Disaggregating the Category “Refugee”: The German Case Today

This paper, based on ethnographic work in Aleppo (Syria), Istanbul (Turkey), and Berlin (Germany), addresses the changing nature of the citizen fleeing Syria and the changing reception of this refugee, from the repression of the “Arab Spring” of 2011 to the present. It tracks changes in the registers of context, motive, and temporality: from individuals to families, from anti-regime to escape from violence and war, from present danger to future expectations. Finally, it makes some preliminary comparisons of the evolution of Turkish and German receptions, also on the bases of registers of context, motive, and temporality.