Scholarship on borders has deepened insight into the externalization of borders and the creation of internal borders. Little attention has been paid to what bordering means for the societies building these borders. To capture this, we introduce the concept of border internalization. Combining ethnographic and historical perspectives, we argue that borders do not "protect" societies but change them. Understanding border work as society work highlights issues of race and racialization. As sites of constant "crisis," borders are internalized through social, political and affective processes that inscribe them into the moral, cultural and institutional fabric of state and society. The paper introduces the concept of border internalization to better understand borders as forces of social transformation and racialization. It proposes methodological tools for studying these dynamics. Finally, it explores the genealogy of bordering, society work and race formation up to the current rise of a new sovereigntist border.

Critical Migration Studies and Border Studies conceptualize deportation as 'a technology of citizenship'. Drawing on two ethnographic research projects focusing on the German return and deportation regime, the paper argues that even though deportation is the ultimate act of membership definition - relying, as it does, on hard law and the establishing of a dichotomy between citizens and non-citizens (as deportable others) - such boundaries are not static. Findings demonstrate, rather, that the latter are fluid in terms of the ways in which the deportable subject is constructed. We show how, in the German context, the modes and criteria involved here increasingly emerge from the interplay of a 'migration control-social policy/workfare state-criminalization nexus'. This aligns with the contemporary discourse around the removal of the 'criminal offender', demonstrating how deportation has been rebranded as an act of national security and social safety, how it plays out in practice and, especially, how it interrelates with the politics of 'welfare-state bordering'. That is, the tendency to moralize citizenship as something that must be earned.

This article argues that the invention of the European Union (EU) common market and the lifting of national border controls produced a mobility-control vacuum within the EU and its member states. Building on ethnographic research in the German city of Munich and symptomatic policy-paper analysis (2013-2021), it traces the emergence of a new policy field that targets 'poverty migration' and 'benefit fraud' in this vacuum. This internal border work builds on transformations of the German social system from an ethos of welfare to active labour-market policy. With the classical toolbox of national migration regimes no longer working for intra-EU movers, their mobility rights and right to residence have been increasingly restricted by making economic self-reliance a conditionality of stay and excluding those not engaged in wage labour or self-employment from welfare services. Social policy is used as a tool for controlling mobility, which we refer to as 'workfare-state borders.' This is because it reinforces the radicalization of the workfare state by either pushing the racialized and migrantized poor into precarious wage labor or depriving them of social protection. This internal border work reconnects meritocratic logics with classical articulations of racism, thus contributing to the finely tuned reinvention of a racial order in Europe.

Against the background of the ongoing collaborative research and archiving project “Re/assembling antiracisms in Germany,” I discuss what anthropologists have to offer in highly complex settings of “activist expert cultures,” and thus how such projects can best be designed. The paper argues that rather than thinking of such projects in terms of collaboration (or “co-laboration”), it is more about co-articulating the differently situated knowledges and experiences on offer, with anthropologists more and more taking on the role of a curator. By drawing on the concept of “para-sites,” as proposed by Douglas Holmes and Georg Marcus, I further argue that it is no longer about helping others to find their voice but rather about creating spaces and infrastructures of listening.

Flucht- und Aufnahmeprozesse sind durchzogen von geschlechtsspezifischen und intersektionalen Dynamiken. In der Einleitung werden der Kontext sowie die konzeptionellen Überlegungen erläutert. Wir arbeiteten mit regimeanalytischen Ansätzen der neueren sozial- und kulturwissenschaftlichen konstruktivistischen Migrationsforschung und fragten nach der Produktion, Bearbeitung und Regierung von Mobilitätsbewegungen als ‚Migration‘ und als ‚Flucht‘ durch Akteur*innen aus Politik, Medien und Wissenschaft. Dabei rekurrieren die Akteur*innen auf spezifisches Geschlechterwissen und rassifizierendes Wissen.

Das Buch analysiert das Geschlechterwissen für die Themen Unterbringung, Gewaltschutz, Erwerbstätigkeit, Medien, Familie und Solidarität.

Aufbauend auf einer dreijährigen Feldforschung in Niedersachsen untersuchen wir in dem Artikel zentrale Dynamiken und Fallstricke genderspezifischer Artikulationen und Praktiken im Bereich der Aufnahmepolitik von Geflüchteten. Anhand von empirischem Material zeigen wir wie geflüchtete Frauen*, Unterstützer*innen, Politik und Recht um Fragen von Sicherheit und Teilhabe im Feld der Unterbringung ringen. Im Rahmen der an methodische Herangehensweisen der Anthropology of Policy angelehnten Forschung haben wir ganz unterschiedliche Akteur*innen in den Blick genommen, wie staatliche Einrichtungen des niedersächsischen Asylregimes, gleichstellungspolitische Akteure sowie Akteure aus dem Feld der Flüchtlingsunterstützungspraxis und nicht zuletzt die geflüchteten Frauen* selbst. Unsere Forschung demonstriert dabei nicht nur eine große Kluft zwischen den Wahrnehmungen und artikulierten Bedarfen von geflüchteten Frauen* und dem staatlichen und nichtstaatlichen Feld der Hilfe und Unterstützung – eklatant zu sehen an Wahrnehmungen in Bezug auf Unsicherheit; vielmehr haben wir eine Reihe dominanter „mobilising metaphors“ (Shore und Wright 1997, S. 57) von „Geschlechtsspezifischer Gewalt“, „Vulnerabilität“ und „Integration“ herausarbeiten und zeigen können, welch ambivalente, ja negative anti-migrantische Wirkungen diese in dem zutiefst vermachteten Feld entfalten.

