Integrating integration: a prelude

A majority of young men in Germany

In the period from 2013 to 2016 there were a variety of media discourses highlighting the number of young male refugees who arrived in Europe. These discourses helped shape the imaginaries of refugees who became racialized and seen as criminal threats to order. The discussion was always framed by who had integrated well and who had not. This tension tended to be conceived of as social divisions emerging from the ‘refugee crisis’ and of perceived cultural differences (Richter 2016; Bangel and Thurm 2016; Bershidsky 2018; Abdelilah et al 2019). However, the fact remains that the majority of asylum applicants and refugees arriving from 2015 onwards were indeed young men living alone – a group I consider to be from aged 18 to 35 (BAMF 2019a). Nonetheless, much of the discourse was uncritically observed from a statistical perspective of male arrivals, and ignored the broader context of refugee arrivals. In the following chapters a more nuanced and less static narrative will be presented. In other words, Chapters 4 and 5 draw a rather decisive line between the group of young male arrivals and the family group arrivals.

The distribution of Syrians who arrived in Germany can be analysed across transnational class divisions, temporal arrivals and the habitus of refugees themselves. There were incredibly nuanced cases in which refugees arrived in Europe and applied for asylum, but later had family members join them, or in some cases arrived after legal changes and received a status that prohibited a family reunification visa (Familiennachzug). There were refugees from well-educated, wealthy land-owning classes who were eventually able to have their entire large family of eight settled, and others who were the only family members sent to apply for asylum because the family could only afford to send one person to Europe. In some cases, young men overcame legal challenges of status by taking informal action that led to other legal mechanisms, which in turn were more favourable to their livelihoods. Unlike attempts that have been made by researchers, politicians and journalists – and often in the public imaginary in Germany – to essentialize both society and refugees as distinct groups, it is the aim here to present a spectrum of both experience and circumstances, where many paths and routes were taken in order to navigate the German integration regime.