Lieke van der Veer | Erasmus University Rotterdam (original) (raw)

Papers by Lieke van der Veer

Guessing games with target groups : Securing a livelihood by supporting refugees in a hostile environment

Intersections

In the wake of mass-migrations of refugees seeking safety and stability in Europe, this contribut... more In the wake of mass-migrations of refugees seeking safety and stability in Europe, this contribution studies emerging grassroots organizations that support refugee status holders in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The municipality expects these organizations to adhere to the European trend to incorporate immigrant integration priorities in interventions that apply to all residents. The article discusses the paradox of how bureaucratic classifications regarding preferred target groups cast certain grassroots responses as fringe-activities that are less legible bureaucratically. Based on a year of ethnographic fieldwork, this article shows how this lessened legibility translates into profound insecurities for grassroots organizers. The article discusses how these insecurities, in combination with the uncertainty grassroots organizers feel regarding their employability, motivate them to play guessing games and to give in to municipal preferences to boost their eligibility for funding. It a...

Treacherous Elasticity, Callous Boundaries: Aspiring Volunteer Initiatives in the Field of Refugee Support in Rotterdam

Voluntas, 2020

This contribution focuses on volunteer initiatives that seek to assist refugee status holders in ... more This contribution focuses on volunteer initiatives that seek to assist refugee status holders in Rotterdam. It studies initiatives that are still in the process of fine-tuning their focus, grappling for funds, searching for volunteers, and seeking collaborations. The article lays bare the inequalities that such aspiring initiatives can be premised on and produce. In analyzing moments in which the label of ‘volunteer’ is rejected—or instead celebrated or transformed—this article demonstrates that the elastic representation of volunteering clashes with callous boundaries between ‘being only a volunteer’ and ‘doing something together.’ These boundaries are heartfelt by the organizers of these aspiring initiatives, who often have a refugee background themselves. By understanding inequality in volunteering in relation to debates about active citizenship, this article seeks to examine the workings of the glass ceiling that hinders the organizers of volunteer initiatives to transition into a position they consider more credible and professional.

Residents’ responses to refugee reception: the cracks and continuities between care and control

Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2020

Since 2015, residents in Europe have responded to the so-called “refugee crisis” by undertaking b... more Since 2015, residents in Europe have responded to the so-called “refugee crisis” by undertaking bottom-up activities in which they engage with newcomers. These resident responses—both supportive and restrictive towards refugee reception—apply pressure on governments to change protection regimes. In the Netherlands, for example, “ordinary people” join anti-migrant patrol groups that target refugees, or assist border-crossers and accommodate refugees. In this article, I study grassroots movements in which residents undertake practices focused on refugee reception in the Netherlands, and discuss the democratic potential of these undertakings. In the wake of extensive neoliberal processes that seek to “craft good citizens” and emerging forms of public action that bring perceived injustices to light, this article investigates the cracks and continuities between practices of care and control. It does so by analysing and comparing two explanatory mechanisms that prevail in recent literature to account for grassroots movements: active citizenship and counter-powers.

Group-making and distrust within the infrastructure of refugee support

FocaalBlog, 2020

In the Netherlands from 2015 onwards, the ‘spectacle’ (Casas-Cortes et al. 2015) of people arrivi... more In the Netherlands from 2015 onwards, the ‘spectacle’ (Casas-Cortes et al. 2015) of people arriving into Europe seeking refuge was channeled by vast media attention and political debate. These events triggered a vast response of bottom-up initiatives in the Netherlands wanting to support refugee status holders. In this contribution, I focus on such newly emerged initiatives that seek to support refugee status holders in Rotterdam, the second-largest city in the Netherlands. It discusses the struggles that the initiators of these initiatives face, who more often than not have a refugee background themselves. It shows how these struggles originate from the ambiguous categorizations of group-making that experimental policies presuppose in the field of refugee reception and support in urban spaces today.

