Charity & The Pitfall of Patronage
Eritrean Refugees in a German Church Asylum
University of Amsterdam (UvA) Department: GSSS
Programme: Master of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Supervisor: dr. Kristine Krause
Second Reader: dr. Milena Veenis
Third Reader: dr. Barak Kalir
Name: Sophie Knauerhase
Student Number: 10739750
E-Mail: sophie.knauerhase@gmail.com
[2] Abstract:
This master’s thesis attempts to contribute to the existing ethnographies of charity on the micro level, through a thorough study of the situation of Eritrean refugees in church asylum in a small town in East Germany. I will extensively analyse the relationship between a single voluntary helper who created and upholds the church asylum, and several Eritreans. For this, I draw from literature on patron-clients relationships (Hicken 2011, Wolf 1968), kinship relations and gift giving, as forwarded by Marcel Mauss (2011) and frame it within literature on humanitarianism. Building on gift exchange theory, I argue that there are no free gifts, even in charity work, but that giving is a moral act and produces the obligation to return. The Eritreans therefore consciously display their gratitude through hospitality, care and demonstrations of esteem towards their helper. It is through these strategic acts of reciprocation that they maintain their dignity in an inferior position in the power relation. Other strategic acts involve calling the helper a ‘father’. I demonstrate the complexity of the lived relationship produced in daily life in a charity situation with its aspects of clientelism, kinship and friendship. I also show how the pitfall of patronage can thereby not be avoided because it is entrenched in charity work itself.
[4] Declaration:
I have read and understood the University of Amsterdam plagiarism policy [published on http://www.student.uva.nl/fraude-plagiaat/voorkomen.cfm]. I declare that this assignment is entirely my own work, all sources have been properly acknowledged, and that I have not previously submitted this work, or any version of it, for assessment in any other paper.
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CONTENTS
1. Introduction ... 8
1.1 Theoretical Framework and Research Question ... 11
1.2 Methods ... 12
1.3 Outlook for the Thesis ... 13
2. Charity in Church Asylum ... 14
2.1 The Arbitrariness surrounding Extra-Legal Spaces ... 14
2.2 Charity: Based on Inequality ... 15
2.3 Inhabitants and Daily Life of the Church Asylum in Bad K. ... 17
3. Ben and the Eritreans – Was ist das? ... 19
3.1 Dependencies (Danke, Danke) ... 21
3.2 What patronage is and where it evolves... 23
3.3 The Patron: Mediating, Organizing, Supplying ... 25
3.4 The Clients: Granting Esteem and Hospitality ... 28
3.4.1 The Cycle of Reciprocity ... 28
3.4.2 Partaking in the Suppenküche ... 30
3.4.3 The Dignity on the Receiving End ... 31
4. Ben – the Friend, the Father, the Patron ... 33
4.1 Vollmacht, Vormund, Vaterrolle ... 33
4.2 Friendship & Amity ... 38
4.2.1 The Official Breach ... 39
4.3 The Plurality of Voices ... 41
5. Reflection and Conclusion ... 43
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1. INTRODUCTION
Vergeßt die Gastfreundschaft nicht. Durch sie haben manche, ohne es zu wissen, Engel beherbergt.
(Hebräer 13:2)
Forget not to shew love unto strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
(Hebrews 13:2)
These words were the motto of an information event on church asylum in the East of Germany that took place during my period of fieldwork. It was initiated by the provost of a protestant parish of the area and several pastors, mayors, representatives of local councils and school directors were invited. I was there with Ben1, a
young man of my age, who is taking care of the church asylum in Bad K., the small town in which I conducted my research.
Several days later, another information event on church asylum was organized in another town of the area. It showed that the church asylum became an emergent topic, just as my research interest had been drawn there by chance. I had initially wanted to research asylum seekers2 living in the asylum seeker centers in the town where I
went to school, but then I got acquainted with Ben and learnt that there was a church asylum existing for nearly one year in the same town, which was something neither my friends nor relatives knew about, and it quickly became the focus of my research.
There has been an intensive debate on church asylum in the public involving the Federal Ministry of the Interior, the Federal Agency of Migration and Refugees, and the Protestant and Catholic Churches. The discussion in the media can be followed on a website on church asylum by the federal ecumenical task force (Ökumenische
Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft - Asyl in der Kirche). The website covers media publications during the heydays of
the discussion, between January 30 and March 17, 2015 (a time frame that lies entirely within my research period).3 The debate reached a climax when the German Minister of Interior, Thomas de Maizière (from the
party CDU, Christlich Demokratische Union – Christian (!) Democratic Union) declared that he was “by principle and fundamentally“ against church asylum. Shortly thereafter, he compared it to sharia – an utterance he was obliged to withdraw afterwards.4 He argued that no religious institution, neither Islamic nor Christian,
could elevate itself above German law. As a Christian he would understand „four, five, six, ten cases“ of church asylum a year but „as we are talking about more than hundred cases“ (360 at this point in time), we face a „systematic prevention of transfers according to Dublin which qualifies as an abuse of church asylum“.²
1 All names are changed.
2 I will use the term refugee, if I speak of people who did not apply for asylum yet. I will speak of asylum
seekers, which is a bureaucratic category, if I want to speak more general than about my main group of (foreign) interlocutors in the thesis who are all Eritrean. The term ‘asylum seeker’ is only a legal category, but it
encompasses people who are subjugated to a similar life style due to this legality, and therefore the term is suitable for my purposes.
3http://www.kirchenasyl.de/?portfolio=zur-aktuellen-situation-neue-bedingungen-des-kirchenasyls 4
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Indeed, Germany is recording a continuous rise in the number of church asylums: By now, four months later, in June, 2015 there are already 460 people in church asylum. In 2004, the year in which the website on church asylums began listing those numbers, there were only 200 people in church asylum throughout the whole year, whereas in 2014 there were 788 people in total - thus numbers rose nearly 400% within 10 years.5
The main reason for the current need of church asylum is the Dublin convention, which has existed since 1990 in renewed versions6. It rules that asylum seekers have to claim asylum in the country through which they first
entered Europe. The aim of the Dublin convention is that a claim for asylum can only be made once (so that refugees would not try their chances in different countries) and to balance the distribution of asylum in a just way. Through this regulation Germany is now only responsible for the asylum procedure if the asylum seeker reached it by plane or if it cannot be proven that a refugee came via land, crossing another member state of the treaty before.
The instrument to register and prove the sojourn of asylum seekers in the member states is the EURODAC system. It is a fingerprint database in which the fingerprints of asylum seekers are kept for 10 years (Bundesamt in Zahlen 2013, 34; Schuster 2011, 404). The Dublin convention presupposes that the member states all adhere to similar standards of treatment for asylum seekers, which is however not the case (Schuster 2011, 404). In Italy, asylum seekers often face a life on the street7 and, in the case of my informants, have already experienced
it on their sojourn and do not want to return there. But if a fingerprint is found to be taken in Italy (which happened by force to my interlocutors), according to Dublin III, the asylum seeker is required to return – this is the law.
