Debt, Guilt and Migration in Urban Settings Field:Migration and Urban Studies, Anthropological and Social Theory

城市环境中的债务、罪恶感和移民领域：移民和城市研究、人类学和社会理论

• 批准号: 2127363
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Oxford
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2018 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2127363
• 关键词: Debt; Guilt; Migration; Urban; Settings

A multidisciplinary study of the relation between debt and migration in the context of urban mobilities, which draws on both theoretical approaches and ethnographic research, including the case study of refugee centres in Berlin Debt has become a defining element of the global economy, but is mostly seen as a merely technical concept. Yet, it not only facilitates and prevents practices of migration, it also often relates to moral obligations of repayment, leaving many migrants and refugees "indebted" to their communities. In 2015-2016, the "refugee crisis" brought questions of mobility and indebtedness to host societies, as well as the moral obligations of the state, to the forefront ofcontemporary debate in Europe. But what do we mean when we speak of debt in the context of migration? Is the economic notion of debt semantically congruent with the moral notion of "guilt", as the German words for debt ("Schulden") and guilt ("Schuld") imply?In my research project, I propose to examine processes of contemporary migration through the lens of the nexus between economic debt and moral guilt. My hypothesis is that bodies with credit are highly mobile, that is, they are free to move through space, unbound by geopolitical and economic constrains. Bodies in debt, however, are bound by moral, economic or political constrains.As migration into cities rises in the 21st-century, urban spaces increasingly become the site of bordering practises and nationalist conflict. Conducting ethnographic fieldwork in selected empirical sites in Berlin, Germany, my project combines theoretical approaches with in-depth qualitative research techniques. I propose an innovative conceptual framework, which allows us to understand why processes of migration might involve a moral dimension of debt: An individual owes her presence, work and, sometimes, even her life to a specific socio-cultural setting. She is, when viewed in this way, bound to repay her debt to the community, family or the nation. The broader theoretical argument of my research is that the concept of debt links individual and social relations to the global economy.

对城市流动背景下债务与移徙之间关系的多学科研究，借鉴了理论方法和人种学研究，包括对柏林难民中心的案例研究。然而，它不仅便利和防止移徙做法，而且往往涉及偿还的道德义务，使许多移徙者和难民对其社区“负债”。2015-2016年，“难民危机”将收容国的流动性和债务问题以及国家的道德义务问题带到了欧洲当代辩论的前沿。但当我们在移民背景下谈论债务时，我们的意思是什么？债务的经济概念是否与“内疚”的道德概念在语义上一致，就像德语中债务（“Schulden”）和内疚（“Schuld”）所暗示的那样？在我的研究项目中，我建议通过经济债务和道德内疚之间的联系的透镜来检查当代移民的过程。我的假设是，拥有信用的机构具有高度移动的性，也就是说，它们可以自由地在空间中移动，不受地缘政治和经济约束的约束。然而，负债的机构受到道德、经济或政治约束的约束。随着21世纪向城市移民的增加，城市空间日益成为边境冲突和民族主义冲突的场所。在德国的柏林进行民族志实地考察，我的项目将理论方法与深入的定性研究技术相结合。我提出了一个创新的概念框架，它使我们能够理解为什么移民过程可能涉及债务的道德层面：一个人欠她的存在，工作，有时甚至是她的生活，以特定的社会文化环境。从这个角度来看，她有义务偿还她对社区、家庭或国家的债务。我的研究的更广泛的理论论点是，债务的概念将个人和社会关系与全球经济联系起来。