The Multiple Movements of the Humanitarian Border The Portable Provision of Care and Control at the Aegean Islands, 2019

The “humanitarian border” that emerged at the Aegean Islands of Chios and Lesbos during the so ca... more The “humanitarian border” that emerged at the Aegean Islands of Chios and Lesbos during the so called “refugee crisis” arose out of various engagements with care and control. A humanitarian border can be said to consist of the entanglements between humanitarianism and securitization. But how do care and control materialize in practice and how can they move from one place to another? By combining the notion of the “humanitarian border” with the concept of “viapolitics” and an actor-network lens, and based on interviews with state authorities, volunteers and NGOs, this article brings in three claims. First, by studying the “missing masses”, the humanitarian border can be said to arise out of “conjoint actions” that concern engagement with peoples and objects of all sorts. Second, the humanitarian border is not only of a composite nature but of a mobile nature as well. Third, the interstructure of the humanitarian border is generated by a productive relationship between the fluidity of network configurations on the one hand and emerging frictions on the other. By studying the situated tensions between humanitarianism and securitization and focusing on the circulation of materialities of all sorts the movements that make up a humanitarian border can be displayed.

Introduction to a special issue on migration and borders

Governments increasingly invite non-state actors to contribute to mobility regulation. Not only o... more Governments increasingly invite non-state actors to contribute to mobility regulation. Not only organizations and businesses, but also citizens are required to respond to the greater visibility of migration, for instance by actively reporting on migrant ‘illegality’. The ideal of active citizenship as subjectivity promoted through tactics of responsibilization seems to encourage these mobilizations of vigilant citizens. The article presents a case study of responsibilization in the field of controlling unwanted migration in the Netherlands. By using Foucault’s analysis of governmentality as conceptual framework, the article evaluates the forms of thought, conduct and subjectivity that constitute the problematization of migrant ‘illegality’.

Conference Presentations by Lieke van der Veer

This paper focuses on enactments of authority within the urban infrastructure of social service p... more This paper focuses on enactments of authority within the urban infrastructure of social service provision to 'refugee status holders' in Rotterdam (The Netherlands). In this infrastructure, grassroots organizers with a forced migration background routinely self-identify as 'broker' [verbinder] or 'bridgebuilder' [bruggenbouwer] in producing authority for their envisioned initiative. Prominent advisors in refugee advocacy within the city, too, use this identification, to refer to themselves, as well as to particular grassroots organizers known as promising 'key figures' [sleutelfiguren]. Based on a 12-month fieldwork period, this paper studies how this subjectivity of 'broker'/ 'bridge-builder' is used in claims to authority-both by grassroots organizers and advisors in refugee advocacy. First, it shows how grassroots organizers invoke this subjectivity to claim a unique epistemic position in understanding and addressing the needs of their initiatives' envisioned beneficiaries. The inherent liminality that underpins this subjectivity of 'broker'/ 'bridge-builder,' moreover, serves to protect the initiative from being legible as 'mono-ethnic activity'-i.e. a facilitative intervention for a specific ethnic group, which is something that Rotterdam's city administration would consider 'not desirable'. Second, in elucidating how advisors distribute epistemic authority within the support infrastructure, this paper sheds light to (conflicts over) scale-making and the visibility of refugee support initiatives. In sum, by studying the preconditions and effects of emic practices that cast recent migrants and their advisors deliberately as intermediaries, this paper brings into view enactments of authority within an urban infrastructure of support provision to refugees, and explicitly does so against the backdrop of migrant hostility.

This contribution studies grassroots organizers with a forced migration background who support "r... more This contribution studies grassroots organizers with a forced migration background who support "refugee status holders" in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Based on a year of ethnographic fieldwork, it discusses how these organizers try to boost their "professionalism" and adhere to municipal preferences. These preferences include the requirement to stay away from interventions that assume ethno-racial differences. This process, in which organizers adhere to these preferences, is motivated by the organizers' desire to enhance their organization's eligibility to funding. Advisors that act as brokers to these organizations refer to this economic stimulus as 'tender trap'-a financial infrastructure that mediates the normative value of 'groups' along ethno-racial lines. In this contribution, I analytically forward two related claims. The first claim concerns reciprocity and social debt. I propose that the grassroots organizers studied, by "participating," hope to reciprocate their "social debt". This hope, I show, is set in motion by the desire to rework the ontology of indebtedness that typically underpins humanitarian dialectics between giver and receiver. Crucial in this regard is the fact that the grassroots organizers studied are people with a refugee background themselves. For them, starting an organization is an anticipated pathway to enter into relations of reciprocity-where debt does not sediment, and solidarity flows. The second claim concerns practices of securing a livelihood: the process of giving in to funding preferences, I propose, should be understood as attempt by grassroots organizers to reduce precariousness, secure a livelihood, and turn affective labor into a lifesustaining practice.

