as binding yet frontline state not in the current EU implementation, a more progressive and visionary future is needed, implementation of certain systems of EU actions, sabotage of others

Overt acceptance and latent rejection and contestation of the EU-directed binding future, latent sabotage of the implementation if involving relocation

Projections and futures in the context of the crisis

Table 7.3 Projections, futures, and asylum policy in Poland, Hungary, and Romania

Ignorance and change  203

204  Ignorance and change

for instance, the elaboration of future projections appeared in jumps and changes of attitudes and positions. Even in Hungary which seemed to deliver a clear set of projections regarding what the country is or should be doing, there were certain perturbations and uncertainties along the way. As we may expect, the issues that required projective clarification and concretization are many. In order to illustrate the process, we will focus on the following three aspects: • • •

Is the country (directly) affected by the crisis? What is the response to the crisis? Does the country take part in the relocation programme?

All three questions resonate with the elements we explored in relation to the coverage of the European refugee crisis in the Polish, Hungarian, and Romanian media (Chapter 6). The responses given in the countries are not ad hoc but projective and performative with regard to the actions taken and the restructuring of the asylum policy at the national level. The elaboration Table 7.4 Elaboration of projections in the asylum policy field in Poland, Hungary, and Romania Country

Projections Is the country What is the response to Does the country take part (directly) affected the crisis? in relocation? by the crisis?

Poland

Hungary

Elaboration (debate, capture)

Elaboration (debate, capture)

Outright statement

Elaboration (development, reinforcement, reification)

Elaboration (debate, stabilization)

Decoupling (ambiguity, Decoupling (sabotage) uncertainty) Elaboration (reinforcement)

Manipulation, instrumentalization Romania

Elaboration Not realized, pending

Elaboration (apparent change) Reinforcement, conditioned by the pressure applied Disjunction, decoupling (withdrawal)

Elaboration (initial change, quick error correction) Transformation, complexification, subject to conditioning Disjunction, decoupling (withdrawal), not realized

Ignorance and change  205

of projection in this respect entailed basically recontextualization of the European refugee crisis at the level of Poland, Hungary, and Romania. In addition to the element of direct contact with the refugees in particular countries, the elaboration of the projection also demanded a reflection of the position that the three countries held in the international geopolitical register. Poland This country, as we saw, was characterized by a quite technocratic genre of asylum policies. The impact of the refugee crisis on the asylum policy field in Poland led, in an initial phase, to the proliferation of interaction between municipalities and NGOs. These networks elaborated models of practice and action in accordance to the newly formulated projection of increase in migration pressure. The most acute reset of projections in the asylum field came, however, only subsequent to Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (PiS) [Law and Justice] winning the elections and capturing asylum policymaking powers. The new government, for instance, took the decision to cease the transfer of Asylum Migration and Integration Fund support to NGOs. Given that the activity of many NGOs was built on the projection that this source of financing would not be exhausted in the nearest future, the crisis became inevitably identified with this radical change in the logic of financing. The consequence of the refugee crisis for many Polish NGOs thus entailed the elaboration of a new projection with regard to access to financial resources – the blocking of access to EU funds. With regard to the first aspect (i.e., Is the country (directly) affected by the crisis?), the projection that was elaborated was that Poland is at great risk of being affected by it, as well as that it has its own refugee (migrant) crisis to deal with. The projection regarding the high potentiality of being affected by the crisis emerged in relation to the spectrum of relocation, while the notion that Poland was experiencing a refugee crisis itself referred to immigration from Ukraine. This offered an alternative or guarantee against the EU refugee quotas. The accounts given by the participants in the Polish asylum field allow one to see how the elaboration of these two projections developed upon the initial negotiations and the subsequent capturing of policymaking by PiS. They show how the elaboration of these interrelated projections was contingent on domestic politics and the unfolding of mediatization and politicization of the refugee crisis and migration issue. The participants in the asylum field related to the futures elaborated by the national authorities in a critical and counterfactual manner. Accordingly, irrespective of whether the refugee-type immigration would or would not directly affect Poland, the labour-immigration type certainly will, and this might even be conducive to social problems in the future. The quickly increasing number of Ukrainian

206  Ignorance and change

labour immigrants in Poland is a fact which renders that the projection of increased migration pressure on the country is materializing. The scenario of possible mass immigration from Ukraine, however, has a complicated status. The participants in the asylum policy field showed how labour migration from Ukraine was used by PiS politicians (including the Prime Minister) to justify the rejection of the relocation of asylum seekers from Italy and Greece. As a result of this stance, the Polish government could not but ignore the economic benefits of fulfilling this projection and the fact that the government itself supported the materialization of Ukrainian migration even after having mobilized their voters with anti-immigrant rhetoric. There is also the issue that Poland had embarked on preparations for the scenario of asylum migration from Ukraine already in 2014, subsequent to Russia’s aggression. Still, according to the participants in the asylum policy field, apart from the political instrumentalization of the topic, the projection of mass immigration from the former USSR was not taken into account in the public debates and by the decision makers. Moving to the next aspect (i.e., What is the response to the crisis?), the elaborated projection was rejection of refugees, supplemented to the level that the Polish state will cease accepting any asylum seekers at all. The dynamics of the political debate regarding the relocation programme in 2015 thus also triggered questions about the acceptance of the asylum seekers applying for protection at the Polish border. One of the projections that was formulated was that in order to show how adamant the PiS politicians are towards rejecting the refugees, the state will also block the traditional channels of forced migration to Poland. The participants in the Polish asylum field documented and commented on how this radical shift in asylum policymaking occurred. The movement from technocratic asylum policy managed in the shadow of public attention transformed into a highly visible asylum policymaking process which no longer follows EU guidelines, but rather aligns well with the new Hungarian model instead. With regard to the third aspect (i.e., Does the country take part in the relocation programme?), the projection that was elaborated at the political level was that Poland takes part in relocation yet because of inadequate conditions it cannot carry out its pledge. Poland formally decided to engage in the relocation programme, yet subsequent to the elections the government updated the projection in the direction of no relocation without the withdrawal from the programme having ever been formalized. The new PiS government operated with two sets of projections. For the European Commission: Poland takes part in relocation, yet it cannot fulfil its pledge because of safety reasons. For Polish public opinion: Poland withdrew from the relocation programme. The elaboration of these two sets of projections occurred as a contentious development that was settled with PiS winning the elections and with the decision not to participate in relocation eventually stabilizing. As part of

Ignorance and change  207

the debates on the abandonment of the projection regarding participation in the relocation plan, the decision of Poland to close its borders and refuse to relocate migrants was also rationalized by the projection that there is no point in helping those who do not need it (economic migrants) or those who eventually won’t need it (and thus creating places in Poland for people who intend to leave the country). These all fits well with the official explanation of the political decisions of the Polish government, that it is better (and at the same time most economically effective) to help at crisis hotspots, that is, in refugee camps in Lebanon, and that it is not necessary to create places for people who will leave Poland. The previous government accepted these commitments knowing that most of these people […] will not be here in Poland. The current government approached the matter responsibly. Knowing that they will not come anyway, why should we commit ourselves, accept and create bureaucratic procedures for accepting applications, when we would have to take a decision and increase the percentage of refusals again or […] withdrawals of applications due to the fact that this person is not present in Poland. (P_Interview 4) The participants in the asylum field revealed the uncertainties and pressures that were caused inside the field by the succession and partial overlap of contradictory projections that occurred during the overall contentious elaboration regarding relocation. They point to instances of disjunction and decoupling orchestrated from above. As it emerges from the accounts of the participants in the policy asylum field, subsequent to the decision to accept the asylum seekers from Greece and Italy the state agencies started preparing to implement the decision. They were also joined by local authorities and NGOs who projected that they were going to be involved in the accommodation of relocated asylum seekers. There seems to have been a consensus that fulfilling the Polish pledge to accept 6,182 relocated asylum seekers in two years was not problematic from the perspective of operational capacities. The actions to be taken by their organizations would have been standard ones, and the challenges they would face would be rather of a technical kind – such as translation from languages which are not widely known in Poland like that spoken by the Eritrean community. How the future was going to look was quite clear for the representatives of state agencies and NGOs involved in the process. The number of asylum seekers who were destined for relocation over the two years was half as large as the number of asylum seekers arriving to Poland at that time,2 so there would not be much additional pressure on institutions. The participants in the policy asylum field thus had the means and knowledge to materialize the Polish pledge. It was rather the political situation

208  Ignorance and change

that emerged around the decision to relocate the asylum seekers which was the source of the uncertainty. No, in terms of the number of applications and in terms of our asylum procedures, no. Of course, politically it was quite a hot time, because we did not know what we were preparing for. How will Poland react to this crisis? (P_Interview 8) The heated political debates regarding the relocation programme were increasing the uncertainty regarding the directions in which things should happen. A certain state of projection haziness and even disharmony was created in which the state agencies had to prepare for future participation in the relocation plan long after the political declarations of dropping out of the programme were announced by the new PiS government subsequent to the party’s victories in the parliamentary elections in October 2015. Beata Szydło who served as Prime Minister of Poland from 2015 to 2017 never officially renounced the decision regarding Poland’s participation in the relocation programme. Poland was simply not fulfilling its pledge. This led to the situation that at the beginning of Prime Minister Szydło’s term in office, the institutions involved in asylum protection in Poland were all still working according to the projection that Poland was taking part in the relocation programme. In early 2016, an ordinance regulating the arrival of the first group of refugees was even drafted. However, this was not advertised as such by the government whose official line in Poland was that we are not going to accommodate any refugees. The participants in the asylum policy field gave accounts that amount to a certain liminality, or a period of transition without actual transition, in which two projections were being materialized at once. On the one hand, the original projection that Poland was taking part in relocation, which although somehow hidden from public opinion never ceased to exist actually, and on the other hand, the new projection that Poland was renouncing the relocation scheme, which although announced to the public at the beginning was materialized in conditions of uncertainty. It was only subsequently that it became clear that the second projection would be the one that actually counts for the organizations present in the field. Hungary In the case of Hungary, there was a radical and overt change from the pre2015 standardized asylum system to an overt and over-restrictive one. The new system entailed the erection of the razor-wire fence, the closing of reception centres, the introduction of the transit zones with closed regimes, and even the restriction of support to the refugees who had already been granted

Ignorance and change  209

asylum in the country. The participants in the asylum policy field pointed to a change of status in terms of asylum policy. They uncover the ambitions of the country to become a new Europe of sorts, having moved from being a member state that follows the patterns introduced by the EU with regard to asylum policy to being a pattern giver. The participants showed how this new pattern in asylum policy had the appearance of legality, though in actuality it undermined the asylum principles and even the entire system from inside – in the words of one participant, it lead to the “minimalization” of the asylum system (H_Interview 1). They discussed in detail how the new Hungarian system not only aimed to make the country a less desirable destination for refugees, it also put the EU funds it received to use for advancing border control, and it drastically marginalized collaboration with NGOs. What is also revealing in how the participants saw the reset in the projections regarding the asylum system in Hungary is that even when they distance themselves from it, they rarely do so one hundred percent. In the event that participants in the asylum policy field disagreed with the obvious abuses, they still seemed to recognize and appreciate the fact that Hungary attempted to make a statement of sovereignty in relation to the EU and to renegotiate some of the terms of the relationship. They reveal a quite dynamic and intricate relation in which the rule of the behaviour of the Hungarian government is to refute the solutions that Western Europe comes up with. While at the same time, the country expects from the EU recognition of its mission in the refugee crisis as well as financial support – such as for the erection of the border fence. In relation with the first aspect (i.e., Is the country (directly) affected by the crisis?), the projection that was elaborated instantly and naturally at the political level is that Hungary certainly is affected. Although this fact, for obvious reasons, is accepted unconditionally by the participants in the asylum policy field, several participants did make the point that the refugees were merely passing through and the resources and efforts extended by the Hungarian institutions were not taxed to the point that they could have been, or to the extent that they were in Western Europe, for example. In this perspective, Hungary although affected by the refugee mobility was not affected by the crisis, at least not initially. Hungary rather allowed the development of the perception that it was being affected by the crisis by, for instance, letting the refugees to be visible in public spaces in a state of decay and disorder that was meant to alert the public of their presence. One participant in the asylum system, for instance, made the point that the projection that Hungary might be affected by a refugee influx started to make its way into distinct political communications as early as 2014. The possible future communicated being that in such an event, Hungary will be able to accommodate the incoming people. Once the possible scenario became reality, however, the government did not do anything and in this way it allowed for the projection that it is affected by the crisis to evolve – “this

