Mechanisms of Exclusion and Invisible Incorporation into the EU: Refugees in Germany as Europeans3 4 5 Mechanisms of Exclusion and Invisible Incorporation into the EU: Refugees in Germany as Europeans Marike Janzen University of Kansas Abstract: In her essay, Marike Janzen calls for the need to reframe the issue of refugee integration or marginalization in Europe away from one defined either by a particular state’s strictures for accommodating migrants or alienation from the forced migrant’s sense of identity, to one that takes into account migrants’ implication within a multinational legal framework� To do so, she draws on Étienne Balibar’s insight into the constitutive role of Europe’s “border zone�” According to Balibar, this zone is not merely to be found at Europe’s external borders but exists any place where belonging in the E�U� is regulated, and it is central, not marginal, to conceptions of who may claim to be a European subject� Janzen shows how two recent documentary works about refugees seeking asylum in Germany, Benjamin Kahlmeyer’s 2014 film “Die Unsichtbaren” and Lola Arias’s 2018 play “What They Want to Hear,” exemplify how mechanisms of exclusion can occasion forms of fluency that reflect a subject’s incorporation into an E�U� legal regime, if not their acceptance into a specific state� Keywords: documentary, asylum, border zone, refugee, E�U�, Benjamin Kahlmeyer, Lola Arias In his 2014 documentary film Die Unsichtbaren, Benjamin Kahlmeyer traces the experiences of four men from Syria, Kenya, and Cameroon at a refugee reception center in the German town of Eisenhüttenstadt in the state of Brandenburg� There, the men wait for their applications for asylum in Germany to be processed� At the end of the film, Gedeon, from Cameroon, reads the letter rejecting his application and announcing his imminent deportation to Spain out loud in halting German� We hear that his “Antrag wird als unzulässig abgelehnt” and the “Abschiebung [nach Spanien] wird angeordnet�” Following the Dublin Regu- 346 Marike Janzen lation, which mandates that refugees apply for asylum in the European country they first enter, Gedeon must submit his application in Spain� 1 Although he has only been in Germany for a short time, Gedeon’s ability to manage German “bureaucratese” is notable, a fact he evidently recognizes as he remarks with a defeated shrug: “Not too long ago I couldn’t imagine that I would one day be able to read in German� Now I do it quite well�” 2 The scene, which demonstrates Gedeon’s ability to navigate the language of a country in which he is a stranger and where he is not permitted to stay, highlights a paradox at work in EU efforts to regulate immigration: mechanisms of exclusion themselves can occasion forms of fluency that reflect a subject’s incorporation into an EU legal regime, if not their acceptance into a specific state� My argument that Gedeon’s newly developed ability to read a deportation order in German exemplifies a form of incorporation into the EU reveals limitations in discourses about the migrants’ relationship to the place where they seek asylum� These position the migrant either as an individual who can potentially become part of the nation, or as a subject alienated by the parameters of asylum regulation� For example, the German government promotes a liberal humanist vision of migrant “Integration,” by which immigrants are incorporated into the national story� Specifically, “Integration” refers to state efforts aimed at cultivating a sense that migrants belong in Germany through initiatives that promote non-citizens and citizens sharing their perspectives and experiences with each other - a process seen as mutually enriching for both groups� 3 This view provides the rationale for state-funded cultural projects that aim to teach Germans about immigrants and teach immigrants about Germany and its traditions� Such projects include the radio program “Radio Globale” in Oldenburg, which is produced primarily by recent immigrants to Germany for the region’s listeners� “Radio Globale,” supported by the Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge (BAMF) and aired on the publicly funded radio station “Oldenburg Eins,” allows migrants to practice German and learn technical skills while sharing their stories about their places of origin and perceptions of Germany with a German public (“Radio Globale”)� Yet this “Integration” framework, which relies on migrants’ participation in a nation’s public sphere, cannot incorporate individuals like Gedeon who speak German by virtue of having spent time in the nation, but whose voice will not have been heard in a German public sphere� If a national “Integration” paradigm does not capture Gedeon’s experience within Germany, neither does a literary critical one that highlights migrants’ alienation by a European asylum regime� In their work on asylum narratives, Agnes Woolley and Alison Jeffers, respectively, highlight the way that the asylum-seeking process requires migrants to align their subjectivity with a specific legal framework� In this context, what makes a subject legible is an “asylum Mechanisms of Exclusion and Invisible Incorporation into the EU 347 script” in which one is either credible and thus deserving of protection, or fraudulent in one’s claims, and not a legitimate “refugee” according to the language of the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees� Thus, the asylum seeker must undergo a “bureaucratic performance” ( Jeffers 35) at the border through which she is “produced [as a refugee]” (37), an identity that may lead to the desired protection, but that, at the same time, requires the erasure of other identities (Woolley 381, Jeffers 38)� From this perspective, asylum seekers are like characters in a Kafka story in which bureaucratic processes supplant individual experience as the measure of reality� Woolley’s and Jeffers’ analyses are crucial for identifying the legal discourses through which migrants are included or excluded from a state in which they seek asylum� Yet their presentation of the issue isolates the asylum seeker as if they were actually outside the border-enforcing mechanisms they must traverse� To examine the situation in this way is to run the risk of reinforcing the