Refugees Welcome Research Articles

Makeshift activism and the afterlives of refugee welcome in Covid-19 Italy

This article captures a shift occurring at the peripheries of the Italian asylum system where, as reception infrastructures are progressively gutted, dismantled, and transformed into security apparatuses, local organizations refocus their efforts on helping refugees and asylum seekers carve out spaces of agency and autonomy in the time-space after institutional reception. I introduce the concept of “makeshift activism” to describe this relentless, creative patching together of solutions to support migrant emplacement beyond and – sometimes – against the confines of official programs. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in one of the world’s first Covid-19 hotspots – Italy’s Veneto region, I take the pandemic as a magnifying glass to expose the precarious nature of this activism but also its potential for prefiguring alternatives to the state’s (non-existent) paths towards long-term inclusion. More broadly, I shift the anthropological gaze towards charting the afterlives and aftermaths of refugee “welcome” in less spectacular locales, such as mid-size cities and small municipalities in peripheral mountain regions.

Migration and disability narratives from an intersectional perspective: a photovoice study

The aim of this paper is to explore everyday life experiences of migration and disability from an intersectional perspective drawing on issues such as gender, class, and ethnicity. This is relevant because when focus is on either migration or disability, unique challenges faced by disabled migrants are neglected, leading to fragmented support and a lack of accurate knowledge. The analysis is based on retrospective data from photovoice sessions conducted within the context of a community-based project, Disabled Refugees Welcome (DRW). A secondary analysis has involved eight of the members from the original photovoice sessions as well as academics. The results are presented in a narrative thematic analysis. The findings show how the combined effects of liminality, structural violence (lack of accessible and adapted housing, lack of access to knowledge about societal resources), and multiple discrimination risks can result in permanent exclusion.

Public discourse on refugees in social media: A case study of the Netherlands

Social media websites, such as Facebook and Twitter, are starting to become places where people present and evaluate various events. Moreover, these websites influence value perception of their users and readers. The article discusses the refugee crisis in Europe and initiatives like ‘Refugees Welcome Netherlands’ and ‘Refugees Not Welcome Netherlands’ that have been launched to help or oppose refugees. It aims to analyse the formation of the discourse on refugee integration in social media in the Netherlands and its impact on individuals’ attitudes towards refugees. The article uses statistics, images and social media posts to provide deeper insights on the topic. The study also highlights Dutch government’s approach to refugees and their integration and Government’s concern about growing intolerance towards immigrants. The study is relevant to shed light on how political decisions and public opinion condition refugee integration processes in the host society.

‘Ordinary people like myself’: Character work and modesty in the Refugees Welcome movement

ABSTRACT This article uses discourse analysis to investigate how British volunteers involved in the Refugees Welcome movement give an account of their engagement and of the changes that they aim to achieve through their actions. Focusing on the different ways participants ‘do modesty’ when they present their actions and their own role within the movement, we show that ‘character work’ – their effort to shape their own reputation – is an essential feature of their discourse. In particular, we show that, by presenting themselves as 'modest' and 'ordinary' participants, they aim to display a character that is distinct from the heroic figure of the social activist and the humanitarian actor. In so doing, they construct a character that resists categorisations and an engagement which aims to appeal to universal values and emotions.

Refugees Welcome? Illustrative storytelling to challenge apathy towards refugees

The illustrator and storyteller Hayfaa Chalabi writes and draws about what kind of design the Migration Board uses to visualize the asylum process. She tells about her own asylum experience and the roles that refugees are forced into. The work becomes a place for memory and history writing where Chalabi tries to understand how to document a process that is prohibited to be documented by the person undergoing it. How and why is the same emotion, such as fear, expressed and processed differently depending on one’s possibilities or impossibilities? This essay therefore aims to explore the tool of illustrative storytelling to challenge governmental restrictions faced by refugee narratives in Sweden. This exploration is done through the study of stereotypes that stigmatize the refugee’s identity. The figure of the refugee is often shaped by the visual representation one consumes via mass media and the words one hears in political debates and social discourse. Refugees are often portrayed as immigrants and nothing but immigrants, faceless victims on news and often de-named suffering people drowning in some ocean. This portrayal makes the humanity of the refugee invisible. A human who has a face, a name, a past, a story beyond his/her refugee story and most importantly an identity and rights.

