In Slovenia the so called refugee crisis lasted from October 2015 to March 2016, when the Balkan route was closed. The public discourse in this time had the characteristic of moral panic; it abruptly started when the Hungarian government closed the border with Serbia and Croatia, forcing masses of migrants to take the route to "Germany" via Slovenia, and as abruptly ended with the closure of the Balkan route. The subjective experience with the period of intense public interest in migration is described through many interventions by the author, who happened to be one of the many experts who were asked to comment on the "refugee crisis". Each intervention was intentionally the same, and addressed the same two clusters of public fears: first, the masses of migrants and refugees as a natural disaster that would destroy "everything", and, second, the impossibility of integration of masses of migrants into European and Slovenian societies. Each intervention insisted, first, on the forgotten historical facts about the intense migrations that have been a crucial part of the formations of Europe's ethnically, religiously, linguistically and culturally diverse and mixed populations and societies, and, second, on the forgotten facts about the recent successful integration practices that have evolved in Europe and Slovenia in the past fifty years and enabled them to become and remain economically and socially stable and safe.

moral panic Migrations "Refugee crisis" Construction of the Other Integration practices

[No Keywords available]