"Spending like a Refugee": Asylum and Political Economy in 1980s West Germany

The “Welcome Refugees” movement in Germany grabbed headlines internationally in the summer of 2015, but media coverage has tended to use two historical events as context: the National Socialist period and the wave of violence against asylum seekers in the early 1990s. In this paper, I explore a different moment in the history of asylum in Germany by focusing on the 1980s. During this period, asylum seekers waiting for a verdict on their case were not allowed to work, as officials feared that work permits would only stimulate additional asylum applications. Instead of cash, asylum seekers were expected to meet their needs with state-provided “food vouchers." In 1984, activists in West Berlin began to give asylum seekers cash in exchange for these vouchers, and the action spread to other cities. The West Germans who had purchased vouchers then tried to use them, “spending like a refugee," but many stores refused to accept these certificates from people identified as "German". This refusal revealed assumptions about the racial boundaries of the community: someone who looked white could not be a refugee. Activists also used the voucher action to criticize the way that asylum seekers under suspicion of being "economic migrants" were forced into a shadow economy: excluded from the economy until they could prove they did not want to join it. The paper not only testifies to the long history of pro-refugee activism in Germany, but also argues for a new way to think about the relationship between asylum and political economy.