Local Migration Regimes in Rural Areas: The Example of Refugee Reception in Saxony, Germany


Local Migration Regimes in Rural Areas: The Example of Refugee 
Reception in Saxony, Germany*

Hanne Schneider

Abstract: The reception of asylum seekers has challenged municipalities and their 
populations across Europe in recent years: Many rural villages and small and mid-
sized towns had little prior experience with large numbers of asylum seekers. The 
housing of refugees constitutes one of the most controversial arenas and challenges 
for local communities within the reception process. 

This paper sheds light on rural case studies using the perspective of migration 
regimes. Local Migration Regimes constitute arenas of migration-related processes 
including actors, practices, and negotiations at different scales. The analysis covers 
four rural municipalities (two villages, two towns) from two Saxonian counties in 
Germany. All cases have different strategies for accommodating migrants but all 
can be seen as post-socialist immigration societies. The fi ndings show that the 
issue of reception and housing is seen as a recurrent and contested local fi eld 
of confl ict and cooperation in the rural case sites. The regime lens highlights the 
strong dependencies but also fragmentation between different levels (national, 
regional, and supra-local). Housing practices and strategies for refugees refl ect 
local discourses and contribute to the social and spatial production of migration. 
I argue, that the regime lens contributes to an interdisciplinary understanding of 
local settings, acknowledges spatial and social structures but challenges empirical 
fi eld work and data sets. This empirical research is based on qualitative interviews, 
media articles, and documents from rural counties in Germany and was conducted 
within the joint research project “Future for Refugees in Rural Regions of Germany”.

Keywords: Local Migration Regime · Refugees · Rural regions · Local level · Saxony · 
Germany

Comparative Population Studies
Vol. 47 (2022): 413-442 (Date of release: 28.11.2022)

Federal Institute for Population Research 2022 URL: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de
      DOI: https://doi.org/10.12765/CPoS-2022-16
      URN: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2022-16en8
    

* This article belongs to a special issue on "Refugee Migration to Europe – Challenges and 
Potentials for Cities and Regions".



•    Hanne Schneider414

1 Introduction 

As the numbers of asylum seekers increased tremendously, refugee reception 
during the “long summer of migration” in 2015 (Hess et al. 2017) challenged 
municipalities throughout Germany. In particular, this applied to localities which 
were not experienced in the accommodation of asylum seekers, such as rural villages 
and small and mid-sized towns. Today, many of these localities receive refugees, 
whereas asylum had previously not been a prominent local issue. Moreover, most 
rural regions in Germany also have a lower level of diversity and fewer long-standing 
traditions surrounding arrival infrastructures (Aumüller/Gesemann 2016; Rösch et 
al. 2020). This is particularly true for rural municipalities in eastern Germany which 
are the geographical focus of this paper. Public discourses on how to manage the 
reception challenge of 2015/2016 referred to possible advantages of rural regions 
for refugee reception and integration: For example, housing vacancies or a higher 
level of social engagement than in urban agglomerations, which could offer easy 
entry points for inclusion of refugees. Discourses also highlighted potential benefi ts 
for rural localities accommodating refugees such as demographic rejuvenation 
or positive effects for the local labor market (e.g. Franke/Magel 2016). However, 
this optimistic description of a “win-win situation” neglected the complexity of 
immigrant inclusion in terms of local societal processes. In academic contributions, 
this supposed “rural idyll” is also refl ected in a more critical way (e.g., Arora-Jonsson 
2017).

The issue of accommodation and housing undoubtedly constitutes one of 
the most controversial issues in the local reception of refugees. First of all it, 
triggers very practical questions regarding residential facilities, local infrastructure 
and capacities, but also questions of local political governance and civil society 
involvement, and it fi nally lays bare societal negotiation processes of localities 
on spatial issues. Factors shaping local reception processes include the socio-
economic situation, societal structures, local actors, and multi-level decision-
making such as the impact of national policies (see also Glorius et al. 2019). These 
local characteristics have sparked the interest of migration scholars in recent years, 
aiming to go beyond national frameworks which formerly constituted the main 
scientifi c level of observation (Glick Schiller/Çağlar 2009). One promising concept 
for understanding but also disentangling the complexity of local settings is the 
Local Migration Regimes approach, which focuses on the analysis of structures and 
power formations in certain local contexts concerning migration issues (Schmiz/
Räuchle 2019). The Local Migration Regimes perspective opens the view on local 
processes without ignoring legal and political implications of spatial levels. 

