Kurzbeschreibung

The dissertation project is driven by the question what policies aimed at the return of migrants to their home countries tell us about the actors formulating them. Starting out from this overarching interest, I investigate what discursive strategies Western European state actors use to justify migrant return policies, and what political objectives these strategies serve. In a first descriptive step, a comprehensive mapping of return policies in two exemplary country case studies (the United Kingdom and Germany) is carried out. In a second step, I investigate and compare how migrant return policies are justified in specific national arenas, and how these policies relate to and reflect both international norms and national conceptions of membership. This is done through an in-depth analysis of the policy-making processes leading up to and following the establishment of temporary protection schemes and voluntary return programs administered by the International Organization for Migration, paying close attention to these policies' degree of voluntariness and to the stated motivation of the actors formulating them.

Kurzbeschreibung

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Abstract

The dissertation investigates trends in the formulation and implementation of migrant return policies in the United Kingdom and Germany between the early 1970s and 2012, and investigates the factors and mechanisms underlying the observed changes over time. In a first step, my analysis brings to light two contravening trajectories: While over time, return-related legislation has become more inclusive, in that non-citizens' access to regularization and permanent residence has become easier in both countries under investigation, the implementation of migrant return has become more restrictive, in that a greater share of unwanted non-citizens is returned. In a second step, I show that while individual instances of restrictive return implementation are triggered by domestic electoral pressure, the overall restrictive trend in migrant return implementation that I observe constitutes the outcome of a long-term process of depoliticization and institutionalization. Depoliticization strategies serve to counteract the normatively charged nature of migrant return and remove related questions from public contestation. Processes of institutionalization, on the other hand, create administrative and operational capacities dedicated to migrant return, and therefore facilitate return implementation. Both processes originate at the domestic level. However, I show that international actors involved in the governance of migration have made important contributions on both counts: While the depoliticization of migrant return, i.e., its reframing from a normative to a primarily technical challenge, has taken place primarily in the domestic context, international actors have facilitated this shift through the provision of alternatives to outright coercion that help to remove the topic from the political sphere. The institutionalization of return practices, i.e., the building up of permanent (rather than ad hoc) administrative and operational structures dedicated to migrant return, on the other hand, crucially depends on a continuous demand for return-related services. While in the domestic context, this demand depends on the political dynamics of the day, international actors have over the past two decades catered to multiple domestic contexts and have therefore experienced a constant demand for their return-related services. Consequently, they have become a key site of return-specific capacity building. The possibility to draw on these international resources in turn enhances domestic authorities' ability to step up the efficiency of return implementation if and when called for by their electorate.

Kurzbeschreibung

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Abstract

This project seeks to investigate in the politics of migration in The Gambia, where an unexpected regime change in January 2017 gives a new turn to many migration issues. Acknowledging the political nature of migration, this project seeks to highlight the importance of agency in the governance of migration – both in terms of the politics of creating migration governance and the stakes involved.

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Abstract

Solidarity is one of the contested claims in public debates about the 'Eurozone crisis' and Europe's migration crisis. However, solidarity has hardly been examined in the social sciences. In my PhD project I will take a closer look at solidarity and my main question is: Which conflicts between actors regarding their meanings and justifications of solidarity can be identified in the political and media arena in Ireland and Germany? If we understand politics as a mode of different interpretation of political problems and solutions, we have to consider the relevance of ideas on solidarity in the political process. Therefore I examine the contested history of solidarity as well as the different meanings of solidarity, named as "patterns of solidarity". My empirical investigation of these patterns will take place in the media discourse of Germany and Ireland. I will analyze two debates, the economic crisis in the ‘eurozone’ and the refugee and asylum crisis in the European Union (EU) from 2010 to 2015. In both topics, solidarity is an important claim about the support for other EU member states in times of crisis or the help for refugees while they try to cross the Mediterranean. With a discourse network analysis I can shed light on the numerous ideas on solidarity and the actors who act in favor of solidary action or refuse to act in solidarity