210  Ignorance and change

was the whole idea, to render this crowd of people visible, to present it in the media in a proper manner, as to allow for the further continuation of this negative campaign” (H_Interview 4). In relation to the second issue (i.e., What is the response to the crisis?), Hungary shows an almost linear development towards statements such as Hungary cannot handle the crisis; Hungary does not welcome refugees; and Hungary will defend the country and the European borders. The elaboration of these projections is contingent on domestic politics. In the context of the refugee crisis, the asylum policy was run by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party which conferred it with a certain texture of unity (unlike the Polish case, for instance). The asylum policy during the crisis, however, was also subjected to changes at the border and actions of Hungary’s neighbours related to controlling irregular movement. This last element entailed, for instance, that Hungary moved from allowing the transport of refugees towards Austria and Germany towards blocking the refugees’ access to its territory once the irregular transfers were stopped. These two strategies, at first glance, seem quite distinct. They, however, fit one general pattern – the agency of Hungary was aimed at keeping the refugees out of the country. The participants in the asylum policy field comment quite comprehensibly on the three projective statements. The first one, Hungary cannot handle the crisis, is a recurrent one. The participants approach it both factually as well as symbolically – Was the country prepared or not to handle the crisis? What did this fact entail on the political level? How it was exploited? The participants advanced interpretations that are not always convergent. Some participants considered that Hungary was not prepared to offer assistance; the country knew this very well, and it was worried about a situation in which the refugees, due to the closure of the Western border for instance, ended up remaining in the country. Others considered the elaboration of the projection that Hungary could not handle the situation to have been actually purposively induced. Hungary could have handled the emergency situation, and the fact that it presented itself as unable was meant to increase the visibility of the refugees. The second issue, that is, Hungary does not welcome refugees, is by far the dominant projection with which the participants in the asylum field engaged. They indicated how the Hungarian authorities embarked on it quite quickly, how they linked it with the security-threat issue, and used it instrumentally to strengthen their political narrative. The projection that Hungary does not welcome refugees appears to have moved from a short-time projection into a reified ideology quite quickly. It was important that this projection reveals that in the case of Hungary the response to the crisis was not to resolve the refugee problem as such but to keep the refugees from entering the country. In this regard the participants pointed to a progressive disengagement with the issue, especially on the humanitarian and social assistance side. The Hungarian response practically meant closed ghettoization, removal of the

Ignorance and change  211

problem. Its approach was shrouded in mystery, being triggered also by the security and defence approach of the country. So that’s about the essence of the Hungarian asylum system at the moment. There is now an ideology built up here, and I think in the beginning this was just a short-term, medium-term pattern of communication, which subsequently managed to grow into an ideology. (H_Interview 6) The third purposive statement, Hungary will defend the country, also comes across as a political one. The participants in the asylum policy field showed how this was woven by the political elite and national authorities as a response to an alleged danger – “Are there any refugees? What are we going to do? Defend the country” (H_Interview 6). The participants considered that the danger spectrum facilitated the rapidity with which the projection was elaborated as well as the urgency of its scope. It also rendered coping with the crisis rather difficult in practice for institutional actors. Importantly, the participants in the asylum policy field sensed the framing of the so-called crisis mood (H_Interview 1) which emerged in Europe and became articulated in the context of the 2008 global economic crisis and the communication about the crisis on the internet and social media. The integration in the broader European context notwithstanding, the participants in the asylum policy field did not take too seriously the role of Hungary as the defender of European borders. In this interpretation, even the construction of the fence appears as mainly symbolic – either in intention or as effect. Though, we should add, this perspective on the fence is not universal. We also encountered the opinion that the fence functions as a tool of Hungarian sovereignty. This takes us to the following major aspect which constituted the subject of projection elaboration – does the country take part in the relocation programme? In Hungary, the projection in the case of relocation overlapped with the response to the crisis: the country does not want any refugees. The participants in the asylum system insisted that there were no debates. Rather, the governmental authorities simply communicated their position. The participants also highlighted that unlike other countries which initially refused relocation but ultimately agreed to it while also engaging in sabotage, the refusal of Hungary to take part was stubborn and overt from the very beginning up until the end. Apart from the legal and technical aspects of the debate between Hungary and the EU on this issue, the participants in the asylum field also indicated that the refusal of Hungary was an issue of politics rather than pragmatics. The country would likely have argued against any other solution that EU had come up with. Another interesting point is that some of the participants in the asylum policy field argued that would Hungary have opted for the opposite response in the case of the

212  Ignorance and change

programme – yes to relocation – it could have been prepared to take in the allotted refugees. The refusal of the relocation plan is thus a statement by Hungary against the projection of the EU asylum policy upon the Member States, a statement of autonomy. Yet, as some participants indicated, this involved manipulation, misinformation and misinterpretation employed to target the relocation scheme and formulate steps taken in relation to it – such as the organization of the controversial quota referendum. It seems that the reification of the future and the stubborn adherence to it facilitate the application of questionable ignorance practices. The participants in the asylum policy field offer a rich picture of how the aspect (i.e., Does the country take part in the relocation programme?) was politically exploited by the Hungarian political elite, both in terms of autonomization in relation to the EU, as well as strengthening ties with the electorate inside the country. As in the case of the other two projections – Is the country directly affected by the crisis? and What is the response to the crisis? – however, it is important to underline that the participants in the asylum policy field were if not affirmative then at least understanding of the projections elaborated by the political authorities. This fact comes into view especially when the asylum policy field interacts with the international context of the crisis. The participants in the asylum policy field manifested, for instance, a certain lack of trust regarding the possible behaviour and delinquency in asylum processing of their Italian and Greek counterparts during a possible relocation scenario. This recalls, as we just saw, the official line of Poland regarding the insufficient conditions to properly carry out the relocation plan there. Romania The refugee crisis in Romania entailed an initial energetic top-down mobilization in the form of a platform of collaboration between representatives of ministries, secret services and the civil society. In this context, and this is where Romania differs from Poland and Hungary, the crisis brought the projection of increased access to EU funds. This interessement in the issue and window of opportunity notwithstanding, the participants in the asylum plan drew attention to a certain lack of authenticity, quick symbolic exhaustion and abandonment of the problem of the refugee crisis by the national authorities. They also indicated the articulation of a certain logic of delegation of the management of the refugee problem to the General Inspectorate for Immigration (IGI). That is the specialized body of public administration entrusted with implementing Romanian policies in the fields of migration, asylum, and foreigner integration – IGI is the one that deals with the refugees. In relation to the first issue (i.e., Is the country directly affected by the crisis?), the projection that was elaborated in the case of Romania was that

Ignorance and change  213

the country is not affected by the crisis, yet it might turn out to be. As the participants in the asylum policy field point out, the not affected part of the projection had to do with Romania being a poor country or a country that is unattractive or where refugees will not stay. While the might turn out to be part was linked with the possibility that subsequent to being derailed from Serbia to Croatia, the journey of the refugees would become oriented towards Romania eventually, or that the Black Sea route might move from a theoretical possibility to a real one. In both scenarios, a crisis would have erupted because, according to the projection, the capacity of the country to host the incoming refugees would have been surpassed. The various acts of preparation that the country embarked upon also appear to be an important factor for the elaboration of the projection that Romania might be directly affected by the crisis – “I know that the authorities were trying to prepare a little in the event that the migratory wave could derail” (R_Interview 3). The preparation undertaken amounts to a clear performative and projective agency. There is thus a strong intuition, backed up by real signals, that things are either changing or about to change, that the status of the country as a transit state is getting stronger and that this will affect the future. The projection that Romania might be directly affected by the crisis did not persist long. Or, better stated, a second projection came along that challenged or undermined the first. The future projection that the country will be affected by the crisis became less and less probable, until even the opposite was reified. As the participants in the policy asylum field reported, this had to do with fact that the movement of the refugees across Romania did not materialize. There was an increase in asylum applications, but the phenomenon was not of proportions. In a similar vein, there were boats arriving at the Black Sea, but they amounted to irregular maritime movement, were sporadic and without continuity, and did not constitute a trend. The Black Sea, because of the difficulties in crossing it, did not translate into a new route. All this was supplemented or additionally confirmed by the feedback that the refugees are reported to have given. As the participants in the asylum policy field noted, stories about refugees refusing to come to Romania, and even revolting, were circulating without inhibition. I also happen to know […] that the moment when such migrants or refugees were brought to Romania through the quotas we pledged to cover at the European level, when people woke up in Romania, most of them were upset that they came here, because they did not want this thing to happen. (R_Interview 2) It is worth noting that the participants in the field recurrently referred to the refugees’ perception regarding Romania as one of the reasons why

214  Ignorance and change

the possible future of refugees trying to integrate in Romania did not ­materialize – their perception of Romania affects their desire to stay here. The imaginary of refugees regarding the wellbeing in different countries thus influenced the manner in which they projected their journey and the destination point they chose. In this context, the projection that got elaborated regarding Romania was that this is a transit country, and not a targeted destination. If this perception was common among the participants in the asylum policy field, then this is certainly one point that strongly suggested that the future of Romania was beyond its control. Whether Romania was affected directly by the crisis or not was subjected to exogenous factors. This was also the main point in which the differentiation between Romania, on the one hand, and Poland and Hungary, on the other, revealed itself the most. With regard to the second issue (i.e., What is the response of the country to the refugee crisis?), the projection that was elaborated in the country was that Romania will act in accordance with the response drafted at the level of the EU. At some point, when the opposition of Romania to the relocation plan was voiced, this projection occurred to have been changed. As one participant put it – “We seemed to be in the same group as Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, that is the group with the ones who have this refugee-phobia, i.e. they are afraid of refugees” (R_Interview 5). Yet the participants make the point that even in this case the retrospective approach is that this was a mistake and that for Romania no projection, other than the one linking it with the EU and European values, was, in fact, possible. The opposition to the mandatory quotas was, in fact, taking issue with the obligatory aspect, without, however, amounting to a departure from the EU. In the best case, it was a moment of wandering but not a shift of projections per se. If anything, the participants in the asylum policy field reiterated that the country was clear on its loyalty to European principles. What appeared as decisive momentum in terms of projection in the case of Romania was, however, not as much a shift, as it was a certain disjunction, decoupling. On the one hand, there was the projection that Romania will respond to the crisis in accordance with the response drafted at the level of the EU. This projection is linked with Romania’s almost automatic adherence to EU norms, and the legislative and institutional achievements of the country thus far. On the other hand, the projection that there is no crisis to respond to or that there is no point in engaging with the asylum issue. The participants in the asylum policy field pointed out in this sense that the projection that entailed that the refugees will not come to Romania has led to a certain sense of futility and associated disengagement with the whole thing: this issue regarding relocation, and generally the topic of asylum in Romania, is not taken seriously because […] they are all counting on the

Ignorance and change  215

fact that Romania is not a destination country […] and on the fact that the people will never stay here. (R_Interview 10) Meanwhile at the level of everyday policy implementation, where there is direct contact with the refugees, it led to frustration – “we have this feeling that we work, and we do so, but our work does not materialize because they choose to leave” (R_Interview 4). The situation in Romania, we see, was thus a bit different than in the other two countries. In Poland, for instance, the absence of refugees in the country did not act as a deterrent in the advancement of politicization. If anything, it even furthered the politicization of the issue and enhanced the engagement of political elites and national authorities with the topic – even though this entailed refusal to cope with it in accordance with EU prescriptions. With regard to the third issue (i.e., Does the country take part in the relocation programme?), as we already pointed out, in the case of Romania, the initial projection that was elaborated was that the country has a negative attitude towards relocation. The country, nevertheless, subsequently and quite quickly changed its mind, deciding to implement the decision of the European Council and to bring into existence the binding future that comes with it. Why did this change of projections from no relocation to yes to relocation occur? The participants in the asylum policy field indicated that the political actors quickly became aware of the political miscalculation that they were about to commit. They were also acting based on the assumption that the number of refugees who decided to stay would actually be different from the number who were initially relocated. The projection that the country takes part in the relocation programme solidified quite quickly, despite the initial moment of hesitation. The interesting phenomenon, however, is that the question of whether Romania takes or does not take part in the relocation process soon converged with whether the refugees accept being relocated to this country or not. The participants in the asylum policy field allow us to see quite clearly the convergence of these two projections. The waiting and uncertainty situation that we witnessed in the case of Poland is thus created again. This time, however, it flourishes not as much in relation with the form of the projection – does the country take part in relocation or not? – but regarding how this will ­materialize – will the refugees accept being relocated or not? The participants in the asylum policy field showed that the relocation programme works in such a manner that there is a conditionality of various projective sequences and thus revealed the mutual contingency and complexity of the issue. The country has to make a projection of the number of refugees it can accept for relocation which eventually should be matched with the request of the refugees to come to this country – the refugees had the opportunity to choose which EU country to go to and Romania was not one of them.