Officially the church asylum is then a way to demand ‚a renewed assessment of the facts in justified individual cases‘ (This is how it is put in public spaces, e.g. by the representative of the Nordkirche (Northern Church) at one of the information events I attended with Ben). Only a very few asylum seekers, in comparison to the number of those who face problems because of Dublin, can make use of this possibility. It depends on parishes that are willing to grant church asylum, on knowing about the opportunity and on being able to access the right people. These few asylum seekers have to spend 6 months on the church ground (in fact within the ‚sacred
5http://www.kirchenasyl.de/?page_id=4
6 Dublin III is applied since January 1, 2014, before Dublin II was followed since 2003. The changes since
Dublin III are not substantial for my purposes.The Dublin law is one of the four building blocks of the EU asylum regime (Schuster 2011: 403). It is applied in all EU member states except Denmark, but also in Switzerland, Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland (Ibd.: 33). ProAsyl has uploaded the wording of the law of the previous Dublin II convention in German under:
http://www.proasyl.de/fileadmin/proasyl/fm_redakteure/Asyl_in_Europa/Dublin_II-Verordnung.pdf, last accessed on May 9, 2015.
7 Deportations to Italy have come under attack but because ‘systemic deficiencies’ in the ‘reception conditions of
asylum seekers’ could not be proven, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights did not rule, as in the case of Greece, that transfers should be stopped (Juss 2013: 309-310).
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rooms‘8) from where they will not be deported by the police. Only after this period of time can they lawfully
request asylum in Germany and only then will their case be examined by German authorities. If they had went into hiding before, they have to wait 18 months in church asylum.9 It is not easy to live for such a long time in a
greatly restricted environment. In most of the cases however, the asylum seekers are rewarded because church asylums usually end positively (in 2013, 43 of 45 cases of church asylum in Germany ended at least with a degree of tolerance, and only one person was deported).
In Bad K., the town where I conducted my research, seven people were hosted in the parish throughout the year of its existence. Nearly all of them were Eritrean (six) and one more Eritrean girl lived there unofficially for a while. The number of Eritrean refugees reaching Germany is currently rising (Bundesamt in Zahlen 2013: 18).10
For a long time Eritrea has been among the 10 main countries of origin for refugees in Europe (Ibd.: 30) because Eritrea is a military dictatorship.
In 2013 57.4% of Eritreans were granted refugee protection (not only subsidiary or humanitarian protection), which is the highest amount in comparison to the other main countries of origin in 2013 (Ibd., 47) and speaks to the official recognition in Germany of political persecution from the Eritrean government.
Since Eritreans cannot leave Eritrea by plane because the government does not issue passports for normal citizens, they need to cross the Mediterranean Sea by ship or boat, and reach Europe in Malta, Italy or Greece. According to Dublin, these states will be the member states who ”actually permitted entry“ (Schuster 2011, 404) to Europe and where they are supposed to be returned once their fingerprint is found in the database. While Germany refrains from deporting to Eritrea11 due to the very high possibility that returnees will go directly into
prison upon arrival (Connection e.V. 2010: 9), it does deport Eritreans to other states, according to the Dublin convention.
The church asylum in Bad K. came about by chance when Ben became acquainted with three Eritreans12 who
visited the church service on Sundays. When Ben got to know that they were supposed to be deported to Italy, he
8 Oral communication of a lawyer for asylum seekers during an information event on church asylum in March
2015.
9 This is because a member state has 6 months to deport an asylum seeker to the country through
which he or she first entered Europe (e.g. Italy). Once the time period of 6 months is over, Italy or the respective member state has the right to refuse to take back the asylum seeker, and Germany itself has to deal with his or her asylum procedure. Except if the refugee absconds – then the German state has 18 months time to return the claimant.
10 See:
http://www.bamf.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/DE/2014/20141107-0029-pressemitteilung-bmi-asylzahlen-oktober.html
11 Beschluss vom 24.03.2010 - 8 A 4620/05.A - Abschiebungsverbot gemäß § 60 Abs. 2 AufenthG wegen
drohender Gefahr der Folter oder unmenschlicher Behandlung in Eritrea wegen Wehrdienstentziehung (Klaglosstellung durch das BAMF). Link:
http://www.asyl.net/index.php?id=185&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=38858&cHash=1eb4581c5e0e43eb0f43348 4475a0843
12 It is useful for me to speak of „the Eritreans“ but this category is of course homogenizing. There are 9
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immediately asked the parish of Bad K. if they could enter church asylum. Ben nodded eagerly when I called his attention to the biblical quotation, I cited in the beginning: ‘It is like this’ (Das ist ja auch so), he said, ‘I have also been housing angels’ (Ich habe auch schon Engel beherbergt.).
Ben had a close relationship with the Eritreans who were hosted in the church asylum that he was looking after. He used his experience with them to encourage anyone he met during these information events not to hesitate if the need of a church asylum would emerge. Many people we encountered seemed insecure and sceptical about the idea of setting up a church asylum, and some declared that they did not engage with this topic ‘voluntarily’. The organizers of the events were aware of these doubts, and therefore used means like emphatically told stories of refugees’ sad destinies to open people up and to evoke compassion.
1.1
T
HEORETICAL
F
RAMEWORK AND
R
ESEARCH
Q
UESTION
Compassion and charity often go together, as various scholars have pointed out (Harrel-Bond 1992, Ticktin 2005, Rozakou 2012). Refugees are rarely portrayed as people with rights – what is used to move the masses are rather the logics of pity, giving to the one who is suffering enough (Harrel-Bond 1992). But when support is not based on rights but on compassion and is left up to charitable institutions by the state, justice to be enacted depends on the “exceptionality of the individual”. In the case of asylum seekers, help is based on luck or on other criteria it should not be based on, like gender, race, country of origin or reasons of flight – while political refugees may in some contexts be given an advantage, in others they may be disadvantaged, just as economic migrants (2005: 366-367). But this kind of access to the law, as Ticktin calls our attention to, “is not about systematicity, regularity, or even equality” (2005: 359) at all and therefore perpetuates injustice.
What more is problematic about the use of compassion is that it seems to play upon a feeling that is directed at the suffering subject vertically, not horizontally. The one who needs compassion is standing below; he needs the mercy of the benefactor, while the benefactor does not need him in turn. That is why charity and humanitarian aid (as well as development work) are associated so easily with patronage (Ibd.: 208, Mauss 2002) and the implicit arrogance of the “rich almoner” (Mauss 2002: 63).
However, while charity has much been criticized from a theoretical (Mauss 2002, Douglas 1990) or theoretical and structural perspective (Harrel-Bond 1992 and 2002, Ticktin 2005 and 2014), it is interesting to see what happens at the grass-root level where actual individuals meet each other and close relationships can evolve, something which also Rozakou has done in Greece (2012). My inquiry will be guided by the following research question:
Which kind of relationships evolve in daily life between the helper and the helped, in an extra-legal and charitable institution such as church asylum?
even though Eritrea is a very small country, the exact location of origin, ethnic group, language, religion etc. ensures that the Eritreans themselves feel very different from one another.
