Contesting the Dublin Regulation: Refugees’ and Migrants’ Claims to Personhood and Rights in Germany

his study demonstrates how an EU law, Dublin 111, affects a heterogeneous group of refugees and migrants in Germany who first enter the EU through States such as Italy, Spain, or Hungary. The Dublin regulation allows refugees (with the exception of refugees from Syria) solely to make asylum-claims in the EU country through which they first enter and where they are initially fingerprinted. Therefore, if authorities find asylum-seekers’ fingerprints in the database and can thus confirm that they have been in another EU Member State, then according to the Dublin regulation, they can be deported to the first country. The study illustrates the ways in which many refugees and migrants in Germany negotiate the Dublin law in differentiated ways, which subsequently enables them to claim their rights to personhood and dignity. More specifically, this study interrogates how some refugees are affected by the Dublin legislation and how they negotiate this law. This group of refugees have varied status in Germany – some have claimed asylum, some fear imminent deportations, others have not claimed asylum within Germany, while there are others who are in the process of ‘getting out of Dublin’. The study explores how these refugees with differing positions, status, and background negotiate their stay and personhood in Germany

Collaborations and Performative Agency in Refugee Theater in Germany

The article contributes to an understanding of the formation of political identities of asylum seekers within the context of theater in Germany. Thus, this article demonstrates the ways in which the identity of the refugee as a political activist is accomplished through performative exercise for the German audience. In doing so, the refugee-activist does not aim simply toward assimilating within German society, but rather her/his identity is formed within a context of unjust European and German asylum laws. Much scholarship has focused on the concept of networks and citizenship in the context of immigrant and refugee protests, but the notion of performative agency within the realm of refugee theater has been less discussed. This article, by exploring the performative agency of refugees, contributes to an understanding of refugee political activism in spheres other than camps and the streets. In doing so, the article contributes to consider alternate modes of refugee activism such as the cultural sphere. Data are drawn from the viewing of seven performances in Germany of refugee activists from the global South as well as from interviews with the theater team

Supporting searchers’ desire for emplacement in Berlin: Informal practices in defiance of an (im)mobility regime

The article traces the ways in which refugees in precarious legal and economic circumstances in Lagers (refugee camps) in Germany participate in informal practices to reverse their displaced positions. More specifically, the paper demonstrates how refugees work in conjunction with a Berlin-based solidarity group in order to find access to informally organized housing outside of the formal bureaucratic state system. The study shows that refugees’ engagement with informal structures must be understood as struggles towards emplacement and formality. Much scholarship has discussed the economic aspects of informality in the global South and post socialist countries. However, there is little discussion on how refugees may engage in informal practices within the nation-state in order to find emplacement and achieve formality. The article additionally demonstrates how informal acts are co-produced between citizens and refugees in the process of searching and offering of living places outside state defined formal systems. Thus, informality needs to be understood as resistance against displacement, struggles towards emplacement and formality. The study draws on ethnographic data and on-going participation in a Berlin-based grassroots group, Schlafplatzorga, which supports refugees on an informal level with temporary accommodation

Transnational (Im)mobilities and Informality in Europe

People around the globe rely on informal practices to resist, survive, care and relate to each other beyond the control and coercive presence of institutions and states. In the EU, regimes of mobility at multiple scales affect various people on the move who are pushed into informality in order to acquire social mobility while having to combat border regimes, racialization, inequalities, and state bureaucracies. This text explores how mobilities and informality are entangled with one another when it comes to responding to the social, political, and economic inequalities that are produced by border and mobility regimes. Within this frame, the ethnographic articles in this special issue go beyond national borders to connect the production of mobility and informality at multiple interconnected scales, from refugees adapting to settlement bureaucracies locally to transit migrants coping with the selective external borders of the EU, or from transnational entrepreneurs’ ability to move between formal and informal norms to the multiple ways in which transnational mobility informally confronts economic, social and political constraints. In sum, this volume brings together articles on informality and mobility that take account of the elusive practices that deal with the inequalities of mobility and immobility