This contribution discusses bureaucratic categorization practices regarding newcomers in Rotterda... more This contribution discusses bureaucratic categorization practices regarding newcomers in Rotterdam (the Netherlands).

This contribution focuses on the coordination among aspiring refugee support initiatives as well ... more This contribution focuses on the coordination among aspiring refugee support initiatives as well as their position vis-à-vis procured NGOs in the field, municipal funding schemes and policy frameworks.

EASA Belfast , 2022

This panel aims to engage critically with the circulation of bodies within and between state inst... more This panel aims to engage critically with the circulation of bodies within and between state instantiations, writ large, to theorise state power. Ethnographically examining movement within and between such entities allows us to expand considerations of circulation as a possible mode of governance.

This paper addresses the frictions within the arena of refugee reception in Rotterdam, where gras... more This paper addresses the frictions within the arena of refugee reception in Rotterdam, where grassroots initiatives compete for recognition by the municipal administrators, play guessing games to speculate on opaque policy frameworks with the hope of making formal collaborations likely, and keep their head down to ward off possible repression. Long paper's abstract In response to the visibility of people who are recognized as refugees and try to settle in in new cities in the Netherlands, grassroots initiatives that aim to care for these refugees and to help them in navigating their new life, multiply. In attempts to secure funding and to establish partnerships, initiatives reach out to the city administration, to each other, and to residents that act as informal advisors. Balancing between 'welcome' and 'deterrence', the city administration in turn embraces the opportunity to externalize the responsibility to manage refugee reception to non-state actors. At the same time, however, policy targets and matching funding opportunities for grassroots initiatives shape the initiatives' missions and mandates. Drawing on ethnographic research in the Dutch city of Rotterdam, this paper studies the frictions within this arena of refugee reception. It does so by attending to the case of Josefien, a resident that founded a platform to signal solidarity with recognized refugees. She helps nascent grassroots initiatives that are affiliated with this platform through their start-up phase and thereby attempts to resist exclusionary urban policies towards accepted refugees and those wanting to help them. Behind her back, however, Josefien is under attack, as she is accused of pushing her own agenda. Moreover, competing initiatives all make use of Josefien's advice, which intensifies distrust between the initiatives and weakens the coalition of solidarity. This paper emphasizes the cracks within the refugee solidarity movement and the contentious politics that undercut local border making.

This contribution, empirically based on ethnographic fieldwork in Rotterdam, discusses how the in... more This contribution, empirically based on ethnographic fieldwork in Rotterdam, discusses how the informal infrastructure of refugee reception materializes in anticipation to repression. It examines how accepted refugees assemble possibilities that emerge at the intersection of moralities of 'active citizenship' and 'activist citizenship.

In The Netherlands from 2015 onwards, residents increasingly organise to respond to the greater v... more In The Netherlands from 2015 onwards, residents increasingly organise to respond to the greater visibility of newcomers who seek refuge. In the city of Rotterdam, there are for instance grassroots initiatives that facilitate the accommodation of refugees awaiting the assignment of official housing, and resident collectives that mobilize against the reception of newcomers in their neighbourhood. Embedded in what is perceived of as 'reception infrastructure'-consisting e.g. of NGOs, government actors and private enterprises – the envisioned research investigates the ways in which residents' initiatives in Rotterdam constitute networks of care and control in relation to newcomers. Practices of control are conceived of acts of containment in which resident initiatives look over newcomers and e.g. engage in surveillance, policing, conservation, enforcement, and repression. Practices of care, then, are conceived of as acts of protection in which resident initiatives look after newcomers and e.g. relieve discomfort, inequality, unsafety, precarity. It is among the aims of the research as proposed to understand how care and control' are intertwined in their enactment. Specifically, I will explore how 'care' and 'control' materialize in entanglement, and what this interrelation is productive of. Departing from the observation that borders are no longer at the border, the research aims at an analysing how 'ordinary people' engage in 'borderwork' – which comprises categorizations of people, imaginations of distance, and enactments of differential boundaries between constituted publics. The research adds to an understanding of novel forms of political world making, as well as representations of the state and constituted publics.