216  Ignorance and change

As it emerges from the accounts of the participants in the asylum policy field, the situation that was shaped was that Romania did not relocate refugees at the pace it pledged to. This was, however, more contingent than wilful, and even retrospectively anticipated. The situation is quite interesting, because the participants indicated that the projection that Romania is an active participant in the relocation plan is there, and there are actions being taken to prepare for it, but the execution of the plan fails to fully solidify because it is contingent on elements beyond the control of Romania, or which require a longer time and more complex steps to address. The more detailed technically qualified accounts of the participants in the asylum policy field are quite interesting and useful for understanding Romania’s participation in the relocation plan. These show basically how the projection that Romania takes part in the relocation plan was practically undermined not only by what the refugees wanted but also by the everyday bureaucratic regime of relocation. The relocation procedure was designed sequentially and presupposed fit of projective agencies in the process that did not always materialize in practice. We complied with the decisions, we worked with Greece and Italy very well, we sent the pledges, but unfortunately they were unable to cope with the requests we sent and their number for the persons referred for transfer was much smaller in comparison with the pledges we sent. (R_Interview 13) What is the outcome of this complexification and dissociative dynamic? At the projective level, the situation is somehow without an exit and almost completely contingent on what is going on at the international level. While at the level of practice, the participants in the asylum policy field lamented about a certain state of easiness reportedly triggered by the disappearance of the external factor of pressure – not to get involved because there is no pressure to. It seems that a certain lack of interest and real engagement in trying to keep the refugees was pivotal. It was a certain fatalism, the participants in the asylum policy field underlined, that was not totally imagined. It was also based on a certain experience with relocation, as well as habitual job anxieties linked with support for integration. Crisis as projection and ignorance Throughout the book, we discussed various facets of the production and reproduction of ignorance in the context of the European refugee crisis of 2015–2016. In the analysis of the processes of contestation taking place in the academic research, for instance, we indicated how the relevant literature observes effects of ignorance even in simple and standard mechanisms of categorization (refugees vs. migrants) and framing (the refugee crisis as

Ignorance and change  217

crisis) – see Chapter 4. We have also identified and classified what seemed to be concrete ignorance-related effects of the interaction between ignorance and various forms of knowledge – see Chapters 5 and 7. What renders the genealogical-cum-interactional approach special, in this regard, is that it allows one to see the manner in which forms of projection and ignorance can be intermingled and support each other in the context of the crisis. Trying to depict the manner in which asylum policy perceives this issue is extremely relevant because it so happens that the participants in the field have a quite elaborated and comprehensive understanding of the dynamics. They themselves refer to ignorance in order to explain several processes. The participants in the asylum policy field in Poland, Hungary, and Romania expressed their disappointment with lessons that were not learned and overall had a good intuition of the processes of projection and the reification of the unfolding future – although they might not explicitly depict them in these terms. 1

There are various modalities in which the interaction between ignorance and projection in the context of the European refugee crisis occurs in the accounts of the participants in the asylum policy field. To begin with, we see quite clearly the manner in which ignorance affects the processes of projection and anticipatory knowledge. The participants answer questions about what happened in the past, when the so-called refugee crisis broke out, and imagine the consequences of the decisions made by their countries at that time. They also indicate possible futures that their countries might have attended, yet these developed as not articulated, or not realized (see non-becoming in Scott et al., 2016; Scott, 2018), or were simply unattendable because of incompatibility on an axiological level, for instance. Not articulated futures are possible scenarios that are not formally enunciated and are practically ignored in the public debate. These occur predominantly in the accounts of the participants in the asylum policy field in Poland who mention alternative scenarios that although were well crafted by individual actors who had an expertise in asylum, did not manage to change their status to something more concrete. These ideas, which eventually became neglected possible futures, such as the humanitarian corridors, or the reception centres outside of the EU, are source of counterfactual thinking and even frustration. The participants in the Polish asylum policy field were obviously having a hard time adjusting to the situation and the official line on asylum policy. This perfectly shows how the mechanism of reified future works: the alternative futures (to the official future) are known by certain individuals but they are supressed at the level of their organizations and the knowledge about alternative projections is ignored at the level of the asylum policy field and the general public.

218  Ignorance and change

2

Not realized or non-becoming futures, in comparison, enjoy a certain acknowledgement even though this comes in the form of couldhave-been and counterfactual pasts. Hungary offers arguably the most illustrative example. This country, as was pointed out, could have had engaged in a more democratic manner in the refugee crisis, and could have agreed to the solutions advanced by the EU. Instead, however, it chose to build a fence along its southern border and to suspend its mainstream asylum system procedures, as well as to use the EU funds it had at its disposal for restrictive policies. In other words, the window of opportunity was there for Hungary to play its role differently. The national authorities, however, have never opted for such a future because according to their projection Hungary was supposed to act differently, to take a distinct road than EU, and perhaps even to go in the opposite direction. Plus, the local conditions and uncertainty asked for geopolitical circumspection and eventually imposed a future that does not welcome refugees and is in opposition to the relocation plan as the most rational projection. Unattendable futures, on the other hand, are potentialities that may very well be realized given directed efforts to that end, but for various reasons these simply cannot be taken into account. We saw this clearly at work in Romania when the participants in the asylum field discussed why Romania did not take the path of Poland and Hungary in terms of their instrumentalization of the crisis as an act of Member State rebellion or as a statement of autonomy in their relationship with the EU. The way the participants see it, this was a possible yet unattendable future. The principles Romania adheres to, the advanced legal development of their asylum policy, and even the low level of debate on migration and refugee-related issues in the country are indicated as circumstances which ruled out application of the Polish and Hungarian models. Although, at the same time, by taking these actions the agency of these countries was also confirmed and their power to impose their point of view was admired. Regardless of the ultimate configuration, whether not articulated, not realized, or unattendable, what has happened to all these futures in the context of the refugee crisis is that, one way or another, they were ignored. Ignorance thus manifests as a future-shaping selection and framing tool to begin with. While in the case of more stabilized and taken for granted forms of anticipatory knowledge, this is a condition of reification or “unmarkedness” (Scott et al., 2016; Scott, 2018; Zerubavel, 2018), in the sense of futures being less valued and presumed eventualities, basically. The interrelated genealogy of projection and ignorance also manifests in the effect that projection has on ignorance, namely, its elaboration and reification. The direction of the relationship seems a little harder

Ignorance and change  219

to ascertain. Still, from the accounts of the participants in the asylum policy field it emerges quite clearly that projection of the future has the effect of triggering attention and mobilization of resources with regard to its preparation or containment. Ignorance is thus transformed by the elaboration of new futures. Yet this is also reproduced given that the investment in specific and selected futures usually occurs in the context of well-established rules of ignorance operating at the epistemic level. Due to the high level of politicization in Poland, the stabilization of the future there was contingent on shifts in the domestic politics. Although reification emerged, the influence of the political sphere meant that it was vulnerable to possible new changes in the regime. In terms of regimes of ignorance this meant that change occurred with every newly established future bringing new logics of ignorance that are quickly articulated, yet this process was, if not reversible, then at least capable of undergoing change in the future. In the case of Hungary, however, reification evolved at such a quick pace and the projection ideologized so swiftly that new rules of ignorance were formed without a debate on the issue even having taken place. The participants in the asylum policy field depicted quite descriptively how this calcification of rules of ignorance occurred, and how the advancement of reification closed the space for debate around the new futures. Hungary’s policies reflected such a definite rejection of the refugees and relocation plan that changing course on the issue was unimaginable. In the case of Romania, the participants in the asylum policy field pointed not as much to marginalization of potential debate, as to displacement of it. The processes of neglect of probability in the media reflect this by the envisaging of terrorist scenarios, for instance, which holds the place of a real debate in the public sphere. Projection thus has the effect of reproducing the regime of ignorance and creates a feedback effect, especially when elaborated on the basis of advanced ignorance about a topic. As several participants in the asylum policy field in the three countries let it be understood, the lack of the debate and of discursive engagement on the part of the civil society allowed basically the sensationalist coverage of the crisis to unfold and for the reification of negative scenarios to move forward. Another manner in which projection, and reification of future in particular, impacts ignorance is by advancing the ignorance of individual knowledge. Possible future scenarios alternative to the official line of the government were projected by the participants in the asylum policy field. Yet the scenarios had the status of individual knowledge which made it easier for these to be ignored on the level of organizations, on the level of the asylum policy field and the level of the whole society. The following conclusion thus emerges: individual knowledge is not enough

220  Ignorance and change

3

to translate into collective use. The interaction of dominant projections and the process of reification of the future allows powerful actors and the broader public to ignore even the knowledge of experts in the field. The reification of the future marginalizes alternative projections and individual knowledge of actors that is not formalized in the form of frames in the field. This causes not only frustration but also conformity to the reified future, and thus the reproduction of ignorance of individual expert knowledge. What can we tell about the relation between projection and ignorance? The elaboration of new projections, and the reification of new futures is one of the forms by which the regimes of ignorance change. Ignorance facilitates the reification of new futures. While, at the same time, the new futures delimit what will be ignored and what cannot be ignored in the context of resetting projections. The reification triggers preparation which presupposes investment efforts that are knowledge-related. Let us now move forward to explore the genealogical interaction between projection and ignorance, as it manifests in the context of the European refugee crisis. The main conclusion that emerges is that ignorance change is contingent on, and reactive to projection change, or that in order for ignorance to change, the manner in which the future is envisaged has to change also. Furthermore, the way in which the elaboration of new futures comes about is also relevant. In the context of the refugee crisis, as we saw, the elaboration of new futures was subjected to both endogenous as well as exogenous pressure and conditionality – see Table 7.4. The most consistent change, however, seems to have occurred in the cases when the change in the form of projection came from inside, or when it came from outside yet the pressure was sustained for long enough as to induce internal institutional restructuring or path dependency.

We see this quite clearly when we look at the three countries. The elaboration of new futures in the case of Romania is conditioned from outside. Meanwhile, in the case of Poland and Hungary there appears to be a more endogenous dynamic at play, or at least the endogenous and wilful elaboration of new futures overshadows the exogenous and imposed component. Even in the case when the projections of Poland are contingent on what is going on outside – as in the scenario of accepting to take part in the relocation plan that would have entailed that the refugees might choose not to stay in the country – this situation is instrumentalized and taken advantage of in order to advance new projections or bolster legitimacy. We observe a similar dynamic in the case of Hungary. The participants in the asylum policy field revealed how the country was uncertain whether refugees would continue to transit through their territory. This notwithstanding, this issue appears to have never influenced its policy in a significant manner. Romania, however,

Ignorance and change  221

indulged in waiting and preparation and seems not to have exploited the available potential for change – not in a satisfactory manner at least. It is also difficult to say whether Romania is a victim of the conditionality imposed from outside the country, or whether it perfectly exploited the situation in order to advance its interests. The accounts coming from the participants in the asylum field render both scenarios possible, even at the same time. Irrespective of which is the actual case, what is being pointed out almost unanimously is that there is a loss of opportunity on the part of Romania to engage more seriously. Or, more explicitly, Romania was given and acted on this opportunity, yet given that the projections of the future were not maintained or they were not fulfilled – the refugees did not arrive in high numbers for instance – the country disengaged, having slowed the rhythm of preparation and eventually abandoning the projected future. How does this situation regarding projection reflect in changes of ignorance? In the case of Poland, overall we notice both a change in the regime of ignorance as well as the fact that this takes place in relation to the establishment of new futures in the context of the refugee crisis. On the strategic level, the change in the regime of ignorance is dynamic and reoccurring. The crisis made the reality of the situation so apparent that the refugee problem could not be ignored any longer. And, indeed, the initial projection that the country would engage in responsibility-sharing seemed to cause a change in this regime. On the other hand, as we saw, the projections elaborated regarding the response to the refugee crisis and participation in the relocation programme were undergoing change contingent on the internal reconfigurations in the political system in the country – see Table 7.5. In Poland the politicization level of the crisis became high, and national authorities elaborated projections regarding the refugee crisis by bringing in other elements and engaging mechanisms of analogy with dubious Table 7.5 Ignorance change in the asylum policy field in Poland, Hungary, and Romania Country

Change of ignorance (dimension) Strategic

Cognitive

Epistemic

Poland

Yes, dynamic, reoccurring

Yes

Yes, decoupling

Hungary

Yes, though it stabilizes Yes, though it stabilizes Yes, though it stabilizes

Romania

Yes, low

Initially yes, inside policymaking Not realized

No

222  Ignorance and change

legitimacy – such as the analogy between the refugees and the labour migrants from Ukraine. Thus, we may conclude, the change in the country’s strategic ignorance is there. The fact that this is contingent on the power games in the political system, however, renders that this change is relatively unstable. The new futures, although elaborated, are not as certain. They, nevertheless, are reified yet only within the limits of the political regime that is in power. Should the regime change, the logic of ignorance would change also. Change in the regime of ignorance in the case of Poland is visible in relation to the next two dimensions – strategic and epistemic – also. The production of new knowledge was fundamental to the change in the strategic dimension we just discussed. Basically, the change in the strategic ignorance is supported and legitimized by various revelations – such as the data regarding the involvement of Poland in the Common European Asylum System, for example, the numbers of asylum seekers annually returned to Poland in the framework of the Dublin Regulation. These have the quality of fact revelations in the contexts of the debate taking place. As far as the epistemic dimension of ignorance is concerned this seems to have changed because of the change in the position of Poland as a weak regulator of the EU asylum policy. Poland emerged as a state whose role vis-à-vis the EU fundamentally changed, at least in this context; and its status as a humble implementor of EU directives was derailed. As far as Hungary is concerned, the dynamics of elaboration of new futures appears to be a game-changer as it was in the case of Poland, however, it manifested differently. As we saw earlier, in the case of Hungary, the futures that were elaborated with regard to the refugees and the response to the crisis were quite radical and stabilized from the very beginning. The change was much more sudden and overt than for instance in Poland wherein although the shifts occurred at least two times, these were not as explicit. The reformulation of the projection regarding relocation subsequent to PiS winning the parliamentary elections, for instance, was not announced officially. There was no shift or overturn of projections, but instead a kind of symbiosis and decoupling. In the case of Hungary, however, there is no ambivalence, uncertainty, or signs of undecided ignorance. The futures change; they change from the beginning, and they do so quite radically. The effects at the level of regimes of ignorance are directly observable. Everything changes, at all three mentioned layers, but the change also stabilizes. The remaking of the change would not be as facile as in the case of Poland, because the elaboration of new futures was a quite overwhelming process and the political regime also appeared to be more stable. In the case of Romania, on the other hand, the situation is more differentiated across the three dimensions. With regard to the strategic dimension, for instance, we notice that there is some change, yet this is quite low. The refugee crisis, as a global problem, used to be ignored before the crisis and in spite of the momentum of change and initial mobility it continued to be

