The hierarchisation of Afghan and Ukrainian refugees in discourse in
the Spanish press
La jerarquización de los refugiados afganos y ucranianos en el discurso de la
prensa española
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January-June of 2026
ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978
How to cite this article:
Corral, A.; Fernández Romero, C. and Prieto-Andrés, A. (2026). e hierarchisation of Afghan and Ukrainian refugees in discourse in the Spanish
press.
Doxa Comunicación
, 42, pp. 149-168.
https://doi.org/10.31921/doxacom.n42a2672
Alfonso Corral.
Has a degree in Journalism and a PhD in Communication from the Universidad San Jorge (Zaragoza,
Spain). He is a lecturer and part of the teaching sta of the Institute of Humanism and Society at the same university.
He is a researcher for the Migrations, Interculturality and Human Development group, recognised and funded by the
Government of Aragon (Spain). His chief line of work concerns communication and the Arab-Islamic world, especially
Islamophobia in the media, although he also analyses topics such as journalistic discourse on immigration, the
integration of migrant groups and interculturality in educational contexts, always from perspectives, methodologies
and techniques related to the social sciences. Among his merits are the achievement of a six-year research period, a
ve-year period for teaching excellence, an extraordinary doctoral award and the completion of two research stays at
the Institute for Media Studies
at the KU Leuven (Belgium). He currently heads the Spanish team on an international
project that brings together North American, European and North African institutions, which has been funded by the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Universidad San Jorge, Spain
[email protected]
ORCID:
0000-0003-0539-1314
Cayetano Fernández Romero.
PhD in History and Professor at the Universidad San Jorge (Zaragoza), where he teaches
Sociology and History of Political ought in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Communication. He is currently the
principal investigator of the research group Migrations, Interculturality and Human Development, recognised and
funded by the Government of Aragon (Spain). His academic and research work has been completed with various
research stays at universities in Morocco (Université Cadi Ayyad in Marrakech and Université Hassan II in Casablanca)
and the United Kingdom (University of Sussex). His eld of study focuses on the analysis of media representations of
migrants and refugees, with the aim of identifying the ways in which the media perpetuate or question stereotypes and
prejudices based on gender, geographic origin or religion. He also examines how such projections contribute or not to
the understanding of the social and cultural challenges that such people face in the current global context.
Universidad San Jorge, Spain
[email protected]
ORCID:
0000-0002-6547-8270
is content is published under Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License. International License CC BY-NC 4.0
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1. Introduction
Large-scale forced displacement of people has acquired remarkable prominence in the media, especially since the
humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean in 2015 (which arose from the conict in Syria that had begun four years previously),
but also following events in Afghanistan in 2021 and Ukraine in 2022 (Zarauza-Valero, 2021). 2015 saw images such as that of
little Aylan Kurdi stranded lifeless on a beach or of crowds walking along train tracks to reach the longed-for European Eden,
which moved the issue of refugees to the top of political, academic and media agendas, as well as in debate and public opinion
(d’Haenens & Joris, 2019).
An event that was to bring a group of refugees back to the forefront of news coverage in August 2021 was the evacuation from
Afghanistan following the nal withdrawal of US troops and the capture of Kabul by Taliban forces (Rashid, 2022). e UN
Refugee Agency (UNHCR) estimates the number of Afghans displaced to other countries at 2.6 million, the majority in Iran and
Antonio Prieto-Andrés.
Teacher and researcher at the Faculty of Communication and Social Sciences at the Universidad
San Jorge (Zaragoza). With a PhD in Communication and a degree in Law, his teaching is linked to Human Rights,
Communication Law, Video Game Legislation and Communication Ethics, especially in journalism. He is a member
of the research group Migrations, Interculturality and Human Development, through which he makes an academic
contribution to the legal and social aspects of immigration, particularly its treatment in the press.
Universidad San Jorge, Spain
[email protected]
ORCID:
0000-0001-5214-1794
Recibido: 16/05/2024 - Aceptado: 13/09/2024 - En edición: 11/10/2024 - Publicad: 01/01/2026
Received: 16/05/2024 - Accepted: 13/09/2024 - Early access: 11/10/2024 - Published: 01/01/2026
Resumen:
Partiendo de que unos refugiados son mejor bienvenidos que otros, esta
investigación analiza el discurso reexivo e intelectual sobre la catego
-
rización de refugiados proyectado por la prensa española en las dos úl
-
timas crisis que implicaron directamente a Europa: Afganistán (2021) y
Ucrania (2022). Con especial atención a la perspectiva del framing de
Semetko y Valkenburg, se revisan textos de ABC, El Mundo, El País y La
Vanguardia por medio de un análisis de contenido de corte cuantitativo
y un análisis crítico del discurso. Los resultados maniestan diferencias
en la cobertura de ambas crisis: si la afgana se europeíza en su inter
-
pretación y trata de cuotas de acogida, el recuerdo a la crisis de 2015
o los bloques de países (los solidarios y los desconados), la ucraniana
se humaniza (por enfoques e historias), domestica (toca directamente
a las sociedades de acogida) y permite reconocer la tesis de los dobles
estándares o las jerarquías de refugiados.
Palabras clave:
Refugiados; análisis crítico del discurso; Afganistán; Ucrania; framing.
Abstract:
Starting from the premise that some refugees are more welcome than
others, this study analyses the reective and intellectual discourse on
the categorisation of refugees projected by the Spanish press in the last
two crises that have directly involved Europe: Afghanistan (2021) and
Ukraine (2022). Special attention is paid to Semetko & Valkenburg’s
framing perspective, and texts from
ABC, El Mundo, El País
and
La Vanguardia
are reviewed through quantitative content analysis
and critical discourse analysis. e results show dierences in the
coverage of the two crises: while the Afghan crisis is Europeanised in its
interpretation and deals with quotas for reception, the memory of the
2015 crisis or the blocks of countries (the supportive and the distrustful),
the Ukrainian crisis is humanised (through perspectives and narratives),
domesticated (directly aects the host societies), and allows recognition
of the thesis of double standards or refugee hierarchies.
