Panic narratives about the “dangerous migrants”: emergence and existence during The covid-19 epidemic in Russia

Abstract

With the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in Russia, a lot of rumors and panic stories have arisen and have been spreading in Russian-speaking social media. One of the topics of such stories was the fear of migrants. On the one hand, it was argued that due to economic recession and unemployment brought by the epidemic, migrants would be forced to switch to aggressive actions - theft, robbery and even cannibalism. On the other hand, migrants were accused of being “contagious” and spreading the disease. It is important that the facts and assumptions stated in such texts do not correspond to reality. However, such panic narratives (the author’s term) are not a product of the current epidemiological situation. They exist in the general context of xenophobia in Russia, which has a long history. However, during the COVID-19 epidemic, these narratives experienced a rebirth. Since during an emergency practices of divergence and delimitation are present, such texts are a form of their embodiment. Firstly, these texts enable separating of “us” from “strangers” and smoothing out the fear of everyone being equally vulnerable to the illness. Secondly, they enable blaming the outsiders for the loss of the privileges that the citizens normally enjoy. The article analyzes the history of the emergence of such panic narratives, as well as their typology and structure