ChapterPDF Available

Preface: Engaging Anthropology in the "Refugee Crisis" in Berlin – The Need for New Collaborations in Teaching and Research

Authors:

Abstract

This book provides insights into the various ways in which women* perceive of and experience their living conditions in five different asylum accommodation centers in Berlin. In particular, it explores how women* – who have fled from countries such as Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea and Albania, and who have diverse socio-economic, linguistic and educational backgrounds – describe their lives in the camps with regard to health and care, administration and registration, social interactions and support, and safety and privacy. The ethnographic research on which this book is based resulted from a collaboration between students and lecturers of the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Freie Universität Berlin and the Berlin- based group International Women’s Space. In this regard, the book aims to contribute to the improvement of the living conditions of refugee women* in Berlin and simultaneously hopes to provide a model for anthropological engagement in the face of increasingly complex socio-political challenges.
Hansjörg Dilger and Kristina Dohrn (eds.)
in Collaboration with International Women Space
Living in Refugee Camps in Berlin
Women's Perspectives and Experiences
Bibliografische Informationen der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deut-
schen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Inter-
net über http://dnb.de abrufbar.
Cover Photo: Mapping by Namika from Syria. During a workshop with
women* living in an emergency refugee camp, we asked them to draw
aspects that were important to their lives at home and in Germany. Words
on the mapping (referring to Germany): learning IT and having a computer,
to go on with studying, learning German or more languages, being a jour-
nalist, I love friends, living like Germans, my children are learning.
The following units at Freie Universität Berlin funded the publication of
this book: Welcome@FUBerlin; the Department of Political and Social
Sciences (funds for gender equality, Gleichstellungsmittel); and the Institute
of Social and Cultural Anthropology.
© 2016 by Weißensee Verlag
Hubertusstr. 14, 10365 Berlin
Tel: 030 993 9316
Fax: 030 994 01888
info@weissensee-verlag.de
Verlagsleitung: Detlef W. Stein
www.weissensee-verlag.de
Alle Rechte vorbehalten
Umschlaggestaltung: Weißensee Verlag, Thomas Seidel
Titelfoto: Mapping by Namika from Syria
Cover Design: Sabine Weber and Marisa Maza
Satz: Thomas Seidel
ISSN 1610-6768
ISBN 978-3-89998-242-8
7
Table of Content
Preface: Engaging Anthropology in the “Refugee
Crisis” in Berlin – The Need for New Collaborations in
Teaching and Research
Kristina Dohrn, Hansjörg Dilger ........................................................ 9
Introduction – On the Situation of Women* in Refugee
Camps in Berlin
Miriam Bräu, Katharina Epstude, Ana Mara Erlenmaier,
Sabrina Haumann, Diana Jerichau, Lena Nahrwold, Maya
Perusin Mysorekar, Maja Sisnowski, Laura Strott, Camila
von Hein ........................................................................................... 23
“Waiting Kills Me” – Life in a Factory Building
Rebecca Bruhn, Rodrigo Cavalcanti, Katharina Epstude,
Clara Färber, Gabriela Jose Goncalvez Montero, Maya
Perusin Mysorekar, Ronda Ramm, Laura Strott, Rebecca
Wandke ............................................................................................. 63
“Only Eating and Sleeping” – A Gym as a Shelter
Miriam Bräu, Diana Jerichau, Lena Nahrwold, Yvonne
Naundorf ......................................................................................... 109
“How Can Someone Judge You and Your Situation?”
Experiences from a Centrally Located Accommodation
Center
Kamil Preikšait, Damyana Rusinova, Johanna Scheidies ........... 151
“We Want to Build Our Future Here in Germany” –
Longing for Self-Determination in an Emergency Camp
Mara Erlenmaier, Sabrina Haumann, Lisa Löbe, Carlotta
Mellies, Hannah Schirop ................................................................ 181
“Starting Below Zero” in a Non-Centrally Located
Accommodation Center
Maja Sisnowski, Lili Steffen, Camila von Hein ............................. 233
Conclusion: Recommendations to Improve the Living
Conditions of Women* in Refugee Camps in Berlin
Miriam Bräu, Mara Erlenmaier ...................................................... 285
8
Postface
International Women Space ........................................................... 301
Acknowledgments
Miriam Bräu, Katharina Epstude, Ana Mara Erlenmaier,
Lena Nahrwold, Maya Perusin Mysorekar, Maja
Sisnowski, Laura Strott, Camila von Hein ..................................... 307
9
Preface: Engaging Anthropology in the “Re-
fugee Crisis” in Berlin – The Need for New
Collaborations in Teaching and Research
Kristina Dohrn, Hansjörg Dilger
“We are approaching a crisis, the age of revolutions” (Rousseau
1889 [1763]: 149), wrote Jean-Jacques Rousseau at the dawn of the
French Revolution. The perception that “the old” is challenged by
“the new” in the name of progress – and the suggestion that this pro-
cess goes hand in hand with a complete rupture of the existing order
of things remains characteristic of discourses on “crisis” until to-
day, thereby linking perceptions of crisis directly to notions of tem-
porality and historicity. In our contemporary world, which has been
shaped by processes of migration, mediatization and neoliberal re-
structuring, the notion of “crisis” is often evoked in order to highlight
that current ways of life and the structural foundations on which
they rest – are at stake and that the future is becoming uncertain
(Roitman 2013). In such a scenario, the times we live in appear to be
characterized by multiple and interconnected crises, the most recent
one being the so-called “refugee crisis.”