asylum seeker’s passivity and lack of knowledge� In other words, highlighting the alienating effect of border bureaucracy leaves no room to investigate its role in shaping migrant subjectivity in instances like those of Gedeon’s language learning� And yet, Gedeon’s observation that he never imagined he would be able to read German reflects an awareness about the way that the requirements of asylum bureaucracy shape his sense of self� In this essay, I call for the need to reframe the issue of refugee integration or marginalization in Europe away from one defined either by a particular state’s strictures for accommodating migrants or alienation from the forced migrants’ sense of identity, to one that takes into account migrants’ implication within a multiand intranational legal regime� This reveals regulations themselves - those of Europe as much as any member state - as the “culture” to which migrants are assimilated, rather than any national one� Such a shift in focus is important for three reasons� First, it reflects the scaled and nested legal reality in which forced migrants live� They must negotiate how a system of states, the EU, defines their existence in Europe as well as the national and regional laws related to asylum seekers within each of the EU member states� Such a focus on migrants’ relationship to the European legal framework - even as they may seek asylum in Brandenburg or Bavaria - exhibits the kind of “scalar attentiveness” to the intersection of “national, […]-supranational, and […] transnational” elements required to understand the “complexity” of migration in Europe today (Gökturk and Gramling 218)� Second, following this aspect of migrants’ experience recognizes the knowledge that they develop as they navigate EU regulations� While many migrants exist in a state of extreme precarity characterized by their “suspension” from networks that offer protection from “incessant economic and social insecurity” (Baker 507), viewing them as subjects who gain 348 Marike Janzen knowledge about how to navigate border mechanisms, and thus as possessing expertise about border managament protocols, pushes against a construction of forced migrants only as victims� Far from remaining bewildered strangers, many migrants develop an experiential understanding of asylum regimes that citizens of European states may not begin to match� Third, to focus on migrants’ position vis-à-vis an EU legal framework rather than their belonging or non-belonging within a state, may be a way to foster awareness of connections between a state’s citizens and non-citizens that exist by virtue of living within the same regulatory apparatus� Such connections are not visible from a humanist perspective that establishes commonalities between people based on their inherent qualities as humans or their cultural practices more traditionally conceived, rather than their respective relationships to the same politico-legal framework� To argue for the importance of viewing Europe’s mechanisms of exclusion as elements that shape the European subject, rather than as policies that simply demarcate the European from the non-European, I draw on Étienne Balibar’s insight into the constitutive role of Europe’s “border zone�” According to Balibar, this zone is not merely to be found at Europe’s external borders, but exists any place where belonging in the EU is regulated, and it is central, not marginal, to conceptions of who may claim to be a European subject� I bring Balibar’s view to bear on two recent documentary works about refugees in Germany, the above-mentioned film by Kahlmeyer, Die Unsichtbaren, and Lola Arias’s 2018 play “What They Want to Hear” about a Syrian man’s attempt to gain asylum in Bavaria� These works, which appeared during a span of time in which Germany had the highest number of people applying for asylum than any other country in the EU, showcase migrants’ subject formation within EU asylum regulations (“Migration to Europe”)� Reviews of both pieces have noted how they depict the dehumanizing nature of asylum bureaucracy - a major effect of which is to keep people out of a nation where they would like to stay� 4 I argue, however, that the film and the play’s documentation of the spaces, processes, and agents that forced migrants must negotiate - most significantly, their confrontation with the bureaucrats who make asylum decisions at their office desks - reveals the way that the border forms subjects� In a 1999 essay titled “At the Borders of Europe,” Balibar asserts that belonging in Europe must be conceptualized in terms of the border zones shot through it� Characterizations of Europe as either a haven for all to enjoy democratically established human rights (a demos), or as a “fortress” that bars entrance to those deemed non-European (an ethnos), are insufficient, as it is the tension between these two impulses that define it� Indeed, Balibar’s understanding of Europe as a space shaped by both “modes of inclusion and exclusion” reflects the way Gede- Mechanisms of Exclusion and Invisible Incorporation into the EU 349 on and his peers who seek refuge in Europe and confront its mechanisms of gatekeeping, experience Europe and thus can be seen as European subjects (3)� I do not intend to equate the conditions for asylum seekers in distinct German regions, nor do I claim that the contexts of the works I focus on are representative of Europe� Instead, my study serves as a case study that aims to show how narratives about asylum seekers can be read as narratives about negotiating a European identity� In his essay, Balibar identifies this tension of defining what constitutes the “inside” and “outside” of Europe as one that has shaped the territory since the seventeenth century, when “Europe” came to replace “Christendom” as the “designation of the whole of the relations of force and trade among nations or sovereign states, whose balance of power was materialized in the negotiated establishment of borders” (7)� According to Balibar, the way that Europe reacted to the Balkan Wars, the events that serve as the point of departure for his reflections, are only a more recent expression of the contradictions that comprise Europe� On the one hand, European intervention in the conflict was motivated by