The volunteer and the state : "Wir schaffen das"

(1)

The volunteer and the state:

“Wir schaffen das”

Niklas Ehrmuth

Supervisor: dr. Benno Netelenbos |Second reader: dr. Imrat Verhoeven Master Thesis Political Science |Specialization Course International Relations

Graduate School of Social Sciences |Universiteit van Amsterdam June 2018

(2)

(3)

1. Introduction

In 2015 and 2016, Germany received a total sum of 1,222,194 asylum applications (BAMF, 2018). Political asylum is part of the German Basic Law (Article 16a Grundgesetz) which equals the German Constitution. National as well as local structures that are responsible for the processing of these asylum applications were overwhelmed by the number of immigrants arriving on German territory (Fleischmann, 2016, Stadler, 2018). Some have labelled the 2015 period the “long summer of migration” (Kasparek and Speer, 2015) because it is linked with refugees’ widespread hope of reaching Germany at the end of their flight. Others, however, have termed it a German or even a European “refugee crisis” because politics on both the international and the domestic level were overwhelmed by the influx of refugees that resulted from the de facto decomposition of the Dublin agreement and the war in Syria and Iraq (Barbulescu, 2017, von Altenbockum, 2015, Daldrup, 2016).

As asylum application processes take significantly longer to be handled in Germany than in other European countries like the Netherlands1_{, these asylum seekers have to be}

provided with housing and nutrition for some time by German municipalities. While their data is being processed, asylum seekers are not allowed to work or to move freely (Crage, 2016, Katz et al., 2016). That is, municipalities are highly responsible for these newcomers’ well-being after their arrival. Municipalities, conversely, have had to comply with substantial fiscal adjustments in the past years. On the national level, Germany has introduced the so-called Debt Brake in 2009 to “eliminate or substantially reduce structural deficits throughout public budgets” (Conroy, 2017).2_{On the European level, the Member States decided to introduce}

the Fiscal Compact in 2011. This agreement was further tightening the SGP (Stability and Growth Pact) measures (Truger, 2013).

Accordingly, there was a gap between the fiscal requirements and the legal requirements that city governments had to fulfill. This gap, however, was occupied by volunteers who were tremendously willing to support the arrival of newcomers. Thus, the media discourse has

1_{In general, the process of asylum recognition is individualized. Therefore, the country of origin and other distinct}

factors are considered. In 2015, an average asylum process took around 5 months BUNDESREGIERUNG 2016. Ergänzende Informationen zur Asylstatistik für das Jahr 2015. Berlin: Deutscher Bundestag 18. Wahlperiode. After adjusting the process, the general government is publishing that new asylum applications will be processed in two months BUNDESREGIERUNG 2018. Wie lange dauert ein Asylverfahren? Berlin: Deutsche Bundesregierung.

2_{The Debt Brake was even introduced as primary legislation. Germany was thereby overfulfilling the European}

Union’s recommendations TRUGER, A. 2013. Austerity in the euro area: the sad state of economic policy in Germany and the EU. European Journal of Economics and Economic Policies, 10, 158-174.

(6)

labelled the invoked citizen commitment a new sort of “Welcome Culture” (Haller, 2017).3

Some studies argue that 10% of the German population were actively devoted to support refugees at their arrival (Ahrens, 2017). Hence, the Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth has stated that the refugee influx has exerted “considerable activation effects” (BMFSJ, 2017) on the German population. According to the Federal Ministry, 55% of the German population have either made donations, made public statement or done hands-on work with refugees. Green Party policymakers have even argued that this civic engagement is a “September fairy tale” (Vollmer and Karakayali, 2018). Scholars, moreover, have argued that “Welcoming Society” would be the more adequate concept because it acknowledges that individuals from all walks of life are sustainably willing to welcome newcomers (Schiffauer et al., 2017) whereas the “Welcome Culture” term was mainly aiming at reforming the bureaucratic processes surrounding a refugee’s arrival in Germany.

The most famous and the most hotly debated claim surrounding this refugee influx emerged from Germany’s head of government Angela Merkel. At a press conference on 5 September 2015 she stated: “Wir schaffen das!” (“We can do it!”). While she was replying to a question that referred to the welcoming of newcomers, it was left unclear whom she meant with “we”. Nevertheless, Merkel’s humanitarianism and the German civic engagement has shaped the international image of Germany (Economist, 2018, Paterson, 2015, Cohen, 2015, Economist, 2015). As Adam put it: “A country with an Auschwitz past, a history of military aggression and European economic domination, had finally redeemed itself” (2015). Some argue that this German path-dependency has stressed the importance of a welcoming image of the country. This is why the “antirassistische Strahlkraft” (anti-racist charisma) (van Dyk and Misbach, 2016) of the voluntary efforts is so important. So, the overall term of “Willkommenskultur” and the civic engagement that is pro-openness was somehow surprising to the international public (Economist, 2015, Cohen, 2015, Paterson, 2015, Economist, 2018).

3_{The specific term “Welcome Culture” derives from employer-friendly liberal political campaigns. Political parties}

like FDP (The Liberals) have come up with this notion to emphasize the importance of easy processes to integrate asylum seekers into the labor market HALLER, M. 2017. Die “Flüchtlingskrise“ in den Medien. Tagesaktueller Journalismus zwischen Meinung und Information. In: LENGARD, J. (ed.) OBS-Arbeitsheft. Frankfurt am Main: Otto-Brenner Stiftung.

(7)

Conversely, there have been right-wing rallies against the welcoming of newcomers. The PEGIDA4_{movement was most explicitly opposing this enthusiasm about refugee support}

(Baumgärtner et al., 2015, Dostal, 2015, Patzelt and Eichardt, 2015). Correspondingly, the movement utilized the claim “Wir sind das Volk!”5_{(“We are the people!”) (Patzelt and}

Eichardt, 2015) to stress that they are not feeling included in Merkel’s “Wir schaffen das!”. This tension between an openness approach and a closing borders has ramifications for the voluntary field that is willing to support refugees: On the one hand, individuals might be willing to support immigrants who arrive with this crowd of more than 1,000,000 people because they are actually willing to help others in the first place. On the other hand, individuals can be motivated because they do not want to leave the field open to others. That is, they want to retain the sovereignty of interpretation about their immediate environment. Over the course of time, volunteers working with refugees have indicated that they felt intimidated by the rise of the PEGIDA movement and by the rise of other right-wing tendencies in Germany (Beitzer, 2017). These diverging motives are adding complexity to the field that is willing to support the governmental approach to open borders. Those volunteers, however, was, and still is in some spaces, crucial to the state’s functioning because bureaucratic structures are oftentimes overloaded with work that the open borders approach entails (Birnbaum, 2015, Funk, 2016, Fleischmann, 2016, Fleischmann and Steinhilper, 2017).

