The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has also been known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Islamic State (IS) or in the Arabic world Daesh, but will be referred to as ISIL throughout most of this book.

On 15 January 2016, Turkey implemented the Regulation on Work Permits of Refuges under Temporary Protection to allow Syrians access to labour. However, labour market access and education continue to be major problems for refugees in Turkey. For more on this, see UNHCR (2016).

One example of this that comes to mind is the German implementation of the Residency Obligation for asylum seekers that limited movement and conflicted with EU law. German lawmakers circumvented this constraint by arguing that it could be used as a tool for integration. For a deeper analysis of this, see Chapter 2 of this book and El-Kayed and Hamann (2018).

There are extensive works that detail much of what is written about in this section from a European integration perspective. For a more nuanced historical analysis, see Favell (2001) and Schierup, Hansen and Castles (2006).

For a comprehensive history of the German social state, see Steinmetz (1993).

In the following chapters I address this term more thoroughly, but I do not wish to diverge here to specify my approach. Yet, in order for the reader to have a more general picture, I am thinking of a more Foucauldian ‘truth discourse’ (Rabinow and Rose 2006; Lorenzini and Tazzioli 2018), which goes beyond interrogating subjects, media and public voices.

Up until this point I have not distinguished between the legal and the self-identified differences in refugee labelling. In the rest of the book I will attempt to distinguish between those who have been recognized by Germany as refugees or related protection, those in the asylum application process and those who would self-identify as refugees, but also at times as a catch-all for both groups regardless of legal distinction. When I make the point of legal status, it is in reference to the elusion and exclusion of different groups.

Here I use the word privileged reluctantly and only to relate the rhetoric of refugees in the public imaginary and how different refugee groups are constructed and reconstructed. At the time of writing, there are certain country nationals seeking asylum in Germany who have been prioritized by policy and who are seen as an economic opportunity (Karakayali 2018). For more on how refugees and migrants were being discussed at this period, see Crawley and Skleparis (2018).

An exhaustive account of asylum is available in German from Bogumil, Hafner and Kastilan (2017), but work in English by Schneider (2019) is also relevant, providing an inside perspective on policy in action. The most relevant ethnographic work in this area to date is Eule (2014). Alternatively, Laubenthal (2019) presents the asylum policy development from a political perspective, and EU-sponsored work by Bonewit (2016) and Konle-Seidl (2018) are both helpful general overviews.

I comment here on the image of Alan Kurdi, a Syrian boy who drowned in the Mediterranean Sea on 2 September 2015 trying to reach the Greek island of Kos. This image was used to bring light to drownings as sea and refugees at large as well as critical commentary on the use of such images (Kingsley and Timur 2015).

There should be some irony here because of the historical nature of barracks used for refugee shelters in Germany following the Second World War (Malkki 1995).

She was referring to the well-known case in Germany of Franco A., who is now a convicted right-wing extremist and was living a double life as a refugee and as an officer in the German military (Bundeswehr). In 2022, he was found guilty and sentenced to five years in prison for his planned attack against prominent left-wing figures in Germany (DW 2022).

Gupta uses the term ‘structural violence’ that was originally developed by peace researcher Johan Galtung who differentiated between three forms of violence: direct (violence that directly harms), structural (forms of exploitation, such as marginalizing an ethnic group causing famine) and cultural (the cultural legitimization of the other forms, or the form that makes violence look and even feel right) as well as negative peace and positive peace. For further reading on this subject, see Galtung (1969; 1990; 2010).

For more on the discourse on ‘power-over’ and ‘power-to’, see Dean (2013).

It should also be noted here that asylum applicants can appeal a rejected claim before a judge. Cases appealing decisions increased dramatically after 2015. Up until 2017, as much as 91 per cent of decisions had been appealed. Of those that have appealed in court from Syria and Afghanistan, 60 per cent have had their decisions overturned (Kastner 2018).

Both independent research and BAMF documentation show that because of the overwhelming number of asylum applications and the growing backlog since 2013, BAMF shifted policy in many ways to predetermine asylum cases based on previous similar cases, in effect removing the individual from decisions and applying tactics like ‘case-constellations’. For a detailed account of administrative practices at BAMF and the most in-depth study of the institution available, see Schneider (2019).

After federal elections in 2017 and a highly publicized political debate, the grand coalition of the CDU/CSU and the SPD voted in favour of reducing the number of family reunifications for refugees with subsidiary protection to 1,000 per month, which came into effect in August 2018 (Anzlinger 2018). This action further reduced the rights of those with subsidiary protection; in many ways they are ‘second-class refugees’ because of the temporality of the status. The law also placed German law at odds with EU law (Thym 2018).