the need to “block a crime against humanity” in a space exterior to Europe, and that Europe continued to define as “Other” even after the conflict� On the other hand, this intervention was justified by the idea that “Europe could not accept genocidal population deportation on its own soil” (4)� In other words, for Balibar, war and its aftermath in the former Yugoslavia exemplifies how Europe is a negotiation between what constitutes belonging or not-belonging within it� Though written some twenty years ago, Balibar’s insight that Europe exists at the sites where distinctions between Europe and its “Others” are negotiated remains relevant for making sense of debates that have intensified since the so-called “refugee crisis” of 2015 about who may and who may not belong in Europe� 5 Thus, Europe defines itself in part as a union of states committed to upholding the 1951 Geneva Convention on the protection of refugees, a space prepared to welcome those rejected elsewhere� At the same time, Europe is a union of nation states, each of which plays a part in deciding who may legitimately seek refuge there, and who must remain external to it� There is obviously a great tension at work in Europe’s assertion of its identity as a haven for refugees, and its enforcement of movement through its borders� The refugee reception centers, the desks at which asylum seekers encounter the “Entscheider” who judge their relative belonging within Europe, and the negotiation and appeal of deportation orders, are the very spaces and acts requiring attention in order to understand what Europe is and who its subjects are� These are the contexts where, according to Balibar, we see most clearly the interrelationship of “politico-economic power” and “collective imagination” (4), as well as the stakes of this relationship� For this reason, border zones, not only 350 Marike Janzen geographical boundaries but also the administrative spaces where “exclusion” and “inclusion” are negotiated, are crucial to understanding what the common project of Europe can be: “border areas […] are not marginal to the constitution of a public sphere but rather are at the center” (2)� Balibar’s characterization of Europe is not a mandate to accept the violence of exclusion� Instead, his call to conceptualize a “European people” as a collectivity that works to “[resolve] […] the contradictions that run through it” functions to critique standards of European-ness based on cultural uniformity or primordial origins that exacerbate xenophobia (2)� The film Die Unsichtbaren and the play “What They Want to Hear” represent European border zones located at an immigrant reception center in Eisenhüttenstadt, in the state of Brandenburg, and in various migration offices in and near Munich, in Bavaria� These are but a few of the many places throughout Europe where, in Balibar’s words, “the movement of information, people, and things is happening and is controlled,” places, he argues, we must focus on in order to understand what constitutes Europe (1)� The documentary works are among multiple cultural artifacts produced in recent years, both in Germany and other EU states, that represent how forced migrants negotiate Europe’s border zones� 6 Such depictions of refugees’ relationship to Europe’s policing of its borders offer rich material for studying the nature of migrant subjectivity as European subjectivity� If, as Balibar suggests, the border zone constitutes Europe, then these works provide insight into the way the migrants who pass through it become European in the sense that they become subjects of the “technocratic” apparatus that governs belonging within Europe as a legal space (2)� In what follows, I examine how Die Unsichtbaren and “What They Want to Hear” depict subjects and communities that form at the edge of inclusion or exclusion in the EU� Each piece highlights the official subject positions that, as Woolley and Jeffers argue, border zones produce� These include the migrant who has declared herself an “asylum seeker” and can thus be introduced into the transand intrastate asylum-granting process, as well as the official who interviews the asylum seeker and determines the validity of her request for protection, known in Germany as “Entscheiderinnen und Entscheider” (“Entscheiderinnen”)� Specifically, I focus on the way that these works reveal asylum seekers to be agents who gain expertise in the conditions and expectations present within - and because of - the contingent condition of the EU’s border zone� While they may express feeling helpless within the asylum-seeking system, they are not portrayed as its hapless or passive victims� In this way, they can be understood as subjects shaped via Europe, not as individuals who are extraneous to the region and thus excisable from it� Mechanisms of Exclusion and Invisible Incorporation into the EU 351 As I mentioned above, Kahlmeyer’s Die Unsichtbaren provides insight into the experiences of asylum seekers temporarily housed in the “Erstaufnahmezentrum” in Eisenhüttenstadt, a town located on Germany’s border with Poland� The film opens by revealing the subjectivities that this particular border zone creates� On one side there are the four migrant men who are made legible to the EU asylum bureaucracy as they seek inclusion into the EU as refugees� We see their initial declarations of “Asyl” at the center’s front gate, and follow how their existence is documented through biometric data and the questionnaires the men complete with the help of translators� On the other side are the bureaucrats who process these asylum seekers’ claims� We hear two of them talk about their work checking with EU-wide databases to determine whether the migrants have been apprehended in other EU states before coming to Germany, or the preparation required for them to conduct an asylum interview� Crucially, the film foregrounds the way that the migrants, who bear the identity of asylum seekers in the refugee center of Eisenhüttenstadt, are also agents who seek out and share their knowledge about how to navigate the expectations of this border zone� The interview desk, where the asylum seeker sits across from the “Entscheider” is the most explicit manifestation of the zone as a space of potential inclusion or