Thus, given the salience of the immigration topic since 2015 and considering the fact that national politics has to an extent appropriated the voluntary efforts which supported its approach, it is interesting to see how municipalities met this engagement (Mushaben, 2017, Schiffauer, 2018). Some scholars even argue that there was an “Indienstnahme” (employment) (van Dyk and Misbach, 2016) of voluntary work by politics. Municipalities are the sphere where national policies are unfolding. National policies are provided with a “face” through the implementation stage by bureaucrats (Lipsky, 2010). In other words, municipalities are actually the “interface between citizenship and the state” (Schiffauer, 2018). At the end of the day, the state which is represented by bureaucrats has to tread a fine line vis-à-vis volunteers because these bureaucrats are embedded in a legal framework which

4_{Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes or Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization}

of the Occident

5_{PEGIDA emerged in the German city of Dresden which is part of the former GDR territory. The “We are the}

(8)

can produce (de-)motivating outcomes in the eyes of volunteers. Therefore, this research sets out to answer the question How does motivation affect the state-volunteer relationship? To understand how the relationship between volunteers and state entities unfolds, the scientific community has focused on large-scale quantitative studies (Hamann et al., 2016, Karakayali and Kleist, 2016) in Germany and qualitative studies in other countries (Strokosch and Osborne, 2017). Also, there are publications on particular German initiatives and their association with government (Schiffauer et al., 2017, Hesse et al., 2018) which stressed the importance of institutional logics of voluntary organizations and government entities. Yet, Hesse et al. merely concentrate on rural areas where conflicts do not evolve as overtly as in urban districts. Thus, there is a lack of comprehensive insight into what has happened in urban areas in terms of network structures between refugees and state entities.

To shed light on the state-volunteer relationship, this thesis proceeds as follows. Chapter two discusses the notion of “active citizenship” and moves on to stress the importance of motivation in the present context. Chapter three sketches the research design. It mainly argues that qualitative research is carrying the scientific understanding of the relationship between the state and “government’s little helpers” (Kuhlmann, 2011) forward by investigating the case of Duisburg. Chapter four is introducing the German refugee discourse which was fairly polarized because civic engagement was strong on both ends of the political spectrum. Chapter five is providing the analysis of, first, motivations of volunteers that are committed to refugee aid and, second, the way that bureaucrats met these efforts. It accentuates that bureaucrats are inherently obliged to act in accordance with their legal framework which is in effect creating pressures in exchange with volunteers. The study closes by concluding that mutual understanding is the basis for a beneficial relationship.

(9)

2. The volunteer and the state

The volunteer and the state are two distinct entities. These units are somehow connected as they are representing the civil society and the legal institutions. In an ideal sense, they are complementary instead of being substitutes for each other. As European Member State governments meet an increasing number of challenges due to fiscal policies that are decided on the EU level, cutbacks in welfare and an overall reliance on civil society are more attractive than ever. Migration, at the same time, is both unprecedented and hotly debated because asylum seekers are possibly competing with needy natives for scarcer resources (Banting and Kymlicka, 2006). Therefore, the following sections will sketch the debate surrounding active citizenship in Germany. Subsequently, I will make a case for diverging motivations to enter voluntary work. The chapter will close by describing the role of street-level bureaucrats who represent the state and its policies in the local sphere. Consequently, both sides of the state-volunteer relationship are being described. The subsequent chapters analyze how this relationship develops in the municipality of Duisburg.

2.1 Active citizenship

In this section, I will argue that Western European welfare regimes are inclined to rely on extended participation (van Dyk and Lessenich, 2009, Pinl, 2015, Isin and Turner, 2002, Bode, 2007). That is, the reliance on voluntarism is on the rise in Western societies. Governments tend to deliberately pass on certain chores to volunteering citizens. There is a burgeoning body of literature on the increased importance of voluntary work in Western society. This literature is linking the concept of welfare state decline with the term “active citizenship”. Newman and Tonkens (2011) stress that policymakers have conceived of “active citizenship”. According to them, the concept implies that activation is shifted from being a right that was granted in response to calls for autonomy to becoming a citizen duty. In other words, their argument encompasses that solidarity is engineered “from above” by ethics. Hence, responsibility rather derives from more or less metaphorical contracts instead of from internal social cohesion which results from solidaristic premises to society. In that regard, the policy term “active citizenship” is arguably seeking to engineer ethics (Dean, 2006) in a way that is pleasing the policymaker’s reluctance to extend expenditures on welfare. “Active citizenship” thus remains a “discursive construct”.

(10)

Similarly, Mühlebach stresses the importance of voluntarism in “postwelfarist societies” (Mühlebach, 2012) like Italy. She too relates to new forms of citizenship that arise from welfare retrenchments. One instance of these “postwelfarist” societies she names, is Prime Minister Cameron’s “Big Society” concept which was aimed to foster democratic participation and social cohesion by providing an antithesis to “big government” (Newman, 2011, Szreter and Ishkanian, 2012, Slocock et al., 2015). Being one of the richest European countries, Great Britain provides us with an interesting example of economic pressure that is put on municipalities as the central government retreats. So, if even the richest European countries are tending to rely on active citizenship, what is Germany doing? Considering Germany’s economic power, one might assume that they could possibly defy this pattern.

Targets of care are evidently those who constitute the weakest part of society, be it elderly people, disabled people or even asylum seekers (UN, 2017). This mere fact stresses the importance of the state for social cohesion. In other words, the construct of “active citizenship” leads to questions about the boundaries of state responsibility. The term “citizenship” in itself determines the connection between the citizen and the state as democracies strive after a formally equal relationship (Poggi, 2014). Isin and Turner (2002) argue that the concept of citizenship is varying in countries because of different understandings of citizen rights and citizen obligations. Military service, for example, is a citizen obligation that is implemented in some countries, for example Israel, while it is not mandatory in others like Germany. The minimum age for voting, meanwhile, is a citizen right that is depending on the respective country’s legislation. In the same sense, the term “citizenship” entails entitlements like social welfare and duties like participating in neighborhood initiatives. Thus, context-dependent research is needed to understand what a state asserts a reasonable relation between the individual citizen and the state. Again, Germany is one of the biggest and richest countries in Europe, why would she need to rely on active citizens?

For instance, the German Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth has published a report on the civic engagement that increased in supporting refugees which is containing a section on the activation effects of the influx of refugees (BMFSJ, 2017). Following this conclusion, it is noteworthy to see if and how the state-volunteer relationship has actually evolved on the local level where hands-on work is done. Possibly, this work is running the risk to be employed (“Indienstnahme”) by policymakers because it is engineered

(11)

(van Dyk and Misbach, 2016). From a government perspective, volunteers offer a substitute to civil servants that are paid by tax money or private actors that are also paid by taxes. To sum up, the discussion on “active citizenship” shows us how European states are defining the boundaries of their particular responsibilities: If states reject certain tasks, citizens apparently feel involved. Nevertheless, the German rhetoric on “active citizenship” is diverging from other state’s speechmaking.