Keywords:
Refugees; critical discourse analysis; Afghanistan; Ukraine; framing.
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Pakistan, to which another 3.5 million internally displaced persons must be added (UNHCR, 2023a). Its impact in Spain has
not been excessive, as only 1,581 asylum applications have been documented (Spanish Commission for Refugee Aid, 2023).
Another event that triggered a new diaspora took place at the end of February 2022, when Russian troops invaded Ukraine,
leading to a mass exodus of civilians. According to the UNHCR (2023b), more than 6 million people have been forced to leave
the country, while it is estimated that there are another 8 million internally displaced persons. e eect of this crisis in Spain
has been greater than the Afghan case, given that as of October 1, 2023, there were 211,408 registered Ukrainians, doubling the
gures from the previous year (National Institute of Statistics, 2023).
is paper critically analyses the discourse of the press to determine whether Spanish journalism favours intellectual and
ethical reection on the existence of refugees who are accepted more or less readily by host societies. In other words, in light
of the events in Afghanistan and Ukraine, the paper seeks to clarify whether Spanish written journalism questions double
standards or categories of people (rst or second class) eeing armed conicts.
In addition to looking more closely into the Afghan case, which, with few exceptions (Bucken-Knapp & Zelano, 2023), has
been forgotten in academic output, what is innovative in this paper is the empirical, qualitative examination from the Spanish
perspective. Such hierarchisation had previously been treated in a sociological reection that highlights the paradoxes and
contradictions of Western responses to both crises (De Coninck, 2023), presented in a technical report - with little scientic
validity since it does not provide a methodological design - that was delivered to the European Commission and that presented
dierent examples of international media narratives (none concerning Spain) that proved those double standards (Ibañez
Sales, 2023).
According to Eberl et al. (2018), journalistic attitudes to refugees (and migration in general) varies depending on the country
from which the report is made, the ideology of the medium, the type of migration, the cultural proximity (or distance) of the
migrant or refugee, the newsworthiness of any events emerging, political changes, the proposed topics or approaches, etc.
Despite this, their review shows that migrants and refugees are often considered economic, cultural or criminal threats to
the host societies (the security approach), which is why they are represented in a highly unfavourable or negative way. is
approach is consistent with social journalism studies, which advocate for journalists looking more deeply into the contexts
of vulnerable groups (in our case, migrants), avoiding negative stereotypes (propensity to conict, threat, illegality), such
stereotypes generally being linked to striking events that generate concern in public opinion (Cytrynblum, 2004). Superciality
in the analysis, the absence of diverse information sources and of testimonies from the migrants themselves, or the use of
inappropriate terminology to refer to them, would go against this type of journalism, contributing to worsening the necessary
mutual understanding and coexistence, thus failing to comply with the social commitment that should govern journalists’
work (Castillo-Tamayo & Domínguez-Delgado, 2020). is type of coverage conditions the perceptions of political actors and
inuences voting behaviour (Martínez Lirola, 2022; Zapata-Barrero & Van Dijk, 2007). On the other hand, there is another
type of more positive and supportive narrative (the humanitarian approach), which can even become paternalistic or victim-
seeking (Ibañez Sales, 2023; Gómez-Quintero et al., 2021). In these cases, the media’s dealings with migrants are more
personalist, highlighting the dangers they have faced, their insecurity, problems with maas, human tracking, hurdles to
integration, etc. (Georgiou & Zaborowski, 2017; Caviedes, 2015).
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As regards refugees and journalistic discourse in Spain, Arcos Urrutia et al. (2021) argue that it is a phenomenon that is
presented supercially by the media, with hardly any reection or opinion. It is true that, depending on the newspaper, room
is found for the refugees’ demands, for their life stories and for a humanistic approach to the phenomenon itself, but the
most frequent approach is from an institutional viewpoint, since the priority is the politics, or the social actions and solidarity
promoted by associations and NGOs. e scant space given to these people as a source of information in the texts is the main
conclusion of another work focused on the case of the ship Aquarius, which does recognise a certain degree of visibility for
migrants and refugees, but always from brief statements, without providing details (Arévalo Salinas et al., 2021).
Study of the Aquarius case allows Martínez Lirola (2022) to suggest the existence of a humanitarian narrative that reinforces
solidarity through the dualism “us” and “them”: some are active when they welcome, help and provide care, while others are
passive when they are welcomed, helped and cared for. Her proposal favours a journalistic discourse that is more committed
to social justice, which promotes the inclusion and empowerment of refugees, which naturalises aid between countries and
people for humanitarian reasons, and which brings respect for diversity and the defence of the rights of all human beings
into public focus. Bañón Hernández (2021) also investigates the particularities of journalistic discourse in his terminological
examination (
migrant
,
immigrant
,
refugee,
asylum seeker
) of the dierences in the phases of the migratory journey, encouraging
a rethinking of the collective imagination projected in the news, and an improvement of media routines.
Any deliberation of narratives and approaches requires reference to framing theory, a paradigm that considers that journalists
and opinion leaders, consciously or unconsciously, impose judgments when composing their texts (Entman, 1993). Journalistic
pieces incorporate frames that are manifested by the presence or absence of certain key words, set phrases, arguments,
stereotypical images, sources of information, etc. Facts do not exist in isolation but are given meaning by being embedded
in a narrative, and it is frames that help show what is happening with a certain problem or social issue (Cools et al., 2024).
erefore, as certain aspects of reality are emphasised and made more prominent in narratives, media coverage of an event
may be framed from dierent angles, aecting the receiver’s interpretation of news events (Scheufele, 1999).