exclusion, and the protagonists of Kahlmeyer’s film desperately want to know how to perform in that space� The migrants’ preparation for this performance is not isolated to learning abstract legal codes� Rather, the expertise they gather is seen as embedded within interlocking circles of the common language and experiences that migrants share from their home communities, the history, geography, and language that shapes the physical condition of their places of refuge, and EU and German asylum law, including regional-level practices governing care of migrants� The interrelationship between the multiple legal parameters shaping the lives of people who request asylum in Germany bears spelling out here� On one level is the Common European Asylum System (C�E�A�S�), which establishes standards for granting asylum across EU member states based on the 1951 Geneva Convention on the protection of refugees� These standards include the Dublin Regulation, which mandates that claims of asylum be made in the country in which a migrant first entered Europe� The C�E�A�S also coordinates the European Asylum Dactyloscopy Database, or EURODAC, that contains all fingerprints of any person claiming asylum in any EU country (“Identification of Applicants”)� The German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, the BAMF, establishes nationwide asylum processing guidelines, including those that stipulate how to follow the Dublin Regulation, and coordinates the distribution of asylum claimants across the various German Bundesländer, or states (“Ablauf des Asylverfahrens”)� The states, in turn, take charge of “[accommodating] asylum-seekers,” a responsibility that 352 Marike Janzen includes running “refugee reception centers” such as the one in Eisenhüttenstadt (Laubenthal 11)� Each state decides how to administer these centers, but they all follow federal parameters for deciding the kind of status an asylum seeker may be granted� Coordination between these various spheres of law and policy that govern asylee processing is not seamless� Even though EU law takes precedence over nation-state law (EUR-Lex), which, in turn, takes precedence over regional law, enforcing this hierarchy can be a lengthy process, and states and regions do defy EU guidelines for implementing asylum regulations with minimal risk of sanction� 7 The European subject of the border zone is thus the expression of an unstable, multitiered and multinational asylum regime as enforced in the subject’s home community� In Die Unsichtbaren, Kahlmeyer shows how migrants’ position in the EU is shaped through these interlocking legal arenas� He does so via three sets of relationships between asylum seekers that develop within the context of the Eisenhüttenstadt reception center as the men wait and prepare for their asylum interviews� These include the friendship of the Kenyans Peter and Matthew, the interaction of Gedeon with fellow asylum seekers from Africa, and Wasim’s connection with fellow Syrians� Peter and Matthew, both from Kenya, form a relationship as mentor and mentee� Peter, who is middle-aged, hopes to be able to join his wife and children who are living in Sweden� He takes the younger Matthew, who wants asylum in Germany, under his wing� The location of the reception center both on the eastern edge of Germany and at the center of the EU asylum regime shapes their friendship� There is little for migrants to do as they wait for their asylum claims to be processed, and the former run-down barracks on the outskirts of town offer few options to pass the time� To ease their boredom, Peter and Matthew buy a used television set that will allow them to play video games� This requires the men to navigate the logistics of making phone calls in German and finding their way, on foot, into town to purchase it� In this act of purchasing the TV to survive the liminal space of the border zone, the Kenyan men have had to exercise their knowledge of a specific German linguistic and geographic context� A central bonding moment for Peter and Matthew occurs when Peter helps Matthew prepare for his asylum interview� In this scene, the two are talking in what appears to be Peter’s room about Matthew’s upcoming appointment with the “Entscheider�” Matthew is nervously fiddling with his phone, waiting for a call from someone he hopes can give him advice� Commenting on yet another asylum seeker’s interview, Matthew says “it was over pretty quickly� You know these people, they confuse you� […] It scares me�” Peter, perhaps a generation older than Matthew, seeks to calm him with his expertise about the procedure: “Just talk like we’re doing now, except that other people will be asking ques- Mechanisms of Exclusion and Invisible Incorporation into the EU 353 tions� […]- They’ll want exact details: dates, month, which year, which flight� Those kinds of things, that’s what you’ll tell them� […] That’s all� […] I know you’ll make it, just tell them the main basic points�” The barren room in the old barracks where soldiers were trained to protect the borders of Cold War East Germany are now the space where Kenyans teach each other how to gain entrance into a Europe that had, in the language of the statue commemorating the 1985 Schengen agreement - located in Schengen, Luxembourg - “[suppressed its] internal borders” (Traynor)� A second group of friends comprises Gedeon and fellow francophone Africans� In a poignant scene, they undertake an excursion to a nearby lake� Here we see how the men’s connection through their common history of fleeing their homes and their residence in the refugee reception center informs their understanding of the region where they seek to pass time until their interviews that will determine whether or not they can stay in Germany, or even in Europe� Though there is a bus to the lake, the men are not sure which direction they should go, nor do they know when the bus will come� They decide to walk� Once there, they take in the view� They note that the shore opposite to them must be Poland: “If our dream of living in Germany doesn’t come true,” one man says, “we’ll swim to the other side�” Even though, in a legal sense, their situations would not change in Poland since they would still be in the EU and subject to similar asylum law as