Renegotiation of local orders

Migration-induced diversity, intergroup relations, conflicts and integration dynamics in the district

DeZIM Research Community

Project team:

Principal investigators: Dr Jörg Hüttermann (IKG), Prof. Dr Andreas Zick(IKG), Prof. Dr Andreas Pott (IMIS), Prof. Dr Naika Foroutan (BIM)

Project staff: Johannes Ebner (IKG), Dr. Daniel Kubiak (BIM), Hannah Mietke (IKG), Dr. Anna-Lisa Müller (IMIS/IKG), Denis van de Wetering (IMIS), Benjamin Zeibig (IKG)

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Project description:

This comparative-explorative project is dedicated to the coexistence of "groups" in selected neighbourhoods of Dortmund, Bonn and Magdeburg that are characterised by migration-related diversity. It explores how the orders of coexistence are reproduced, varied and changed through local interactions of conflict and negotiation. The selection of the study cities is explained by the aim of taking socio-spatial inequality and different manifestations of migration-related diversity into account as a comparative dimension. The research approach used is a combination of figuration-sociological conflict analysis, negotiated-order and symbolic-boundary-making approaches. In this way, not only intended manifest, but also non-intended pre-flexive negotiation processes of local-spatial everyday interaction come into view. The data collection is based on methods of social space analysis and urban ethnography.

In detail, the project addresses seven questions:

1. What problems are perceived in the social spaces concerned (generational conflicts, immigration and emigration, deviant behaviour of young people, ageing, housing vacancy or shortage, family disintegration, gender inequality, property price decline or increase, etc.)?
2. Which of the problems explored are framed in terms of migration or migration-related categories (ethnicity, culture, religion, regional origin, reason for migration)? Which problems are not?
3. Which of the subjectively migration-related problems are taken up by conflict and/or negotiation interactions? And how does this affect the ensemble of local conflict and negotiation interactions?
4. What effect do conflict and negotiation interactions have with regard to the positioning of the various perceived groups in the district and in the city as a whole? What effects do conflict and negotiation interactions have on group formations and everyday border regimes in the respective district (i.e. course of local intergroup borders incl. border crossings, crossing intergroup borders, dissolution of intergroup borders and intergroup hierarchies etc.)?
5. Do socio-spatial conditions - settlement history, structural-architectural, infrastructural, local political and cultural peculiarities - have an impact on the style, form and productivity of negotiation processes in the districts or cities? If so, in what form and to what extent?
6. To what extent do local problem solutions harmonise or collide with decisions or actors perceived as coming from outside (infrastructure of relevant actors, including NGOs and state institutions)?
7. What recommendations for action can be derived?

The project aims to develop a research perspective and a set of tools to better understand conflict dynamics on the ground. From a political-practical perspective, the participants would like to contribute to enlightenment about existing and to be developed integration potentials of local civil societies. Based on this knowledge, political interventions could be tailored even more precisely to the respective local contexts.

Participating partners: Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence (IKG), Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (IMIS), Berlin Institute for Empirical Integration and Migration Research (BIM).

Funding: Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (Third-party funding)