Beyond the Shelter: understanding the limits and potentialities between emergency and endurance in Refugee Camps in Germany

• Applicant: Dr. Juliana Soares Gomes Canedo
• Subject Area: Urbanism, Spatial Planning, Transportation and Infrastructure Planning, Landscape Planning
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 434672696

This research aims at looking at the impact of spatial dimensions in the integration of refugees living in refugee shelters in Berlin. To develop this debate, it is important to critically approach the term integration. Since the 1970s, the socio-political discussions in Germany have been strongly influenced by a conservative concept of integration. This is based on the idea that there is an established core society to which people with migration biographies must unilaterally adapt. According to this logic, traditional integration policy tries to eliminate deficits among migrants. Obstacles to integration are preferably seen in the cultural or religious differences or in the person of the migrant, not in the conditions of the host society. The socio-spatial context is considered to play a significant role in the integration process of immigrants and refugees. Refugee shelters in Berlin have very strict rules regarding spatial transformation – even when related to the internal transformation of the housing unities. Despite that, refugees manage to perform transformations in order to create a sense of home and belonging. These transformations are an attempt to dwell and are also connected to the inefficacy of the Berliner state to integrate the refugees into the housing market. In a city like Berlin, where gentrification and privatization of public housing stock had a major impact in housing affordability for all residents, the access to housing and the social-spatial impact of not accessing it unfolds as a central issue for refugees. This proposal is a renewal proposal for the first phases of the project Beyond the shelter, and the next phase intends to deepen the theoretical debates around insurgent urbanism and post-migration society in the refugees research field. Through the use of collaborative research tools, elaborated through previous experiences from the researcher in the context of self-built informal settlements in Brazil and in the first phases of the current project, I intend to explore the views and narratives of the refugees living in refugee shelters in Berlin regarding their current, past and envisioned future living environment.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants