University of Amsterdam Research Master Social Sciences
Thesis Supervisor: Marcel Maussen Second Reader: Walter Nicholls
Engaging in the Politics of Belonging:
The Case of Lampedusa in Hamburg
Alrun Rosanna Vogt
Student No.: 10635572 alrunvogt@daad-alumni.de
Engaging in the Politics of Belonging: The Case of Lampedusa in
Hamburg
Alrun Rosanna Vogt
Research Master Social Sciences, University of Amsterdam
Abstract: Since spring 2013 a group of 300 refugees who fled from the
Libyan war and received refugee status in Italy has been claiming a right to stay in Hamburg, Germany – they call themselves Lampedusa in
Hamburg. Together with their supporters they challenge the lines of
exclusion delineated by migration politics in the European Union. In this article, I analyze how Lampedusa in Hamburg and their supports have constructed the refugee group as a legitimate political actor by depicting them as an exceptional group deserving rights. I argue that this
deservingness discourse is intertwined with another discourse that constructs the city of Hamburg as the place to make an exception. This is reflected in the activities through which the refugees have articulated their protest, established themselves as right bearing subjects and have
gradually become incorporated in the city.
Keywords: belonging, deservingness, irregular migrants, protest, city, discourse
We are victims of the war in Libya and victims of the European refugee policies. [...] We survivors in Europe have no more choice. We are here and we will stay. No European country can evade the responsibility. We will not be played with anymore by the European policy. We demand the facts to be recognized and thus we demand the full recognition of our rights as refugees (Lampedusa in Hamburg, 2013b).
1. Introduction
the deaths of refugees trying to reach Europe – already in 2011 the UNHCR (2012) called the Mediterranean the “most deadly stretch of water for refugees and migrants.” In spring 2013 a group of 300 refugees who crossed the Mediterranean to flee from the war in Libya and received refugee status in Italy went public and began to claim a right to stay in Hamburg, Germany – they call themselves Lampedusa in Hamburg. Their protest challenges the lines of exclusion delineated by the current migration politics in Germany and in European Union (EU).
Since the mid-1990s migration and refugee politics in many European countries have become more restrictive. Several scholars have observed a convergence of citizenship and migration regimes as well as increasing efforts to stop irregular migration (see Bloch & Chimienti, 2011; Fassin, 2005; Guiraudon & Lahav, 2000). On the European level the establishment of the Dublin-system in EU refugee and asylum politics has shifted the enforcement of migration control to the peripheral member states which has “limited access to EU countries” and effectively “resulted in more irregular migration” (Bloch & Chimienti, 2011: 1274).
Over the last few years there have also been a growing number of protests and rights movements by refugees and asylum seekers (Pero & Solomos, 2010; Nyers & Rygiel, 2012). In Germany alone several examples of refugee protest and resistance can be found in various cities across the country such as the occupation of a school in Kreuzberg, Berlin, a protest camp by Sudanese refugees in Hanover, and the hunger strike by asylum seekers in Munich. In this article, I argue that to understand the relative success of an increasing number of refugee protests, we need to look at the discourses through which migrants claim rights as well as the discourses and actions through which
they connect with the local communities in which they claim rights. The exemplary case is the refugee group Lampedusa in Hamburg.
Lampedusa in Hamburg self-identifies as a group of 300 African migrants from
different countries who lived in Libya when the war started in 2011. They fled to Italy where they were recognized as war refugees which gives them the right to reside and work in Italy. Due to the closure of facilities for refugees, they left Italy and traveled to Hamburg, Germany in winter 2012/13. Ever since the group made their first public appearance in spring 2013, they have claimed a right to stay in Hamburg. With their papers they can travel as tourists to other states in the Schengen Area for a limited period of three months. Given this legal context, their prolonged stay in Hamburg renders the refugees' status irregular.1 The claim to a right to stay in Hamburg challenges the Dublin-regulation according to which Italy is not only responsible for processing the asylum application but also is the state responsible to care for the refugees thereafter. Lampedusa in Hamburg therefore challenges national and EU asylum and refugee policies.
Even though their central claim to a right to stay in Hamburg remains unfulfilled,
Lampedusa in Hamburg has been quite successful in voicing their claims and gathering
support. The group mobilized extensive support from a wide range of actors, from church groups to football fans, from artists to urban movement activists. Together with their supporters, Lampedusa in Hamburg effectively averted initial plans by the
1 I choose the term irregular status and irregular migrants in line with Carens (2008: 164) and McNevin (2011: 20) who both point out that even though there are hardly any neutral terms in the debate about irregular migration, the alternative terms “illegal” and “unauthorized” are more normatively charged and as Chauvin and Garcés-Mascareñas (2012: 246) argue, “undocumented” is often empirically inappropriate, since most irregular immigrants possess formal documents of some kind. However “irregular”, like all the other terms, still carries with it a binary differentiation (Goldring et al., 2009: 239).
governmental authorities in Hamburg to force them into the regular procedures of registration (and likely expulsion) and has sustained their protests over a period of more than two years by now. In a way the continued existence of their protest and the prolonged presence of the group in the city of Hamburg can be considered a success in itself. In the course of the protests, Lampedusa in Hamburg and their supporters addressed two central questions: Why is Lampedusa in Hamburg an exceptional group and why is the city of Hamburg the place where they should receive the right to stay? In this article, I thus examine how Lampedusa in Hamburg and their supporters not only constructed the migrant group as a legitimate political actor deserving rights but also depicted the city of Hamburg as the place in which an exception in their favor could be made.
The case study is based on data gathered during five months of fieldwork in Hamburg from September 2014 to January 2015. Local newspapers and documents, interviews with supporters as well as observations are the sources for the case study which allow an analysis of both the discourses and actions performed by different actors in different locations throughout the contestation process from the beginning in spring 2013 until January 2015.
The article is structured in three sections. First, I elaborate the theoretical framework in which I seek to connect insights from literature on citizenship and activism by irregular migrants with work on the city as a specific site of contestation and I propose to conceptualize discourses through which irregular migrants claim rights as discourses of deservinness (2). Second, I outline the data and methods for this case study (3.1), before I turn to the analysis of the three phases of the contestation process which I identified
(3.2). In the analysis I demonstrate how the refugees established themselves as a collective actor deserving rights and how the discourses through which they have claimed rights connected with discourses specific to the local context. I argue that these discourses are tied to the actions through which the refugees engage with the local community.