Along with framing, this paper uses the postulations of critical discourse analysis from the perspective of social representation
(Moscovici, 1961) and the study of power relations, domination and inequality (Zapata-Barrero & Van Dijk, 2007), to demystify
ideologies through the systematic and reproductive exploration of semiotic data. Among all the approaches involved in critical
discourse studies, the discursive-historical approach (Wodak, 2001; Reisigl & Wodak, 2000) facilitates the methodical, explicit
and transparent study (therefore reproducible) of the intertextual dimension by studying the ways in which discourses evolve
over time (Ferreiro Gómez & Wodak, 2014). One of its crucial attributes is that it allows for the association of critical theory
with empirical research (Wodak et al., 2009).
e media are decisive in the construction of social reality and in the moulding of public opinion (d’Haenens & Mattelart,
2011), they inuence decision- and policy-making during crises (Eberl et al., 2018), or in the reinforcement of hate speech
(Oller Alonso et al., 2021). erefore, the role played by journalism in the proliferation of these prevailing denitions needs to
be questioned, as discussed in the next section.
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2. Hypotheses and research questions
In light of a review of the literature, the starting hypothesis is that any reection by the Spanish press on the existence of
a dierentiated socio-political and media treatment of Afghan and Ukrainian refugees is supercial, that is to say, lacking
analysis of its causes and failing to provide academic or specialised perspectives (H1). Moreover, Spanish newspapers are
aware that the media attention, social assistance and political acquiescence received by Ukrainian refugees has been much
greater than in the case of the Syrian or Afghan crises (H2). However, the discourse of the press is opposed to such double
standards and argues that it is unjustiable that there be hierarchies when reporting on the lives of human beings eeing
conict (H3).
In addition to these hypotheses, this research aims to answer the following questions: what are the main topics and frames
projected by the press concerning Afghan and Ukrainian refugees? What types of information sources prevail when the press
reects on the categorisation of refugees? What arguments do newspapers use when they question their own discourses
regarding any dierences in treatment? What dierentiating nuances lie behind the reections on said categorisation?
3. Methodology
e corpus of this study comprises 225 items of journalism from
El País, El Mundo, ABC
and
La Vanguardia
, four leading
Spanish newspapers that have been selected for their history, number of readers, social inuence and varied ideological
approach (Reig, 2000).
La Vanguardia
is a conservative Catalan newspaper, while the other three have a more national
orientation, although they are ideologically diverse:
El País
is left-wing and progressive,
ABC
is linked to Catholicism, the
monarchy, traditionalism and conservative values; and
El Mundo
is considered centre-right (Martínez-Lirola, 2022; Durán,
2019).
e texts were taken from the
MyNews
platform
using the search terms refug* AND (afgan* OR “ucran*), provided that they
appeared in the title or subtitle to conrm the relevance of the term within the content. e journalistic genres considered
are news, reportage, interviews, features, columns or opinion articles, analysis, editorials, proles, letters to the editor and
photo reports, thus the study excludes cartoons, listings, obituaries, ocial announcements, pastimes, etc. e interval 2002-
2021 was used for the Afghan case (although 65% correspond to the year 2021) and from February 24 to April 22, 2022, for the
Ukrainian case. Although the Afghan diaspora began as early as 1979, the compilation of data began in 2002 with the intention
of having similar gures for both crises and thus making comparisons fair. e Ukrainian time frame was limited to the rst
two months of the 2022 conict, as from then on the number of displaced persons and the subsequent media interest in this
issue decreased (UNHCR, 2023c).
At an analytical level, this work combines quantitative and qualitative techniques in order to achieve the required sequentiality,
reliability and level of detail, in addition to methodological triangulation (Creswell, 2009; Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011). Firstly,
a quantitative content analysis was applied to describe and interpret the coverage with numbers and statistics (Piñeiro-Naval,
2020) by means of a code made up of 64 categories to classify both formal (date, newspaper, photographs, etc.) and specic
aspects (subject matter, refugee testimonies, framing, etc.) for the object of study. It should be pointed out that the coding
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was carried out by a single researcher, following a detailed codebook and its instruction sheet. To mitigate potential intra-
coding inconsistencies, another co-author supervised approximately a quarter of the framing variables of the units of analysis,
the most meaningful ones for the subsequent connotative analysis, resolving by consensus any dierences of criteria that
occasionally came up. is could represent a methodological limitation, but the authors believe it is mitigated by the use of a
strict codebook, double-checking the coding process, and complementing the quantitative approach with qualitative analysis.
e second phase studied what Van Dijk (2018) terms
Migration Media Discourse
, that is, a critical analysis of the journalistic
discourse on migration by observing languages, meanings, contexts, argumentative logic, metaphors, changes, nuances,
intentions, connotations, etc. (Schreier, 2012; Van Dijk, 2018; Martínez Lirola, 2022; Zapata-Barrero, 2018). is called for an
initial reading to dene the measurable aspects (ideology, religion, culture, testimonies, reections, subject matter, linguistic
practices, etc.) that were then categorised in a second, more detailed reading (Ruiz Olabuénaga, 2012) and recorded in QSR
NVivo, a program that facilitates qualitative data processing. e main ndings are provided in the form of extracts (Palmgren
et al., 2023), following a chronological pattern wherever possible, and emphasising, above all, the hierarchisation of refugees
according to their origin.