2.2 The German case

As mentioned above, citizenship is a country-specific concept. This section briefly introduces German policies that are related to policies of retrenchment as well as to “active citizenship” in the broadest sense. Altering demographics and reunification provoked budgetary cuts with regards to social welfare because these developments would debit the German welfare system (Streeck and Trampusch, 2005). The Schröder government finally delivered ideological arguments for welfare retrenchments that would include more self-reliance and more willingness to contribute to an equilibrium of social interests (Pinl, 2015, Blair and Schröder, 1999). The second Schröder government indicated that social welfare was then to be seen as a trampoline rather than a safety net which means that the German state increasingly focused on the activating effects of their policy programs (Hough and Sloam, 2007). This assumption ended up informing parts of the Agenda 2010 which was a major policy program of this particular government. The Agenda 2010 had two main goals: fighting unemployment and fostering economic growth. In this context, some have argued that the discursive label of “active citizenship” was not backed by sufficient political will on the governing elite’s side to sustainably foster civic engagement (Leif, 2004). Nonetheless, the SPD6_{never rejected the}

idea of a supporting state completely. Instead, they took a “welfare to work” approach (Hough and Sloam, 2007) which means that basic social security was not completely removed but considerably cut back. Jobless citizens thus receive significantly more grants if they assume vocational training or other training programs (Lessenich, 2013, Dean, 2006).

Additionally, the mandatory military service which was linked with a civilian service for male adolescents was abolished in 2011. Prior to 2011, around 90,000 young men were available for a broad range of services such as social services, health services and sports

(12)

(Brandsen et al., 2017b). Instead, national politics designed the so-called German Federal Volunteer Service “Bundesfreiwilligendienst” in 2011. This service is supposed to activate the elderly as well as young people disregarding their gender. In the course of 2015, the Bundestag set up a three-year program to encourage young refugees to commit to voluntary services. While doing so, they were in fact paid an expense allowance by national budgets (2016). In that sense, national policies designed programs to increase participation by all parts of society. After all, German volunteers were fairly young as they worked with refugees during the “long summer of migration” (Karakayali and Kleist, 2016) which indicates that these individuals might not have been fully aware of the implications of the Agenda 2010 because the concept was introduced and discussed in the early 2000s.

Interestingly though, the German understanding of citizenship deviates from other Western countries, as Kuhlmann concludes (2011) because it derives from Bismarckian welfare policies from the 19th_{century that are informed by estates. Therefore, Germany is representing the}

ideal type of Esping-Andersen’s conservative welfare state classification (1990). Furthermore, Kuhlmann determines that German activation regimes are fairly fragmented when it comes to welfare provision. Germany’s corporative conservative welfare regime is besides highly reliant on the principle of subsidiarity which makes the case of immigration especially interesting because asylum seekers cannot confide in their family members or in their social network respectively. Still, “[a]s elsewhere in Europe, the politics of activation are gaining ground in Germany’s public sector” (Kuhlmann, 2011). Yet, there is no literal German translation to “citizenship” (Newman and Tonkens, 2011, Kuhlmann, 2011). The German translation for citizenship (“Staatsbürgerschaft”) refers to the extent of citizenship, whereas the English term citizenship can refer to the content of citizenship (Isin and Turner, 2002). This contradiction makes it difficult to use the term citizenship as an analytical tool in the German context. Germany, however, has her own term that is referring to the concept of “active citizenship”. The term “Ehrenamt” is linked with its own history on the state-volunteer relationship.

2.3 Ehrenamt and civic engagement

The following section will explain the German “Ehrenamt” tradition because it is referring to the content of German citizenship. This section will also reflect upon the debate surrounding welfare cutbacks and respective activating regimes in Germany. The particular notion

(13)

“Ehrenamt” is often used to describe volunteer work. Originally, the term was coined in the 19th_{century while Prussia was facing a financial crisis. Prussian policymakers were seeking}

ways to increase efficiency in municipal self-government. Multiple chores were transferred to citizens who were honored to taking on certain responsibilities gratuitously. “Ehrenamt” tasks are thus not necessarily organized in a bottom-up manner but steered by government which implies that volunteers are rather loyal to the state’s overall goals (Zimmer, 2005). As this term is still used in debates surrounding voluntary work, there is reason to assume that there is a tradition of employment of German volunteers.

German national policymakers, however, started to apply the expression “bürgerschaftliches Engagement” or civic engagement (Bürsch, 2002) which is acknowledging the willful character of the voluntary field. This term is implying that volunteers are more likely to be involved in governance networks and that their critiques will be heard by policymakers on both the local and the national level (Zimmer, 2005, Kuhlmann, 2011). Bürgerschaftliches Engagement is supposed to foster civic participation in political processes (Han-Broich, 2012). To that end, the German Bundestag has installed a so-called sub-committee Bürgerschaftliches Engagement since the early 2000s.

The overall reliance on participation is partially deemed a positive shift, as some say that it represents a more inclusive and deliberative democratic structure of welfare politics (Newman and Tonkens, 2011). Plus, volunteers that are working with needy individuals are helpful to identify what commodities and services are actually needed: “the [third] sector exhibits a particular potential of identifying the needs of citizens and may contribute to a more cost-efficient delivery through the use of volunteers” (Bode and Brandsen, 2014). Furthermore, Najam (2000) makes an organization’s size responsible for its perceived reliability. He reiterates Clark’s argument that small-scale voluntary organizations are regarded to be more trustworthy and gentle than large-scale bureaucratic entities. These smaller voluntary endeavors may be triggered by a declining welfare state in the first place (Brandsen et al., 2017b).

Others argue that activating regimes represent a negative shift. In fact, the weakest parts of society are systematically neglected because they cannot be empowered by these schemes (Slocock et al., 2015). Worldwide welfare retrenchments have been characterized as a phenotype of neo-liberalization (Zimmer, 1999) because they are allegedly enforced by global competitions of locations for domesticizing multinational corporations (Lessenich,

(14)

2013). Furthermore, the “Big Society” program, for instance, inherently left too little space for action “’from beneath’” (Brandsen et al., 2017b) because it was designed on the national level. With regards to voluntary work, helpers might thus be exploited by government due to political budgetary cuts. Van Dyk and Misbach embedded refugee aid in Germany in the academic welfare state discourse (2016). Retrenchments and activating regimes are seen as a means of relieving the state from its actual responsibilities through harnessing the resources of unremunerated work (p. 210). This is what initiatives that helped refugees in Berlin in 2015 have argued. According to them, the Berlin Senate was failing to give assistance which would have resulted in numerous fatalities, if volunteers had not stepped in (Beitzer, 2015).

