KAN INTE EUROPÉER TILLIKA VARA FLYKTINGAR?

Sammanfattning: This bachelor thesis aims to comparatively study speeches by the European Union’s Commissions representatives, the president during 2014-2019 Jean Claude Juncker, the commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship Dimitris Avramopoulos during the same years as Juncker, as well as the president for the Commission now Ursula von der Leyen. The speeches regard refugees and migration from the relevant years 2015/2016 and 2022, and how they have chosen to address the refugees. Why this is of importance is because of how different the EU chose to act in regards with an eventual implementation of the Temporary Protection Directive (TPD), i.e., a quick activation of the TPD by the EU when Ukraine was invaded by Russia. But when a large number of refugees, from mainly the Middle East, arrived on the shores of Europe there was trouble agreeing amongst the member states regarding the TPD. The research question for this thesis is therefore: How have the representatives of the EU Commission chosen to speak about the refugees at the influx of refugees in 2015 and 2022, respectively? The method used to comparatively study the speeches is a qualitative content analysis with an abductive approach. The result of this study demonstrates that there is a difference between the speeches from 2015/2016 and 2022. Juncker and Avramopoulos spoke about the situation in 2015/2016 in terms of challenges or problems and disagreement inside the EU. Von der Leyen’s speeches portrayed the situation with Ukraine mostly in terms of feelings of belonging between the EU and Ukraine along with a great support for the country. Whether or not the differences in the speeches can relate to the contrasting responses to activate the TPD, I can only speculate. However, the results of the study do say something about how the two refugee situations were perceived.