In the summer and fall of 2015, the year that marked the beginning
of what later became known as the “refugee crisis,” 1.1 million peo-
ple arrived in Germany with the goal of seeking asylum. The majori-
ty had fled from the war in Syria, followed by people from states of
the Western Balkans, primarily Albania and Kosovo, as well as from
Afghanistan and Iraq (BAMF 2016)
1
. In Germany, people responded
to this arrival of newcomers through voluntary activism in the form
 
1
The number of 1.1 million relates to persons registered in the BAMF system
EASYan IT system through which refugees are distributed to the diverse Ger-
man Länder and which also serves as a census.
10
of local but also national organizations and initiatives
2
, as well as
neighborhood associations
3
and other networks of volunteers
(Bochow 2015). Simultaneously, however, xenophobic groups and
movements, such as “PEGIDA” (Patriotic Europeans against the
Islamicization of the Occident) and the recently established party
Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) with their often racist rhetoric
have mobilized against this Willkommenskultur (welcome culture). In
media appearances and during demonstrations in German cities, they
call for refugees to be kept out of the country and, if they have al-
ready arrived, ask for their deportation
4
. Furthermore, according to
this perspective, government institutions are said to be overwhelmed
by the arrival of refugees in high numbers, thereby suggesting that
the German state will not be able to integrate the newcomers without
accepting drastic disadvantages for its citizens. Especially in Berlin,
media images of crowds waiting in lines for days for their registra-
tion, stories of inadequate health care, hygiene, food, clothing and
security in the refugee camps and in front of registration centers, and
poor local administration – often symbolized by the inabilities of the
LaGeSo (the State Office for Health and Social Affairs) to adequate-
ly assist the newcomers all reinforce this idea of the state “in cri-
sis.”
Over the last couple of months, the loud public critique from largely
right wing groups and parties – that has been coupled, however, with
a growing dissatisfaction in wider German society and the partly
vehement opposition of other European governments to Germany’s
politics of “open borders” – have led to a shift from the govern-
ment’s “welcome culture” towards the politics of Abschottung (isola-
 
2
E.g. http://www.fluechtlinge-willkommen.de/, a platform assisting refugees to
find a flat in larger German cities.
3
E.g. http://kreuzberg-hilft.com/en/.
4
For an analysis of the representation of refugees in German media and public
discourses, and the related “war of position,” see Holmes and Castañeda 2016.
11
tionism). This has resulted firstly in a “deal” with the Turkish gov-
ernment to prevent the further migration of refugees to the European
Union, but simultaneously and seemingly paradoxically also in
the even further rising popularity of nationalist tendencies in Germa-
ny and abroad. The proponents of these seclusionist fractions and
movements do not tire of repeating that “the people” – referring to an
alleged majority of the societies in which they act – have the impres-
sion of living in a time where history has run “out of control” and
where the end of the course of events ahead cannot be foreseen
(Cabot 2015: 2). De facto, however, as Cabot shows in her book “On
the doorstep of Europe” (2014), “crisis-talk” and “crisis-thinking”
bear the danger of overlooking the underlying continuities in mo-
ments of rapid change. Cabot states that crisis has a kind of
“maghia” – a bewitching quality” that pulls our attention to certain
topics and places and bestows them with an aura of emergency and
urgency. Hence, it also bears the risk of looking at “crisis” as merely
an aberration of what is perceived as the “normal” (i.e. taken for
granted) political and social order and overlooking already existing
power inequalities and injustices:
Crisis-thinking is […] dangerous for how it reifies pow-
er relationships and active decisions that lie behind po-
litical and economic realities, and for how it presents
certain injustices as given and unavoidable when – per-
haps – things really could be different.
(Cabot 2015: 3, emphasis in original)
An anthropological perspective on “crisis” can link macro-economic
and political developments with the experiences of individual per-
sons and take a more contextualized and historically embedded per-
spective. Furthermore, as Cabot shows in her ethnography, such a
perspective sheds light on the active decision making and structural
violence that lie behind the European politics of marginalization and
12
exclusion, as well as the insufficiency of asylum systems
5
(Cabot
2014; Cabot 2015: 4). Finally, anthropology has the potential to
foreground the voices, experiences and practices of those who are
most vulnerable in the context of “crisis” and who have come to
embody the manifold political, legal and socio-cultural responses
with which European societies and governments have reacted to the
arrival of refugees.
