{"id":618,"date":"2025-12-01T16:59:18","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T21:59:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/?p=618"},"modified":"2025-12-01T16:59:18","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T21:59:18","slug":"the-strange-status-keeping-refugees-in-germany-guessing-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/the-strange-status-keeping-refugees-in-germany-guessing-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Strange Status Keeping Refugees in Germany Guessing"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Nazira Khairzad, former goalkeeper of the Afghan Women\u2019s National Soccer Team, flew out of Germany, she risked never being allowed back in. On October 31st, she and her sister, Nazima, were three days out from the Ultra-Trail du Mont-blanc, a technical 26-kilometer race through Mallorca\u2019s Serra de Tramuntana mountains. Nazira\u2019s legs were still sore from the marathon she\u2019d run the week before. But as she waited to display her refugee travel document to the security officer at Frankfurt am Main, Nazira had bigger concerns on her mind.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Nazira\u2019s status in Germany is tenuous. After the Taliban took over Afghanistan, she fled to Italy, where she obtained asylum. But in 2023, she moved to Frankfurt to support her sister, who was ill, and her parents. Reuniting with her family came with a price. As a non-resident in Germany, Nazira isn\u2019t allowed to work or travel. The status she holds, called <\/span>duldung<\/span><\/i>, denies her residency but delays her deportation. Still, its protections are limited. Each time Nazira leaves the country to do what she loves most\u2013play sports\u2013Germany can refuse her re-entry.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

To Nazira, the risk is worth it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Nazira is used to hiding. As a young girl, she and her sister started the first girls\u2019 soccer team in their native Bamiyan, a city in central Afghanistan. They snuck off to early morning practices multiple times a week, telling their parents they were going to an English class that met before school. Mostly in secret, Nazira\u2019s love for sports took hold. At 11, she won a 10k, crossing the finish line in a long dress and tattered sandals. Her parents only discovered she ran when, after a race, she was broadcast on their home TV.<\/span><\/p>\n

Born in 2004, Nazira came of age after U.S.-led coalition forces ousted the Taliban regime. In the two decades that followed, women ran, swam, and biked in triathlons abroad. Powerlifters won gold medals in India and Kazakhstan. The Afghan Women\u2019s National Team formed in 2007, winning its first international match in 2012. By 2013, female Afghan athletes had accumulated some 100 medals. Through running, soccer, and skiing, Nazira added to that tally. As a female athlete, she was a minority in a conservative culture. But for most of her life, she was safe.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That changed in early 2021, when the Taliban started to gain control of the provinces surrounding Kabul. One night, Nazira woke up to her phone ringing. It was a driver from Free to Run, the organization that sponsored Nazira\u2019s first race, offering to help her escape. Calling from the city center, he said Talib soldiers had entered Bamiyan.<\/span><\/p>\n

Violence had been on the rise in Bamiyan for the first time since the Taliban\u2019s regime. In September of 1998, Taliban soldiers first entered Bamiyan and killed an estimated <\/span>500 people<\/span><\/a>. Three years later, the group exploded the towering Buddhas of Bamiyan, hollowing out a cliff the height of a ten-story building.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This history fresh in her mind, Nazira pushed a desk in front of her door. She changed into a long black dress, threw clothes into a small suitcase, and gathered the trophies, medals, and certificates that adorned her room, tying them up in a tapestry. At around 4:30 in the morning, her father called to tell her their neighbors were driving to Kabul. \u201cYou should go with them,\u201d she recalls him saying.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When Nazira got to Kabul, she joined her sister Nazima, who\u2019d left home months earlier, in the basement room she was renting with several other women. For months, they shared a twin bed, their heads resting on opposite ends of a top-bunk mattress.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It was around this time that Nazima\u2013an athlete with a unique hunger for adventure\u2013ventured into the black market. She\u2019d won a scholarship to study in Malaysia, and needed a visa so she could travel to Pakistan for her appointment at the embassy (there is no Malaysian embassy in Afghanistan). Between odd meetings with a network of fixers, she traveled around the country, giving tours to English-speaking tourists. In May of 2021 she moved to Pakistan, narrowly escaping her country\u2019s fall to the Taliban. Meanwhile, Nazira joined the Afghan Women\u2019s National Team as a goalkeeper and started training for a match in Tajikistan, set for the end of August.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