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To answer this question, firstly, theory on gift exchange by Marcel Mauss (2012) and on humanitarianism will be needed to develop a theoretical and structural perspective on charity, the context in which my analysis will take place. I will furthermore make use of theory on patron-client relationships which seems to be most useful to describe the relationship which had evolved between Ben and the Eritreans, even though it may not have been a typical patron-client relationship as Gellner, Silverman, Scott and Weingrod (all 1977) describe in the collection on Patrons and Clients in Mediterranean Societies where patronage appears as “the dominant mode of political organisation” (Weingrod 1977: 42) or where clients “supply economic services” (Ibd: 45). I will use the concept of the patronage whatsoever, because other than the concept of the broker, who is mediating between two parties, it is directly associated with the hierarchy that appears between the patron and his clients, and also rather reflects the ratio of one patron, having many clients. However, because I do not want “to obscure the complexity and actual practices and the diversity of aid” (Rozakou 2012: 563), I will have to add theory on social exchange and reciprocity within kinship and friendship, predominantly based on Pitt-Rivers (1973) to keep up with the complexity of the relationships that I observed.
1.2
M
ETHODS
My fieldwork took place from January-March 2015 in a small town in the East of Germany. While most of my information is based on participant observation, I started to conduct interviews at the halfway point of my fieldwork.
Before I went into the field I had been told that it would be difficult to gain the trust of people in such a vulnerable position as asylum seekers. The Eritreans however, treated me so politely and friendly that I never felt uncomfortable around them. Still, I learnt in a benevolent way that they were not void of skepticism in the beginning: Said, who was my main interlocutor due to his language skills, told me in the second month that he had dreamed of me walking in a demonstration with a sign that said ‚Ausländer raus!‘ (Foreigners Get Out!). I thought that he worried that I would turn out to be someone else than I pretended. This assumption was eventually affirmed when he also told me that during the first month, he was not sure if I was not a spy of the government, and that he found himself torn between feelings of sympathy and distrust. But soon, the Eritreans started to called me „meine Kleine“, the common term used in the parish hall (introduced by Ben – I will get back to this) or „meine Schwester“ (my sister), a term to express closeness among the Eritreans. Ben occasionally called me ‘Sophiechen‘, a minimization of Sophie, or even ‘Engelchen‘ – I think no term could ascribe more innocence and thus show trust. It was indeed very important for me to establish a close relationship with Ben beside the Eritreans because he acted like a gatekeeper for me and provided me with much valuable information. Also, he plays a major role in this thesis.
Even though my information is also based on interviews, participant observation has been the more effective method for what I have studied. Interviews mainly allowed me to get a quotable record of an opinion I already
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knew. What I studied deepest was the everyday life of the Eritreans in church asylum and their relationship to Ben. Something like this cannot be summarized or told in an interview, it needs to be experienced.
Participant observation or deep hanging out constituted the time when I got to know people and built relationships. While I first sat with the men in the guest room while the women were cooking, I learnt that I would only establish a good relationship with them when I would join them in the kitchen. Soon thereafter I regularly helped to cook, lay the table, clean up and wash dishes together with the Eritreans. This is something that I did not see other Germans do.
Only because people started to like me and to trust me (not least because I really started to like them), they opened up to me and let me know about things an ordinary attendant would not know about. This was a day-to-day process and in this way also, my understanding about the situation piled up: slowly, from day-to-day to day-to-day. In the end it gave me a much more complex and differentiated picture than I could have obtained from interviews only.
1.3
O
UTLOOK FOR THE
T
HESIS
The first chapter in the main part (chapter 2) will refer to the second part of my research question: church asylum as an extra-legal and charitable institution, and will frame chapter 3 and 4 in which I will zoom in on the relationship between Ben and the Eritreans. Chapter 2 will explain why asylum seekers, as a group of people with limited number of rights, are in need of such structures as church asylum. Drawing on Mauss’ theory of gift exchange I will explain, why inequalities and power hierarchies are inherent to charity and therefore invite patronage.
In the third chapter, I will illustrate the power relation through ethnographic material and I will show in what way it is a patron-client relationship which has evolved between Ben and the Eritreans. While I present what both sides give into the relationship, I also show where the agency of the Eritreans is positioned, and how they maintain their dignity in their weaker position.
In the fourth chapter, I will bring the element of affection in that I observed between Ben and the Eritreans and I will elaborate on the fact that Ben was at times ascribed the status of the father. Using Pitt-Rivers, I will explain what it meant for the relationship of social exchange and the obligation of reciprocation if Ben was more of a patron, a father or a friend.
Thereby, I hope to draft a picture of the multi-layered relationships between Ben and the Eritreans which I observed during my fieldwork and which differed from individual to individual. This, I hope, will tell something about charity work that is not visible from the structural perspective that focuses on laws, policies and institutions.
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2. CHARITY IN CHURCH ASYLUM
2.1
T
HE
A
RBITRARINESS SURROUNDING
E
XTRA
-L
EGAL
S
PACES
What is important to understand is that asylum seekers as a legal category, generally constitute a group of people with notably limited rights and minimal access to state support. The state leaves a gap that then individuals, non-governmental organizations, associations or councils attempt to fill (Ticktin 2014: 281). Structures of this kind are in Germany on the national level for example the well-known organization proAsyl. Smaller structures, rooted at the level of the state (Bundesstaat) which I encountered during my fieldwork include the Flüchtlingsrat (refugee council) which supports asylum seekers in all areas but especially with access to lawyers, fair asylum procedures, and access to vocational training (Ausbildung), or medinetz, a network of medicine students which support refugees in cases of sickness, or NAF (Netzwerk Arbeit für Flüchtlinge), a network that assists refugees in finding work. That means that the church asylum is only one of the “interstitial“ structures which are trying to support refugees outside of state-run structures. Currently, it mainly responds to the fact that asylum seekers do not have the right to decide in which country they ask for asylum, since it is decided through the Dublin treaty. The church asylum enables a few to stay in the country of their choice, if they endure the time period of possible deportation.
Church asylum may be especially vulnerable because other than for the formation, rights and duties of an NGO, there exist no laws about it: Its existence is tolerated by convention (Herler 2004: 197). This became tangible when church asylum came increasingly under attack in the media. It was subjected to a growing amount of paradigm shifts in terms of how to deal with church asylum claimants.13 During the three months of my
fieldwork, information on what to expect for people in church asylum were changed several times: Through unofficial channels I was told one day that from now on church asylum will be made less attractive by always classifying the refugee as ‘fugitive’14 and thereby prolonging it to 18 months. Later on I was told by the refugee
council that now the Federation and the church had reached an agreement where the church asylum was supposed to be tested for 6 months (till October 2015) to see if it will be further tolerated by the state. They will examine if numbers of church asylum will rise and if the cases in church asylum are justified.
