Humangeographie

REFRAME: Reframing Arrival. Transnational perspectives on perceptions, governance and forced migrants’ practices from 2015/16 -2022/23

Objectives of Research

Whether related to conflict, disaster, persecution, or climate change - displacement is defining our time and is entangled with crises related to housing, energy, democracy, and care. By taking the notion of crisis as a starting point, the research project REFRAME aims at reframing the paradigm of forced migrants’ arrival as both a policy framework and a discursive realm, through systematic analysis and transnational comparison of data and framings on the arrival of forced migrants.

REFRAME will conduct a comparison around three strands:

  • discourses on and perceptions of arrival and their impact on policy approaches to housing and social cohesion in the neighbourhood;
  • governance of arrival and housing, its inherent conflicts and opportunities to strengthen urban citizenship; and
  • the co-constitution of refugees/migrants' practices and housing regimes.

The project seeks to compile and compare existing and newly collected data, discursive and policy considerations on the arrival and housing of refugees in 2015/16 and in 2022, and the time in between, in selected localities in four countries (Germany, Italy, Turkey and United Kingdom). The transnational multi-sited comparative approach will disentangle locally specific factors from more universal phenomena, thus supporting a nuanced reframing of the paradigms of arrival and contributing to the ‘local turn’ in migration research.

Thus, REFRAME contributes to problematizing arrival and reception around their processual and relational dimension (particularly paying attention to ‘unending arrivals’ and ‘refugee humanitarianism’) and examines the spatial and colonial implications of arrival and reception, both historically, socially, and emotionally. It will bring forward theoretical development and inform policy debates on new foundations for urban citizenship.

Informations

Duration: 4/2024-3/2027

Collaborating Partners: Chemnitz University of Technology (Germany), University College London (United Kingdom), Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research, Leipzig (Germany)

Project Coordinator: Dr. Friederike Enßle-Reinhardt

Research Associate: Denis Zeković, M.Sc.

Funding: UK-German Funding Initiative in the Humanities 2023/24", gefördert durch die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Projektnr. 528026063)

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