{"id":600,"date":"2025-12-02T12:26:22","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T17:26:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/?p=600"},"modified":"2025-12-02T12:26:22","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T17:26:22","slug":"did-the-german-moderates-welcoming-culture-for-syrian-refugees-fall-alongside-assad-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/did-the-german-moderates-welcoming-culture-for-syrian-refugees-fall-alongside-assad-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Did the German moderates’ ‘welcoming culture’ for Syrian refugees fall alongside Assad?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The clock reads 4:18 A.M. when Tareq Alaows and his friends feel their world tilt.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

The industrial gleam of three laptops illuminated the darkness of Alaows\u2019 Berlin living room, spitting a flurry of words from the plethora of German news channels. Overlapping audio streams made individual speakers incomprehensible to the unattentive ear. But that December night, the attention of Alaows and his four friends \u2014 Syrian, Iranian, German \u2014 had been anything but sparing. While they were collectively sleep-deprived from the past few days of the grueling ritual, not a single person wanted to miss the moment that Bashar al-Assad\u2019s reign of terror would crumble to the ground.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

\u201cI saw it, and at first, I didn\u2019t believe it. I was too tired to do anything, so I slept for an hour right away.\u201d Alaows said. \u201c[Afterwards,] I immediately \u2026 started making social media statements. I knew right away [that] as a political voice here in Germany and \u2026 an opponent of the Assad regime, there would be a lot of media inquiries coming my way.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

Alaows, a Syrian refugee who arrived in Germany in 2015 after <\/span>fleeing<\/span><\/a> conscription in Syria, was under unique circumstances. He was the first Syrian refugee to run for German Parliament, representing the left-leaning environmentalist Green Party in 2021. After withdrawing his candidacy due to racist threats, his work since then has focused on advising asylum seekers and supporting refugees for <\/span>ProAsyl<\/span><\/a>, Germany\u2019s largest pro-immigration advocacy organization.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

Alaows was euphoric at Assad\u2019s fall, but his joy fizzled out as quickly as it ensued. A mere few hours after the announcement, Jens Spahn, a German politician and Bundestag (parliament) member of the major center-right Chrsitian Democratic Union (CDU) party, suggested that the German government hand Syrian nationals in Germany 1,000 euros to repatriate them to their Assad-free homeland.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

\u201c[He] shamelessly suggested in the media [that] we give every [asylum] seeker 1,000 euros,\u201d Alaows said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

\u201cI thought, hey, an entire population is trying to understand what happened in the country, and the only thing Jens Spahn is interested in is that people can go straight back.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

***<\/span><\/p>\r\n

Just 10 years ago, stringent opposition to progressive immigration and asylum reform in Germany was considered a part of a minor stream of far-right politics. Today, it is minor no longer.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

The AfD (Alternative fur Deutschland), Germany\u2019s populist far-right party that openly <\/span>embraces<\/span><\/a> mass deportation policies and anti-Islam <\/span>views<\/span><\/a>, is the second most powerful party in the German Bundestag. They are <\/span>regarded<\/span><\/a> positively by nearly 20% of the German population, up from 13% in 2016. The AfD became the first far-right party since 1945 to win a German state election.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

The rightward cultural shift has generated a profound impact not only on the AfD but also on their more moderate counterparts. The CDU\/CSU (Christian Democratic Union\/Christian Social Union) \u2014 the center-right political powerhouse that traditionally has held majority seats in the Bundestag\u2014 is changing under the face of a metastasizing anti-immigrant culture, with nearly 37% of German voters in January\u2019s Bundestag elections considering \u2018migration\u2019 to be <\/span>one<\/span><\/a> of the two most important \u2018political problems\u2019 that lawmakers need to address. Just 10 years ago, Germany\u2019s CDU-led government allowed large numbers of asylum seekers into the country, fueled by progressive political and public sentiment on migration issues. Now, they\u2019ve taken a sharp right turn, its highest-ranking members espousing support to limit migration.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