in Germany, the men apply their experience of crossing a body of water in order to cross a border to their situation in Germany� Talk of border and sea crossings turns Gedeon despondent as he remembers his own flight across water from Morocco to Spain� He recalls the deaths of fellow migrants, and wonders if his decision to leave home wasn’t a stupid one� “We didn’t have a choice,” his friends tell him, in an effort to stop him from second-guessing his decision to flee Cameroon� As is the case with Peter and Matthew who draw on new skills in order to buy a TV, Gedeon’s outing with his friends to a new place shows how asylum seekers are pushed to acquire knowledge to manage their lives in the border zone� At the same time, the scene depicts how these men, who exist in a state suspended between inclusion and exclusion as they await asylum determinations, interpret their new surroundings through their experience of Europe as constituting border zones that constantly threaten expulsion� They implicitly make sense of the relationship between two neighboring states in Europe, Germany and Poland, in terms of their fear of rejection by Germany and their hope that crossing to Poland might result in the kind of refuge they sought when they crossed the Strait of Gibraltar� The third set of relationships we see in Die Unsichtbaren is Wasim’s interaction with fellow Syrians and Arabic speakers� In a scene that mirrors Peter 354 Marike Janzen and Matthew’s conversation about how to prepare for the asylum interview, we see Wasim talking with another Arabic-speaking asylum seeker in one of the men’s private rooms� Wasim is dressed well� He is wearing a white shirt with cuff links, he has a notebook open in front of him, and he is holding a nice pen: he possesses the affect of a candidate preparing for a job interview� Wasim is worried, because he first entered Europe in Italy� He recites the Dublin II mandate to his interlocutor: “Every person that enters a European country and has his fingerprints taken there has to apply for asylum in that country�” His companion responds with special insight into the situation for Syrians: “Here in Germany there are exceptions for Syrians� In the past month special laws were introduced for Syrians, and even if something happens, we still have lawyers�” Wasim is grateful for the information� He did not know he could access legal help if necessary� The film’s narrative arc culminates in Matthew’s asylum interview: the precise moment in which his ability to remain in Germany, and in Europe, is being assessed� We learn that Matthew entered Germany with a temporary work permit, but for some reason, this was revoked and he remained living and working in Germany illegally� He is not granted asylum because of this infraction, and, as the viewer learns, neither are most of the men depicted in the film� Yet, according to Balibar’s understanding of Europe as a space where belonging is negotiated, rather than a place for those who have measured up to a specific standard, this rejection of asylum does not stand as the sole definition of Matthew’s relationship to Europe� Following this view, we can see the protagonists of the film as representatives of what, in Balibar’s view, defines Europe� Though they may be “invisible” to Europeans whose mobility is not limited by asylum regulations - a status suggested by the film’s title Die Unsichtbaren - they are not external to Europe� Instead, they have acquired first-hand knowledge about the tension between inclusion and exclusion that characterizes the border zone as they navigate their presence within it, an experience that, to be clear, in no way mitigates the precarity of their lives in that space� In 2018, the Münchner Kammerspiele premiered the play “What They Want to Hear,” about the experiences of a Syrian man, Raaeed Al-Kours, with the asylum process in Germany� The Argentinian director Lola Arias, known for her work creating documentary theater, developed the piece in conjunction with Raaed, who plays himself in the work, and the Open Border Ensemble, a group of artists in exile collaborating with the Kammerspiele (“Open Border Ensemble”)� 8 The piece tells Raaed’s story by drawing on his own description of and documents from his bureaucratic journey� Raaed, a trained archaeologist, fled Syria in 2014� He entered the EU in Bulgaria, via Turkey, where he was granted subsidiary Mechanisms of Exclusion and Invisible Incorporation into the EU 355 refugee status (Ricklefs)� The conditions for refugees in Bulgaria were inhumane, so Raaed continued his flight to Germany, where he has been working on his asylum request for four years, or, as he put it on the day that I saw the piece in mid-July 2018, 1,620 days� Raaed, who fled violence in his home, meets the definition of a refugee as laid out in the UN’s 1951 convention: “A refugee should not be returned to a country where they face serious threats to their life or freedom” (“The 1951 Refugee Convention”)� And yet he exists in limbo, waiting to find out whether he will receive asylum in Germany or be deported to Bulgaria, where he first entered the EU� The play’s title, “What They Want to Hear,” refers to the exigencies specific to asylum narratives, which, as Woolley and Jeffers emphasize, require the migrant to tell the “right” or convincing story that can persuade the “Entscheider” to judge in favor of granting asylum - not the story that might reflect an asylum-seeker’s more authentic self� The play’s three scenes focus on different interviews that Raaed must undergo, two with representatives of the BAMF, one with an immigration lawyer, and one with the Ausländerbehörde that regulates his stay in the region of Bavaria which issued his temporary residency permit� The purpose of the interviews is to situate Raaed in connection with various legal spheres governing asylum seekers in Germany: EU law, specifically, his status vis-à-vis the Dublin Regulation (Arias 12); German law governing the level of protection he may be granted in the country (38); and Bavarian law relevant to his residency status in the state (50—52)� Raaed’s various interviews that often leave him confused and frustrated are interlaced with scenes that represent experiences that he feels are significant