140272 VO Migrationregimes and Refugee Protests (2013S)

Since early 2012 there have been refugee protests in several European countries, such as Germany, France, and Greece. These protests are interconnected on many levels, as refugees formulate not only practical but strategic demands, i.e., pushing for an acknowledgement of socio-economic reasons for claiming refugee status. Another important characteristic of the protests is that refugees are acting as political agents in their struggle against increasingly restrictive European-wide asylum policies by speaking for themselves instead of representative NGOs or humanitarian organisations speaking for them. At the same time other actors – supporters, charitable organisations, and institutionalised political and civil-society actors – are also actively involved in the protests. Our hypothesis is that the emergence of this social movement can be traced to its transnational networks and communication links, but also to the contemporary form of national and European migration policies, such as the residency restrictions in Germany or the Dublin II Regulation.

In this lecture series we will discuss the current dynamics of refugee protests and migration policies in the Austrian and European context from an interdisciplinary perspective with academics, activists, and representatives of NGOs.