Public discourse on refugees in social media: ‘Refugees Welcome in Lithuania’

Social media websites, such as Facebook and Twitter, are starting to become places where people present and evaluate various events in the world such as terrorist attacks in London, Barcelona, Berlin, Brussels in 2017. Moreover, these websites influence value perception of their users and readers. These new technologies allow people to exchange views at the very moment of the event and time zone and location users of the platforms do not have a significant role in this exchange process. However, this capability of these new technologies can have a negative impact on some social groups. The aim of this article is to provide an analysis of the discourse in social media on refugees’ integration in their respective host societies by analysing the content in Lithuanian language Facebook pages ‘Priimsiu pabėgėlį’ (eng. ‘Refugees Welcome’) and ‘Visuomeninis komitetas prieš priverstinę imigraciją’ (eng. ‘Public Committee against Forced Immigration’).

Refugees Welcome to History and Memory: Polish (and Jewish) World War II Exiles in Hungary

Abstract After 2015, the Hungarian and Polish governments voiced their vehement opposition to the idea of the European Union distributing refugees among its member states in a quota system while at the same time cherishing the history of Hungary welcoming Polish refugees during World War II. This episode in history fits into the proverbial tradition of camaraderie between the two countries. Meanwhile, aid to refugees in 1939 was strongly tainted by selective discriminatory criteria—as today (refugees from Ukraine: yes, from Syria: no)— which shows a repetition of regional practice toward refugees. Reading against the patterns of historiographical and commemorative traditions of both countries, this article discusses the sinusoidal presence of this refugee topic in Hungary and Poland. The recent discourses created around this case of international solidarity have depended strongly on political decisions and major debates taking place in both societies, including their coming to terms with the Holocaust and the refugee situation unfolding in Europe after 2015.

From Vulnerability to Trust

This article examines the complex and ambivalent nature of the encounters between British volunteers and refugees within the 2015 Refugees Welcome movement. The 72 interviews we conducted with volunteers active in different charities and informal networks reveal the significance of the logic of trust in these encounters. We show that although participants often base their engagement on claims that disrupt dominant narratives about border controls, they also tend to endorse and reproduce bordering processes based on the perceived trustworthiness of refugees and, sometimes, exclude some groups from their support. Taking insights from the literature on encounters and critical humanitarianism, our article highlights from a theoretical and empirical perspective how “ordinary participants” in the refugee support sector can subvert humanitarian borders, but also participate in the construction of new types of borders based on domopolitics. More generally, the article aims to highlight civil society’s voluntary participation in the governance of migration.

Refugees Welcome? Difference and Diversity in a Changing Germany. Jan‐JonathanBockandSharonMacdonald, eds. New York: Berghahn, 2019. 358 pp.

Refugees Welcome? Difference and Diversity in a Changing Germany. Jan‐JonathanBock<i>and</i>SharonMacdonald, eds. New York: Berghahn, 2019. 358 pp.

‘Refugees welcome’, including in (gay) porn: violence under the mask of liberation

ABSTRACT In 2017, the porn film Refugee’s Welcome was released, directed by Canadian pornographer Bruce LaBruce. Using the ‘Refugees Welcome’ slogan popularized in Germany following the arrival of a growing number of refugees, LaBruce individualizes the narrative through the fictional story of Moonif, a young gay Syrian refugee who explores his sexuality upon arrival in Berlin. Indeed, a broader porn genre has emerged involving the depiction of refugees. In this article, I argue that Refugee’s Welcome perpetuates the trope of queer refugees having a sexual awakening upon migration, whereby the West is positioned as liberating refugees from the alleged homophobic Global South. Not only does this trope allow the film to directly focus on saviourism, but the queer refugee becomes imagined as inherently vulnerable by contrasting them to the imagined hypermasculinity of heterosexual Arab refugee men. This article thus explores the obscenity of demanding queer refugees only becoming intelligible through narratives of liberation.

