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This paper engages with the violent conditions deriving from neoliberal trends in European migration and asylum governance. We explore how continuous precarity, in conjunction with an integration imperative, affects the lives of recently arrived Afghan refugees in Germany and Switzerland. Drawing on critical engagements with the politics of integration and theories of violence, we argue that, in both European countries, Afghans are increasingly forced to earn their right to remain on the basis of labour‐market performance instead of obtaining humanitarian protection. Based on qualitative interview data, we show that persons with a precarious legal status are urged to fulfil neoliberal integration requirements to avoid being deported to their country of citizenship. Employing the “continuum of violence” as an analytical entry point, we specify how the interplay and consequences of structural and cultural violence manifest in the way those affected navigate precarious living conditions and uncertain futures in receiving countries.

Dieser Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit den Auswirkungen ambivalenter Männlichkeitskonstruktionen auf die Lebensrealitäten und Handlungsstrategien von afghanischen Geflüchteten in Deutschland und der Schweiz. Wir zeigen, wie Argwohn, Ausgrenzungserfahrungen und rechtliche Prekarität in der Aufnahmegesellschaft in Kombination mit Verantwortungsgefühlen gegenüber Familienmitgliedern ein vergeschlechtlichtes Spannungsfeld für männliche Geflüchtete erzeugen. Dieses ergibt sich aus widersprüchlichen Handlungsimperativen der europäischen Migrationspolitik, prekärem rechtlichem Status und unerfüllten Erwartungen der Familie gegenüber und setzt männliche Geflüchtete einem geschlechtsspezifischen Risiko doppelter Marginalisierung aus.

In migration law, being informed about legal and administrative procedures constitutes an essential procedural safeguard. Yet, in practice, the transparency of legal practices is often structurally undermined, resulting in the curtailment of procedural safeguards and potentially affecting perceptions of procedural justice. Building on our multi-sited ethnographic research in Germany and Switzerland, we first argue that migrants find it often difficult to anticipate how laws work, contradicting the key procedural law principle of legal certainty. Second, a general trend towards acceleration in migration administration allows limited time for information to reach migrants on the ground, leaving them uninformed about legal procedures. Third, migration law is implemented in an atmosphere of suspicion, which has a negative impact on trust between migrants and state officials -and on transparency. We thus demonstrate how procedural safeguards become empty and routinised, aggravating the structural violence at the heart of the distinction between citizens and non-citizens in interactions with the state.

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