The paper centres on the observation that non-state individuals are increasingly in a position fr... more The paper centres on the observation that non-state individuals are increasingly in a position from which they may facilitate or instead hinder access to formal and informal infrastructures of reception. These individuals characteristically are 'people among the people', meaning that their role and status differs from street-level bureaucrats – the latter professionally operating as government actors in enforcing, contesting or cushioning migration policies. Instead, the non-state individuals that this paper attends to, are said to act as 'brokers'. So-called brokers may develop their own initiatives-for example in (re)distributing resources and creating opportunities for particular publics towards increased social security – or instead respond to invitations by the local authorities to act as representatives of publics they are assumed to speak for. What will be explored in this paper, are the assumptions concerning such representations of publics as they are shaped in the city in relation to citizenship interpreted in a broader sense. Attention will be drawn to the imaginaries of citizenship that authorize a supposed broker to act, and vice versa, to the particular imaginaries of citizenship as well as of the state that a broker may promote. The often romanticized picture of brokers - who embody unproven dreams of bridging alleged gaps – will be problematized by the observation that boundaries of premised publics can instead be (re)inforced and that new boundaries can emerge by virtue of brokerage. Specifically, it will be asked how brokers that engage with issues of reception, interconnect what will be analysed as 'infrastructures of care' and 'infrastructures of control'. In attending to the intertwinement of these infrastructures, the analysis moves beyond participation as discursive claim-making, and attends to the material configuration of participation in the city. Similar to the increasing attention to ways in which humanitarianism and securitization materialize in entanglement, it will be argued that the lens of brokerage as ethnographic starting point sheds new light on boundary making in relation to citizenship and challenges (state-centred perspectives to) representation. As such, it brings discussions of the changing nature of borders – e.g. in terms of privatization, localization, temporalization, fragmentation and differential inclusion – as well as the problems that undercut representation to the city.

This paper presents Lieke’s recently started fieldwork on resident initiatives and grassroots fou... more This paper presents Lieke’s recently started fieldwork on resident initiatives and grassroots foundations run by volunteers that engage with recent refugees Rotterdam, the Netherlands. This research project is part of a larger ERC-funded project (BROKERS), coordinated by Martijn Koster. It also includes studies in Recife (Brazil), Manchester (UK) and Medellin (Colombia).

In this paper we present our recently started fieldwork on volunteers in Manchester, UK, and Rott... more In this paper we present our recently started fieldwork on volunteers in Manchester, UK, and Rotterdam, the Netherlands. In both cities, a withdrawal of state funding and a shift of tasks and responsibilities from government officials to volunteers have transformed the landscape of welfare and urban governance. Volunteers play an increasingly crucial role in the provision of services and access to care and welfare, especially regarding residents in extremely precarious situations. At the same time, the number of people in need of such aid and assistance is also growing under austerity. People who are long term unemployed, incapacitated or indebted, people who lack access to housing, law, and health, and newly arrived migrants who have to find their way in the city and its bureaucracy – they have all become heavily dependent on the know-how, the services and the goodwill of volunteers.

Guessing games with target groups : Securing a livelihood by supporting refugees in a hostile environment

Intersections

In the wake of mass-migrations of refugees seeking safety and stability in Europe, this contribut... more In the wake of mass-migrations of refugees seeking safety and stability in Europe, this contribution studies emerging grassroots organizations that support refugee status holders in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The municipality expects these organizations to adhere to the European trend to incorporate immigrant integration priorities in interventions that apply to all residents. The article discusses the paradox of how bureaucratic classifications regarding preferred target groups cast certain grassroots responses as fringe-activities that are less legible bureaucratically. Based on a year of ethnographic fieldwork, this article shows how this lessened legibility translates into profound insecurities for grassroots organizers. The article discusses how these insecurities, in combination with the uncertainty grassroots organizers feel regarding their employability, motivate them to play guessing games and to give in to municipal preferences to boost their eligibility for funding. It a...