This paper uses the regime perspective to implement a comparative analysis 
of local reception situations in four distinct rural localities in the state of Saxony. 
Focusing on the issue of reception and housing, and making use of a rich dataset 
consisting of documents, expert interviews and media articles, this paper explores 
the ways in which the reception of migrants is negotiated and constructed at the 
local level. Therefore, this paper provides insights into the spatial conditions and 
processes of spatial production in two districts, including four localities in the rural 



Local Migration Regimes in Rural Areas    • 415

areas of the federal state of Saxony in Germany. I argue that both the previous 
experience with migration and rural specifi cs such as socio demographics shape 
the local regime characteristics. 

This paper is structured as follows. Section 2 explores the theoretical perspective 
of Local Migration Regimes as a way of observing contexts of migration. Section 3 
introduces the data and methods. The contextual conditions for migrant reception 
for both districts are described in Section 4, and the empirical fi ndings presented 
in Section 5. The fi ndings are then further discussed through the lens of Local 
Migration Regimes in Section 6. 

 2 Theoretical perspectives: Local Turn and Local Migration Regimes

As a result of the emerging role in refugee reception and the ongoing push to move 
beyond the state as the central unit of analysis (“methodological nationalism”), 
migration scholars have recently turned to the Local as relevant level for political 
negotiation processes on immigration and immigrant inclusion, and thus for 
research on those processes (“local turn”) (Glick Schiller/Çağlar 2009; Zapata-
Barrero et al. 2017). This emerging research perspective has become even more 
prevalent as European cities have introduced their strategies and have become 
more involved in national reception policies addressing challenges to integration 
and diversity. Meanwhile there is a growing body of literature covering local 
migration policies and the role of localities within integration processes (e.g., 
Martinello 2013; Garcés-Mascareñas/Penninx 2016; Schammann et al. 2021; 
Zapata-Barrero et al. 2017). Whereas previous comparative research paid particular 
attention to policies and local government and governance (Borkert/Caponio 2010; 
Martinello 2013; Scholten 2013), fi ndings from recent comparative case studies 
increasingly highlight the importance of local contexts beyond the policy level 
such as local discourses, regional socio-economic situations, the local population, 
and other geographical implications (Doomernik/Glorius 2016; Glorius et al. 2019; 
Meer et al. 2021; Schammann et al. 2021; Walker 2014). As local specifi cs receive 
more attention, there is also growing interest in rural municipalities as case study 
sites (Cabral/Swerts 2021; Haselbacher/Segarra 2022; Woods 2018), as well as on 
urban agglomeration without a long-standing immigration history. In Germany, this 
notably applies to East German cities with a post-socialist history (Dunkl et al. 2019; 
El Kayed et al. 2020; Wiest 2020). Considering those developments described above, 
the concept of migration regimes has found its way into the locality debate (“Local 
Migration Regimes”): It aims to capture the complexity of overlapping societal and 
political settings for migration while also acknowledging spatialities (see Rass/
Wolff 2018). In contrast to policy-oriented frameworks or development studies, 
the regime perspective introduces a more interdisciplinary view on migration and, 
different from governance analysis, approaches “the local” from different angles 
(e.g., actors, discourses, spatial conditions). 

Most prominently, the term “regime“ was introduced in political science in the 
late 1970s to describe regulative structures in normative systems of international 



•    Hanne Schneider416

relations (Keohane 1984; Krasner 1983). The underlying assumption is that states 
do not only act in a rational or egoistical manner, but also focus on cooperative 
mechanisms. The core idea of this defi nition remains central to different notions 
of regimes today: Regimes are “defi ned as principles, norms, rules, and decision-
making procedures around which actor expectations converge in a given issue-
area” (Krasner 1983: 1). Regimes affect ways of interacting (“regimes do matter”, 
Krasner 1983: 6) and are prolonged modes of interaction, although they can be 
shorter-term. In contrast to ad hoc agreements, regimes set the standards across 
such agreements and do not change in a short time frame. The term “regime” is 
widely used in migration studies and its meaning differs, e.g., “European Migration 
Regime”, “Asylum Regime”, “Border Regime” or “Mobility Regime”. Most of 
these meanings share a focus on power formation between (non-)state actors, 
inclusionary/exclusionary practices, and challenge state-centric approaches or 
normative governance frameworks. 

