Newsletter

In this edition of the newsletter of the Center for Integration Studies in June, you will be able to find recent information on the following subjects:

• Reports
• News from the ZfI-Network
• Events
• Personnel

 

Reports

 

Private archive: Malte Wandel

Citizen science research project on “Ostdeutsche Migrationsgesellschaft selbst erzählen” (East German migration society tells its own story) (MigOst) launched

The BMBF-funded MigOst project, which is scheduled to run for three years, makes visible the life stories of people with migration histories in eastern Germany. The goal of the project is to initiate and reflect on migration and migration-related experiences in eastern Germany in a participatory manner together with citizens. This is important since migrant perspectives on the past and present have been marginalized until now, although the GDR and East Germany both have a continuous history of migration. From an everyday perspective, narrators are going to address their knowledges and experiences with migration histories from the times of the GDR and the German reunification up to the present. Questions of identity and belonging, of the experience of arriving, staying and leaving as well as of discrimination and racism can play a role.

           

 

           

“Gesellschaft im Dialog (Society in Dialogue)” continues with diverse events

Since mid-2020, the ZfI, together with the Institut für angewandte Demokratie- und Sozialforschung (Institute for Applied Democracy and Social Research) anDemos, the Kulturbüro Sachsen as well as numerous local partners, has been conducting the event series “Diversity in Dialogue”, which has continued since the beginning of the year under the title “Society in Dialogue” (GiD).
“What is racism?” was the topic of the kick-off event in 2021, which was held as part of the International Weeks against Racism. On March 29, Franziska Martinsen, Eter Hachmann and Douha Al-Fayyad spoke with Julia Schulze Wessel about the concept of racism, addressing who talks about racism and how. They also discussed what a society without racism could look like.
On July 8, 2021, GiD will continue the series with a comic workshop with students from the Oberschule Dippoldiswalde, in which they will work together on questions of belonging.
GiD would like to invite you to the presentation of a book about a three-year comic art project “Frauenstimmen in Bildern” (Women’s voices in pictures). On September 28, 2021, Dresden artist Nazanin Zandi and TUD sociologist Youmna Fouad will speak at Richters Buchhandlung about autobiographical, honest, and humorous picture stories that provide insights into the lives of women of different backgrounds, religions, and languages. The event will be streamed live on YouTube and will take place as part of the Intercultural Days Dresden.
In addition, GiD is planning a workshop on social cohesion in Bautzen on October 16, 2021, together with many local actors.
 

           

digiDaZ:Pro - Update from the project

As part of the development project “Digital-gestütztes Lehren und Lernen in DaZ: Professionalisierung digitaler Kompetenzen in der DaZ-Lehrkräftebildung in der 1. und 3. Phase” (Digital-supported teaching and learning in DaZ: Professionalization of digital competencies in DaZ teacher training in the 1st and 3rd phase), which has been funded by the Stifterverband since November 2020, a highly motivated group of students in the DaZ extension subject is currently working on issues relating to the development of digital competencies for language education. In dealing with language learning applications, the participants are developing concepts for the individualized promotion of language competencies, especially - but not only - in times of pandemic-related school closures.
A survey of teachers’ experiences has shown that they are under extraordinary strain due to the pandemic. As a result, digiDaZ:Pro is focusing on university teacher training in the first phase of the project.
The anniversary initiative “Wirkung hoch 100” will enter the next selection round in early summer 2021, after which 30 projects will receive further funding. A selection for this second funding phase would enable digiDaZ:Pro to continue working with students on concepts of digital language education, to put these concepts to the test, and thus to contribute to the cross-phase networking of student teachers and teaching staff in Saxony.
 

 

News from our initiatives

News from the Refugee Law Clinic

With the beginning of the summer semester, the participants of the Refugee Law Clinic 2020/21 started the second half of their training. This includes various lectures by external speakers, in which knowledge on topics relevant to counseling is deepened. At the same time, the application of the acquired knowledge on asylum and residence law is to be further practiced on practical cases. In three work shadowing sessions, the trainees also gain first experiences in counseling at the RLC Dresden. 
Furthermore, face-to-face counseling is being resumed at the initial reception center Stauffenbergallee (formerly Hamburger Straße) and at the Weltclub with a hygiene concept. RLC Dresden now also provides counseling at the Bremer Straße reception center. Online counseling appointments continue to take place.
 

News from the IDA – Initiative in Dresden Ankommen (Initiative Arriving in Dresden)

IDA - In Dresden Ankommen is a student initiative supported by TU Dresden staff. Founded in 2015, IDA started by organizing and coordinating language courses for refugees in the initial reception facilities on the TU Dresden campus.
Today, IDA pursues the mediation and coordination of voluntary offers of help from students for refugees. IDA also contributes to the inclusion of refugees and the intercultural exchange between refugees and people in Dresden (especially students).

Turkish language course:
IDA’s language learning opportunities have expanded!
Since this summer semester, IDA offers a Turkish course for beginners in addition to the language courses in Arabic and Persian.
Of course, participation is again free of charge! Non-TU students are also welcome to attend the IDA courses.

Laptops:
IDA is looking for functioning laptops, PCs, and tablets!
Due to the online teaching as a consequence of the pandemic, the need for technical equipment has increased. For our tutoring students and German course participants we are therefore looking for no longer needed but, necessarily, functioning (!) devices as donations in kind. If you would like to donate your laptop, PC, or tablet for a good cause, please contact us at ida-dresden@mailbox.tu-dresden.de.
 

