This thesis focuses specifically on student media consumption around the Syrian Refugee Crisis at the Claremont Colleges through interviews and participant observation in order to understand the role of media photos in knowledge production around the Syrian Refugee Crisis. Looking at the role of photos in a cross-cultural understanding of the Refugee Crisis, this thesis analyzes the way individuals read and interpret these photos. I argue that photos have a vital role in knowledge production of the Syrian Refugee Crisis however their presentation and consumption occurs in a complex world without guidelines of what photos impact are and how they should be used. Finally, I aim to understand the potential for more ideal representation of the Syrian Refugee Crisis.

The refugee crisis is a current and wildly debated topic in the Swedish society today. As a result, companies that engage themselves in the topic experience both positive and negative reactions. Theory suggests that CSR initiatives in a western context suffer a greater risk of being interpreted as political. However, research on political CSR’s influence on brand image is scarce.       The purpose of this thesis is therefore to explore if brand image is influenced differently when companies engage in sensitive issues than with other CSR initiatives. In order to do so, a conceptual framework was developed through an extensive literature review of previous theorization about political CSR and brand image. A qualitative approach were implemented using an exploratory design, applied on an experimental method using online focus groups.    The findings suggest that when CSR becomes politically sensitive, stakeholders have a hard time to see the purpose of the initiative. They question whether the company is involved because of genuine interest. When an initiative’s genuineness is questioned the positive responses in regards to brand image, weakens. This genuineness is determined by four themes: self-interest, consistency, public celebration and sensitivity. However, the results in this thesis are somewhat inconclusive making it difficult to determine whether there is a difference between sensitive CSR and other CSR. The fictitious cases, however, indicate that there are differences relating to all four themes, however, the real cases cannot verify this.    For future research we suggest three different options. Firstly, to examine the relation between sensitivity and responsibility, quantitatively. Secondly, to conduct a study examining other politically sensitive topics. Lastly, to conduct a similar study in hindsight of the refugee crisis, evaluating the effect involvement in sensitive political CSR has on brand image.

The Swedish Church can be understood as having a large focus on social- and supportive work, in Sweden as well as abroad in their international projects. An example of their engagement is the extensive responsibility the church took during the refugee crisis 2015. This commitment in society raises questions about the role of the Swedish Church, such as how the church manifest itself in a so called secular society. On that basis, the aim of this paper is to examine how the Swedish Church’s work with refugees during the refugee crisis 2015, can help us understand the role that the Swedish Church has in the Swedish society today. The purpose is therefore to find out how the receiving of, and work with, refugees was expressed and what it can tell us about role of the Church today.   Moreover, the empirical material includes five case studies about the church’s commitment in the refugee crisis 2015, made by the Swedish Church itself. Theories about secularization is used for the analysis, and more particularly theories about internal secularization and deprivatization.   The conclusion of this paper is that the church’s answer to the refugee crisis, show us that the Church has in some aspects adopted a secular public role. This can be understood by the fact that they welcomed people to activities with main focus on integration, rather than pronounced Christian activities. Through their refugee work, the Swedish Church can also be understood as an important voluntary welfare provider supporting the Swedish state.

The theses deals with the most current problem of refugees stemming from the Syrian crisis, and the consequences the migration crisis can have for stability and the overall political situation in the chosen region. Due to the fact that the Syrian crisis is felt not only in the region, the aim of this thesis is to look at the impact of subsequent migrant crisis on the EU with focus on the Czech Republic. Despite various attempts by the international community, including the EU and the Czech Republic itself, to stabilise the situation the migration crisis is not, within a short and midterm time frame, closing to an end, and it is necessary to focus on possible negative consequences it may bring. The aim of this thesis is to uncover possible political repercussions. Even though, the Czech Republic is in reality afflicted by the migration wave on a minimal scale, the main hypothesis of this thesis is that the current migration wave has an influence on its political scene. The thesis is focusing especially on extremism in the Czech public and consequently in the political scene.

