Doris Akrap Sunday 6 September 2015
A willingness to help Syrian refugees is sweeping the nation. How Germany deals with the long-term consequences of its generosity is equally important
Borussia Dortmund supporters hold a banner showing their support for refugees. Photograph: Frank Augstein/AP
Sometimes German words end up having an international career. Kindergarten is one of them, Blitzkrieg another. Willkommenskultur could be next. With its uniquely German ring of bureaucratese and poetics, Willkommenskultur means “welcome culture” and is a word not born of custom but created to establish one.
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Coined by politicians a few years ago, it was originally meant to be the siren call that would attract people from other countries to come to Germany and compensate for a big shortage of skilled workers in vast, sparsely populated areas such as Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
These days Willkommenskultur is used to encourage help for the hundreds of thousands of refugees coming to Germany. And thousands of Germans have pitched in; they take food and clothes to the camps, take refugees to meetings with the authorities in their own cars, pay their fares, foot their medical bills, teach German, translate forms, share couches and bikes, act as nannies, open up soccer clubs, schools and kindergartens for refugee kids, and go on demonstrations against right-wing attacks across the country.
Those with a particularly sensitive ear may detect an air of passive aggression in the manner in which Germans seek to highlight their goodness these days. The public mood is so empathically pro-refugee, you’d feel guilty if you didn’t at least do the bare minimum, such as offer your spare bed to a Syrian. It’s as if a year after the World Cup triumph in Rio, Germans desperately want to be world champions again – this time as the globe’s most welcoming country for refugees.
And yet, there is something new to all this. The last time there was a major spike in immigration into Germany, in the 90s, refugees were largely left to their own devices. Only the radical left, the churches and a few engaged private individuals offered organised help. All the while they were coming under direct attack from neo-Nazis in Hoyerswerda or Rostock-Lichtenhagen. This became a worldwide symbol of the new “ugly German”. With overseas prestige under threat, the majority reacted: even middle-sized towns got their own Rock Against Racism gig and the government organised candle-lit demonstrations. For all that, in 1993, the Bundestag de facto abolished the right of asylum. When that occurred, it was left once again to left-wing activists, the churches and immigrants to protest. The plight of the other had once again become a niche concern.
Many refugees organised themselves to fight for their political agenda, but they were often hamstrung by the reality of their lives in the migrant camps. Finding a job, and thus integrating into society, and living in constant fear of deportation was exhausting. For at least a decade afterwards, the numbers of refugees coming to Germany dropped. It’s around that time that the detached discourse around Willkommenskultur was established.
But here we are in 2015, watching TV reports of refugees arriving to applause in Munich or those still in transit in Hungary chanting “Germany! Germany!”, for the country where they hope to find conditions for a dignified life. Whatever way you look at it, this is a turning point.
Indeed, another word that is frequently popping up in civil discourse these days is Wende: “turning point”. The term might imply that the rules of the EU today can’t be the rules of the EU tomorrow. But the refugees haven’t time to wait for “us” to work out whether Dublin III or Schengen need to be overhauled . The breakdown of these agreements is already happening.
But as the Germans share their bread with the refugees, Angela Merkel made clear in her speech on Monday that she won’t accept Italy, Greece or Hungary not pulling their weight and opening their borders. She also made clear that all the refugees from the Balkan states will be send back immediately, as they are not in need of protection.
As a child of a “guest worker” who grew up in Germany in the 90s, I can’t claim to be completely impartial about this debate. Phrases such as “Germany can’t take all refugees in the world” or “They can stay, but do they really need an apartment on their own?” give me the creeps. I hear them from conservative politicians. I hear them from colleagues and friends, none of them racist. Butsuch comments remind me of those flung at my father, whose family was killed by the Nazis in Yugoslavia. Even after 30 years of living and working in Germany he had to listen to people telling him: “Isn’t it nice that we let you work here?”
Maybe my fears are as arbitrary as the resentments of right-wing Germans who demonstrate in front of refugee shelters in Dresden or Heidenau. But when I listen to the “good Germans”, I often ask myself: what is going to happen, when the new refugees demand more than a tent, a bottle of water and a slice of bread? How will German society deal with this next turning point? What if it turns out that not every refugee has the skills to equip them for the “made in Germany” brand? Will Willkommenskultur end, when it involves not just singing Hallelujah together, but helping people to become autonomous and articulate their own wishes? Will the liberal segment of German society that is drawing so much praise right now have the determination to fight their own government and abolish Dublin III and Schengen? Or will “Willkommen” be just a slogan on the doormat again?
Comment by aleksiasinitchkina
The Schengen agreement requires refugees to seek asylum in the first country they enter under the EU’s Dublin accord. Under the Dublin accord, before it was changed, it stated that it would only examine refugee applications in one state within the Dublin zone to ensure that asylum seekers may not be sent from one country to another. For legitimate reasons, this was implemented. Lets look at the big picture here, by scrapping the Dublin accord makes the Schengen Agreement a de facto, even if Germany tries to justify it by arguing that it would speed up the refugee movement process, nevertheless an influx of illegal Syrian migrants (now deemed legal according to the changes declared in the Dublin accord) is expected to overpopulate Germany with a whopping 800k figure, this year alone. This will lead to catastrophic consequences that Europeans will have to endure i.e imposed levies, crowded housing, increased unemployment, not to mention the criminals and human traffickers. Don’t forget, this is on top of the outstanding economic instability that exists in Europe prolonged by the EU and bankers I.e Greece who is basically on life support who have already had 200,000 migrants enter this year, legal and illegally. Also how does Germany expect to sustain their own countries economy referring to Goldman-Sachs outstanding proportions of money loaned to Greece when It’s irrefutably clear that they are incapable of paying pack. These are just some of the consequences that EU and banker control have had. Don’t think for one moment that They wouldn’t happily use the refugee crisis to their advantage as a decoy in their schemes to distract Europeans from political scandals. The EU members, Germany, Austria are going about this the wrong way. Europe needs to help themselves before they start thinking about taking in outrageous proportions of refugees then they can handle. Europe is hanging by a very thin thread.
As for the Hungarian officials in Budapest Killeti, they are not the ‘bullies’ as so many of you say, if anyone is a bully it’s a spineless government who chooses to give in to political peer pressure and allow destruction of their own country by migrant influx on biblical scales, at the cost of the working class people. The solution is this, address the wars, collaborate with Allies, the time for talking is over, send troops down, stop the boats from leaving the ports in Libya. We need to control the flow of refugees, check paper work, and send direct aid to minorities in refugee camps who urgently need the help. Pull them out if we need too. The process of refugee movement should be in moderation using an orderly selection process, It’s extremely irresponsible for Germany to allow an open door policy, which only exacerbates the migration crisis and further compromise migration policies of the European Union.
Lastly, just to make it clear for everyone, any asylum seeker is a person seeking protection from their own country, but has not yet received refuge status. By arriving illegally means automatically, will be determine if you are a refugee escaping prosecution from your own country. Once you are granted refuge status then you may reside in the selected country you applied asylum for. A good portion of these refugees become economic migrants when they Abandon their country of asylum and move into another country. Anyone who says otherwise is blind or delusional as is obvious in the pictures we see of Syrians dressed in nice flashy clothing, walking through international borders like we have rolled out the red carpet for them, and making ridiculous acts of protests lying on the floor with cardboard signs when they could be sitting in refuge centres eating meals and sleeping in beds and waiting in line like the rest of us would.
In short, by ‘jumping the queue’, these economic migrants diminish any chances of a more deserving refugees hoping to acquire resettlement in refugee centres.
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