29.06.2025
[Colloquium:] Spatial Appropriation and Arrival Infrastructures in Limbo: Architectures of Asylum in Zaatari, Jordan and Berlin, Germany
Thursday, 03 July 2025, 18.15 - 20.00 CET; Room 101, Institut für Soziologie (Wilhelmstr. 36, 72074 Tübingen) and via Zoom
On Thursday, 03 July (18.15 - 20.00 CET), Anna Steigemann (Universität Regensburg & TU Berlin) will give a talk on “Spatial Appropriation and Arrival Infrastructures in Limbo: Architectures of Asylum in Zaatari, Jordan and Berlin, Germany”. This talk will be held in room 101 at the Insitut für Soziologie (Wilhelmstraße 36, 72074 Tübingen) and can be followed online via Zoom. This event is the fourth and final session of the G-TURN colloquium "Urbanities in a Global Perspective: Crises, Changes, and Continuities" of the summer term 2025.
Biography
Anna Steigemnn ist Professorin für Stadtforschung und Raumsoziologie am Department for Interdisciplinary Multiscalar (DIMAS) der Universität Regensburg sowie Associated Researcher an der Habitat Unit, dem Fachgebiet für Internationale Urbanistik und Design, an derm Technischen Universität Berlin.
Ihre Forschungsinteressen umfassen Gender, Migration, Diversität, Stadt-,Nachbarschafts- und Communityforschung, Infrastruktur-, kritische Governance- und Partizipationsforschung sowie kollaborative qualitative Sozial- und Raumforschungsmethoden.
Abstract
Within the field of interdisciplinary urban research in Germany, few scholars have addressed the more informal self-made arrival infrastructures in the course of home-making of forced migrants in so-called collective accommodations and on the neighborhood level as well as their impact on urban space-/ place- and neighborhood-making.
With a focus on the making and unmaking of home through more makeshift or bottom-up architectures of asylum but more so through self-made arrival infrastructures and the related infrastructuring practices, this presentation discusses findings from in-depth ethnographic studies of first, refugee accommodations in Berlin and Zaatari and second, also the surrounding (ordinary) neighborhood in Berlin-Neukölln. In detail, I will address both the spatial production and the social life in the more top-down formalized arrival infrastructures in/of the camps as well as of the more self-made, bottom-up and often more informalized arrival infrastructures. Contrasting the two as first, socio-spatial/ -material settings and second, as a set of distinct practices and personal ensembles of the involved people, the presentation then reveals how the forced migrants’ efforts to make themselves at home (temporarily or not) involves and results in socio-spatial settings and practices, which in turn also affect arrival, belonging, and homemaking for other newcomers and city residents.