As mentioned above, one of the most important issues is the study of frames
,
which are handled here both deductively
(quantitatively) and inductively (qualitatively). us, Semetko & Valkenburg’s proposal (2000) was rst integrated into the
quantitative content analysis, their design contemplates ve options: attribution of responsibility, human interest, conict,
morality, and economic consequences. A new frame is added here, that, in the authors’ opinion, completes the classication:
that of socio-political consequences, which emphasises the consequences that a certain action can have on individuals,
groups, institutions, regions or countries. At the same time, while framing theory
also allows for more experimental approaches
assisted by qualitative methodologies (Cools et al., 2024; Ardèvol-Abreu, 2015), inductive frames emerge from critical discourse
analysis. In addition to facilitating the understanding of narratives, their biases, nuances or meanings, what is highlighted or
silenced, these qualitative frames reinforce the exhaustiveness of the analysis (Ibrahim, 2010). is type of study is usually
carried out with small samples, as in our case, due to the importance of contextualisation and latent discourse (Schreier, 2012).
4. Results
Firstly, the quantitative ndings are presented regarding the topics and sources of information most used by the Spanish press,
followed by an analysis of the main frames of media coverage, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Finally, a third section
reveals the discourse and media reection concerning the categorisation of refugees.
4.1. Topics and information sources
Of the 225 pieces of journalism, one in ve (20.4%) includes a reection on the existence of categories of refugees, understood
as dierences in treatment depending on their origin. Hereinafter, the results shared always correspond to the 46 units of
analysis that integrate the discursive nuances that will later be externalised in the form of extracts. ese reections are
more frequent in the information on the Ukrainian crisis (63%, 29 texts) than on the Afghan crisis (37%, 17 texts), and in
El
Mundo
and
El País
(both with 32.6%) than in
La Vanguardia
(23.9%) or
ABC
(10.9%). Going deeper into the specics of each
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newspaper, it is noteworthy that
El País
is the only one in which the Afghan crisis (53.3%, 8 texts) appears more than the
Ukrainian situation (46.7%, 7 texts), while the Ukrainian emergency takes precedence over the Afghan one in
La Vanguardia
(81.8%, 9 texts compared to 2),
ABC
(80%, 4 texts compared to 1) and
El Mundo
(60%, 9 texts compared to 6).
In the study of the topics (Table 1), it is illuminating to see that the same issues (legal matters, decisions taken by other
countries or organisations, descriptions of the journey, and racism) are dealt with in both crises, with one exception: the most
common topic varies. us, in the case of displaced Afghans, the most frequently mentioned topic refers to agreements with
the European Union (41.2%), while this issue is only the sixth most common in the Ukrainian case (6.9%). On the other hand,
reception and humanitarian aid is the most repeated argument when reporting on Ukrainian refugees (37.9%), occupying sixth
place for Afghans (5.8%).
Table 1. Main topics in both crises (%)
Afghan crisis
%
Ukrainian crisis
%
EU agreements
41.2
Reception and humanitarian aid
37.9
Legal issues
17.6
Legal issues
13.8
Decisions of other countries or organisations
11.8
Decisions of other countries or organizations
13.8
Description of the journey
11.8
Description of the journey
10.3
Racism11.8Racism10.3
Reception and humanitarian aid
5.8
EU agreements
6.9
Total100Total93
Source: created by the authors
As for the sources of information, after reviewing the two leading sources that include reection in the texts about both crises
(regardless of whether they come from news or opinion sections), it is found that the media itself is the most common source
for both Afghans (38.1%) and Ukrainians (34.9%). For the former, the other relevant sources are the European Union (16.5%),
testimonies of refugees or migrants (14.5%), the United Nations (11.5%), civil society, i.e. NGOs, the Church and religious
sources, experts, academics, think tanks, unions, lawyers, readers, etc. (9.7%), and the governments of other countries (9.7%).
In contrast, the Ukrainian crisis is reported from the point of view of civil society (18.3%), ocial Spanish sources (14.7%),
testimonies (13.2%), governments of other countries (10.9%), police forces (2%), the European Union (2%), the United Nations
(2%) and other sources of information (2%). e data shows that the latter crisis has a more domestic or national character
than the former, which is more dependent on international sources.
4.2. Media frames
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e dierences in treatment are claried by studying the frequency of appearance of the frames adapted from Semetko &
Valkenburg (2000). Table 2 shows that conict (64.7%) and the attribution of responsibility (23.5%) are characteristic of Afghan
refugees, while coverage of displaced Ukrainians leaves room for more frames. In the accounts concerning Ukraine, attribution
of responsibility is predominant (37.9%), while conict is attenuated (6.9%), whereas human interest (24.1%), morality (13.8%)
and sociopolitical consequences (13.8%) are highlighted, three nuances that are barely present when reporting on Afghans. It
should be remembered that, in this measurement of the frames, just as with the topics, only the priority is recorded among all
those that may occur in a piece, that is, the most prominent, visible and perceptible frame in the text or in the heading, subtitle,
introduction or summary of the same.
From a qualitative point of view, the relevance of the conict frame in the Afghan case is clearly reected throughout the
sample analysed. It is sometimes related to the country itself, Afghanistan, “bathed in violence for decades” (Gutiérrez, 11
September 2015), and on other occasions, to the situations experienced by Afghans on their journey or once on European soil.
For this second case, in a text that narrated the aggression perpetrated by young members of Golden Dawn, the Greek “ultra-
right”, “neo-Nazi” party, there is talk of “re for refugees on the streets of Lesbos”, of attacks on “Afghan immigrants stranded
on an island which they cannot leave”, or of “women sleeping in diapers to avoid going to the latrines and being raped” (Rojas,
24 April 2018).
Table 2. Main frames in both crises (%)
Frame
Afghan crisisUkrainian crisis
Attribution of responsibility
23.537.9
Human interest
5.924.1
Conict64.76.9
Morality5.913.8
Economic consequences
03.5
Socio-political consequences
013.8
Total100100
Source: created by the authors
Furthermore, the conict also serves to represent European Manichaeism in crisis management, as if it were a ght: “e
Afghan crisis reverberates in Europe with two factions facing each other over the potential coming avalanche of refugees”
(Abril & Pérez, August 31, 2021). e two political “factions” that clash are grouped into “the humanitarian face” that sought
“specic commitments and to establish quotas and shares,” and the security face, typical “of countries in favour of sealing
borders, fearful that any gesture of openness could generate a call eect that would make old ghosts reappear.” is duality is
found in another item: the Europe of the “values” and “rights” of people is confronted with that of “fear,” “migratory panic,”
“security” or “call eect” (Pérez, September 5, 2021). e Afghans and their crisis were caught in the middle, “the ghost … that
has reopened all the scars, all the poorly-healed wounds, all the fault lines in an EU that remains an idea in search of reality.”