to his biography, but that have no relevance in asylum-related interviews� These include the efforts of Raaed’s family to document the torture of a relative by the Syrian army, Raaed’s own work helping refugees who were arriving at the Munich train station in 2015, and his desire to continue the archaeology studies he began in Syria at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich� The representation of a disconnect between the version of Raaed’s biography that EU and German migration policy create and his personal experiences lend credence to reading the work as a Kafkaesque tale of an individual’s unjust entrapment in bureaucracy - an interpretation that follows Woolley’s and Jeffers’s analyses of asylum narratives� Furthermore, it is possible to view the casting and staging of “What They Want to Hear” as depicting a bureaucratic system that is consistently unresponsive to individual concerns: Arias has the same actor play different representatives of an asylum legal system at the same office desk� Yet I posit that the piece, which documents Raaed’s negotiation of and learning about the EU border zone, depicted by the repeating desk and official, also serves as a testament to Raaed’s encounter with and formation by Europe’s core, not 356 Marike Janzen his existence on its margins� The narrative trajectory of Raaed’s consecutive encounters with people representing various elements of the asylum legal system highlights the process as one of gaining knowledge in, and being formed by, the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion� In the first two desk scenes, BAMF agents, with the assistance of an interpreter, interview Raaed about his personal data, the specifics of his flight, and whether the reason he fled Syria warrants granting him protective status� These scenes, drawn in large part from transcripts of Raaed’s interview with the BAMF, showcase the specific language and format of the highly consequential intake and asylum interview, as well as the transcripts made from them for official use� 9 The interview begins as the BAMF agent asks a question in German� The interpreter poses the question to Raaed in Arabic� Raaed responds in Arabic, and his interpreter translates his response into German for the BAMF agents� The official restates the translated response, and then dictates the answer into a recording device� By recreating the regimented and multilingual interview, Arias emphasizes its nature as a singular genre� This is a genre with which Raaed is not familiar, but which he must learn in order to succeed� For example, when the “Entscheider” asks whether there are any other countries that are part of the Dublin Regulation that might be responsible for regulating his asylum, but where he does not want to go, Raaed does not understand� The interpreter works to clarify the confusion� He asks, “Did you give your fingerprints in any other state of the Dublin States? ” (10)� Raaed responds, “I don’t know what Dublin is, what does it mean? ” (10)� At the end of his first interview, Raaed realizes that the process is not a singular one, but is simultaneously repeated for individuals and across various sites in the EU� Raaed remembers that he had undergone a similar procedure in Bulgaria: “I had a deja vu� I have been through this before� In Bulgaria the interview was very short” (12)� In anticipation of his second interview with the BAMF to determine asylum status, Raaed recalls realizing that “[he] had to tell the whole story again” (20)� While there are opportunities available for asylum seekers to prepare for the interview process, Raaed did not know about them� In a scene that reinforces the interview as a specific mode of communication, a German volunteer explains to asylum seekers how to rehearse the kinds of questions they will face, as well as helping them rehearse how to answer them: “There is a different way of telling stories, for example the Arabic way, you are always going here and there, back and forth� And then in Germany […] you have to tell everything after each other, in order” (15)� Watching the exchange from another part of the stage, Raaed comments, “I wish someone like her would have helped me” (16)� Raaed’s observation of the volunteer who calls attention to the different storytelling conventions that interviewers and interviewees bring to Mechanisms of Exclusion and Invisible Incorporation into the EU 357 the asylum interview highlights how the expertise necessary to maneuver in the border zone is not relegated to navigating a foreign bureaucracy or language, but also requires managing unspoken, culturally specific, expectations� Fifteen months after his second interview, Raaed learns that his request for asylum has been denied� He will be sent to Bulgaria, where he first entered Europe� His recourse is to take advantage of the expertise of his peers, fellow asylum seekers, and consult with them about how to handle his situation� While the first scene emphasizes Raaed’s experience learning about the border zone interview on his own, in isolation, the second scene demonstrates how Raaed accesses a corpus of experiences about deportation from asylum seekers who describe what it is like - “they come in your apartment and tell you to pack your stuff” (39) - and offer various suggestions on how to prevent it� Hassan tells him to find a lawyer (41), Kamel suggests he not do anything and wait out the bureaucracy, Kinan advises him to “find a German woman and have a child” (42), and Jamal thinks he should seek “Kirchenasyl,” asylum in a church community (43)� Raaed decides to follow the advice to seek help from an immigration lawyer� The play’s second desk scene depicts his meeting with her� Here there is no translator: the lawyer and Raaed speak to each other in English� While Raeed is able to speak about the harm he experienced in Syria and Bulgaria during his intake and asylum interviews, those conversations follow a strict format and hone in on the specifics of Raaed’s religious and legal affiliations and identities� By contrast, his interview with the asylum lawyer concerns the specific ways in which he was mistreated in Bulgaria, information that the lawyer will use to make the case that Raaed cannot be deported there� The lawyer