Treacherous Elasticity, Callous Boundaries: Aspiring Volunteer Initiatives in the Field of Refugee Support in Rotterdam

Voluntas, 2020

This contribution focuses on volunteer initiatives that seek to assist refugee status holders in ... more This contribution focuses on volunteer initiatives that seek to assist refugee status holders in Rotterdam. It studies initiatives that are still in the process of fine-tuning their focus, grappling for funds, searching for volunteers, and seeking collaborations. The article lays bare the inequalities that such aspiring initiatives can be premised on and produce. In analyzing moments in which the label of ‘volunteer’ is rejected—or instead celebrated or transformed—this article demonstrates that the elastic representation of volunteering clashes with callous boundaries between ‘being only a volunteer’ and ‘doing something together.’ These boundaries are heartfelt by the organizers of these aspiring initiatives, who often have a refugee background themselves. By understanding inequality in volunteering in relation to debates about active citizenship, this article seeks to examine the workings of the glass ceiling that hinders the organizers of volunteer initiatives to transition into a position they consider more credible and professional.

Residents’ responses to refugee reception: the cracks and continuities between care and control

Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2020

Since 2015, residents in Europe have responded to the so-called “refugee crisis” by undertaking b... more Since 2015, residents in Europe have responded to the so-called “refugee crisis” by undertaking bottom-up activities in which they engage with newcomers. These resident responses—both supportive and restrictive towards refugee reception—apply pressure on governments to change protection regimes. In the Netherlands, for example, “ordinary people” join anti-migrant patrol groups that target refugees, or assist border-crossers and accommodate refugees. In this article, I study grassroots movements in which residents undertake practices focused on refugee reception in the Netherlands, and discuss the democratic potential of these undertakings. In the wake of extensive neoliberal processes that seek to “craft good citizens” and emerging forms of public action that bring perceived injustices to light, this article investigates the cracks and continuities between practices of care and control. It does so by analysing and comparing two explanatory mechanisms that prevail in recent literature to account for grassroots movements: active citizenship and counter-powers.

Group-making and distrust within the infrastructure of refugee support

FocaalBlog, 2020

In the Netherlands from 2015 onwards, the ‘spectacle’ (Casas-Cortes et al. 2015) of people arrivi... more In the Netherlands from 2015 onwards, the ‘spectacle’ (Casas-Cortes et al. 2015) of people arriving into Europe seeking refuge was channeled by vast media attention and political debate. These events triggered a vast response of bottom-up initiatives in the Netherlands wanting to support refugee status holders. In this contribution, I focus on such newly emerged initiatives that seek to support refugee status holders in Rotterdam, the second-largest city in the Netherlands. It discusses the struggles that the initiators of these initiatives face, who more often than not have a refugee background themselves. It shows how these struggles originate from the ambiguous categorizations of group-making that experimental policies presuppose in the field of refugee reception and support in urban spaces today.

The Multiple Movements of the Humanitarian Border The Portable Provision of Care and Control at the Aegean Islands, 2019

The “humanitarian border” that emerged at the Aegean Islands of Chios and Lesbos during the so ca... more The “humanitarian border” that emerged at the Aegean Islands of Chios and Lesbos during the so called “refugee crisis” arose out of various engagements with care and control. A humanitarian border can be said to consist of the entanglements between humanitarianism and securitization. But how do care and control materialize in practice and how can they move from one place to another? By combining the notion of the “humanitarian border” with the concept of “viapolitics” and an actor-network lens, and based on interviews with state authorities, volunteers and NGOs, this article brings in three claims. First, by studying the “missing masses”, the humanitarian border can be said to arise out of “conjoint actions” that concern engagement with peoples and objects of all sorts. Second, the humanitarian border is not only of a composite nature but of a mobile nature as well. Third, the interstructure of the humanitarian border is generated by a productive relationship between the fluidity of network configurations on the one hand and emerging frictions on the other. By studying the situated tensions between humanitarianism and securitization and focusing on the circulation of materialities of all sorts the movements that make up a humanitarian border can be displayed.

