Work as real life in the context of organised disintegration – a perspective on the everyday life of refugees

ABSTRACT

The contribution introduces the concept of ‘organised disintegration’. Based on an interview study conducted in Germany, the concept describes the life situation of asylum seekers and ‘tolerated’ refugees. At first, the theoretical references to the ‘total institution’ and ‘conduct of everyday life’ approaches are explained. ‘Work’ appears in the results as an arrangement of the refugees’ conduct of everyday life that is characterised by joblessness and futile search for employment. The refugees experience work as prohibited and their persistent situation as lost lifetime and as ‘human death’. At the same time, the arrangement of work is maintained as a meaningful part of ‘real life’ which begins immediately after overcoming the current legal status. The validity of the concepts that were made relevant as well as the implications for the current state of research in refugee studies are discussed in the conclusion.

KEYWORDS:

• Refugee
• work
• conduct of everyday life
• total institution
• interviews
• Germany

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. I want to thank Elisabeth Scheibelhofer very much for our constructive exchange and for discussing the contribution with me. I also wish to thank Andreas Sturm for supporting the finalisation process.

2. According to German residency laws, ‘tolerated’ persons (Geduldete) are former asylum seekers whose applications for asylum have been rejected. The status of ‘tolerated’ persons means that deportation to their countries of origin or third states has been postponed (see 2.1).

3. The explanations refer to the year of data collection, 2005. Changes made since then could not be described here.

4. Goffman himself did not absolutely require the general characteristics of total institutions to be fulfilled (Goffman 1971, 16ff.) but rather emphasised that many of the concepts described were also valid in other institutions, such as the family.

5. According to Löw (2016, 145f.), the societal structure can be described as a ‘web of structure’ comprising potentially conflicting legal, political, economical, spatial and temporal structures.

6. This conduct of everyday life approach is embedded in the context of German subject-oriented sociology and has yet to be widely adopted internationally. For an overview of different conduct of everyday life approaches, see Schraube and Højholt (2015).

7. The names of all people and locations have been anonymised. The interview partners’ countries of origin are not given in order to maintain anonymity.

8. Translation from German. The language of the original quotes has been adjusted.

9. Patrick’s interview was conducted in English; these citations are thus excerpts from the original transcript. Underscoring in the transcripts indicates emphasis.

10. Etzold makes use of the term ‘field’ according to Bourdieu’s notion of ‘social field’.