Flüchtlingsströme against / and / or Wohlfahrtsfestung: An Ecology of the So-called Refugee Crisis

The chapter investigates the connection between archives, ecology and the so-called refugee crisis. While it seems to be surprising that the so-called refugee crisis is articulated within the environmental and ecological concepts, this discursive framing speaks to broader issues at hand. The questions are what can be said and how can it be articulated, which articulations become statements that seem to be able to describe or define a situation. In this sense, the description of the so-called refugee crisis within concepts of ecology or / and environment have to be understood, as the chapter argues, within the Foucauldian notion of archive. Concepts like landscape or flows do not only shape our understanding of the so-called refugee crisis and the massive movements of people all over the world but also shape massively the discourse about the sociopolitical realities and as such function as part of an archive of what can be said and which realities exist.