Kurzbeschreibung

In the 2000-2010 Latinos in USA increased by 43%: from 35.3 million to 50.5 million. Mexico contributed over two-thirds of that growth, adding 11.2 million more Mexicans to the US population. But their relative growth (54%) was lower than the 137% growth of Central Americans—from 1.7 to nearly 4 million. Nicaraguans doubled their presence, from 177,684 to 348,202, but the greatest relative growth was of Hondurans (191%), despite being the most harassed by roundups and filtered by migratory controls, followed by Guatemalans (180%) and Salvadorans (152%). Part of that growth is due to natural increase, but the most important part is due to immigration. The US immigrant population grew at a rate of one immigrant every 45 seconds; or put differently, 1,920 immigrants a day and 57,600 a month. More than 60% of the migrants from Mexico and Central America who currently live in the United States are undocumented. According to official estimates, there are 11,510,000 unauthorized immigrants (34% of the total number of foreigners), of which 6.8 million are Mexicans (58% of them born in Mexico), 660,000 Salvadorans (54%), 520,000 Guatemalans (63%) and 380,000 Hondurans (73%). Undocumented immigrants have a relative important weight in their areas of greatest settlement: in 2010 they represented more than 6% of the population in the states of Nevada, California, Texas, New Jersey and Arizona: 6% of those states’ inhabitants without legal status or identity. Despite their weight, being undocumented is recorded as an accessory particularity that US Census Bureau statisticians, demographers of various institutes, human rights activists and academics who denounce the undocumented phenomenon mainly as a failure or abuse of state policies busy themselves with. The myopia regarding this feature generates a particularly regrettable theoretical and methodological vacuum because crossing borders “without papers” and settling without having one’s legal status in order is the form of migration most turned to by Latin American, particularly Central American, migrants looking for access to the US labor market, which is decidedly better remunerated than the one in their respective country of origin. Never before were so many “criminals” coming into the United States, residing and working there.

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Abstract

This research project focusses on the theatrical representation of a taboo figure which the philosopher Giorgio Agamben has called ‘the bare life’, but which also appears in the critical theorist Judith Butler’s recent writing under the name of ‘precarious life’, and which the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman has called a ‘wasted life’. In contemporary plays and performances, this figure often appears as a victim of war and conflict or as a person or group of people that have been legally ostracised from or have never been part of the polis, that is of the political and social community of citizens who are granted civil rights. Further examples of the figure of the homo sacer are asylum seekers, refugees, illegal immigrants, unlawful combatants, vagrants, and displaced and stateless persons. By drawing from a wide selection of plays from several countries and different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, it will be possible to trace patterns of the depiction of the bare life across the whole of the Western sphere, thus allowing for conclusions to be drawn about the parallels between the Western realm and the ancient polis as to their mutual policies concerning the consolidation of borders, citizenship based on exclusion, and a consensus about the human value of those excluded.

Kurzbeschreibung

Trajectory Analysis as a New Approach in Research and Practice: Migrationsverläufe nach Europa und Deutschland sind komplex und kontingent, da sich auf dem Weg durch nationale, institutionelle und soziale Kontexte Möglichkeiten und Zielvorstellungen von Migrant/innen ändern. In der Migrationsforschung wird derzeit das Konzept der Trajektanalyse diskutiert, um der Kontingenz individueller Migrationsverläufe Rechnung zu tragen und diese über längere Zeiträume und räumliche Einheiten hinweg zu untersuchen. Ziel dieser Projektgruppe ist es, Trajektanalysen um ein besseres Verständnis für die Interaktion zwischen individuellen Migrationsverläufen und sozialen sowie institutionellen Kontexten zu ergänzen. Hierzu wird untersucht, welche Rolle Narrationen über Migrationsverläufe in dieser Interaktion spielen und wie sie sich in unterschiedlichen Praxiszusammenhängen verändern. Ein solcher Ansatz sollte sensibel sowie kritisch gegenüber Machtverhältnissen sein und dazu beitragen, die Bedeutung von Narrationen für subjektive Identitäten und mentales Wohlbefinden besser zu verstehen. Praktische Implikationen werden mit Blick auf die Praxisfelder der Gesundheitsversorgung und sozialen Arbeit genauer untersucht.

