EtnoAntropologia (Jul 2023)
Nouvelles et anciennes inégalités à la lumière d’une crise complexe: le contexte de l’exclusion liée au logement et celui des réfugiés et des migrations New-old inequalities in light of the double crisis: the context of homelessness and refugee and migrat
Abstract
The text will present the complex contexts of the social situation currently prevailing in Poland. Firstly, these are the migration effects of the war on February 24, 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine. Secondly, it is a crisis related to war refugees (from Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, and various African countries) on the Polish-Belarusian border (since 2021). Both crises are covered in thoroughly different ways by the media, state, and public opinion. In these cases, we are dealing with a situation that does not create a homogenous image of migration and refugees, neither at the level of social assessments nor when it comes to the law or the state support system. To understand the situation, it is necessary to observe the development of non-institutional and grassroots forms of approach to social and humanitarian crises in Polish society, including those led by NGOs. However, the models of assistance used for new groups in crisis in Poland (war refugees) are largely based on the well-known rules of assistance (homelessness). The question is: to what extent are the two crises compatible so that it is possible to use one type of experience (help in homelessness) to organize support for people remaining in another crisis (war refugees)? This is important in the Polish case, although it applied there the system of public social assistance, the authorities use only methods of managing crises and social problems, and not solving them.
