A Popular Geopolitics of the Refugee Crisis in Europe: The Re-actualization of Identity-driven Geopolitical Narratives in Estonia

Abstract

The article examines the question of how the refugee crisis in Europe re-actualizes the existing national geopolitical narratives and affects the border-(re)drawing of European political communities. I particularly refer to the Estonian experience, which I examine through two different case studies. The first one focuses on the refugee issue as seen from the perspective of fostering a less nationalistic and more heterogeneous identity in Estonia, expressed in the language of contemporary art. The second one addresses the perceptions of the refugee debate by Russian speakers in Narva who directly relate this question to their personal experiences with integration into Estonian society since the fall of the Soviet Union. I analyse both issues within the framework of popular geopolitics that tackles cultural representations of territories, spaces, and identity politics from the viewpoint of vernacular, home-grown, and routine meanings, to bring this culturally focused approach to the foreground of research into politically sensitive phenomena.

The Figure of the Refugee in Superhero Cinema

“…This has changed, as Dempsey and McDowell (2019) argue that the media representation of refugees arriving in Europe since 2014 has evolved from a focus on a shared humanity situated within a framework of 'European values' and humanitarianism, to an inhuman force of nature, to a security threat to European societies. Similarly, Yatsyk (2018), via an analysis of Estonian art and entertainment (as well as interviews with Russian-speakers), notes that the narratives of today's refugee policy in Europe re-activate older national narratives of assimilation and difference dating back to Soviet times (see also Braghiroli and Makarychev 2018).…”