In recent years, migration scholars have suggested a broadened heuristic 
perspective on “Migration Regimes“ and “Local Migration Regimes“ (e.g., Bernt 
2019; Hinger/Schäfer 2019; Pott 2018; Oltmer 2018; Rass/Wolff 2018; Schmiz/
Räuchele 2019). While most of these contributions focus on conceptual thoughts 
there are few empirical contributions using the term Local Migration Regime (Hinger/
Schäfer 2019; Cabral/Swerts 2021). The lens of Local Migration Regime emphasizes 
spatial structures and conditions for political and societal processes of negotiation 
on migration processes within a certain local context. Therefore, the idea of 
migration regimes considers the complexity of migration processes, challenges the 
state-centric research focus, and addresses the “scalar shift in migration studies” 
(Schmiz/Räuchle 2019: 3). Contributions on Local Migration Regimes highlight 
the interaction of state and non-state actors, local migration history, positioning 
processes, discourses, and migrant representation (Schmiz/Räuchle 2019): For 
example, how do certain actor constellations deal with migration-related issues; 
what role is taken by civil society and migrants? How can different practices and 
discourses about migration be linked to historical developments? And are spatial and 
bordering practices shaped by local or other levels? Overall, the approach of Local 
Migration Regimes adopts a social constructivist perspective, focusing on certain 
entities as spatial-temporal and social ordering structures and the corresponding 
production of migration: The main foci of most of the contributions, based on the 
basic idea of the regime theory, are the power formation and principles of collective 
processes (“confl ict and cooperation”, Oltmer 2018: 4). These collective processes 
constitute “zones of negotiation” (Pott/Tsianons 2014) or “arenas” (Oltmer 2018) in 
which migration is negotiated. 

Despite the increased number of conceptual publications on migration regimes 
in recent years, there is still no universal defi nition or framework as the concept 
is undertheorized (Bernt 2019: 10-12). This is certainly due to missing empirical 
embeddedness of the concept. The lack of empirical application might be caused 
by the fuzziness and variation of meanings of regime analysis. Therefore, Rass 
and Wolff propose a multi-layered and methods-based approach, arguing for 
“more empirically saturated current […] regime research” (Rass/Wolff 2018: 



Local Migration Regimes in Rural Areas    • 417

44). They propose approaching migration regimes “not as a detectable entity or 
institution ‘out there’, but rather as a model to describe and understand a complex 
and decentralized power formation” (Rass/Wolff 2018: 44). In this sense, I use the 
perspective of regimes as a methodological viewpoint for reconstructing local 
settings with empirical evidence (see also Section 3). For this, I refer, based on 
Oltmer (2018: 6), to the Local Migration Regime as a local fi eld of actions focusing 
on certain migration-related issues. It represents a local arena of negotiation and 
processes of cooperation and confl ict driven by migrants, as well as (local) non-
state and state actors. Furthermore, each local regime is shaped by its own political 
norms and spatial conditions. Local Migration Regimes serve as a spatial context for 
migration but also include spatial productions1 (see also Pott 2018: 121-122).

In this paper, I focus on rural places which have been of increasing interest to 
migration scholars for several years. In their study of rural settings of Local Migration 
Regimes in Portugal, Cabral and Swerts (2021: 192) show that the pressuring role 
of non-state actors is not as decisive as in urban settings (e.g., Hinger et al. 2016). 
Drawing on this, I expect the non-urban environment to offer new insights on the 
characteristics of rural migration regimes, their actor constellations, and spatial 
features.

This paper draws therefore on three core elements of Local Migration Regimes: 
(1) Actors and power constellations in migration-related issues, (2) local discourses, 
narratives, and migration history, and (3) spatial structures and levels (e.g., regional, 
national) impacting the local fi eld of action. 

