Becoming a refugee. A life-course approach to migration under duress

Abstract

This article offers a sociological approach to the ongoing debate about the distinction between refugees and migrants. It adopts a life-course perspective on seeking refuge. Seeking refuge is embedded not only in the legal regimes of refugee protection, but also in other institutional frameworks governing the life-course. Exploring continuities between migrants and refugees allows for a better understanding of whether and under what preconditions the refugee category is applied by administrations and accessed by refugees themselves. With the help of case studies selected strategically from a larger sample of narrative interviews with university educated migrants to Germany, Turkey, and Canada, the article shows how the implementation and administration of the Geneva Refugee Convention in Germany is organized in a manner that often diverges from the empirical reality of fleeing from persecution and lack of protection. On this basis, a broader comparison with migrants in Turkey and Canada who could fall under the Geneva Refugee Convention, but who mostly refrain from claiming asylum, shows that those with better resources and socio-spatial autonomy can, if well informed, find alternative options for gaining protection rather than claiming refugee status. Whether migrants under duress see themselves as refugees and whether they claim asylum does not only result from the persecution they face but also from specificities of legal and administrative frameworks, as well as their position in global structural inequalities and it is related to divergent degrees of socio-spatial autonomy.

Double burden of representation: how ethnic and refugee categorisation shapes Syrian migrants’ artistic practices in Austria

“…Between 2010 and 2019, 57,965 Syrians applied for asylum in Austria, many who have since being recognised as refugees (48,415 positive decisions 2010-2019) (BMI 2020). In the context of this study and in order to address some of the critique surrounding the term 'refugee' (Erdal and Oeppen 2018;Weiß 2018), I use the expression 'Syrian refugees' in a broad sense, referring to people who have fled Syria during civil war (2011-). This definition encompasses both people who seek protection in Austria (the majority of them by applying for asylum) and those who have already been granted 'refugee status' by the Austrian government on the basis of the 1951 Refugee Convention, subsidiary protection or residence permit.…”

“…Thus, the label refugee becomes a stigma with psychological burdens. (Ludwig 2016, 15) Several scholars also emphasise that the process of becoming a 'refugee' should be taken more rigorously into account (Weiß 2018;Zetter 2007). In her study of refugees in Canada, Marie Lacroix (2004) analyses this 'making of' the refugee label in detail, and examines the process of 'becoming a refugee' as something that starts in the country of origin, where political events, war, turmoil and persecution forced migrants to leave their home countries (Lacroix 2004, 155).…”

Why We Have Forgotten About Refugee Adaptation and Why Studying It in the Global South is Critical

“…As refugees usually flee for political reasons, their migration flows also acquire the characteristics of a "cohort": Kurdish and Turkish leftist refugees to Sweden after the military coup in the 1980s (Østergaard-Nielsen 2003), Cuban refugees to the USA after the socialist revolution (Colomer 2000), Iranian middle-class refugees to Europe after the Islamic revolution (Moghaddam et al 1987), and Turkish middle-class refugees following the 2016 coup attempt and ensuing political instabilities (Ozcurumez and Aker 2016). Additionally, immigrants often come from the working class, 4 whereas refugee flows include many middle-class and upper middle-class people (Weiß 2018). The former group can face more barriers in the integration process as they have scarce social and cultural resources (Constant and Massey 2005).…”

“…The people of the latter group usually have more valuable resources to facilitate their social mobility and integration into the host society. However, resources can only be activated when they are recognized (Weiß 2018). Refugees therefore may experience downward mobility and under-employment when their certificates and qualifications are not recognized (Krahn et al 2000), which is hard to accept for those with high qualifications (Baranik et al 2018).…”

Recognition of foreign qualifications in Germany: Selectivity and power in re‐making professionals

“…Basran & Zong, 1998;Krahn et al, 2000;Hawthorne, 2002Hawthorne, , 2005Hawthorne, , 2013Hawthorne, , 2015Bauder, 2003;Grant & Nadin, 2007;Englmann & Müller, 2007;Guo, 2009). Refugees are 'migrants under duress' (Weiß, 2018), whose migration is generally indirectly linked to prospects of qualification recognition and employment. Similar to family migrants, their international movement does not necessarily have a causal link to the labour market, even though labour market participation in the host society is often a major aspiration (Williot & Stevenson, 2013;Correa-Velez et al, 2013;Brücker et al, 2016).…”