Poles exhibit contrasting attitudes towards absent Muslim refugees and physically present Ukrainian labor immigrants. Both groups have been historically seen as “Significant Others,” potentially perilous to the nation. Today, however, Muslims are rejected, while Ukrainians are accepted. This situation can be attributed to historical, ethnic, political, social, and economic factors, all of which are discussed here. The ethnic, linguistic, and religious superhomogeneity of Polish society affects the approach to the “culturally distant” Muslim migrants who were cynically rejected by the right-wing populist authorities during the 2015 refugee crisis. Economic necessity justifies the acceptance of the Ukrainians, who are perceived as culturally close. It is argued here that within the category of Significant Others, it is necessary to distinguish between Distant/Absent/Hostile and Familiar/Present/Tolerated Significant Others.

The arrival of many Yemeni people on Jeju Island in 2018 to seek asylum became a mega-political issue in South Korea. This article investigates two questions. First, how and why have Yemeni asylum seekers suddenly become the focus of securitization concerns in South Korea? And second, how have these concerns affected the government’s responses? We argue that three key factors—the influence of media on the refugee crisis in Europe, the Yemenis’ race, gender, and religious background, and South Korea’s internal political and economic situation—have intersected with each other and produced the securitization of Yemeni migration. Amidst highly contested political debates on the protection of forced migrants in South Korea, the state has strictly controlled the border but showed contradictory refugee policies.