Alibis of Exclusion: The role of ethnic economies in the differentiated inclusion of refugees in Berlin

I would sincerely like to thank all the reviewers and the editor, for their detailed and thoughtful comments on this paper. They have given me a lot to think about and work with, and I have tried to incorporate as many suggestions as possible. Below I provide an outline of the changes made to the manuscript in line with the reviewers’ feedback.

1. On “auto-ethnic economies”
- Reviewers 1, 3 and 4 all expressed reservations about the validity of the term “auto ethnic economy”. Reviewer 1 points out that the words “auto” as well as “ethnic” don’t seem to work since the paper references practices where often other older settled migrants and/or German citizens are involved in these relationships. Further, Reviewer 1 suggested that my use of the term needs to be distinguished from classical concepts of the ethnic economy. Reviewer 3 felt the use of the notion of “economy” wasn’t substantiated well enough.
- I used the term “auto-ethnic economies” to try to capture the way economic activity, for my interlocutors, seemed to involve both a kind of isolation, as well as, as Reviewer 1 rightfully identifies, a kind of “endo-replication” of hierarchies. Upon reflection, I believe that introducing a new term here might be counterproductive for the clarity of the paper. The new manuscript now drops the term altogether, instead making the case for thinking of the functions and roles of ethnic economies under neoliberal transformations. The case the manuscript tries to make is that, under these transformations, the ethnic economy works both, to manage new diversity, as well as to function as an alibi for marginalisation that aesthetically or ideologically works to displace and disavow critique. I refer to these now under the rubric of “alibis of exclusion”, which function by masking a relationship between recently arrived migrants and the German economy and society as a relationship between migrants themselves” (p. 5). Thus, neoliberal ethnic economies, I contend, work as “both the engine and alibi of the German state’s attempt to produce value from recently arrived asylum seekers and refugees” (p. 5). To strengthen this claim, I have included references to the work of scholars working on middlemen and cultural brokers (Lindquist et al., 2012; Xiang, 2012), as well as to those working with theories and ideologies of racial capitalism (Gilmore, 2002; Jodi Melamed, 2015)
- Alongside this new focus, and given the observation from the Reviewers that I do not make much use of the “Guest Worker” paradigm until much later in the article, the manuscript now has a new title, “Alibis of Exclusion: The role of ethnic economies in the differentiated inclusion of refugees in Berlin”
- Reviewer 2 makes the case that I do not adequately demonstrate “how” changes in policy affect the labour relationships of my interlocutors. I have now included some more ethnographic material on p. 13-14 that addresses the way Haider saw the Duldung as preventing him from escaping exploitative co-ethnic relationships in two ways. First, by denying him the time needed to retrain and learn German given the timeline of deportation initiated by the rejection of his asylum plea, and second, because his legal status made it hard for him to articulate a case for his employability to other employers outside the ethnic economy. In a note (p. 12), I also add how the work permit for Duldung holders being conditional on them already having a job contract produces “a chicken or egg situation where employers are unlikely to hire people who’s right to work is itself uncertain”. Finally, I also add references to the work of other scholars who examine the relationship between uncertain legal statuses and employment (Lewis et al., 2015) as well as with migrants’ social worlds (Sigona, 2012).

2. The social construction of “co-ethnicity”
- All 4 Reviewers expressed concerns over the use of the co-ethnic analytic.
- Reviewer 2 pointed out that the usage of a certain rigid language was homogenising, particularly in regards to terms like “Arab”, “Asian” etc. I agree that this is a difficult line to tread. People are always far more than any one, or many, categories can describe. Nonetheless, people, and my interlocutors, also use certain ways to categorise themselves as parts of certain communities. Their use of these terms is, of course, dynamic. Someone that is “like you” in one context (eg. national identity), can become radically other in a different one (eg. religious identity). However, the fact that the use of categories of proximity are fluid is not, in my opinion, enough to justify not engaging with them at all. Taking into account Reviewer 2’s detailed comments, I have modified the language I use to indicate broader coalitions of categories where possible, (eg “their own linguistic, national or ethnic communities” on p. 4). Furthermore, the current manuscript emphasises how these categories were used by my interlocutors themselves - Haider’s use of “apne” (our own people), and Khaled’s use of “al arab mithluna” (Arabs like us). It does so not to absolve itself of the responsibility of considering the contradictions inherent in these notions - I take this on extensively (p. 14-15; p. 22-24) - but to emphasise the tragic and frustrating ways in which these economic relationships are experienced by my interlocutors.
- I have also tried to emphasise, and this is something Reviewer 1 also picks up on, the difference between “longer settled migrants” and “recently arrived refugees” within these economic relationships (p.5, p.6)
- Perhaps more crucially, as Reviewers 1 and 3 suggest, the manuscript now takes a more constructivist approach to “co-ethnicity” and ethnic boundaries more broadly. In a section titled “Productive Boundaries and the Production of co-ethnicity” (p. 22-24), the new manuscript engages more explicitly with the way co-ethnicity becomes a “consequence of the value of boundaries, not its cause”, arguing against a notion that thinks of it as “sui generis”. In line with Reviewer 1’s suggestions, I engage with the idea of Racial Capitalism to further this perspective, using the work of Gilmore (2002) and Melamed (2015), to talk about the way capital produces boundaries that become essential to its valorization.

