Participation and public spheres: democratising society by participatory action research in social work

ABSTRACT

The article is based on a participatory action research project with refugees, volunteers and concerned citizens in rural Germany facing the challenges of integration in diverse communities. Integration is an interactionist and open-ended process with the aim of fair chances of participation in society. The word ‘integration’ is still the political term for concepts to regulate transnational immigration. Participation here means that all concerned groups should have chances to express interests, which needs organised spaces – social public spheres – where these dialogical processes can take place. We firstly present aspects of a participative theory of democracy and link action research intrinsically to it. Secondly we discuss a conception of generating social public spheres in the context of social work which uses methods of participatory action research to organise communication. Last we will describe the Project ‘DIWAN – Dialogue and Mobile Exhibitions to Develop Good Coexistence in the Post#x2D;Migrant Society’ in which we intend to initiate the building of social public spheres in migration societies by organising future workshops in rural communities. DIWAN shows that the process of societal learning as an element of democratising societies has to be moderated, which is a main task of community#x2D;based social work.

KEYWORDS:

• Participation
• democratisation
• public spheres
• post-migrant society
• social work

Acknowledgments

The project “DIWAN - dialogue processes and mobile exhibition for a successful coexistence in the migration society” was funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research in Germany in the years 2018 to 2021.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The term ‘refugee’ is a general term in the German context, used for people who already have refugee status and for those seeking asylum. For our project, the legal status of participants was not important, so we did not ask whether people were refugees, asylum seekers, or had another immigration status.

2. Translation by the authors.

3. The organization of the exhibition is supported by the cultural anthropologist Dr. Georgia Rakelmann (University of Giessen and Fulda University for Applied Sciences) who specializes in organizing and curating exhibitions and museums.