Introduction to a special issue on migration and borders

Governments increasingly invite non-state actors to contribute to mobility regulation. Not only o... more Governments increasingly invite non-state actors to contribute to mobility regulation. Not only organizations and businesses, but also citizens are required to respond to the greater visibility of migration, for instance by actively reporting on migrant ‘illegality’. The ideal of active citizenship as subjectivity promoted through tactics of responsibilization seems to encourage these mobilizations of vigilant citizens. The article presents a case study of responsibilization in the field of controlling unwanted migration in the Netherlands. By using Foucault’s analysis of governmentality as conceptual framework, the article evaluates the forms of thought, conduct and subjectivity that constitute the problematization of migrant ‘illegality’.

This paper focuses on enactments of authority within the urban infrastructure of social service p... more This paper focuses on enactments of authority within the urban infrastructure of social service provision to 'refugee status holders' in Rotterdam (The Netherlands). In this infrastructure, grassroots organizers with a forced migration background routinely self-identify as 'broker' [verbinder] or 'bridgebuilder' [bruggenbouwer] in producing authority for their envisioned initiative. Prominent advisors in refugee advocacy within the city, too, use this identification, to refer to themselves, as well as to particular grassroots organizers known as promising 'key figures' [sleutelfiguren]. Based on a 12-month fieldwork period, this paper studies how this subjectivity of 'broker'/ 'bridge-builder' is used in claims to authority-both by grassroots organizers and advisors in refugee advocacy. First, it shows how grassroots organizers invoke this subjectivity to claim a unique epistemic position in understanding and addressing the needs of their initiatives' envisioned beneficiaries. The inherent liminality that underpins this subjectivity of 'broker'/ 'bridge-builder,' moreover, serves to protect the initiative from being legible as 'mono-ethnic activity'-i.e. a facilitative intervention for a specific ethnic group, which is something that Rotterdam's city administration would consider 'not desirable'. Second, in elucidating how advisors distribute epistemic authority within the support infrastructure, this paper sheds light to (conflicts over) scale-making and the visibility of refugee support initiatives. In sum, by studying the preconditions and effects of emic practices that cast recent migrants and their advisors deliberately as intermediaries, this paper brings into view enactments of authority within an urban infrastructure of support provision to refugees, and explicitly does so against the backdrop of migrant hostility.

This contribution studies grassroots organizers with a forced migration background who support "r... more This contribution studies grassroots organizers with a forced migration background who support "refugee status holders" in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Based on a year of ethnographic fieldwork, it discusses how these organizers try to boost their "professionalism" and adhere to municipal preferences. These preferences include the requirement to stay away from interventions that assume ethno-racial differences. This process, in which organizers adhere to these preferences, is motivated by the organizers' desire to enhance their organization's eligibility to funding. Advisors that act as brokers to these organizations refer to this economic stimulus as 'tender trap'-a financial infrastructure that mediates the normative value of 'groups' along ethno-racial lines. In this contribution, I analytically forward two related claims. The first claim concerns reciprocity and social debt. I propose that the grassroots organizers studied, by "participating," hope to reciprocate their "social debt". This hope, I show, is set in motion by the desire to rework the ontology of indebtedness that typically underpins humanitarian dialectics between giver and receiver. Crucial in this regard is the fact that the grassroots organizers studied are people with a refugee background themselves. For them, starting an organization is an anticipated pathway to enter into relations of reciprocity-where debt does not sediment, and solidarity flows. The second claim concerns practices of securing a livelihood: the process of giving in to funding preferences, I propose, should be understood as attempt by grassroots organizers to reduce precariousness, secure a livelihood, and turn affective labor into a lifesustaining practice.

This contribution discusses bureaucratic categorization practices regarding newcomers in Rotterda... more This contribution discusses bureaucratic categorization practices regarding newcomers in Rotterdam (the Netherlands).

This contribution focuses on the coordination among aspiring refugee support initiatives as well ... more This contribution focuses on the coordination among aspiring refugee support initiatives as well as their position vis-à-vis procured NGOs in the field, municipal funding schemes and policy frameworks.

EASA Belfast , 2022

This panel aims to engage critically with the circulation of bodies within and between state inst... more This panel aims to engage critically with the circulation of bodies within and between state instantiations, writ large, to theorise state power. Ethnographically examining movement within and between such entities allows us to expand considerations of circulation as a possible mode of governance.

