Volunteering for Refugees - Sources for Transnational Solidarity

The paper presents the results of a study conducted among volunteers who support refugees in different places in Germany, encompassing both individual volunteers and representatives of organisations. With more than 450 respondants it is the first study which looks at this specific field of activism with a quantitative perspective. Some of the results are particularly interesting with regard to the emergence of the refugee support in the summer of 2015, which in certain aspects appear to be the outcome of a continuos growth of this type of engagement since the civil war in Syria. With regard to some of the more signficant data, the paper will also explore the role of the volunteer movement in challenging the European migration regime, the role of second and third generations migrants and the framing of migration politics in these movements.