Constructing the Forced Migrant and the Politics of Space and Place-making

Abstract

Mobility is one of the defining concepts of globalization processes. For some migrants, however, mobility is restricted by international and national laws as well as sociopolitical discourses, which regulate the migrant body and her ability to create social relations. Based on interviews in asylum seeker accommodations in Germany, this study illustrates how asylum seekers are spatially constructed and arrested through bureaucratic labeling and assignment to heterotopias and as a discursive location of transience and difference. Those processes freeze the forced migrant in place, in social and semiotic spaces, and position it as a politicized discursive location. The positioning is indicative of monitoring the Other as a symbol of threat to the nation in times of risk. Overall, the study illustrates the tensions between transnational mobility and fixity and the intersections between globalization, communication, social, legal, and political practice, and space/place-making.

Beyond employability: refugees’ working lives

“…Refugees also actively seek voluntary work if the labor market is not (yet) accessible (Hunt 2008). Finally, they participate in legal and/or illegalized labor markets independently and partially in contrast to their official employment and living conditions (Täubig 2009;Witteborn 2011).…”

Legal Paradigm Shifts and Their Impacts on the Socio-Spatial Exclusion of Asylum Seekers in Denmark

“…In most European countries, refugees are usually allocated to states and municipalities according to allocation quotas, which are often calculated based on economic activity and the number of inhabitants in a region. The political motivation often lies in spatially constructing and arresting refugees "through bureaucratic labelling and assignment to heterotopias" -processes, which "freeze the forced migrant in a place" (Witteborn 2011(Witteborn : 1142. Dispersal, first reception and resettlement are policy areas and processes that are linked with each other in the trajectories of arriving forced migrants.…”

“…In the North, studies analyse the 'asylum centre' and the living conditions of forced migrants in those accommodations. The research stress the genesis of mass accommodation systems in EU member states and the exclusion of asylum seekers through these large accommodations (see for example Darling 2009;Dwyer and Brown 2008;Hirschler 2013;Kublitz 2016;Szczepanikova 2013;Witteborn 2011). Most of the studies describe them as places of states of exceptions and as border areas, where the state has unlimited power to decide on the inclusion or exclusion of immigrants.…”

From Forced Migration to Forced Arrival: The Campization of Refugee Accommodation in European Cities

“…Defining refugee accommodation is a struggle of interpretational sovereignty. Witteborn (2011Witteborn ( , p. 1149 illustrates that "the practice of naming asylum heterotopias constructed the forced migrant as a discursive location." Pieper (2008, p. 528) explains that labeling these spaces is a result of the political will of those who govern them and of their institutional character.…”