Conflict, war and violence

Das Verständnis internationaler Migration, insbesondere von Flucht, ist für Entwicklung und Stabilität auf nationaler sowie globaler Ebene zunehmend von Bedeutung. Zusammenhänge zwischen Migration und Entwicklung werden bereits seit den 1990er Jahren umfassend untersucht. Im Laufe der letzten zwei Jahrzehnte hat sich organisierte Gewalt jedoch als einer der Schlüsselfaktoren des Migrations-Entwicklungsnexus herausgebildet. Mancherorts kann organisierte Gewalt klar als verstärkender Einflussfaktor für internationale Migrationsprozesse identifiziert werden (z.B. Bürgerkriege in Zentralamerika und dem Mittleren Osten). Andererorts steht organisierte Gewalt in direktem Zusammenhang zu Migration (z.B. kriminelle Menschenhandelsnetzwerke). In Ankunftsländern tritt organisierte Gewalt in Form von Schwarzarbeitsnetzwerken, einheimischen Terroristenzellen oder Fremdenfeindlichkeit politischer Gruppen in Erscheinung (z.B. in den USA oder Deutschland). Diese unterschiedlichen Formen von Gewalt und Migration spiegeln gleichzeitig entwicklungsbezogene Faktoren wider. In manchen Fällen ist organisierte Gewalt das Resultat fehlender nachhaltiger Entwicklung oder von bewaffneten Konflikten um Rohstoffe, politische Macht oder soziokulturellen Einfluss; in anderen Fällen ist sie die Ursache fehlender Entwicklung oder massiver Migration. Das Konzept der organisierten Gewalt ist ein vielversprechender Ansatz, um neue Migrations- und Entwicklungsmuster zu verstehen. Als Kategorie umfasst es Formen sozialer Gewalt, die nur schwer mit den herkömmlichen konzeptuellen Rahmen organisierter Kriminalität, kollektiver Gewalt und politischer Gewalt zu erfassen sind. In Anbetracht seiner Bedeutung für den zentral- und nordamerikanischen Raum, sowie für den Raum Afrika, Mittlerer Osten und Osteuropa ist ein komparativ angelegtes internationales Forschungsvorhaben, das die Stärken unterschiedlicher regionaler Kontexte und akademischer Netzwerke kombiniert, besonders sinnvoll. Daher wird dieses Forschungsprojekt Formen von Gewalt miteinander vergleichen und einander gegenüberstellen, mit einem besonderen Augenmerk auf organisierte Gewalt und auf die Art und Weise, wie diese Migrations- und Entwicklungsmuster prägt. Das Projektteam besteht aus zwei institutionellen Partnern: dem Lateinamerika-Institut der Freien Universität Berlin und der Ruhr-Universität Bochum unter der Leitung von Ludger Pries (RUB) und Stephanie Schütze (FU) als Projektleiter/innen. Die beiden Partnerinstitutionen werden in diesem Projekt mit Wissenschaftler/innen von dem El Colegio de México und der Universidad de Guadalajara in Mexiko, der Universität Koç und dem Orient-Institut Istanbul in der Türkei sowie der University of Illinois at Chicago in den USA zusammenarbeiten.

"Das vorliegende Teilprojekt wird im Rahmen des BIM-Forschungs-Interventions-Clusters ""Solidarität im Wandel?"" durchgeführt, das durch die Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Migration, Flüchtlinge und Integration gefördert wird. Das Projekt “reWoven- refugee women and (psychosocial) volunteer engagement” möchte Prozesse der Solidarisierung von ehrenamtlichen Helferinnen für geflüchtete Frauen analysieren, tieferliegende Folgen von Gewalterfahrungen auf beiden Seiten bearbeiten und praxisnahe Interventionen entwickeln. Geflüchtete Frauen machten in vielen Fällen diverse Gewalterfahrungen – in ihren Herkunftsländern, auf der Flucht, sowie in den Unterkünften in Europa; Erfahrungen von Krieg und politischer Gewalt, frauenspezifische und sexualisierte, sowie häusliche Gewalt. Auch für ehrenamtliche Helferinnen können eigene geschlechterspezifische Gewalt- oder Diskriminierungserfahrungen zu der Entscheidung beitragen, sich für geflüchtete Frauen einzusetzen. An diesem Punkt in der Beziehung zwischen geflüchteten Frauen und ehrenamtlichen Helferinnen möchte das Projekt “reWoven- refugee women and (psychosocial) volunteer engagement” ansetzen. Durch explorierende Feldforschungen und 360° Interviews vor Ort möchten wir erfahren: Welche Hilfe nehmen geflüchtete Frauen in Anspruch, an welchen Angeboten mangelt es noch? Welche Erwartungen haben geflüchtete Frauen an ehrenamtliche Helferinnen – und umgekehrt? Wie gehen ehrenamtliche Helferinnen mit eigenen Belastungen angesichts der Arbeit mit geflüchteten Frauen, die Gewalterfahrungen gemacht haben, um? Welche Konflikte können daraus entstehen und wie können diese Konflikte in den Beziehungen dialogisch bearbeitet werden? Als Output des Projekts sollen Supervisionsmodelle erarbeitet und Dialogprojekte in Unterkünften organisiert werden, in denen Erfahrungen frauenspezifischer Gewalt und Diskriminierung in einem für beide Zielgruppen sicheren Rahmen bearbeitet werden. In einem offenen Dialog über frauenspezifische Gewalterfahrungen können die beteiligten Frauen potenziell traumatisierende Erlebnisse in Ressourcen umwandeln und so gemeinsam Möglichkeiten der Partizipation entwickeln."

