Review of the lecture series "In Society": Belongings – Mobilization and Marginalization in the Migration Society in the 2022/23 winter semester

With the lecture series, the ZFM offers the opportunity for exchange with renowned personalities, discusses with them in the company of an interested public and, last but not least, expresses the scientific interest of the ZFM: Taking an analytical look at society that is oriented towards flight and migration.

In the 2022/23 winter semester, the ZFM organized the series titled "Belongings – Mobilization and Marginalization in the Migration Society".
The preconditions of belonging and participation are contested in modern migration societies and are the subject of social negotiations. This is true in various social and institutional contexts of society, such as the educational or legal system. Civil society mobilizations, in turn, are driving forces in these struggles for belonging, social participation, or even marginalization of refugees and people with migration histories. In the framework of three contributions, the discussion series approached the question of how processes of belonging and marginalization are shaped in migration societies, and in particular, how they are produced or limited, from different perspectives.

On November 10, Thomas Geier from TU Dortmund University opened the current series of talks with a lecture on educational practices of the Turkish-Muslim Gülen movement. Based on findings from his own research project, Geier referred in particular to processes of subjectification observed in the field. One aspect of this, he said, is the focus on success: Within the movement, an ethos is spread whereby a successful educational and professional career is considered highly desirable, which spurs on the corresponding ambition of the participants. Geier sees this in the context of widespread discourses about Muslims as a group with educational deficits. This is followed by the second aspect: the experiences of racism and exclusion described by many participants, against which involvement in the movement can be understood as a counterweight. This in turn points to the third aspect, the communalization practices that take place there.
In this context, Geier emphasized that the reconstruction of these educational and subjectivizing practices did not aim at a positive or negative assessment of the organization. The question of whether the Gülen movement should be classified as a sect or as Islamist, which has long been debated in Germany, cannot be decided with the chosen research design, nor can the accusation made by the Turkish government against the movement of having initiated a coup attempt in 2016.

On December 08, we welcomed Stacy Brustin from the Columbus School of Law at the Catholic University of America, Washington DC as our second speaker, whose presentation focused on the institutional embedding of unaccompanied minors in the United States. For children and youth who find asylum in the U.S. through resettlement programs, support is provided until age 23. However, since they are usually placed with foster parents, it can go beyond that. On the other hand, those who enter the U.S. mostly through the southern border alone would only enjoy protection from deportation until their 18th birthday – even without asylum. During this time, authorities search for relatives of the unaccompanied minors that live in the country. Brustin criticized the length of procedures and the practice of multiple transfers between shelters and even states. She continued to say that these hindered the stabilization of minors, some of whom are traumatized, and often prevent the granting of protection before they reach the age of 19.

On January 19, Larissa Fleischmann from the University of Halle-Wittenberg was our third and last guest in the current series of talks. Based on the results of her 20-month ethnographic field research, which she conducted during the so-called Long Summer of Migration in Baden-Württemberg, she focused her lecture on civil society actors and their support practices. She argued that it was short-sighted to classify civic engagement from a dualistic point of view, either as political or as humanitarian – and thus as supposedly apolitical. Rather, she was able to show the ambivalences and interconnections of the seemingly separate fields.
Based on the diverse motivations and political self-conceptions of the actors, she made clear that some presented themselves as humanitarian and charitable aid providers and did not want their commitment to be understood - at least superficially - as "political”. However, some of the actors also used this "apolitical" self-image as a strategic resource, for example, to win a broader audience for their actions. Fleischmann found a variety of political effects even among supposedly "apolitical" supporters, who, for example, supported actions against deportations. Furthermore, in her study, she also observed so-called "anti-political" effects (as understood by Miriam Ticktin), which means the reproduction of inequalities and hierarchies.

We thank all guest speakers for their enriching contributions and hope to see you again soon. A continuation of the lecture series with further exciting guests and topics is being planned. We will inform you about dates and speakers on our website.