Analysis and explanation of notions of solidarity in migration contexts
The joint project
What notions of solidarity do political decision-makers and social actors have? Can patterns be identified in communication about migration and flight at the political, social and individual levels that indicate either solidarity or a lack thereof? Are discourses on solidarity becoming more diverse? How resilient is the structure of solidarity, and what might a communication strategy look like that reduces the effects of desolidarisation? How do discourses on solidarity at the political level correlate with discourses at the individual or social level? These and similar questions are being investigated by the interdisciplinary research network at the University of Hildesheim. In four sub-projects, researchers from the Institute of Social Sciences in the fields of political science and sociology and from the Institute of Information Science and Language Technology are cooperating and pursuing a multi-level approach: The micro level (led by Prof. Kneuer) deals with online and offline communication among citizens; the meso level (led by Prof. Corsten) deals with the communication of socially organised actors, and the macro level (led by Prof. Schammann) deals with the communication of political decision-makers. The discourse analysis on the three levels is carried out with the help of corpus linguistics tools (led by Prof. Heid). The research project will run for three years and is funded by the Lower Saxony Ministry of Science and Culture and the Volkswagen Foundation.
Subproject 3: The macro level
The sociological subproject deals with the question of what role solidarity plays for organisations in the local context of a city or municipality. The current divergences in socially debated notions of solidarity are particularly evident in their different local manifestations, for example when comparing eastern and western German regions. The aim is to find out whether, and if so, what influences the increased immigration in 2015 and 2016 has had on cohesion at the local level. We address the following questions on migration and flight: How successful is cooperation with civil society organisations on the issue of immigration in your district or city? What changes have there been in recent years? Were there or are there actors who have campaigned against immigration? Are there differences compared to other districts, and if so, what do you attribute these to? How do people in your region and in your organisation generally feel about social cohesion? How and to what extent do they refer to national and global perspectives? Are there dynamics of solidarity and engagement rising and falling over time? The investigation of the ideas of different groups of actors aims to answer the question of solidarity and the sense of community in a local society. What holds the local community together in terms of engagement, and what drives it apart? Even in the local context, different groups are struggling to find the ‘right’ attitude towards the problem of flight and migration. In this way, the sub-project can show how the local public reacts to the pluralised and conflicting perspectives of solidarity and how and why moods of solidarity or disunity develop in these ‘small worlds’, how they rise and fall.