Since summer 2015, there have been a number of remarkable shifts in gender awareness in the context of flight and migration in the German refugee debate. But the way how gender aspects have been framed – mostly as refugee women as passive victims of inter-personal violence – causes itself a series of shortcomings, side- and boomerang effects. Thereby the article based on a three years ethnographic project on “Gender, Flight and Reception Policies” not only shows how the discourse changed over time; By focusing on the field of policy the article also outlines the gaps between discourse, political programs and the specific practices that have been emerging on the communal, regional as well as national level in Germany. Thereby the article demonstrates again how the discourse of gender is being instrumentalized for restrictive migration policies.

Der Beitrag skizziert verschiedene Konzepte von Grenzen und Grenzziehungsprozessen im Kontext der wissenschaftlichen Debatte um die sogenannte internationale (Flucht-)Migration. In Verbindung mit der Darstellung leitender Paradigmen der EU-europäischen Grenz- und Migrationspolitiken behandeln die Autor*innen die Perspektive der Autonomie der Migration und ihre methodologisch-theoretischen Implikationen für eine ethnografische Grenzregimeanalyse. dia-gonalen Grenzräumen sowie wechselseitigen Beeinflussungen.

Background The war in Syria caused the forced displacement of millions of Syrians to neighboring countries. Lebanon is the host country with the largest overall number of Syrian refugees per capita. Adolescent refugee girls experience a unique level of vulnerability during human emergencies and are at increased risk of suffering from poor sexual and reproductive health (SRH) outcomes. We conducted an exploratory qualitative study to learn about the SRH perceptions and experiences of refugee adolescent girls living in Bourj Hammoud, an urban setting in Lebanon. Methods We employed a qualitative design with eight focus group discussions (FGDs) conducted with 40 Syrian Arab and Syrian Kurdish adolescent girls between January and March 2020. Every FGD consisted of five participants aged 13 to 17 years. A semi-structured guide was used covering multiple themes: menstruation, puberty, SRH awareness, and sexual harassment. FGDs were transcribed and analyzed using thematic analysis. Findings The participants discussed adolescent girls’ health and named six elements of good health, such as healthy activities and self-protection. The majority of the FGD participants reported a lack of awareness about menstruation when they experienced it for the first time and the social stigma associated with menstruation. When defining puberty, they indicated its social link to a girl’s readiness for marriage and her need to become cautious about sexual harassment. Most FGD participants had very poor knowledge of the female reproductive system. Mothers were the most approached persons to receive information on SRH issues; however, the girls indicated a wish to receive advice from specialists in a comfortable and private atmosphere. All the girls reported that either they themselves, or an acquaintance, had experienced some type of sexual harassment. The girls rarely reported those incidents due to fear of being blamed or subjected to mobility restrictions, or forced to drop out of school. Conclusions The findings show the refugee girls need for satisfactory knowledge on SRH issues and interventions to prevent sexual and gender-based violence that take into consideration the complexity of urban settings.

Editorial introduction to the thematic issue 'Grassroots responses to mass migration in Europe'

EU-Europa erfindet sich von seinen Grenzen her neu. Die europäische Grenzgewalt der letzten Jahre untergräbt in erheblichem Maße im ganzen Südosten Europas und weit darüber hinaus die jungen und noch zarten Demokratisierungsbewegungen in den Gesellschaften. Die Grenze entpuppt sich dabei in verschärfter Weise nicht nur als Neuziehung des postkolonialen Europas, sondern ganz grundlegend als Grenze der Demokratie.

This report analyzes how refugees are impacted by border-management policies and migration controls, and how they experience these policies and respond to them. It is based on 507 interviews with r ...

Against the background of our recent ethnographic research project on the European border regime in South-East Europe in 2016, the article calls for a re-visiting of established paradigms and approaches in border studies. The article assesses established theoretical conceptualisations of border studies, such as securitisation, externalisation, digitalisation, but also internal mobility regimes and humanitarian rationales. Focussing especially on the vast encampment within Europe, the inner-European buffer zoning, shifting legal foundations as well as new infrastructures of migration control, the authors argue for an extension of theoretical and methodological perspectives of border studies by drawing on insights from legal anthropology and camp and infrastructural studies.