Between redemption and affirmation: German identity in affective narratives of the ‘refugee crisis’

Abstract

The German ‘refugee crisis’ produced formidable levels of civil society assistance, involving citizens and locations with no previous experience in refugee support. Grounded in research with citizen volunteers in a rural region in southern Germany conducted at a time when rightwing populism gained strength, this article explores how volunteers reflect on their relations with refugees while negotiating distinctly German identities. Scholarship on volunteering in refugee settings has looked at the emotional aspect of this work largely for its political import. This article expands attention to emotions in volunteering from a form of political practice on the ground to a practice of narrative reasoning. In a close reading of interview-derived narratives as affective practices the relevance of locality, identity and history for refugee reception comes to the fore. Deploying the notions of ‘redemptive’ and ‘affirmative’ Germanness the article shows how volunteers draw on specific historical trajectories to produce moral arguments about the support and incorporation of strangers. This article argues that volunteers’ affective involvement with history and locality needs unpacking if their relations of solidarity are to be understood.