Institutional Arrangement Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Since the Autumn of 2015, Germany has received over one million asylum-seekers from a wide variety of origins. In response to this massive influx of people, the Federal Republic has exceptionally engaged in the task of accommodation (providing housing and sustenance, financial support, healthcare, legal services, and language training). It is widely recognized that the next task – and one of perhaps greatest public and policy concern – is that of facilitating asylum-seekers’ “integration” (albeit a contested term referring to a broad set of social processes). Yet integration – however defined – already begins during the stage of accommodation. It is the nature of specific institutional arrangements – created during the process of accommodation – that is decisive for conditioning and channeling subsequent processes of integration. Further, integration can only proceed successfully if asylum-seekers’ own diverse needs and aspirations are addressed. Accommodation through the creation of institutional arrangements for large numbers of asylum-seekers have necessarily entailed complex organizational measures, requiring a range of actors, perspectives, strategies, and resources at various levels and scales. These intricate measures are further complicated when necessarily considering another complex set of factors: those posed by the sheer socio-cultural diversity of asylum-seekers themselves. Their extensive human diversity presents a manifold range of needs and aspirations beyond the immediate necessities of food and shelter. Recognizing the required interplay of both sets of complexities (institutional arrangements together with diverse needs and aspirations), in February 2016 a one-year pilot project was launched at the Max-Planck-Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity (MPI-MMG) (see http://www.mmg.mpg.de/project/asylum-seekers-needs/about/). The project “Addressing the diversity of needs & aspirations of asylum-seekers” has been undertaken through the auspices of a grant from the Volkswagen-Foundation. Within the project, three post-doctoral researchers – a sociologist, an anthropologist and an urban planner – supervised by the Institute’s Director and supported by research and student assistants – have employed a range of social scientific methods. The project was prepared and initiated expediently because of the urgency of the situation and the need to gather quickly and tactically a range of information in order to assess and understand best the significant processes currently unfolding across Germany. The research location, the city of Göttingen (population 116,891), was chosen not only for expediency but because – as a mid-sized German city that has received a substantial number of asylum-seekers since Autumn 2015, and which accordingly set up a wide variety of institutional responses – it represents a highly appropriate context within which to examine the issues at hand. Our approach has been premised on the observation that contemporary asylumseeker diversity – from which individuals’ distinct needs arise – is comprised of variable combinations of categories. These include: nationality, ethnicity, language(s), religion/sub-tradition, age, gender, health condition or disability, education/training, parental status, pre-migration social position (embracing class, political activity, experience of persecution), and migration history (including mode of travel, channel, duration, and institutional handling prior to arriving in a Flüchtlingsunterkunft or refugee accommodation center in Germany). It follows that, what each asylum-seeker immediately requires or requests from local institutions (concerning, for instance, family care, language acquisition, education, job placement, legal processes, health, information, communications and mobility) will vary according to the combination of these categories. The project accordingly examined: (a) how highly dissimilar, local institutional arrangements for accommodating asylum-seekers condition the nature of services and information available to them; and (b) how the variety of needs and aspirations among asylum-seekers (reflecting a range of social traits and cultural/religious backgrounds) are differentially addressed, met or unmet through the variety of institutional arrangements in the city.