Probably also due to the worsened reputation of church asylum, the two first Eritreans in Bad K. still received money from the social service department, while later on this concession was not made anymore. One of my informants who left the church asylum after I ended fieldwork was the first one who only obtained the status of tolerance (Duldung) when he went out, a status through which he is actually permanently obliged to leave the country (ausreisepflichtig). Before opening the asylum procedure the Bundesamt reserved itself to check first if there were any other legal grounds on which this Eritrean could possibly be deported. At the same time, he was
13 Information given by a lawyer for asylum seekers during an information event on church asylum.
14 That means that the church asylum, which is officially registered with the authorities, is interpreted as if the
asylum seeker was deliberately balking a deportation and s/he is thus treated in the same way as an asylum seeker who goes into hiding.
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also the first one and the only asylum seeker I know who got his monthly social security benefit paid in the form of vouchers.15 The refugee council told me in January that the practise of handing out vouchers to asylum
seekers had actually been abandoned and was only used as a ‘means of disciplining’ asylum seekers who have not been cooperating.
This does not only mirror the increasing number of critics on church asylum but it also demonstrates that it was simply possible to treat asylum seekers differently without traceable reasons because there was no law that prevented the state officials from using their room for maneuver.
I want to refer to the fact that asylum seekers are subjected to the discretion of individuals, such as state officials, with what Ticktin has called ‘juridical indeterminacy’ (2005: 365). At the margins of law, where asylum seekers usually find themselves, the access to their rights is lying in the hands of state officials. Their rights are not as protected and standardized as are the rights of citizens. Ticktin has described how refugees in France were subjected to the benevolence of policemen, judges or the compassion of state medical officials who acted as gatekeepers on the way to a residence permit or other goals (Ibd.: 364). In the case of church asylum in Bad K., the Eritreans were first of all dependent on the benevolence of Ben, and the parish to host them, and during the time of church asylum and beyond, need to rely on the discretion of officials who work in the foreigner’s registration office, the social service department or the Federal Agency for Migration and Refugees.
2.2
C
HARITY
:
B
ASED ON
I
NEQUALITY
It is thus the outsourcing of state functions (Ticktin 2012: 281) that makes asylum seekers so vulnerable and forces them into charitable institutions such as church asylum. While it is laudable that individuals work in humanitarian NGOs or found church asylums to make up for the missing support of the state for refugees, I now want to outline the problematics that come along with charity.
Charity, the virtue of helping those in need, is supposed to be “a voluntary, unrequited surrender of resources” (Douglas 1990 in Mauss 2002: ix), or to put it in Malinowski’s words “a pure gift” which is a gift which does not require any return service (in Befu 1977: 257).
While Mary Douglas (1990) has related Mauss’ work on gifts to charity, Barbara Harrell-Bond (1992) has taken it into the realm of refugee studies and humanitarian aid. Both point at Mauss’ outstanding insight that there are
no free gifts: every gift requires reciprocation.16
15 Vouchers are a discriminatory practise because they label people in a supermarket as asylum seekers or as
socially “weak” and hurt their right of self-rule since you can only buy food and drinks (but for example no credit for your cellphone) with them. Furthermore, they complicate shopping because no change in cash is given if the vouchers are not used up till 90% of their value.
16 Similarly, Gouldner has posited that there exists a universal ‘norm of reciprocity’ by which you know that you
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When Mauss comparatively studied societies in Polynesia, Melanesia and North-West America with gift-exchange systems, he found that there were three obligations surrounding gifts: to give, to receive and to repay (Mauss 2002: 10-11). According to Mauss, the circulation of gifts is about ‘honor’, ‘dignity’, ‘etiquette’, ‘rank’, ‘position’ and ‘authority’. “The gift not yet repaid debases the man who accepted it,” he writes (Ibd.: 63). Mauss himself stated that “charity wounds him who receives” because it forces him into an inferior position towards his donor, even though the donor may be not aware of this (2002: 63).
If we apply Mauss’ insight on asylum seekers in the country in which they search for refuge, it can be said that they find themselves in an inferior position from the beginning: Even the act of asking for asylum is an act of asking for help – thus asking for a gift before having given one yourself. In the country in which they arrive, they start out with a debt in the cycle of gift-giving. One of my interlocutors was occupied with this thought. He said: ‘I did nothing for this country still now. I am only taking, I am not giving’.
The dependency on help is only one factor that is creating a hierarchy between the helper and the helped. Another structural inequality in the relationship between asylum seekers and their supporters emerges through the fact that you are always in an advantaged position if you are in your home country. Here, you know how to get along, how to access knowledge and resources and you are part of a familiar social network. Regarding the church asylum in Bad K. the relationship between the voluntary helper Ben and the Eritreans who enter church asylum is one marked by inequality before it has even begun.
The structural inequality between asylum seekers and their voluntary helpers will then be maintained or even enhanced throughout the time in which the asylum seekers in church asylum receive daily help and support, which they cannot repay in terms of its value.
What the church asylum provided them with was, first of all, the protection from deportation to another country. The refuge in the parish hall allowed them to stay in the state they preferred - at least over the country they were supposed to be deported to.
What they received in church asylum on a daily basis was a place to live, food, clothes, medical care and in the case of Bad K. from time to time money donations. Even without Mauss’ theoretical framework it is well comprehensible that these asylum seekers must have felt indebted towards the parish that hosted them and the individuals therein. Ben was a leading figure in all of this because he initiated the church asylum and took care of the asylum seekers on a daily basis. One of my informants said one day that what Ben was doing for them was enough to feel grateful towards him until the end of his life.
It was thus the enduring one-sided dependency of the Eritreans on support during their stay in church asylum, that invited the emergence of a patron-client like relationship despite the most honourable intentions of the voluntary helper Ben between him and the asylum seekers. The structural power inequality that dominated the
[17]
situation from the beginning could not be resolved in practise. Those on the receiving end of gift-giving felt debased and were debased by their well-wisher.
Before I start my analysis of why that was so, I need to make you acquainted with my main informants and their context.
2.3
I
NHABITANTS AND
D
AILY
L
IFE OF THE
C
HURCH
A
SYLUM IN
B
AD
K.
Five Eritreans were living in the parish hall when I arrived in January for my fieldwork. Helen, an Eritrean woman around 50, had joined the first two, who I will call Teddy and Asmorom, in July. She had come by plane via Poland and was therefore supposed to be deported there according to Dublin III. However, she wanted to ask for asylum in Germany and not in Poland because her daughter and her daughter’s son were already living in Germany. On the very first day I was introduced to the Eritreans, the message came that church asylum was over for Helen. CHampagne was fetched while she hugged everyone, including me, surprised and clueless as I was. Different people of the parish who came by congratulated her, and only later on I understood the importance of these news.
Furthermore, there was Thomas, who is about 30 and is able to entertain everyone with his jokes despite his very limited German. He arrived in October and has to wait 18 months.
Afterwards, in November, Said, 26 years old, arrived. He was twice arrested in the deportation centre and got out twice miraculously (the German officials had made some bureaucratic mistakes, his lawyer told me). When Said was about to be deported by the police for a third time, he ran off, which brought him a wait of 18 months. He was mediated via medinetz, an organisation of medicine students who support people without papers in the case of illness. Said is the only Muslim among the Eritreans in church asylum. He speaks the best German (and English) among the Eritreans and is therefore constantly consulted as a translator.