Poor countries are often plagued by civil wars. They are also, in many cases, emigration countries. Anybody interested in the development of such countries must understand to what extent these phenomena are interrelated, and how they interplay with each other. If it is pretty clear that civil wars push people to leave the country, it remains understudied how diasporas play a role in the emergence and evolution of violent conflicts. Indeed, the interactions between diasporas and conflict have roughly been overlooked by the economic literature to date, in spite of the very suggestive pieces of evidence provided by related research fields and of the very important policy questions that it raises – in particular, how to optimize the contribution of diasporas to peaceful development. Based on case studies such as those of Erytrea or of Sri Lanka, the literature in history and political science underlines diverse mechanisms through which diasporas have intervened in the evolution of violence in their home country, either as peace-builders or as peace-wreckers. On the other hand, in these case studies, the evolution of civil wars also appears to have been determinant of emigration and return migration patterns and, eventually, of the nature of diasporas’ involvement in the political situation in the homeland. This project will investigate the joint dynamics of civil conflicts and migration in developing countries. It will first build a theoretical framework to characterize how diasporas and civil wars interact together, accounting for the endogeneity of both migration and violence. The theoretical predictions derived from this framework will then be empirically tested, relying on recent and original data. Through a multi-disciplinary perspective, nourished by the findings of the qualitative research and relying on economic tools – both theoretical and empirical – this project will allow to build the first comprehensive investigation of the diasporas – conflict nexus.

Each year, civil wars cause hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, ecological disruptions, regional instability. These conflicts encompass many players and their effects are felt not only at the regional level but also within Western societies (refugees, terrorism, sectarian tensions). Despite this, no systematic comparison of civil wars have been conducted using a qualitative method. Social scientists are struggling to understand these breakdowns of the social order, which are fertile from a theoretical perspective because they de-trivialize the social functioning. In civil war, the partial or total institutional collapse marks the end of the (imperfect) monopoly of the state with regards to violence and justice, challenges the social and ethnic hierarchies and also provokes fluctuation of the economic and social capital. Accordingly, we will address three questions. First, the sudden and non-anticipated reconfiguration of modes of accumulation and conversion of capitals and the relationship between social fields. Next, the formation of competing institutions by politico-military movements involved in the construction of an alternative political order. Finally, individual adaptations to risks and uncertainty affecting the ability of actors to anticipate the consequences of their actions and reassess their own values and engagement. The implementation of this program of comparative sociology of civil wars will draw on extensive fieldwork. This requires an adapted methodology for researchers faced with unpredictable situations, where quantitative methods fall short. Prosopography, semi- or unstructured interviews and participant observation are therefore prioritised. The creation of an interdisciplinary team of sociologists, political scientists and anthropologists will be able to carry out research based on thick description, following 25 years of experience by the PI in collecting data and supervising researchers in areas afflicted by civi