Refugees Welcome? Online Hate Speech and Sentiments in Twitter in Spain during the Reception of the Boat Aquarius

High-profile events can trigger expressions of hate speech online, which in turn modifies attitudes and offline behavior towards stigmatized groups. This paper addresses the first path of this process using manual and computational methods to analyze the stream of Twitter messages in Spanish around the boat Aquarius (n = 24,254) before and after the announcement of the Spanish government to welcome the boat in June 2018, a milestone for asylum seekers acceptance in the EU and an event that was highly covered by media. It was observed that most of the messages were related to a few topics and had a generally positive sentiment, although a significant part of messages expressed rejection or hate—often supported by stereotypes and lies—towards refugees and migrants and towards politicians. These expressions grew after the announcement of hosting the boat, although the general sentiment of the messages became more positive. We discuss the theoretical, practical, and methodological implications of the study, and acknowledge limitations referred to the examined timeframe and to the preliminary condition of the conclusions.

‘It’s like having one more family member’: Private hospitality, affective responsibility and intimate boundaries within refugee hosting networks

Since 2015, the notion of hospitality has been a guiding principle and a key demand for individuals and organisations that provide direct support to refugees in Europe. Through a set of interviews conducted with volunteers active in the Refugees Welcome movement in Britain, France and Italy, this article explores the motivations and experiences of individuals who practise (private) hospitality by hosting refugees in their homes. Looking specifically at the ‘responsibility’ that emerges from the practice of hosting, we show that the experience of private hospitality is based on narratives stressing feelings of love and family-like relations, and thus creates the expectation of an affective connection between the host and the guest. We maintain that this process is highly ambivalent as it risks creating and reproducing everyday intimate bordering processes.

Making it “Easy to Help”: The Evolution of Norwegian Volunteer Initiatives for Refugees

AbstractAt the height of the refugee reception crisis in 2015, a large number of volunteers across Norway mobilized to bring assistance in different forms. The two most notable initiatives were Refugees Welcome Norway (RWN) and A Drop in the Ocean (Dråpen i Havet, DiH). RWN focused on those arriving in Norway and DiH on those arriving in Greece. Looking at these two initiatives’ organizational trajectories together allows us to examine how they managed the transition from the immediate ‘crisis’ and large volunteer mobilization to finding a role for themselves in the longer‐term. Drawing on social movement theory and literature on humanitarian action, the article argues that the two organizations, while adapting in different ways, focused their organizations around ‘making it easy’ for volunteers to help. The article explores how this allowed to forge their distinct identity in the organizational landscape, while also engaging with volunteers’ ‘need to do something’.

JAN-JONATHAN BOCK &amp; SHARON MACDONALD, editors, Refugees Welcome? Difference and Diversity in a Changing Germany. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. 2019

JAN-JONATHAN BOCK &amp; SHARON MACDONALD, editors, Refugees Welcome? Difference and Diversity in a Changing Germany. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. 2019

"Say It Loud, Say It Clear…": Concerting Solidarity in the Canadian Refugees Welcome Movement (2015-2016).

The Canadian Refugees Welcome Movement (2015-2016) was one of the most sizeable, visible, and effective instances of collective action in recent Canadian history. It had a nationwide scope and grassroots initiation. It comprised a wide variety of participants and actively employed social media in its constitution. This article reports the results of a multimethod case study that seeks to explain how collective action frames emerged in the context of the Canadian Refugees Welcome Movement; which actors were involved in their articulation; and how they generated a following, collective action and humanitarian and political effect. The focus is on the discursive processes of construction of solidarity across difference as they unfolded in the social media environment. The Facebook event pages calling for rallies in support of Syrian refugees, it argues, served as a discursive space that helped transform the moral shock experienced by members of distinct moral communities into a process of concerting of voices and construction of solidarity and collective action frames across differences.