Although much of what seems new is actually connected to longer
developments and policies, and the “crisis” and “emergency” of per-
sons fleeing war and conflict are certainly not only phenomena of the
last years
6
, the sheer number of persons seeking refuge in Europe is
indeed unprecedented and their visibility in localities and public
spaces, where they were not present before, is also new (Cabot 2014:
4). As for Berlin, people who have fled from their country are not
only visible in the so-called “migrant quarters” (Bezirke mit hohem
Migrationsanteil) of the city, at the offices for the registration and
administration of migrants and refugees, or in larger accommodation
and detention centers at the city’s outskirts; they are also present in
Berlin’s city center(s), in the sport halls of schools, on the doorsteps
 
5
The Dublin Regulation (Dublin II 2003 and Dublin III 2013), for instance, de-
mands that persons that arrive in the European Union apply for asylum and also
remain in the country where they first entered Europe. With this regulation, Eu-
ropean asylum and migration policy has “successfully outsourced” the challeng-
es of migration to European border countries, something that has been criticized
for years by activists and advocates (but with only minor success). Furthermore,
through the Dublin Regulation, European states often fail to offer protection to
refugees. Indeed, the regulation often hinders access to asylum procedures and
increases the risk of refugees being deported and returned to persecution. Thus
separated families or persons who are unable to find housing and social support
can be seen not as the result of a “crisis” but as a direct consequence of Europe-
an border politics (Cabot 2015; Cabot 2014).
6
In fact, German politics and media have paid only scant attention to the arrival
of refugees in Italy and France since the early 2000s, along with the challenges
that the governments, societies and refugees themselves have faced in these con-
texts (Reckinger 2013; Kehr 2015).
13
of our homes and workplaces, and in universities. However, when
taking a critical look at the way refuges are portrayed in media and
public discourses in Germany, we cannot help but notice how the
diversity – and the individuality – of these newly arrived persons are
reduced to certain stereotypes that go hand in hand with certain privi-
leges and (moral) rights that are granted or denied them. In this con-
text, some refugees are seen as “worthy” of protection and their pres-
ence in Germany (or Europe) is declared “legitimate,” while others
are presented as “undeserving.” The trope of “the Syrian refugee”
has often become the symbol of an imagined mass of refugees, thus
neglecting the complexity of individual people’s lives, families, pro-
fessions and their specific biographical trajectories and experiences.
In this context, Syrian refugees are often portrayed as educated, cul-
turally “whiter,” more cosmopolitan and thus closer to “us” Europe-
ans, in comparison to Afghan, Iraqi and Eritrean refugees. Further-
more, these media and public discourses, as well as political messag-
es, produce “powerful stereotypes of vulnerability, victimhood, race,
and class […]” (Cabot 2015: 9), which materialize in an unequal
distribution of (moral) rights and care (Cabot 2015: 8-11; Holmes &
Castañeda 2016: 15).
However, popular discourses and media images in Germany not only
portray refugees as homogeneous masses but also primarily as
male*
7
. Women* are often absent in these images and discussions,
and hence their specific experiences, realities, vulnerabilities and
needs often remain unaddressed. The flight experiences of women*,
travelling sometimes with their families, sometimes only with their
children and sometimes alone, are often significantly different from
those of men. They have specific concerns and often become victims
of gender-based persecution and violence. Especially when travelling
 
7
The use of the symbol * (gender star) for women/woman, men/man,
male/female will be explained in the introduction of this book (see footnote two
of the introduction).
14
alone or only with their children, women* are often subjected to
sexual assault, violence, extortion, exploitation and theft not only
during their flight but also after their arrival while living in refugee
camps (Rabe 2015). To consider the situation of women* is all the
more critical as figures from a UNHCR report, published in January
2016, showed that the number of fleeing women* and children has
risen dramatically: according to the report, the percentage of refugee
women* and children arriving in Greece and seeking asylum in the
EU increased from an estimated 27% in June 2015 to 55% in January
2016 (UNHCR 2016). This shift highlights the particular importance
of paying attention to the situation and experiences of women* dur-
ing their flight and also after their arrival in refugee camps in their
destination country (including Germany). Gender and its intersection
with other categories such as nationality, socio-economic and ethnic
background, age, material status, class etc. is important to consider in
order to complicate the often oversimplified image of the refugee,”
and to be able to address the demands and needs of particularly vul-
nerable actors and groups.
Engaging Anthropology, or: How Academia Can Act Re-
sponsibly in Contexts of “Crisis”
It is especially in the above-described context of debates on particu-
larly vulnerable populations which have gained momentum in the
wake of (forced) migration and globalization processes at large
(Quesada at al. 2011) that new questions have been posed regard-
ing the responsibilities of academic research and teaching. Within the
discipline of social and cultural anthropology
8
, such questions have
 
8
In German-speaking countries, the discipline is mostly known as “Ethnologie,”
thereby suggesting that the field is focused primarily on the study of ethnic
groups. De facto, however, the theoretical and methodological approaches of
most Ethnologie institutes in the German-speaking context are closely aligned
with the traditions of social and cultural anthropology in the Anglophone world,
which focuses on the study of human beings (anthropos) in specific social and
15
become firmly embedded in discussions on public,” “engaged” or
“activist” scholarship – which reach far beyond the traditions of “ap-
plied” research in the field in that they do not necessarily imply the
immediate translation of research insights into policy-making con-
texts (e.g. Kline 2016)
9
. Rather, the notions of “engaged,” “public”
or “activist anthropology” refer to a wide range of contributions to,
and involvements in/with, non-academic audiences; i.e. those
through which anthropological insights are produced and subse-
quently made available for our field interlocutors and through public
discussion. As Setha Low and Sally Engle Merry (2010: 214) have
argued, “an expanded set of forms of engagement” today ranges:
[…] from basic commitment to our informants, to shar-
ing and support with the communities with which we
work, to teaching and public education, to social cri-
tique in academic and public forums, to more commonly
understood forms of engagement such as collaboration,
advocacy, and activism.
