ABSTRACT
The relevant literature on the refugee crisis in relation to academic research, the media, and asylum policy do not explicitly point in the direction of processes of projection. This raises the inquiry to what extent projectivity is really there. The chapter answers this question by exploring the manifestations of projectivity in the media coverage of the European refugee crisis in Poland, Hungary, and Romania. It bridges ignorance studies and recent sociological investigations of future and projective agency. The analysis of the media accounts reveals how the 2015–2016 European refugee crisis is represented as an interaction of various projective agencies, which are exercised by the refugees as well as by EU Member States and EU organizations and actors. These projective agencies are multidimensional and mutually contingent, and they interact with each other as well. Drawing attention to the continuous projecting of the refugee crisis helps to both explain its dynamics, as well as to understand the extent to which the crisis was an opportunity for the autonomization of Poland, Hungary, and Romania in relation to the EU.
