Inside the regime

In Parts I and II of this book I narrated the arrival, asylum application and early experiences with the integration regime from the perspective of refugees. In Part III, I shift focus to two areas: first, how intuitions were operating during this period, the challenges they faced and the way in which they incorporated themes of the integration regime; and, second, how this institutionalization of the integration regime impacted Syrians attempting to permanently settle in Germany. This chapter takes many of the themes featured in previous chapters and applies them to ethnographic work conducted within several federal and local government intuitions. Chapter 6 will outline many of the structural challenges ‘well-integrated’ refugees face, as well as challenges for refugees who are outside the scope of mechanisms created by the integration regime.

When I began undertaking my fieldwork, meeting up with the contacts I first met in Turkey in 2015 and then in 2017 travelling around Germany in order to reconnect with them, the bureaucratic theme almost immediately emerged. I was just beginning my inquiries, so it was unclear at the time why BA played such a vital role the experience of Syrians in Germany. Once this finding was made, I sought to join research collaborators on their visits to in the Job Centre in order to gain insights into the bureaucratic processes and observe the tensions that my contacts recounted to me. Early on, I was faced with difficulties contacting the Job Centre in Saarbrucken and near Westerkappeln (administered by the district of Steinfurt), and was later denied access to BAMF's central office in Nuremberg. However, a colleague referred me to someone close to him at a Job Centre in the city of Kassel and they agreed to let me observe and conduct interviews. I was also, after much effort, able to access the Job Centre, BA and the local Foreigner's Office in Munich. The offices of various bureaucracies in Munich were particularly supportive in providing transparency to researchers like myself.

What follows is a complement to other references to these agencies given throughout this book. It attempts to frame localized variation in the legal interpretation and structure of agencies in the context of their regional resources, as well as some of the ways in which agents work with clients to achieve differing Job Centre agendas.