This paper addresses the frictions within the arena of refugee reception in Rotterdam, where gras... more This paper addresses the frictions within the arena of refugee reception in Rotterdam, where grassroots initiatives compete for recognition by the municipal administrators, play guessing games to speculate on opaque policy frameworks with the hope of making formal collaborations likely, and keep their head down to ward off possible repression. Long paper's abstract In response to the visibility of people who are recognized as refugees and try to settle in in new cities in the Netherlands, grassroots initiatives that aim to care for these refugees and to help them in navigating their new life, multiply. In attempts to secure funding and to establish partnerships, initiatives reach out to the city administration, to each other, and to residents that act as informal advisors. Balancing between 'welcome' and 'deterrence', the city administration in turn embraces the opportunity to externalize the responsibility to manage refugee reception to non-state actors. At the same time, however, policy targets and matching funding opportunities for grassroots initiatives shape the initiatives' missions and mandates. Drawing on ethnographic research in the Dutch city of Rotterdam, this paper studies the frictions within this arena of refugee reception. It does so by attending to the case of Josefien, a resident that founded a platform to signal solidarity with recognized refugees. She helps nascent grassroots initiatives that are affiliated with this platform through their start-up phase and thereby attempts to resist exclusionary urban policies towards accepted refugees and those wanting to help them. Behind her back, however, Josefien is under attack, as she is accused of pushing her own agenda. Moreover, competing initiatives all make use of Josefien's advice, which intensifies distrust between the initiatives and weakens the coalition of solidarity. This paper emphasizes the cracks within the refugee solidarity movement and the contentious politics that undercut local border making.

This contribution, empirically based on ethnographic fieldwork in Rotterdam, discusses how the in... more This contribution, empirically based on ethnographic fieldwork in Rotterdam, discusses how the informal infrastructure of refugee reception materializes in anticipation to repression. It examines how accepted refugees assemble possibilities that emerge at the intersection of moralities of 'active citizenship' and 'activist citizenship.

In The Netherlands from 2015 onwards, residents increasingly organise to respond to the greater v... more In The Netherlands from 2015 onwards, residents increasingly organise to respond to the greater visibility of newcomers who seek refuge. In the city of Rotterdam, there are for instance grassroots initiatives that facilitate the accommodation of refugees awaiting the assignment of official housing, and resident collectives that mobilize against the reception of newcomers in their neighbourhood. Embedded in what is perceived of as 'reception infrastructure'-consisting e.g. of NGOs, government actors and private enterprises – the envisioned research investigates the ways in which residents' initiatives in Rotterdam constitute networks of care and control in relation to newcomers. Practices of control are conceived of acts of containment in which resident initiatives look over newcomers and e.g. engage in surveillance, policing, conservation, enforcement, and repression. Practices of care, then, are conceived of as acts of protection in which resident initiatives look after newcomers and e.g. relieve discomfort, inequality, unsafety, precarity. It is among the aims of the research as proposed to understand how care and control' are intertwined in their enactment. Specifically, I will explore how 'care' and 'control' materialize in entanglement, and what this interrelation is productive of. Departing from the observation that borders are no longer at the border, the research aims at an analysing how 'ordinary people' engage in 'borderwork' – which comprises categorizations of people, imaginations of distance, and enactments of differential boundaries between constituted publics. The research adds to an understanding of novel forms of political world making, as well as representations of the state and constituted publics.

