Making volunteering with refugees governable: the contested role of "Civil society" in the German welcome culture

Journal article | Zeitschriftenartikel

This article investigates the manifold attempts of governmental actors to make volunteering with refugees governable in light of the so-called German Welcome Culture in 2015. Driven by the notion of a need to interfere, authorities introduced numerous programmes and efforts seeking to order, coordinate, influence, and enhance volunteering with refugees in order to make it more "effective". This investigation will suggest reading these interventions as attempts to (re)gain control and power over the conduct of committed citizens, making them complicit in the governance of asylum seekers, while co-opting potentially dissenting behaviour amongst them. Yet, it will also reveal how certain volunteers proved to contest their ascribed roles and responsibilities, demanding space for disagreement. Volunteering with refugees thus also constantly exceeded and defied governmental control and interference - and thereby remained, at least to a certain extent, ungovernable.

Object Details

• ISSN: 2183-2803
• Extent: Seite(n): 64-73
• Language: Englisch
• Notes: Status: Veröffentlichungsversion; begutachtet (peer reviewed)

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Social Inclusion, 7(2)

Classification and Topics

• Subject: Sozialwissenschaften, Soziologie ; Soziale Probleme und Sozialdienste ; Politikwissenschaft ; Migration ; Sozialwesen, Sozialplanung, Sozialarbeit, Sozialpädagogik ; politische Willensbildung, politische Soziologie, politische Kultur ; Europa ; Flüchtling ; Bundesrepublik Deutschland ; politische Kultur ; Solidarität ; Zivilgesellschaft ; Freiwilligenarbeit ; Humanität ; Krise ; Staat ; Kontrolle

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Fleischmann, Larissa
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (when): 2019

Further information

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.17645/si.v7i2.1979
• Rights: GESIS - Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften. Bibliothek Köln
• Last update: 21.06.2024, 4:27 PM CEST