Polish president Karol Nawrocki is shutting off welfare benefits for Ukrainians in Poland. Earlier welcomed as refugees, Ukrainians are now pushed into a role as second-class guestworkers in their host country.
It was easy to see a contrast. Where Czech president Petr Pavel publicly embraced a Ukrainian girl humiliated by her classmates, just a month later his Polish counterpart Karol Nawrocki removed benefits from the children of unemployed Ukrainian single mothers. One of Poland’s leading liberal-oriented publicists, Sławomir Sierakowski, a critic of right-wing president Nawrocki, was sure to highlight the opposition in the two leaders’ treatment of refugees. One president signals compassion, the other enacts exclusion.
But in Poland, this exclusion has become a central language of pow