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e attribution of responsibility is the second most projected frame in the Afghan case and can be seen in an opinion piece
that subscribes to the idea that “the world must welcome Afghan asylum seekers”, that “the United States must face its share,
in proportion to its enormous responsibility in this humanitarian catastrophe” (Naïr, August 28, 2021). is frame has always
been more common in political texts, such as when the European Union announced its commitment to welcome 37,000
Afghans, of whom 2,500 would arrive in Spain, an agreement that was praised by the heads of the European institutions or the
member states of the Union (Abril, December 10, 2021).
Human interest and morality are the other frames present in the case of the Afghans. e rst is clearly seen in a report posted
from Athens and based on the experiences of Mohamed Ali, a 34-year-old Afghan who ed with his family because they had
no “future” in their country, or of Imran Hussein, another Afghan in his twenties who wanted to reach Germany (Gutiérrez,
September 11, 2015). e same thing happens in “e defeat of Genghis Khan’s ‘grandchildren’” an article that recounts the
journey of Hamid and many other families of Hazara refugees, “one of the most persecuted minorities in the world” (Rojas,
December 3, 2015). On the other hand, an editorial criticising “Europe’s double language when it becomes a magnet for
millions of people and communities aected by persecution and despair” is from a moral perspective; with the challenge being
described as “colossal” (
El País
, 22 August 2021). Given that such moral arguments are among the hypotheses questioned in
this study, more speeches of this nature are presented in the following section.
e Ukrainian case, on the other hand, rests on a wider variety of frames, although coverage is dominated by the attribution of
responsibility for several reasons. at is sometimes because Vladimir Putin is pointed to as the cause of the new circumstances
for so many thousands of people (Rojas, February 26, 2022), but in other cases because a country, a city or a politician is involved
in helping (Roces, February 27, 2022; Medialdea, March 8, 2022; López, March 20, 2022; Pita, April 7, 2022). Responsibility is
once again evident when the European Union reacts favourably to protect Ukrainians in contrast to past crises (Suanzes, 4
March 2022; Alberich et al., 22 April 2022), but also when Boris Johnson, British Prime Minister at the time, is not as supportive
as his European colleagues in terms of control and verication (Fresneda, 8 March 2022).
Secondly, the coverage is presented from a human-interest perspective, that is, from the personal stories of those who have
suered the consequences of the Russian invasion. Such is the reality of a group of African women bound for Poland, whose
testimony gives the title to a report: “«We all went together for fear of being raped by the Russians»” (Rojas, March 1, 2002).
Or that of the Makohou family, whose mother, Luda, shortly after crossing the border with Poland, claimed that she had “not
had time to cry” because she had to “be strong” for her children (Segura, February 27, 2022). Another of these stories is that
of Denis, a thirty-something “citizen of the enemy power that has invaded the country in which he resides”, who preferred to
follow his Ukrainian wife on her way to Slovakia or Poland rather than return to Russia (Segura, March 3, 2022). Romania was
the choice of Faith Igogo and her husband Sahdrach, 33-year-old Nigerians, who were grateful for the help they have received
in their new destination (Pita & Costa, March 6, 2022). Finally, it is worth highlighting the experience of Waleed, a twenty-
something Pakistani aeronautical engineering student in Kiev, who ed with his wife and a female friend, and who was waiting
for shelter at a Berlin train station after three sleepless nights of travel and having been the victim of discrimination at the
border. is is how he described his journey in
El País
: “We came to Europe to build a future for ourselves and now we nd
ourselves as refugees of war with a very bleak future” (Sevillano, March 11, 2022).
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e moral burden is also present in some parts of the coverage. It appears, in particular, to denounce that the magnicent
treatment received by Ukrainian refugees should be the norm for anybody in need, and it comes, almost always, attributed to
illustrious gures, such as Pope Francis (Martínez-Brocal, April 4, 2022) or Abdulrazak Gurnah, Nobel Prize for Literature in
2021 (Ayén, March 23, 2022). Ultimately, these texts raise a humanistic reection on the existence of categories of refugees, a
subject that is discussed at length in the following section.
Another representative frame in the Ukrainian crisis is that of socio-political consequences, a new addition here to Semetko
& Valkenburg’s proposal (2000). It can be clearly seen in a report that describes the Hungarian management of the Ukrainian
crisis, and which questions the decisions of “Viktor Orbán’s ultra-conservative government”, who, despite having “been slow
to react”, decided to welcome “the Ukrainians as he did not do with the Syrians in the 2015 crisis” (López, March 30, 2022).
Testimonies are cited, such as the one that suggests that it is merely an electioneering measure, or that, in the opinion of the
leader of Fidesz, the majority of those who ed to Western Europe in 2015 did not do so “‘for reasons of safety’, but because
they wanted to live in Germany”. e relevance of this frame is perfectly illustrated in one type of journalistic narrative: the
style that describes the large number of Ukrainians arriving and the challenges this is causing in the host society, both in Spain,
where, for example, the hiring of Ukrainian interpreters is encouraged to help with the integration of refugee children at school
(Sanmartín, March 31, 2022), and in other contexts such as Poland (Sevillano, March 11, 2022), Mexico or the United States
(Sánchez Olmos, March 21, 2022; Peirón, April 10, 2022).
