Making a difference - The accommodation of refugees in Leipzig and Osnabrück

Abstract

The East-German city Leipzig and the West-German city Osnabrück, the main locations of our research, are among the pioneers of a nationwide movement for the decentralisation of refugee accommodation. At the beginning of the 2010s, local authorities in the two cities decided against housing refugees in mass accommodation centres, instead choosing to support them in leading self-determined lives by facilitating their access to private housing. However, the two cities then responded very differently to the increasing number of people coming to Germany for protection over the course of 2015. Based on empirical observations, this paper discusses an exemplary solution to a major research problem of how to compare the diverse and changing practices and discourses of refugee accommodation in local migration regimes. To find answers to this question, we develop a five-dimensional comparative model, combining the relational rescaling approach of Nina Glick Schiller and Ayse Çağlar with Henri Lefebvre's spatial constructivist considerations.