This thesis analyzes the management of refugee crisis in the Federal Republic of Germany in relation to the applicable law of the European Union. In theoretical introduction, the thesis focuses on the definition of key concepts and the related areas of EU law. The second part is devoted to the policy of the Federal Republic of Germany led by Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel and the actions adopted. In the last part, these actions are analyzed in accordance with the main research question of this thesis, namely whether Germany is dealing with the immigrant crisis in accordance with the law of the European Union.

This thesis is an attempt to analyse whether the EU can be conceived as a “force for good” in the world, where through its actions in its surroundings, EU is very eager to take a role as a “Normative Power”, and to be conceived as a model for integration and democracy.This thesis is looking at this narrative from two different perspectives. Firstly, through an analysis of the successfulness of the ENP, through looking at the official EU documents and the progression in key areas in between them, and contrasting them to critique by Human Rights NGOs. Secondly, interconnected with the ENP, this thesis will look at the EU’s response to the recent refugee crisis on its southern border, and its current developments, where the EU’s sea rescue operation “Operation Sophia” has been diminished, and the refugees rescued are taken back to Libya by the Libyan Coast Guard, contrary to UNHCR’s position on returns to Libya. This issue will be looked at through the perspective of the refugees’ democratic rights, and invokes questions regarding the legitimacy of closing one’s borders, and whether the “demos” can be legitimately bounded or does the Democratic Theory insist for the demos to be unbounded.This thesis concludes to find itself agreeing with the previous debates regarding the ENP, where the paradoxes of EU foreign policy have been researched 10-years back, little has changed. These two “cases” researched also contribute to the fact that the inconsistency of EU’s action is eroding its claims both to “Normative Power” and to be a “Force for Good”.

The terms “refugees” and “refugee crisis” have been prominent in media discourse all over the world – especially since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011 and large incoming numbers of refugees into Europe since 2015. Germany, whose media initially celebrated its “Willkommenskultur”, has become increasingly critical of refugees; political and civic exclusion has intensified, and emphasis has been placed on belonging based on peoples’ passports and hence nationalities, which determine whether or not someone belongs in a country. The author Olga Grjasnow, born 1984 in Baku, Azerbaijan and who is of Russian-Jewish descent, took on the task of describing the horrific circumstances in Syria in the midst of its ongoing civil war in her latest novel, entitled Gott ist nicht schüchtern (2017). Moreover, she depicts individuals’ flight across the ocean and their eventual arrival and life in Germany. In her book, Olga Grjasnowa describes the lives of three young Syrian individuals and their extremely limited possibilities of leading a free, peaceful life due to their nationality and the resulting closing of diverse borders for them.Based on the scholarly discourse on transnational fiction and how this work may or may not fit into this notion, especially with regard to globalization and powerful nations’ economic interests, this thesis seeks to analyze how nationalist and capitalist policy makings affect people in drastic ways, as they find themselves uprooted and persecuted.By excluding a Western narrative voice, Olga Grjasnowa zooms in on the lives of Syrians and their hopeless circumstances, while showing how a “wrong” passport makes life for people difficult to navigate in Syria, Germany and beyond. By means of close reading, I analyze the novel pertaining to the war in Syria and the resulting politics, media coverage and individual “fate”, which is tied to limitations for people to escape these circumstances based on documents and national borders.