Unlike the Afghan crisis, the conict frame is not a priority here when focusing on the meaning of the texts. at does not mean
that it is not present in the coverage, something impossible when the basis is the invasion of a country and the subsequent
armed conict; what happens is that others take precedence, as explained above. However, it does occur on certain occasions
due to the way in which the journalist presents arguments or chooses testimonies, as happens with a news item where it is
reported that the “French extremist candidate” Eric Zemmour asked for “the refugees to be left in Poland” (Val, March 1, 2022).
Finally, the same circumstance that accompanies the conict frame is repeated with that of economic consequences. e
exception is found in pieces such as the one entitled “Ukrainian refugees receive help to pay the rent” (Martín, April 14, 2022).
4.3. e categorisation of refugees
is section oers some examples of cases in which the Spanish press pondered the existence of categories of refugee or double
standards in their treatment. In other words, this section presents the journalistic discourse on intellectual and humanistic
(moral or ethical) reections on the existence of refugees who experience greater or lesser acceptance by host societies.
Examining the Afghan case since 2002, the maxim that there are rst- and second-class refugees is already apparent from
the 2015 Mediterranean crisis. At least this headline puts it so: “Afghans, second-class refugees” (Gutiérrez, 11 September
2015). e reason was that “EU emergency measures give priority to Syrians, Eritreans and Iraqis”. On other occasions, it was
the Afghans who received preferential treatment, as reected in the report “‘You can go through... You to the cage’” (Rojas,
21 November 2015), which recognised the fortune of the Afghans in gaining access to the Balkan countries in their European
dream. e reason for this was that they had been displaced by war, just as the Iraqis and Syrians had. A dierent reception
faced other less fortunate refugees or economic migrants (especially from Morocco, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Congo, Liberia,
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Algeria, Sri Lanka or Sudan), with “the cage” waiting for them prior to their return to the “previous border”. However, a change
in the Greek regulations declaring that Afghanistan was no longer a country at war, changed their status and, from February
2016, Afghans were left without the option to continue along the Balkan route (valid only for Syrians and Iraqis), which left a
new title awaiting many: that of being “vagrants” (Rojas, February 26, 2016). ree years after the rst salvos of the crises, it was
the Afghans who were reduced to the same status as the “Moroccans, Algerians or Pakistanis”, collectives “from countries that
are not at war, which makes it dicult for them to be recognised as refugees” (Rojas, April 24, 2018).
Among people of the same nationality, hierarchisation may respond to dierent criteria that vary from sex or age to religion or
ethnicity. Such was the case of the Hazaras of Afghanistan, with “slanted eyes” or “Mongol-looking”, predominantly Shiite and
from the Bamiyan region (Rojas, December 3, 2015). As this text recalled, “it is not easy to be a refugee, but it is more dicult
to be one if you are an Afghan Hazara”. e compassionate discourse touched on other occasions on Afghan women, as when
the deputy mayor of Madrid, Begoña Villacís, denounced that many continued to live “the true terror of being there” (Roces,
February 27, 2022).
e solidarity and humanitarianism announced by European politicians, recalled in an editorial in
El País
, clashed with the
practical reality that refugees discovered on their way to Eden: “railings”, “surveillance systems”, “watchtowers”, “thermal
cameras”, “electronic surveillance” or “a ve-metre fence” (
El País
, 22 August 2021). Perhaps for this reason, famous names
such as Sami Naïr (28 August 2021) denounce that “Afghan refugees not only call for the duty of human solidarity, but for the
recognition of the right to aid, an emblem of the civilisation that we claim to represent”. His openly compassionate speech
armed that Afghans were “humble citizens” who “plead for solidarity”, “helpless people, who had believed in an Afghanistan
free from the violence of the Taliban and embarked with the dream of a system that respected human dignity”. In essence,
Europe was at a crossroads between, on the one hand, the “values” and “rights” of people and, on the other, “fear”, “migratory
panic”, “security” or the “call eect”, something reprehensible in the eyes of a researcher at the Centre for European Reform
who stated that “there is a lot of hypocrisy in Europe” (Pérez, September 5, 2021).
However, since the very rst news item about the Ukrainian crisis, a more favourable attitude towards those eeing that
country can be perceived. Poland’s attitude, for example, was considerably more empathetic, given that, as one report put it,
“the border barrier” was opened for all Ukrainians and their pets, “without the need for documentation, a Covid certicate
or insurance” (Rojas, February 26, 2022). Only a few months earlier, during the 2021 crisis that pitted Poland and Belarus
against each other when President Lukashenko, “Putin’s ally, transferred migrants from countries in conict such as Iraq or
Afghanistan to the border,” the Polish authorities had “aggressively” blocked their entry (Segura, February 27, 2022). Another
journalist criticised that Polish society was showing itself to be “as generous with culturally kindred countries” as it was “not in
2015-2016 with a few thousand Muslim migrants” (Pita, 7 April 2022). In fact, the Ukrainian crisis revealed a truth described by
an Indian university student who had just set foot in Poland: “ere are two queues, one for Ukrainians and one for foreigners.
For every 50 Ukrainians, more or less two foreigners come through. e colour of your skin doesn’t matter. You go to one line
or another depending on your passport” (Rojas, 1 March 2022). Almost metaphorically, these two lines support the thesis of
the two categories of refugees.