For greater conceptual precision, I focus on one issue-area as a starting point 
for the empirical analysis. I examine the issue of reception and housing of refugees, 
since it is both a central fi eld of action for municipalities, as has been shown in 
comparative studies, and an integral part of local debates, confl icts, and spatial 
production (e.g., Alexander 2007; Kreichauf 2018; Meer et al. 2021). Also, as Meer 
et al. state, the area of housing shows “where the national state is relying on third 
sector partnerships” (Meer et al. 2021: 2). Hinger and Schäfer (2019) identifi ed cities’ 
migration history and scalar positioning as relevant features in their comparative 
analysis of two German cities. Furthermore, their fi ndings clearly show that implicit 
structures in urban societies are linked to accommodation practices. For Leipzig, a 
city in Saxony, they highlight the importance of “the presence of right-wing groups 
and xenophobic sentiments” (Hinger/Schäfer 2019: 73). This impacts the way 
how migration is dealt with in a broader sense. Referring to the accommodation 
situation, the authors found, for example, more hostility toward reception facilities 
accommodations than in the other comparative case of Osnabrück (Hinger/Schäfer 
2019: 6). Referring to this previous research, I expect that the area of housing and 
accommodation is a useful starting point for identifying constellations and spatial 
productions while limiting the broad approach of migration regimes analysis to a 
particular issue. 

1 The concept of “Production of Space“ was introduced by Henri Lefebvre (1991). He stated that 
social relations and social settings also structure physical spaces. In society, there is a dialectic 
of space and social relations. 



•    Hanne Schneider418

3 Methods and Data 

The empirical data was collected in two rural counties (“Landkreise“, NUTS 3 level) 
in the federal state of Saxony in Germany. I selected the two cases from the data 
set of a comparative joint project (“Future for Refugees in Rural Areas of Germany”) 
conducted in four Länder with overall eight counties and 32 municipalities 
(“Gemeinden“, LAU level). According to Küpper’s (2016) typology, all eight counties 
are either rural or very rural. For following analysis, I have chosen to focus on two 
counties and four municipalities from the sample of Saxony. This selection and 
reduction of the cases made it possible to grasp the complexity of local regime 
cases by using a mixed set of data.

Because both counties are located in the State of Saxony, they are subject to 
the same federal and national regulations concerning refugee distribution. This 
makes it possible to consider the regional context more closely (e.g., demographic 
development and socio-economic situations) and at the same time to identify the 
local varieties within the negotiation of housing and reception of refugees. One 
medium-sized town and one rural village2 were selected in each of the two counties 
(see Table 1). In line with Küpper’s (2016) typology acknowledging the diverse 
character of rurality in terms of sizes of municipalities, two different sizes were 
chosen (one rural village, and one rural town in both counties). Also, all chosen 
localities accommodate refugees,3 which is not the case in all municipalities in these 
counties. For reasons of research ethics, the names of the municipalities are not 
mentioned here because the interview data of interviewees must be pseudonymized. 

To capture different aspects of migration regimes, this paper applies a multi-
method approach. It uses the following methods and data:

(i) 22 semi-structured interviews (see Table 2) with local experts conducted in 
2019 and 2020 dealing with migration or integration constitute the main data 
for this paper; the analysis of the transcribed interviews was carried out in 
three steps using structured and inductive methods (based on Strauss et al. 
1996) with MAXQDA: 1) a structured coding of interview segments containing 
any reference to housing, local reception, or accommodation 2) an inductive 
coding of all the identifi ed segments, and 3) selective coding to fi nd relations 
within the codes. 

(ii) The data collection also included newspaper articles covering local discourses. 
I searched two larger regional newspapers4 with local sections from 2009 to 
2019 (keywords: “asylum“, and “migration“, each combined with the name 

2 In this paper, I am refer to the two rural municipalities as “villages” since the fi ndings only draw 
on fi eld research in one part of each rural municipality. 

3 I refer to the term “refugee“ as a general term for humanitarian migrants including different 
legal terms (e.g. asylum seekers, recognized refugees).

4 These are the Leipziger Volkszeitung for Nordsachsen and the Sächsische Zeitung for Bautzen. 



Local Migration Regimes in Rural Areas    • 419

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•    Hanne Schneider420

of the municipality). In total, I found 1789 articles, 623 of which addressed 
housing or municipal reception as a central issue. I summarized these 
articles in monthly memos for each local case. In addition to the qualitative 
interviews, the media covers a long-term period and provides information 
about the relevant topics discussed in public. 

(iii) Further case memos for each locality were compiled while working on all 
additional material, interviews, and newspaper articles. 

4 Refugee reception in the counties of Bautzen and Nordsachsen

This section introduces the regional context of the case studies, which is necessary 
to assess the local contexts for migrant reception, including public discourses 
and practices on migration. As highlighted above, the local scale cannot be seen 
separately from other levels such as the regional or national levels (Rass/Wolff 
2018: 52). Furthermore, the rural conditions defi ning the spatial context should be 
addressed. 

