Chapter 1 - Introduction

Summary

Is It Enough?

“You know, it is a strange feeling when refugees leave the Slovak reception facilities and travel on to Austria or Germany. I mean, we are trying our best here, is it not enough?” Peter, a social worker from the Slovak Migration Office, told me with a mixture of disappointment and irritation. He had just shown me a housing facility for refugees awaiting their asylum trial, about 35 kilometers northeast of Bratislava. A significant amount of asylum seekers leaves Slovakia before their trial, trying to apply for asylum somewhere else—even though they know they might get transferred back, Slovakia being the first country in the EU they registered in. Slovaks who support refugees in their country as social workers, translators, language teachers, lawyers, or volunteers often feel outright heartbroken about these premature departures. They are the dramatic conclusions of encounters with high emotional and moral stakes. The tensions that complicate these encounters are manifold: they encompass disagreements between state and non-state actors in refugee care and reach into the intimate realms of interpersonal relationships.

Slovakia is not a typical destination for refugees or migrants. They are more likely to join kinship networks or diaspora groups which have already established themselves abroad, usually in Western Europe. The Central and East European countries that are EU member states now, but used to lie behind the Iron Curtain, do not belong to the most desired target countries—due to their reputation of being less accommodating toward strangers, and due to being less affluent. Indeed, Western Europe is an attractive destination for Slovak and other Central and Eastern European emigrants, as well, and refugees’ allegedly easy access to the German or Austrian labor markets increases reservations against them (Hann 2015). At the same time, the continually small numbers of people arriving in Slovakia from abroad serve as an excuse for political stakeholders not to develop a more comprehensive integration program or a more welcoming attitude. Hence, refugees avoiding Slovakia and politicians delaying overdue reforms are forming a vicious circle. In public discourse, refugees are arguably the least desired migrants, and their ‘premature departures’ (to wealthier EU member states) are believed to demonstrate the illegitimacy of their asylum pleas, not the inefficacy of the Slovak asylum system.