After a visit to Damascus, Syria, earlier this month, Germany\u2019s Foreign Minister and CDU member Johann Wadephul <\/span>said<\/span><\/a> in a statement to German news network Deutsche Welle that \u201chardly anyone can live here [in Syria] with dignity.\u201d Wadephul allegedly made a remark that said today\u2019s \u201cSyria looked worse than postwar Germany\u201d during a meeting in parliament, irking other party colleagues. Germany\u2019s Chancellor Friedrich Merz, also a member of the CDU whose pointed remarks appeared to address Wadepuhl indirectly, said that \u201cthere is no longer any reason for [Syrian] asylum in Germany, and therefore, [Germany] can begin repatriations.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

For now, voluntary repatriation and deportations of Syrians with criminal records remain at the forefront of the CDU\u2019s repatriation advocacy. But only 0.1% of Germany\u2019s Syrians have voluntarily returned to their homeland a year after Assad\u2019s fall, and the pressure of Germany\u2019s <\/span>climbing<\/span><\/a> anti-immigrant cultural sentiment remains, even as the number of asylum applications is falling. Those who have already naturalized know that they are lucky. But to the hundreds of thousands of Syrians under more precarious circumstances \u2014 such as those with temporary residence permits or a subsidiary protection status \u2014 small political shifts can feel potentially life-altering.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

***<\/span><\/p>\r\n

Since Assad\u2019s fall, a wave of anxiety has ensued amongst many yet-to-be naturalized Syrians or Syrians under more temporary immigration statuses. In 2024, nearly <\/span>300,000 people<\/span><\/a> were granted naturalized German citizenship, a record for the nation. Many of them \u2014 over 80,000 \u2014 were Syrians.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

In 2015, the general path to German naturalization for Syrian refugees required eight years of legal residence, an intermediate level of fluency in German, and the completion and passing of an integration course. A large number of Syrian refugees who arrived during former German Chancellor Angela Merkel\u2019s border openings in 2015-2016 became eligible for naturalization in 2024, approximately 8-9 years after their arrival \u2014 and for most, after they had successfully integrated.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

\u201c[Syrians] have high intentions to integrate and stay \u2026 there are studies comparing return intentions before and after the fall [of Assad], and they find that the share of people who want to go back slightly increased, but a large and overwhelming majority wants to stay for the foreseeable future in Germany,\u201d said Jonas Wiedner, a German sociologist who studies social stratification and integration issues faced by immigrants.\u00a0 \u201cGermany has invested billions of euros in integrating, training, and schooling people from Syria.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\r\n

German politicians remain divided on the topic of repatriation. And Syrians, many of whom have lived in Germany for years but have yet to receive their citizenship, remain in judicial limbo. Many are fearful that rightward cultural shifts will translate to policy ones. In many ways, those shifts have already been realized.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

Wiedner noted that while there is some credence to the claim that Germany\u2019s rightward, anti-immigrant shift is a part of a broader shift observable in many Western countries today, Germany stands in a particularly unique historical position. Their open-border policy and relationship to a large number of Syrian refugees specifically have played significantly \u201cinto the hands of the far right.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\r\n

\u201cThe \u2026 welcoming culture is no longer the dominant force in German political opinion,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a large majority of people who want to see migration limited, and also want to see foreigners, particularly refugees, reduced in Germany.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

Kristin Brinker, the Chair of the Berlin division of the AfD and member of the Berlin House of Representatives, agrees that \u2018welcoming culture\u2019 no longer exists. But she doesn\u2019t see this as a problem.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

\u201cIf the war in a country has stopped, then the migrants have to go back,\u201d said Kristin Brinker, the Chair of the Berlin division of the AfD and member of the Berlin House of Representatives. Tidily dressed and groomed, she gave a concerned frown at the end of each sentence, occasionally slipping German conjunctions in place of English ones.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

Brinker \u2014 who self-identifies with a more moderate wing of the AfD \u2014 sounded little like her impassioned colleagues, some of whom emblazon \u2018Make Europe Great Again\u2019 slogans and orate passionately in social media-viral speeches. The AfD party\u2019s leader, Alice Wiedel, aroused controversy after <\/span>declaring<\/span><\/a> that \u201cburqas, headscarf girls, publicly-supported knife men, and other good-for-nothings will not secure our prosperity, economic growth, and the social state.\u201d Brinker\u2019s demeanor was laughably tranquil in comparison.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

