Between Humanitarian and Political Realism: Anthropological Perspective on the Refugee Crisis in Germany

The article historicizes the German ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015 in the context of post-World War II politics of migration and asylum in the country, focusing particularly on the reactions to the ‘crisis’ of 1992. That time, government reacted to more than 400,000 refugees from the Balkan wars with severe restrictions of the right to asylum, framed also within the ‘Dublin Regulation’ of the European Union. It is argued that German politics of immigration was mostly a kind of Realpolitik that subordinated humanitarian considerations to closed-border politics geared at keeping migrants out. Summer 2015, however, saw elements of humanitarianism in German refugee politics, understood, following Didier Fassin, as the introduction of moral sentiments into politics. This ‘humanitarianism’ was mostly accredited to Chancellor Angela Merkel. Yet the commitment of thousands of members of the German public ensured the sustainability of a ‘welcome culture’ intended to accommodate refugees, government politics quickly reverted to new restrictions that keep immigrants for many months or even years in a limbo of waiting. While to some extent government’s humanitarian discourse continues it becomes apparent that humanitarian politics is often a cover up for ulterior political motives. It is concluded that marking the events of 2015 as a refugee crisis enables in the first place the legitimization of politics of restriction like the externalization of EU borders into North African countries.