Katrin Kremmel

migration

citizenship

unwaged labour

From “Municipal Asylum” to “Volunteering”: Citizenship and Unwaged Labor in Western Austria

In the spring of 2015, the initiative We welcome in a rural region in Western Austria published a “manifesto” in which it publicly announced its decision to grant “municipal asylum” to two asylum seekers from Syria. In its manifesto, the initiative carefully argued for its decision to protect the two men from nation-state authorities, time and again recurring to the law in order to legitimize its actions. Oriented by the logics of the extended case method, I use the initiative We welcome as an entry point for my PhD project to investigate how citizenship was negotiated and contested through the unwaged labour of citizens and forced migrants in rural areas in the context of failing refugee reception policies.