Then Aster joined the church asylum, a small person with a high tied ponytail, who is around 30 and only stayed as a ‘guest‘. For her case, the congregation council of Bad K. had never adopted a personalized resolution which means that the authorities did not know that she was residing in church asylum. In Aster’s case it was Ben who had approached her and asked if she needed help. Aster rejected Ben’s help in the first place but was then deported to Italy. She came back to Bad K. after about a week and then moved into the parish hall.
The last one to join the church asylum was Bereket, a 24-year old man. One day in August he had also arrived with his luggage in front of the parish hall but at that time Ben felt overloaded with refugees and mediated him to another church asylum in the next bigger town. Bereket spent only one month there. Rumours about an extension of church asylum to 18 months were circulating among the Eritreans and Bereket was the whole day alone in the church asylum – he could not even leave the building at all. Apparently he found his situation unbearable and collapsed by ending the church asylum himself (which is telling in terms of how straining church asylum can be). After he was living again in an asylum seeker centre, and escaped from deportation, Ben finally accepted
[18]
him in church asylum in Bad K. in January. Bereket also has to endure an 18 month wait in Bad K. In fact, he arrived only a few days before I met everyone.
The time of those living in church asylum was structured by fixed activities. Every day they worked in the kitchen and serving room of the Suppenküche from 11am-2pm. The Suppenküche is an opportunity to eat for free or on the basis of donations in the parish hall that was established for the financially disadvantaged.
Three times a week the Eritreans had German class from 10.30 am till 12.00 pm with a retired lady, Mrs. Habich’s whose house is only a 2 minutes’ walk away from the parish hall. Twice a week they had class with Mrs. Müller, another retired lady who used to be a Russian-German teacher, at the parish hall from about 3.00 till 5.00 pm. It was usually followed by drinking coffee and having a meal. Sunday the Christians went to the service in the church, on some Fridays the head of the Suppenküche brought the Eritrean Muslim Said by car to a mosque in the next bigger town.
The Eritreans who resided in church asylum lived off left-over food from the Suppenküche. Their clothes were donated (sometimes there were sacks of clothes standing around in the parish hall, which the Eritreans could check before they were further distributed to the GU’s). They did not have health insurance but relied on an acquaintance of Ben, a female general practitioner who was also a member of the parish council. In this way they created little extra costs for the parish: What was offered to them was the room where they slept, the kitchen and the dining room with the different facilities which they could use and electricity and gas for their free disposal. The time that was not reserved for fixed activities, the Eritreans spent mostly in their room with the two bunk beds: talking, using their cell phones in all imaginable ways (they had free Wi-Fi in the parish hall but not in the asylum seeker centres), receiving visitors, doing German homework, eating or going to visit other Eritreans. There are two asylum seeker centres in Bad K., a small one in the west and a larger one with many children in the east. From now on, I will refer to them as GU West and GU East, GU from the German term
Gemeinschaftsunterkunft17. There was an active exchange of visits going on between these three locations and
thus I was certainly not the only one visiting the parish hall every night: Every day there were other Eritreans coming from the other GUs. That was not only because the church asylum was lying in between the two GU’s but also because Ben wanted it to be like this: I was told that the parish hall is a meeting point and has been ever since it was established with the two young Eritreans, Teddy and Asmorom, who by then had moved out of the church asylum. Hier ist der Treffpunkt und nirgendwo anders (‘This is the meeting point and nowhere else’), Ben used to say – which already displays the power he had. Thus, Eritreans came either to use the Wi-Fi which was not available in the asylum seeker centres, to meet each other, or to meet Ben. He himself was visiting the church asylum regularly, sometimes he brought along a German friend.
17 The GU’s are too grey inside and marginal in the cityscape to call them asylum ‚centers‘. They are also too
well built to use the term asylum ‚camp‘. In English GU means „common accommodation“ and sounds as sterile as these places are meant to be: They are a way of ordering and overseeing people during the asylum procedure in a highly developed system of German bureaucracy.
[19]
The following extract from my fieldwork diary will introduce Ben, by showing how much he expected the Eritreans to follow his instructions and in what terms even his friends were often following his will, even though one friend was also able to openly criticize him for his patronizing behaviour towards the Eritreans.
Asmorom and Teddy were the first two Eritreans who lived in the parish hall of Bad K. in church asylum, and Ben had an especially close relationship to them. Lemlem and Samuel are Eritreans who are friends of Asmorom and Teddy.
3.
B
EN AND THE
E
RITREANS
–
W
AS IST DAS
?
18Extract from my fieldwork diary. At Ben‘s house. … Ben is telling us how disappointed
he has been one day of Asmorom, Teddy and Samuel. It was Teddy’s birthday when all of them had been drinking. They had asked Ben if Lemlem (a girl living in the GU West) could stay overnight in the parish hall, she felt too tired to walk home. Ben refused since he didn’t like anyone who was not actually in church asylum to sleep there. They kept begging. When Ben arrived at the parish hall in the next morning, he got to know that they had been to the disco (a precarious place for refugees) and furthermore, he found Lemlem sleeping in one of the bunk beds. „For a short time, I was wondering if I should get a scream attack and throw everyone out“, Ben says. „I was so disappointed, I cannot describe how disappointed I was and how fucked over I felt.“ I look at Ben. He is wearing a suit every day. I say: „Mh.“ Then Ben’s friend Ralf starts to speak: „Ben, these people are humans, as you and I. They just wanna live.“ And he proceeds to say that Ben can’t forbid them to leave the house. Also during World War II people were celebrating as if there was no tomorrow. People have needs. And this age is the best time of life. I nod with appreciation. I think that Ben saw it but he doesn’t say anything. They discuss a little more. I hardly say anything. At about 10.40 pm I say that I want to go home. „Then we will all go,“ Ben says and is kicking everyone out with these words. He wants everyone to go for a walk to the parish hall (where my bike is standing). His friend Ralf says: „Come on, I won’t go all the way to the monastery if my car is standing here in front of your door.“ But this is what happens.
Ben is an energetic young man with blond hair and blue eyes. His hair is always freshly washed, his beard is neatly cut. Every day he is dressed in suits, their colours ranging from classic white and grey to orange or red. His properly-chosen outfits stand in contrast to the clothes the Eritreans in church asylum wear: While their appearance is also tidy and neat, their clothes are casual and mostly donated. Only sometimes they were able to buy an item in a cheap store.
This is a visual difference between Ben and the Eritreans one may note when first meeting them. After a few minutes, the superiority in clothing also shows up in other non-verbal forms, such as body language and tone. Ben, who lives and works in Bad K., visits the Eritreans in the parish hall every day, sometimes multiple times a day. When he comes from his job in the regional court, he enters the upper floor and often shouts ‘Naaaa!’19 or
18 „Was ist das?“ These words are still resounding in my ears. It is a question that Ben and the Eritreans
commonly used to express indignation. Here I want to ask with this question what kind of relationship is that between Ben and the Eritreans.
