European international society and asylum seeker discussion: The case of European Union

One of the key topics of theoretical discussions on the concept of international society is the need for cultural commonality. In the context of European integration, some of the theorists addressing the issue consider common interests, shared norms and rules as sufficient for membership in the international society, while others have stressed the importance of having a common cultural background. This study focuses on the question of how the issue of Syrian asylum seekers affects this long debate. Before the case of the Syrian asylum seekers, four cases will be analyzed through the issue of cultural commonality of the European Union: the Central and Eastern enlargement, the membership of the candidate Turkey, migrants within the borders of the Union and BREXIT. The former two cases are about the horizontal enlargement of the borders of the Union and the latter two cases are about the deepening (vertical enlargement) of the Union. After this comparative case study, the produced statements on Syrian asylum seekers in the minutes of the European Parliament, which hosts elected representatives of the European international society, will be analyzed through discourse-historical approach, one of the methods of critical discourse analyses. The findings are: Analogy of Medieval Europe, Normative European Discourse, Concern for the Dissolution of the Union, Concern for the Islamization of the Union, The Wall Metaphor, Dream of where Christians Can Take Refugee. The findings suggest that the European identity is being re-produced on a discourse strategy based on cultural and religious commonality within the crisis atmosphere where Muslim refugees are excluded in a marginalizing (othering) language. Cultural commonality, therefore, has a significant role in the context of the European integration as well as common norms and rules.