4.1 Rural regions and the reception of migrants in Saxony

The state of Saxony is located in eastern Germany and was a part of the German 
Democratic Republic (GDR). Saxony consists of 13 districts made up of 10 counties 
(166 towns and 250 rural municipalities) and 3 urban (see Fig. 1) districts (Chemnitz, 
Dresden, Leipzig). Each of these counties contains between 28 and 59 municipalities. 
Since the 1990s, the region has been shaped by a substantial transformation 
process in society, economics, and infrastructure (Henn/Schäfer 2020). Starting 
after reunifi cation, the economic transformation led to an immense demographic 
decline due to outward migration of the working population and ageing processes. 
This applies in particular to rural regions in the state and to certain population 
groups, e.g., women. Since the early 2000s, the state’s demographic decline has 
slowed down, especially in the three cities. The same trend can be observed with 
respect to the economic situation: The upward economic trend was followed by 
lower unemployment rates, and additional workforce was needed. However, the 

Tab. 2: Analyzed interview data

Type of expert Bautzen Nordsachsen Total

Local politician 3 2 5
Administration/Public offi cial 2 5 7
Civil society/volunteer 4 1 5
Civil society organization 3 2 5

Total 13 9 22

Source: own design



Local Migration Regimes in Rural Areas    • 421

demographic decline can still be observed in rural regions, where the effects of 
return migration and international migration remain lower than in the urban districts 
(Leibert 2020: 200-204).

Population decline represents a continuous challenge in rural regions of Saxony 
and other rural parts of (East) Germany. There are ongoing debates on replacement 
migration via attracting Germans or international migrants as a solution to 
demographic decline (Nadler 2012). In the GDR, migration was mainly experienced 
as strictly regulated labor migration by contract workers from socialist partner 
countries, many of whom had to leave after the collapse of state socialism. After 
the reunifi cation of Germany, emigration and immigration became more visible 
and increased signifi cantly. In the early 1990s, large-scale migration fl ows from 
former GDR territory to West Germany began, so that urban and rural regions lost 
a signifi cant share of population at working age. At the same time, international 
migrants arrived, such as ethnic German immigrants from Eastern Europe, or 
refugees, from the wars in former Yugoslavia. Additionally, Intra-EU-mobility 
increased, notably since the EU’s eastern enlargement in 2004. However, this did not 
reverse the declining demographic situation in rural regions of East Germany. The 

Fig. 1: Rurality and foreigners in districts and counties of Saxony

Source: Thünen Index of Rurality/Küpper 2016, Federal Statistical Offi ce (Destatis) 
2021 based on Central Register of Foreign Nationals, Geodata by GeoSN 2021, 
Staatsbetrieb Geobasisinformation und Vermessung Sachsen (GeoSN) 2021: 
Geodaten des Freistaates Sachsen [https://www.govdata.de/dl-de/by-2-0, 
21.05.2021].



•    Hanne Schneider422

increased infl ux of refugees in the mid-2010s interrupted the negative population 
trend, though only for a short time (Reibstein/Klingholz 2020). The proportion of 
foreigners, therefore, remains at a lower level in Saxony than in other federal states. 
While the share of foreigners in Germany was 12.5 percent, it was only 5.1 percent 
in Saxony in 2019 (BAMF 2020). Table 3 shows that foreigners are a clear minority 
in Saxony, especially in the more rural counties. With rising numbers of asylum 
seekers around 2015, the proportion of foreigners increased in many municipalities 
(though not all received refugees) and in all counties. 

As mentioned above, since 2014, the number of asylum seekers in Germany has 
increased signifi cantly (2014: 173.072, 2015: 476.649, 2016: 745.545) (BAMF 2020) 
and remains at a higher level than before 2014 (2020: 122.170), much of which is 
attributable to asylum seekers. 