"Theoretical background and objectives The project continues research on the causal dynamics behind anti-immigrant violence in Germany during the 1990s. With a total of about a hundred deaths and many thousands of acts of violence over an extended period of time, this constitutes by far the most important outbreak of ethnic violence in post-war German or indeed West European history. In combination with the availability of a uniquely detailed event data set (see below) studying this wave of violence can make important contributions to our knowledge of the causal dynamics behind mobilisation processes generally, and ethnic mobilisation and violence in particular. Earlier research (e.g., Koopmans 2004; Koopmans and Olzak 2004) has shown that the violence was spurred by political opportunities in the form of highly mediatised controversies between government and opposition over immigration control. Although this connection is well-established, it is less clear, which social mechanisms linked opportunity structures to acts of anti-immigrant violence. The current project investigates two social mechanisms: spatial diffusion processes across localities and the role of bystander publics. The data on anti-immigrant violence display strong temporal clustering and a non-random geographical distribution, suggesting that diffusion processes have played an important role. We investigate whether violent events that were widely mediatised and that occurred during periods of intense immigration debates increased rates of violence in other localities; whether local opportunity structures affected variation in rates of violence across localities; and whether diffusion was more likely to occur between socially homophilous localities. We then investigate the role of bystander publics. On several occasions (e.g., Hoyerswerda, Rostock, but also less well-known instances) local bystander crowds were present when groups of right-wing youths attacked immigrant hostels. Sometimes these crowds ""just"" watched, at other times they signalled support by applauding or cheering, or signalled opposition by verbally or physically intervening in defence of immigrants. We investigate whether such bystander public reactions – which often received much media attention – contributed to the diffusion or containment of violence and acted as an intermediate mechanism between national political opportunities and local activism. Research design, data and methodology The data are drawn from content analyses of German newspapers, supplemented with violence statistics of the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz and Reuters news agency data gathered by Ron Francisco. The newspaper data contain detailed information (including the exact timing and geographical location) on altogether around 12,000 events, including public statements on immigration control or the extreme right, political decisions on immigration issues, repression of the extreme right, as well as 700 violent attacks against immigrants, of which for 81 a bystander public reaction was registered. Data are analysed using event history analysis (diffusion across localities) and negative binomial regression (bystander effects). Findings Diffusion processes indeed played an important role in mediating between opportunity structures and anti-immigrant acts. Widely mediatised acts of violence, as well as those that occurred during periods of heightened immigration debate were more likely to lead to copycat events in other localities. Local opportunities also played a role: violence was less likely to occur where the moderate right (CDU or CSU), and even where extreme right parties were electorally strong. This goes against the common sense idea that strong right parties fuel anti-immigrant action, but fits political opportunity structure theories that state that extra-institutional mobilisation is more likely to occur when a constituency is less well represented in institutional politics (e.g., Kriesi et al. 1995). Further, we showed that the recurrent finding from diffusion studies that geographical distance matters can be made sociologically more meaningful when one substitutes – as Gabriel Tarde suggested long ago – geographical by social distance. We investigated three aspects of social homophily: socio-economic (% of the workforce in the agrarian sector), political (% CDU/CSU votes), and demographic (% immigrants). Diffusion was significantly more likely to occur across localities that were more similar along these dimensions and once this was taken into account geographical distance did not matter anymore. Regarding reactions of bystander publics, first results indicate that they were an extremely important mechanism. In particular bystander reactions that supported anti-immigrant activists had a strongly positive impact on the subsequent rate of violence. Bystander reactions that disapproved of the violence did not have a significant effect, probably because they inadvertently generated more media attention for the violence and its perpetrators. Importantly, once bystander public reactions are taken into account, effect sizes for the political opportunity variables become weaker and in some cases insignificant, suggesting that bystander public reactions were indeed important in signalling to activists the opening or closure of opportunities for successful mobilisation."

The HEUNI report "Unseen Victims" presents the manifestations and consequences of gender-based violence and the challenges in assisting victims of violence in the migration context. With this report the authors aimed to increase the understanding of policymakers on the structural challenges asylum-seeking and refugee women who have experienced gender-based violence face.

