Contestations of »the Social«. Welfare conflicts in the migration and labor society

Lan­guages: Eng­lish and German

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Wel­fare is char­ac­ter­ized by con­flicts and con­tra­dic­tions. It both enables and restricts: it pro­tects indi­vidu­als from the cap­it­al­ist mar­ket eco­nomy while sim­ul­tan­eously sup­ply­ing it with suit­able work­forces. It cre­ates freedoms and con­strains them, resolves con­flicts, yet at the same time gen­er­ates new prob­lems (Lessenich 2019). It reacts to social protests and integ­rates them into its own logics of social cohe­sion. Moreover, its national frame­work exists in ten­sion with muni­cipal and transna­tional levels of negotiation.

These lines of con­flict are par­tic­u­larly evid­ent in the cur­rent polit­ical debates at the fed­eral level in Ger­many. While the Bür­gergeld (‘cit­izen’s money’) reform ten­ded to strengthen the right to sub­sist­ence bene­fits and placed the focus on qual­i­fic­a­tion (qual­i­fare) and hol­istic approaches such as out­reach coun­sel­ing or coach­ing (care­fare), neo­lib­eral and nation­al­ist forces have been advoc­at­ing for cuts in social spend­ing and restrict­ing social rights for people who allegedly do not meet the norms of the national mer­ito­cracy (work­fare & chauvi­fare), and not just since the 2025 elec­tion cam­paign. This is evid­ent, for example, in the intro­duc­tion of pay­ment cards for refugees, the expan­sion of work oblig­a­tions and sanc­tions or the inven­tion of the fig­ure of the “Total­ver­weigerer” (“total objector”). These con­flicts are reflec­ted in the every­day nego­ti­ations of (social) state bene­fits and rights.

In the research pro­ject Con­test­a­tions of ‘the Social’ we exam­ine socio-polit­ical con­flicts within migra­tion and labor soci­et­ies, while also explor­ing pro­cesses bey­ond the national level. Based on the every­day dis­putes between mul­ti­lin­gual grass­roots groups of unem­ployed and pre­cari­ously employed people and vari­ous author­it­ies and act­ors, we ask: What con­flicts and con­tra­dic­tions shape the cur­rent social (state) regime?

In our research, we have iden­ti­fied four cent­ral areas of con­flict. Build­ing on the interim res­ults, we invite you to dis­cuss the fol­low­ing questions:

1. Migrants’ struggles for social repro­duc­tion in nec­ro­pol­it­ical times

Present­a­tions: Polina Man­o­lova (Duis­burg-Essen), Josie Hooker (Munich) and Valentina Moraru (Munich)

Com­ment­ary: Anda Nic­olae-Vladu (Oldenburg/Bochum)

The social repro­duc­tion of migrant work­ers in low-wage sec­tors is embed­ded in power rela­tions that are char­ac­ter­ized by racial­iz­ing and nec­ro­pol­it­ical dynam­ics. The work­ers seem to be trapped in a relent­less struggle against instabil­ity and mul­tiple pre­car­ity (Birke 2022). Imper­at­ives of labor con­nec­ted to social and res­id­en­tial rights, for example, force people into strain­ing employ­ment at the expense of their health. Their poor health, in turn, lim­its future employ­ment. Com­bined with exclu­sion­ary infra­struc­tures of the social (state) regime, it also sig­ni­fic­antly affects their (social) repro­duc­tion. Examples of this are plenty in regions which have been trans­formed by pre­cari­ously employ­ing indus­tries. In the Olden­burg region, where our part­ner organ­iz­a­tion, the Arbeitslo­senselb­sthilfe Olden­burg (ALSO), is act­ive, it is the meat and deliv­ery indus­tries that, dir­ectly and indir­ectly, shape the course of repro­duc­tion. In order to under­stand how the “geo­graph­ical dynam­ics of accu­mu­la­tion have become increas­ingly racial­ized” (McIntyre/Nast 2011, 1466), we ask: What do the con­flicts of migrant­ized work­ers around social repro­duc­tion in regions such as Olden­burg tell us about nec­ro­pol­it­ical social rela­tions in the Global North?

