Research

Project team: Prof. Dr. Ulrich Schneckener, Isabel Hoffmann, Katharina Kleynmans

Project duration: 2024 - 2027

Funding: German Research Foundation -  Collaborative Research Center Production of Migration

The sub-project examines the production of mobility options in the course of migration and border management between the European Union (EU) and two Eastern European states (Ukraine and Moldova). It examines negotiation processes within the framework of the Eastern Partnership (EaP) for the establishment and design of regulatory infrastructures. In the process, migration-related categorizations and attributions are (re-)produced, which are translated into entry, return and control practices towards individuals and groups of people. For this sub-project, regulatory infrastructures are understood to be of four types: (i) legally binding agreements between the EU and the EaP states, (ii) politically binding agreements, (iii) multilateral policy networks and (iv) operational cooperation formats. While (i) and (ii) set the political and legal framework for action, (iii) and (iv) primarily serve to implement it and to build capacity in migration and border management.

Since the start of the EaP in 2009, these processes have been taking place in a highly conflictual environment. The Russian war of aggression from February 2022 must be seen as a turning point, which led to changes in attributions, priorities and practices in migration and border management as well as to a change in EU policy with regard to the candidate status for Ukraine and Moldova. This raises the fundamental question of the influence of conflict dynamics on the production of migration.

The overarching question is examined on the basis of three sub-questions, each of which is linked to a theoretical perspective: (1) How and in what form are regulatory infrastructures negotiated, established and operationalized in the context of EaP for migration and border management?(governance perspective); (2) What role do these infrastructures play in the production of migration-related categorizations and attributions as well as the associated mobility options?(reflexive migration research); (3) To what extent are these processes shaped by regional conflict dynamics?(conflict research). In addition to process tracing (question 1), the project uses content-analytical, interpretative and ethnographic methods (especially for questions 2 and 3) to investigate these questions.

Project team: Prof. Dr. Alexander De Juan, Dr. Kristof Gosztonyi, Dr. Jan Koehler

Project duration: 2024-2027

Funding: German Research Foundation (DFG)

Cooperation partners: Prof. Dr. Beatriz Magaloni Kerpel & Prof. Dr. Alberto Diaz Cayeros (Stanford University

Conflict-affected states usually try to restore regulation by expanding statehood. A few states take a different approach: they delegate core functions of the state to local institutions that base their legitimacy on local traditions. The project, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), examines how this strategy affects the security situation in Mexico.

Project team: Prof. Dr. Daniel Mertens, Dr. Nils Stockmann

Project duration: 2022-2025

Funding: Sustainable Finance & Climate Protection (SFCP) program line from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)

Cooperation partners: Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences, Paderborn University, Sociological Research Institute (SOFI) Göttingen

The sub-project of the Climate Finance Society network investigates the role of development banks in climate finance and the evolving landscape of sustainable financial markets. It determines which expectations are formulated for development banks, which adaptation processes exist, which design instruments and justification contexts they use in a multi-layered institutional environment and identifies potentials and pitfalls in the design of state development instruments.

Project team: Prof. Dr. Ulrike Krause, Nadine Segadlo

Project duration: 2019 to 2024

Funding by:  German Foundation for Peace Research

Funding amount: €100,000

What importance do people, and women in particular, who have fled violent conflicts attach to peace? Violent conflicts around the world contribute to many people leaving their regions of origin to seek protection in other areas or countries. Scientific studies on the nexus of conflict and flight have so far primarily investigated the consequences of conflict. They show that conflict-related violence can persist in refugee reception situations, particularly in refugee camps, and can pose specific risks for women. However, this research, which concentrates on dangers, neglects the importance of peace. In most cases, peace is reduced to a condition for the return of people to their places of origin, but is not considered as a formative part of everyday life or as a motive for action for refugees and specifically for refugee women.

This is where the research project Women, Flight - and Peace? Peace-building practices of women in refugee camps . The project places peace at the center of its analyses and combines peace and refugee studies discourses. The conflict/refugee nexus is supplemented by an interdependent connection with peace and refugee camps are understood as peace-relevant post-conflict situations. Based on empirical research with a case study in the Kenyan refugee camp Kakuma, the objectives are to investigate how refugee women understand peace, how they want to work for peaceful conditions in the camp and in relation to regions of origin, and what possibilities and limits they experience in their peacebuilding practices.

Project team: Prof. Dr. Ulrich Schneckener, Lina Liedlbauer

Project duration: 01.05.2018 - 30.09.2023

Funding: German Research Foundation (DFG)

Funding amount:

The project investigates how and under what conditions politicization processes unfold in the field of European security. It thus questions established assumptions that associate the supposedly special field of security with forms of depoliticization. It develops a multi-level analytical framework for the investigation of politicization and analyses the course and the conducive conditions of politicization processes through detailed case studies. The project aims to open up the black box of politicization processes by focusing on concrete acts of politicization by various actors, the subsequent controversies and interactions, and the potentially ambivalent consequences that result. The empirical analysis sheds light on politicization processes in the fields of counter-terrorism and border security at the European and national levels (using Germany as an example). The initial observation is that the provision of comprehensive security along the softened border between inside and outside is increasingly becoming the subject of public interest and public controversy. In the face of transnational risks (especially migration and terrorism), the EU institutions are increasingly using their security function as a source of legitimacy, for example in the context of the proclaimed "Security Union". In turn, this puts the legitimacy of European security institutions up for discussion. On the one hand, concerns regarding compliance with human and civil rights are increasingly being directed at the EU, particularly in the context of data retention, the monitoring of data flows and the expansion of FRONTEX. On the other hand, there are increasing calls from various political camps for the EU to expand its role in the area of security or, as right-wing populist groups emphasize, for the EU itself to become a security risk. This raises the question of whether these different tendencies are signs of a broader politicization, which the project understands as the transfer of previously non-controversial or non-public issues into the realm of open decision-making, public deliberation and social contestation. The project questions traditionalist and critical approaches that characterize European security either as a special field of high politics and executive prerogative, as a securitized field beyond normal politics, or as technocratic multi-level governance that defies politicization. This project combines current debates on the politicization of European and global governance with research onsecuritization, sheds light on the tense relationship between security and politics and contributes to a better understanding of the political dynamics in the field of European security.

Project team: Prof. Dr. Ulrich Scheckener, Sandra Wienand, M.A., Christoph König, Dipl.

Project duration: 10/2012 - 06/2017

Funding: German Research Foundation (DFG)

Funding amount: €

The research project examines the question of how militias contribute to the creation of security (or insecurity) in societies characterized by violent conflict. The project defines militias as paramilitary organizations that, depending on the context, act on the specific "order" or with the approval of dominant elites, representatives of the state or certain social groups in order to protect and, if necessary, actively defend the interests of these clients. As a rule, this type of non-state actor of violence is characterized by its orientation towards the status quo. Paradigmatic cases of this are the paramilitary groups that have been active for decades in Colombia - often on behalf of the state or economic elites - and the many combat units in Lebanon that act on behalf of various (religious) communities and political movements.

Based on the type of mission, in the first step of the analysis the project examines which specific tasks militias perform on behalf of a certain group of people(governance services) and which means they use to do so. On this basis, in the second step of the analysis, the project examines the question of how the provision of security by militias for the respective clientele affects the effective and legitimate establishment of public security. In both steps, the project also analyzes how much control the respective clients have over the militiamen and the effects of any observable loss of control.