Refugees welcome: Arrival gifts, reciprocity, and the integration of forced migrants

Abstract

Against competing political theories of the integration of immigrants, we propose to reframe the relationship between the populations of host countries and arriving refugees in terms of a neo-Maussian theory of gift exchange. Using the example of the European refugee crisis of 2015 and the welcoming attitude of significant parts of German civil society, we argue that this particular situation should be understood as epitomizing the trend toward internal transnationalism. Increasingly, the “international” is becoming part and parcel of the “domestic” sphere. Since Marcel Mauss was concerned with the question of how separate, culturally different communities can establish ties of solidarity and cooperation between each other, we use his work to answer key questions about the relations between international refugees and native citizens in their home countries: What are the expectations underlying gift-giving in the context of welcoming refugees? Should refugees feel obliged to repay the arrival gifts? How should we deal with the normative ambivalence of gift-giving and its potentially humiliating effects on those who receive gifts but are unable to reciprocate? Most importantly, how does gift theory help us to clarify the very concept of integration which is at the heart of recent debates on the ethics of immigration?