2. Com­munity as a tool for neo­lib­eral crisis man­age­ment and eman­cip­at­ory alternatives

Present­a­tions: Tine Haub­ner (Biele­feld), Ove Sut­ter (Bonn) and Tim Herbold (Munich)

Com­ment­ary: Mike Laufen­berg (Fulda)

Social move­ments have, in recent dec­ades, estab­lished infra­struc­tures of solid­ar­ity and mutual sup­port across many regions. This was par­tic­u­larly evid­ent in the after­math of the so-called “sum­mer of migra­tion” (Karakay­ali 2018; Maaroufi 2023). An example of these infra­struc­tures is the self-organ­ized social cen­ter of Pro­ject Shel­ter in Frank­furt, one of our research part­ners. At the same time, state insti­tu­tions can be observed attempt­ing to mobil­ize these emer­ging struc­tures and com­munit­ies for the man­age­ment of social prob­lems, effect­ively out­sourcing respons­ib­il­ity to them (van Dyk/Haubner 2021). How can these con­tra­dict­ory pro­cesses be ana­lyt­ic­ally grasped and interpreted?

3.B/ordering wage labour

Present­a­tions: Michael Bät­tig (Olden­burg), Alex Rau (Munich), Ver­onika Schmid (Munich) and Paula Brücher (Munich)

Soci­ety today, and the lives lived within it, are primar­ily organ­ized through wage labor. This also applies to those who do not work for wages, as essen­tial sys­tems of social integ­ra­tion and secur­ity ulti­mately rely on paid work. The need for wage labor is driven by eco­nomic coer­cion and an activ­at­ing wel­fare state (Lessenich 2008). It is fur­ther rein­forced by the norm of the wage-earn­ing adult. This norm con­trasts with the exist­ence of groups that are struc­tur­ally excluded from employ­ment. Examples include refugees, who are sub­ject to legal employ­ment bans, as well as indi­vidu­als engaged in care activ­it­ies, such as eld­erly care. This panel asks: How and where do con­flicts and social nego­ti­ations about the norm of wage labor take place? How can we under­stand the con­tra­dic­tions that arise from the coer­cion to work along with exclu­sion from work tak­ing place simultaneously?

4. Dis-/orders of ‘the Social’– Social policy between crim­in­al­isa­tion and pro­tec­tion

Present­a­tions: Friederike Faust (Göt­tin­gen), Svenja Schurade (Göt­tin­gen) and Lisa Ried­ner (Munich)

Com­ment­ary: Insa Koch (St. Gal­len, CH)

Social admin­is­tra­tion relies on bur­eau­cratic and moral orders related to fam­ily, work, and the nation, which often do not align with lived real­it­ies (Cruikshank 1999). Our research demon­strates how attempts to cir­cum­vent such demarc­a­tions and exclu­sions were framed as fraud against the Ger­man and local wel­fare state. The policy field of com­bat­ing wel­fare fraud has become a focal point of threat scen­arios and author­it­arian con­trol pro­jects. In res­on­ance with research on crim­in­al­iz­a­tion, poverty, and wel­fare (Faust et al. 2024; Koch/James 2020; Kor­vensyrjä 2024), we observe that the logics of con­trol and pun­ish­ment are part of nearly all areas of the social (state) regime, while sim­ul­tan­eously cre­at­ing their own infra­struc­tures, net­works, coali­tions, laws, and prac­tices. The Janus face of social policy has been noted many times. But what is the rela­tion­ship between the caring and pun­it­ive ele­ments of the wel­fare state in dif­fer­ent fields? How does this rela­tion­ship change? How are migra­tion and social policy con­nec­ted in this pro­cess? How can ana­lyz­ing shifts in the rela­tion­ship between pro­tec­tion and pun­ish­ment con­trib­ute to under­stand­ing con­flicts over cur­rent pro­jects of author­it­arian order?

This is the interim work­shop of the DFG Emmy Noether Junior Research Group Con­test­a­tion of ‘the Social’ – Towards a Move­ment-Based Eth­no­graphic Social (State) Regime Ana­lysis, which is based at the Insti­tute for European Eth­no­logy and Cul­tural Ana­lysis at LMU Munich. We are plan­ning both aca­demic pan­els as well as formats for exchange with experts from prac­tice. We wel­come inter­ested par­ti­cipants and par­tic­u­larly our part­ner groups: the com­munity organ­iz­a­tions of unem­ployed people BASTA! (Ber­lin) and ALSO (Olden­burg), and Pro­ject Shel­ter from Frankfurt/Main.

