Children or productive adults? Infantilisation and exploitation of refugees in Germany and Austria

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3616610
AutoresAmelie Harbisch (0000-0002-6743-129X, University of Erfurt, autor de correspondencia)
Año2024
Volumen50
Número6
Páginas1590-1608
Fecha de publicación2024-04-02
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaNew Community (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0047-9586 • E-ISSN: 1469-9451
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/1369183x.2023.2166908
OpenAlexW4316468425
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas5
Referencias citadas72

The persisting poor labour market integration of refugees and asylum seekers is puzzling, especially given host states’ declared desirability of refugees and asylum seekers being employed. Existing research on the determinants of refugees’ lack of labour market integration has analysed possible factors such as refugee health and education as well as host countries’ policies and discrimination. Based on original ethnographic data generated in Berlin and Vienna in 2019, I argue that the poor labour market integration can be better understood when we consider colliding perceptions, called scripts, of refugees and asylum seekers: At the same time that they are constructed as potentially useful labour, they are also constructed as helpless children who can never quite be ready for the labour market. I present each script’s ascriptions and prescriptions towards refugees and asylum seekers, show how these are enacted by the people subjected to them and analyse how disruptions occur when there are simultaneous, contradictory demands. Policy implications are that the host society’s perceptions do matter and that integration measures must be reviewed with regard to their potentially infantilising tendencies

Demographic economics · Economics · Ethnography · Market integration · Political science · Refugee · Sociology · Law · Migration and Labor Dynamics · Migration, Health and Trauma · Migration, Refugees, and Integration