Visibilities and the Politics of Space: Refugee Activism in Berlin

This article examines the ways in which refugee activists attained visibility within the public sphere while they contested, resisted, and helped transform multiple spaitials as part of their movement in Berlin, Germany. Scholarship on refugee and immigrant protests has focused on demonstrations and every day acts of resistance in refugee camps or accommodation. However, there has been less focus on the ways in which refugees engage in spatial politics. This article focuses on urban resistance in Berlin where refugee activists in alliance with supporters occupied several spaces and transformed them to political sites

The Nexus of Political Violence and Economic Deprivation: Pakistani Migrants Disrupt the Refugee / Migrant Dichotomy

There have been discussions about how the labels “forced migrants,” related to political violence, and “voluntary migrants,” associated with economic factors, cannot be understood in categorical ways. However, there has been less focus on the specificities of the asylum-migrant nexus from the perspective of migrants. This essay discusses how such factors intersect as understood by Pakistani migrants residing in Germany. Through enacting a critical view of Pakistan, the migrants demonstrate how aspects of corruption, economic deprivation, and political violence come to intersect so that is becomes impossible to classify asylum seekers in binary/dichotomous ways

Cosmopolitan belonging and diaspora: second-generation British Muslim women travelling to South Asia

This paper traces the ways in which British born Muslim women self-identify with Britain and South Asia. More specifically, the article explores the ways in which the young women express their sense of belonging and convey cosmopolitan identities while they self-reflect upon their travels to their parents' homeland. The paper argues that the women do not view Britain and South Asian nations in discrete terms along religious and cultural dimensions but with frequent visits in different stages in their lives come to understand these nation-states in porous ways. For example, they self-identify with South Asia because of South Asian culture's emphasis on the family and express openness and tolerance towards their parents' homeland. On occasions they express tourist-like appreciation of their parents' homelands. Yet in other instances, they reflect upon the ways in which they negotiate foreign and challenging circumstances. At the same time they consider Britain to be their home because they find that women have relatively greater independence and rights here. Some of the women also find it easier in Britain to express their religious rights. For example, they find that in Pakistan, although a Muslim nation, it is not customary to wear a headscarf but rather the traditional dress. Much of the literature that has explored diasporic young people's experience has focused on questions of identity through the lens of their country of residence. However, given the age of global interconnectedness and the decreasing salience of nation as an overarching feature of identity, it becomes significant to explore in greater detail questions of belonging, cosmopolitanism, and nation. Examining the narratives of British born Muslim Asian women, this study conceptualizes identity around 'belonging' and 'cosmopolitanism'. Data are based on in-depth interviews of 25 second-generation British Asian Muslim women meeting regularly at Islamic study circles. Respondents ranged from ages of 19 to 28 years old who were mainly middle class professionals and university students

Asylum Seekers Struggle to Recover the Everyday: The Extended “Emergency Shelter” at Tempelhofer Feld as a Site of Continuous Crisis

This study describes how the iconic hangars at Tempelhofer Feld, which are designed to accommodate asylum-seekers temporarily prior to relocating them to various other parts of Germany, have for some of them turned into a more permanent and more regimented site of accommodation in Berlin. The shelters have housed several hundred asylum-seekers for two and a half years, and in many respects they contradict the so-called Willkommenskultur (‘welcome culture’) on which Germany has prided itself. Drawing on Vigh’s (2008) notion of continuous crisis, this study argues that these asylum-seekers have found themselves residing in a state of perpetual regimentation, which they understand as detrimental to their well-being. It also shows that they have nevertheless sought to find well-being and to dignify their lives by striving to normalize this situation

“Un Niño Puede Agarrar un Perro”: Children’s Use and Uptake of Directives in the Context of Play and Performance

This paper examines the ways in which Mexican American children use directives in the context of play. There is a range of directives that young children employ as they do pretend play, teach their younger siblings new play skills, and spontaneously invent play. Much of the research discussing the use of directives among young children has not explored the range of directives they may use in mixed-age play but rather has argued that children learn to employ more complex forms as they become older. I argue that age is not the only factor leading children to use directives in complex forms. In mixed-age play, older children may simplify their directives and younger children may utter directives in complex ways to fit the play. Data are drawn from 50 hours of video-recording naturally occurring verbal and nonverbal actions among caregivers and young children in three Mexican American families living in South Central Los Angeles