[20]
‘Helloohoo’ loudly and complacently. Then he walks the floor in a jaunty step and opens the door of the guest room without knocking. If the Eritreans were sitting on their chairs, they will get up and offer them to him. Ben will sit in the most relaxed manner on the chair or he will come and sit with them at one of the bunk beds. With 26 years, Ben is about the same age as the Eritreans: one year older than Bereket and a few years younger than Said, Thomas and Aster.
While I experienced Ben, as someone who was helping me and others out whenever he could and whose enormous efforts in the church asylum were indispensable, from the very first time I saw Ben interacting with the Eritreans, despite his friendliness, I felt that there was something like dominance expressed in his behaviour towards them. It began to be something I wanted to grasp. It was in the way Ben talked to the Eritreans, in the body language he acted out, the way he touched their faces and petted their hair, in the way he sat with his legs apart and his arms stretched out, in his assertive and lecturing tone that expressed beyond words: I am ruling here.
While he would talk to me about meine Flüchtlinge oder meine Afris – ‘my refugees’ or ‘or my Africs’20, he
would say meine Kleine, the grammatically female form of ‘my little one’ to them – males and females alike. The Eritreans accepted this term; they even started to use it themselves. I am not sure if all of them are aware that it is grammatically inappropriate for a man and could therefore be offensive. So why was Ben able to belittle them in this way?
What I was observing were the symptoms of a power inequality, a hierarchy that was practised anew from day to day in situational behaviour that signalled who was superordinate and who was not. This hierarchy was originating from the structural inequality and the positions Ben and the Eritreans found themselves him: While he was the one taking care of the church asylum and therefore taking care of them, they were the ones dependent on his benevolence.
Throughout the thesis, I will describe what Ben was doing for the Eritreans and what they were doing for him in return. Before, I will take you deeper into the topic by illustrating the power relations that I observed. They became most tangible when I least expected it: at a party of the Eritreans that took place in the parish hall. I realized that night that fieldwork never stops as long as you are in the field. I probably never witnessed another situation that demonstrated so strongly how dependent the Eritreans were on Ben.
19 A German particle that is very context-dependent, though it always has an introductory function. The correct
answer in this kind of situation would be: Na as well, usually the question How are you? follows.
20 I do not think that Ben was aware that there were sometimes racist connotations in the terms he used or the
way he spoke about the Eritreans. His behaviour probably resulted from a general feeling of superiority. Something I will address in the conclusion.
[21]
3.1
D
EPENDENCIES
(D
ANKE
,
D
ANKE
)
The party took place for Helen, an Eritrean woman around 50, and her brother, daughter and grandson, who had come for a visit. Ben had been to the beach with them on that day but did not like how the afternoon proceeded: Tirhas, an Eritrean woman living in the GU East, had spontaneously invited Helen, her guests and anyone else to her room in the GU, and had prepared traditional food and Eritrean coffee for them. Ben was irritated because he had expected that there would be a dinner and a subsequent party in the parish hall following the trip to the beach. He complained to Asmorom, who is his favourite Eritrean, that there was a ‘contra event’ called into being. Then he drove home angrily before even showing up at the parish hall.
When I sat there later on next to Asmorom on a bunk bed, Asmorom called Ben to check if he was alright (a way of showing care and affection, I will return to). Asmorom then passed the phone on to me. I told Ben that he was being missed here in the parish hall and that he should come, which he eventually did. While the dinner was supposed to start at 6pm, only at 8pm it seemed as if everyone had arrived from the GU’s. I counted 26 Eritreans in total.
This evening I passed a really nice time, maybe one of the nicest during my fieldwork period. The music the Eritreans play is calm but yet very rhythmic; their way of dancing is rather more happy and harmonic than sexual. Even though alcohol was served, no one seemed too drunk. Soon I joined the jolly dancers in the dim light. I became one of the smiling faces among them, moving naturally to this friendly sound as the Eritreans welcomed me and showed their appreciation for dancing to their music. It could have gone on like this the whole night.
But eventually it was Ben who put an end to this party. It was a Saturday and around 1am Ben said that the last song should be played because tomorrow the service will take place at 9.30 am, and he wanted the Eritreans to be there. Being at the height of the party, it was hard to stop for everyone. Many songs became the ‘last song’. It was Asmorom whose smartphone was connected with the speakers and who could not stop playing music. Ben was urging him more and more seriously to end. Finally, Ben became really angry, stepped in front of Asmorom and shouted: ‘You turn off the music NOW!’ Asmorom turned off the music.
This behaviour of Ben gave me an uneasy feeling. But then Teddy got up at the neighbouring table and started to clap and to sing something in Tigrinya with the melody of an Eritrean song. The refrain of his stand-up song consisted out of the words ‘Danke, Danke’. Soon many Eritreans joined him by shouting ‘Danke, Danke’ while in a rough voice he was singing solely the verses in between. The party atmosphere lasted despite Ben’s will. While I got more and more amused with this song, I saw the grimace on his face. Some of the Eritreans noticed. Romela, an Eritrean girl of 25 years, started to distribute sandwiches with cheese at the table and Helen’s daughter tried to reach Ben by calling21: Ben, weißt du was? … Das ist Dankeschön. (“Ben, do you know what?
21 In my quotations I will keep the original wording, while I will eliminate the linguistic mistakes in the English
[22]
… This is a thank you.”22), referring to the sandwiches. Peace needed to be kept. Somebody else shouted: Ja,
dankeschön für alles! (“Yes, thank you for everything!”). Asmorom seemed to be torn between the need of
reconciliation and the exuberance of the party. He shouted: Danke von Essen, von die Trinken, von alles, von
Musik... (“Thank you for the food, the drinks, for everything, for the music...”) Some people made affirming
sounds. Asmorom went on: Erste Mal Danke von Ben! (“First of all, thank you for Ben!”) People clapped and shouted. Zweite Mal Danke von der Gästeeee! … (“Second: thank you for the guests!”) People clapped harder and hooted louder. Dritte Mal… von Helen… Vierte Mal von [?] Und letzte Mal… [shouts] für miiiiich! (‘Third: thank you for Helen … Fourth: for … [?] and last time… [shouts] for me!’) – ridiculizing the situation in the end. The 18-years old Eritrean beside me kept laughing and saying: “That’s really crazy.” I went to the other side of the room where Ben sat and said to me: Was ist’n das für ‘ne Verarsche? (‘What kind of bull shitting is this?’). ‘Don’t take it seriously,’ I replied. Doch (‘Yes’), he said and shaking from anger like a furious bull, he left the room, slamming the door behind him.
After this happened, an Eritrean with a kind face, a family father who left his family behind, got up and gave a speech in a calm manner. Everyone was nodding in consent to what he said. It got more quiet in the room. Later it was translated to me that he said that you should be thankful for what you have and that you always should try to maintain peace. When Ben came back into the room, Asmorom was just about to announce that another party would take place on the next day, at the same time. I heard Ben shouting from some corner: Das überleg ich mir
noch! (roughly: ‘I will think about that!’). And Asmorom added: Ja, und morgen feiern wir nicht so lange!