Kurzbeschreibung

Der Rundfunk war eines der bedeutendsten Medien im Kalten Krieg. Rundfunkwellen ermöglichten eine Kommunikation zwischen den Gesellschaften des "Westens" und des "Ostens" in einer Zeit, in der ein freier Austausch über die Blockgrenzen hinweg kaum möglich schien. Das seit 2009 laufende Forschungsprojekt nimmt den amerikanischen Sender Radio Free Europe (RFE) in den Blick, der als Akteur des Kalten Krieges in einem europäisch-amerikanischen Zwischenraum als Wissensmittler agierte. Radio Free Europe war seit Anfang der 1950er Jahre in München angesiedelt. Im Mittelpunkt der Untersuchung steht die tschechoslowakische Redaktion von Radio Free Europe, in der vor allem tschechische und slowakische Emigranten beschäftigt waren. Mit ihren Sendungen in die Tschechoslowakei stellten sie ihren Landsleuten eine alternative Berichterstattung über die politische und gesellschaftliche Lage im Land sowie über die "westliche" Kultur bereit. Obgleich der Empfang von RFE in der Tschechoslowakei verboten war, war der Sender für viele Tschechen und Slowaken eine der wenigen alternativen Informationsquellen. Ziel des Forschungsprojekts ist es, verschiedene Richtungen des Wissenstransfers und Prozesse der Wissensgenerierung im deutsch-tschechoslowakisch-amerikanischen Beziehungsdreieck zu analysieren: zwischen deutscher Aufnahmegesellschaft, amerikanischem Arbeitsumfeld sowie der Tschechoslowakei als Herkunftsland der Emigranten und Zielgesellschaft der Radiosendungen.

Kurzbeschreibung

Das Ziel von UmFELD ist es, Gelingensbedingungen der Persönlichkeitsentwicklung und gesellschaftlichen Integration von unbegleiteten minderjährigen Flüchtlingen in Deutschland zu benennen, um spezifische pädagogische Unterstützungsmöglichkeiten zu finden. Die theoretische Grundlage bildet das Modell der produktiven Realitätsverarbeitung nach Hurrelmann. Die Lebensphase Jugend stellt Individuen vor Entwicklungsaufgaben, die bewältigt werden müssen, wobei unterschiedliche Arten der Bewältigung denkbar sind. Es soll herausgefunden werden, wie sich der Wechsel des Sozialisationskontext auf die spezifischen Herausforderungen der Lebensphase Jugend auswirkt, welche Ressourcen zur Verfügung stehen und genutzt werden können und welche spezifischen Herausforderungen gemeistert werden müssen für eine gelingende Individuation und Integration. Die pädagogische Praxis im Bereich der Sozialen Arbeit mit geflüchteten Jugendlichen hat sich bisher vorwiegend auf die Bewältigung von Traumata, Fluchtursachen und deren Folgen konzentriert. Das Projekt will den Fokus auf die Entwicklung der Jugendlichen legen, bei der es um das Erlangen von Bildungszertifikaten, das Ausbilden eines Wertesystems oder die Auseinandersetzung mit der eigenen körperlichen und psychischen Entwicklung geht. Eine ressourcenorientierte Perspektive soll vermeiden helfen, geflüchtete Jugendliche, deren Entwicklung aufgrund besonderer Herausforderungen unterstützt werden muss oder erwartungswidrig verläuft, zu verbesondern und ihr Ankommen in der deutschen Gesellschaft – sofern sie in Deutschland bleiben wollen – erleichtern helfen. Dafür werden Jugendliche in ihren Wohngruppen qualitativ und quantitativ befragt. Mithilfe eines Mixed-Methods-Designs sollen aufschlussreiche Erkenntnisse über das Leben und die Entwicklung der jungen Geflüchteten in Deutschland möglich werden.

Kurzbeschreibung

Mit dem Anstieg der Asylanträge gewinnt auch die Diskrepanz zwischen Ausreisepflicht und tatsächlicher Ausreise an politischer Bedeutung. Vor diesem Hintergrund soll der vorliegende Beitrag zur EMN-Studie „Umgang mit abgelehnten Asylbewerbern“ beleuchten, mit welchen Abschiebehindernissen die Behörden der Bundesrepublik Deutschland konfrontiert sind und welche Maßnahmen sie getroffen haben, um trotz der großen Herausforderungen in diesem Bereich die Ausreisepflicht durchzusetzen.