3. Methodology
- All 4 reviewers wanted to see more detail on the research methodology and the question of my role and relationship in the field. The current manuscript provides some more detail on the research process.
- Reviewer 3 asked for clarity on whether the research was “fully inductive” or “grounded theory”. Though not explicitly using this terminology, the current manuscript now indicates that it was, in fact, inductive : “When I began, I did not intend to study the economic lives of my interlocutors specifically, but rather the broader dynamics of foreigner incorporation they were involved in, especially as initiated by interpersonal encounters in 2015/16. However, it quickly became clear to me that the field of labour was both unavoidable, and central to the nature of their engagements as and with members of Berlin’s social world.” (p. 4)
- The manuscript now also specifies the number of people I spoke with.
- Reviewer 3 also asked that I explain why I chose to tell these specific stories, and somewhat preempts my answer with their reference to Weber. The new manuscript now makes this more explicit on p. 6: “I chose to tell the stories of Omar Khaled and Haider because of how their experiences represented three distinct trajectories of labour incorporation and its relationship to co-ethnicity. Each had, as a result of their search for employment, unique relationships with other refugees, as well as with longer settled migrants of their own linguistic, national, or “ethnic” backgrounds. I began to think of their stories as representative - not necessarily in a statistical sense - of the dominant modes of engagement with the labour market for my interlocutors. Such a choice prioritises a kind of analytical specificity over complexity, eschewing stories that may not fit so clearly into the analysis that follows. Yet by doing so, I hope to articulate a possible way to think of the structural forces my interlocutors found themselves engaging with.”
- Reviewer’s 1, 2 and 4 all asked for more information about my relationship to my interlocutors, particularly in context of my volunteering work. The new manuscript now provides some more detail, indicating that I was a volunteer for 3 months (p. 3) where I made some initial contacts, before moving out of the camp over the course of the next 3 years of my fieldwork. On p. 12 I provide some more information on why I was asked to convince Haider to enrol in a vocational training course. The previous wording perhaps wrongly implied that this was my job at the camp, though as I now make clear, I worked mostly as a translator - I was the only Punjabi/Urdu speaker in the camp, and they believed that an Ausbildungsduldung would be the best way forward for him and therefore asked me to speak with Haider about it.

4. Structure
- Reviewers 1 and 4 both suggested I revert to a more traditional structure, with the background on the asylum policy coming all together in the introductory section. The new manuscript reflects this change, and I have moved up the interlude section on the Bleibeperspective to follow the section that details the neoliberal changes in asylum policy at the beginning of the paper.
- Reviewers 3 and 4 asked for clearer signposting at the end of the introduction. The new manuscript now has a detailed paragraph at the end that more explicitly outlines the structure of the paper, while also addressing what I believe to be the contributions of this paper, i.e. the relationship between the ethnic economy and neoliberal transformations of asylum policy.