Bib­li­o­graphy
Birke, Peter (2022): Gren­zen aus Glas: Arbeit, Rassismus und Käm­pfe der Migra­tion in Deutsch­land, Man­del­baum Ver­lag, Wien.
Cruikshank, Bar­bara (1999): The Will to Empower: Demo­cratic Cit­izens and Other Sub­jects, Cor­nell Uni­ver­sity Press, Ithaca, New York.
Faust, Friederike et al. (2024): Crim­s­capes: Kul­tur­anthro­po­lo­gis­che Per­spekt­iven auf Politiken der Krim­in­al­is­ier­ung, in: Zeits­chrift für Empir­ische Kul­tur­wis­senschaft, Bd. 120 Nr. 2 (2024), 217–241.
Karakay­ali, Ser­hat (2018): Volun­teers: From Solid­ar­ity to Integ­ra­tion, in: South Atlantic Quarterly, 117 (2), 313–331.
Koch, Insa & James, Deborah (2020): The State of the Wel­fare State: Advice, Gov­ernance and Care in Set­tings of Aus­ter­ity, in: Eth­nos, 87(1), 1–21.
Kor­vensyrjä, Aino (2024): Die „Gesell­schaft schützen“? Strafgerichte diskrimin­ieren nicht nur bestim­mte Grup­pen, son­dern tra­gen auch aktiv zu rassi­fiz­ierter und migrantis­ierter Armut bei, in: Ana­lyse & Kritik, ak708, 15.10.2024.
Lessenich, Stephan (2008): Die Neuerfind­ung des Sozialen: Der Sozi­al­staat im flex­iblen Kapit­al­is­mus, tran­script Ver­lag, Biele­feld.
Lessenich, Stephan (2019): Sozi­al­politik als Prob­lem­löser und Prob­lem­ver­ursacher, in: Obinger, Her­bert & Schmidt, Man­fred G. (eds.): Hand­buch Sozi­al­politik, Springer VS, Wies­baden.
Maaroufi, Mouna (2023): Käm­pfe um Auto­nomie und Com­mons des Ankom­mens: Urbane Infrastruk­turen und Infra­pol­itiken der Arbeits­ver­mittlung, in: sub\urban, Bd. 11 (1/2), 97–126.
Nast, Heidi J. & McIntyre, Michael (2011): Bio(necro)polis: Marx, Sur­plus Pop­u­la­tions, and the Spa­tial Dia­lectics of Repro­duc­tion and “Race”, in: Anti­pode, 43 (5), 1465–1488.
Van Dyk, Silke & Haub­ner, Tine (2021): Com­munity-Kapit­al­is­mus, Ham­burger Edi­tion, Hamburg.

Program

Thursday, Nov. 13, 2025
8pm	Open­ing Event (tba)
Fri­day, Nov. 14, 2025
11:00 a.m.	Regis­tra­tion, get­ting to know each other, cof­fee & snacks
12:00 p.m.	Wel­come & short inputs from the CoS team
1:30–3:00 p.m.	Panel I Migrants’ struggles for social repro­duc­tion in nec­ro­pol­it­ical times with Polina Man­o­lova (Duis­burg-Essen), Josie Hooker (Bath, UK) and Valentina Moraru (Munich), commenatry: Anda Nic­olae-Vladu (Oldenburg/Bochum), facil­it­a­tion: Lisa Ried­ner, CoS-Team
3:00–3:30 pm	Cof­fee Break & Snacks
3:30–5:00 p.m.	Panel II Com­munity as a tool for neo­lib­eral crisis man­age­ment and eman­cip­at­ory altern­at­ives with Tine Haub­ner (Biele­feld), Ove Sut­ter (Bonn) and Tim Herbold (Munich), com­ment­ary: Mike Laufen­berg (Fulda), facil­it­a­tion: Valentina Moraru, CoS-Team
5:15–6:30 p.m.	Inter­act­ive discussion
8:00 p.m.	Even­ing event, din­ner, ver­n­is­sage & music (venue tba)
Sat­urday, Nov. 15, 2025
9:00 a.m.	Cof­fee
9:30–11:00 a.m.	Panel III B/ordering wage labour with Michael Bät­tig (Olden­burg), Alex Rau (Munich), Ver­onika Schmid (Munich) and Paula Brücher (Munich), facil­it­a­tion: Tim Herbold, CoS-Team
11:15 a.m.-12:15 p.m.	Panel IV Dis-/Orders of ‘the Social’ – Con­flicts over fraud with Friederike Faust (Göt­tin­gen), Svenja Schurade (Göt­tin­gen) and Lisa Ried­ner (Munich), com­ment­ary: Insa Koch (St. Gal­len, CH), facil­it­a­tion: Paula Brücher, CoS-team
12:35 p.m.	Lunch
2 p.m.	Final dis­cus­sion

Contributors

More inform­a­tion com­ing soon!