Ignorance and change  223

ignored in the context of the crisis also. As observed by the participants in the asylum policy field, in spite of the window of opportunity, Romania failed to contribute actively, to engage in a serious manner in the regulation and management of the refugee crisis. This happens to be explained both by a lack of capacity and experience, as well as a more or less unconscious contentment. In the case of Romania the change in the regime of ignorance appears to be more substantial mainly in relation to the cognitive dimension. The initiation of contacts, collaboration and learning between the national authorities, public institutions, and NGOs occurred at this level. Still, the elaboration of the informal projection that Romania is a country of refugee transit seems to have inhibited the production of new knowledge upon a certain point at the central level. The change of ignorance occurred, however, inside the system because of contact with the EU institutions and the actions of preparedness. A certain path dependency occurred here which, even though it did not account for a full bridge and flow of experience, had, nevertheless, managed to set things in motion. The modality of management of European funds at the level of the country, and the regionalnetwork structure of the asylum policy field ensured a certain linkage between policy implementation and policy learning. With regard to the epistemic dimension, however, the change in the regime of ignorance in Romania was not as evident. This basically seems to be absent. The endogenous impetus for change of the existing future was too low, and the change under pressure from the outside was too short in order to bring about a substantive transformation. Romania did not fundamentally change the rules of the game; even in relation to the EU it decided – purposively or not – to remain in the same position as a weak regulator and submissive follower of EU asylum policy. We thus see how in the case of Poland, Hungary, and Romania the elaboration of future projections impacted the regimes of ignorance. The reification of the future, especially, triggered projective agency which redrew the limits of ignorance. Certainly, the change was not deterministic. And there were also other factors at play. Still, the correlation cannot be downplayed. The three countries acted as projectors of their domestic asylum policy, and in certain instances they even ventured to project the future of EU asylum policy. Determining what is included or excluded subsequent to this process of establishing new futures, as well as the spread and direction of reification, created the conditions for the change of regimes of ignorance and the temporality of the change thereof.

Conclusions The goal of the analysis we conducted in this chapter was to make sense of the interaction between ignorance and projection in a manner that is more generic. This entailed clarifying where such proclivity for categorization

224  Ignorance and change

comes from in the ignorance studies, as well as establishing the manner in which the interactional perspective we propose can exploit this tendency for categorization of effects of ignorance, as well as move beyond it. We argued that such a tendency for categorization is linked with both the manner in which the social sciences learned to operate as well as the intrinsic quality of ignorance as a state that is too widespread and yet undefined, and thus exhibits an obvious need for clarification. Upon this, we embarked on upgrading the proclivity for categorization and providing a more comprehensive analytical impact. In the first instance, we integrated the ignorance-related effects of interaction between projection and ignorance in a manner that would reveal the logic of ignorance in the context of the European refugee crisis and the ways in which it changed. Afterwards, we looked at mechanisms of projection triggered in the context of the refugee crisis. Finally, we investigated the role played by ignorance in the emergence of projections which aim to reify the future of asylum public policy in Poland, Hungary, and Romania, or to stipulate how this future should look. These three approaches – categorical, analytical, and genealogical – allowed us to decipher in what manner the interactional analysis of ignorance can be performed less conventionally. Research on ignorance is more than merely the analysis and uncovering of hidden dynamics and materialized effects of ignorance. It is also tackling the role of ignorance in the unfolding of forms of knowledge and their elaboration and evolution. Only by embarking upon this more indirect type of analysis of ignorance in this book did we manage to understand that change of regimes of ignorance is contingent on the changes that are triggered in forms of knowledge – projection in particular – and the durability and elasticity of the transformations triggered in the context of unexpected events and crises. The empirical investigation carried out in this chapter allowed us to look at the interaction between ignorance and projection from the point of view of participants in the asylum policy field in Poland, Hungary, and Romania. We thus learned how the crisis brought about a completely new context as far as these were concerned. Ignorance, for instance, translated into an almost complete reset, and the need to re-establish the practices of knowledge production, ignorance-sharing and employment of ignorance. While with regard to projectivity, this entailed the need to consider whether these three countries were facing a refugee crisis (which except Hungary was not so obvious), whether they were prepared to face it, as well as to reconsider what future the asylum policy was projected to be heading towards. The interactions between the ignorance and projectivity occurring in relation to the cognitive, epistemic, and (even) strategic dimensions of ignorance were contingent on how the trajectory of the refugee crisis and asylum policy were projected to be in the three countries. While, in a similar vein, the emergence and reification of the new futures were contingent on mechanisms of ignorance that play a crucial role. These allowed for the elaboration and

Ignorance and change  225

reification of certain futures even at the expense of possible and alternative futures that were left pending or simply unattended.

Notes 1 In itself it is a case for ignorance analysis. The civil servants from Hungarian public agencies refused to take part in the research. Therefore, the state, which is officially hostile to the acceptance of refugees, was also limiting access to, and production of knowledge regarding its asylum policy. 2 According to the data of the Polish Office for Foreigners (the central authority responsible for granting international protection in Poland) in 2014, there were 8,193 immigrants who applied for international protection in Poland, while in 2015, there were 12,325, and in 2016, there were 12,319 (UDSC, 2020).

References Abbott, A. D. (2001) Chaos of Disciplines, Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press. Beckert, J. (2016) Imagined Futures: Fictional Expectations and Capitalist Dynamics, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. Berger, P. L. and Luckmann, T. (1967) The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, New York, Anchor Books. Callon, M. (ed) (1998) The Laws of the Markets, Oxford, Malden, MA, Blackwell Publishers/Sociological Review. Greenwood, R., Suddaby, R. and Hinings, C. R. (2002) ‘Theorizing Change: The Role of Professional Associations in the Transformation of Institutionalized Fields’, Academy of Management Journal, 45, 58–80. Grice, H. P. (1978) ‘Further Notes on Logic and Conversation’. In Cole, P. (ed) Syntax and Semantics, volume 9, Pragmatics, New York, Academic Press, pp. 113–128. Gross, M. (2010) Ignorance and Surprise: Science, Society, and Ecological Design, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press. Hall, P. A. (1993) ‘Policy Paradigms, Social Learning, and the State: The Case of Economic Policymaking in Britain’, Comparative Politics, 25, 275–296. Honneth, A., Butler, J., Geuss, R. and Lear, J. (2008) Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea, Oxford, New York, Oxford University Press. Horolets, A., Mica, A., Pawlak, M. and Kubicki, P. (2020) ‘Ignorance as an Outcome of Categorizations: The “Refugees” in the Polish Academic Discourse before and after the 2015 Refugee Crisis’, East European Politics and Societies: and Cultures, 34, 730–751. Krzyżanowska, N. and Krzyżanowski, M. (2018) ‘“Crisis” and Migration in Poland: Discursive Shifts, Anti-Pluralism and the Politicisation of Exclusion’, Sociology, 52, 612–618. Krzyżanowski, M. (2018a) ‘Discursive Shifts in Ethno-Nationalist Politics: On ­Politicization and Mediatization of the “Refugee Crisis” in Poland’, Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 16, 76–96. Krzyżanowski, M. (2018b) ‘“We Are a Small Country That Has Done Enormously Lot”: The “Refugee Crisis” and the Hybrid Discourse of Politicizing Immigration in Sweden’, Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 16, 97–117. Levinson, S. C. (1983) Pragmatics, Cambridge, New York, Cambridge University Press.

226  Ignorance and change Lukács, G. (1971) History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press. Mische, A. (2014) ‘Measuring Futures in Action: Projective Grammars in the Rio + 20 Debates’, Theory and Society, 43, 437–464. Reisigl, M. and Wodak, R. (2001) Discourse and Discrimination: Rhetorics of Racism and Antisemitism, London, New York, Routledge. Scholten, P. (2011) Framing Immigrant Integration: Dutch Research-Policy Dialogues in Comparative Perspective, Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press. Scott, J. C. (2008) Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press. Scott, S. (2018) ‘A Sociology of Nothing: Understanding the Unmarked’, Sociology, 52, 3–19. Scott, S., McDonnell, L. and Dawson, M. (2016) ‘Stories of Non-Becoming: NonIssues, Non-Events and Non-Identities in Asexual Lives’, Symbolic Interaction, 39, 268–286. Smithson, M. (1990) ‘Ignorance and Disasters’, International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters, 8, 207–235. Smithson, M. (2015) ‘Afterword: Ignorance Studies: Interdisciplinary, Multidisciplinary, and Transdisciplinary’. In Gross, M. and McGoey, L. (eds) Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies, London, Routledge, pp. 385–399. Sunstein, C. R. (2003) ‘Terrorism and Probability Neglect’, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 26, 121–136. Sunstein, C. R. and Zeckhauser, R. (2011) ‘Overreaction to Fearsome Risks’, Environmental and Resource Economics, 48, 435–449. Swidler, A. (1986) ‘Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies’, American Sociological Review, 51, 273–286. Swidler, A. (2001) Talk of Love: How Culture Matters, Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press. UDSC (2020) Zestawienie roczne, Dataset. Zaun, N. (2017) EU Asylum Policies: The Power of Strong Regulating States, Cham, Palgrave Macmillan. Zerubavel, E. (2018) Taken for Granted: The Remarkable Power of the Unremarkable, Princeton, NJ, Oxford, Princeton University Press.

Chapter 8

Conclusions

This book was mainly concerned with the issue of change of ignorance in the context of unexpected events and crises. Why do contemporary crises increasingly assume an epistemic profile and why are they viewed as windows of opportunity in relation to existing regimes of ignorance (Dilley and Kirsch, 2015; Kirsch and Dilley, 2015)? How does ignorance change? And, most importantly, why do we live today under the impression that ignorance does not change, and that change cannot be meaningful? Ignorance studies in their new approach to the manifestation of ignorance as a resource for action beyond the traditional meaning of lack of knowledge (Proctor, 2008; Proctor and Schiebinger, 2008; Smithson, 2008; Davies and McGoey, 2012; Gross and McGoey, 2015) have extensively relied on surprises, unexpected events and crisis-like situations. These types of research sites reveal ignorance because they bring forth a reset of conditions of practice which is then taken as an opportunity for change, especially in relation to the production of new knowledge and learning. The radical unexpected events and the crises are moments of rupture when ignorance is either revealed or it is shown that it cannot continue any longer. This moment of epiphany opens opportunities and possibilities at various levels. From awareness raising to the advancement of new policies or inclusion of new knowledge on the policy agenda. Ignorance studies, in general, seem quite confident about the potential for change tied to the revelation of ignorance brought forth by unexpected events and crises. At the level of research findings, as we showed in the book, the explorations generally confirm that these disruptive occurrences work as an opportunity for change in terms of learning. Regarding change of ignorance as such, however, ignorance studies seem to work with the assumption of reproduction instead. This being especially the case with regard to the strategic and epistemic types of ignorance. It is easier to learn something new than to change our patterns of ignorance and neglect. The global economic crisis of 2007–2008 arguably constitutes the flagship case study in this regard. This was recurrently studied as a potential opening for the inclusion of new knowledge that was not fully accomplished because