The paper centres on the observation that non-state individuals are increasingly in a position fr... more The paper centres on the observation that non-state individuals are increasingly in a position from which they may facilitate or instead hinder access to formal and informal infrastructures of reception. These individuals characteristically are 'people among the people', meaning that their role and status differs from street-level bureaucrats – the latter professionally operating as government actors in enforcing, contesting or cushioning migration policies. Instead, the non-state individuals that this paper attends to, are said to act as 'brokers'. So-called brokers may develop their own initiatives-for example in (re)distributing resources and creating opportunities for particular publics towards increased social security – or instead respond to invitations by the local authorities to act as representatives of publics they are assumed to speak for. What will be explored in this paper, are the assumptions concerning such representations of publics as they are shaped in the city in relation to citizenship interpreted in a broader sense. Attention will be drawn to the imaginaries of citizenship that authorize a supposed broker to act, and vice versa, to the particular imaginaries of citizenship as well as of the state that a broker may promote. The often romanticized picture of brokers - who embody unproven dreams of bridging alleged gaps – will be problematized by the observation that boundaries of premised publics can instead be (re)inforced and that new boundaries can emerge by virtue of brokerage. Specifically, it will be asked how brokers that engage with issues of reception, interconnect what will be analysed as 'infrastructures of care' and 'infrastructures of control'. In attending to the intertwinement of these infrastructures, the analysis moves beyond participation as discursive claim-making, and attends to the material configuration of participation in the city. Similar to the increasing attention to ways in which humanitarianism and securitization materialize in entanglement, it will be argued that the lens of brokerage as ethnographic starting point sheds new light on boundary making in relation to citizenship and challenges (state-centred perspectives to) representation. As such, it brings discussions of the changing nature of borders – e.g. in terms of privatization, localization, temporalization, fragmentation and differential inclusion – as well as the problems that undercut representation to the city.

This paper presents Lieke’s recently started fieldwork on resident initiatives and grassroots fou... more This paper presents Lieke’s recently started fieldwork on resident initiatives and grassroots foundations run by volunteers that engage with recent refugees Rotterdam, the Netherlands. This research project is part of a larger ERC-funded project (BROKERS), coordinated by Martijn Koster. It also includes studies in Recife (Brazil), Manchester (UK) and Medellin (Colombia).

In this paper we present our recently started fieldwork on volunteers in Manchester, UK, and Rott... more In this paper we present our recently started fieldwork on volunteers in Manchester, UK, and Rotterdam, the Netherlands. In both cities, a withdrawal of state funding and a shift of tasks and responsibilities from government officials to volunteers have transformed the landscape of welfare and urban governance. Volunteers play an increasingly crucial role in the provision of services and access to care and welfare, especially regarding residents in extremely precarious situations. At the same time, the number of people in need of such aid and assistance is also growing under austerity. People who are long term unemployed, incapacitated or indebted, people who lack access to housing, law, and health, and newly arrived migrants who have to find their way in the city and its bureaucracy – they have all become heavily dependent on the know-how, the services and the goodwill of volunteers.

Citizens increasingly respond to the greater visibility of migration by means of taking part in m... more Citizens increasingly respond to the greater visibility of migration by means of taking part in mobility regulation themselves. Examples are civic initiatives to accommodate refugees, to travel to the Greek islands to provide first aid, and even to navigate to the Mediterranean Sea to set up rescue operations (VPRO Tegenlicht 2015). Apart from initiatives demonstrating support towards asylum seekers, grassroots actions demonstrating opposition towards asylum seekers similarly drew attention, such as citizens engaging in anti-migrant surveillance (The New York Times 2016). The shifting of responsibility for migration policies away from the national government-to the EU, municipalities and non-state actors-allows for a new dynamic to civic initiatives. The ideal of active citizenship as subjectivity promoted over the last decades seems to encourage these mobilizations of affective and vigilant citizens. Whereas bottom-up initiatives of responsibilized publics are often applauded for manifesting societal energies that would enhance policy legitimacy and social cohesion, the adverse may be observed in current mobilizations. By articulately opposing the government – either blaming it for not doing enough to support or instead oppose migration-civic initiatives may influence migration politics by challenging policy legitimacy. In reaction, citizen's actions face the risk of being politically discouraged (RTV NH 2015) or even criminalized (The Guardian 2016)-thus revealing the limits set for counter-democratic participation. Moreover, civic initiatives may effect a bottom-up reproduction of social divides, both among asylum seekers and between asylum seekers and citizens. The figure of the asylum seeker resonates with the figure of those not 'mature enough' to meet up to the ideal of the self-reliant individual-the assumed moral dichotomy underlying responsibilization being dependency versus independency. It will be shown how, as a consequence, capillary civic mobilizations reinforce the inextricability of politics of care and control in the public sphere.

Giving a presentation at a public event on philosophical approaches to the theme of 'the outsider... more Giving a presentation at a public event on philosophical approaches to the theme of 'the outsider'. Topic: How citizens' mobilizations on issues concerning questions of reception and asylum of migrants and refugees may be perceived of in terms of (counter)democracy, populism and neoliberalism.