2. Theoretical Framework
An emphasis on more informal criteria of political belonging in citizenship regimes creates opportunities for irregular migrants to claim rights associated with modern citizenship (2.1). In order to engage in a struggle for rights, irregular migrants need to constitute themselves as a legitimate political actor in the public sphere (2.2). When they struggle for rights associated with citizenship, both the discourses as well as the actions through which they are expressed become relevant in the process of contestation. In order to assert that they belong, irregular migrants often rely on what I call a discourse of deservingness through which they depict themselves as deserving of an exception (2.3). Cities are the prevailing sites where citizenship is contested and migrant activists struggle for rights. The city, the specific local community where the contestation process takes place, influences not only the social and material resources available to migrant activists but also influences the discursive repertoire available to claim rights (2.4).
2.1 Contesting Political Belonging
Modern citizenship represents but one mode of political belonging, albeit in today's state system citizenship is the hegemonic mode of political belonging (McNevin, 2011).
In the historical construction of citizenship, notions of virtue have been central to construct lines of inclusion and exclusion that allow for judgments about who can legitimately belong to the community of citizens and who cannot (Wallerstein, 2003; Isin, 2002). As Isin (2002: ix) argues, virtue is at the heart of the dialectical differentiation between citizens and its others, between “citizens as those who managed to inculcate virtues through others as strangers and outsiders.” In the modern state the virtuous citizen is the active citizen (Wallerstein, 2003).
The right to stay is a basic element of citizenship. Following Marshall's (2009) classic differentiation, citizenship comprises civil, political, and social rights.2 Bauböck (2006: 23) points out that, although irregular migrants can often claim some civil and social rights, “these rights are obviously precarious since they effectively depend on a right to residence and because most states [...] accept only few constraints on their discretionary powers of deportation and expulsion of migrants in an irregular status.” A right to stay, to legal residence, is therefore a precondition to claim further rights.
Recently several scholars have argued that citizenship regimes3 in various European countries shift towards concepts such as earned citizenship (Van Houdt et al., 2011; Andreouli & Dashtipour, 2013), “participatory citizenship” (Bloemraad et al., 2008), “probationary citizenship” (Chauvin & Garcés-Mascareñas, 2012) or a “virtualization” of citizenship (Schinkel, 2010) which emphasize normative notions of active, “good” or
2 Civil rights refer to “the rights necessary for individual freedom” such as freedom of speech and right to own property, political rights are “the right[s] to participate in the exercise of political power” in form of the right to vote and be elected and social rights encompass the rights associated with social and economic welfare “from the right to a modicum of economic welfare and security to the right to share to the full in the social heritage and to live the life of a civilised being according to the standards prevailing in the society” (Marshall, 2009: 148-149).
3 In this paper, I employ Jenson's (2007: 55) definition of citizenship regimes as “the institutional arrangements, rules, and understandings that guide and shape concurrent policy decisions and expenditures of states, problem definitions by states and citizens, and claims-making by citizens.”
deserving members as opposed to non-active, “bad” or undeserving ones based on their civic conduct. This represents a shift towards more informal criteria of belonging in contemporary citizenship regimes. While it can potentially undermine the belonging of formal citizens (Schinkel, 2010), it also opens spaces for excluded non-members to claim that they do in fact belong and are therefore deserving of rights. The turn to more informal, normative criteria to delineate political belonging creates opportunities for irregular migrants as one of the more excluded groups to claim rights associated with citizenship.
2.2 Irregular Migrants Becoming Activists
When irregular migrants claim rights associated with citizenship, their activism illuminates and questions the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion that differentiate between members and non-members, citizens and non-citizens (Nyers & Rygiel, 2012: 10; Bauböck, 2006: 16). By claiming rights connected to citizenship, “non-citizen migrant groups are involved in practices and ways of engaging in citizenship” (Nyers & Rygiel, 2012: 2). Given that they face a comparatively precarious situation conditioned by their irregular status, irregular migrants have to become legitimate political actors in the public sphere in order to struggle for rights.
In order to gather enough support and sustain their protests, migrant activists need to gain a sufficient level of legitimacy in the public eye (Nicholls, 2013; Chimienti, 2011). In this context network of actors who support irregular migrants become important in order to gather material and social resources. Studies on immigrant activism, especially concerning refugees and irregular migrants, have shown that supporting groups such as churches, welfare organizations, NGOs, or trade unions have often acted as mediators
for migrants to the extent that they sometimes overshadow the migrant activists (Chimienti, 2011). Laubenthal (2011) observes that supporting groups often take a primarily humanitarian approach in supporting migrants and, as Fassin (2005) points out, this humanitarianism creates the problem of establishing a hierarchy between those who help and those who are helped. Over time some migrant activists grow independent from their supporters and establish themselves as activists in their own right.
Migrant activists first of all need to constitute themselves as a collective political actor. The identification as a group enables them to engage in collective action such as political protests and in return these actions reinforce the identification as a group. To act together as a group constitutes, develops, and strengthens the group's identity. Collective identities are expressed in discourses and collective actions (Bader, 1991: 119). When collective actors articulate who they are, this is also a result of the problem (and opponent) they identify and the solution they propose (Bader, 1991: 124). Discourses that enable irregular migrants to be legitimate political activists in the public sphere are therefore part and parcel of the actions through which they conduct themselves as political activists in public spaces.
2.3 Discourses and Actions
When irregular migrants challenge the boundaries of belonging, they articulate their identity, their grievances, and demands through discourses which are expressed in specific actions. Before I turn to the relevance of social (inter)actions regarding the protest by irregular migrants, I discuss the role of discourses. Steinberg (1998: 851-852) defines “discourse” as “the social production of meaning that is essentially dialectic, dynamic, and riven with contradictions”, since “there is a constant struggle between
actors to invest discourse with their preferred meanings.” He defines the concept “discursive repertoire” as action-specific “sets of discourses in a field” that activists draw upon to define a problem, suggest a critique, and propose a solution (Steinberg, 1998: 856-857).
At their core the sets of discourses that irregular migrants draw upon in their struggle for rights share a common logic, since they construct irregular migrants as a legitimate political actor deserving of rights based on characteristics that are deemed to be particular to the specific group (or person) and their respective situation. I have come to call this a discourse of deservingness by relating my research findings to the discourses identified in other cases in of contestation by irregular migrants. In this article, I conceptualize deservingness as discourses through which a collective actor aims to construct itself as a legitimate claimant of rights based on a narrative about their exceptional characteristics. Simultaneously the lines of exclusion are redrawn for others that do not share the particular characteristics (McNevin, 2006; Nicholls, 2013; Anderson, 2010), which leads to the creation of a hierarchy of deservingness, along which the legitimacy of claims by different groups are judged (Fassin, 2005). In the literature on protests by irregular migrants a set of discourses is identifiable (see McNevin (2009) for an overview) which contains three broad topics: Civic conduct, victimization, and humanitarianism – I discuss each in turn.
