Testing Solidarities: Activism, Alliances, and Political Responses of German Women’s Organizations during the 2015 Refugee Crisis

By the end of 2015, an estimated 800.000 refugees will have reached Germany from the Middle East, Southern Europe, and North Africa, many of them women and children. German governmental institutions are not prepared to provide humanitarian and legal support on the scale that is needed. Instead, engaged citizens and local groups have stepped into the governmental void and created spontaneous networks of humanitarian aid. Localized women’s NGOs have become highly relevant to alleviate trauma and stress of women refugees and their children.

This paper assesses activism, alliances, and political responses of German women’s organizations to the crisis: In what way do women’s NGOs engage with the refuges’ situation and support action? To what degree do “grounded and particular” (Mohanty 2003) solidarities echo on national and transnational scales of activism? Based on their practices in the refugee crisis, do women’s organizations articulate the need for broader and more stable intersectional networks and alliances? And finally: What kind of political responses do German women’s organizations develop and, more specifically, do these responses exhibit new solidarities among gender and refugee/ethnicity/minority activists? The paper will be based on a mixed-methods approach, utilizing NGO reports, interviews, and issue network mapping tools.