explains that she will use this information to “make [the] appeal and send it to the administrative court� […] If the appeal gets accepted there are two options� The BAMF will either just reopen it or wait for the decision in the European court� So we have to wait” (45)� It is in his conversation with the asylum lawyer, and not the asylum interview with the BAMF representative, that Raaed is encouraged to speak about the shortcomings of claiming asylum in the EU� As Raaed waits for his appeal for deportation to be processed, he moves from Munich to the small town of Wiesheim, presumably as a result of Bavaria’s regulations for dealing with asylum seekers in the state which mandates that they be distributed to various municipalities (“Asylverfahren”)� Yet once he has been admitted to the university in Munich he would like to live there, instead� The third desk scene, set in the town’s Ausländerbehörde, depicts Raaed’s request to change his residence registration from Wiesheim to Munich� The agency employee tells him “when you move to Munich you lose your support here� You are registered as a refugee here, you have to stay here …-as long as your procedure is going on you have to stay in Wiesheim” (Arias 50)� When Raaed asks, in frustra- 358 Marike Janzen tion, “Why? ,” the agent responds, “Well, you … I don’t know” (50)� Here, Raaed learns the conditions of his residence in Bavaria, and we see that the employee of the Ausländerbehörde is pushed to confront her lack of knowledge about the rationale for the asylum laws� It is possible to view “What They Want to Hear” as a play that shows Raaed butting up against but unable to cross multiple borders in Europe, a process represented in the piece by the multiple bureaucrats at their desks who deny his asylum application or his desire to change residence� Yet I submit that the way Arias tells Raaed’s story also allows us to make sense of the desks as zones of negotiation between inclusion and exclusion from Europe that form the subjects who inhabit it� In no way do I mean to suggest that the knowledge that comes from this space compensates for Raaed’s existential limbo, characterized by the bureaucratic misrecognition of his trauma in Syria and Bulgaria and his inability to follow his profession� His existence within those spaces where the EU determines its “inside” and outside,” however, obliges us not to see him solely as an outsider to Europe� Instead, this position reveals Raaed as someone who has gained firsthand knowledge, and thus a kind of expertise, about the very regulations that mandate who is allowed to be included as one of Europe’s legitimate residents, policies that many of Germany’s citizens, EU residents, may not know about� Die Unsichtbaren and “What They Want to Hear” are set within Germany’s national borders� At the same time, they are set in the outposts of a European-wide legal regime - expressed through Germany’s enforcement of the Dublin Regulation as well as compliance with C�E�A�S� policies - seeking to manage the arrival of Europe’s “Others” in the EU� Both works highlight the experiences of refugees who, by virtue of this experience, become experts in the space where this acceptance is negotiated� And both pieces confront the audience with subjects formed by the border zone who either cannot be, or are waiting to be, integrated into the European space� These are the bodies that take on themselves the contradictions that, according to Balibar, define the European project: prioritizing refuge and yet keeping out “the Other�” For this reason, these works cannot be characterized as documents of a uniquely German condition, or as tales of bureaucratic alienation, but must be seen as narratives about a contradictory emergent European subject� In a chapter titled “The Promise of Documentary,” theater scholar Janelle Reinelt claims that “the value of the document is predicated on a realist epistemology, but the experience of documentary is dependent on phenomenological engagement” (7)� That is, documentary works are valuable for demonstrating “what is really happening,” but they cannot be thought of as distinct from the Mechanisms of Exclusion and Invisible Incorporation into the EU 359 experience of those who engage with these stories� This element of the documentary work underscores the significance of Raaed’s decision to “[perform] for you while I’m waiting” (Arias 53)� Here, Raaed shows to an audience in Germany the knowledge of the border zones that primarily belongs to those assumed to be on the “outside” of Europe� Bringing his experiences and documents of asylum-seeking into the public sphere can spur the kind of collective reflection necessary to understand that the purported “Others” waiting for judgment on their presence within Europe may be more “European” than many who can take this presence for granted� Making sense of what constitutes Europe in an era in which its boundaries are being fiercely policed requires much more curiosity and attention to the experiences of those who face the concrete implementation of border policy head-on� This study has examined what “becoming European” looks like for refugees in certain parts of Germany� More study is needed to understand what characterizes this experience across the EU� Notes 1 The current Dublin Regulation, known as Dublin III, replaces the first Dublin Convention (signed in 1990), and the Dublin II Regulation (signed in 2003)� See “Country Responsible for asylum application (Dublin)” and “The Dublin regulation - explained�” 2 The asylum seekers featured in Die Unsichtbaren speak English, French, German, and Arabic, among other languages� Citations are taken from the film’s English subtitles� 3 After passage of the “Zuwanderungsgesetz” (“immigration law”) in 2005, the German government mandated a “Nationaler Integrationsplan” (“national integration plan”) in 2006� See “Zuwanderungsgesetz” and Sharifi 373� 4 One review of Die Unsichtbaren explains that the film “reveals the bureaucratic mechanisms that stand in contrast to the hopes of people around the world trying to make a better life” (see “The Invisibles/ Die Unsichtbaren”)� A review in the New York Times of “What They Want to Hear” claims that Mr� Al Kour’s saga plays out like a contemporary version