Testimonio and spaces of risk: A forced migrant perspective (original) (raw)
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In: Streinzer, Andreas; Tošić, Jelena (szerk.) Ethnographies of Deservingness : Unpacking Ideologies of Distribution and Inequality Berghahn Books (2022) pp. 304-330. , 27 p., 2022
The relationship of European societies with people arriving from Africa and the Middle East constitutes an important aspect of present-day politics. Discourses of deservingness have become central in this relationship, in deploying or denying support towards specific immigrant groups and categories. In this chapter, we aim to investigate a specific aspect of such deservingness discourses by noting the fact that non-European Union (EU) migrants represent only one segment of transnational migration, while intra-EU mobility is also a constitutive element of present-day migratory currents. Against the simplistic idea that discourses of migrant deservingness are produced by the 'host society', understood as essentialized, homogeneous and unitary, we depart from the assumption that encounters and interactions between people and groups from diverse migration backgrounds constitute an important source. Encounters between various migrant groups will be analysed with a focus on narratives of suffering, vulnerability and victimhood, in the context of refugee accommodation institutions in Germany. As highlighted in the Introduction to this volume, images of legitimate suffering have become a core component in legal, political and media discourses of refugee deservingness in Western societies. After the Second World War, the modern concept of the refugee became closely tied to the institutional-discursive field of humanitarianism, legitimating support of various displaced populations through their suffering, vulnerability and victimhood. While specific forms of suffering became the basis of distributing material, legal and symbolic resources and the attribution of the 'deserving refugee' category itself, other forms of suffering remained unnoticed or became grounds for indifference or outright rejection (such as for deportation) on behalf of Western societies. These ideas of (un)deservingness are produced and recreated by various institutional actors and domains. Besides the more often foregrounded institutional actors such as legislation, politics or the media, intermediary institutions that contribute to refugees securing a basic livelihood, food, shelter, health, education, social services and employment are also central in reproducing deservingness (Chauvin and Garcés-Mascareñas 2014; Ambrosini 2016). In this chapter, we aim to explore how refugee deservingness frameworks-and concepts of suffering, and 'deserving victimhood' and vulnerability in particular-are recreated in such institutions of refugee accommodation in Germany. In our case, such institutions are those offering housing and community development for refugees and asylum seekers, or educational organizations providing language or vocational courses. Central for our current project, these are often operated by employees and volunteers (teachers and social workers) who themselves have experiences, life trajectories and identities related to transnational movement. During the last half-century, there have been many waves of immigration to Germany-including Turkish labour immigrants, ethnic Germans from communist and postcommunist Central Eastern European states, and refugees from the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, the less visible arrival of hundreds of thousands from eastern EU countries
Unexpected agency on the threshold: Asylum seekers narrating from an asylum seeker centre
Current Sociology
Several studies have described the condition of asylum seekers as being on the threshold or in-between structures. Victor Turner's concept of liminality and Agamben's state of exception have been used extensively to analyse this condition, mostly to show the negative implications of the ambiguous legal (non-) status. This article argues that the condition of liminality provides an intensified doubleness of impossibility and possibility for action, which casts a different light on conceptualizing agency. Without disregarding the downside of this liminal, in-between condition, the article shows that the lack of 'normalized' connectedness to the new structure combined with physical distance from the past structure, enables reflection and feeds the power of imagination. This can lead to alternative (yet conditional) forms of agency, such as delayed agency and agency from marginal positions. Through the narratives of asylum seekers living in Dutch asylum seeker centres, the article shows the potential of transforming non-places, such as asylum seeker centres, into those in which existential meanings can emerge (even if partial). Considering these sources of agency has great implications for the short-term well-being of asylum seekers and the long-term inclusion of refugees in their countries of residence.