ABSTRACT
For people who have become refugees, hope was and is often the only thing that inspires them to take steps that might lead to something better. Even those who have been able to relocate to other European countries have been and continue to be forced to return or move elsewhere, without any consideration of the political and economic situation in their countries of origin. This is particularly true in the Federal Republic of Germany. The following statement made by a Bosnian refugee summarizes Germany’s unclear and restrictive policies so well that further elaboration is hardly necessary: “I haven’t been in Germany for seven years, but rather twentyeight times for three months each. That is something different”.2 This quotation seems to me to demonstrate three things. First, it shows
how refugees are handled at the administrative and political level in Germany.3 It also presents a different picture of refugee life than the one commonly presented in public here: the prejudice that refugees “are doing just fine”. Refugees experience this “perception through the other” in both their host and their home countries. They see themselves not as refugees but as exiles. I, too, prefer and will use the terms “forced migration” or “expulsion”. Refugees do not want to live as official minorities at home, because then they would not really be at home at all, insofar as being a minority would determine their status, rights and future opportunities.
