Exclaves in the Externalisation Society: Accommodation, provisions and care for refugees in Germany

Abstract

Externalisation is a core structural feature of capitalist societies. The negative effects of a capitalist mode of society and economy are externalised to other countries and later generations. The question that will be addressed in this paper is how externalisation societies respond when people from the externalised societies push into the inside of the externalisation countries, as for example in the context of forced migration. In this article, using the example of the accommodation, provision and care system for refugees in Germany, I will show that a fundamental element of externalisation is to re-externalise the people fleeing to the Global North into exclaves within the externalisation societies. I therefore argue that refugee accommodations need to be theorised as exclaves in externalisation societies, since spaces are created that are outside of these societies despite being territorially enclosed. In order to understand the character of the exclaves’ borders and the bordering processes, I will refer to Critical Border Studies. This area of study helps us to conceptualise borders not only and not mainly as the material demarcation lines of a social entity. Instead, they result from a permanent social practice. They can be drawn almost anywhere and by anyone. Therefore, I will also trace the intended and unintended bordering processes in the context of refugee accommodation, and I will present examples in which these processes have failed. The added value of my contribution lies on three levels. First, I extend the externalisation concept and apply it to a new topic. Second, I add a global perspective to the understanding of refugee accommodation, provisions and care in externalisation societies by applying the externalisation approach to this field. Third, by introducing Critical Border Studies, I flesh out the externalisation concept by showing that borders are decentralised, highly fluid, never closed and neither universally valid nor visible to everyone.