\u201cThere are a lot of Syrians here. They live in our social system. They are young men, and they can work, go home, and rebuild their country,\u201d Brinker said, fixing her hair. \u201cAnd that\u2019s an important message for us.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\r\n

***\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

I\u2019ve been sitting in an empty Zoom conference for 15 minutes when a pixelated apparition of Stephan Mayer\u2019s round, doughy face emerges from the void. The flickering lights of German apartment buildings flash by in his car window. He mutters a sentence in German \u2014 I respond that I can only understand English. \u201cMake it quick,\u201d he says. \u201cI only have a few minutes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\r\n

Mayer, who has been a member of the German Bundestag since 2002, stepped down from his role as Secretary-General of Germany\u2019s CSU party in early 2022 after making death threats to a <\/span>journalist<\/span><\/a> for reporting on his illegitimate child. Under Chancellor Angela Merkel, Mayer served as the Parliamentary State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of the Interior from 2018 to 2021. Now, he is a \u2018Spokesperson for Sports\u2019 of the CDU\/CSU party. As part of his former Parliamentary State Secretary position, however, Mayer said that determining the CDU\/CSU\u2019s stance on migration policy was one of the key aspects of his job.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

\u201cI followed the discussions about migration, and especially illegal migration, very intensively within the last decade,\u201d he said. \u201cI am deeply opposing the theory that there [has been] a shift in [Germany\u2019s] <\/span>Willkommenskultur<\/span><\/i> [welcoming culture]<\/span>.<\/span><\/i>\u201d<\/span><\/p>\r\n

Critical to the argument for Syrian repatriation \u2014 a policy Mayer remains a strong proponent of \u2014 is the notion that a post-Assad Syria is safe for return. \u201cFortunately, we now have quite [a] stable government in Syria,\u201d Mayer said. \u201cI just had a briefing with the Federal [Foreign Office], and they are very confident that the al-Sharaa government is stabilizing.\u201d Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa, a former rebel commander and member of al-Qaeda, assumed Syrian presidency in January of 2025. The meeting presumably included Johann Wadepuhl, Germany\u2019s Foreign Minister, who opposed Syrian repatriation after making contentious comments about Syria\u2019s safety after the fall of Assad.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

But if Syria is truly safe for return as Mayer and some of his CDU colleagues are proposing, there seem to be other strong incentives keeping return rates at bay.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

[TK Potential moamadani\/al-zoabi interview inclusion on how rents in damascus are similar to rents in major american cities; more data on Syria\u2019s livability]<\/span><\/p>\r\n

In the early 1990s, the Yugoslav Wars \u2014 a series of ethnic conflicts, wars of independence, and insurgencies in the Balkan region that lasted over 10 years \u2014\u00a0 sparked a major refugee and humanitarian crisis in Europe. Generous estimates put the number of refugees at nearly 1 million. Germany received a large number of refugees \u2014 around 700,000. Most, according to Wiedner, were repatriated after three to four years in Germany.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

\u201cSo there is precedent that large repatriations can work,\u201d he said. \u201cBut of course, now the Syrians have been here for more than 10 years. That\u2019s a different story.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

Only now is Germany\u2019s billions of euros in migrant integration investments \u2014 integration training, schooling, and education \u2014 bearing economic returns. \u201cMore and more people are in the labor market [and are] contributing to the social security system. To send people back now, after all of these investments, really seems unwise,\u201d Wiedner added.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

[TK on doctors \/ syrians taking up high skill positions that would be empty otherwise; quote on brinker saying even the doctors should leave so that they can \u2018help rebuild\u2019]<\/span><\/p>\r\n

***<\/span><\/p>\r\n

There\u2019s an implied agency in the word \u2018repatriation\u2019. Unlike \u2018deportation\u2019, which often involves an involuntary removal and a cited violation of immigration law, \u2018repatriation\u2019 does not indicate any kind of legal violation and, in some cases, presupposes a voluntary return. But not all repatriations are voluntary, and not all involuntary repatriations involve a legal violation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

A repatriation, then, can become a practical equivalent to a deportation without legal basis.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

