The Use of Identity as a Form of Protest
The Use of Identity as a Form of Protest

Summary/Abstract: The migration crisis to and in Europe had more characteristics but there was one above others – the struggle for a unified reaction of the European Union. The situation was also complicated by the fact that opinions on the response often differed at the internal level of the member states, as in the Czech Republic, a birthplace of the voluntary movement called the Czech Team. In this study, one aspect of the team members’ motivation was analysed – the declaration of the “European identity” as a form of their protest against the state immigration policy, considered to be anti-European. The occurrence of this incentive element had been investigated by the participant observation, unstructured interviewing of volunteers in Serbia and compared to the related researches on motivation. The results showed the protest against the state policy was often combined with other protests (for example against media or extremist groups) and was the most apparent during the peak of the crisis in 2015. Later, following the stabilisation of mass migration in the Balkans, the strong declaration of the European identity lost its relevance. The volunteers and their open critique of the policy gain the attention at the state and international levels. However, the real impact on the Czech immigration policy remains questionable and rather insignificant.

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