News from the project “QuaBiS” - Qualification of education professionals in Saxony

Since April this year, we from the QuaBIS team have been working on “Inclusive Values”. There are 16 of them in total. Inclusive Values can help us find answers to the question of how everyone can live well together in all areas. They can help when thinking about how to act so that everyone can participate. They are called wisdom, compassion, trust, courage, sustainability, respect for diversity, community, participation, equality, rights, honesty, joy, love, beauty, hope, and nonviolence (“Gewaltfreiheit”).
We have a few problems with the word “Gewaltfreiheit” (nonviolence - translated literally from German: “freedom from violence”). Violence is not good. We wonder: why is this word included in the Inclusive Values? Does it mean that we are free to use violence? If violence is not to be used, why is the word violence used and no other? It is not an easy word to use because it is not easily understood only by itself.
We invite you to join us in finding a better word for “Gewaltfreiheit”.
Feel free to send your ideas to our email address quabis@tu-dresden.de
Together with our colleagues at the University of Leipzig, we present a different inclusive value every week. 

We wish you hope and courage, because without these values in life, everything is rubbish.
 

 

News from the ZfI-Network

 

 

New publication at ZfI

Seminar on the topic of Postcolonial City

In the summer semester of 2021, a seminar on the topic of Postcolonial City will be offered under the direction of Dr Anke Schwarz (Chair of Human Geography). Under the guiding question “What is postcoloniality and how is it located in the urban?” students will deal with different theoretical as well as methodological approaches to (post)colonial continuities and investigate their spatialization in Dresden. The core of the seminar will be textual work on postcolonial geographies and subjects, a tour of Dresden’s postcolonial sites, and independent student research. The results of the seminar will be presented at a poster exhibition at “Weltclub Afropa”, for one week starting on July 14, 2021, to make connections between colonialist structures and everyday urban life accessible to civil society as well.

The seminar is organized in cooperation with the Center for Integration Studies at TU Dresden and the group Dresden Postkolonial.

 

 

Events

 

Participation of the ZfI at the Intercultural Days Dresden 2021

The 31st Intercultural Days in Dresden will take place from September 26 to October 17, 2021. This year’s motto „Verantwortung. Gemeinsam. Leben.“ (Living. Responsibility. Together.) highlights the importance of living together based on responsibility and understanding and is intended to celebrate the diversity of Dresden’s urban society. More than 150 events – including concerts, lectures, craft or lecture afternoons, exhibitions, or film screenings and much more – are dedicated to this year’s focal points:

•            Strengthening political participation 
•            Strengthening human and children’s rights
•            Promoting interreligious exchange
•            Shaping neighborhoods
•            Living a self-determined life

The Center for Integration Studies of the TU Dresden, as well as the student initiative "Arriving in Dresden (IDA)", which is affiliated with the ZfI, and the project "Society in Dialogue (GiD)" are participating again this year with various events.
 

 

Dates

 

Personnel

The ZfI is welcoming its new employees:

Dr Patricia Ward

As of May 2021, Patricia Ward is a postdoctoral associate at ZfI. 
Her latest research focuses on the organization of labor in the humanitarian aid sector within the Middle East context to understand how aid facilitates and inhibits mobility and migration through work practices. Her dissertation, “How Humanitarian Relief ‘Works’: International Aid Organizations and Local Labor in Crisis Contexts" examined changing aid operations amidst a growing number of protracted displacement crises worldwide and its effects on national aid workers employed in the sector. Also within the framework of the new research initiative on "Disruption and Societal Change" (TUDiSC) at the TU Dresden, Patricia will expand upon this latest study at ZfI in a new interdisciplinary project that looks at the historical and contemporary roles of Middle East-based actors and practices in shaping global humanitarianism. Patricia anticipates that this project will contribute to more rigorous understandings of the relationship between humanitarianism and mobility and may ‘disrupt’ assumptions undergirding ‘how aid works’ beyond Global North-South explanations. At ZfI, Patricia will also be contributing to the university’s "Migration-Disruption" network. Patricia is eager and excited to connect and collaborate with researchers, students, practitioners, and other individuals and teams about the network, her project, and shared interests more generally.

Luise Böhm

Since the beginning of March 2021, I have been a research assistant in the Citizen Science project “Ostdeutsche Migrationsgesellschaft selbst erzählen” (East German migration society tells its own story) (MigOst) of the ZfI in cooperation with DaMOst, the ISGV as well as the BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg. Together with the project team, I am responsible for the conception and implementation of participatory history workshops and city labs in Dresden, Cottbus, and Halle.
Before that, I studied Empirical Cultural Studies and Media Studies at Eberhard Karls University Tübingen (B.A.) and European Ethnology at Humboldt University Berlin (M.A.). My research interests include migration and integration studies as well as critical racism studies. Furthermore, I focus on memory cultures and politics as well as on the emergence, negotiation and narration of collective identities and belongings in pluralistic societies.

Paolo Le van

My name is Paolo Le van, and I was born shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall as the son of a German mother and a Vietnamese contract worker in Upper Lusatia in the former GDR. I have now lived in Dresden for a quarter of a century, where I have been politically active for several years and studied philosophy, political science, and sociology.
In the last few years, I have been working both full-time and on a voluntary basis, mainly on the topics of voluntary work, participation, and integration. In this context, I was the coordinator for the youth participation and integration project „AWO ländlich BUNT“ at AWO Saxony for the last three years and also helped to build up the youth association there.
Since April, I have been employed as a research assistant in the Citizen Science project “Ostdeutsche Migrationsgesellschaft selbst erzählen” (East German migration society tells its own story) (MigOst) of the ZfI in cooperation with DaMOst, the ISGV and the BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg. My tasks there are the scientific support and organization of history workshops in cooperation with migrant organizations in Cottbus, Dresden, and Halle, the conception and implementation of biographical interviews as well as the scientific evaluation of the project.