Especially because civic engagement in the field of refugee aid was pivotal in 2015 and especially because it has been appraised on multiple occasions (Vollmer and Karakayali, 2018), this case represents a performance benchmark for German activation regimes in the 2010s. These activating regimes are inevitably walking a fine line between top-down governing and an approach that is seeing politics and devoted citizens on the same eye level. One could argue that it is not necessarily a bottom-up approach, however, because the term bottom-up implies that voluntary efforts had more leverage than state actors. As the following sections will show, this is not what all volunteers are unavoidably aiming at.

2.4 Collaboration in the gap

As stated before, government has to tread a fine line between harnessing the comparative advantage of voluntary work and not seeming to “greedy” vis-à-vis volunteers. Asylum seekers are the primary target of voluntary care that is relevant for this work. Also, a particular asylum procedure can take multiple years in Germany, including several objection stages (Bundesregierung, 2018). Thus, most people who arrived in Germany since 2015 had a long wait (Bundesregierung, 2016). During this time, however, they were not allowed to work (Crage, 2016).

Najam contends that collaboration between the third sector and the government is increasing worldwide, whereas the extent to which government is supporting this trend varies (2000). Nonetheless, this trend is not increasing at an equal global rate. Bode (2007) argues that past experiences with corporatism are helpful to involve volunteers in public-private partnerships. Central European arrangements like German social market economy or the Dutch polder system are providing us with examples. Meanwhile, British voluntary

(15)

organizations are better skilled in lobbying for state-led care policies. The main tension for the voluntary sector vis-à-vis state actors is to find a fine line between harnessing the third sector’s “comparative advantage” and its loss of autonomy due to state coercion (Najam, 2000). The advantage that voluntary organizations bring to the table is that they

“are inclined to know people seeking help in a holistic way. Unlike government administrators of rulebound eligibility standards, provider in

private service agencies resist reducing clients to their bureaucratically relevant characteristics” (Lipsky and Rathgeb Smith, 1989).

Activating regimes compel policymakers to interact with third sector organizations. Evers and Leggewie (1999) call for a “new welfare-mix” in Germany. That is, voluntary work, business and the state will have to find ways to draft and implement effective social policies. Calling for corporate social responsibility (CSR), however, turns out to be complicated because the goals of CSR have to be closely aligned with corporations’ business goals (Haigh and Jones, 2006, Prätorius and Richter, 2013). Otherwise, their efforts cannot be sustainable. An asylum seeker’s legal status in Germany does not allow them to work (Crage, 2016) which makes their work force irrelevant for businesses. Also, collaboration with businesses would be likely to entail conflicts about competition (Hesse et al., 2018) Thus, we can assume that CSR efforts that treat refugees are only marginal. Moreover, Evers and Leggewie imply that this concept is supposed to accept volunteers, amongst others, as new political partners (1999). As Kuhlmann mentions, the inclusion of volunteers and their critique creates several tensions because voluntary workers are not included in the prevailing polity of welfare provision discourses (Kuhlmann, 2011) because of its strictly conservative welfare history (Esping-Andersen, 1990). Instead, corporations, NGOs and labor unions traditionally have huge influence on social policies. In the past, volunteers have yet pioneered concepts of collective goods and notions of welfare once they were involved in policymaking (Bode, 2007).

Yet, third sector partnerships are “very much welcome” from the government perspective due to their cost-efficiency (Bode and Brandsen, 2014). The third sector, on the other hand, cannot ignore government: “They can oppose the state, complement the state, or reform it” (Clark, 1991). Though, some scholars call too much policy intervention “greedy governance” which is likely to result in a “governmental machinery” (Brandsen et al., 2017a) instead of a vital civil society. Hence, government has to tread a fine line between too much

(16)

and too little intervention in the third sector. Both government and the third sector have to be aware of their mutual dependence. This holds true for national government as well as for local government embodied by street-level bureaucrats. In other words, a constructive communication between the voluntary sector and the state is beneficial for both sides. This section has made clear that the collaboration that is stepping in the welfare gap on behalf of asylum seekers and refugees is most likely to derive from the voluntary sector because enterprises are essentially not able to support them sustainably. Businesses have had a considerable impact on prevailing welfare policies in Germany. Their de facto dismissal in this case is thus posing another challenge to policymakers. Therefore, the voluntary field has to be surveyed more thoroughly.

2.5 The voluntary field

On the side of volunteers themselves we can detect multiple complexities. They vary in their political awareness of their organization’s goals. There is a distinction between “political” and “apolitical” (Fleischmann and Steinhilper, 2017, Eliasoph, 2011) volunteering or “active” and “activist” (Newman, 2011) citizenship. This separation entails that volunteers who become involved in new political spaces gain voice which could finally lead to an ineffective outcome from a government’s perspective. One possible risk for the German government is that voluntary work with an anti-racist or anti-fascist background might be quick to criticize German national migration policies because they might deviate from the national government’s understanding of immigrant rights, for example. Deviation, however, is not desired by government because

“[w]hat matters for governments is that citizens are active in ways that support, rather than challenge, their current political projects: it is not that

citizens are not active, but that their activities need to be channeled to appropriate ends” (Newman, 2011).

The case of the Essen food bank embodies an example of active citizenship that appeared not to be congruent with national policies for a short amount of time. After encountering problems with immigrants that overwhelmed the charity’s capacities, the organizers decided to substantially narrow its services. In response, even Chancellor Merkel has criticized the charity’s decisions in public (BBC, 2018, Wernicke, 2018). Hence, government has to be

(17)

consciously aware of who to choose as a collaborator from the voluntary sector. However, the scope of government’s conscious decisions matters: It can assume collaborations with organizations that have the free and democratic order as a common denominator which is relating back to the German values that are manifested in the German Basic Law (Thurich, 2011). Yet, it can also pick and choose which implies that the common means and ends are even closer aligned if the relevant voluntary sub-field is big enough.

The volatility in numbers of volunteers implies that German volunteers in the refugee field were “plug-in volunteers” (Eliasoph, 2011) in the first place. Qualitative studies on the third sector that supported asylum seekers in the past couple of years show that its volume shrunk since early 2016. Scholars ascribe the public discourse on asylum to be the reason for this regression (Hamann and Karakayali, 2016, Karakayali and Kleist, 2016). Volunteers generally have an easy exit option because they are lacking accountability as opposed to professional social workers (Szreter and Ishkanian, 2012). That is, they can quit their work once it “stops feeling rewarding” (Eliasoph, 2011). The kind of reward, however, can differ among volunteers. We can assume that people some people enter voluntary labor with refugees because they want to react to xenophobic attitudes in their immediate environment (extrinsic motivation). Others might commence voluntary work because they are driven by an impetus to afford help (intrinsic motivation). While some might thus be motivated by intrinsic purposes that refer to their own well-being, others might see their voluntary commitment as a form of political message (Han-Broich, 2012).