(‘Yes, and tomorrow we won’t party as long!’). When everyone left, Helen’s guests, her daughter and her brother, apologized to Ben and also to me.
The situation was symptomatic for different aspects of the relationship between Ben and the Eritreans: First of all, the Eritreans, and not only the ones in church asylum, but also the guests and the Eritreans from the GU, seemed to feel the urge to express their respect and gratitude towards Ben, which became visible through the speech on gratitude given, to which everyone agreed, and through the numerous apologies expressed towards Ben after the whole incident – for not behaving gratefully.
Furthermore, especially the two Eritreans closest to Ben, Teddy and Asmorom, seemed to feel torn between their obligation to be grateful for everything that Ben is doing for them, and the urge to rebel: Teddy sang “Danke Danke” but was in fact making fun of Ben’s order of stopping. Asmorom did a similar thing, when he first thanked Ben – and then himself. By using especially the word “Thank you”, and not another word, they seemed to make fun of Ben’s expectations of gratitude.
Thirdly, that Ben however still expected respect and gratitude from them, and especially from them, was visible through his outburst of anger. I will return to this in chapter 4.
22 I will use “…” if I am quoting directly and ‘…’ if I am quoting from my memory. From this scene, I took a
[23]
Finally, this evening showed that the power relation between Ben and the Eritreans was set: When I saw Asmorom giving in after his moment of rebellion and how Ben got in the end what he wanted (the party ended, gratitude was expressed sincerely and apologies were spoken), I realized that Ben would always ‘win’ in the end, due to the fact was that the Eritreans remained dependent on his help and support.
Now I will move on to explain why the relationship between Ben and the Eritreans can be conceptualized as a patron-client relationship.
3.2
W
HAT PATRONAGE IS AND WHERE IT EVOLVES
What Ben can do to the Eritreans mirrors the existing hierarchy. According to Hicken this is one feature typical for patronage, or respectively clientelism.
Hicken states that the relationship is dyadic and characterized by iteration and contingency (2011). That means that there are two parties involved in an ongoing, reciprocal exchange which is however unequal. In the case discussed here it means that Ben as the patron constitutes one party, while the Eritreans constitute the other as his clients (dyadic relationship). Their relationship is enduring because Ben is taking care of them the whole time they spend in church asylum or even beyond that (iteration), and it is unequal because Ben is in a more powerful position, providing them with fundamental resources (hierarchy). But since both parties, the Eritreans as much as Ben, are benefitting from this relationship, it is reciprocal (contingency) - otherwise it could not be maintained (Befu 1977: 269).
According to Gellner, patronage evolves when power is not “effectively centralized” (Gellner 1977: 1) because it is a “form of power” itself (Ibd.: 4). Wolf conceptualizes the patron-client relationship among the “interstitial, supplementary, and parallel structures in complex society” (Wolf 1968: 2). It “prove[s] especially functional in situations where the formal institutional structure of society is weak and unable to deliver a sufficiently steady supply of goods and services, especially to the terminal levels of the social order“ (Wolf 1968: 17). In the case of church asylum is the state which is not offering protection or basic supplies to those asylum seekers that are supposed to be deported according to Dublin III.
Therefore, Stein argues that patron-client relationships are in fact not dyadic, that is, existing between two parties, but triadic: they presuppose a third partner (Stein 1984: 31) that creates the need of the patronage. Offering protection from this third party is a typical feature of patron-client relationships, which here takes the form of protection from deportation. Furthermore, organizing access to housing, education and health care are also typical benefits offered by a patron to his clients (Hicken 2011: 291) and are also needs created through (the non-intervention of) the state: It treats the asylum seekers in Dublin-cases as non-citizens and therefore rejects responsibility when it comes to providing for their basic needs. As the refugees in church asylum are not supposed to be in the country, they are denied access to the basic social structure, to accommodation, the
social-[24]
security benefit, and not to speak of the labour market. Therefore Ben and the parish are providing for the basic needs of the Eritreans now.
Intervening with the local bureaucracy is another way of support offered by the client, and this is something which also the Eritreans in church asylum were in need of. In fact, all asylum seekers are in need of brokers. First of all, language plays a critical role not only in everyday life but also within the asylum procedure: all the official letters they receive from the Federal Agency or the Foreigner’s Registration Office are in German. Access to knowledge can be complicated in many different ways. The legalities of the highly bureaucratic asylum system in Germany are unintelligible to any layperson and the procedures are opaque. Asylum seekers need lawyers, or people like Ben or the employees of the GUs to explain the procedures to them. These then act as brokers, when they mediate between the asylum seekers and the German bureaucracy.
Befu makes an analytical distinction here. There is brokerage and patronage: “a broker is able to obtain from another source (through personal contact, etc.) whatever resources are desired by his client, whereas a patron possesses himself resources desired by his clients” (Befu 1977: 268). Seen in this way, Ben may be more of a broker than a patron. He predominantly operates through using his influence on other people because he has “a standing in the community and [is] deeply imbedded in local networks” (Hicken 2011, 291) which is a feature of brokers. I will stick with the term patron however, because the associations this term carries seem to be more suitable for the relationship that I am describing between Ben and the Eritreans. The relation to the people of the parish also carries aspects of patronage but in a more diffused way than the one to Ben. I describe Ben as the patron, because this term carries connotations of dependency and hierarchy, which are in my opinion missing in the term of the broker, who is only mediating.
Gellner does not seem to distinguish. He points at the fact that “patronage arises when a modern or semi-modern state operates in an idiom as yet unintelligible to a large part of its population, who then need brokers (lawyers, politicians.... [...]) to obtain benefits or to avoid persecution“ (Gellner 1977: 5). In the case presented, it is not a large part of the population, but individuals practically excluded from the population (i.e. citizenship) who need brokers. In the following section I will show in detail in which ways Ben acts as a broker for asylum seekers.
[25]
3.3
T
HE
P
ATRON
:
M
EDIATING
,
O
RGANIZING
,
S
UPPLYING
Forwarded e-mail to me, from Ben to four people (May 24, 2015):
Liebe Unterstützer, wie ich bereits vorhergesehen habe, wollte das Sozialamt den Mietvertrag nicht genehmigen. Selbst meine Argumente zur gesundheitlichen Situation der Frau haben das Sozialamt auch nicht umgestimmt. Erst nachdem ich gesagt habe, dass die 30 € beziehungsweise 28 € von Dritten getragen werden [die Wohnung war 28 € teurer als was das Sozialamt übernimmt], hat der Sachbearbeiter nicht mehr viel gesagt. Er hat sich dann mit seiner Chefin verständigt und mir mitgeteilt, dass unter dieser Voraussetzung der Mietvertrag genehmigt wird. Das Mietverhältnis beginnt ab 1.6.2015. Ich würde vorschlagen, dass wir auf unserer nächsten Sitzung am 3. Juni alles Weitere besprechen. Die Beiden sind sehr glücklich und bedanken sich. Gott sei Dank. In diesem Sinne ein gesegnetes Pfingstfest.
Liebe Grüße, Ben R.
