An unprecedented recent flow of refugees to Europe presented the continent with a complex challenge and produced tensions and mixed responses of the European elites and publics. Despite attempts to develop a unified perspective within the EU, political, societal and public actors responded to the on-going crisis in different ways, being polarized between fundamental opposition to migration and humanitarian perspective, promoting compassion and solidarity. Though only small number of refugees came to stay in Central and Eastern European countries, the issue of migration produced here a new cycle of mobilization organized by both pro-refugee and anti-refugee organizations. At the same time, political mobilizations depend largely on the political environment that may either stimulate or suppress collective action. This paper looks into the dynamics of contention in the public sphere in the Czech Republic during the refugee crisis in 2015. It analyses interactions between civil society and political institutions, examining networks of actors actively participating in the debate on international migration. Building upon Koopman’s argument that decisive interactions between social movements and political authorities present encounters among contenders in the arena of the mass media public sphere, we look at the symbolic networks in the mediated public discourse which interconnect participants who make either positive or negative reciprocal references, who formulate their claims or protest against someone or something in the debate on migration to Europe. We apply this to the data gathered from political claims-making analysis, with intention to present a map of symbolic networks of interactions between civil society actors and political elites in the Czech public discourse. The overall aim is to understand discursive mechanisms in the claims-making on the migration through analysis of the symbolic networks of interactions of actors involved in and affecting the public discourse on the refugee crisis.