Arguments about the civic conduct of migrants build on their history of residence in the community in which they claim rights. Cultural and social ties are invoked to support accounts of de facto belonging and civic conduct (Nicholls, 2013; Rosenberger & Winkler, 2014; Versteegt & Maussen, 2012: 34). The key argument within discourses
along these lines is that the persons concerned do belong to the community despite formal obstacles – “[m]aking undocumented immigrants into a legitimate subject therefore does not result from dis-identification but identification” (Nicholls, 2013: 90, orig. emphasis). Discourses through which the economic role of irregular migrants is highlighted similarly support a narrative of integration and “good” conduct by pointing to their economic contribution (Chauvin & Garcés-Mascareñas, 2012; McNevin, 2006; Anderson, 2010). In the case that irregular migrants lack a longer period of residence, discourses about their economic role highlight their potential contributions to society (McNevin, 2009). Discourses about civic conduct and economic contribution are based on ideals about the performance of economic, social, and cultural duties associated with citizenship – in their struggle for rights, migrant activists can turn the performance of duties into potential sources of claiming rights (Chauvin & Garcés-Mascareñas, 2012).
Discourses about the victimization of migrants emphasize that the persons concerned are not to blame for their current status (Morando Lakhani, 2013). Victimization discourses contradict charges that attempt to criminalize migrants as well as other negative stigmas used to justify their exclusion (Nicholls, 2013; Versteegt & Maussen, 2012: 32). However the passive nature associated with victimhood is seemingly at odds with migrants as activists. One avenue to overcome this contradiction and reassert their political subjectivity is to declare that they are survivors, not victims in order to overcome the stigma as passive victims in need of help (Fassin & Vasquez, 2005) – survivors can become active political subjects helping themselves.
Human rights constitute one discourse to claim rights based on a more universal vision of rights and belonging (Soysal, 1994: 3; McNevin, 2009). When the situation in which
irregular migrants claim rights is declared to be a humanitarian emergency, humanitarian discourses can become particularistic, since the declaration of a humanitarian emergency is essentially a declaration of an exceptional situation – as Fassin and Vasquez (2005: 391) point out, “humanitarianism always justifies a form of exception.”
The deservingness discourses often rely on arguments that highlight the exceptionalism of the case at hand such as the exceptional characteristics of the persons concerned, for example based on their civic conduct or their depiction as survivors, or the exceptional aspects of the circumstances, for example, when a humanitarian emergency is proclaimed. Rossi (2009: 241) provides a differentiation between “exceptions” and “exemptions.” According to him “exceptions to a rule have to be justified, as one-off events, whereas exemptions fall within previously established boundaries of admissible deviation from a rule.”4 From a policy perspective, deservingness discourses seek to find openings that allow for exemptions within the existing policies or argue for an exception to be made, for example by a policy change in favor of the persons concerned. Even though the political challenge for the citizenship and migration regime is often only partial, the cases of protest by irregular migrants can still contribute to question and potentially broaden the boundaries of belonging. The demand to proclaim an exception points to the conflicts within the system of citizenship and migration politics.
4 Based on Rossi's (2009) differentiation, Fassin's and Vasquez's (2005) “humanitarian state of
exception” can also be a state of exemption depending on the legal context. Fassin and Vasquez (2005: 402) state (against Carl Schmitt) that “[e]xception, in the political sense, is always apprehended through the categories of law, of which it marks less the negation than the boundary because it is often included and even prescribed in constitutional texts.” From Rossi's (2009) perspective an included or prescribed exception is actually an exemption.
The discourses through which irregular migrants claim rights are not isolated processes but are connected to the actions through which these discourses are articulated. The “practice turn” (Schatzki et al., 2001) in social scientific theory has increased the attention researchers pay to the interconnection between discourses and actions. In the discussion of discursive repertoires, Steinberg (1998: 856) highlights that they are “action-specific.” He proposes “that it might be better to conceptualize discourse as critical mediating action by which activists create legitimacy and collective identities to garner resources for collective action” (Steinberg, 1998: 862). This highlights that discourses cannot be disassociated from the actions through which they are expressed.
Citizenship is also increasingly understood as a social practice and as such it is continuously contested and renegotiated (Nyers & Rygiel, 2012; Barnes et al., 2004; Ehrkamp & Leitner, 2003; Isin, 2008). According to Isin (2002: 273), acts of “insurgent citizenship” are acts through which social groups position themselves as legitimate political actors that challenge their previous social position and thereby the lines of inclusion and exclusion. Acts of citizenship such as rights' struggles by irregular migrants disrupt and illuminate normalized citizenship practices (Isin, 2008: 39). Activism itself is an integral part of becoming legitimate political subjects when the active citizen is an ideal type (Conlon & Gill, 2013). In the context of activism by irregular migrants activities through which they become incorporated in the community (if they are not incorporated already) are especially relevant in order to sustain the protests in spite of their precarious situation. Over time the performance of activities associated with civic duties can in turn become a source of rights (Chauvin and Garcés-Mascareña, 2012).
Therefore, not only the acts of protest but also the activities through which irregular migrants become incorporated are relevant for their struggle for rights. Struggles over citizenship, over who may legitimately belong take place in specific sites which influences both the discourses and the actions. This site is often the city.
2.4 Rights through the City
Historically, cities have been the places in which struggles over citizenship, over who may legitimately belong to the polity have been carried out – “the city is the battleground through which groups define their identity, stake their claims, wage their battles, and articulate citizenship rights, obligations, [and] principles” (Isin, 2002: 284; orig. emphasis). Cities constitute distinctive sites of political contestation and harbors of political change (Sassen, 2002; Isin, 2002; Holston & Appadurai, 1996), especially in times of “glocalization” when localities, such as cities, are increasingly linked through globalizing processes (Robertson, 1995). In migration politics today, cities are the sites where questions of identity and citizenship connect with the incorporation of immigrants and migrant activism as well as the enforcement of contemporary citizenship and migration regimes.