228 Conclusions

of structural and power-related ignorance loops that economists, experts and politicians were more or less consciously supporting. We thus found out that the opening of opportunities and possibilities of change notwithstanding, the recent crises have been rather interpreted as favouring a certain inertia, rather than bringing revolution with regard to change in the regimes of ignorance. These revealed assumptions of ignorance studies opened lines of inquiry in various directions. How are learning and change of ignorance connected? What is the threshold for the change of ignorance to occur effectively? Why do we encounter contestation and dismissal of change of ignorance in the context of contemporary unexpected events and crises? Is the lack of meaningful change of ignorance an issue at the level of our society, or it is also a phenomenon of perception of change at the level of the social sciences of which ignorance studies is just an illustration? Trying to formulate an answer to these questions, we first of all took into account the fact that change in the context of unexpected events and crises appears in conditions of proliferation of projections and expectations of change, and even contestation of it. That the issue of change cannot be separated from that of projection of change began to be quite convincingly pointed out in the research of contemporary crises, the global economic crisis of 2007–2008 in particular (Taleb, 2007; Best, 2016, 2019; Grabel, 2018). We wished to contribute to this discussion by including these forms of projection, expectation, and contestation in the analysis of change of ignorance. Our idea was to accomplish this in a manner that not only makes us aware about these forms of knowledge but also pushes us to look into how they effect change, and change of ignorance in particular (see Horolets et al., 2020). We advanced an interactional model of change of ignorance in the context of contemporary unexpected events and crises that would capture the feedback and contingency processes which envelop and accompany the dynamics of forms of change and ignorance in contemporary society. In the contemporary world, where we witness a proliferation of research of unexpected events and crises, the projections and expectations of change are particularly common yet also misleading. These anticipatory and prospective analyses of the future are shared because the crises render the reorganization of our reality so radical that the metaphor of opportunity for change seems to apply generally. Yet they are also misleading because the projections and expectations of change become constitutive and performative in the context in which change appears. The forms of anticipatory knowledge, we argue in the book, influence our perception of the very processes we study, even more so as they facilitate the appearance of processes of contestation and dismissal of change altogether. Yet in order to understand this dynamic it is necessary to move from the current focus in ignorance studies on what ignorance is and what happens to it in terms of change

Conclusions 229

towards what ignorance does and how it interacts with various forms of knowledge in the context of crises. In this book, we strengthened and illustrated the interactional approach to ignorance on the basis of the European refugee crisis of 2015–2016. As we saw in our analysis, this crisis was constructed as an unexpected event in the public discourse and it influenced the policy and politics of the European Union (EU) and its Member States to a great extent. This notwithstanding, there was also visible, from the very beginning, a certain wave of contestation and prophesying of failure even. This concerned whether the crisis could be conducive to change with regard to the responses formulated by society and EU institutions to the global refugee crisis and the challenges triggered by the 2015–2016 movement of refugees towards Europe in particular, as well as the debate regarding whether the refugee crisis should be termed as a crisis to begin with. Our starting point was that this phenomenon of prospective contestation has consequences for the public debate and policymaking, and that it is constitutive of a broader array of anticipatory (Mallard and McGoey, 2018) and projective (Mische, 2014) forms of knowledge that were triggered by the crisis. There is a common-sense expectation for large events (like crises) to have large scale consequences. If there are no big social changes then the doubt arises if there was any crisis to begin with. On the other hand, a lack of meaningful social change can also be an outcome of the ignorance of incremental changes triggered by the crisis because of the projection and expectation of large-scale changes and transformations. The European refugee crisis unfolded on the Mediterranean Sea and on the route from Greece to Germany. The broadcasted images of refugees arriving at the doorsteps of Europe and passing through the Balkans, the statistics and coverage of the dramatic deaths triggered public reactions throughout the whole continent. From the three countries we selected for study, the refugee crisis has affected only Hungary directly, which was on the Balkan route from Greece to Germany. In the case of Poland and Romania, in comparison, the crisis was experienced only as a media reality-spectacle. In all three countries, however, regardless of the presence/non-presence of refugees, the debates regarding the refugee crisis were linked with the continuous projecting of it. The media and political accounts entailed projections regarding the events and situation from various parts of Europe and presented them as the immediate context and future proximity of Poland, Hungary, and Romania. Despite the fact that the refugees did not pass through Poland and Romania, nor did they eventually stay in Hungary, the European refugee crisis was part of the mediated reality of these three countries because the projections from the public sphere had this integrative and distance-diminishing effect. Once the crisis is socially constructed as such, irrespective of whether this is contested or not, the production of projections follows. The actors

230 Conclusions

involved in crisis management have to provide responses with regard to what is going to happen next. Debating and preparing for the future events triggered by the crisis is intrinsic to the crisis phenomenon as a whole. The crisis is a reset of existing forms of knowledge on various accounts. It triggers the elaboration of new futures and displays tendencies of reification when the possible future becomes the future that is taken for granted and offers the basis for the agency of various actors. As we showed in the book, some of the futures that got elaborated in the context of the refugee crisis achieved very quickly the status of reified and binding. The projections were launched as reification projectiles actually. Such envisioning of what is going to happen next occurred in certain instances to be so dominant that the alternative projections were silenced, not taken into account and ignored. The actions followed the anticipation of the reified future, which actually renders that the change in the regimes of ignorance occurred as contingent on the dynamics of reification of new futures. The analysis of the interaction between ignorance and the anticipatory forms of knowledge, projection in particular, brought us to the conclusion that change in the regimes of ignorance is contingent on the change of the future, that is what the future is projected to be. In this book we proposed to advance the study of change of ignorance in four respects: • • • •

To take into account the characteristics of the research site in terms of triggering forms of anticipatory and projective knowledge that impact our perception of change; To break down the general window of opportunity phenomenon at the level of specific domains – academic research, media, public policy, and politics; To introduce the interactional study of change of ignorance; To advance the European refugee crisis of 2015–2016 as a research site for the production and reproduction of ignorance in conditions of forms of anticipatory knowledge – projectivity in particular.

Impact of the research site on our research expectations We drew attention to the notion that approaching the problem of change of ignorance in the context of unexpected events and crises is not just an issue of the problem of change per se. Certainly, it entails aspects such as how change plays out, how it reveals itself, and whether it does or does not happen. The problem of change of ignorance, however, is also an issue of our projections and expectations that such change should or should not happen. Such statements and attitudes regarding change are currently quite visible in ignorance studies, and they are key to the very fact that this

Conclusions 231

field  is  closely linked with the study of surprises, unexpected events and crises. In a certain sense, the revival of this field in the last few decades is occurring in relation with the unexpected. Ignorance studies, we showed, are quite aware of this connection. They realize the opportunity to bring about change in the context of such events and manifestations. Yet the ignorance studies do not approach this opportunity critically and epistemically. They stop at discussing the strong and weak points of the unexpected in terms of revelation of ignorance. Nevertheless, we argued, they should also move forward to analyze how the unexpected influences the manner in which we perceive the change of ignorance, demand it to have happened, and are ultimately disappointed by it. By drawing attention to the forms of anticipatory knowledge that the unexpected triggers we attempted to make a bridge between ignorance studies and current initiatives to study the problem of contestation of change. This bridge has immense analytical and emancipatory potential given that the scope of ignorance studies is by definition linked with a broader intention to challenge the power relations in a society. Yet we emphasized that the ultimate aim of realizing the importance of such processes of projection, expectation, and contestation of change is not to purify our subject of study from these but to include them in the analysis of change as such.

Opportunity for change as distribution of roles – academic research, media, public policy, and politics Irrespective of the processes of projection, expectation, and contestation that impact our research imagination, there is something in the representation of unexpected events and crises as an opportunity to effect change that is worth following. We were preoccupied with this problem twice in our book. First, when based on the literature review of ignorance studies we tried to establish how this window of opportunity really manifests. It was then when we encountered that from the point of view of this field it rather seems that the opportunity materializes as a chance in terms of advancement of learning and production of new knowledge. Yet this does not manifest as a clear shift in the patterns of neglect, framing and silencing. This is especially true for the types of strategic and epistemic ignorance occurring which are linked with stubborn forms of reproduction, as shown in the critical account of the global financial crisis of 2007–2008. Second, when the study of the production and reproduction of ignorance in the context of the European refugee crisis of 2015–2016 led us to locate the problem of change of ignorance at the level of various domains – academic research, media, public policy and (indirectly also) politics. This made us

232 Conclusions

Media

Academic research

Politics

Policy

Figure 8.1 D istribution of opportunities/roles in the general process of change of ignorance

realize that the window of opportunity for change of ignorance is rather a general process in which particular domains are basically distributed with specific roles – see Figure 8.1. Academic research occurs in relation with the opportunity to produce knowledge, media with the opportunity to raise awareness, public policy with the opportunity for policy change and politics with the opportunity for new agenda setting. In the distribution of the opportunities we identified, the media are in a mutually contingent relationship with politics: politicians use media as outlets to promote their stance while at the same time having to attend to issues covered by the media. Politics sets the agenda and makes decisions regarding policymaking. Academic research has the ambition to inform policymaking and this expertise is used by policymakers to various degrees (Boswell, 2009). The interaction of academic research with media and politics is less direct but it conditions the possible impact of policy learning on policymaking. In the case of the issues which do not capture the public’s attention there is an opportunity for a more technocratic mode of policy management, yet there is less opportunity for more profound policy change (Kubicki et al., 2017). The distribution of opportunities in the general process of change of ignorance is so complex and advanced, that these opportunities largely have the status of roles. In the meta-analysis of the interaction between ignorance and characteristic forms of knowledge in media and public policy, for instance, it became quite obvious that these domains are perceived to have a certain duty to advance awareness raising and policy change in connection to policy learning a fact which led us again to the forms of projection, expectation, and contestation we just mentioned.

Conclusions 233

Interactional study of change of ignorance Coming back to the phenomenon of the anticipatory forms of knowledge that are triggered in the context of unexpected events and crises, we tried, as stated, to advance a model of change of ignorance that would take into account the existent findings on the impact of these processes on how we perceive change. However, unlike the literature that guided us, we set our aim towards including these processes in the analyses of change, rather than in showing that change occurs even though our perception might say that it does not, or that change occurs on a more incremental basis than we would have expected it to. We have thus encouraged ignorance studies to integrate the processes of projection and the related forms of anticipatory knowledge into one analytical framework. This allowed us to develop a model of change of ignorance in the context of unexpected events and crises that is mainly interested in interactions. When we formulated the idea of the interactional study, what we had in mind was to show first that ignorance changes in relation to the various forms of anticipatory knowledge, and second that it is more important to understand how it changes rather than whether it changes. Our book called for zooming out from ignorance, and a move away from the inspection of nuanced types of ignorance. We believed that both for the scholarly analysis and social practice it is more invigorating to focus on what ignorance does. The application of the does principle and of the interactional model of analysis led us to develop quite quickly a skill in terms of identifying and categorizing ignorance-related effects of the interaction between ignorance and forms of knowledge that were triggered in the context of the refugee crisis. The meta-analysis of research on the refugee crisis allowed us to examine several such ignorance-related types in relation to academic research, media and public policy. The abstracted effects not only provided an insight into the dynamics of the refugee crisis but also confirmed our intuition regarding the interaction between ignorance and related forms of knowledge. In this case, those included contestation, framing, legitimation/pre-legitimation, and learning. What is also highly relevant, however, beyond the identification of types of ignorance as such, is that these effects allowed for their grouping as manifestations of various dimensions that were recurrent across the academic research, media, and public policy domains. Though in different configurations, in the analysis of all these domains we have spoken about strategic, cognitive, and epistemic dimensions of ignorance, and in the case of public policy, even about the incentivized dimension. Our analysis rendered that what in ignorance studies occurs as the strategic, cognitive, epistemic, and incentivized types of ignorance, in our book were simply understood as dimensions. The difference may not seem extravagant, but at the level of understanding the change in interpretation it is quite consistent. When we think of strategic and epistemic as types of

234 Conclusions

ignorance, for instance, we rather envisage forms of ignorance that more or less exclude each other. In the case of dimensions, however, the meaning we attribute is purposiveness, awareness, and the possibility to effect change. Furthermore, there is also the aspect that certain ignorance-related effects, for instance, may move within the various dimensions. Generalization of the interactional study of ignorance beyond anticipatory knowledge This counted actually as a serendipitous encounter in our research. When we embarked on the meta-analytical examination of findings regarding the interaction between forms of knowledge and ignorance in the media and public policy, we hardly came across any discussion of forms of projection and expectation, at least not straightforwardly. The relevant literature was, however, discussing other forms of knowledge in relation to ignorance, and this even quite abundantly. This led us to realize that the interactional model was quite general, and that it finds applicability beyond the anticipatory forms of ignorance as such. The forms of knowledge that are triggered in the context of unexpected events and crises are actually quite complex and diversified. Although the forms of projection, expectation, and contestation are present, this does not mean that the spectrum of knowledge is limited to these alone. The refugee crisis triggered forms of framing, legitimation/pre-legitimation, and learning as well. Meaning that the anticipatory elements are not the only forms of knowledge there are, and that they also interact with the other forms of knowledge to a non-negligible extent. On the one hand, the presence of forms of knowledge other than projection, expectation, and contestation is opportune because in this way we place ignorance back on the terrain of knowledge. Most importantly, we do this not in the sense of absence of knowledge but as something that interacts with and shapes the existing forms of knowledge. This generality of the forms of ignorance is neither universal, nor ad hoc. It is rather contingent on the type of domain that we study. This is why, the relevant research underlines contestation in the case of academic research, framing and legitimation/ pre-legitimation in the case of the media, and framing and learning in the case of public policy. It is also why we stumbled less often upon explicit forms of projection for instance. It is not that projection was not there. This occurred, though sometimes with another meaning than that applied herein, or it figured in indirectly. It is simply that the academic research on particular domains instinctively looked at the forms of knowledge with which these fields are mainly associated. Also noteworthy is that, as matters currently stand, framing and learning appear to be the forms of knowledge primarily discussed in relation to the context triggered by unexpected events and crises. This does not necessarily mean that the anticipatory forms of knowledge