Especially in a context in which the established view is represented by the national government, we can expect that politicization (Palonen, 2003) plays a role among volunteers. Politicization here is understood as a particular discursive context in which contestation, or support, is peculiarly important. Already in 2014, about three out of four German volunteers working with refugees indicated that they wanted to “shape society” through their commitment (Karakayali and Kleist, 2015). In other words, one can assume that the degree to which the context is decisive for a particular volunteer varies. This, however, is striking because one could assume that volunteering derives from a willingness to help in the first place. Also, there is reason to assume that the readiness to shape society on behalf of refugee rights has increased after the numbers of asylum applications has rapidly increased in 2015. Extrinsic motivation here is understood as an impetus to shape society, while intrinsic

(18)

motivation is deriving from an internal willingness to help. These two notions are sketched in the following sections.

2.5.1 Intrinsic motivation

Mühlebach conceives a specific form of intrinsic motivation which she labels “ethical citizenship” (2012). In Mühlebach’s case, “ethical citizenship” was aroused as the Italian welfare state is no longer willing to engage in certain care efforts. She concludes that “ethical citizenship” is stirred by “love” (Mühlebach, 2012, Han-Broich, 2012), as she translates. This feeling of love or compassion is highly context-ignorant and therefore rather depoliticized (Kleres, 2017). “Ethical citizenship” is thus outside the realm of state and market transactions. Intrinsically motivated volunteering is defying economic neoliberal hegemony, as it is not providing workers with livelihood even though thus work is time-consuming, after all (Mühlebach, 2012). Interestingly, it is thereby defying the distinction between the private sphere and the public sphere (Mühlebach, 2012, Habermas, 1991) because volunteers are acting outside of their direct environment which is understood as the family. Correspondingly, they are entering the public sphere where economic hegemony normally compels them to act rationally.

As mentioned before, this type of voluntarism is rather context-ignorant. This is why it can result in so-called “voluntary careers” (Han-Broich, 2012). These careers have multiple milestones because the respective individuals are more concerned about helping than about a specific discourse or a specific environment. Going further into detail about their impetus to help, dedication for the good cause might have played a role in their upbringing: If parents are involved in similar efforts, children are likely to assume this commitment as a given (Han-Broich, 2012).

It is important to bear in mind that this intrinsically motivated behavior can also cause large-scale societal change. However, this change is not the initial impetus of these volunteers. Instead, it is a secondary consequence of their labor (Han-Broich, 2012). Voluntary workers in Mühlebach’s case in Lombardy conducting relational labor which is suggesting a shift in the way productive and “nonproductive” labor is regarded in Italy (Mühlebach, 2012). Accordingly, some argue that German voluntary workers that are committed to welcome refugees can be political in the sense that they create a new perception of the polis. This awareness is creating a sense of community that is no longer based on inheritance (Schiffauer et al., 2017). Also, the volunteering with refugees ended up holding up the German migration

(19)

regime which is a political outcome in itself (Fleischmann and Steinhilper, 2017). In the long run, asylum seekers might moreover be accepted as “deserving” even though they have not contributed to the German welfare state yet.

2.5.2 Extrinsic motivation

Extrinsic motivations, on the other hand, are highly context-dependent because they target large-scale effectiveness (Han-Broich, 2012). Fleischmann and Steinhilper (2017) argue that a “new dispositif of helping” was triggered by the overwhelmed prevailing German authorities which is inherently political because it is taking a stance in the politicized context of immigration. Therefore, van Dyk and Misbach (2016) remark that volunteers working with refugees are running the risk to be employed by national policies because the national government has chosen to retreat from providing certain welfare services. This argument, however, is linked with the presumptions of the SPD’s Agenda 2010 as citizens were supposed to be activated to support state action while the national government proceeded its welfare cuts (Lessenich, 2013). These extrinsic purposes could be found in the field of radical left-wing or anti-racist groups in the past (Karakayali, 2017, Kleres, 2017). Extrinsically motivated volunteers consequently strive for an influence on societal processes (Han-Broich, 2012). Prior to 2015, however, most voluntary efforts derived from the leftist milieu. Thus, one motivation that is at least partially extrinsic could envelop that volunteers were only willing to help to a certain extent. This would entail to convey a message to national politics in the sense of objecting to policies of self-reliance (van Dyk and Misbach, 2016). The underlying assumption here is that extrinsically motivated volunteers are more aware of their strategic goals than those that are intrinsically motivated. This mere fact makes the former less likely to be co-opted by the government. Consequently, other types of frictions can evolve between the state and this particular kind of volunteers. However, this assumption turned out to be difficult to research because volunteers that were intrinsically motivated according to the framework ended tried to prompt political reforms as well (Keller-Steegmann, 2018).

As mentioned earlier, extrinsically motivated volunteers strive after concrete policy outcomes. Therefore, their actions have a “reference to societal processes” (Han-Broich, 2012). These processes, moreover, target the immediate environment meaning the atmosphere of a particular town or district. Accordingly, initiatives that are extrinsically motivated proactively seek an “audience” (Habermas, 1991) which means that they try to

(20)

create a societal or maybe even legal framework that is according to their wishes. Empirically, this can play out as a poster campaign or regular contact with gatekeepers like journalists.

As mentioned earlier, there can be overlaps in this dichotomy. Eliasoph gives an example of the complexity these motivational structures (2011): Gradually, an individual can move from being an intrinsically motivated volunteer to having an awareness about the large-scale consequences of their volunteering. Seeking specific policies, however, is likely to create friction between volunteers and the state because these aspirations deviate from existing policies. So, how is a bureaucrat to meet this contradiction between a respectful encounter and an official duty of neutrality?

2.6 Street-level bureaucrats

If the municipal level is the particular realm where the state and the citizens face each other (Schiffauer, 2018), then it is crucial to know who is acting in this realm on behalf of the municipality. In Weber’s ideal understanding of bureaucratic rule, Beamte, or the administrative staff, is supposed to act strictly according to their rules (“Regeln”). Therefore, the bureaucratic apparatus becomes both impersonal and calculable for outsiders (1976). More modern accounts on bureaucrats, however, acknowledge that these individuals have discretionary spaces which they can make use of. Lipsky calls these individuals “street-level bureaucrats” (2010). In fact, these persons have a remarkable impact on how citizens perceive state policies because these bureaucrats are becoming the face of these policies. As these officials are deciding how to interpret policies, they moreover become policymakers, according to Lipsky. Their usage of discretionary spaces is, for instance, shaping the way policies play out in practice. In short, within the administrative staff there is a conflict between rule-bound acting and a more personal usage of discretionary spaces.