Like the word \u2018repatriation,\u2019 shifts in Germany\u2019s migration sentiment have been presented in feigned platitudes. Some, like Brinker, cite Germany\u2019s investment in Syria’s reconstruction: their homeland calls for the return of their young and talented. Others like Mayer cite a dubiously defined \u2018safety\u2019: of course Germany is a welcoming place for immigrants! But if \u2018home\u2019 is a great place to be in, why should they have to be here at all?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

To some, the platitudes of German migration politics seem to hide something more sinister: a fundamental misunderstanding of life as a Syrian migrant in Germany. At the very least, that\u2019s how Tareq Alaows saw it in 2021, when he realized he could be the missing voice of authenticity in the German government from a refugee perspective.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

\u201cI realized, even as a refugee who came to Germany in 2015, my perspective, my voice, was missing in the political debates about refugees. Not just my individual perspective, but overall,\u201d he said. \u201cThe perspective of affected people in politics, and that\u2019s why I decided to run for the Bundestag in 2021, to represent exactly this perspective of the people in the Bundestag during political decision-making.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

Alaows expected backlash. As the <\/span>first<\/span><\/a> Syrian refugee to ever attempt candidacy for the Bundestag and also as a member of the left-leaning Green Party, he knew that anti-refugee and racist social media posts were something he\u2019d have to endure.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

\u201cThe hostility [ranged] from people who said that as a Syrian, I could seek protection in Germany, but I shouldn\u2019t run for a political position \u2026 [to] people saying that they would look for me and, if they found me, would take me back to Syria to Assad so he could kill me as a political opponent.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\r\n

But what he didn\u2019t expect was threats to his family members and a physical altercation that would leave him fearing for his safety. One night on a Berlin subway ride, Alaows was accosted by a man who screamed at his face for nearly a minute straight. His family members also began <\/span>receiving<\/span><\/a> death threats initially limited to his own inboxes \u2014 and that was when he decided to retract his candidacy.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

Alaows thinks that this anti-immigrant rhetoric that drove his candidacy to withdrawal, while pronounced after the fall of Assad, was a phenomenon already in the making.\u00a0 \u201cThe debate about refugees shifted from being about \u2018asylum seekers\u2019 to so-called \u2018illegal migrants\u2019 in recent years. And this didn\u2019t just refer to refugees from Syria, but to all refugees coming to Germany,” he said.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

It\u2019s unmistakable, Alaows thinks, that this phenomenon was also one adopted by the German moderates. \u201cI noticed that certain statements by AfD politicians in 2015, like \u2018we shoot people at the border\u2019 or \u2018we must push people back with force at the German borders\u2019, [were limited] within far-right circles,\u201d he said. \u201cBut over time, it gradually became more socially acceptable and was even adopted by democratic parties.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\r\n

***<\/span><\/p>\r\n

When I had asked Stephan Mayer whether he believed that the CDU\/CSU\u2019s rightward policy shifts on migration were influenced by an attempt to appeal to conservative voters, he’d scoffed.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

\u201cThat\u2019s absolutely not true \u2026 I just said that we are hosting 1 million Syrian refugees, and now, the civil war has fortunately ended. We [gave them] residence allowances, but only for a certain time, for the time of the Civil War \u2026 and now the war has ended. [What] does that have anything in common with regaining conservative votes?\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a natural development,\u201d he added.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

Alaows would agree with him. That is, agree with his final statement: that what\u2019s happening to Syrians in Germany today in a post-Assad world is merely an extension of an alarming development of anti-immigrant sentiment that\u2019s been growing in potency for years.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

\u201cEven before the fall of the Assad regime, the narratives have changed,\u201d he said. \u201cThere were already efforts to deport people to Syria. [Even] while Assad was still in power.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\r\n

[feeling iffy about the ending]<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The clock reads 4:18 A.M. when Tareq Alaows and his friends feel their world tilt. The industrial gleam of three laptops illuminated the darkness of Alaows\u2019 Berlin living room, spitting a flurry of words from the plethora of German news channels. Overlapping audio streams made individual speakers incomprehensible to the unattentive ear. But that December<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6935,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6935"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=600"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":628,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600\/revisions\/628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}