Most immigrants move to and live in cities where local identities and practices shape the incorporation of newcomers (Borkert & Caponio, 2010; Holston & Appadurai, 1998). Cities possess considerable discretionary power to divert from national incorporation policies (Penninx, 2009). The de facto incorporation at the local level can provide a source of rights for irregular migrants (Chauvin & Garcés-Mascareñas, 2012). Cities are “strategic spaces” that provide immigrant activists with a rich environment of material, social, and cultural resources to articulate “rights through the city” (Nicholls &
Vermeulen, 2012: 79). In addition, immigrant activism at the local level potentially connects local practices not only with national but with transnational issues (Ehrkamp & Leitner, 2003: 131). Yuval-Davis (1999: 122) points out, that citizenship is “a multi-layered construct, in which one’s citizenship in collectivities in the different layers […] is affected […] by the relationships and positionings of each layer in specific historical context.” The local is one such layer (Yuval-Davis, 1999; Ehrkamp & Leitner, 2003) that gains importance as political power from the national level is shifting upwards to the transnational, outwards to the private, and downwards to local levels (Guiraudon & Lahav, 2000; Brodle, 2000). These shifts of power involve a tendency towards the localization of migration politics regarding inclusionary aspects such as incorporation practices as well as exclusionary aspects such as the internal enforcement of border and migration control (Van der Leun, 2006).
Therefore, the city is often the site that shapes the struggles for rights by immigrants. Irregular migrants publicly claim a part of the city space through their protests despite the precariousness of their situation. In Sassen's (2002) words, migrant activists create a “presence” in the city as political subjects despite a lack of formal recognition and thereby engage in citizenship.
3. Case Study: Lampedusa in Hamburg
3.1 Data and Methods
For this case study I conducted five months of fieldwork in Hamburg,5 Germany
5 Hamburg is the second largest city in Germany and one of its states. As a city-state the municipal and state level political entities are one and the same giving the legislative (called “Bürgerschaft”) and the executive (called “Senat”) considerable more influence on national politics and more legislative and executive capacities than other cities (aside from the other two city-states Berlin and Bremen).
between September 2014 and January 2015. I derived my data from newspaper articles, documents, interviews, and observations which enables data triangulation. The data allows an analysis of the actors, the discourses they employed, and the activities they engaged in as well as of the locations in which the political struggle took place.
The newspaper analysis focuses on the two city-wide newspapers the Hamburger
Abendblatt (292 articles) and the Hamburger Morgenpost (205 articles) since the
beginning of the protests in May 2013 up until the end of my fieldwork in January 2015. I coded the articles using codes derived from a literature review regarding other cases of protest by irregular migrants and from preparatory research regarding the research context as well as open coding. The codes served to identify the actors involved (codes Lampedusa-group, support groups, government officials, politicians, and media), their actions (protest, discussion and open codes parliament, festival, art, declaration, and football), and the discourses they employed (membership, human rights, identity, city, victimization, deservingness and open codes interconnection, racism, law and order, Lampedusa Italy, housing, and urban movement),6 the locations in which these activities took place (city center, St. Pauli, Altona and open code St. Georg),7 and the level of contestation (quarter, regional, national, and EU) using the city level as the baseline. Based on the codes for the actor categories, I constructed a map displaying the actors and actor groups and their relationships. The codes for different acts are the basis on which I created a time line of events. By identifying the connections between the different themes I grouped them into sets of discourses.
6 Initially I coded twelve different themes. Two themes (xenophobia and nation) were later omitted, since they only encompassed few, single statements, leaving ten themes in the discourse analysis. 7 Two other locations, Glinde and Reinbek, which are located in the neighbouring state
Documents published by different actors were included to further deepen the analysis and look for media distortions. The types of documents include written public statements published in the form of press releases, parliamentary protocols and inquiries, declarations, and blog posts. Aside from parliamentary documents I focused on documents published by the central actors engaged in the public discussion. I analyzed the documents using the same codes as in the newspaper analysis.
I conducted seven semi-structured interviews with different supporting actors.8 The interviews focused on their personal experiences, perceptions, and reflections concerning the protests by Lampedusa in Hamburg and its effects on the city. Throughout the fieldwork period I carried out observations at public events and other meetings that were related to Lampedusa in Hamburg or refugee and migration politics.9 The combination of interviews and observations allowed me to gain a better understanding of the political context and specific localities as well as the activities through which forms of protest and support were carried out. The events were also a way to get in contact with potential interview partners and to conduct informal conversations.10
3.2 Three Phases of Contestation
Three phases of the contestation process can be distinguished in line with Bader (1991:
8 Two activists, a member of the Thalia Theater, a member of the Kampnagel (a theater and cultural center), a representative of the trade union Ver.di, a politician of the Green party and a politician of the Left. All interviews were anonymized.
9 Overall there were fewer protest activities compared to the one and a half years before. This became apparent both in the reduced news coverage regarding Lampedusa in Hamburg as well as fewer events on the issue. In a way I arrived late in the field, at a time when the issue was still present but received less public attention.
10 While I did not conduct a formal interview with a member of Lampedusa in Hamburg, I talked to some of the members informally and was able to listen to some of them talk at a few public events.
334). Figure 1 shows the number of articles in both newspapers over time.11 First there was the phase in which the conflict emerged from May to early October 2013 followed by a period of repeated escalations until February 2014, which is the phase from the most media coverage. The phase of deescalation thereafter has lasted until today.
Figure 1. Number of articles in Hamburger Abendblatt (black) and Hamburger
Morgenpost (grey)
In the discourse analysis I identified three central sets of discourses. The refugees of
Lampedusa in Hamburg and their supporters based their claims on the specific
characteristics of the group and their situation which I have come to call a discourse of deservingness. Their main opponent, the Social-Democratic government of the city responded by defending the status quo. In the course of the protests discourses about the city's identity became connected to the protests and constructed Hamburg as the place to make an exception for Lampedusa in Hamburg.
11 The analysis of the local newspapers shows differences in their coverage: The Hamburger Abendblatt covers the protest more extensively not in terms of the number of articles, but in terms of depth which is reflected in the considerably lower number of claims coded in the Morgenpost (befitting its image as a tabloid paper). 05-13 07-13 09-13 11-13 01-14 03-14 05-14 07-14 09-14 11-14 01-15 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 Abendblatt Morgenpost time in months n u m b e r o f a rt ic le s
The following analysis is structured along the three phases of contestation I identified. I sought to integrate an analysis of the central actors and the discourses they employed with the actions through which they were articulated as well as the main locations where they were articulated in a chronological account of the main events. In the first part I describe the emerging conflict that began as a humanitarian emergency and turned into a movement for a right to stay. During this phase the refugees publicly constituted themselves as a collective actor based on their migration history (3.3). The second part depicts the escalation phase during which the Lampedusa-refugees and their supporters increasingly called for an exception in favor of the group. In this part I demonstrate how the refugees conducted themselves as independent political actor and how the protests connected with other urban conflicts and raised questions about the city's identity (3.4). The deescalation phase is the third part of the analysis in which I discuss how the refugees were increasingly incorporated in the city. In this part I also analyze how the claim to a right to work became part of the discourse of deservingness (3.5).