In case of collaboration with voluntary organizations, bureaucrats are physically and mentally leaving their sphere. A mental sphere in this context is understood as a set of linguistic codes and organizational structures. Both differ between the voluntary field and the officials’ field. In Eversole’s words, bureaucrats enter “foreign institutional terrain” (2010) whenever they meet with third sector organizations. These different institutional systems entail variance in use of language, sets of rules and communication. Therefore, “these journeys […] are difficult but potentially valuable: those who can learn to translate their needs into the language of others may find valuable resources and support” (ibid., p. 37). While engaging with people in

(21)

territory that is outside the bureaucratic apparatus, administrators might experience being stuck in what Eversole calls the “paradox of dual embeddedness” (ibid., p. 38). That is, community developers take the institutional role of a representative of the state, while also having a private opinion as part of the community. Nevertheless, translating between two different institutions – like the voluntary sector and the public sector – can award these bureaucrats a key role in sustainable community development.

In short, refugee aid in Germany that was triggered in the “long summer of migration” instances pose multiple puzzles from the welfare state perspective: Firstly, the German state has to meet volunteers that are willing to support the public policy approach of openness in an adequate manner. On the one hand, the state needs to harness the volunteers’ comparative advantage. On the other hand, officials must not act as a top-down employer of volunteers. One has to bear in mind that the “we” in Merkel’s famous quote was not specified. The diversity of the voluntary field, however, might create additional pitfalls for street-level bureaucrats who enact state policies. Especially motivation to volunteer on behalf of refugees is seen as pivotal in this framework because the discourse on refugee aid was, and still is, fairly hotly debated. This is constituting the context for the subsequent analysis. Therefore, the analysis is supposed to answer the question How does motivation affect the state-volunteer relationship?

(22)

(23)

3. Research Design

To answer my research question on the effect of motivation on the relationship between the state and volunteers, I have interviewed volunteers and bureaucrats from Duisburg. These interviews comprise five volunteers and two bureaucrats that work for the city government. In sum, I conducted eleven semi-structured interviews whereas four interviews are considered to be context talks. These conversations were supposed to contextualize the knowledge acquired during the interviews with volunteers. Therefore, members of the Bundestag and a professional coordinator of voluntary work employed by the Diakonie association replied to my questions. Furthermore, the latter invited me to a Round Table meeting, where I was able to obtain further interviews with volunteers. The following paragraphs will give detailed information on why I decided to focus on a qualitative single-case study design. They will also explain why I chose this particular case which is the municipality of Duisburg. Also, it will clarify why I chose these particular respondents and how the data collection proceeded.

3.1 Single case study design

The single-case study design allows me to proceed the gathered knowledge on the state-volunteer relationship. One particular municipality constitutes a case for this study. Municipalities have significant competences in the field of receiving asylum seekers (Katz et al., 2016). Integration, conversely, is happening on the local level. Meanwhile, municipalities lack in control over the amount of assigned asylum seekers (Crage, 2016). In Flyvberg’s sense, an assessment of the state funding for voluntary organizations would simply reiterate the rules that set the scene for voluntary work. Focusing on one particular case allows me to “assess[…] complex causal relations” (George and Bennett, 2005) within this case. Qualitative research, however, is affording insight that is making the difference between a “rule-based beginner” and an “expertise virtuoso” (Flyvberg, 2006). According to Flyvberg both scientific knowledge and human knowledge in general are making progress if they are generating context-dependent comprehension. To delve deep into a certain context, qualitative interviews are most suitable. Hereby, it is, again, more beneficial to ask for an individual’s deeds instead of asking for their opinion (Forester, 2013). The state-volunteer relationship might be assessed by analyzing the amount of government funding that flows into voluntary efforts, for instance. This, however, lacks an understanding of the hands-on work that is done by the voluntary field (van Dyk and Misbach, 2016).

(24)

Nevertheless, this research tried to capture the whole picture of the state-volunteer relationship. As mentioned earlier, I interviewed both government officials and volunteers that have done hands-on work with refugees. Accordingly, this is granting a picture of the respective relationship instead of assessing one side’s attitude towards the other (Najam, 2000). The semi-structured and qualitative approach to my interviews allowed me to adjust my set of questions throughout the research process as problems raised considering the question about the Essen food bank, for instance (Jahn, 2013).

3.2 Case selection

Duisburg counts 499,845 inhabitants (IT.NRW, 2018). These inhabitants are divided into seven legal units that are called “Stadtbezirke”. Being part of North-Rhine Westphalia, it is also part of the so-called Ruhrgebiet, one of Europe’s biggest agglomerations. The underlying assumption to choosing this case is that it is a “deviant case” (Gerring, 2007). However, it is a deviant in the sense that it is helpful to answer my research question because the relationship between the government and volunteers should be strong enough to be researched in this particular case. This holds true for two main reasons: Its overall struggle with economic resources and the pressure that is caused by unemployment and past immigration.

National and European austerity measures like the Debt Brake have caused trouble for all German communities since 2009 (Conroy, 2017). Duisburg, moreover, is a municipality that is heavily indebted. It is, for instance, part of North-Rhine Westphalia’s HSK (Haushaltssicherungskonzept/Budget Security Concept) municipalities (NRW, 2018). Furthermore, it is obtaining more than €350,000,000 from the so-called Stärkungspakt (Reinforcement Agreement) to meet the national requirements for public budgets by 2020 (Rappen, 2017). Essentially, that means that the city government receives reimbursements from the Land so that it can meet the requirements of the Debt Brake. The Debt Brake implies that a municipality is forced to balance its budget. For the everyday work of a community, this means that decisions about expenses have to be double-checked in accordance with § 82 Gemeindeordnung (LexSoft). As the need to economize is thus fairly high, we can assume that support by volunteers, for example is “very much welcome” (Bode and Brandsen, 2014).

A city’s budget is highly reliant on taxes. Taxes are most commonly gathered through prosperous economies. If the unemployment rate is high, in turn, we can expect that economic pressure on the public budget is increasing. Duisburg faces major unemployment

(25)

(11.8%) (Duisburg, 2018). The national German average is ranging between three and four percent (Ames, 2018). Traditionally, since reunification, unemployment is higher in East Germany than it is in West Germany. However, the Ruhrgebiet area has taken major setbacks in the past century because the coal and steel industry is shrinking due to globalization (Taylor, 2015).

Being part of the Ruhrgebiet, also makes Duisburg part of the largest German Land North-Rhine Westphalia which counts 18 million inhabitants in total. Simultaneously, it houses more than 20% of the foreign population that is living in Germany (DeStatis, 2018). Population density is relatively high which makes proper integration even more significant because people are somewhat compelled to live in an urban setting. Conversely, one could argue that the contact hypothesis is easing integration efforts after all.

In recent years Duisburg hosted one major event that went wrong. In 2010, the Loveparade, an electronic dance music event, caused 21 deaths and left 650 people injured (Fischhaber and Brunner, 2017, Kurpjuweit et al., 2010). The flawed security concept and the poor management of political and legal accountability have also shaped the national image of Duisburg. Therefore, security concerns have risen since 2010. In short, the economic pressure and the rather dark national image make Duisburg overall a “deviant case” (Gerring, 2007) that is differing from an average German community.

