Inclusive-Exclusion of exiled scholars into German academia through the ambivalent zone of ‘academic humanitarianism’

ABSTRACT As mentioned in official reports, the number of scholars migrating from countries with autocratic regimes or/and at war to neighborhoods or Europe is increasing due to continuing attacks on scientists and academic institutions in those countries. This paper studies this phenomenon through the analysis of the data collected through a research project involving interviews with 10 experts and 22 exiled scholars who fled their home countries to Germany after 2015. Within this context, the paper particularly focuses on the experiences of scholars, who were provided by academic humanitarian actors with scholarships/positions at universities or research institutes in Germany to continue their academic work in safety. The paper suggests defining the recently expanding supporting networks for at-risk scholars as ‘academic humanitarianism’, which refers to a domain of power and a regime of governing that emerged at the intersection of two social fields: higher education and humanitarianism. Analyzing their narratives on their academic experiences in Germany, the paper concludes that despite the target of academic humanitarian actors to integrate this superfluous population of academia into German higher education (GHE), the unintentional result is their ‘inclusive-exclusion’ due to conflicting social forces (re)producing epistemic and dispositional hierarchies that exist in German universities.