Against the backdrop of such recent debates within our discipline
as well as the formation of a more comprehensive “engaged anthro-
pology collective” at our institute
10
we welcomed the request of a
group of undergraduate students in our BA program Social and Cul-
   
cultural settings. To complicate matters further, the “Ethnologie-Institut” at the
Freie Universität Berlin renamed itself the “Institut für Sozial- und Kulturan-
thropologie” (Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology) in 2015. In this
book, we therefore refer to “Ethnologie” as “social and cultural anthropology” or
briefly as “anthropology.”
9
Several scholars have argued that anthropology has always been an “engaged”
discipline with an “applied focus” – though the ways such engagements have
been perceived and discussed (critically) have changed considerably over the
last century. For further reading, see for instance Low and Merry 2010.
10
More information about the various activities of the “Engaged Anthropology
Collective” at the Freie Universität Berlin can be found here:
http://www.polsoz.fu-berlin.de/ethnologie/aktuelles/Engaged_Anthropology_
SKA_Berlin_10_12_2015.pdf
(Accessed on: July 2, 2016).
16
tural Anthropology who aimed to initiate a self-organized yet facul-
ty-mentored research seminar on the situations of women* in refugee
camps in Berlin. Not only were we immediately convinced by the
timeliness and relevance of the topic they suggested, but we were
also attracted strongly by the idea that the proposed seminar envis-
aged a close collaboration with the Berlin-based group International
Women’s Space. This group has been involved in activist and advo-
cacy work on behalf of refugee women* for the past couple of years
and was interested in obtaining further data about the life situations
of newly arrived women* in refugee camps in Berlin (see the intro-
duction and postface of this book). In assisting the altogether 24 stu-
dents in designing the seminar discussions and research process –
together with members of the International Women’s Space and
some women* from the refugee camps we learned that collabora-
tion and engagement in contemporary academia can never be taken
for granted. Rather, they require the continuous commitment and
effort of all involved actors, especially in contexts where resources
and opportunities for action are limited among those who are the
actual target group – and thus the supposed beneficiaries – of ethno-
graphic research. The specific contributions of this book can thus be
understood on three levels.
First, this book contains a set of ethnographic reports that speak to
the emerging social scientific literature on refugees in and forced
migration to Germany
11
. Ethnographic research offers a specific per-
spective within this growing body of research, as it adopts a dense
focus on people’s lifeworlds and highlights their own experiences,
ideas and practices with regard to the larger political and bureaucrat-
ic configurations that have come to shape the asylum and refugee
process (Holmes and Castañeda 2016; Kehr 2015). With the core
methods of ethnographic fieldwork – that rely primarily on the build-
 
11
For more information, see for instance the website of the “Netzwerk Flüchtlings-
forschung”: http://fluechtlingsforschung.net/ (Accessed on: June 20, 2016).
17
ing of relationships of trust in our respective field sites – anthropolo-
gists can foreground the perspectives and experiences of those actors
that often remain hidden in other forms of rapid data collection. Fur-
thermore, with its bottom-up approach – that is, oriented primarily
toward our interlocutors’ priorities – ethnographic research is able to
formulate suggestions for the improvement of life situations in the
refugee camps in Berlin that are derived from the immediate experi-
ences of women* with regard to the most pressing issues in their
everyday lives. Still, as the reports in this book show, such insights
from “quick ethnographic research” in the highly politicized settings
of refugee camps will always be limited. Not only did the research
teams face multiple obstacles in terms of access to the field sites,
which ranged from the camp administrations’ (partly bureaucratic,
partly humanistic) concerns about the safety of camp residents to the
linguistic diversity among the women* the students talked to. There
was also the (obviously understandable) reluctance of some camp
residents to become involved in a project on their current living situ-
ations when they were actually waiting for a more permanent solu-
tion to their precarious situation.