3.3 From a Humanitarian Emergency to a Protest Movement
Homelessness was the foremost problem that the refugees of Lampedusa in Hamburg faced when they went public in May 2013. The winter during which the refugees, who were going to become Lampedusa in Hamburg, arrived on the streets of the city had been a particularly long and cold one. When they appeared publicly for the first time as a group they demanded housing, access to the labor market, to education, and to health care in order to have their rights as refugees recognized (Lampedusa in Hamburg, 2013b). Their relatively recent arrival should have been a disadvantage in organizing protests, but within just a few months Lampedusa in Hamburg became an important
political actors. During this first phase of the protest process the main actors, locations, and discourses emerged that came to characterize the conflict and began to set it apart.
The refugees' call for immediate support was answered the most in the quarter St. Pauli. The St. Pauli Church opened its doors to let 80 members of Lampedusa in Hamburg sleep there. From then on the St. Pauli Church became a locus of support activities from organizing housing and material support to building social networks. The range of supporters who gathered in and around the church was vast – they were neighborhood residents, parishioners, activists, students, artists, and football fans of the FC St. Pauli. The church's pastor highlighted the exceptional fate that the refugees of Lampedusa in
Hamburg had endured: “I have never experience such an acceptance and solidarity
among the people [...] These refugees form an exception. They are traumatized repeatedly, since they are the survivors of a humanitarian catastrophe” (Hamburger Abendblatt, 2013b).12 “‘This is an act of humanitarian emergency aid’ [...] It is a human duty to aid ‘disregarding the legal situation of anyone’” stated the pastor in the
Hamburger Abendblatt (2013d) – this interpretation as a humanitarian emergency was
the prevailing discourse to depict the plight of the Lampedusa-refugees in the beginning of the protests and to justify support of the group grounded in a humanitarian reasoning and irrespective of legal consideration. By proclaiming a humanitarian emergency the stage was set to demand an exception for Lampedusa in Hamburg.
The church in St. Pauli and the surrounding support activities including public events were the focus of the media coverage. Through the media coverage and the public
12 Some of the documents published in the name of Lampedusa in Hamburg were in English or in both English and German. Among the documents cited in this article this pertain Lampedusa in Hamburg (2013a), (2013d) and (2014). All the other quotes from documents, newspaper articles or interviews are originally in German and therefore translated by myself.
events, the St. Pauli Church served as a forum to tell and retell the migration history of
Lampedusa in Hamburg. “We did not survive the NATO war in Libya to die on the
streets of Hamburg!” (Lampedusa in Hamburg, 2013a) was an early slogan in the protests. It captures a core element of Lampedusa in Hamburg's migration history, namely their depiction as victims of the war in Libya, their continued victimization as refugees in Italy and their precarious situation in Hamburg. The slogan not only points to their repeated past and ongoing victimization, but describes the refugees as survivors despite their victimizing circumstances.
We are war refugees, survivors of the NATO war in Libya. We never had the intent to come to Europe. We had work and enough income to provide for ourselves and our families. Today family members die, because despite the recognition of our refugee status in Italy, we do not have the opportunity to receive a permission to work in other EU member states. We are not labor migrants, we are here because Europe's interests supported by NATO destroyed our livelihoods in Libya. We are here and we stay here (Lampedusa in Hamburg, 2014).
As this excerpts shows, the responsibility for their victimization was allocated to the EU member states (and NATO) as well as the governmental authorities in Hamburg to whom the refugees addressed their claims by holding the local authorities responsible to enact the refugee status that they had received in Italy. The repeated victimization is a discourse used to emphasize that they are blameless and therefore genuine refugees. The narrative of their migration history was not only the basis upon which they have identified as a collective actor, but also as the cornerstone of a discourse of deservingness through which the group has claimed rights in Hamburg. The refugee group Lampedusa in Hamburg has been depicted as exceptional by emphasizing the
particular aspects of their migration history as survivors of the Libyan war, as genuine refugees whose status is recognized in Italy and as victims of the EU asylum and migration politics.
While the resources to support Lampedusa in Hamburg gathered in St. Pauli and effectively addressed the proclaimed humanitarian emergency, debates about the political responsibility towards the refugees erupted in city hall. The only aspect that all political factions in parliament could agree upon was that the situation was a humanitarian emergency, but their opinions vastly differed regarding the appropriate reactions to be taken. The metaphor of a “balancing act” (Bürgerschaft der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg, 2013a) between legal and humanitarian considerations marks the central point at which the political parties diverged either in favor of enforcing the status quo or in favor of a humanitarian exception.
“For all these refugees a specific procedures applies that self-evidently applies for everyone and not for any exceptions. [...] There is no moral reason to favor these refugees from Libya [...] to create a special provision for these 300 men from Africa” (Bürgerschaft der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg, 2014: 6214) stated a member of the Social-Democratic faction thereby denying any exceptional characteristics based on which Lampedusa in Hamburg has claimed rights. Government officials insisted that any humanitarian aid should be connected to regular registration procedures13 which would likely lead to an expulsion to Italy – “the legal situation is indisputable and the perspective can only be the departure to Italy” (Hamburger Abendblatt, 2013a)
13 This was the reason why early talks about a joint effort by the church and the city's officials to engage in a joint effort to provide for the refugees failed, since the church refused to link aid with law enforcement.
summarized the Social-Democratic minister for interior affairs the government's position. These examples show that a defense of the status quo was the main response by the Social-Democratic government of the city – they argued that the existing laws have to be upheld and enforced which denies any exceptional measures in favor of
Lampedusa in Hamburg.
Among the opposition parties, the Liberals (FDP) and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) basically corroborated the defense of the status quo. However they also called for short-term humanitarian aid – as one member of the CDU-faction stated: “The solution is, short-term humanitarian aid, but thereafter expulsion to Italy” (Bürgerschaft der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg, 2013b: 4667). The Green party and the Left, the other two opposition parties, opposed the government's position and instead joined the support groups by demanding humanitarian aid first while dealing with legal concerns later. They also became the parties who were to call for an exemption in favor of the Lampedusa-refugees, the call to enact §23 AufenthG (Residence Act).
While the supporters continued to gather, the protests showed first signs that
Lampedusa in Hamburg was gaining enough public acceptance to ascend from victims
in a humanitarian emergency to a political actor with a compelling call for rights. On August 17th, 2013 2 500 protesters gathered demanding a right to stay on humanitarian grounds for Lampedusa in Hamburg by applying §23 Residence Act. §23 Residence Act states that a regional state's government can grant groups a right to stay based on humanitarian grounds, on grounds of international law or specific political considerations – it is a paragraph that grants the executive the discretionary power to declare an exemption. Any possible application of §23 Residence Act rests on the
recognition of Lampedusa in Hamburg as a group. The fact that this demand gathered quite substantive support shows that in the eyes of many residents in Hamburg the Lampedusa-refugees are a distinctive group deserving of an exemption. This became particularly apparent when the situation escalated in October 2013.
