Asylum regimes and transnational refugee families in Germany and France: family reunification in official practice and everyday experience

尽管有国际协议和欧洲联盟（EU）联合指令，但各成员国对寻求保护者及其亲属的家庭团聚的规定各不相同。在德国，家庭团聚的权利只适用于那些获得《联合国公约》规定的难民身份（或根据《基本法》第16a条获得庇护）的人。在给予附属保护的情况下不存在（或仅在有限程度上存在）。相反，在法国，所有庇护申请得到承认的人都享有与保护地位无关的家庭团聚权利。在此背景下，该研究项目调查了德国和法国的政治、法律和体制条例在难民家庭关系的（重新）建立、维持或改变方面发挥作用的程度。这就导致了下一个问题：在难民与有关当局之间的交往中，家庭作为一种制度的潜在不同概念是如何被接受、谈判、合法主张或通过官方法令强加的？通过这种方式，研究项目分析了政治/法律和体制参数及其在各国的执行情况，并明确结合寻求保护者及其家庭的经验和做法。该研究项目基于三个层面的定性调查：(1)文件分析；(2)对居住在德国或法国的具有保护地位和申请或启动家庭团聚经验的男女进行叙述性访谈；(3)在综合方法的基础上对家庭团聚程序进行个案研究。因此，对体制做法的分析采取比较两国庇护制度的形式，而寻求保护者的经验和做法以及他们为维持和重建家庭关系所采用的战略则通过案例比较加以调查。要点是：1)法律规定和普遍的家庭观念如何影响有关当局对保护规定和家庭团聚的处理；2)（在难民方面）在变化的条件下，迄今所坚持的家庭观念和忠诚如何得到维持、重新建立或改变。其目的是实现经经验证实的理论概念：a)关于寻求保护者家庭团聚方面的官方做法和体制影响；b)关于在被迫移徙情况下维持和重建家庭关系方面的家庭内部自我组织。

Despite international agreements and joint European Union (EU) directives, the regulation of family reunification for protection seekers and their relatives differs across member states. In Germany, the right to family reunification exists only for those who have been granted refugee status as set down in the UN Convention (or asylum in accordance with Article 16a of the Basic Law). It does not exist (or only to a restricted extent) in cases where subsidiary protection has been granted. In France, by contrast, the right to family reunification is conceded independently of protection status to all those whose applications for asylum have been recognized. Against this background, the research project investigates the extent to which in Germany and France political, legal and institutional regulations play a role in the (re-)establishment, maintenance or alteration of the family relations of refugees. This leads to the next question: How are potentially divergent notions of the family as an institution accepted, negotiated, legally asserted or imposed via official decree in the dealings between refugees and the rele-vant authorities? In this way, the research project analyses the political/legal and institutional parameters and their implementation in the respective countries in explicit connection with the experiences and practices of protection seekers and their families. The research project is based on a qualitative investigation on three levels: (1) analysis of documents, (2) narrative interviews with men and women living in Germany or France with a protection status and experience with application for, or initiation of, family reunification, (3) case studies on family reunification procedures undertaken on the basis of a combination of methods. Accordingly, the analysis of institutional practices takes the form of a comparison of asylum regimes in the two countries, while the experiences and practices of protection seekers and the strategies they employ to maintain and re-establish family relations are investigated by means of case comparisons. The essential points are 1) how legal provisions and prevalent family concepts influence the handling of protection provision and family reunification by the relevant authorities and 2) (on the refugee side) how under changed conditions family concepts and loyalties upheld hitherto are maintained, re-established or transformed. The aim is to achieve empirically substantiated theoretical concepts a) on official practice and institutional influence in connection with family reunification for protection seekers and b) on inner-family self-organization with regard to the maintenance and re-establishment of family relations in forced migration circumstances.