҉
Dear supporters, as I foresaw, the social service department did not want to approve the tenancy agreement. Even my arguments regarding the state of health of the woman did not change their minds. Only after I told them that the 30 € or respectively the 28 € per month will be borne by a third party [the apartment was 28 € more expensive than what the department will pay for], the official in charge didn’t say much anymore. He then talked to his boss and told me that the tenancy agreement will be approved under this condition. The leasing agreement will start on June 1, 2015. I would suggest talking about everything else during our next meeting on June 3.
The two are very happy and say thank you. Thanks God. With this in mind I wish you a blessed feast of Pentecost.
Regards, Ben R.
This e-mail concerns an Iranian couple which got to know Ben during the three months I spent in Bad K. They were not living in church asylum but in the GU West. However, Ben, who is a frequent visitor of both GUs, started to take care of them by suggesting they join the German classes at Frau Habich’s house and by finding a martial art course for the man who had been a professional fighter in Iran. Recently, he helped them find a flat. While they hesitated about the first flat Ben had shown them, they will now move in right across from his own flat, which means that they will live in the centre of Bad K. in a nicely renovated apartment. The e-mail is exemplary of what Ben does in different aspects: It shows the personal contact he has with employees of the social service department. He is functioning as a mediator between this institution and the two asylum seekers. There he can achieve things for them that they could not achieve by themselves. Furthermore, finding a good flat in the right price range is not easily done. Ben can do it in a short amount of time because he seems to know everyone in Bad K. Here Ben mobilized four different people, among them a judge, a lawyer with a Ph.D. and a psychologist, to each pay monthly 7 € for this Iranian couple, the money which exceeded the amount the social service department is willing to take over.
Ben is a person who connects people, and whose advice is wanted. Sometimes pastors and refugees who have heard about him call when they have questions about church asylum. He is in contact with the lawyers of the
[26]
asylum seekers in church asylum and is able to draft preliminary works for them, like resumes for the refugees. He also regularly talks to the refugee council, the representative for refugees of the Northern Church and the head of the GU in Bad K. He is constantly working on establishing new contacts, for example, by attending information events on church asylum. There he will not hesitate on getting acquainted with any person he considers to be important. Besides his numerous activities with the refugees and his job at the regional court, he is politically active for the city of Bad K. as a member of the city council and a local party. In this way he is constantly busy organizing something, meeting people or going to dinners he was invited to. All of this, he does next to his fulltime job at the administrative court in Bad K.
Beside the social service department, he also regularly calls or visits the foreigner’s registration office (die
Ausländerbehörde) and the Federal Agency for Refugees and Migration (BAMF, Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge ). During my stay, he for example went to the BAMF and managed to achieve through negotiation
that Aster will be assigned the status of toleration, a Duldung.23 The advantage of this status, in contrast to the
others in church asylum, is that she will be provided with a room in a GU and that she will receive the social security benefit (which is at the same time the financial disadvantage from the authority’s perspective). After obtaining a Duldung, Aster for example needed to go to the police to provide fingerprints, which is thus another important state institution Ben may also step in contact with.
On this day, he told me that the policeman had asked him indignantly how his support of this Eritrean woman (who needed to give a fingerprint because she was illegally residing in Germany) was matching his post at the regional court. Ben was not sure if the policemen wanted to accuse him of abuse of his position (Amtsmissbrauch vorwerfen). Luckily, no problems emerged for Ben from this situation.
It is clear that precisely because of his juridical background Ben is such a good broker for asylum seekers. He has not only the right knowledge of the legal system of Germany, he is also aware of his rights and the Eritreans under his protectorate. Befu writes about a patron who is at the same time “a bureaucrat, an office holder, [that] he has two alternatives. On one hand he can largely ignore the organizational goal of the bureaucracy and take advantage of the power and privileges […] on the other hand, for a patron-office holder [it is possible] to use his personal resources for the furtherance of bureaucratic goals.” (269) Ben, obviously goes for the former option, but it must be said, that he is only part of the bigger bureaucratic structure as a state employee; he is not working at the BAMF or the foreigner’s registration office directly. While this may grant him less direct power, it may also be the key to the room of manoeuvre that he has.
23 The Duldung, literally a status of toleration, is what the asylum seekers receive once the asylum procedure was
finalized with a negative decision and the asylum seekers are supposed to leave Germany – in case of the Eritreans towards Italy or if they cannot be deported, for example because of the situation in their home country.
[27]
Also in general, Ben knows how to use his social skills: when he should be assertive or charming, when he needs to visit an authority himself or when a phone call will suffice. Thereby, he is well aware of his broker skills. In his interview he mentioned the following:
Gestern rief mich ja die Ausländerbehörde an – das find ich ja auch gut neuerdings. Das ist ja so’n Zusammenspiel: Herr R., wir haben hier Post für Aster, Frau M., ne, und können Sie ihr sagen, dass sie das abholen soll, ja. Und dann ruf ich die Flüchtlinge an, und es läuft ja, das merkt die Ausländerbehörde auch, dass ich n guter Kontaktmann zwischen Behörde und den Flüchtlingen bin, ja.
҉
Yesterday the foreigner’s registration office called me. I like this. [Recently] there is this cooperation: Mr. R., we have post for Aster, Mrs. M., you know, and you can tell her that she should come and get it, okay. And then I call the refugees, and it works out, you know, and this is what the foreigner’s registration office is realizing as well: that I am a good contact person between the authority and the refugees, you know.
At this point, I want to draw a connection to what I mentioned in the beginning: Ben can only have such a big influence on the asylum procedures of the Eritreans under his protectorate due to the juridical indeterminacy that gives the state officials themselves such a big room for manoeuvre. If Ben has managed to gain their sympathy and respect after presenting his legal skills, they may use this room for manoeuvre to the advantage of the asylum seekers. The same legal situation that is thus making the asylum seekers especially vulnerable, Ben may take advantage of.
On another occasion Ben used his broker skills to protect the Eritrean Thomas from the police: On a beautiful Sunday afternoon, Thomas and another young Eritrean went on a bike ride towards the beach of the sea. For unknown reasons they decided to ride on the street and unfortunately even on the wrong side. Not surprisingly, eventually a car crashed into them. Though the car was driving very slow, Thomas’ bike was broken, he was hurt and the car got some scratches. While the female driver first wanted to move on, a passer-by insisted on calling the police. The police came and when checking the identity of the two Eritreans, found out that Thomas was a sought person by the police, since he was supposed to be deported to Italy. It mattered little to the policemen that Thomas explained that he was in church asylum. But then Thomas called Ben who immediately left his work, drove to the accident site and started to discuss with the policemen. As mentioned earlier, offering protection is another feature of patrons and Ben used his connections for that: He called two members of the parish council, a medical doctor and a judge, who arrived in time and started to fight with the policemen as well. Finally, they convinced the policemen of letting Thomas go “for the sake of peace”. This situation is a vivid demonstration that Thomas would find himself in Italy if not under Ben’s protectorate.
In total, Ben’s power thus lies for a great part in the connections he has and is able to develop. He is a single agent, connecting authorities with single asylum seekers while he is managing to step outside normal regulations or laws.
