Handlungsorientierungen, Integrationspraktiken und Einstellungen zivilgesellschaftlicher Akteur*innen in ländlichen Räumen

This working paper addresses action orientations of civil society actors who are involved in integration processes of asylum seekers and refugees in rural areas. The interviewees are important local actors with essential local expertise in this field. The aim of this paper is to analyse the receptiveness of local societies regarding refugees, other migrants, or newcomers in general. The main hypothesis is, that general orientations regarding the meaning of “integration” shapes societies’ responses towards newcomers. Thus, this paper presents varied interpretations of the term “integration”, which are connected to the varied societal contexts, collective mindsets and actors’ self-positionings in the respective locality or region. A second focus of the paper is to analyse how narrations of “integration” are embedded in narrations of “rurality”. The issues here are in particular societal and structural conditions and challenges of rural areas which have been discussed on a local level, and have been reinforced by the arrival of refugees in 2015. These first findings stem from an interview series which was carried out in the context of the joint project “Future for refugees in rural regions of Germany”.