3.4 Deserving of an Exemption – “We are here to stay”
Failed police actions mark the beginning and the end of a period of escalations. What at first had been mainly perceived as a humanitarian emergency turned into one of the most heated political conflicts the city and its residents had seen in a while. The escalation began when the governmental authorities attempted to force the Lampedusa-refugees into the regular procedures through concerted police controls in October 2013, just about two weeks after national elections had taken place. The controls met with almost daily rallies by supporters which included the first violent protest actions by Leftist supporters. The rallies effectively hindered the police controls. Both the intensity of the protests and the arising of violent actions marked a change in the protest dynamics as well as an escalation.
The police controls were criticized as racial profiling by Lampedusa in Hamburg and their supporters. The official response was that the police actions are controls of “persons who are staying illegally in Germany” (Hamburger Abendblatt, 2013e). In an effort to answer the question how the police was detecting illegality on sight, one official reply was that the controls were carried out in known locations (Hamburger Abendblatt, 2013e). This response did little to appease the protests and the charge that the controls were racial profiling further discredited the governmental actions. That the Lampedusa-refugees were not regarded as illegal migrants by a considerable number of
persons in Hamburg became apparent in the October protests. For many supporters the Italian papers gave the members of Lampedusa in Hamburg sufficient legal status to reside and claim rights in Hamburg. “Legal leeway” (Hamburger Abendblatt, 2013c) was a prominent phrase which implied the question whether the city could give
Lampedusa in Hamburg a right to stay, for example by applying §23 Residence Act.
This question overshadowed attempts to depict the Lampedusa-group as illegal migrants in the public eye.
October 2013 was also the month during which government officials negotiated with representatives of the regional Protestant church (Nordkirche, to which the St. Pauli
Church belongs) and lawyers of the Lampedusa-refugees. The result was the so-called
“Duldungs”-offer by the city's government and supported by the church. The offer was to prolong the regular procedures, so that the only members of the Lampedusa-group would effectively not be deported for several years even if their applications for a legal status in Germany were rejected. This is accomplished by not further processing their cases in the “Eingaben und Härtefallkommission” (literally Commission for Petitions and Cases of Hardship) and thereby extending the title of “Duldung” (literally toleration). However “Duldung” is not a residence status but the temporary suspension of deportation procedures which leaves the executive the discretionary power to decide the moment of expulsion. The “Duldungs”-offer poses a paradox regarding the government's position. The government's defense of the status quo rested on a denial of the exceptional characteristics through which the refugees of Lampedusa in Hamburg identified as a group and an insistence on the application of regular procedures. However, as one member of parliament for the Left pointed out, the governmental authorities themselves implicitly recognized the group's defining characteristics by
making the “Duldungs”-offer “when they listed the criteria which those have to fulfill who claim membership in the group and register individually with the public authorities in order to fall in the specific regulation” (Bürgerschaft der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg, 2014: 6213). The offer can be interpreted as an attempt by the Social-Democratic government to get the Lampedusa-refugees to register, hoping to thereby end their protests.
A majority of Lampedusa in Hamburg rejected the offer.14 In their official answer the group reaffirmed their collective identity as Lampedusa in Hamburg as well as their central demand to implement their rights as refugees in Hamburg:
We all left our various countries of origin to Libya at various times and for different existential reasons. From this point we have joint biographies and fates [...] In Italy we received a legal status to enable us to overcome the losses we suffered and to rebuild our lives. However till today no implementation has occurred (Lampedusa in Hamburg, 2013d).
The group also proposed that they should be given the chance to proof themselves as contributing members of society by giving them the “legal certainty, which gives us opportunity to start our new life [...] If we would have had a work permit in Hamburg, many of us would already work” (Lampedusa in Hamburg, 2013d). In this way
Lampedusa in Hamburg discursively positioned themselves as a particular group of
refugees based not only on their past but also on their potential as working residents of the city. By emphasizing their potential economic contribution as working member of society, the refugees added another aspect to their depiction as an exceptional group
14 With the beginning of June 2014 the time frame for the so-called “Duldungs”-offer ended. Until then 72 members of Lampedusa in Hamburg registered either voluntarily or as a consequence of police controls.
deserving of rights. These claims about their potential economic contribution is another part of the discourse of deservingness.
When a majority of Lampedusa in Hamburg rejected the offer they also reaffirmed their independence as a political actors. A few days after they answered the offer, the group published a letter to the Protestant church in which they severely criticized that the church officially supported the “Duldungs”-offer as the supposedly best option open to them – “We also have said that any help, support and advise is welcome. But we also have to clarify that we decide our fates and our future ourselves” (Lampedusa in Hamburg, 2013c).15 In this way the group insisted on their political independence. “[T]he group really organized as a group, presented themselves as a group and relatively clearly formulated as a group what they want and why they want it” stated one of my interviewees. The impression that this was the first time that a group of refugees protested in such an independent manner and thereby constituted themselves as an independent political actor from the beginning of the protests appeared in six of the interviews I conducted with different supporters. They hypothesized that the Lampedusa-group's self-presentation as right bearing subjects is one reason why they received such extensive support and solidarity. Therefore the group constituted their political independence discursively and acted in a corresponding manner which solidified the public perception that they are an exceptional group deserving of rights.
A few days after the rejection of the “Duldungs”-offer, on the 2nd November 2013 the largest demonstration in support of Lampedusa in Hamburg took place with about 10
15 The disagreement over the “Duldungs”-offer created a distance between some of the members of
Lampedusa in Hamburg and the church. Beforehand the Protestant church had been publicly criticized
for supporting the refugees, after the failed attempt to create a compromise church officials withdrew from the public debate for the most part.
000 participants – the protests by and in support of the Lampedusa-refugees continued but less frequent and less intense than in October 2013. During the advent season
Lampedusa in Hamburg initiated weekly demonstrations in the city center, however the
last one on December 21st was canceled due to concerns that the rally might escalate. Another rally organized by Rote Flora-activists on the same day in St. Pauli escalated into a violent confrontation with the police in which about 4 700 of the 7 000 protesters participated. Lampedusa in Hamburg was just one issue among others in the December 21st rally. The refugee protest became intertwined with other contentious issues in the city such as gentrification, the Rote Flora, and the Esso-Houses16 – Lampedusa in
Hamburg had become one contentious issues along which the city of Hamburg was
politically divided.