Refugees Welcome!? The Controversial Topic of Migration in German Museums

Abstract This article deals with the representation of migration in German museums. Three exhibitions are examined, all of which dealt with the topic of migration in the year 2018. The exhibitions included are: “2 Million Years of Migration” presented in the Archaeological Museum Hamburg, “Survival Stories” from A to Z in the House of History Baden-Württemberg in Stuttgart, and “Forum Migration”, shown in the German Emigration Center Bremerhaven. The essay shows that all three exhibitions purposefully participated in the public debate on migration and brought new perspectives and elements into the discussion. However, both the focal points of the exhibitions and the presentation were different. They either concentrated on the fate of migrants who came to Germany in recent years or considered the overall picture of migration and presented it as a core element of human development. Presentations were based on the exhibition of personal belongings of migrants, on hands-on activities or multimedia installations that allowed visitors to get involved.

Refugees welcome, but not in my backyard? The impact of immigration on right-wing voting: evidence from Germany

Abstract This article studies whether immigration in voter’s neighborhoods is a driving factor of the rise of Germany’s major right-wing party Alternative fuer Deutschland (AFD) and the decline of Angela Merkel’s center ruling party the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). We use the 2015 refugee crisis as a natural experiment to study the short-run impact of refugee presence on the voting behavior in German municipalities. This is the first study to use a spatial econometric framework combining small-scale immigration data, election data, and a set of socioeconomic factors. Our main finding states that the local immigration boosted AFD votes but did not affect CDU votes directly. Instead, in regions that perceived immigration indirectly, that is in neighboring municipalities, the CDU gained fewer votes.

Urban Arrival Infrastructures between Political and Humanitarian Support: The ‘Refugee Welcome’ Mo(ve)ment Revisited

&lt;p&gt;Maximilian Park in Brussels was the site of a makeshift refugee camp for three months in 2015 when the institutional reception system was unable to provide shelter for newly arriving asylum seekers. Local volunteers stepped in, formed a civic initiative and organized a reception area under the banner ‘Refugees Welcome!’ The civic platform which emerged claimed and asserted (existing) rights for one specific group, asylum seekers, exclusively, and thus did not challenge the exclusive migration regime nor demand transformation. While such a humanitarian approach risks reproducing the exclusive border regime and the inequalities it engenders, political&lt;em&gt; &lt;/em&gt;support is a disturbing rupture in the name of equality that resists normative classifications and inaugurates transformation. This article maps out the complex dialectical interrelation between political and humanitarian support and argues that political implications can only be understood through longer-term research, emphasizing processes of transformation that have resulted from these moments of disruption. Therefore, the article revisits Maximilian Park two and four years after the camp and reveals how the humanitarian approach chosen in the camp sustainably transformed the park, adding arrival infrastructures beyond the institutional, and had an impact on how refugees were dealt with and represented. Concluding, the article suggests the notion of ‘solidary humanitarianism’ that providing supplies, meeting acute existential needs and simultaneously articulating political claims that demand structural transformation: the right to shelter, basic supply, presence, and movement for all in the city.&lt;/p&gt;

Bridging hospitality education and community

Bridging hospitality education and community

The Potentials of Digital Collaborative Platforms for the Innovation of Refugees’ Reception Strategies

The article presents a reflection on the possibilities that the information technologies and new apps developed in the context of the sharing economy may have in the processes of receiving refugees. In recent years, the narrative of migratory phenomena has emphasised the idea of an “out of control emergency”, negatively affecting the ability to imagine constructive answers to arising situations. After a review of definitions, numbers and reception practices in Italy, the article focuses on the inclusive models made possible by using digital collaborative platforms. The case of Refugees Welcome, an association that uses an online platform to connect people offering a room with refugees looking for a place in which to live is analysed in order to better understand its working model, using a mix of qualitative and quantitative data. The conclusion provides a reflection on the potential that this kind of approach may have in promoting social inclusion processes and supporting active citizenship among all individuals both directly and indirectly involved in the association’s activities.