On Refugees, the EU and Germany
Life in a Leipzig Saxony settlement house
Funding Cultural Projects in Settlement Homes
More on German Asylum Practices
On Refugees, the EU, and Germany
The UNHCR (UN High Commission for Refugees) suggests that by 2068 suggested that there will be 68,000,000 refugees worldwide. As a result of the Syrian War, there were approximately 12,600,000 displaced Syrians, with about half of them internally displaced. Of those externally displaced people, about one third of them were minors. According to assyl.info.sachsen.de, in July 2020, there were 22,268 asylum seekers in Saxony, 69% of them living in collective settlement homes.
Rather than a person in need, a refugee is legally defined as someone forced to flee from their home and country due to a “well founded fear of persecution.” According to some studies, migration within the European Union was historically only considered in terms of economic policy, cultural aspects of population shifts were ignored as migrants and refugees were considered second class citizens with no cultural need. (1) Others report that within the EU, studies on the topic of immigration have “often been funded under the assumption of failed integration”, and that multi-culturalism never would exist in the EU as reality or as concept until it is identified as an ideology to be denounced.(2)
Currently, when refugees arrive in Germany, they are initially housed in a processing centers (Erstaufnahme-einrichtung), and then are assigned a state and settlement house where they will bide their time while processing their claim for asylum. Settlement houses in German are known as “Gemainsamunterkunft”. Because of their vulnerability to racist attacks (3), refugee advocates have argued that this way of housing refugees should be discontinued.(4) It is said that because of a very racist recent history in Saxony, there is an unofficial German policy not to send too many migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa to the state.
Life in a Leipzig Saxony settlement house
Within Leipzig, there are six NGO’s running Gemeinsamunterkunft:
Pandechaion
Caritas
Rote Kruez
Europahomes
Johaniter
Maltheser.
Most NGOs run several houses within the city. People involved with supporting asylum seekers in Saxony report that procedures and infrastructures vary between between homes. Children in the asylum process have the right to education. They and their parents have access to health care, though somehow less access to mental health care. While in shared settlement housing, adult asylum seekers are expected to be pursuing their asylum cases through the courts. Settlement homes are often managed by people with social work degrees or something similar- though there are some homes within Saxony where the political and conditions within the surrounding town are so bad that the homes are only staffed by volunteers.
The German state funds healthcare (but less so mental health). The state also provides funding for so-called “integration” education. There is no funding to help asylum seekers through their legal asylum process, though sometimes, in-house social workers will be knowledgeable enough about the process and also have time to help residents. Non-profit organizations do exist to aid individuals in their asylum process, and these organizations do provide training around the asylum system for social workers and others. On paper, the asylum process appears to be a fair, but informants have reported that it is unevenly applied across the country and within states- depending on which region and civic authority is processing the case.
If an asylum claim is granted, a family is allowed to stay– if not, they are deported. Some parts of Saxony have higher rates of denying asylum claims than others, though Leipzig is a relatively progressive city. A family whose asylum is granted can remain in a shared settlement house while they seek job and housing. Many choose too, even though they are often charged market rates for substandard housing.
Funding Cultural Projects in Settlement Homes
The German BAMF- Bundesamt für Migration und Flücthlinge (German Ministry for Migration and Refugees) or BMFSFJ- Bundesministeriums für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend (Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth) provide funding for integration oriented cultural projects that artists and culturally interested precarious workers often apply for. These ministries most often pass on these targeted funds to national NGO’s such as Speilmobil, NeMO (Bundesverband Netzwerke von Migrant*innenorganisationen), Türkische Gemeinde, and Deutsches Kinderhilfswerk to mange the grants.
Artists and their organizations apply to these groups through non-profit vereins (association) they may be members of or associated with. To make such applications, applicants will have a contact within a refugee settlement house, who co-signed (and stamped) that the project can take place with their children. Depending on the grant a third verein might be needed to undersign as well. Applicants and contracted employees will have to a qualifying degree– either in social work, cultural or media education, or in an art field–application depending. Of the 10 people I interviewed, no one felt that their education prepared them at all for this kind of work, though those trained in social work adjusted their work approach the quickest to appropriately meet the context.
In addition to doing their project, the precarious artists and cultural workers are responsible for all the paperwork associated with the grant. Such paperwork might include maintaining a list of participating children, a description of daily activity, a collection of parental agreement documents, bills and receipts.
More on German Asylum Practices
The economizing, Eurocentric and racist reality of EU refugee policy is shown by the unequal treatment afforded Ukrainian refugees. All people could be treated equally, though war refugees from Syria are simply not afforded the same rights as war refugees from Ukraine. Asylum law in Germany is always changing in relation to the flow of incoming refugees and current internal politics. To receive permanent residency after initial asylum is granted, refugees need to demonstrate that they have integrated into German society. The term “integration” has been widely critiqued for forwarding the idea that society organic, static and socially cohesive whole that can be broken by difference. It assumes that certain relations are good, and others are bad. Integration is critiqued as a norm-controlling discourse, a concretion of the national ideal that white people constitute the nation and all others must prove how they relate to the moving target called “integrated”. Integration discourse ignores the realities of what actually binds social organization, that people just relate where they are.
- This has never been expressed as the reason for the relatively generous funding provided for arts interventions with refugee children in Germany, but it does make one wonder when the trades are not given equal funds for educational projects within settlement houses.
- This essay by Willem Schinkel is quite insightful. “Against ‘immigrant integration’: for an end to neocolonial knowledge production”, Comparative Migration Studies (2018) 6:31.
- There is a long and unfortunate history of attacks on group settlement homes in Saxony and Germany as a whole. Most recently in Leipzig, the Pandechaion settlement home at Lilliensteinstrasse was firebombed.
- Leipzig politician Jule Nagel has often critiqued the scale of refugee group homes for their ease of targeting by racists. See https://jule.linxxnet.de/wer-ueber-rassistische-gewalt-spricht-darf-ueber-die-staatliche-verantwortung-nicht-schweigen-30-08-2022/. Additionally, in our experience, larger group homes that are situated at the edge of demonstrate an architecture of social isolation.
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