Second, the reports in this book demonstrate that various forms of
engagement in the field of social and cultural anthropology require a
careful reflection on the “enthusiasm,” as well as the “dilemmas” and
“ambivalence,” that engaged scholarship entails with regard to mul-
tiple forms of collaboration and (activist, applied, public) positioning
(Low and Merry 2010: 214). Such critical reflection also includes the
awareness – and explicit exposure – of the power relations and insti-
tutional frameworks in which such collaborations and engagements
take shape,
12
and which may pave the way for new forms of paternal-
 
12
We are well aware that the call for “socially responsible universities” has be-
come part and parcel of the so-called “audit culture” that has shaped the work of
academia in the wake of neoliberal restructuring over the past decades (see
Strathern 2000). However, in this book we are less interested in criticizing the
overall political and economic structures in which anthropological engagements
18
istic and imperialistic interventionism within and beyond university
settings. Becoming aware of such rather counter-productive – and
potentially patronizing effects of short-term research interventions
highlights the necessity of thinking more “deeply” – theoretically
and methodologically – about the topics of enforced mobility and
migration, citizenship and belonging, and the political practices of
integration, deservingness and deportation that are going to shape the
lives of today’s refugees over the years to come. Finally, engaged
anthropology implies thorough reflection on the researchers’ own
positionality, which may include a certain political agenda, the spe-
cific conditions of one’s own (cultural, ethnic, gendered, class-based,
religious, etc.) socialization, or the moral and emotional commit-
ments to a certain topic, group or set of research questions. Thus, as
anthropology has positioned itself increasingly as a “relational and
intersubjective enterprise”:
[T]he careful analysis of our own (shifting) positionality
and subjectivity is essential not only for better under-
standing (and rendering more transparent) our ways of
coping with difficult field encounters and the moral
stances we take in response to them. It is also a substan-
tial element of analyzing our data and writing ethno-
graphic accounts; that is, it is relevant to all stages of
anthropological knowledge production.
(Dilger, Huschke and Mattes 2015: 5; emphasis added)
Third, this book reflects on the actual opportunities – and limita-
tions – that are associated with the building of spaces of learning that
take seriously our discipline’s commitments to engagement, dia-
logue, collaboration and responsibility. In particular, it seeks to foster
further discussion about the way students themselves can adopt a
central role in these spaces, and how universities and individual lec-
   
occur, but rather in looking at the actual ways and opportunities through which
collaborations and public engagement can be built in university settings in re-
sponse to the current situations of refugees in Berlin and Germany.
19
turers can assist students to take responsibility for their studies and
the environments in which they live. This is especially important in
the context of the Bologna process, which has, according to its crit-
ics, led to a growing focus on market-oriented skills and competen-
cies, thus reducing “critical thinking” among students who are some-
times portrayed as “immature, unprepared and not comparable with
former graduates” (Times Higher Education 2012). Again, the dia-
logic, self-reflexive – and largely participatory – approach of anthro-
pology and ethnographic research fosters the building of such spaces
of critical thinking, and the facilitation of students’ “deep encoun-
ters” with members of wider society, which is central to the disci-
pline’s self-understanding. Furthermore, it opens up the space for
thinking about different idioms and styles of learning and presenta-
tion that will make the insights of our studies and research endeavors
accessible to the wider public. In the context of this seminar, students
have presented the data from their research at the Long Night of Sci-
ence (Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften) in Berlin in June 2016, in a
series of posters and a blog article (Bräu et al. 2016), as well as at
various smaller events and in reports aimed at making the study re-
sults publicly available and also reaching the women* of the research
themselves.
We are aware that such experiments in the space of contemporary
universities face limitations. Not only are they hampered by (finan-
cial, temporal and personnel) resource constraints and the growing
limitations that are imposed by the frameworks of the highly struc-
tured and “modularized” BA and MA programs. Furthermore, they
are usually only possible for a relatively small number of students, as
the building of alternative spaces of learning and engagement require
considerable effort from all involved parties to deal adequately with
the various ethical and social responsibilities they imply. Despite
these challenges, however, we think that the reports and insights in
this book can serve as a model for how to integrate research and
20
teaching in the context of contemporary university settings, and how
students, scholars and activist (or other political) organizations can
collaborate in fostering spaces of critical thinking and engagement in
the face of the complexities and injustices of our contemporary
world.
Bibliography
BAMF (2016): 476.649 Asylanträge im Jahr 2015. Online:
https://www.bamf.de/SharedDocs/Meldungen/DE/2016/2016101
06-asylgeschaeftsstatistik-dezember.html
(Accessed on: July 1, 2016).
Bochow, Astrid (2015): “We Are Only Helping!” Volunteering and
Social Media in Germany’s New “Welcome Culture”. Medizi-
nethnologie. Körper, Gesundheit und Heilung in einer globali-
sierten Welt. Online:
http://www.medizinethnologie.net/volunteering-and-social-
media-in-germanys-new-welcome-culture/
(Accessed on: July 1, 2016).
Bräu, Katharina Epstude, Ana Mara Erlenmaier, Lena Nahrwold,
Maya Perusin Mysorekar, Maja Sisnowski, Laura Strott and Ca-
mila von Hein (2016): “Starting below Zero”: On the Situation of
Women* in Refugee Camps in Berlin". Medizinethnologie. Kör-
per, Gesundheit und Heilung in einer globalisierten Welt. Online:
http://www.medizinethnologie.net/starting-below-zero/
(Accessed on: August 10, 2016).
Cabot, Heath (2015): Crisis and Continuity: A Critical Look at the
European Refugee “Crisis”. Allegra Lab: Anthropology, Law, Art
& World. Online:
http://allegralaboratory.net/crisis-and-continuity-a-critical-look-
at-the-european-refugee-crisis/
(Accessed on: June 28, 2016).
Cabot, Heath (2014): On the Doorsteps of Europe. Asylum and Citi-
zenship in Greece. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press.
