Ukrainian Refugees: (Un)Deservingness and the Politics of Exclusion

In the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens have been displaced and made homeless. This has led to Ukrainians having to flee their homes to find refuge in neighbouring countries. Individuals escaping war or persecution are very rarely constructed positively. However, unusually, this was a phenomenon evident during the Ukrainian crisis, when ‘white’ people fleeing the war in Ukraine were represented by the Western media, politicians and journalists as more deserving of the world’s compassion and care than other non-white refugees of warfare. At the same time, it also revealed the resurgence of hidden white supremacy in the face of a global humanitarian crisis,¹ illustrating how the Western media and some Europeans conceptualise and perceive different people seeking protection from violence and conflict. This paper utilises media broadcasts and newspaper reports to interrogate the reproduction of notions of colonialism drawing on perspectives from postcolonial theory and critical discourse analysis. The findings reveal that Europe typically imagines refugees from colonial lenses, constructing deficit identities for them as coming from poor, under-developed countries and using their colour as a means of exclusion, which enables the West to secure and solidify a racially hegemonic global order. The findings also show that dominant institutions and value systems situate ‘whiteness’ as a ‘common sense’ notion. Therefore, the research concludes that in order to achieve coloniality, higher education Institutions must dismantle the structures that position ‘whiteness’ as normative in institutional contexts and promote equality and sustainability through policies and practices that integrate and provide all refugees with access to higher education and subsequently the labour market that will benefit both the host countries and the refugees themselves.