The distribution, reception, and housing of asylum seekers in Germany is a 
highly fragmented task between the national, state, and local levels with mutual 
dependencies on all levels. This context is important for understanding the impact 
on the localities: While the registration and asylum procedure is carried out by the 
Federal Offi ce for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), the initial reception takes place 
at the state level. According to the distribution quota “Königsteiner Schlüssel“, the 
federal state of Saxony, with its 4 million inhabitants, receives around 5 percent 
of the national applicants. Asylum seekers are fi rst allocated to  Initial Reception 

Tab. 3: Population and share of foreigners in Saxony by county/city district

County/District Total population Share of foreigners in%
2019 2011 2019

Bautzen 299,758 1.6 2.3
Erzgebirgskreis 334,948 1.1 2.1
Görlitz 252,725 2.2 4.6
Leipzig 258,139 1.4 2.5
Meißen 241,717 2.5 3.2
Mittelsachsen 304,099 1.6 3.5
Nordsachsen 197,741 1.9 4.1
Sächsische Schweiz-Osterzgebirge 245,586 1.7 2.9
Vogtlandkreis 225,997 1.5 3.8
Zwickau 315,002 1.6 3.5

City districts
Chemnitz, Stadt 246,334 4.9 8.5
Dresden, Stadt 556,780 4.8 8.0
Leipzig, Stadt 593,145 6.0 9.7

Total 4,071,971 2.9 5.1 

Source: Federal Offi ce for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) 2020, Federal Statistical Offi ce 
(Destatis) 2019 (based on Central Register of Foreign Nationals), Statistical Offi ce 
of the Free State of Saxony (StLA) 2011/2019, own calculation. 



Local Migration Regimes in Rural Areas    • 423

Facilities of the State, where they stay during the fi rst weeks in order to manage 
issues of identifi cation, medical screening, and the preparation of the asylum 
application. After that, they are redistributed to the ten counties and three city 
districts within the State of Saxony, which have to accommodate them while their 
asylum application is processed (see Table 3). According to the distribution quota, 
66.9 percent of refugees are sent to the (mainly rural) counties.5 There, asylum 
seekers are further redistributed to municipalities within the county, which have 
to provide accommodation and social support. Some counties pursue an even 
distribution among municipalities; others focus on centralized reception centers 
installed in a few municipalities. After asylum status determination, the “follow-
up“ housing takes place, in which refugees, in most cases, must move to private 
apartments. To prevent movements to cities with a higher share of migrants 
and reduce emigration from rural counties, Saxony introduced an obligation for 
residence (“Wohnsitzaufl age“, based on national law) on the county level in 2018, 
meaning that refugees with a protection status must stay in the respective county 
for three years after status determination (Renner 2018: 4). 

4.2 The perception of migrants in Saxony and the cases of Bautzen and 
Nordsachsen

In addition to the administrative side of the reception process, societal conditions 
and collective perception of migrants or refugees shape Local Migration Regimes. 
For the counties under examination, notably their characteristics as post-socialist 
spaces and rural peripheries come to the fore. Weiss concludes that the socio-
spatial conditions in East Germany hinder the process of integration. She fi nds that 
there has not been a public discourse about migration as an integral part of society 
in the region (Weiss 2018: 135). Consequently, Glorius argues that the discursive 
framing of migration is closely linked to past and ongoing “[m]igration experiences 
[which] mainly consist of the huge internal outfl ow, which – due to its selectivity – left 
behind local populations with high levels of ageing, unemployment and other social 
problems” (Glorius 2017: 123). Outward migration after reunifi cation, especially of 
women, is seen as another driver of deprivation. 

Furthermore, there is an ongoing debate on the attitudinal specifi cs in the 
East German Länder concerning the collective experience of economic instability. 
Attitudinal studies of East Germany have found several obstacles for the integration 
of migrants. For example, Salomo concludes that the residential context in Thuringia 
(composition, level of immigration and homogeneity of population) indirectly 
increases the above-mentioned perception of deprivation and therefore fosters 
ethnocentric attitudes (Salomo 2019: 103) which are generally unsympathetic 
towards immigration. Rees et al., building on intergroup contact theory and group-
threat theory, found that lower rates of diversity are one of the specifi c local factors 

5 The details of the distribution within the state are regulated according to the Saxonian Refugee 
Reception Act (“Sächsisches Flüchtlingsaufnahmegesetz“).



•    Hanne Schneider424

contributing to a “climate of hate” and right-wing attitudes (Rees et al.  2019: 9-10). 
This is also closely linked to high vote shares for right-wing parties such as the AfD 
(Alternative für Deutschland). In both counties, the AfD has achieved continuous, 
signifi cant electoral success (2017 federal parliamentary elections: Bautzen 
31.9 percent, Nordsachsen 27.2 percent; 2021 state parliamentary elections: 
Nordsachsen 27.8 percent, Bautzen 33.4 percent).