Conclusions 235

are not there in a certain domain (the pre-legitimation process for instance has an observable projective dimension), just that we are trained to think about certain forms of knowledge and not others. Move beyond categorization and the appeal of mechanisms and genealogies To approach ignorance from an interactional perspective may now seem the natural thing to do. With this book we integrated projection and related forms of anticipatory knowledge as the context of the production and reproduction of ignorance subsequent to unexpected events and crises. In this manner, we argued, we no longer have the obligation to demonstrate whether ignorance changed and to what extent. We are instead expected to document how this change occurs in interaction with the social structure, institutional processes that bring the future into the present, and related social processes. The application of our own analysis convinced us that projection as a form of anticipatory knowledge is certainly there. Plus, we may identify slightly similar ignorance-related effects as in the case of the forms of knowledge which are not straightforwardly anticipatory. The search for projectivity, however, also made us realize that for the interactional approach of ignorance to really live up to the expectations we promote herein – showing what ignorance does and not what ignorance is – this has to be more ethnographic, processual, analytical (in the sense of coming close to the study of mechanisms), and genealogical. The production of categories of ignorance-related effects of ignorance, and the distinction between their dimensions of manifestation is valuable because it let us understand the potential of reproduction in these interactions. On the other hand, we are at risk of falling into the same trap of proliferation of categorization tendencies in relation to ignorance, such as those observed in ignorance studies. As we may recall, these constituted one of the starting points of our plea for looking more into what ignorance does rather than into what ignorance is. Instead of producing types of ignorance and focusing solely on ignorance we ended up producing types of ignorance-related effects of the interaction between ignorance and various forms of knowledge. The exploration, no doubt, was still interactional, without, however, having achieved the goals we have set for ourselves in terms of analysis, at least not in full. In order to reach a more comprehensive level of analysis, we argued, one modality is to integrate the various ignorance-related effects and try to make sense of the broader dynamic in terms of the logic of ignorance. In the context of the manifestation of projectivity in the media coverage of the refugee crisis, such broader logic of ignorance is linked, for instance, with the fact that the projectivity of the media is realized by proxy, meaning that the media present and quote the projections circulated by politicians

236 Conclusions

and in this way they create a channel for the reinforcement of the strategic ignorance of the political actors. This logic of ignorance in the media means that the issue whether the media strategically ignore the social reality, or whether they consciously reinforce negative biases with regard to the refugees moves from a normative level to one that concerns the construction and editing of the news coverage. The fact that the media take certain instances of the reification of futures from the political arena and further transmit them already proves this point, though in a more technical manner. Another aspect of the logic of ignorance we discovered is that the projective forms of knowledge manage to shorten the distance between the three countries and the refugee crisis taking place at the European level in a remarkable way. In this sense, the logic of ignorance of projectivity is different than that of framing, wherein the reality of the crisis was shown to be constructed from an outside position. Thus, the categorical tendency that usually manifests in ignorance studies and which we came to see as inescapable in the interactional analytical approach can acquire a more integral outlook once we decide to incorporate the various ignorance-related effects and make sense of broader dynamics. This, however, we argued, keeps us focused on ignorance in the interaction between ignorance and projection with the outcome that we inevitably tell just half of the story. At the same time all that which pertains to ignorance but does not come in the form of a clear outcome or effect is somehow obscured. To address this we decided to switch the angle and tell the projection part of the story of interaction. This was still a story about ignorance as it reveals the role of ignorance in the unfolding of mechanisms of projection and the elaboration of new futures in the context of the European refugee crisis. It is, however, told differently than in the categorical approach. The first non-categorical approach we advanced was analytical-cuminteractional. Based on the analyses of projective agencies that are depicted in the media coverage of the crisis in Poland, Hungary, and Romania, we identified three mechanisms of projection — assumption of projectivity, spatial-temporal displacement and integration, as well as the reification of future. Ignorance is essential in the advancement of these mechanisms to a greater or a lesser degree. But there is also a geo-political dimension to be taken into account. The ignorance of facts of reality allows at the fictional and projective level for the shortening of the distance between the strong regulators of EU asylum policy (Zaun, 2017) and the three selected Member States. The projective mechanisms in the context of the refugee crisis worked in such a manner as to include Poland, Hungary, and Romania in the future of the EU asylum policy and of a possible new crisis. The extent to which the three countries have a clear perception of their role in manifesting this future, and what their role is envisaged to be can, basically, be taken as a measure of their relation to and autonomy within the EU. The more certain and reified the projection of the future occurs to be (see Hungary and

Conclusions 237

Poland), the more we deal with a Member State that seems to have taken the future into its own hands. Meanwhile, the more we deal with a country whose projective agency seems conditional upon what is taking place outside of its borders (see Romania), the more this is a signal of an uncertain status, of a status that awaits confirmation, or of lack of engagement with the issues that constitute the object of projections of the future. This leads us to the second non-categorical variety of interactional approach we identified – that with a clear interest in the genealogy of the new futures that are elaborated in the context of crises. We followed in this respect the analytical instinct of Mische (2009, 2014) with regard to the elaboration and formulation of new futures in contexts marked by debates and negotiations. In this way we also realized a linkage between ignorance studies and future studies; however, our analysis was less at the level of grammar and narrative, and more in terms of genealogy of emergence and articulation of new futures as depicted from the point of view of asylum policy in Poland, Hungary, and Romania. On the basis of the interviews we conducted with participants in the asylum policy field in these three Member States we have shown that the dynamics of elaboration of new futures with regard to asylum policymaking and political responses to the refugee crisis vary at the level of the three countries. Hungary elaborated and reified its future at a quite early stage and kept to it. Poland, likewise, elaborated its future quite quickly, yet due to changes in its domestic politics, it also quite rapidly changed its vision despite having arrived at this through decoupling and future ambiguity, and not by clear displacement of one future with another. Romania, however, after an initial phase of oscillation and change of envisioned futures, became linked to a future that the country considers evident for political and geo-politically normative reasons, though in terms of practice it was not one hundred percent engaged with it. This gave us the key to establish that the dynamics of elaboration and reification of new futures is actually the clue to the change of ignorance. The more the future elaborated is new, and the more this change comes from inside (see Poland and Hungary) the more the ignorance changes because of the potential of futures to trigger agency. The projective agency is an active and performative filter of the logic of ignorance and it produces or reproduces ignorance in a generic manner. However, in the case that the change of the perceived future comes from outside (see Romania) and pressure is not sustained, the ignorance will either change superficially or it will lead to forms of disjunction. The interactional analysis thus has a guiding analytical principle, but it must not conform to a predefined recipe of how it should develop. Irrespective whether the preliminary focus of analysis is on the effects of ignorance or on the various forms of knowledge, ignorance may be revealed and its logic of change explored.

238 Conclusions

The 2015 –2016 refugee crisis as projectivity and ignorance unfolding The role of the European refugee crisis of 2015–2016 in our research was intended to be illustrative. Our initial intuition was that this is an extremely telling example of forms of anticipatory knowledge triggered in the context of the crisis and the manner in which these interact with ignorance. At this initial point, however, we mainly envisaged projectivity in terms of forecasting the future. The refugee crisis, however, brought about a complexity of projectivity instances that go beyond the issues of prediction as such. Partly, this had most probably to do with the characteristics of the crisis as occurring inside the asylum system. We became familiar with dimensions of projectivity such as embarking on a journey, navigating, management of movement, and algorithmization. In all these instances, projectivity is always there. Yet we learned that the processes of projection are not solely about the future. Embarking on bringing a targeted future into account most of the times overlaps with spatial and organizational encounters. The actors in the refugee crisis do not simply predict the future. They also predict the way and the modality to reach the future. Moving now to the three Member States we studied more closely, it also became clear that the ignorance patterns displayed by these is quite distinct from what we came to depict as the generic EU or Western European ignorance regarding asylum and refugee issues. The patterns of ignorance we saw in the case of Poland, Hungary, and Romania were, nevertheless, different. At stake in their case was not as much the neglect of the vulnerabilities of the asylum system and of the historical conditionality and challenges posed by the global refugee crisis, but rather the current formation of patterns of ignorance regarding issues that had recently become politicized and mediatized in relation to the European refugee crisis. In the case of the three Member States, the projections regarding their role in the European asylum system just became stabilized as public projections. As we saw, these projections were to a great extent about the relations of Poland, Hungary, and Romania with the EU, and its institutions. The projections were also about the realities that these countries decide to redefine or to ignore regarding their position in relation to the EU. The ignorance also concerns issues such as whether the refugees target these countries or whether they decide to live here. Issues which in the regime of ignorance elaborated at the level of the EU do not appear, or they appear in a different form. In the end, it seems that we came up with two stories – one regarding the potential of the interactional approach within the ignorance studies, as applied to the dynamics of change in the regimes of ignorance in the context of the refugee crisis, and the second, about the particularities of ignorance in the case of the weak regulating states (Zaun, 2017) vis-à-vis EU asylum policy, the EU Member States from Central and Eastern Europe in particular.

Conclusions 239

The first story attests the importance of anticipatory forms of knowledge in the unfolding of change in the context of unexpected events and crises. The second story shows that the production and reproduction of ignorance regarding the global refugee crisis in the Polish, Hungarian, and Romanian media and asylum policy is observably contingent on historical and political relations. We encountered characteristics that are linked with the fact that these countries, although clearly attempting to break through and improve their position, continued to various degrees to be conditioned by their position as weak regulators of EU directives, and EU asylum policies in particular. The way, however, to overcome the perceived limitations linked with this position as weak regulators is to become strong projectors of EU asylum policies, to elaborate and reify new futures. The EU refugee crisis provided Poland, Hungary, and Romania with an opportunity in this regard. As the book has shown, the extent to which these countries managed/did not manage to embark on a new future provides a measure of the extent to which they managed/did not manage to bring about a change in their regimes of ignorance.

References Best, J. (2016) ‘When Crises Are Failures: Contested Metrics in International Finance and Development’, International Political Sociology, 10, 39–55. Best, J. (2019) ‘Quiet Failures: About the Project’, jacquelinebest.com. Boswell, C. (2009) The Political Uses of Expert Knowledge: Immigration Policy and Social Research, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Davies, W. and McGoey, L. (2012) ‘Rationalities of Ignorance: On Financial Crisis and the Ambivalence of Neo-Liberal Epistemology’, Economy and Society, 41, 64–83. Dilley, R. and Kirsch, T. G. (eds) (2015) Regimes of Ignorance: Anthropological Perspectives on the Production and Reproduction of Non-Knowledge, New York, Berghahn Books. Grabel, I. (2018) When Things Don’t Fall Apart: Global Financial Governance and Developmental Finance in an Age of Productive Incoherence, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press. Gross, M. and McGoey, L. (2015) ‘Introduction’. In Gross, M. and McGoey, L. (eds) Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies, Routledge, pp. 1–14. Horolets, A., Mica, A., Pawlak, M. and Kubicki, P. (2020) ‘Ignorance as an Outcome of Categorizations: The “Refugees” in the Polish Academic Discourse before and after the 2015 Refugee Crisis’, East European Politics and Societies: and Cultures, 34, 730–751. Kirsch, T. G. and Dilley, R. (2015) ‘Regimes of Ignorance: An Introduction’. In Dilley, R. and Kirsche, T. G. (eds) Regimes of Ignorance: Anthropological Perspectives on the Production and Reproduction of Non-Knowledge, New York, Berghahn Books, pp. 1–29. Kubicki, P., Pawlak, M., Mica, A. and Horolets, A. (2017) ‘Wyjście z cienia: Polityka uchodźcza w sytuacji kryzysu’, Polityka Społeczna, 9, 22–28.

240 Conclusions Mallard, G. and McGoey, L. (2018) ‘Strategic Ignorance and Global Governance: An Ecumenical Approach to Epistemologies of Global Power’, The British Journal of Sociology, 69, 884–909. Mische, A. (2009) ‘Projects and Possibilities: Researching Futures in Action’, Sociological Forum, 24, 694–704. Mische, A. (2014) ‘Measuring Futures in Action: Projective Grammars in the Rio + 20 Debates’, Theory and Society, 43, 437–464. Proctor, R. (2008) ‘Agnotology: A Missing Term to Describe the Cultural Production of Ignorance and Its Study’. In Proctor, R. N. and Schiebinger, L. (eds) Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, pp. 1–35. Proctor, R. N. and Schiebinger, L. (eds) (2008) Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press. Smithson, M. J. (2008) ‘Social Theories of Ignorance’. In Proctor, R. N. and Schiebinger, L. (eds) Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press Stanford, pp. 209–229. Taleb, N. N. (2007) The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, New York, Random House. Zaun, N. (2017) EU Asylum Policies: The Power of Strong Regulating States, Cham, Palgrave Macmillan.

