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SUMMARY:Contestations of »the Social«. Welfare conflicts in the migration and labor society
UID:https://www.thesocial.ekwee.lmu.de/en/2025/08/05/contestations-of-the-social-welfare-conflicts-in-the-migration-and-labor-society/
LOCATION:München
DTSTAMP:20251113
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Berlin:20251113
DTEND;TZID=Europe/Berlin:20251115
DESCRIPTION:Languages: English and German
Register here (limited capacity)
Find the program here and the list of contributors here
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
(Friday, Nov. 14, 1:30–3:00 p.m.)
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 (Friday, Nov. 14, 3:30–5:00 p.m.)
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 (Saturday, Nov. 15, 9:30–11:00 a.m.)
Presentations: Claudia Kratzsch (BASTA! Berlin), 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 (Saturday, Nov. 15, 11:15 a.m.–12:45 p.m.)
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?
About the workshop
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.
BibliographyBirke, 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, 20258 p.m.For, Against, and Beyond. Community
Organisations of homeless, unemployed, and racialized people share their
experiences. With: BASTA! Berlin, Project Shelter Frankfurt, ALSO Oldenburg
and Pete White from the Los Angeles Community Action Network (LACAN)Friday,
Nov. 14, 202511:00-11:45 a.m.Registration, getting to know each other,
coffee & light lunchVenue (Friday & Saturday): EineWeltHaus,
Schwanthalerstraße 80, 80336 München12:00-1:15 p.m.Welcome & short
inputs from the CoS team (in English, German translation
available)1:30-3:00 p.m.Panel I Migrants’ struggles for social
reproduction in necropolitical timeswith Polina Manolova (Duisburg-Essen),
Josie Hooker (Bath, UK) and Valentina Moraru (Munich), commentary: Anda
Nicolae-Vladu (Oldenburg/Bochum), facilitation: Lisa Riedner, CoS-Team;
Language: English with German translation 3:00-3:30 pmCoffee Break &
Snacks 3:30-5:00 p.m.Panel IICommunity as a tool for neoliberal crisis
management and emancipatory alternativeswith Tine Haubner (Bielefeld), Ove
Sutter (Bonn) and Tim Herbold (Munich),commentary: Mike Laufenberg (Fulda),
facilitation: Valentina Moraru, CoS-Team; Language: German with English
translation5:30-6:30 p.m.Interactive discussion 8:00 p.m.Evening event,
dinner, vernissage & musicSaturday, Nov. 15, 2025From 9:00
a.m.Coffee9:30-11:00 a.m.Panel IIIB/ordering wage labourwith Alex Rau
(Munich), Veronika Schmid (Munich), Claudia Kratzsch (BASTA! Berlin) and
Paula Brücher (Munich), facilitation: Tim Herbold, CoS-Team; Language:
German with English translation11:15 a.m. -12:45 p.m.Panel IVDis-/orders of
‘the Social’ – Social policy between criminalisation and
protectionwith Friederike Faust (Göttingen), Svenja Schurade (Göttingen)
and Lisa Riedner (Munich), commentary: Insa Koch (St. Gallen, CH),
facilitation: Paula Brücher, CoS-team; Languages: German and English12:45
p.m.Lunch2-3 p.m.Final discussion
Contributors
Paula Brücher is a PhD student affiliated with the Contestations of ‘the
Social’ research group at LMU Munich. She researches processes of
exclusion from wage labor and accompanies people in their everyday lives.
She is interested in conflicts and negotiations about (paid) work, care
work and migration regulations in the welfare state.
Friederike Faust is a junior professor at the Institute for Cultural
Anthropology/European Ethnology at the University of Göttingen. Her
research focuses on political and legal anthropology as well as gender
studies, and she is currently working on the topics of criminalization,
punishment and resocialization and the state-citizen relationships they
represent.