An attitudinal survey on rural populations’ attitudes conducted by the author 
(N = 904) in 2019 within the same project framework as the present study (“Future 
for refugees in Rural Areas of Germany”) supports these fi ndings. The surveyed 
population in Saxony displayed the highest level of hostility against foreigners, 
while contact experiences with migrants were the lowest (Schneider et al. 2021: 43-
44). These attitudes are also discussed in the context of rural areas (e.g., Crawley et 
al. 2019). Czaika and Di Lillo conclude: “People who attribute greater importance to 
living in safe and secure surroundings and having a domicile in rural areas are found 
to be associated with growing hostility towards further immigrant fl ows” (Czaika/Di 
Lillo 2018: 2468).

As in all regions of Germany, refugee reception in Saxony has shown a wide 
range of societal responses, including numerous welcoming initiatives, solidarity 
movements, and the engagement of various civil society actors, especially in 
2014 and 2015. This went along with contention and protests against reception 
policies, including attacks against refugees (“The dark side of the German ‘welcome 
culture’”, Jäckle and König 2017). The share of foreigners within a local community 
has a “highly signifi cant and expected negative effect on attacks on refugees” as 
Jäckle and König (2017: 26) show. Although such incidents and protests against 
reception centers for asylum seekers were not limited to rural communities or the 
region of Saxony, some incidents in rural towns in Saxony have become the focus 
of national news coverage and serve as nationwide symbols of “non-welcoming 
culture” (e.g., in Heidenau, Freital, Schneeberg; see Aumüller et al. 2015: 122). 
The protesters, often driven by right-wing initiatives, drew a picture of “refugees 
as security, economic, or even health threats” (Koehler 2018: 78). Within the two 
cases, counties, especially the county capital Bautzen, experienced a variety of 
protests and anti-refugee attacks. Rees et al. argue that the sociocultural climate 
is a key determinant of intergroup confl icts, conducting a qualitative case study on 
the “super-homogeneous context” of the town of Bautzen (Rees et al. 2022: 9). Both 
the welcoming culture and anti-immigrant protests clearly show the reception of 
refugees as a fi eld of local struggles and contention.



Local Migration Regimes in Rural Areas    • 425

5 Empirical fi ndings in Bautzen and Nordsachsen 

Across the four different municipality case studies, the housing issue illustrates 
different local strategies.6 These approaches are subject to negotiations within 
the localities and between municipalities and counties and are described in the 
following subsections (5.1-5.4). 

Bautzen (County I) 
Bautzen county is located in eastern Saxony and consists of 57 municipalities. It 
has a share of foreigners of 2.3 percent and hosted about 2,300 refugees in 2019. 
The authorities in the county of Bautzen follow a centralized accommodation 
strategy for asylum seekers: In 2019, at least two-thirds of the asylum seekers were 
accommodated in fi ve collective accommodation centers based in three medium-
sized towns and in one rural municipality, the largest with a capacity up to 500 asylum 
seekers. Most of the collective accommodation centers were set up in 2015. Since 
then, Village I has accommodated about 100 people in a collective accommodation 
center run by the county. The building used to be a school and is located at the 
outskirts of the village. Almost no refugees stay in the village after their refugee 
status is accepted. Town I has a somewhat longer history of refugee reception. 
Since 1992, the town has hosted asylum seekers by order of the county. In 2012, 
a collective center was installed as the central facility of Bautzen county, which 
provides up to 400 places. In 2015, around 700 refugees were accommodated in 
Town I. In 2019, it hosts around 350 asylum seekers (2019), about 250 of them in the 
collective center. Around 75 asylum seekers lived in private apartments provided 
by the municipal housing stock. After the approval of asylum, many refugees fi nd 
apartments mostly in municipal housing, assisted by social workers or volunteers. 

Nordsachsen (County II) 
The county of Nordsachsen is located in northwestern Saxony. The share of 
foreigners (4.1 percent) is somewhat higher than in Bautzen and the county host 
about 2,100 refugees. In Nordsachsen, the reception of asylum seekers is organized 
in a more decentralized manner, as around 30 municipalities are involved in the 
accommodation of asylum seekers. However, ten municipalities also provide 
collective accommodations. Around three quarters of the asylum seekers are hosted 
in private apartments. The collective reception centers are signifi cantly smaller 
(maximum capacity of 150). Village II has hosted asylum seekers in municipality 
apartments since 2015. In 2018, approximately 90 refugees (40 after recognition of 
asylum and 50 during their asylum procedure) lived in the village, which is not as 
peripheral as Village I, and close (10km) to a small town with basic infrastructure. 
In contrast, Town II had two collective accommodations (only one since 2020) and 

6 The section refers mainly to the recent years in which numbers of asylum seekers increased 
(2014/2015). The empirical data was conducted in 2019/2020 but interviewees also referred to 
the recent past. Newspaper articles cover 2009-2019. 



