‘Scholars at Risk’ in Germany: Forced Migration and Agency in Forced Migration Decision-Making

Abstract

AbstractThe recent migration waves from countries ruled by leaders with autocratic tendencies or under war regimes included also the forced migration of academics who have become targets of widening severe attacks against academic-scientific values, institutions, and students/scholars (GCP EA). Based on empirical research, this paper studies the forced migration of scholars from such countries to Germany after 2015. While putting theoretical concepts deriving from distinct study fields (such as forced migration and exile studies) into a dialog, the paper perceives the migration of these scholars as forced due to risks they encountered in their home countries. It also addresses the complexity of their forced migration as a multidimensional and relational process involving various structural and subjective push-pull drives. In line with the empirical data and post-structuralist theories on migration and forced migration, the paper pursues the following theses: Risks and responses against risks are varied and involve the agency of migrants. Although forced migration is a regulated process concerning migration regimes and laws, it calls for the performance/agency of exiled scholars and other actors’ governing activities. As a complex and transformative process, forced migration results in different exilic positions. It is not a predetermined linear process in time and space, but a process with unexpected outcomes, since it entails the ongoing struggle of exiled scholars over/through their academic and social networks and capitals, which function as mediating-pulling drivers.