The Residency Obligation was only implemented by seven out of 17 German Länder (Nordrhein-Westfalen, Baden-Württemberg, Bayern, Saarland, Sachsen, Sachsen-Anhalt and Hessen), including every region where my collaborators were living save one (Leubecher 2019). This rule is up to the local governments themselves to decide to implement or not. However, its use in Bavaria plays a significant role in what came out of fieldwork in these areas.

Unaccompanied minors are a huge group and a very important subcategory of refugees who receive a very different kind of state support from the two groups I focus on here. Indeed, they are part of the integration regime, but they are not included in the very specific bureaucratic structure of the empirical work presented.

In late 2018, the administrative centre of Lebach initiated a pilot programme for a so-called Ankerzentrum (which translates as ‘Anchor Centre’, but is actually a play on words that abbreviates Ankunft, Entscheidung und Rückführung: arrival, decision and return). The centres have already faced controversy in the states of Bavaria and Sachsen, and tactics were immediately labelled by the police union as posing ‘constitutional concerns’ (Ernst 2018).

Fehlbeleger is not a word that the average German would recognize, but is framed in a rather pejorative context that produces negative images of refugees.

This is an official designation that follows the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) system of language certification.

As noted elsewhere, these reduction fines were deemed unconstitutional by the highest court in Germany and there are plans to reform the entire system and replace it with a so-called citizen income (Bürgergeld) (Rhein 2022).

See Röder (2016) for a deeper explanation of the legal changes in the 2016 law.

For an extensive explanation of this programmes as well as the actors involved in such programmes, see Aumüller (2016).

Here the term used by several publications is used. However, the framing of the word’s meaning borders on pejorative; I translate this to mean ‘wrong occupiers’, which would indicate that the occupier is to blame for this position. As is carefully outlined here, there are numerous reasons why people have continued residence in temporary shelter. Additionally, there has been well-founded criticism with regard to how such housing has been financed and conceived (see news reporting from Pro Asyl (2017), Stukenberg (2017) and Bathke (2019).

I have returned to the issue of housing here that has been addressed in several chapters because it is one of the key things for which the Job Centre provides support; more exhaustive examples can be found in previous chapters.

This number excludes the refugees that participate in programs funded by the SGB III section of jobless coverage.

The unlimited application of sanctions was taken up in 2019 by Germany’s highest court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) and was found to be unconstitutional.

Here I refer to the official names of the social support programmes. I give a more detailed explanation of this in Chapter 2, so I will not return to the issue here when this information has been given elsewhere.

I find it would be redundant to present references here to work that has been mentioned in several other chapters of this book. It can be assumed that if the agents themselves are unaware of this (although none of the agents featured here are), then the central agencies are cognisant of the interplay between secure housing and language acquisition.

This law was actually initiated in 2016 (Pro Asyl 2016), but I would like to stay true to my recorded conversation here, in which I wanted to engage with her experience with the multiple iterations of the legal standard. The more recent changes, again presented in brief by Pro Asyl (2019), cover legal changes we did not discuss to this extent, namely the legal change that extends the timeline for BAMF to review asylum decisions up to five years instead of what is described here as three years.

There is more than enough literature elsewhere critiquing citizenship tests, so I do not think it necessary to cover the discourse here. See the critique in Löwenheim and Gazit (2009) and a longitudinal analysis in Joppke (2017).

The Bavarian government also attempted to pass legislation that formulated a version of Leitkultur within its integration law, which was summarily rejected by the regional constitutional court in 2019 on the grounds that it went against freedom of expression protection (Mittler 2019).

Working in Germany is regulated by employment contracts, with the exception of the so-called ‘mini-job’, which is allowed at a maximum rate of €450 per month and is tax-free. All other work is carried out under work contracts that are limited (befristet) or unlimited (unbefristet). Limited contracts can be from a few months to a few years.

The subject of racism against Muslim women has a long research history in Europe and beyond. I do not think it is helpful to justify Rasha’s fears by presenting the breadth of quantitative data showing how women wearing a headscarf have a lower chance of finding employment. For more on headscarf discrimination in relation to integration, see the excellent article by Korteweg (2017).

The potential for having informal labour experience (such as driving a truck or raising livestock) recognized is possible through a growing number of programmes. For more on these potentials, see Döring and Kreider’s work on the recognition of informal training (Döring and Kreider 2017).