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

在城市流动的背景下，对债务与移徙之间的关系进行了多学科研究，采用了理论方法和人种学研究，包括柏林难民中心的案例研究。债务已成为全球经济的一个决定性因素，但主要被视为一个技术概念。然而，它不仅便利和防止移徙做法，而且往往还涉及偿还债务的道义义务，使许多移民和难民“欠”其社区“债”。2015-2016年间，“难民危机”将流动性和对收容社会的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。但是，当我们在移民背景下谈论债务时，我们指的是什么？经济上的债务概念与道德上的“内疚”概念在语义上是否一致，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，我提议通过经济债务与道德内疚之间关系的视角来审视当代移民的过程。我的假设是，拥有信贷的机构具有高度的流动性，也就是说，它们可以自由地在太空中移动，不受地缘政治和经济约束。然而，负债累累的机构受到道德、经济或政治约束的束缚。随着21世纪涌入城市的移民增加，城市空间越来越多地成为接壤实践和民族主义冲突的场所。我的项目在德国柏林选定的经验点进行人种学田野调查，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，使我们能够理解为什么移徙过程可能涉及债务的道德层面：一个人的存在、工作，有时甚至她的生命都要归功于特定的社会文化背景。从这个角度来看，她注定要偿还她对社区、家庭或国家的亏欠。我研究的更广泛的理论论点是，债务概念将个人和社会关系与全球经济联系在一起。

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.