Index

Note: Bold page numbers refer to tables; italic page numbers refer to figures and page numbers followed by “n” denote endnotes. Abbott, A. D. 163, 186 academic research 5–6, 87, 96–98, 134–135; contestation and ignorancerelated effects in 88; opportunity for change as distribution of role 231–232; politicization and mediatization and 187 Acemoglu, D. 30, 32 Adevărul 152 Afghanistan 71 Agamben, G. 92 Agha, Z. 135n1 Alcade, J. 87 Alcoff, L. M. 20 Al Jazeera 87 Andersson, R. 89, 94 anticipatory forms of knowledge 1, 5–7, 9, 13, 55, 58, 59, 117, 170, 198, 218, 230, 231, 233, 234, 238, 239; interactional study of ignorance beyond 234–235 anti-Semitism 147 anti-strategies, as opportunity for strategic ignorance 42–43 Aouragh, M. 110 Apostolova, R. 87 Arab Spring 71 al-Assad, Bashar 71 Asylum Migration and Integration Fund 205 asylum policies: crisis as an opportunity for policy change 120–125; Hungary 208–212; Poland 205–208; Romania 212–216

asylum seekers 7, 12, 15n1, 66, 72–74, 76, 81, 98n1, 99n5, 116, 128, 146, 148, 152, 170, 194, 206–208, 222 attribution effects 114, 116, 127 Australia 112 Austria 72, 157, 161, 164, 194, 210; Bulgaria and 157; relocation programme, results of 75 avoidability of ignorance and predictability(post-mortem) 27–29 Badenhoop, E. 77 Bailey, A. 20 Bakken, T. 20, 57 Balch, A. 122 Baldwin-Edwards, M. 80 BBC 87 Beck, U. 24, 34 Beckert, J. 53–54, 194 Belgium, relocation programme results 75 beneficiaries of international protection 98n1 Berger, P. L. 195 Best, J. 6, 46–47, 49–52, 56, 91, 97, 163 bias: cognitive 52, 96, 107; dangeroriented 116–117 Bielan, Adam 196–197 black swan phenomenon 5–6, 28, 31 Blikk 152 Blitz, B. K. 80 Bocskor, Á. 148 Bohmer, C. 83 Boltanski, L. 118

242 Index Boswell, C. 77 Bozdag, C. 118 Brekke, J.-P. 123 Bronk, R. 53 Budapest Keleti train station protest 72 Bulgaria: Austria and 157; relocation programme, results of 75 Cabot, H. 80, 86, 89, 93–95 case studies: Hungary 145–148; Poland 145–148; Romania 145–148 categorical fetishism 87, 89, 94, 98n1; refugee vs. migrant 87–89 categorization effects 114, 116, 127 Central Eastern European societies 7 Central Mediterranean migration route 93 change in ignorance: possibilities and anti-possibilities 80–83; refugee crisis and 80–83 change of ignorance 1–3, 5, 7; distribution of opportunities/roles in process of 232; European refugee crisis and 7–9; integrating projectivity in problem of 50–59; interactional model of 56; interactional study of 233–237; opportunity for 37; revelation and 76–86 Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union 67 Chouliaraki, L. 115, 118 Chua, L. 20 Click! 152 cognitive bias 52, 96, 107 Colander, D. 32 Common European Asylum System (CEAS) 7, 67, 68, 75, 96, 222; changes proposed for 73; implementation of 68–69; purpose of creating 68; relocation plan as a policy tool 98n2; timeline 69 compassion narratives 90 confusion effects 117, 129–130 Constantinople, capture of 71 contestation 86–96; crisis, effects of 92–96; crisis not a crisis but something else 90–92; narrative, replaced 89–90; using category refugee (or migrant) as problematic 87–89 continuity thesis 6, 8, 47, 51–53, 81 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) 67

Cook, K. S. 131 cooperation without trust 132 correctability of ignorance 29–30 cosmopolitan framing 116 Couldry, N. 115 counterfactual thinking 178, 192–193, 197–198, 201, 217 Crawley, H. 65, 80, 87, 90, 95 crisis and ignorance: contestation 86–96; European refugee crisis of 2015–2016 65–76; overview 64–65; revelation and change of ignorance 76–86 crisis as failure 91 crisis chasing 92 crisis contestation sensation 98 crisis narrative 92–93 crisis-related projectivity 54 crisis sensation 91, 98 crisis talk 92, 97 Croatia 164, 167, 213; CroatianSlovenian conflict 190–191; negotiating cross-border refugee movement with Hungary 157; relocation programme, results of 75 Croatian-Slovenian conflict 190–191 Croissant, J. L. 58 Cyprus: Mediterranean Sea arrivals to 71; relocation programme, results of 75 Czech Republic: relocation programme, results of 75; relocation programme, voting against 172 Dalton, P. S. 117 danger-oriented bias 116–117 Daqneesh, Omran 110 Davies, W. 3, 28, 43–44, 47–48, 59 De Genova, N. 65, 88, 91–92 demographic nationalism 147–148 Denmark: Dublin regulations and 68; relocation programme, results of 75 differentiated acknowledgement 127, 129 Dilley, R. 19 Dines, N. 93, 96 distant suffering 118, 192 Dublin Convention 68 Dublin regulation 222; first-countryof-entry rule 8, 85; Poland and 222; Syrian asylum seekers and 72 Dublin II Regulation 68 Dublin III Regulation 68 Dunmire, P. L. 153

Index 243 economic migrants 89, 207 ecumenical epistemology 21 Edwards, M. 32 Emirbayer, M. 7, 53, 141, 143 epiphany 48, 50, 56, 86 epistemic ignorance: refugee crisis as a production of 84–86; refugee crisis as a reproduction of 84–86; reproduction of 38; unexpected events and crises as reproductions of 43–45 epistemological ignorance 60n1; global governance and 58 epistemology of ignorance: framing and 113–120; legitimation/pre-legitimation and 113–120 Erdoğan, Recep Tayyip 71 Eritrea 71, 207 Estonia, relocation programme results 75 ethno-nationalist politics 112 EU Member States 68; Common European Asylum System and 7, 69; Dublin III Regulation and 68; emergency relocation scheme and 73; projective agency of 158–161, 170; responsibility-sharing between 123 EUREMA I 98n2 EUREMA II 98n2 Eurocentrism 134 European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union (Frontex) 69 European asylum policy 89; crisis as opportunity for policy change 120–125; unified 70 European Asylum Support Office (EASO) 69 European asylum system: crisis and 66–70; problems inherent in 7; restrictive policies of 85 European Border and Coast Guard Agency 69 European Commission 72–75, 123–124, 148–151, 170, 174, 179, 191, 206 European Council 142, 178–179, 215 European refugee crisis, projecting: binding future, enforcing 170–179; case studies: Poland, Hungary, and Romania 145–148; crisis in Poland, Hungary, and Romania 163–169, 174–179; future projections through

semantic field analysis 152–154; interactional multilevel approach 144– 145; overview 141–143; projectivity and agency 155–169; projectivity and uncertainty of relocation 170–179; refugee journeys and futures 155– 169; refugee projective agency vs. projective agency aimed at refugee agency 155–163, 163–169; relocation projective agency vs. projective agency aimed at relocation plan 170–174, 174–179; relocation scheme as crisis event 148–151; sampling 151–152; study design 143–154 European refugee crisis of 2015–2016 7–9, 65–76; calling it a crisis has certain effects 92–96; and European asylum system 66–70; not a crisis but something else 90–92; as opportunity for policy change 120–125; as opportunity to raise awareness 108–112; as projection and ignorance 216–223; as projection reset 201– 205; as projectivity and ignorance unfolding 238–239; reconstructing chain of events 70–72; relocation scheme 72–76; so-called crisis 92–96; see also refugee crisis European Union (EU) 34, 65; asylum system 3, 83–84; Charter of Fundamental Rights of 67; migration and asylum regime 65; project 89 EU-Turkey Statement of 18 March 2016 73 exclusion effects 127–128 expectations: fictional 53, 194; impact of research site on research 230–231 failure of change vs. perils of great projections 45–50 Fakt 152 ferment over ignorance 19, 20, 22–23 Fernández, P. D. 53 Ferreira, S. 115, 123 fetishism 95; categorical 87–89, 94, 98n1; dangers of reproduction of 95 fictional expectations 53, 194 Fidesz-KDNP pártszövetség (Fidesz– KDNP Party Alliance) 147 filter-bubble effects 133, 134 Finland 74; relocation programme, results of 75

244 Index framing: and epistemology of ignorance 113–120; ignorance-related effects of interaction between ignorance and 113–119; learning and 125–134; and politics of ignorance 125–134; possibilist 81 France 173; asylum and first-time asylum applicants 70; relocation programme, results of 75 Freddi, E. 84 Freedman, J. 85, 86 Frickel, S. 32 future-oriented agency 142 futures in action 142–144, 153 Gamson, W. A. 113 Gândul 152 Garcés-Mascareñas, B. 126 Gazeta Polska Codziennie 152 Gazeta Wyborcza 152 generalized pity 118 genericization 116 Geneva Convention 67, 98n1 Germany 167, 178, 194–195, 210, 229; asylum and first-time asylum applicants 70; as country with high economic stability 155; Dublin regulation and 85, 131–132; relocation programme, results of 75; Syrian asylum seekers and 72 Giddens, A. 31 global economic crisis of 2007–2008 6, 13, 227–228 global financial crisis of 2007–2008 3, 231 Grabel, I. 6, 49–53, 55, 81, 97, 124 Great Britain 42; see also United Kingdom Greece 146, 148, 150, 157, 178, 206–207, 229; asylum and first-time asylum applicants 70; exhausted capacity of 7; fence, erected at its land border with Turkey 71; International Monetary Fund and 43; relocation programme, results of 75 Gross, M. 9, 17, 20–21, 23–25, 37, 39, 41, 56, 77, 108, 187 Gruijters, R. J. 80, 90, 95 Guiraudon, V. 81–82, 90 Hall, P. A. 143, 163 Hardin, R. 131

Heller, C. 65 Henry, G. 65 hidden unknowns 86 Hirschman, A. O. 4, 52, 53, 81 Hitler, Adolf 28 Holohan, S. 86 Holzberg, B. 143 Horolets, A. 89 HotNews (news portal) 152 humanitarian crisis 89, 123 humanitarian narratives 90 humanitarian protection 98n1 Hungarian Parliament 178 Ibrahim, Y. 118 ignorance: correctability of 29–30; crisis as 216–223; ferment over 19, 20, 22–23; framing and 113–119; ignorance studies and their recent revival 18–23; impossibility of (sheer) 31–33; incentivized 128, 130–132; learning and 132–134; legitimation and 119–120; as a matrix of possibilities 40–42; new society 24–27; omnipresence of 30–31; overt-strategic 85; overview 17–18; pluralistic 117; policy framing and 126–132; prelegitimation and 119–120; speculative 119; typologization of 21–22; and unexpected 27–33; unexpected events and crises 24–27; varieties of 46, 98, 163–164; from what ignorance is to what it does 55–59 ignorance and change: crisis as projection and ignorance 216–223; crisis as projection reset 201–205; Hungarian asylum policy 208–212; ignorance effects and projectivity 186–192; mechanisms of projection in media 193–198; overview 185–186; Polish asylum policy 205–208; Romanian asylum policy 212–216 ignorance effects: categorization and beyond 186–192; and projectivity 186–192 ignorance hypothesis 30, 32 ignorance of framing: crisis as opportunity for policy change 120–125; crisis as opportunity to raise awareness 108–112; and epistemology of ignorance 113–120; framing, learning, and politics of ignorance

Index 245 125–134; legitimation/pre-legitimation and 113–120; overview 106–108 ignorance-related effects: of interaction between ignorance and framing 113–119; of interaction between ignorance and legitimation 119–120; of interaction between ignorance and policy framing 126–132; of interaction between ignorance and pre-legitimation 119–120 ignorance-related effects of framing in media: cognitive dimension 114, 114–117; epistemic dimension 114, 117–119; strategic dimension 114, 119 ignorance studies: ferment over ignorance 19; making sense of their recent revival 18–23; relevance and dynamics of research sites 22–23; shift in framing and levels of analysis 20–21; typologization of ignorance 21–22 imagination failure 117 impersonalization 116 impossibility of (sheer) ignorance 31–33 incentivized ignorance 128, 130–132 Independent 135n1 Index.hu (news portal) 152 institutional pressures, and strategic ignorance 42–43 interactional approach to ignorance 1; of change of ignorance 233–237; forms of 6–7; of ignorance beyond anticipatory knowledge 234–235; potential within ignorance studies 238–239; projectivity and 235 interactional multilevel approach 144–145 International Monetary Fund 43 intra-European movement 122 Iraq 71, 122, 196 Ireland 74; relocation programme, results of 75 islamophobia 147 Italy 148, 206–207; asylum and firsttime asylum applicants 70; exhausted capacity of 7; relocation programme, results of 75 Kessler, O. 29, 44, 47–48 Kirsch, T. G. 19 knowledge: anticipatory forms of 1, 6, 9, 13, 117, 230, 233, 234, 239; production

