WELCOMING SPACES presented at Congress of the German Association of Sociologists

In September 2020, the WELCOMING SPACES projected was presented in a panel at the 40th Congress of the German Association of Sociologists. This panel was moderated by Sabine Meier (University of Siegen), Heike Herrmann (University of Applied Sciences Fulda) and Nina Schuster (TU Dortmund).

In the name of our whole team, Maggi Leung and Alberto Alonso Fradejas presented the aims and the main research questions illustrated by several examples of welcoming initiatives in Poland, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands. Next to our team, a number of other German scholars have presented ongoing research on migration and the (re)development of places. Johannes Becker (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen) examines the relation between characteristics of places and processes of emplacement of refugees in the Jordanian capital Amman. Mila Brill (Universität Bonn) explores to what extent the concept of emplacement offers a way of theoretically grasping everyday cultural practices of making local reference via gastronomy. Based on data from the ongoing research project ´Solidarity at the social level of locally organised actors´ in the SOLDISK research network Michael Corsten and Patrick Kahle presents first research results. In a last paper, Lutz Eichholz, Annette Spellerberg and Christoph Giehl from the TU Kaiserslautern Department of Spatial and Environmental Planning discussed which factors have an influence on the quality of life and satisfaction of refugees in Germany. In doing so, they focus in their research on the great importance of housing, social contacts and neighbourhood.