This division of the city also emerged in solidarity statements by supporting actors. They pointed to the liberal identities of some parts of Hamburg, especially between a more liberal Altona and St. Pauli in opposition to the main city of Hamburg and the politics in city hall.
When it is about the great matters of dispute in the city, the Altonaer politicians recollect the Danish roots of today's borough and occasionally rebel against official Senate politics. Such as in October last year when the so-called Lampedusa-refugees from Libya came to Hamburg. [...] Tolerance, openness for immigrants, self-reliance – such supposedly Danish values are then invoked in the debates in the Altonaer city hall. Scarcely one speech by
16 The Rote Flora is a former theatre, in the quarter Sternschanze neighbouring St. Pauli and part of the borough Altona, which has been squatted since 1989 by Leftist activists. Discussions over the ownership and use of this urban space occurred periodically, one of them in winter 2013/14. The Rote
Flora is a site of a variety of cultural and political events. The Esso-Houses were a popular complex
of buildings built in the 1960s in St. Pauli deriving its name from a gas station located in the complex. Due to the deteriorating state of the buildings, the complex was eventually demolished in February 2014 after almost a year of protests for its preservation and against the eviction of the tenants.
a politician in which the reference was missing that the Altona's coat of arms shows an open gate whereas it is closed in Hamburg's coat of arms. It almost seems that one still preferred Copenhagen as a nerve center and not the city hall in Hamburg, least of all Berlin (Hamburger Abendblatt, 2014a).17
This description of the Altonaer council's debates about Lampedusa in Hamburg narrates the borough's more liberal identity routed in its history. In the quarter St. Pauli the acts of solidarity and support for Lampedusa in Hamburg were also connected with the quarter's identity and its community. “Das St. Pauli Manifest: Wir sind mehr” (The St. Pauli Manifesto: We are more, 2013), a solidarity declaration initiated by a range of persons supporting the refugees, is the most striking example of a broader notion of belonging routed in the quarter: “With our means we want to welcome the people who fled from inhuman, insecure and hungry circumstances only to be treated inhumanly and insecurely again in Europe, we want to respect and protect them if they want to.” These examples demonstrate that the identity and the image of the city of Hamburg were connected to the protests. “I am somewhat surprised that this cosmopolitan city refers only to legal position in this extreme situation” (Hamburger Abendblatt, 2014b) stated one of the signers of a second solidarity declaration, “Hier eine Zukunft! Manifest für Lampedusa in Hamburg” (A Future Here! Manifesto for Lampedusa in Hamburg, 2014). By calling upon the liberal, cosmopolitan image of Hamburg supporters connected ideals about universal rights to the identity of the city of Hamburg and thereby invoked broader notions of belonging. In relation to its image, Hamburg's capacity to accommodate refugees as well as the city's historical heritage as a harbor
17 When protests against the police controls were escalating and shortly before the “Duldungs”-offer was made in October 2013, all parties in the council of the borough Altona decided to provide the funds for housing containers on church grounds for the Lampedusa-refugees, which expressed a more compromising stance than in the city's parliament.
city and a “gateway to the world” (“Tor zur Welt”) were topics that shaped the discussions about Lampedusa in Hamburg. This connection between the protests and the specific locality of the city of Hamburg is already inherent in the name of the group
Lampedusa in Hamburg and symbolized in the group's logo which has an anchor with a
raised fist in its center and thereby references Hamburg's image and history as a harbor city in connection with the slogan “here to stay.” Therefore the protests by and in support of Lampedusa in Hamburg not only relied on the social and material resources available through a network of local supporters, but the refugees' protest connected with already existing conflicts in the city and the refugees and their supporters drew upon discourses about the city's identity. Together they thereby challenged the status quo and argued for broader notions of belonging.
During this phase of repeated escalations, the violence of some of the protests increasingly overshadowed the protest by Lampedusa in Hamburg in the media coverage. In reaction to the previous violent incidences, the police established so-called “Gefahrengebiete” (literally danger areas) in St. Pauli between January 4th and January 13th. These zones were highly controversial, since they enabled the police to impose a curfew and to conduct stop and frisk procedures. The escalations showed that the Social-Democratic government was unable to enforce the status quo by using police force.
3.5 Remaining Present in the City
Over the next few months the Lampedusa-refugees and their supporters worked to keep the issue salient, but there were fewer protest activities – a period of deescalation began. Government officials began to increasingly ignore Lampedusa in Hamburg. Especially
after the mayor held a keynote speech on migration politics in the Thalia Theater on March 19th, 2014, government officials have said very little about the ongoing struggle for a right to stay for the Lampedusa-refugees – silence has become the official stance.
As a political issue Lampedusa in Hamburg has stayed salient without ever reaching the momentum it had gained late in 2013. More routine activities came to characterize the movement – Lampedusa in Hamburg has become part of the city's political and cultural landscape. From an early stage on the Thalia Theater, the city's most prominent theater, supported the Lampedusa-group in three ways: They collected donations, staged a play in which some members of Lampedusa in Hamburg participated and organized public discussions. The play continues to be staged and it is now customary that debates take place afterwards. Thus the Thalia Theater helped to keep the issue salient by incorporating Lampedusa in Hamburg in the city's cultural life. Football is another medium through which members of Lampedusa in Hamburg regularly engage with the city's public and have become incorporated in its society. The support by the football club FC St. Pauli and by its fan groups led to the creation of FC Lampedusa Hamburg. The football events also serve as regular platforms for the Lampedusa-refugees to appear publicly. By now the team plays in a regular amateur league. Both examples demonstrate the extent to which members of Lampedusa in Hamburg interact with the local community where they claim rights and engage in protests.
On a square right next to the central station, the tent by Lampedusa in Hamburg is located. Ever since May 2013, the tent has served as a public meeting and information space. It continues to do so until now. The centrality and publicness of the tent's location stand in stark contrast to the locations that are usually assigned to refugees that arrive in
the city, such as the accommodations for refugees which are often located in more marginalized spaces at the edge of the city. The tent is one example that demonstrates how publicly present the refugees of Lampedusa in Hamburg are – they firmly established their presence in the city.