These plans were upended on August 15th, 2021, when the Taliban reached Kabul. As a high-profile female athlete, Nazira was especially at risk. During this time, photos were circulating online of <\/span>Mahjabin Hakimi,<\/span><\/a> a volleyball player, her head severed from her body. The message was clear: women in sports should fear for their lives.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Nazira took refuge with her ski coach, Gul Hussain Baizada. Through his work as a tour guide, Baizada had contacts outside the country who he said could help them flee. Nazira called her parents from the airport. \u201cIf you stay in Afghanistan,\u201d she recalls them telling her on the phone, \u201cthe Taliban will kill you.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It was family, not escape, that brought Nazira to Germany. After the Taliban took over Afghanistan, she fled to Italy with her ski coach. In a matter of months, she obtained asylum and made plans to take college courses, and in February of 2023, earned a spot on AC Milan. \u201cI see football like a member of my parents, like my brother or sister,\u201d she said in her introductory video for the team. \u201cI cannot live without football.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But just when she started gaining a sense of stability in Italy, everything changed. Her sister, Nazima\u2013who went to Germany on a short-term Schengen visa, after her visa to Malaysia was denied\u2013had been dizzy for months. She blamed her symptoms\u2013vomitting, fatigue, and short, acute headaches\u2013on stress. But soon, her illness became impossible to ignore. On July 27th, 2023, Nazira left her new team, her asylum status, and her college career in Italy to reunite with her family after nearly two years of separation. A month later, Nazima underwent an emergency operation to remove a brain tumor. Nazira stayed in the hospital for three months as her sister recovered, sleeping on a chair or, sometimes, in a supplies closet.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sure she was in Germany to stay, Nazira applied for asylum. After over a year of waiting, her application was processed and rejected. By EU law, refugees can\u2019t apply for asylum in two countries. A non-resident, Nazira now straddles a bureaucratic contradiction. \u201cExclusion of deportation (Duldung),\u201d it says in German on her ID. And under that: \u201cNo residence permit! The holder is required to leave the country!\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As her relatives obtained asylum one by one, Nazira adapted as best she could to her second country of refuge. As she had in Italy, she started to learn the language and joined a team, FC Mittelbuchen. In August, the opportunity arose for her to play at the professional level, for FIFA\u2019s newly inaugurated refugee team. Selection camps would be held in Australia and England. By <\/span>duldung<\/span><\/i> rules, Nazira was supposed to stay in Germany. But for Nazira, the risks of leaving Germany\u2013a country that seemed to want her gone\u2013were worth it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cDuldung is not a right to stay,\u201d said Nazira\u2019s lawyer, Elke Gabsa. \u201cIt\u2019s the opposite.\u201d Roughly translated as \u201ctoleration,\u201d <\/span>duldung <\/span><\/i>puts a temporary hold on deportation. To put it simply, Germany wants <\/span>duldung <\/span><\/i>holders to leave, but for some reason, can\u2019t deport them yet.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s actually like a hundred different reasons,\u201d said Emily Frank, a social scientist and immigration scholar in Berlin. In 2021, the German government listed the reasons it issues <\/span>duldung <\/span><\/i>at the request of a group from parliament. According to the document, some <\/span>duldung <\/span><\/i>holders are too sick to travel. Others are caring for a sick relative. Some are studying, while others are in the midst of vocational training. Many are missing (or withholding) travel documents. A small number are kept in Germany to await criminal proceedings. The most common reason listed is \u201cother.\u201d Often, the grounds for <\/span>duldung <\/span><\/i>are up to the discretion of the immigration official. Nazira\u2019s is an apt example. Of her case, Gabsa told me, \u201cWe ask our authorities to give a residence because we think a special person is good for our country and there are serious reasons for the person to stay.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite these reasons, Nazira faces the same restrictions as other <\/span>duldung <\/span><\/i>holders. Unable to participate in many aspects of daily life, people with <\/span>duldung <\/span><\/i>live in limbo. They can\u2019t work unless they get permission from the office of immigration. <\/span>Some forms of <\/span>duldung<\/span><\/i>\u2013and there are numerous\u2013require holders to live in shared refugee housing, limiting their mobility, privacy, and ability to integrate into German life. As a rule, people with <\/span>duldung <\/span><\/i>can\u2019t access language courses, though there are exceptions. The limited time stamp on <\/span>duldung <\/span><\/i>presents new, less formal challenges. Employers often hesitate to hire people with <\/span>duldung<\/span><\/i> who, even with permission to work, are often regarded as short-term candidates. For the same reason, landlords keep from renting to people with <\/span>duldung<\/span><\/i>. When Nazira completed an intermediate German course, she couldn\u2019t enroll in the next level, a six-month course, because her <\/span>duldung <\/span><\/i>is only valid for three months.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In many ways, <\/span>duldung <\/span><\/i>holders are much like asylum-seekers, barred from work, travel, and school. But people still awaiting an asylum decision have one vital thing <\/span>duldung <\/span><\/i>holders lack: hope. \u201cIn a sense, a decision has already been made,\u201d Frank said of <\/span>duldung <\/span><\/i>holders.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite the humiliation life with <\/span>duldung <\/span><\/i>often entails, thousands of people stay in Germany with this status for years. Out of more than 240,000 people with <\/span>duldung<\/span><\/i> in 2021, over 46,000 of them had been in Germany for over three years, according to the government report from that year. Almost 15,000 of them had been in Germany for over a decade. They continue to face restrictions to employment, education, housing, and travel\u2013rules that, it would seem, sap the German economy. So why does Germany keep issuing <\/span>duldung<\/span><\/i>? \u201cMy impression is that it\u2019s a deterrence mechanism,\u201d Frank said. \u201cMaybe some people will give up on it and leave.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