Three main assumptions informed the choice to conduct this research in Duisburg. First, there is a high need for volunteers. Second, Duisburg is highly reliant on successfully integrating immigrants. Integration, however, encompasses finding a job which is reflecting on the complexity of handling the arrival of newcomers. In other words, immigrants are likely to struggle with job hunting if the local economy is declining. Lastly, the size of the community is crucial because it entails that volunteers can rely on an existing network with regards to management of voluntary efforts (Karakayali and Kleist, 2016).

I assume that the need for volunteers is fairly high (Alihodzic, 2014) because the municipality is facing significant economic pressure. At the same time, it comprises a high share of foreigners living in the city: Around 20% do not have German citizenship (DeStatis, 2018). First and second generation immigrants traditionally face difficulties to integrate into the German labor market because access to education is problematic (Kalter et al., 2007). This should even increase the perceived need to accelerate suitable integration efforts. Duisburg is already facing problems that are dealing with mismanagement of past immigration flows, as some

(26)

districts are nationally reported to be “no-go areas” (Schumacher, 2015, Schumacher, 2018). In response to integration needs as such, the Land North-Rhine Westphalia decided to install the so-called Municipal Integration Centers in 2012. These departments are part of a city government. In their respective city, they are supposed to link, for instance, civic engagement with other relevant actors like social workers (Hecke and Schäfer, 2012).

To conclude, I presume that the network between state entities and voluntary organizations are sufficiently big to be researched in Duisburg, as there is, firstly, a need to harness existing resources wherever possible and, secondly, an urgent need to integrate newcomers adequately.

3.3 Respondents

Respondents for the qualitative interviews of this study consisted of five volunteers and two bureaucrats from the municipality of Duisburg. Thereby, the sample tried to cover both sides of the state-volunteer relationship to shed light on the relationship from points of view.

3.3.1 Volunteers

I have reached out to two major welfare associations, Caritas and Diakonie, that are traditionally influential for providing welfare services (Bode, 2007, Zimmer, 1999). Both these associations had published contacts for potential volunteers throughout the city of Duisburg. Accordingly, the people listed were my focal points to either interview or to refer me to other voluntary organizations.7_{Especially Diakonie turned out to be devoted to bringing state}

representatives and volunteers together (Kiesow, 2018, Morbitzer, 2018).

It is crucial to talk to volunteers that are hands-on workers with refugees. Hereby I carefully chose grassroots organizations that were detached from welfare associations because I tried to depict the extraordinary character of the commitment that was prompted by the „long summer of migration“. Only their first-hand accounts can make visible what motivated them to enter voluntary work. Furthermore, they are a critical part of the state-volunteer relationship. Volunteers themselves were able to give an account on their political attitudes and their coordination with the administration from their point of view. Simultaneously, bureaucrats would have a slightly different image of the coordination in place so that their

7_{As mentioned earlier, I tried to catch the grassroots character of the German voluntary organizations. Both}

Diakonie and Caritas had their own respective groups of volunteers which I deliberately avoided because I presumed they were part of a welfare system that was established before 2015.

(27)

statements afforded me the entirety of their relationship (Najam, 2000). The six volunteers I have interviewed were committed in the Duisburg boroughs Neumühl, Rheinhausen and Walsum. During my field trip, I have discovered three boroughs. These varied in their politicization as a nativist party would hold open demonstrations in one place but omit others. Susanne Lohaus, Stefan Ringling and Michael Hüter are from the same borough which is called Neumühl. All three have a more or less professional relationship to providing welfare services: Susanne Lohaus is chairing a charity organization that is dealing with open youth work. In the context of the “long summer of migration”, she handled the financial matters of the Newcomer Network, an organization that is affording refugee children leisure opportunities. This network involved up to 30 volunteers from the borough. Stefan Ringling is youth leader of the Protestant congregation Neumühl, whereas Michael Hüter is this particular parish’s Father. However, all of them indicated that their commitment with refugees is completely voluntary as it is not salaried. The Neumühl borough has had a hot debate surrounding refugee accommodation in the past (Schmidt-Mattern, 2014). Also, it happened to host right-wing demonstrations in recent years (Piepiora, 2018, Alihodzic, 2015, Chudobba and Endell, 2014). Michael Hüter was actually one of the contact persons that the Diakone association had indicated. He in turn referred me to Susanne Lohaus and Stefan Ringling. Their umbrella organization is called “Initiativkreis Neumühler Erklärung” and was founded in late 2014 (Ruzycki et al., 2014, see Appendix).

The other respondents are Annegret Keller-Steegmann and Andrea Wohlgemuth. Annegret Keller-Steegmann is a retired musician who resides in Rheinhausen, a Southern borough that has had issues with the residents’ response to Roma newcomers (Cnotka et al., 2012, Kaiser, 2012). She attended a Round Table meeting in Rheinhausen which is where I was referred to her. Her voluntary organization evolved from earlier endeavors with newcomers. Last but not least, I talked to Andrea Wohlgemuth, a bank clerk from Duisburg-Walsum. She, however, was not on a welfare association’s contact list but I managed to get in touch with her because of individual contact I had happened to make before this research. The Walsum borough has also housed asylum seekers since 2015 (Herberhold, 2015a, Schmidt-Mattern, 2014). The umbrella organization in Walsum is called “Flüchtlingshilfe Walsum” and it was mainly initiated by the congregation’s Fathers (Wohlgemuth, 2018).

(28)

3.3.2 Street-level bureaucrats

As these officers are doing their work representing the state on a municipal level, they are an important piece in the puzzle of state-volunteer relationships. Representing the municipality they are the “interface between citizenship and the state” (Schiffauer, 2018). This focal point is able to create trust between the citizen and the state unlike abstract large-scale political systems or entities as the Bundestag (Lipsky, 2010). One bureaucrat I have interviewed, Angelika Brockel, is part of the Municipal Integration Center that is said to implement the municipal integration efforts. The Municipal Integration Center of Duisburg is aligned with the Department Integration, Sports and Health, Consumer Protection and Fire Service. Furthermore, I have interviewed a street-level bureaucrat who is employed at the Department Social Affairs and Housing. Both are thus professional social workers. However, during the interview with her one of her colleagues from the same department was present which might have distorted Angelika Brockel’s answers in terms of professional desirability. On the day of the interview he had been in this particular department for about four weeks. However, he intervened the recorded conversation once. Nonetheless, I was interviewing her on the work she does in a professional context. The second bureaucrat’s name is Jörn Kiesow. He, however, is working for the local housing and social welfare authority. He was often referred to as a “Stadtteilsozialarbeiter” (a district’s social worker) (Keller-Steegmann, 2018, Morbitzer, 2018, Kiesow, 2018).

