Doing Arrival - Orientation of New Arrivals in Freiburg and Saint-Louis

• Applicant: Dr. Claudia Ba
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 553210699

The research project examines the orientation actions of ethnic minorities, known as New Arrivals, in Freiburg, Germany, and Saint-Louis, Senegal. These are Senegalese who are in Freiburg for the first time and Germans who are in Saint-Louis for the first time. Although we already know a lot about the social orientation of migrants in metropolitan regions after some time of residence, we know very little about the initial orientation and what significance is attached to the socially constructed space of arrival. The study combines methods of spatial sociology, phenomenology and anthropology. Both cities as secondary cities represent a hitherto little-researched subject in relation to the arrival of these ethnic minority members. The aim of the project is to close several gaps in the research: 1) to explore the orientation behaviour of the New Arrivals in situ, 2) to take into account the New Arrivals‘ constructions of foreignness and coping strategies, and 3) to apply an expanded concept of orientation that includes the New Arrivals’ self-positioning and subjectivisation. By means of ethnography, interviews, go-alongs and videography, the participants are accompanied over the first six months. This also makes it possible to capture changing attributions. The videotaped go-alongs serve as the basis for the auto-confrontation method, in which the participants can comment on the data collected and interpreted by the researcher. In close cooperation with Mercator Fellow Dr Abdourahmane Seck from the Université Gaston Berger in Saint-Louis, the interpretations are examined, avoiding possible language barriers and bias in the research results. Dr Seck, as an anthropologist, closes important gaps in the state of research in the neighbouring discipline and will be intensively involved throughout the course of the project. The planned collaborations will take place alternately at the Technical University of Darmstadt and the Université Gaston Berger in Saint-Louis in order to ensure a continuous bilateral and transdisciplinary exchange. The primary research objective is to develop an understanding through the concrete ethnographic recording of the New Arrivals' orientation actions and appropriation of space. The central question is how New Arrivals orient themselves on the basis of gender, age, socialisation and resources, how they are irritated and how they cope with the forms and consequences of perceived disorientation. The project also pursues two secondary objectives: It aims to make a contribution to urban and spatial sociology on the concept of orientation, which explicitly takes the experience of the extra-ordinary nature of arrival seriously and incorporates it into considerations of action theory of space. Secondly, a Senegalese-German academic dialogue on orientation and concepts of social spaces will be initiated.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants