Paper short abstract:

From an anthropology of law perspective, the paper discusses increasing legal restrictions concerning refugee camps as a determent in German asylum bureaucracy and the ways refugees perceive and deal with those changings.

Paper long abstract:

In public discourse, immigrants often are supposed to adhere to the law. Besides the inherent suggestion immigrant would be less law-abiding than nationals this discourse supports a specific legal conception: Law as an absolute fact that is stable and timeless.

But actually, law gets modified constantly. With Naomi Mezey (2003) law may be understood as "one of the signifying practices that constitute culture and vice versa" (39). Law is always contextualized historically, spatially and culturally and therefore dynamic. Hence, law is not just the business of politicians and judges. It is highly interrelated with the cultural webs of significance (Geertz 1973) like everyday notions, discourses and ideologies.

Regarding German asylum law in context of mass accommodation and against the background of several qualitative interviews with refugees who were living in refugee camps, this paper discusses the legal negotiations of law. In the last years, asylum authorities have among other things decided to place asylum seeker and rejected asylum seeker in special mass accommodation facilities for at least six months for people with children and up to 18 or 24 months or even longer for people without children and depending on several other conditions.

Refugees are aware of those legal changes, but their influence is very much constraint by their legal status. Nevertheless, some refugees try to complain against the conditions at court, claim equal rights or at least fair treatment or challenge their situation by organizing resistance with people inside the camps or with supporters from outside.