5, 10, 18, 40, 85–86, 94, 132, 198, 224; projective 1, 5 knowledge-centered impulses 20 known unknowns 86 Kolbe, K. 143 Koselleck, R. 92 Krzyżanowski, M. 109, 111–112, 119–122, 145, 147 Kuchinskaya, O. 44 Kuhlicke, C. 26, 28, 40 Kurdi, Alan 72, 110–112, 118, 121 kvótanépszavazás 151 kvótareferendum 151 Lakoff, A. 55 Langdon, N. 110, 115–116 Latvia, relocation programme results 75 learning: and framing 125–134; ignorance-related effects of interaction between ignorance and 132–134; and politics of ignorance 125–134 legitimation: and epistemology of ignorance 113–120; ignorancerelated effects of interaction between ignorance and 119–120 Levi, M. 131 Libya 72, 74, 77; Arab Spring and 71 Lichtenstein, relocation programme results 75 Lithuania, relocation programme results 75 Luckman, T. 195 Luft, Stefan 83 Lukács, G. 195 Luxembourg 71; relocation programme, results of 75 Magyar Nemzet 152 Mallard, G. 3, 21, 54–55, 58 Malta 74, 98n2; exhausted capacity of 7; relocation programme, results of 75 Mann Gulch Disaster in Montana 28 Martin de Holan, P. 53 Matar, D. 113, 118, 143 McConnell, F. 66 McGoey, L. 3, 17, 20–21, 23, 25, 28, 42–44, 47–48, 50, 54–56, 58–59, 84, 131 McMahon, S. 90, 92 media: and awareness raising 109–112; future projections through semantic field analysis 152–154; interaction

246 Index between ignorance and legitimation/ pre-legitimation in 120; mechanisms of projection in 193, 193–198; opportunity for change as distribution of role 231–232; relocation scheme as a crisis event 148–151; social and cultural imaginary of crisis and 109; use of metaphors in 116; as a whistleblower 109 Melegh, A. 147 Menzel, A. 44, 60n1 Merkel, Angela 72, 144, 158, 181n1 Merton, R. K. 26–27, 31–32 Mica, A. 26, 31 Middle East 65, 71, 86, 118, 143, 146, 167 migrants 66, 87, 118, 130 Mills, C. 20 Mische, A. 7, 9, 53, 141–144, 153, 198–199, 237 Modigliani, A. 113 Montagna, N. 93, 96 mundane practices and devices 52 narratives: compassion 90; crisis 92–93; of fear and hate 90; humanitarian 90 Nassar, J. 83 nationalism, demographic 147–148 neglect of probability 117, 197, 202, 219 Népszabadság 152 Netherlands, relocation programme results 75 Nispen, F. K. M. van 120–121 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) 86, 112, 200, 205, 207, 209, 223 non-knowledge knowledge 38, 58, 153 North Africa 71, 122, 143 Norway: politicization of immigration as autonomization and 123; relocation programme, results of 75 omnipresence of ignorance 30–31 Onet.pl (news portal) 152 Orbán, Viktor 73, 147, 150, 210 overlooking incentivized ignorance 131 overt-strategic ignorance 85 Palestinian irregular refugee camps 83 Parater, L. 109, 111 Pastore, F. 65 Peisert, A. 31

Pénet, P. 43, 48–49 Penninx, R. 126 phantom objectivity 195 planning failure 117 Platforma Obywatelska (PO) [Civic Platform] 149, 196 pluralistic ignorance 117 policy change: crisis as an opportunity for 120–125; legitimation of 111, 119–120, 143; pre-legitimation of 111, 119–120, 143 policy framing: defined 126; interaction between ignorance and 126–132 Polish Office for Foreigners 225n2 Polish Parliament, resolution of 151 political solidarity 89 politicization of immigration as autonomization 123 Politico 181n1 politics: of attention 94; ethnonationalist 112; opportunity for change as distribution of role 231–232 politics of ignorance: framing and 125–134; learning and 125–134 Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe (PSL) [The Polish People’s Party] 196 Portugal: relocation programme, results of 75 possibilism 52–53 possibilist framing 81 possibilist instances 55 post-mortem argument 27–29 Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (PiS) [Law and Justice] 120, 147, 149–150, 205–206, 208, 222 predictable futures 86 pre-legitimation: and epistemology of ignorance 113–120; ignorancerelated effects of interaction between ignorance and 119–120 preoccupation: with change 56; with failure 55–56 probability neglect 55 problem alienation 133–134 processes of projection 33–34, 38, 52–53, 64, 97, 143, 145, 189, 217, 231, 238 Proctor, R. 21 productive incoherence 52, 55, 124 projection: crisis as 216–223; processes of 33–34, 38, 52–53, 64, 97, 143, 145, 189, 217, 231, 238; by proxy 187, 191–192, 197

Index 247 projective agencies 14, 142, 154, 158, 180–181, 193–197, 236; of EU Member States 158–161, 170; vs. projective agency aimed at refugee agency 155–163, 163–169; vs. projective agency aimed at relocation plan 170–174, 174–179; of Poland, Hungary, and Romania 168, 177 projective grammar 9 projective knowledge 1, 5–7, 9, 13, 14, 107, 135, 230, 236 projectivity: and agency narrowed down 155–169; integrating, in problem of change of ignorance 50–59; and problem of change of ignorance 50–59; and uncertainty of relocation 170–179 projectors of EU asylum policies 223, 239 public policy: cognitive dimension 127– 129; epistemic dimension 129–130; incentivized dimension 131–132; opportunity for change as distribution of role 231–232; strategic dimension 130–131 Putin, Vladimir 71 refugee crisis: as an opportunity 76–80; and change in ignorance 80–83; in Hungary 163–169, 174–179; in Poland 163–169, 174–179; possibilities and anti-possibilities 80–83; as production and reproduction of epistemic ignorance 84–86; as production and reproduction of strategic ignorance 84–86; in Romania 163–169, 174–179; see also European refugee crisis of 2015–2016 refugee crisis in Hungary 1, 6–8, 11–12, 14, 72, 123, 125, 128, 145–148; asylum and first-time asylum applicants 70; asylum policies 208–212; crisis as projection and ignorance 216–223; crisis as projection reset 201–205; elaboration of projections in asylum policy field in 204; future projections in making 198–223; ignorance and change in 185–225; ignorance change in asylum policy field in 221; interactional multilevel analysis of ignorance and projection in media 149; mechanisms of projection

in media 193–198; politicization and mediatization in media 147; projective agency of 168, 177; razor wire fence with Serbia 121; refugee crisis in 163–169, 174–179; refugee projective agency vs. projective agency aimed at refugee agency 163–169; relocation programme, results of 75; relocation projective agency aimed at 175; relocation projective agency vs. projective agency aimed at relocation plan 174–179 refugee crisis in Poland 145–148; asylum and first-time asylum applicants 70; asylum policies 205–208; crisis as projection and ignorance 216–223; crisis as projection reset 201–205; elaboration of projections in asylum policy field in 204; future projections in the making 198–223; ignorance and change in 185–225; ignorance change in asylum policy field in 221; interactional multilevel analysis of ignorance and projection in media 149; mechanisms of projection in media 193–198; politicization and mediatization in media 147; projective agency of 168, 177; refugee crisis in 163–169, 174–179; refugee projective agency vs. projective agency aimed at refugee agency 163–169; relocation programme, results of 75; relocation projective agency aimed at 175; relocation projective agency vs. projective agency aimed at relocation plan 174–179 refugee crisis in Romania 74, 145–148; asylum and first-time asylum applicants 70; asylum policies 212–216; crisis as projection and ignorance 216–223; crisis as projection reset 201–205; elaboration of projections in asylum policy field in 204; future projections in the making 198–223; General Inspectorate for Immigration (IGI) 212; ignorance and change in 185–225; ignorance change in asylum policy field in 221; interactional multilevel analysis of ignorance and projection in media 149; mechanisms of projection in media 193–198; politicization and

248 Index mediatization in media 147; projective agency of 168, 177; refugee crisis in 163–169, 174–179; refugee projective agency vs. projective agency aimed at refugee agency 163–169; relocation programme, results of 75; relocation projective agency aimed at 175; relocation projective agency vs. projective agency aimed at relocation plan 174–179 refugee projective agency: vs. projective agency aimed at refugee agency 155–163, 163–169 refugees 66, 98n1; Dublin Convention and 68; genuine 89; legitimate 89; “socially expected durations” 157–158; as source of political destabilization 117; in transit 155 refugee vs. migrant categorical fetishism 88 regimes of ignorance 1; failure of change vs. perils of great projections 45–50; overview 37–38; projectivity in change of ignorance 50–59; unexpected events and crises as opportunities 38–45 reification of future 167, 190–191, 198, 219, 236 Rein, M. 126 Reisigl, M. 189 relocation: projectivity and uncertainty of 170–179; projective agency: vs. projective agency aimed at relocation plan 170–174, 174–179 relocation scheme: as a crisis event 148–151; European refugee crisis of 2015–2016 72–76 Reser, J. P. 22, 27 restrictive outcomes 90 revelation, and change of ignorance 76–86 Ricard-Guay, A. 133 Riedner, L. 91 risk ignorance 43 Robinson, J. A. 30, 32 Roitman, J. L. 92–93 Rüschenpöhler, J. 117 Sajir, Z. 110 sampling 151–152 Scheel, S. 84 Schengen Agreement 68 Schengen crisis 72, 79, 150

Schmiedel, U. 79, 83–85 Scholten, P. 6, 91, 97–98, 120–121, 129, 133 Schön, D. A. 126 Scott, S. 164, 199 selection effects 114–115, 127 semantic field analysis 152–154 Serbia 72, 112, 121, 146, 148, 150, 157, 164, 166–169, 194–195, 213 sheer tautology 27 Shuman, A. 83 Sigona, N. 92 Simmel, G. 24 Sirriyeh, A. 66, 81–82, 89, 110, 130 sites of hyperprojectivity 53–54, 86, 198–199 sites of projectivity 86, 142 Skleparis, D. 87, 95 Slovakia 172, 214; relocation programme, results of 75 Slovenia 83, 161, 214; CroatianSlovenian conflict 190–191; relocation programme, results of 75 Smets, K. 118 Smith, G. 79, 83–85 Smithson, M. J. 18, 19–23, 27, 30, 39, 58, 187 Somalia 71 Soskice, D. W. 163 Spain: Mediterranean Sea arrivals to 71; relocation programme, results of 75 speculative ignorance 119 Staples, K. 66 Staver, A. 123 Steinhilper, E. 80, 90, 95 Stel, N. 83 Stolic, T. 118 strategic ignorance 119; anti-strategies as opportunities for 42–43; defined 42; institutional pressures as opportunities for 42–43; McGoey on 42; refugee crisis as production and reproduction of 84–86; structural factors as opportunities for 42–43; unexpected events and crises as reproductions of 43–45 Strolovitch, D. Z. 54 structural factors, and strategic ignorance 42–43 subsidiary protection 98n1 Sudan 71 Sullivan, S. 20

Index 249 Sunstein, C. R. 55, 117, 202 Sweden 85, 131, 163, 194; asylum and first-time asylum applicants 70; relocation programme, results of 75 Swidler, A. 199 Switzerland, relocation programme results 75 Syria 122; Arab Spring and 71; civil war in 65, 71 Syrian conflict 71, 79, 122, 143 Szydło, Beata 208 Taleb, N. N. 5, 28, 31, 51, 97, 108 Tazzioli, M. 65, 89, 91 tendency to neglect change 72, 116–117, 127, 130 tolerated unknowns 86 Trauner, F. 80, 85 Treaty of Versailles 71 Triandafyllidou, A. 65–66, 93, 109, 111–112, 122, 129, 133, 145 Tuana, N. 20 typologization of ignorance 21–22 unexpected, ignorance and 27–33; avoidability of ignorance and predictability (post-mortem) 27–29; correctability of ignorance 29–30; impossibility of (sheer) ignorance 31–33; omnipresence of ignorance 30–31 unexpected events and crises: antistrategies as opportunity for strategic ignorance 42–43; institutional pressures as opportunity for strategic ignorance 42–43; new society 24–27; as opportunities 38–45; production

of ignorance as matrix of possibilities 40–42; reproduction of ignorance as matrix of possibilities 40–42; as reproductions of strategic and epistemic ignorance 43–45; structural factors as opportunity for strategic ignorance 42–43; and surprises as opportunities to learn 39–40 United Kingdom 112, 194; relocation programme, results of 75 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development 181n5 unknown unknowns 86 Ustek-Spilda, F. 84 Vacchelli, E. 93, 96 Valenta, M. 93 values 79, 89, 214 Vandevoordt, R. 82 varieties of ignorance 46, 98, 163–164 Verschraegen, G. 82 Visegrad Group 174 “voice as value” 115 war-migration nexus 9, 65, 71, 77, 91 Western Balkan Route 194 Wiik, E. L. 20, 57 Willi, A. 53 Winczorek, J. 31 Wodak, R. 111, 189 Zaborowski, R. 115, 143 Zaun, N. 76, 123–124, 199 Zia, B. 117 Žižek, S. 32 Župarić-Iljić, D. 93 Zwart, F. de 26