Refugee Shelters: Between modus vivendi and Threatened Order

Projektteam

Principal Investigator:
Prof. Dr. Boris Nieswand

Post-Doctoral Researcher:

Dr. Elif Alp-Marent

Research Assistants:

Anastasia Maier

Sam As’sadi

Short Description

The recent arrival of over one million refugees plunged Germany into a tailspin, as people fluctuated between acts of hospitality and hostility towards the newcomers. As refugee shelters were opened in a variety of building types, discursive threats appeared in the public sphere. Were refugees invading the country? Could they respect “European” social values? Were terrorists slipping in along with the wounded and vulnerable? This comparative qualitative study, situated across six different field sites in the southern German state of Baden-Württemberg, sheds light on how dynamics of coexistence oscillate between conviviality and perceptions of threat. How have different dynamics between newly arrived refugees and local populations developed over time? What roles do actions and attitudes from already-settled immigrants play? How do sources of conflict, a discourse of threat, and facets of every day life interact? And do the size of a settlement and the memory of previous immigration make a difference in regards to the reception of newcomers?
Rather than starting from the assumption that refugee shelters are the spatial manifestation of a state of emergency, we understand refugee shelters as the borderland of the polis, where spheres of inclusion, as well as exclusion, are negotiated. Through ethnographic observation as well as interviews with refugees, locals, community leaders, and municipal and regional politicians, we examine how such spheres are negotiated, as well as how discursive threat is reflected in every day reality.