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Similar accounts have come from the border between Mexico and the United States. e Ukrainian “new wave” brought major
changes with respect to other crises experienced “with the Central Americans in 2018, with the Haitians, after the assassination
of Jovenel Moise, and with the Venezuelans and Cubans, at dierent times in recent years,” as “its members are blonder, have
white skin and travel in better conditions,” although they “come face to face with the
bureaucratic wall
that the United States
has raised on its border since the pandemic broke out” (Sánchez Olmos, March 21, 2022). It is hardly surprising that two
testimonies acknowledged, rstly, that the new migrants had “greater facilities than other nationalities”, something which had
“never” happened with “a Central American family,” and, second, that although it is “a little cruel, … if Africans come here, they
won’t be given any favouritism, but since these people are blond, they are allowed in.” e same was said a few weeks later in
another news report that described how Ukrainians who wanted to enter the United States came across on their journey “many
other desperate immigrants from various countries, especially Honduras and Haiti, who were not faced with the same facilities
to enter their destination” (Peirón, April 10).
It was mentioned above that Pope Francis and Abdulrazak Gurnah played a categorical role in criticising the categorisation of
people, and double standards in solidarity with those in need. After a trip to Malta where he met a number of immigrants, the
Christian leader asked European leaders to open “the doors” to “those who arrive from the Mediterranean” just as they did
with those coming from Ukraine (Martínez-Brocal, April 4, 2022). For his part, the 2021 Nobel Prize winner for Literature, when
asked about Ukrainians, replied that “they are relatively lucky that, at least, they have found understanding and support in
neighbouring countries, it is sad that not all peoples in similar situations are taken in like that,” remembering “Afghans, Syrians
and Iraqis” (Ayén, March 23, 2022). e South African writer sees the problem as being that in some areas of Europe, “there
is a suspicion of strangers”, this being “nothing new”, and its origin was “the distance that is felt towards people who come,
especially if they are from the south”, which constitutes a “racist phenomenon”. Finally, excluding Germany, Spain or Portugal
from these areas so lacking in solidarity, Gurnah remarked that “in other countries they have been spoken of as criminals, as
people who come to ruin our prosperity”.
Some of these ideas are compiled in an editorial entitled “e agile reception of Ukrainian refugees”, the agility of which was
due, above all, to the policy of “open borders, something that did not happen in the 2015 Syrian refugee crisis”, or to the fact
that Europeans considered Ukrainians as “neighbours” and abhorred “Putin’s aggression” (
La Vanguardia
, April 2, 2022). e
editorial positively highlighted that, in Spain, “a signicant part of the Ukrainian children who have arrived in our country –
90% of those who have escaped the country under bombs are women and children – are already in school, and can ask for
treatment, like their elders, from the public health system”. e article ended by questioning double standards by pointing out
that some NGOs were calling for “equal treatment for immigrants of other origins”, referring to “North Africans, sub-Saharans,
Syrians, etc. who risk their lives to reach Spain”. It stressed that “they are refugees just like the Ukrainians, and are human
beings like them, but they do not receive the same help”.
Finally, with the paradigm of “institutional racism” as a backdrop, the thesis of double standards was outlined in an opinion
article signed by Colectivo Treva i Pau denouncing that, “despite declarations of human rights, religious preaching…, being
a refugee in Europe is not the same as being a European refugee” (Alberich et al., April 22, 2022). e authors recalled that,
in 2015, “with the intelligent, exemplary exception of Germany, we witnessed a shameful haggling to ‘share’ a few thousand
refugees, and that some countries refused to take in even one, breaking the agreement”. On the other hand, they emphasised
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that “many Spanish cities – the key player in the generation of shared citizenship – have been acquiring considerable know-
how
in the management of cultural diversity and social cohesion, largely applying an intercultural paradigm”. e article ended
with “two requests”: rst, that the “comparative grievance” represented by “the queues at immigration oces for processing
work or residence permits” be eliminated, when the Ukrainian crisis had demonstrated that they can be issued in 24 hours;
and second, that “the collapse of the child protection system in the Canary Islands could, with everyone pulling together, be
resolved immediately.”
5. Conclusions
roughout these pages, it has become clear that the Spanish press has provided a dierentiated treatment of the two refugee
crises analysed from the perspective of intellectual reection that focused on the existence of two categories of refugees or,
in other words, refugees better or worse accepted by the host societies. From a quantitative perspective, on the occasions
when this reection appears (it arises in around 20% of cases), the people who ed Afghanistan gure mainly concerning
topics of international information (European Union agreements), media and international sources of information (European
Union, United Nations and governments of other countries), and within frames that highlight the conict and the attribution
of responsibility. In addition to this same attribution of responsibility, the newspaper texts that deal with the Ukrainian crisis
are also framed around human interest, moral or socio-political consequences, something that rarely occurred in the case of
the Afghans. As regards subject matter, the pieces that touch on Ukrainians deal mainly with reception and humanitarian aid
and are reported, above all, from closer sources of information, such as civil society, ocial Spanish sources, testimonies or
the media themselves. So, if we look only at numerical or quantitative parameters, one of the conclusions that we draw is that
Afghans are dehumanised in comparison with Ukrainians.
e Afghan crisis also shows that information is topical, and that reection is scarce. It should be remembered that in order to
draw up a broad retrospective of coverage, our research went back to 2002 and, with a few exceptions in which the texts had a
more highly opinionated or interpretive content (editorials, columns or interviews), the pieces examined were mostly news,
reports or features, almost always dependent on highly-newsworthy events. is reality cannot be proven with the Ukrainian
case, since the time interval observed was much shorter than for the Afghan case.
