Webinar discusses difference in treatment of refugees from Syria and Ukraine

To what extent did Europe use double standards to grudgingly welcome Syrian refugees, who fled the civil war in 2015, and to open its arms to welcome Ukrainians, who fled the war that began in February after the Russian invasion?

This question is not easy to answer. And it was one of the most popular among the five participants in a webinar produced by the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).

The subject of the debate was not exactly the comparison of the reception of refugees of the two nationalities. But the discussion took that turn at a time when experts were reporting the naturally more positive reception to displaced people from Ukraine.

In Poland, for example, according to Marta Pachocka, from the University of Warsaw, it was unnecessary for the central government to mobilize for the arrival of Ukrainians. NGOs, local governments and civil society as a whole have voluntarily undertaken the task. “The government itself was surprised by the goodwill that has arisen around Ukrainians,” she said.

But Syrians have had a good time too, noted another researcher, Rana Khoury, a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University. He referred to the international commotion aroused, in September 2015, by the dead body of the little boy Alan Kurdi, photographed with his face turned to the sand of a beach where he sank with his family.

At the time, Germany and Austria announced that their borders were open to Syrians. And in Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made a point of personally receiving a plane with refugees from that country’s civil war.

They were, however, exceptional episodes. The European Union, said Khoury, was more concerned with giving money so that Turkey would not open its borders and favor the uncontrolled arrival of Syrians to the continent. And indeed, 1.8 million Syrian refugees were held in Turkish territory. Germany was a European exception to the rule, with the arrival of a total of 1 million Syrians.

It would be pertinent to ask why Poland didn’t do the same thing back then and wait to be generous only to Ukrainians. The answer is complex, and the Poles may even have solid reasons for it.

This is what Martin Rozumek, a researcher and senior official in the Czech Republic, indirectly argued. He claims that, in his country, before the Russian invasion, there was already a strong Ukrainian community of economic immigrants, although less numerous than that settled in Poland.

“My children would attend Ukrainian children’s homes, and their parents would visit my home,” he said. This cultural proximity did not exist with the Syrians. Rozumek also says that unfortunately the Syrians were pointed out as “the other”, in an excluding relationship of cultural alterity.

They were Muslims in secularly Christian lands and, moreover, identified by the extreme right, interested in frightening, as refugees among whom terrorists were hiding. The fact is that national examples of goodwill towards Syrians were rare, as happened in Sweden or Norway.

And I would add that Islamophobia –”we don’t want these people around here”— was one of the arguments that led the UK to vote for Brexit and leave the European Union. The British government resisted quotas to receive refugees from the Middle East.

There are other subtle differences between the two nationalities. Syrian refugees had to accept the fate assigned to them, while Ukrainians can now choose the country in which they intend to live. The option is a little more complicated, but the result is this.

And neither group is favored by their international ties, as Ukraine was invaded by the same Russia that militarily supports Syria’s dictatorship.

Let’s look at the question of gender in emigration. Ukraine retains its adult men of military age. More than logical, due to recruitment for war.

As a result, 95% of Ukrainian refugees in Poland are women and children. Depending on the number of children, they are less “profitable” foreigners than if they were made up of mostly male labor. Demographers phrase this argument very carefully, lest they fall unduly into sexist interpretations.

In any case, the Polish government does not complain and has just approved, after months of study, a policy that gives refugees access to all public services in the country. Which is still a political proof of civility.