21
Dilger, Hansjörg, Susann Huschke and Dominik Mattes (2015): Eth-
ics, Epistemology, and Engagement: Encountering Values in
Medical Anthropology. Medical Anthropology 34 (1): 1–10.
Holmes, Seth and Heide Castañeda (2016): Representing the “Euro-
pean Refugee Crisis” in Germany and Beyond: Deservingness
and Difference, Life and Death. American Ethnologist 43 (1): 12-
24.
Kehr, Janina (2015): Alltägliche Krisen: Flucht, Medizin und Migra-
tion. Ein Denkeinstieg. Medizinethnologie. Körper, Gesundheit
und Heilung in einer globalisierten Welt. Online:
http://www.medizinethnologie.net/alltaegliche-krisen/
(Accessed on: June 20, 2016).
Kline, Nolan (2016): Structural Vulnerabilities and Global Migrant
Crises: What Can Activist Scholars Do? Medizinethnologie. Kör-
per, Gesundheit und Heilung in einer globalisierten Welt. Online:
http://www.medizinethnologie.net/structural-vulnerabilities-
global-migrant-crises/
(Accessed on: June 20, 2016).
Low, Setha and Sally Engle Merry (2010): Engaged Anthropology:
Diversity and Dilemmas. An Introduction to Supplement 2. Cur-
rent Anthropology 51 (Supplement 2): 203–226.
Quesada, James, Laurie Kain Hart and Philippe Bourgois (2011):
Structural Vulnerability and Health: Latino Migrant Laborers in
the United States. Medical Anthropology 30 (4): 339–362.
Rabe, Heike (2015): Effektiver Schutz vor geschlechtsspezifscher
Gewalt auch in Flüchtlingsunterkünften. Berlin: Deutsches
Institut für Menschenrechte.
Reckinger, Gilles (2013): Lampedusa: Begegnungen am Rande Eu-
ropas. Wuppertal: Peter Hammer Verlag.
Roitman, Janet (2013): Anti-Crisis. Durham: Duke University Press.
Rousseau, Jean Jacques (1889): Emile or Concerning Education.
Boston: Heath & Company.
22
Strathern, Marilyn (Ed.) (2000): Audit Cultures: Anthropological
Studies in Accountability, Ethics and the Academy. London:
Routledge.
Times Higher Education (2012): Bologna not to Taste of German
Critics. Online:
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/bologna-not-to-
taste-of-german-critics/419845.article
(Accessed on: June 20, 2016).
United Nations Refugee Agency, United Nations Population Fund
and Women’s Refugee Commission (2016): Initial Assessment
Report: Protection Risks for Women and Girls in the European
Refugee and Migrant Crisis (Greece and the former Yugoslav
Republic of Macedonia). Online:
http://www.unhcr.org/569f8f419.html
(Accessed on: June 28, 2016).
... Furthermore, we emphasize that treating ethics reviews as lists with boxes to be checked off is not only too narrow but potentially damaging to the methods and methodologies that actually underpin ethnographic research-the building of trust and social relations. Lastly, we see a need for establishing in universities and research centers new spaces of thinking and learning that reflect the complex ethical realities of ethnographic practiceincluding both close cooperation with the study participants and reflecting the researcher's own position in the research process-at all levels of the scientific endeavor (DOHRN & DILGER, 2016;. Symposia like the one in Munich can be one of several possible models for initiating discussions on research ethics, which can be organized around methods or issues as well as across disciplinary boundaries. ...
Article
Full-text available
In the German social and cultural sciences attention to research ethics is growing, with empirical researchers increasingly seeking advice and addressing ethical issues in their research practice. In addition, there is an infrastructural debate in this country about whether the use of ethics review boards for research projects should be widened. Researchers who apply for international funding or seek to publish internationally increasingly are expected to gain ethical approval for their empirical projects. Ethics reviews are common in the social and cultural sciences in the Anglophone world. But qualitative researchers severely criticize basic aspects of them primarily the bureaucratization and regulation that such reviews entail and especially the fact that their institutionalized principles and procedures are incompatible with qualitative research. Designed for quantitative, clinical, or medical research, these characteristics may undermine the freedom, quality, and the diversity of methods and methodologies in social and cultural science research. Against this backdrop, what opportunities and challenges do the current developments in Germany present? The Munich symposium entitled "Research Ethics in Ethnographic Field Work" gave an occasion to formulate anthropological and sociological perspectives on this question. We argue for a proactive institutional response, including that of providing ethics review boards to sociologists and anthropologists in Germany as long as such structures remain optional and allow for the methodological diversity and unique features of ethnographic field work. When it comes to fostering ethical conduct, however, we note that qualitative researchers find it far more relevant to promote ethical reflexivity in teaching and research practice than to introduce ethics review boards. © 2016, Inst. fur Klinische Psychologie und Gemeindepsychologie. All rights reserved.
Article
Full-text available
This paper presents the main outcomes of a joint research project conducted at ZMO Berlin between March 2018 and July 2021 with funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The project analysed how Syrians remembered their “normal lives” through daily interactions with each other, in neighbourhoods, institutions, or families, as well as routine encounters with the state through the interface of infrastructural provision and bureaucratic practices. It argues for a perspective that does not essentialize (and generically flatten) people as “refugees” despite the distinct and specific legal and political regimes that shape their condition and set them apart from other categories of migrants. Rather, their experiences must be seen in the context of longer-term trajectories that encompass Syrian and German realities as intertwined and linked in many, often unexpected, ways.
