Arenas of Volunteering: Experiences, Practices and Conflicts of Voluntary Refugee Relief

Abstract

The ongoing arrivals of asylum seekers in Germany and across Europe during the last few years have entailed an enormous increase in local voluntary engagement in the field of refugee relief. Local voluntary organisations have become important actors within refugee integration, taking over basic tasks from municipalities such as language teaching and providing refugees with information and practical help. Ethnographic fieldwork in the context of voluntary refugee relief in a mid-sized city in Bavaria, Germany, reveals insights into the practices and spaces of volunteering. Based on pragmatist notions of experiences as socially constituted modes of being in, participating in, and understanding the world, this chapter can help to understand the development of practices and commitment to voluntary refugee relief. It highlights how the emotional and spatial dimensions are meaningful to the analysis of volunteer practices as well as their conflicts and ruptures. Furthermore, the chapter illustrates that the processes of becoming a voluntary subject in many cases involve reflections on the politicization of voluntary refugee aid. This politicization holds a potential for conflict, both for the individual volunteer subject and the voluntary organisation.