Tine Haubner studied sociology, philosophy, and psychology at Friedrich
Schiller University in Jena until 2010. She received her doctorate there in
2016 with a dissertation on the exploitation of informal care work. Since
2024, she has been a junior professor of qualitative methods at the Faculty
of Health Sciences at Bielefeld University. Her research focuses on (care)
work and inequality research, the sociology of the welfare state, and
qualitative methods.
Tim Herbold conducts research in collaboration with Project Shelter, an
initiative that co-manages a self-organized center for homeless people in
Frankfurt (Main), organizes mutual support in daily life, and advocates for
the interests of migrants. Tim is part of the Contestations of ‘the
Social’ research group and intereseted in the transformation of local
social safety nets through social conflicts and state attempts to integrate
civil society initiatives.
Josie Hooker is a post-doctoral researcher with the Contestations of ‘the
Social’ project at the LMU in Munich. Drawing from work on racial
capitalism past and present, her PhD examined how labour, welfare and
immigration regimes mediate work-related health among Latin American
commercial cleaners in London. She has also researched platform labour and
“social unionism” and has written on militant research and
“neoliberalism from below”.
Mike Laufenberg is professor of Sociology at Fulda University of Applied
Sciences. His fields of research are social theory, welfare states, and
social inequalities; gender and sexuality; social movements, social
reproduction and (feminist) political economy.
Polina Manolova worked at the Institute of Sociology at the University of
Duisburg–Essen until October 2025. She is currently affiliated with the
German Institute for Interdisciplinary Social Policy Research, where she
focuses on social rights conflicts in the context of EU freedom of
movement. In addition, she is active in migrant support and solidarity
initiatives in Duisburg-Marxloh.
A. Valentina Moraru is an activist and PhD researcher with the
Contestations of ‘the Social’ research group at LMU Munich. Working
closely with the Arbeitslosenselbsthilfe Oldenburg (ALSO), her research
focuses on the racialized social reproduction of migrantized workers and
its repercussions for our understanding of how capitalist relations are
experienced.
Anda Nicolae-Vladu is an activist and doctoral candidate at the Institute
for Social Movements at Ruhr University Bochum. Among other things, she was
active in ALSO for many years. In her doctoral thesis, she is researching
struggles of migration in the Northwest German textile industry during the
Weimar Republic. Her research focuses on areas such as labor history,
postcolonial theory, and anti-racism. 
Alexandra Rau, PhD, is a research associate at the Institute for European
Ethnology and Cultural Analysis at LMU Munich. She teaches and conducts
research with a focus on work and precarity, social inequality, gender and
feminist theory, affect studies, and (auto)ethnographic methods. In
addition, she is an author and lecturer (University of Basel, University of
Innsbruck) and works on various projects at the intersection of science,
art, and political education. For many years, she has been committed to
innovative and critical forms of knowledge transfer.
Lisa Riedner is leading the Junior Research Group Contestations of ‘the
Social’ at the Institute for European Ethnology and Cultural Analysis of
the LMU Munich. She has published on engaged ethnography, intra-EU
migration regimes, labour struggles and social reproduction.
Svenja Schurade, a research associate in Cultural Anthropology/European
Ethnology (KAEE) at the University of Göttingen, has been pursuing her
doctorate since 2020 on the German deportation regime and has been working
on the EU Horizon research project MORE
(https://www.moreproject-horizon.eu/) since 2023. Her master's thesis,
completed in 2020 at the KAEE department of the University of Göttingen,
already addressed the implementation of deportations in Lower Saxony. Prior
to this, Svenja Schurade worked at the intersection of academia, art and
activism on the opening and closing of the so-called Balkan route during
the long summer of migration in 2015, resulting in the traveling exhibition
"yallah!? on the Balkan route"
(https://yallah-balkanroute.uni-goettingen.de).
Veronika Schmid studied political science, communication science and
sociology in Munich and Birmingham (UK). She is currently doing her PhD in
sociology at LMU Munich on the topic of returning to work.
Siegmund Stahl has over 15 years of experience in social counseling,
including counseling migrant people.
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