5. Nomenclature, Precision
- Reviewer 2 rightly points out that the use of nomenclature - refugees, asylum seekers, newcomers etc. is not consistent, and occasionally erroneous and even homogenising. The new manuscript addresses this in a few ways. First, as I explain in a note at the beginning, “reflecting the self-identification of my interlocutors, I use the term refugee to refer to people that came to Berlin seeking asylum, irrespective of the legal statuses they were then granted by the German state. Where legal specificity is important, I use the terms “asylum seeker”, “rejected asylum seeker”, “tolerated foreigner”, “refugee with asylum status” etc.”
- Second, in places where the previous manuscript carelessly made claims that seemed to imply a truth for all refugees, the new manuscript takes care to be more specific. For instance in regards to private security, where the new manuscript specifies its popularity is among young, male asylum seekers and refugees (p. 16).
- Third, as mentioned earlier, the new manuscript clarifies the difference between recently arrived refugees and longer settled migrants and refugees within the sphere of work.
- Finally, the new manuscript has removed language that makes it seem like these legal statuses fully describe my interlocutors, indicating that these categories only define structural relationships with respect to the German state (p. 3)
- Reviewer 2 also points out some inaccuracies in the finer discussion on the Duldung and refugee status, as well as in the citing of certain references (for example the erroneous use of ‘differential exclusion’ instead of differential ‘inclusion’ in reference to Mezzadra and Neilsen’s work, as well as in the usage of the word “acceptance” of refugees with regards to the work of Drangsland and Schultz. The new manuscript corrects these mistakes, and I thank the Reviewer for their detailed attention and feedback on these finer points of the article.

6. Additional References
- In line with Reviewer 1’s suggestions the manuscript (p. 23-24) now engages with the notion of Racial Capitalism (Bird & Schmid, 2021; Gilmore, 2002; Gilmore et al., 2022; Jodi Melamed, 2015; Rajaram, 2018). Using the work of Bird and Schmid, as well as de Jong (2019), the manuscript (p. 21)now engages with the role of NGOs in maintaining what the manuscript refers to as “the refugee industry”. I take on de Jong’s notion of “refugeeness as capital” pointing to how “the notion of “refugeeness as capital” can also slip into “refugees as capital”, which opens up the important distinction between those who can capitalise on refugeeness, and those who are turned into capital in the process.”
- Reviewer 2 suggested engaging more extensively with existing work done on the Duldung. I thank the Reviewer for the suggestions, particularly Mitric’s dissertation, which I was completely unaware of. Though, for sake of brevity, I have not been able to fit in a more detailed discussion on the history of the category, in a note on the history of the Duldung, the manuscript now refers to the long history of the Duldung’s use as a category of protection, especially as it was operationalized in response to war and conflict in former Yugoslavia.
- Missing references have been added, both to substantiate claims made in the paper (for example on p. 7 that “asylum seekers faced serious hurdles in accessing the labour market, a policy meant to dissuade people thinking of applying for asylum in Germany (Hinger, 2020, p. 19))”, as well as to correct erroneously left out, or falsely entered, items in the bibliography.

7. Miscellaneous
- Reviewer 1 suggested that I engage with the counterfactual of solidarity, and asked if I hadn’t witnessed situations where the relationships described could be thought of under those terms. In the concluding section, the new manuscript now briefly engages with this. I show instances where solidarity is certainly present, but conclude, following Bird and Schmid, that “moments of autonomous solidarity do not in themselves undo the… violence of Racial Capitalism” (Bird & Schmid, 2021, p. 21)
- In line with Reviewer 1’s suggestions, the manuscript now has a note specifying that I use capital in the Bourdieusian sense.
- Reviewer 2 provided valuable feedback on how the demonstration of arguments might proceed from a “show don’t tell” approach. The current manuscript tries to reflect this approach, and includes ethnographic material before analysis, for example, Haider’s employers’ use of casteist slurs now precedes the analysis on p. 6 : Haider’s South Asian employers were able to draw on their reservoirs of social and cultural capital to read his situation in a way that he no doubt hoped employers from other ethnic groups might not be able. Their incessant use of casteist slurs and referring to him as from the “village” were not just meant to humiliate, but to also discipline and control through the performative reproduction of difference.
- Reviewer 4 felt that my analysis of the neoliberal transformation of asylum was too monocausal, particularly in regards to the right to work for those with Duldung status. While I agree that the picture the manuscript paints focuses on the role played by commercial lobbying interests, I now nuance this by providing both more detail on the importance of the right to work for those on a Duldung citing Tize (2021) on “permanent temporariness”. Nonetheless, I believe that the way in which these reforms took place emphasised the aims and goals of corporate lobbies rather than the needs and rights of tolerated foreigners themselves, such that not all those with the Duldung have experienced these transformations in the same way. Thus, the manuscript (p. 8) follows the conclusions of those like Theresa Schütze (2022, p. 16), who contend that “neoliberalization has not improved the situation for all persons with Duldung but has driven differentiation within the group and a rationale of ‘cherry picking’ by the state”.