e dierences in how the two crises were dealt with are more noticeable from a discursive and qualitative perspective. To
avoid repeating the ideas expressed in the previous sections, a joint, critical and inductive reading is proposed here for each
context. Firstly, regarding Afghanistan, the media and political discourse revolves around the fact that this is not a “version
2.0” of the 2015 Mediterranean refugee crisis, which brought hundreds of thousands of individuals to Europe, principally from
Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Although the memory of that crisis is palpable in the content of the texts, reporters and politicians
(as sources of information) do not give the Afghan crisis of 2021 the alarmist and security-related tone that was raised in the
review of the literature. In fact, some pieces clearly underlined that the Afghan crisis was not comparable to that of 2015 and
that it should be handled completely dierently by Europe. At its core, the Afghan crisis is a European crisis, a community
issue characterised by two news frames: the “quota” policy adopted by European countries for the distribution of refugees,
and the “factionalism” that split Europe into two blocks. On one side, the reluctant group including Poland, Hungary, Austria,
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the Czech Republic or Slovakia, and on the other, the rest, albeit more in “words” than “in deeds”. Because the prevailing
media discourse was that the European Union’s management of the situation by was not living up to the standard set by its
founding charter. In short, hospitality did not carry the day. As far as Spain is concerned, instead of detailed self-criticism of its
performance, the newspapers opted for a discourse of “passing the buck”, that is, insisting that the “bad guys” were the “others”,
the censors, placing the responsibility squarely on the block of Poland, Hungary, etc.
In general terms, media coverage of the Ukrainian crisis transcends the international to the point of being humanised and
domesticated (it is brought closer to our daily lives), because one of the favoured readings is that this crisis poses a direct
question to Spanish, European and Western society, the United States included. Apart from being perceived among the
typologies of news items, topics, information sources and frames, this discourse is based on a singular reality: that being a
Ukrainian refugee is not the same as being a person (foreigner or migrant) eeing the Russian-Ukrainian conict, something
that is indubitably revealed in the articles and reports posted from the countries bordering Ukraine. e dehumanisation
of these second-class foreigners and migrants is manifest in the diculties they encounter in entering Poland and other
neighbouring countries, something that does not happen with Ukrainian women, children and even “pets.” For this reason,
some texts openly expressed the existence of a certain institutional racism, in Spain as well, due to those specic measures that
favoured Ukrainians and which those other refugees and collectives did not enjoy; whether from cities that did their utmost to
welcome refugees or from help paying the rent, from actions to ease the hiring of translators in schools to “express regulations”.
Finally, when parallels had to be drawn, the comparative pattern for Ukrainians was the 2015 crisis, not the Afghan one. And in
this sense, the press recognised the solidarity and humanity of Spain, Europe and the entire Western world.
is study has demonstrated that being an Afghan refugee is not the same as being a Ukrainian refugee, just as being Hazara
is not the same as being Afghan, or being a man is not the same as being a woman or a child. ere are human categories just
as there are conditions and situations that are unfavourable for some people, whatever the context or the crisis. Moreover,
depending on the area of the planet, the “others” change. If in Europe they are Moors, sub-Saharans, Arabs, etc., in North
America they are Haitians, Hondurans, Venezuelans, Cubans, etc. In this game, Ukrainians are welcome, and Afghans are
always less welcome. e same thing occurs in Iran and Turkey, according to some of the Afghans who recounted their
journeys. However, contrary to what might be expected, Islam, as the majority religion of Afghans, has never been an obvious
factor in justifying or criticising the categorisation of refugees, nor have other ideological or cultural nuances.
For all these reasons, it can be seen that the Spanish press is fully aware that there are hierarchies of refugees in the social
and political atmosphere, some better and others worse. Far from arming that the paradigm of categorisation is shared
or encouraged by the media studied, one of the ndings of this work is that, due to their silence, these newspapers do not
perform self-criticism of the consequences of their coverage and evade their responsibility for the eect of their information
or their attitude. In other words, perhaps because it would be throwing stones in their own glass houses, the newspapers do
not feel responsible for the fact that society sees Afghans and Ukrainians in a dierent light, nor that their discourse is decisive
in public opinion or in decision- and policy-making (in the so-called “agenda”), something that would not sit well with their
social responsibility.
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Returning to the hypotheses, it can be conrmed that the Spanish press does not analyse the causes nor provide academic
or specialised perspectives when reecting on the existence of dierent socio-political and media treatment of Afghan and
Ukrainian refugees, which translates into a supercial discourse (H1). On the other hand, as already noted, we do consider
that the newspapers studied are aware that the media attention, social assistance and political acquiescence that Ukrainian
refugees have received is not equivalent to other crises, especially the Afghan one, as it is one of those examined in this work
(H2). Finally, we argue that, in cases where this has been expressed, almost always in editorial and opinion articles, through
testimonies from expert voices or through reporters’ interpretation, the discourse of the Spanish press is contrary to the
existence of double standards and argues that it is unjustiable that hierarchies exist when reporting on human beings eeing
conicts (H3), although without taking responsibility for its own role in this.
Future studies may well focus on other aspects of discourse (such as images) or on broadening the spectrum of reection on
refugee categories to other crises (war or not) such as that of 2015, the Sudanese, the Rohingya, the Venezuelan or, why not,
the most recent Palestinian crisis. Likewise, this perspective could serve as a basis for drawing comparisons with migratory
movements of a more economic (or even climate-related or environmental) nature than war, given that these are the ones that
usually concern Spain.
6. Acknowledgements
is article has been translated into English by Brian O’Halloran to whom we are grateful for his work.
is work has been partially carried out thanks to funding from the Department of Science, University and Knowledge Society,
the Government of Aragon (Research Group S05_23R) and San Jorge University.
7. Specic contributions of each author
Name and surname
Conception and design of the workAlfonso Corral
Methodology
Antonio Prieto-Andrés and Alfonso Corral
Data collection and analysisCayetano Fernández Romero and Alfonso Corral
Discussion and conclusionsAlfonso Corral
Drafting, formatting, version review and approvalCayetano Fernández Romero, Antonio Prieto-Andrés and Alfonso Corral
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8. Conict of interest
e authors declare that there is no conict of interest contained in this article.
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