During the “lange Sommer der Migration [long summer of migration]” (Hess et al., 2016) an increase in civil involvement was observed in Germany. Almost overnight, volunteer work with refugees went from a marginal to a mass phenomenon (Karakayali, 2018). Following Karakayali and Kleist (2016) established organisations working with refugees in Germany noticed a high increase of interest in volunteering for refugees. Additionally, more than a third of all volunteers were active in self-organised groups and initiatives, which is supposed to be “unlike any other volunteering” (Karakayali & Kleist 2016). Similar observations have also been made in other European countries (Rea et al., 2019). Nevertheless, this phenomenon is already described as declining and hardly sustainable (Kopahnke, 2017). But not only the low sustainability of the engagement is problematized by migration researchers, they also critically examine the tension between state and civil society responsibility: Civil Society Engagement in the context of voluntary work with refugees might contribute to stabilising the lack of responsibility taken by the state (Castro-Varela & Heinemann, 2016). 

Interestingly, though, it is partly the criticism of state structures that motivates people to become active. Ideally, such processes might ultimately lead to the development of critical citizenship as a part of personal development by firstly questioning social structures and secondly promoting agency (Sprung & Kukovetz 2018). According to the current state of research in the European context, the significance of this commitment is to be assessed ambivalently: On the one hand, the studies point to positive effects, such as the contribution to improving the situation of refugees as well as positive influences on public discourse; on the other hand, they show that there are also problematic effects of engagement, as e.g. the continuation or even intensification of hierarchical relationships (e.g., Jensen & Kirchner 2020; Maestri & Monforte 2020).

Based on this state of research, we have developed a service learning concept that was piloted for the first time in the winter semester 2018/19. The seminar is organised in cooperation with a so-called local “volunteer agency” and aims to closely link theory and praxis of intercultural education in the context of voluntary work. Therefore, the students enter into a tandem relationship with a refugee. This project-related and comparatively short-term character of engagement can be assigned to the field of voluntary work and corresponds to the “new” forms of commitment (Han-Broich, 2012) already observed in research (Beckmann et al., 2018). 

Theoretical content of the seminar consists of basics of intercultural and anti-racist education with regard to pedagogical work with refugees. Particularly, the hierarchical and asymmetric shaped relationship in voluntary work and the ambivalences of this engagement are discussed, which according to Castro Varela und Heinemann (2016) develop between compassion, paternalism and solidarity. The focus is also on social construction processes that (can) contribute to the formation of boundaries and to the preservation of dominance relations. The seminar additionally creates a space for exchange and critical reflection since it does not only aim for knowledge transmission but wants to support the students in developing a critical understanding of the challenges in building equal relationships with refugees within the context of service learning in a society which is structured by migration regimes (Pott et al., 2018). 

In the accompanying research we document the experiences of the students in the context of this seminar. This raises the following research questions: Which perspectives on forced migration and the living conditions of refugees can be reconstructed for students who have been active in voluntary work with refugees? How do they reflect in retrospect on their involvement in the tandem relationship and the seminar concept? 

The data so far consists of, among other sources, thirteen semi-structured problem-centered interviews (Witzel, 2000) which were guided by our research interest to reconstruct the experiences of the students who participated in the project seminar. For this type of interview the interviewer “ensures that respondents remain close to the topic, but often leaves enough space for the interviewee to open up the discussion and introduce connected topics, thus making it more exploratory in nature” (Fedyuk & Zentai, 2018). This method is a theory-generating procedure in which both narrative and comprehension-generating questions are used to ascertain the subjective views of the interviewees. Additonally to the questions previously set out in the interview guide, the knowledge generated within the interviews is used as a source for follow-up-questions (Witzel, 2000). This interplay of induction and deduction seemed to be adequate in view of the data analysis with the Grounded Theory methodology (Charmaz, 2014). According to Charmaz’s line-by-line initial coding, we have already carried out an initial analysis of the interview material. The first period of interview conduction took place in November and December 2019 and resulted in nine interviews. These were conducted by a student assistant who was a former participant of the seminar and interviewed her classmates, so we were able to realize peer interviews. The second period of interview conduction, which is currently taking place, is being realized by a student whose master thesis is located in our research project. This approach to let students conduct the interviews seemed reasonable considering research ethics, so as not to give the students the impression that their participation in the interview could be related to the evaluation of their academic performance. We also see advantages in this form of peer interview since it gives the opportunity to communicate in a setting characterized by less asymmetry compared to an interview setting in which students are being interviewed by lecturers. Insofar as the quality standard of “naturalisticity” (Lamnek, 1995) can be fulfilled as well, we believe that good pre-conditions were given for conducting co-constructed interviews, an approach that “aspires to understand and treat conversational partners not as traditional ‘participant’, but rather as collaborators” (Patti & Ellis, 2017). Compared to our submission in 2020, we were able to expand the data corpus by fifteen portfolios that the students wrote in order to reflect on their experiences during the seminar and in the relationship with their tandem partners.

Following other research in the context of volunteer work with refugees, our analysis also shows that for the participating students the attitudes of their private environment towards the topic of forced migration and also towards their commitment in the project seem to be of great importance (Beckmann et al., 2017). They report both irritations and distancing (“But unfortunately I know many people who take a very negative view of it, who are very much against it and who take up all the things that are written or said without questioning.”) as well as that their commitment was welcomed by their environment (“And yes, I have received positive, many positive reactions regarding the project from my family. That was cool.”). In line with the findings of Sprung and Kukovetz 2018, the students we interviewed also put the living situations of the refugees in relation to their own biographies and report that they have become more aware of their privileges through being in contact with refugees. In particular, they talk about their newly expanded knowledge of the bureaucratic processes of the German state, which hinder the integration and everyday life of refugees (“So Imara was super motivated and she had the will to learn, the will to work and she said, oh, she would love to work, to participate in society in some way. And she is not allowed to, because she hasn't got the B1 level yet.”). We will discuss these results from a critical perspective on power relations and elaborate processes of othering (Spivak, 1985) and doing difference (West & Fenstermaker, 1995). In addition, we would like to give an outlook on planned modifications of our research design in order to include the perspectives of the refugees to a greater extent in the future.

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