During the 2010’s a new situation emerged due to the influx of people using the Mediterranean Sea route. Around its peak in 2015, widespread media coverage constructed this crisis as ‘the refugee crisis’. Camps like Moria became the emblem of the refugee crisis, yet, more than half a decade later, the ‘crisis’ has yet to be resolved. And, amid a pandemic, a global crisis, not the least affecting refugees, yet another ‘crisis’ arose during the night of 8th/9th September 2020 when a series of fires almost completely destroyed refugee camp Moria, leaving more than 10.000 refugees ‘homeless’. It is in this unique context, at the intersection of ‘the refugee crisis’, ‘the corona crisis’ and ‘the fires in camp Moria’ that this exploratory study captures written news coverage from the four biggest Dutch newspapers, engaging with the refugee crisis in the first week after the fires (9-15 September 2020). It does so, with the aim of exploring the range of frames used to (re)construct the refugee crisis, thereby making certain meanings more likely to be conveyed than others.  Directed at an event focussed time frame within an understudied national context, this study zooms in on a moment of heightened media import to explore the (re)construction of frames as the situation unfolds. To this end, a qualitative inductive framing analysis, focussing on how the frames are reconstructed through framing and reasoning devices, has been conducted on a total of 60 articles.  Including both broadsheets and tabloids with diverse political backgrounds in the sample, significant differences between the coverage of the two tabloids and the two broadsheets were found. The former (tabloids, Telegraaf politically right oriented and AD politically neutral oriented) significantly distance the situation in Moria, the refugees and the refugee crisis as a whole, quite often even framing the refugees as a problem while rejecting humanitarian grounds. The latter (broadsheets, Volkskrant politically (centre) left oriented and NRC politically centre right oriented) were found to centralize humanisation and identification within a humanitarian frame, while problematizing, and assigning responsibility to political handling. Furthermore, the coverage of the tabloids is characterised by more superficial, descriptive accounts, using little framing devices, while the coverage of both broadsheets is saturated with framing devices to substantiate the humanitarian frame.             Finally, the study also found similarities on the level of incorrect labelling (the usage of migrants instead of, or as interchangeable with refugees) and ‘voicelesness’ (the rare opportunity for refugees to speak). The sample articles more often than not mix labels. Furthermore, the broadsheets give (multiple) refugees a voice in respectively 2 (Volkskrant) and 3 (NRC) articles. And in doing so, these articles actually centralize those accounts. Both tabloids on the other hand, only briefly quote an anonymous and un-contextualised refugee once. Although the broadsheets ‘do better’, still, overwhelmingly, refugees themselves do not play a role in their representation and framing.

This master thesis deals with the development of the protest movement PEGIDA, which was founded on October 11. 2014 in Dresden. This movement speaks loudly against the Islamization of Germany during the regular demonstrations and criticizes the political situation in the country. In times of its greatest popularity it has attracted thousands of people. Nowadays its importance is still diminishing. The aim is therefore to describe the development of the movement and its characteristics. The work is divided into four main chapters. The first one explains the development in Saxony, the second one describes the development of the movement and its programmatics. It also contains the change of relationship towards Alternative für Deutschland (AfD): from an animosity into an open collaboration. PEGIDA was created as a Facebook group: with tools like Google Trends and Fanpage Karma this chapter analyzes its evolution in an online world. It also shows a declining search rate on Google and its popularity on Facebook. The last chapter is based on studies conducted among demonstrators concerning their demographic data and their views on the functioning of democracy and politics. It follows that most Pegidists do not believe in political representation and see an AfD as an alternative. The stagnation of the...

Diplomová práce zjišťuje, jak nestátní neziskové organizace zabývající se migranty (NNO) do jeho používání. Do práce byla zahrnuta rovněž perspektiva zástupců státní správy, kteří by dle teorie vzájemné závislosti mohli mít významný vliv na vnímání a používání výrazu multikulturalismus ze strany NNO. Dále se práce věnuje hodnocení spolupráce mezi NNO a v němž navazuje na vybrané diplomové práce z Katedry studií občanské společnosti. Během sběru dat vypukla tzv. uprchlická krize, jejíž možný efekt na zkoumanou problematiku je také součástí práce. Stěžejní část práce tvoří kvalitativní výzkum, který byl den metodou polostrukturovaných rozhovorů a byl doplněn obsahovou analýzou dokumentů NNO a státní správy.