More than an effective deterrent, <\/span>duldung <\/span><\/i>is a convenient catch-all for<\/span> non-residents whose deportation Germany can\u2019t justify.<\/span> It\u2019s also a buffer: as soon as the grounds for <\/span>duldung <\/span><\/i>go away, the German government may revoke its protections. In other words, <\/span>duldung<\/span><\/i> offers some safety\u2013but only for as long as Germany deems it necessary.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

St. George\u2019s Park spans 330 acres of land in Staffordshire, a county in the West Midlands of England. An on-site Hilton Hotel looks onto the National Football Centre, which boasts fourteen outdoor pitches, bright green against the gray England sky. Since its inauguration in 2012 by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, St. George\u2019s Park has been home base to England\u2019s 28 national football teams. In September, Nazira and twenty other candidates for FIFA\u2019s new Afghanistan women\u2019s refugee team got a chance to play there.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Worried travel would jeopardize her ability to stay in Germany, Nazira didn\u2019t initially plan on going. But after Gabsa, her lawyer, told her she could use her Italian refugee document to travel, she left for an eight-day trip, where she reunited with several players she knew from her stint on the Afghan Women\u2019s National Team.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Two weeks after her trip, Nazira was selected as a goalkeeper for the Afghan women\u2019s refugee team. The first match, set for October 26th in Qatar (and later diverted to Morocco, after Qatar denied the team visas), conflicted with Nazira\u2019s plans to run the Mallorca race. She and her sister had been training for nearly a year, often going on five-mile jogs together through Neuberg. Not one to flake, Nazira packed a bag for the 26-kilometer trail run, determined to keep goal in the next match.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For the second time, Nazira broke the rules of <\/span>duldung<\/span><\/i>, leaving her German ID at home on the day of her flight. Again, as she left Germany and re-entered\u2013still feeling the high of a successful race\u2013with no deportation scare.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Nazira faces a future speckled with these moments of uncertainty. Now a member of two soccer teams, she alternates between practicing in Hanau with FC Mittelbuchen and lifting weights on Zoom with the scattered refugee team. Between practice, she cares for her parents, often accompanying her mother, who has diabetes, to doctor\u2019s appointments. Each session with her lawyer seems to signal an ongoing limbo. In mid-November, Gabsa told Nazira that her third request for asylum had been denied. Gabsa is working on another appeal. \u201cI tried to argue that it can also be a human rights violation if members of a family need each other for private reasons,\u201d she told me.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Nazira got asylum in Italy in 2023. Within the next year, this status will expire. Without asylum, Nazira will lack the documents she needs to travel. Unable to travel, she won\u2019t be able to play in matches with the Afghan women\u2019s team. Still, Nazira\u2019s chances for obtaining asylum in Germany will stay the same.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Nazira faces one clear path out of limbo. She could go back to Italy, wait five years, and apply for residency, which would allow her to travel freely to Germany. Each asylum rejection is a reminder of this alternative. But after two years of involuntary separation from her family, life with them seems impossible to abandon. Her mother needs a medical interpreter. Her father needs a caretaker. She needs her family as much as she needs soccer. \u201cI moved to Italy and then I lived alone,\u201d she told me. \u201cCompletely alone.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Nazira Khairzad, former goalkeeper of the Afghan Women\u2019s National Soccer Team, flew out of Germany, she risked never being allowed back in. On October 31st, she and her sister, Nazima, were three days out from the Ultra-Trail du Mont-blanc, a technical 26-kilometer race through Mallorca\u2019s Serra de Tramuntana mountains. Nazira\u2019s legs were still sore<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4790,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-618","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\/618","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\/4790"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=618"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":621,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618\/revisions\/621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}