Migrants as ‘pawns’: Antimigrant debates on Twitter and their affinity to European border politics and discourses

This article explores how Europe’s border crises in the post refugee ‘crisis’ years were discussed micro-blog Twitter, through an in-depth analysis of boundary making. Our focus is on tweets top influencers hashtag #IStandWithGreece who strategically promoted ideologies ranging from white supremacism to Greek nationalism, glued together by antimigrant stance during a at periphery. network intolerance representation migrants as ‘pawns’; seen like chess piece, with no value their own right, literally pushed towards Europe Turkey, elevated them into sizable threat. Within this, was represented paradoxical other, fallen Self, for not rising up opportunity protect its sovereignty and identity more securitization. Despite being diffused extreme Twitterers, we argue that these offer overtly racist expression otherwise mainstream European (Union) discourses politics migration. Effectively, #IStandWithGreece’s functioned alter-ego mouthpiece, saying unsayable using social media, affordances contributing normalization oppressive restrictive management.