Article
Using the case of Berlin, this article examines civil society actors in relation to local bordering practices following the large number of refugee arrivals in 2015. Combining critical border, migration, and urban studies and adopting a Foucauldian lens, the article aims to illustrate to what extent civil society actors have challenged and transformed local bordering practices vis‐à‐vis refugees within a specific urban space. The analysis illustrates that civil society actors have created new spaces of inclusion for refugees and brought new political and normative challenges to the established notions of belonging. On the other hand, they have also reproduced bordering practices either by their integration into formal state structures or by reinforcing hierarchical categorizations and unequal power relations embedded in the notion of humanitarianism. Finally, the article argues that these de/re‐bordering practices of civil society actors should be understood in line with the constraints that established bordering processes and the existing political and structural dynamics placed on them. Keywords: Berlin, bordering practices, civil society, humanitarianism, refugees. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Article
Full-text available
Forschungsethik wird in den deutschsprachigen Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften zunehmend zum Thema. Zum einen reflektieren empirisch Forschende vermehrt ethische Fragen, die sich in ihrer Forschungspraxis stellen. Zum anderen wird auf wissenschaftspolitischer Ebene diskutiert, Ethics Reviews, d.h. Begutachtungen von Forschungsvorhaben durch Ethikkommissionen, nun auch in der sozial- und kulturwissenschaftlichen Forschung in Deutschland verstärkt einzuführen. Dies ist unter anderem darauf zurückzuführen, dass Forschende, die in englischsprachigen Journals publizieren oder internationale Fördermittel einwerben möchten, zunehmend aufgefordert sind, eine ethische Unbedenklichkeitsbescheinigung bezüglich ihrer empirischen Forschung vorzulegen. Ethics Reviews sind international insbesondere im angloamerikanischen Sprachraum üblich, werden dort jedoch durch qualitativ Forschende teilweise scharf kritisiert. Im Mittelpunkt der Kritik stehen neben dem hohen bürokratischen Aufwand vor allem die mangelnde Passfähigkeit der Prinzipien und Prüfverfahren für die qualitative Forschung und die negativen Folgen der institutionalisierten Prüfverfahren für die Freiheit, Qualität und methodologische Vielfalt sozial- und kulturwissenschaftlicher Forschung. Wie lassen sich vor diesem Hintergrund die aktuellen Entwicklungen in Deutschland einschätzen? Anlässlich eines interdisziplinären Symposiums zum Thema "Forschungsethik und ethnografische Feldforschung" kommentieren wir die Entwicklungen in Deutschland aus ethnologischer und soziologischer Perspektive. Wir sprechen uns für eine institutionelle Verankerung des Themas aus und unterstützen die Entwicklung von Strukturen der forschungsethischen Begutachtung, sofern diese freiwillig bleiben und die methodische Vielfalt der Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften sowie die Besonderheiten ethnografischer und explorativer Studien angemessen berücksichtigen. Aus der Perspektive qualitativ Forschender kommt der Förderung methodologischer und forschungsethischer Reflexivität in Forschung und Lehre jedoch grundsätzlich weit höhere Relevanz zu als der Einrichtung von institutionalisierten Begutachtungsverfahren. URN: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs1603203
Article
Full-text available
FROM THE INTRODUCTION: Over the last two decades, debates on ethics and reflections on the researcher's positionality and responsibility have been established firmly in general anthropology. These topics have received less attention in medical anthropology, however, despite the close relationship of the sub-discipline with physical and mental health and (social) suffering. [...] In this special issue, we wish to incorporate discussions on ethics, engagement, positionality, and epistemology – and the ways in which these issues become intertwined in the everyday work of anthropologists, particularly in the sub-discipline of medical anthropology. We aim to shed light on how discussions on all these aspects are established within and across often strongly nationalized academic cultures. Younger scholars especially face challenges with regard to diverse, often conflicting, expectations in regard to the ethical or moral nature of their research. This urges more 'established' anthropologists to think not only about researchers' different experiences in specific phases of their academic careers and in shifting contexts of fieldwork, but also the responsibilities that transnationally interconnected scholars have toward the training of future generations of medical anthropologists.
Article
Full-text available
Latino immigrants in the United States constitute a paradigmatic case of a population group subject to structural violence. Their subordinated location in the global economy and their culturally depreciated status in the United States are exacerbated by legal persecution. Medical Anthropology, Volume 30, Numbers 4 and 5, include a series of ethnographic analyses of the processes that render undocumented Latino immigrants structurally vulnerable to ill health. We hope to extend the social science concept of "structural vulnerability" to make it a useful concept for health care. Defined as a positionality that imposes physical/emotional suffering on specific population groups and individuals in patterned ways, structural vulnerability is a product of class-based economic exploitation and cultural, gender/sexual, and racialized discrimination, as well as complementary processes of depreciated subjectivity formation. A good-enough medicalized recognition of the condition of structural vulnerability offers a tool for developing practical therapeutic resources. It also facilitates political alternatives to the punitive neoliberal policies and discourses of individual unworthiness that have become increasingly dominant in the United States since the 1980s.