"Theoretical Background and objectives In the context of the combination of escalated sectarian conflicts in Iraq and Syria, and home-grown conflicts around real and perceived attacks on Islam and its symbols in the West (from Rushdie to Charlie Hebdo), increased numbers of Muslim youth in Western countries have embraced radical forms of Islam and have sometimes become actively involved in violence, both at home and abroad. Beyond impressionistic evidence on a few active radicals, extremely little is known about the incidence among countries’ Muslim populations of adherence to radical versions of Islam and support for religiously-motivated violence. To answer these questions, cross-national surveys across Muslim populations in different countries are necessary, but apart from the very descriptive surveys by the US American Pew Research Institute, which are moreover not publicly accessible for secondary analysis, no such information is available. Existing research also leaves another major question unanswered, namely to what extent religious radicalism is specific to current Islam or whether it is comparable to what we find in other contemporary religions, particularly within Christianity. This project wants to fill these voids. A first step was an analysis based on the SCIICS survey. This was the first representative survey study to compare religious fundamentalism and outgroup hostility between Muslims and Christians (Koopmans 2015), and as such it attracted worldwide media attention. While the study revealed large differences between the two religious groups even when controlled for a range of socio-economic and demographic variables, the limitation of the study to two Muslim ethnic groups as well as the fact that it compared Muslims of immigrant origin to autochthonous Christians limits the generalizability of its findings. Moreover, the SCIICS survey did not include questions about support for religiously-motivated violence and extremist religious organizations. Research design To overcome these shortcomings, we are conducting two studies: Religious Fundamentalism and Radicalization Survey and Jihadi Radicalization in Europe Database. The first project is a representative survey study of Muslims, Christians, Jews, and non-believers in 2017 in the following 8 countries: Germany, the United States, Cyprus, Turkey, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and Kenya. The choice of countries allows for a broad range of cross-national and cross-sectional comparisons. For instance, all three of the world’s Abrahamic religions are represented in our sample, allowing us to investigate similarities and differences between these three religious groups. In addition to comparisons across religious groups, we are also interested in examining variances within the religious groups. Therefore we sampled across different branches of Islam, i.e. Sunni Muslims (Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Kenya, and Cyprus), Shia Muslims (Lebanon) and Alevites (Turkey, Cyprus); of Christianity, i.e. Catholic and Protestant Christians (Germany, and the USA), Greek Orthodox Christians (Cyprus, Lebanon), Maronite Catholics (Lebanon) and the generally more conservative Christianity of Sub-Saharan Africa (Kenya); and of Judaism, i.e. both Orthodox and Reformist branches (Israel and the USA). Our research design also allows us to investigate the role of immigration and integration experiences in religious radicalization. The study not only includes two Western immigration countries with strongly divergent immigrant integration policies (Germany and the United States), but also three countries with autochthonous Muslim and Christian populations (Kenya, Cyprus, and Lebanon). Furthermore, both in Germany and the United States, we oversample Christians of immigrant origin, thus extending the range of comparisons to a variety of immigrant and native groups and augmenting the possibility of isolating the role of immigration. Apart from the usual socio-economic and demographic control variables, the surveys included questions on religiosity, religious knowledge, fundamentalism, out-group hostility, intergroup contacts, discrimination, adherence to conspiracy theories, violence legitimation, and support for extremist groups. Moreover we employed a survey experiment to test the effect of religious scripture on religious violence legitimation. The broad range of variables and the experiment included in the surveys will enable rigorous hypotheses testing, which will help us uncover causal mechanisms behind religious fundamentalism and radicalization. In the second project Jihadi Radicalization in Europe Database, we aggregate profiles of Jihadist individuals from publicly available information. The main units of analysis of this database are people from four European countries (Germany, France, the Netherlands and the UK) who fit in any of the following characteristics: People (including their partners and children from the age of 15 who accompanying them), who have traveled to Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan or other conflict regions involving Muslims, acting out of their Islamist conviction (the so-called foreign fighters); people who have actively recruited others as foreign fighters or motivated others to join through propaganda activities; people who were involved in the aiding, planning or conducting of Islamist terrorist activity in Europe or were suspected thereof; people who supported, justified or glorified the use of violence in the name of Islam through propaganda activities; people who are members of jihadi-Salafist and Islamist organizations, which support the use of violence. The database will primarily consist of biographical and sociodemographic information on individuals, with the aim of identifying common characteristics. Using the sociodemographic data, we aim to investigate, what kind of people are more susceptible to radicalization, whereas we will use the biographic data to gain insights into contexts of radicalization. In addition to these characteristics, social contacts and networks of the individuals will also be registered, in order to analyze the social network structures. This information will be used to explore group-specific radicalization processes as well as to identify central influential figures within the networks. The relevant data will be gathered through an online and media research. A variety of sources of data will be used to collect relevant information such as newspaper articles, interviews, online-blogs, biographies, news databases such as LexisNexis®, and court proceedings, in order to gather as much data as possible on the individuals. The database can be understood as an aggregation of publicly available data on European Islamists."