CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2017
| Author | Maerz, Wolfram |
|---|---|
| Title | The Phantom of the Neighborhood ; Reactions Toward a Planned Emergency Shelter for Asylum Seekers in a Berlin Suburb |
| Summary | In 2015, an estimated number of 1.1 million refugees had arrived in Germany. Shelters were hastily established. In their search for available space, local authorities decreed the occupancy of facilities in wealthy, ethnically rather homogeneous quarters which until then had little to none contact to other strata of society. In some cases, this has led to forms of NIMBYism (not-in-my-backyard) against such shelters. When the ‘LAGeSo’, the office which is responsible for the distribution and accommodation of newly arriving refugees in the state of Berlin, had announced plans to convert a former fabric into a shelter for at least 1000 people in a northern district of the city, an outcry and heated discussions filled local online news portals. Against the backdrop of right-wing politics becoming increasingly acceptable in public discourse, this MA thesis is an ethnographic inquiry about attitudes of middle-class residents toward the planned shelter in the neighborhood. Interviewees’ statements were assessed by using Michael Dear’s framework of NIMBY conflicts and embedded in a history of the neighborhood as a changing place due to increasing suburbanization and a history of migration to Germany. Thus, the academic concept of NIMBYism – evolved out of the discipline of human geography, yet analytically constrained to the backyard – is further developed in light of contemporary events and broader historical trajectories. The findings suggest that contrary to research on NIMBYism so far, residents’ reactions to planned facilities are much more dependent on global and historical developments than on just local ones. |
| Supervisor | Rabinowitz, Dan; Fabiani, Jean-Louis |
| Department | Sociology MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2017/maerz_wolfram.pdf |
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