Europeanisation and the Dialectics of Crisis and Solidarity in the Croatian and Serbian Broadsheet Press between 2007 and 2017

Abstract

This article explores representations of European solidarity in the aftermath of crisis-like events between 2007 and 2017 in the Croatian and Serbian broadsheet press, as well as their resonance with the discursive construction of Europe and Europeanisation. In order to achieve this goal, corpus-based discourse analysis is performed over a large collection of ca. 20,000 articles, originating in four newspapers. The results demonstrate that discourses on European solidarity rose to particular prominence in 2008–2009, 2011–2013, and 2015. This constitutes a dialectical relation with discourses on crises: the global financial crisis, European debt crisis, and migration crisis – especially the latter – redefined the notion of European solidarity, reflected in Croatian and Serbian discourses as a value promoted by the EU core and related mostly to the EU members. In Serbia, the solidarity discourses were of particular local importance during the first phase of the global financial crisis, coinciding with the country’s application for the EU candidacy, and later losing significance. In Croatia, the notion of European solidarity seems to become more relevant for domestic actors after the 2013 EU accession.