Book
Die italienische Insel Lampedusa im Mittelmeer ist so klein, dass man sie getrost immer wieder vergessen könnte in Rom und in Brüssel - gäbe es nicht Zehntausende afrikanischer Bootsflüchtlinge, die hier gelandet sind. Die Medien haben die Bilder menschlicher Tragödien von der Peripherie in die Mitte Europas getragen - und das Interesse an der Insel dann schnell wieder verloren. Von Lampedusa und den Lampedusani haben wir nichts erfahren. Der Ethnologe Gilles Reckinger wollte wissen, wie es sich lebt auf Lampedusa und die Inselbewohner haben ihm viel erzählt von ihrem Leben an diesem Ort der Übergänge.
Article
The European refugee crisis has gained worldwide attention with daily media coverage both in and outside Germany. Representations of refugees in media and political discourse in relation to Germany participate in a Gramscian “war of position” over symbols, policies, and, ultimately, social and material resources, with potentially fatal consequences. These representations shift blame from historical, political-economic structures to the displaced people themselves. They demarcate the “deserving” refugee from the “undeserving” migrant and play into fear of cultural, religious, and ethnic difference in the midst of increasing anxiety and precarity for many in Europe. Comparative perspectives suggest that anthropology can play an important role in analyzing these phenomena, highlighting sites of contestation, imagining alternatives, and working toward them. [refugee, media, immigration, crisis, Germany, Europe]
Book
Greece has shouldered a heavy burden in the global economic crisis, struggling with political and financial insecurity. Greece has also the most porous external border of the European Union, tasked with ensuring that the EU's boundaries are both "secure and humanitarian" and hosting enormous numbers of migrants and asylum seekers who arrive by land and sea. The recent leadership and fiscal crises have led to a breakdown of legal entitlements for both Greek citizens and those seeking refuge within the country's borders. On the Doorstep of Europe is an ethnographic study of the asylum system in Greece, tracing the ways asylum seekers, bureaucrats, and service providers attempt to navigate the dilemmas of governance, ethics, knowledge, and sociability that emerge through this legal process. Centering on the work of an asylum advocacy NGO in Athens, Heath Cabot explores how workers and clients grapple with predicaments endemic to Europeanization and rights-based protection. Drawing inspiration from classical Greek tragedy to highlight both the transformative potential and the violence of law, Cabot charts the structural violence effected through European governance, rights frameworks, and humanitarian intervention while also exploring how Athenian society is being remade from the inside out. She shows how, in contemporary Greece, relationships between insiders and outsiders are radically reconfigured through legal, political, and economic crises. In addition to providing a textured, on-the-ground account of the fraught context of asylum and immigration in Europe's borderlands, On the Doorstep of Europe highlights the unpredictable and transformative ways in which those in host nations navigate legal and political violence, even in contexts of inexorable duress and inequality.
Article
As a discipline, anthropology has increased its public visibility in recent years with its growing focus on engagement. Although the call for engagement has elicited responses in all subfields and around the world, this special issue focuses on engaged anthropology and the dilemmas it raises in U. S. cultural and practicing anthropology. Within this field, the authors distinguish a number of forms of engagement: (1) sharing and support, (2) teaching and public education, (3) social critique, (4) collaboration, (5) advocacy, and (6) activism. They show that engagement takes place during fieldwork; through applied practice; in institutions such as Cultural Survival, the Institute for Community Research, and the Hispanic Health Council; and as individual activists work in the context of war, terrorism, environmental injustice, human rights, and violence. A close examination of the history of engaged anthropology in the United States also reveals an enduring set of dilemmas, many of which persist in contemporary anthropological practice. These dilemmas were raised by the anthropologists who attended the Wenner-Gren workshop titled "The Anthropologist as Social Critic: Working toward a More Engaged Anthropology," January 22-25, 2008. Their papers, many of which are included in this collection, highlight both the expansion and growth of engaged anthropology and the problems its practitioners face. To introduce this collection of articles, we discuss forms of engaged anthropology, its history, and its ongoing dilemmas.
Crisis and Continuity: A Critical Look at the European Refugee " Crisis " . Allegra Lab: Anthropology, Law, Art & World Online: http://allegralaboratory.net/crisis-and-continuity-a-critical-look- at-the-european-refugee-crisis
  • Heath Cabot
Cabot, Heath (2015): Crisis and Continuity: A Critical Look at the European Refugee " Crisis ". Allegra Lab: Anthropology, Law, Art & World. Online: http://allegralaboratory.net/crisis-and-continuity-a-critical-look- at-the-european-refugee-crisis/ (Accessed on: June 28, 2016).
Effektiver Schutz vor geschlechtsspezifscher Gewalt – auch in Flüchtlingsunterkünften
  • Heike Rabe
Rabe, Heike (2015): Effektiver Schutz vor geschlechtsspezifscher Gewalt – auch in Flüchtlingsunterkünften. Berlin: Deutsches Institut für Menschenrechte.