The tent's location is close to the main building of the trade unions in Hamburg which facilitated the contact between Lampedusa in Hamburg and the trade unions. One union in particular supported the Lampedusa-refugees – in summer 2013 members of
Lampedusa in Hamburg became members of the union Ver.di. This membership,
although it was controversial within the union, demonstrated the will to let Lampedusa-refugees become part of society and is connected to the depiction of Lampedusa in
Hamburg as potential working members of society. “The work is there, but what is
missing is the work permit” (Hamburger Abendblatt, 2014c) argued one union representative by pointing out that various employers in Hamburg complain about a lack of qualified personnel, a lack which the Lampedusa-refugees could help to remove. While the claim to a right to work and the discourse about the refugees' potential as working members of society were part of the protests by Lampedusa in Hamburg since the beginning, this aspect gained increasing attention in the later phases of the movement. It added a future oriented component to the depiction of Lampedusa in
Hamburg as a particularly deserving group.
In the context of the elections for the parliament in Hamburg on the 15th February 2015
Lampedusa in Hamburg became one issue regarding refugee politics in the election
campaigns. “Never mind the papers – Recht auf die Stadt” (right to the city) was the slogan under which 8 000 persons gathered at the St. Pauli Landing Bridges for a rally
on 31st January. The slogan was not only the rally's motto, but it is also the name of a new alliance for refugees' rights in which Lampedusa in Hamburg takes part. It indicates that their struggle diffused into a broader movement for refugees' rights and their access to health care, housing, and work permits.
The Social-Democrats won the elections, however they lost the absolute majority and entered in a coalition with the Green party. In their electoral program the Green party had demanded a right to stay for Lampedusa in Hamburg, but the coalition agreement does not mention the Lampedusa-refugees. Instead the government representatives stated that the “Duldungs”-offer is supposed to be reinstated. Consequently the coalition received harsh criticism from both the refugees and supporting groups. The refugees of
Lampedusa in Hamburg continue their struggle even though their situation remains
precarious. In June 2015 members of the group took their demands to Strasbourg where they presented a letter to the president of the European Parliament. In the letter
Lampedusa in Hamburg (2015) renewed their claim to a right to stay in Hamburg: “We
just want the right to stay and work so that we can sustain ourselves and our families back home. We demand the Europe-wide recognition of our Italian residence and working permits.”
4. Conclusion
The refugees of Lampedusa in Hamburg and their supporters continue to voice the refugees' claim to a right to reside and work in the city of Hamburg. So far work on rights' struggles by irregular migrants has focused on the discourses through which they claim rights, however I argue that the case of Lampedusa in Hamburg clearly shows the importance of looking at the interaction processes with the local community in which
irregular migrants claim rights. In this article, I demonstrated that the strength of
Lampedusa in Hamburg's struggle for rights rests not only in their discursive depiction
as an exceptional group deserving of rights but also in their interactions with the local community in the city of Hamburg.
The emphasis on informal criteria of belonging in contemporary citizenship politics opens the space for irregular migrants to assert rights and claim that they do belong (Nyers & Rygiel, 2012) – discourses of deservingness are one way for irregular migrants to claim rights. I have conceptualized deservingness discourses as a specific set of discourses through which a collective actor aims to construct itself as a legitimate claimant of rights based on a narrative about their exceptional characteristics. Instead of regarding discourses through which irregular migrants assert rights as thematically separate (see McNevin, 2009 for example), I emphasize that they are connected by a shared logic that is to depict a specific group of irregular migrants as an exceptional deserving of rights. In this article, I demonstrated that Lampedusa in Hamburg and their supporters used a discourses of deservingness to depict the group as exceptional and thereby assert the refugees' right to stay in the city.
Lampedusa in Hamburg and their supporters have depicted the group as exceptionally
deserving of rights resting on their migration history, their conduct throughout the protests and their potential as contributing members of society. The members of
Lampedusa in Hamburg identify as a collective actor based on their migration history
and have constituted themselves as genuine refugees, as survivors of the Libyan war, then as refugees in Italy and finally as victims in a humanitarian emergency. The claim for a right to work has been an integral part of the refugees' call for rights. Together with
their supporters the members of Lampedusa in Hamburg have highlighted their potential as working members of society. From the beginning of the contestation process the Lampedusa-refugees have emphasized their political independence and conducted themselves in a corresponding manner which, I have argued, further strengthened the public perception of them being an exceptional group. This is one aspect that makes the case of Lampedusa in Hamburg particularly interesting and should therefore receive more attention in future research. Politically the discourse of deservingness has been expressed in the demand to apply §23 Residence Act and thereby effectively declare an exemption in favor of Lampedusa in Hamburg. By demanding a right to reside and work in the city of Hamburg the refugees and their supporters have challenged the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion delineated by national and EU migration and citizenship politics.
Beyond the discursive construction of Lampedusa in Hamburg as an exceptional group, I demonstrated that it is also necessary to look more closely at the interaction with the local community in which the refugees have claimed rights, in this case the city of Hamburg. Discursively the supporters of Lampedusa in Hamburg have called upon the liberal, cosmopolitan image of the city of Hamburg routed in its history as a harbor city to advocate for broader notion of belonging. The liberal identity of the city of Hamburg facilitated the claim that the city is responsible to uphold human rights, especially in the face of a humanitarian emergency. The interpretation that there was a humanitarian emergency supported the call for an exception – humanitarianism justified the demand for an exception (Fassin & Vasquez, 2005). Supporters have invoked alternative notions of belonging in connection to the identities of some quarters of the city in order to express their opposition to the governmental authorities. This shows how the protest by
Lampedusa in Hamburg and their supporters is connected to other contentious issues in
the city to the extent that it has increasingly diffused into a broader struggle for refugees' rights along with other urban conflicts. In this way their struggle continues until today.
The case of Lampedusa in Hamburg shows that the specific locality in which migrants claim rights matters in terms of the discursive repertoires as well as the social and material resources that can be drawn upon. A vast network of supporting actors, from church groups to urban activists to football fans and artists, gathered around the refugees of Lampedusa in Hamburg which helped to enable and sustain their protest over a period of more than two years by now. Beyond effectively sustaining the protests, the network of supporters also contributed to the gradual incorporation of members of
Lampedusa in Hamburg into the city's political, cultural, and social life. In this way, the
Lampedusa-refugees have remained publicly present despite the precariousness of their situation. It has allowed the refugees of Lampedusa in Hamburg to establish their “presence” (Sassen, 2002) as political actors despite practical and formal obstacles. The city of Hamburg has shaped their struggle. The protest by and in support of Lampedusa
in Hamburg has been a predominantly local struggle which has resisted the local
enforcement of national and EU asylum and refugee policies – this case encompassed both the localization of the enforcement of migration politics as well as local forms of resistance against increasingly restrictive citizenship and migration politics.
References
Anderson, B. (2010). Mobilizing migrants, making citizens: migrant domestic workers as political agents. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 33(1), 60–74.
