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Berliner Institut für empirische Integrations- und Migrationsforschung

Shifting solidarities?

The current manifold social changes, unleashed in parts by the growing flight movements towards Europe, cannot alone be represented in numbers. The present Research-Intervention-Cluster wants to react to the growing need of civil society and politics for data, classification and analysis of these complex social momentums with accordingly varied and broad research. The requirement for analysis that challenges the current “discourse of crisis” and questions the definition of refugees’ arrival to Europe as crisis, is central.  

Diverse research perspectives

In order to understanding this complex momentum in Europe’s post-migrant societies, we address the following questions: How exactly are institutions, discourses, narratives, attitudes changing since the “summer of migration” of 2015 in Germany and Europe? How does the often-quoted welcoming culture take shape – who is becoming involved, for whom, under what circumstances? And how, on the other side, should we understand the turnaround into a culture of refusal: What processes of desolidarization are taking place and in what relation do they stand to a broader, racist discourse in Germany?

We elaborate these issues through various theoretical disciplines and methodological approaches, i.e. quantitative, qualitative or mixed-methods, according to the specific research question. The Cluster is composed of 14 projects, in which researcher from the areas of Social, Cultural and Political Studies, Sociology, Sport Sociology, Psychology and Ethnology work together. 

Practice-oriented accompanying research

The decision to arrange this project as a Research-Intervention-Cluster suggests the practical relevance of the research questions that aim to be addressed together with different private and institutional players on the field. It is together with networks and cooperation partners, recruited along the research process, that concrete research results and policy recommendations, as well as guidance for civil society are developed in each of the projects. Our aim is that the obtained results will have a direct effect on the practice and that the need for action encountered during the research processes is recognized as such, for example in recommendations for refugee work considering the specific need of refugee women or on issues of racism in a fast-moving, globalized world.  We elaborate empirically grounded concepts, making them available to stakeholders and interested persons in politics, media and civil society.