Internal migration industries: Shaping the housing options for refugees in German cities

Keywords: migration, housing, refugees, Germany
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Saturday
Session Start / End Time: 2/26/2022 05:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/26/2022 06:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 65

Abstract

In the “summer of migration” of 2015, nearly one million refugees took up residence in Germany. This article deals with the question of where and how they found a place to live, highlighting the role of providers, i.e. those agents who either offer their own housing stock to refugees or who deliver specific services that support access to the housing market. We develop the concept of internal migration industries and demonstrate how it enables a more complex understanding of refugee settlement in Germany.
We show how a specific financialized accumulation model of renting out privatised public housing stock to disadvantaged parts of the population has emerged that increasingly targets migrant tenants. With the growing immigration of refugees to Germany since 2015 and argue that housing provision to refugees has become a new business opportunity. This has given rise to a broad variety of “Internal Migration Industries” that provide the housing infrastructure, but also control access to housing. This not only results in new opportunities for profit extraction, but actively shapes new patterns of segregation and the concentration of refugees in particular types of disadvantaged neighbourhoods.