Caring, Giving and Receiving: Relationships of Solidarity in the Study of Forced Migration

This paper examines solidarity relationships between mainstream civil society and refugees based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in the German context (Zalewski 2022). Set in the years after the "long summer of migration" and before the coronavirus pandemic, it analyzes the emotionally close relationships between myself as a German-born ethnographer and young men with a Syrian refugee background. A methodology of "strong reflexivity" (Kühner et al. 2016) was applied together with Donna Haraway's (1988) idea of situated knowledge: it was important not to fall for the "God trick" of a universal, i.e. unmarked, perspective, but to adhere to an ethical demand for accountability.

As a result, on the one hand, dynamics of giving and receiving in these relationships will be pointed out. Following Marcel Mauss (1925), who conceived his theory as a non-utilitarian practice to reveal forms of "corporate solidarity" (Moebius 2006), I draw on the mixing of person and thing in the exchange of gifts by disclosing situations in which I experienced shame. On the other hand, the realm of "reciprocal experiences of loving care" (Honneth 1996) based on unconditionality is approached: the mutual empathy and the sincere sharing of each other's lives.

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Honneth, A. (1996). The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Kühner, A., Ploder, A., & Langer, P. (2016). Introduction to the Special Issue: European Contributions to Strong Reflexivity. Qualitative Inquiry, 22(9), 699–704.

Mauss, M. (1925). The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. London: Cohen & West

Moebius, S. (2006). Marcel Maus. Konstanz: UVK.

Zalewski, I. (2022). Negotiating Asymmetries: The (De)Thematization of Giving and Receiving in Ethnographic Relationships in Forced Migration Research. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 23(1), Art. 8.