3.4 Context talks

For background talks I have met up with three MPs from the Bundestag’s sub-committee on civic engagement (Unterausschuss Bürgerschaftliches Engagement) which is supposed to design an inter-agency engagement strategy that is to provide a sustainable framework for voluntary efforts (Brase et al., 2017). That is, if there is a deliberate steering of voluntary work by national politics, it is to be found in this sub-committee. Fractions are represented according to their party’s strength in the parliament and their sessions are generally non-public (Marschall, 2011, Marschall, 2005). Therefore, my interview sample included Svenja Stadler, Ulrike Bahr (SPD) and Martin Patzelt (CDU). Svenja Stadler used to be the Social Democrat’s spokesperson on civic engagement. I also audio-recorded these three interviews by mutual consent. Unfortunately, members of the Linke Party (Die Linke) and the Green Party

(29)

(Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) were not available for interviews. These two had formed the opposition in the 18th_{German Bundestag (2013-2017).}

Furthermore, I have got Aurelia Morbitzer for the record. She is working for Grafschafter Diakonie which is a chapter of the German welfare association Diakonie. Her job is to coordinate volunteers that are registered with Diakonie in Duisburg-Rheinhausen. The interview was taped as well. Furthermore, Aurelia Morbitzer afforded me access to a Round Table meeting that bureaucrats and volunteers from the borough attended. This meeting in turn gave me access to further volunteers.

3.5 Interviews

These meetings also gave me an impression of what frictions arise between volunteers and local administration. Subsequently, I was able to pose targeted questions. For instance, the borough Rheinhausen had issues with an air hall that had been erected in the course of 2016 (Ahlers, 2016). This air hall apparently caused two kinds of disputes: On the one hand, volunteers had problems entering the facility, whereas, on the other hand, the temperatures would rise to an unbearable degree in the subsequent summer (Spelleken, 2017). However, the questions asked were dependent on the particular interviewee.

Semi-structured interviews also allowed me to alter the list of questions I asked (Jahn, 2013). Initially, I assumed examples from current news to be a good way to frame questions. The case of the Essen Tafel, a charity food bank in the Western city of Essen, was one of those (Wernicke, 2018, BBC, 2018, Erickson, 2018). I presumed this case to be useful because the Tafel is partially run by volunteers and because it recently ceased it services because of an overload. The main argument was that the organization filled a gap that was left by the state. After receiving too many requests, it decided to send a signal to state entities by terminating its services. Van Dyk and Misbach have described a similar case in the context of refugee support in Berlin (2016). It turned out, however, that my respondents were either poorly-informed about this topic or not willing to disclose their comment on this. Finally, I decided to leave this particular question out and asked volunteers if they had ever considered quitting their volunteering because of frustration or because of an overload. Since the question left room for interpretation, some even thought of violent attacks as a reason to leave (e. g. Ringling, 2018).

(30)

In all, the interviews with volunteers were problem-centered which means that they were able to elaborate on what they perceived as a difficulty that they sought to change by doing voluntary work (Han-Broich, 2012). Furthermore, I asked them about points of contact with government officials and the appreciation of their work through bureaucrats and politicians. The questions for bureaucrats, however, focused on their respective experiences with volunteers. The most arguable point in these interviews was the degree of reliance on voluntary work for their job (for an exhaustive list please see the Appendix). Each interview lasted thirty to sixty minutes in total. Ten out of eleven interviews took place in face-to-face situations which was my most preferred method because it included complete communication (verbal and non-verbal). Unfortunately, I had to conduct one interview via telephone due to logistical problems.

3.6 Analyzing the interviews

The interviews were audio-recorded by mutual consent. I conducted ten interviews in face-to-face settings whereas one interview had to be done via telephone. The face-face-to-face interviews were recorded using an Apple iPhone, while the telephone interview was taped with the application Audacity. Afterwards, the interviews were fully transcribed which resulted in 128 pages of transcripts. However, these interviews were not translated to English unless single passages are cited directly in the following analysis. I transcribed the interviews in Microsoft Word using marks and comments to structure the arguments of my interviewees. During the transcription the telephone interview turned out to contain a couple of flaws so that some sub-clauses were not understandable.

The emerging structure is reflected in the sub-chapters of my analysis. The recurring and therefore most important talking points were the volunteers’ initial motivations, the problems that both bureaucrats and volunteers encountered and the boundaries between volunteers and officials that started to blur in the process and aftermath of the “long summer of migration”.

3.7 Limitations

Several obstacles had to be faced over the course of this research. Firstly, time was a constraining factor as this research encompassed traveling between Amsterdam, Berlin and Duisburg. Secondly, the talks with bureaucrats touched upon their work and their use of

(31)

discretionary spaces (Lipsky, 2010) which is both close to their practices and close to the limits of legality.

Voluntary work is a complex field with diverse organizational structures and as in any other field trust is pivotal for gaining access; in hindsight I would say that I had definitely too little time to gain proper access to this field. Thus, my sample does not include people who were extremely politicized, for example. These outliers did not participate in any Round Table formats which might distort my findings with regards to the research question because their motivation is definitely affecting the state’s relationship with a certain share of the voluntary field. Yet, there is variation in the investigated sub-sections of the voluntary field with regard to their particular motivation. Also, the scrutinized initiatives vary in their relationships with government officials as there are different tensions arising.

Refugee work, and discretionary spaces in some cases, are close to the fine line between legality and illegality. That is why some respondents were intimidated by the questions asked and were not willing to divulge details about their management approaches. Furthermore, they could have made claims that were politically explosive or controversial to say the least. As none of the interviewees is anonymized, their claims are possibly distorted in terms of social desirability (which became clear in background talks off the record). Nonetheless, bureaucrats never reversed their on-the-record claims by 180 degrees. Meanwhile, I tried to create an atmosphere that was not condemning. My assumption was that once my interviewees felt comfortable while talking they would be more willing to share information that might be held back in other conversations. In a similar vein, I tried to keep the more critical questions for the end of the interview. Semi-structured interviews allowed me to decide on the exact phrasing of questions as well as on the order of questions.

Thinking about the case selection, it would also have been interesting to assess the state-volunteer relationship in areas of the former GDR. Municipalities in these areas often have a level of unemployment that is similar to Duisburg while also facing enormous economic pressure. In East German Länder, however, there was a higher frequency of attacks on refugee accommodation than in West Germany (Jäckle and König, 2017). Yet, the case of Duisburg represents the most cost-efficient community in Germany from my perspective. Also, voluntary organizations and the networks between state entities and volunteers were rather small (BMFSJ, 2017) which means that particular relationships are less researchable. Having

(32)

grown up in Duisburg provided me with low-cost opportunities to conduct my research. Also, the geographical proximity made face-to-face interview more probable.

The volunteer and the state : "Wir schaffen das"