of a tale by Kafka (see Goldmann)� A German review of the play is titled “In den Mühlen der Bürokratie” (“In the Wheels of Bureaucracy”) (see Ricklefs)� 5 In 1999, Balibar saw European’s responses to the war in the former Yugoslavia as growing out of the desire to contain that which was considered properly European (a commitment to human rights, not genocide) within a European territory� Balibar’s argument then was that Europe is not only negotiated at its external limits, but inside of it� In his 2016 essay “Europe 360 Marike Janzen at the Limits,” Balibar looks to more recent crises in places considered to represent Europe’s “Other” - Ukraine, Damascus, and Lampedusa - and notes how the conflicts in those settings can also be read, in part, as a negotiation about European identity� While Balibar does not explicitly link these negotiations to an inner-European context as he does in “At the Borders of Europe,” neither does his most recent argument contradict the position that there are borders within Europe where the definition of European identity is at stake� For Balibar, “Europe” exists in those places where the definition of “Europe” and Europe’s “Other” is contested� 6 See, for example, Jenny Erpenbeck’s Gehen, ging, gegangen (2015) or Abbas Khider’s Ohrfeige (2016) about asylum seekers in Germany� 7 Hungary offers a key example of a nation-state that has defied EU guidelines through actions that include “[keeping] asylum seekers in transit zones for excessively long periods and [failing] to provide access to proper asylum procedures” (Bayer)� The European Parliament has voted to censure Hungary, possibly by taking away their vote in the Parliament (“EU Parliament”)� However, such a sanction requires a unanimous vote of parliament members, and it is likely that some member states, such as Poland, would not vote for censure (Bershidsky)� 8 Lola Arias is an Argentinean “writer, theatre and film director and performer” (“Lola Arias”)� Her documentary theater work, set both in Argentina and Germany and performed across the world, grows out of her collaboration with the subjects of her plays� In these works, as in “What They Want to Hear,” characters reflect on their own experiences� 9 The play’s languages are English, Arabic, and German� When actors are speaking in German, English surtitles are projected onto a screen� Citations from the play are taken from the surtitles unless otherwise noted� Works Cited “Ablauf des Asylverfahrens�” Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge, n�d� Web� 21 May 2019� Arias, Lola� “What They Want to Hear�” Münchner Kammerspiele, Munich� 22 June 2018� Performance� “Asylverfahren�” Bayerischer Flüchtlingsrat, n�d� Web� 21 May 2019� Baker, Gary L� “The Violence of Precarity and the Appeal of Routine in Jenny Erpenbeck’s Gehen, ging, gegangen�” Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 54�4 (2018): 504—21� Balibar, Étienne� “At the Borders of Europe�” We the People of Europe? Reflections on Transnational Citizenship� Princeton: Princeton UP, 2004� 1—10� Mechanisms of Exclusion and Invisible Incorporation into the EU 361 —� “Europe at the Limits�” Interventions 18�2 (2016): 165—71� Bayer, Lili� “Commission takes Hungary to court over treatment of asylum seekers�” politico.eu� POLITICO, 19 July 2019� Web� 20 July 2019� Bershidsky, Leonid� “How the EU Plans to Punish Hungary and Poland�” bloomberg. com� Bloomberg, 18 Jan� 2019� Web� 6 July 2019� “Country responsible for asylum application (Dublin)�” European Commission, n�d� Web� 21 May 2019� “Entscheiderinnen und Entscheider�” Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge, n�d� Web� 22 Sept� 2018� Erpenbeck, Jenny� Gehen, ging, gegangen� Munich: Knaus Verlag, 2015� “EU Parliament votes to punish Hungary over ‘breaches’ of core values�” bbc.com� BBC News, 12� Sept� 2018� Web� 6 July 2019� EUR-Lex� eur-lex.europa.eu� Publications Office of the European Union, n�d� Web� 6 July 2019� Goldmann, A�J� “In Conservative Munich, a Theater Turns Radical and Defends Refugees�” nytimes.com� The New York Times Company, 13 July 2018� Web� 16 Oct� 2018� Gökturk, Deniz, and David Gramling� “Germany in Transit, ten years on�” German Quarterly 90�2 (2017): 217—19� “Identification of Applicants�” European Commission, n�d� Web� 21 May 2019� “The Invisibles/ Die Unsichtbaren�” fmf-slovenija.si� Festival of Migrant Film, n�d� Web� 5 Feb� 2019� Jeffers, Alison� Refugees, Theatre and Crisis: Performing Global Identities� New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012� Khider, Abbas� Ohrfeige� Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 2016� Laubenthal, Barbara� “Refugees welcome? Federalism and asylum policies in Germany�” fieri.it. fieri Working papers, 3 Sept� 2015� Web� 21 May 2019� “Lola Arias� Biography�” lolaarias.com� Web� 7 July 2019� “Migration to Europe in Charts�” bbc.com� BBC News, 11 Sept� 2018� Web� 25 Feb� 2020� “Open Border Ensemble�” muenchner-kammerspiele.de� Münchner Kammerspiele, n�d� Web� 15 Feb� 2019� “Radio Globale�” oeins.de� Oldenburg Eins, n�d� Web� 21 May 2019� Reinelt, Janelle� “The Promise of Documentary�” Get Real: Documentary Theatre Past and Present� Ed� Alison Forsyth and Chris Megson� New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009� 6—23� Ricklefs, Sven� “In den Mühlen der Bürokratie�” deutschlandfunk.de� Deutschlandfunk, 24 June 2018� Web� 22 Sept� 2018� Sharifi, Azadeh� “Theatre and Migration Documentation� Influences and Perspectives in European Theatre�” Independent Theatre in Contemporary Europe� Ed� Manfred Brauneck� Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2017� “The Dublin regulation - explained�” infomigrants.net� INFOMIGRANTS, 6 Feb� 2017� Web� 21 May 2019� “The 1951 Refugee Convention�” UNHCR: The UN Refugee Agency, n�d� Web� 22 Sept� 2018� 362 Marike Janzen Traynor, Ian� “Is the Schengen dream of Europe without borders becoming a thing of the past? ” theguardian.com� The Guardian, 5 Jan� 2016� Web� 21 May 2019� Die Unsichtbaren� Dir� Benjamin Kahlmeyer� Penrose Film and SWR, 2014� Woolley, Agnes� “Narrating the Asylum Story”: Between Literary and Legal Storytelling�” Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 19�3 (2016): 376—94� “Zuwanderungsgesetz�” Auswärtiges Amt, n�d� Web� 15 Feb� 2019