•    Hanne Schneider426

private apartments. Many of these appartments are located in a part of town with a 
higher proportion of migrants and socially precarious neighborhoods. 

The following sections outline the central fi ndings on the issue area of 
accommodation and housing found in the empirical analyses of both countries. 
The data analysis of the examined localities shows that the issues of housing and 
accommodation play a central role in the local negotiation of migration and was 
discussed more than other integration-related issues. 

The data mainly covers the initial reception period and early stages of the local 
admission of refugees. This is because the long-term housing of refugees, e.g., in 
private fl ats, was not addressed in the data as much as expected. This became 
particularly clear in the media analysis using the keywords “asylum“ and “migration“ 
to fi nd articles concerning the local debates. 623 out of 1789 newspaper articles 
address the topic of housing and reception facilities, so it is extensively covered 
in local media compared to other migration-related issues. Accommodation and 
housing were also a central focus points in the majority of the analyzed interviews 
on refugee integration. 

The rising numbers of asylum seekers in 2014-2015 can be seen as a strong 
reference point (“before” and “after”), even though the refugee reception in Town I 
(Bautzen) and Town II (Nordsachsen) were already discussed early: 

“I would like to start with 2015. Yes, in 2015 the fi rst refugees came to 
[Town II] and then it became clear that we need accommodation facilities 
(...) Over the year, the number [of asylum seekers] decreased. While in 
2015 and 2016 people had arrived in buses, arrival signifi cantly decreased 
later on. Later on, in some weeks one family came, some weeks later 
three families came, and then there were weeks when no one arrived 
here.” (interview 311, civil society/volunteer, own translation)

“[In 2015] the county founded a unit for asylum. Employees were assigned 
to this offi ce and mainly had to deal with the issue of accommodation 
and ensuring basic services. We were searching nearly everywhere, and 
set up new accommodations. During this time, it became clear that it 
meant more than just providing a roof over people’s heads and food, but 
also of what happens to the people we accommodate, how we integrate 
them, and what about their prospects of staying, for a longer or shorter 
period of time.” (interview 149, county offi cial, own translation)

The great interest in accommodation and housing can also be attributed to the 
fact that the events of 2015 and the need for hosting a large number of refugees 
can be seen as an exceptional situation in small municipalities in Saxony: Even 
though migration and integration processes have been ongoing (at least) since 
reunifi cation, they remained somewhat overlooked as societal issues because the 
share of foreigners remained low. The county strategies of housing were highly 
discussed, as shown in the interviews and other data (e.g., NGO position papers and 
newspaper articles): The centralized housing strategy, as predominantly used in 



Local Migration Regimes in Rural Areas    • 427

Bautzen County, is viewed critically, especially by civil society actors. However, the 
newly-introduced obligation for a specifi c residence (“Wohnsitzaufl age“) was not 
a topic of great interest – neither for most interviewees nor media coverage. One 
reason might be that it came into force in 2018 and therefore did not concern many 
refugees who arrived in 2015. 

The analysis of the empirical data showed two central fi ndings which address 
the regional specifi city of the housing stock: First, even in smaller municipalities 
in Saxony, the housing capacities are usually found in public housing. Unlike 
other German municipalities (Adam et al. 2020: 215-216), the housing market is 
not as competitive. However, this leads to a particular type of spatial segregation 
as municipal housing is often connected to lower rent and thus are preferable 
places for the lower social strata of society (see 5.4). Secondly, for both collective 
accommodation and private apartments, large housing blocks built in the GDR were 
used.

5.1 Reception and housing facilities: Scenes of local (migration) history

As shown in Section 4, the Saxon counties do not have a long-standing and 
distinctive history of migration, and there is no pronounced collective identity as 
a region of immigration. However, the recent migration of asylum seekers brings 
up interviewees’ memories and sheds light on this neglected part of local history. 
Especially in Town I and Town II, some of these memories are linked to certain 
reception facilities or buildings formerly used to accommodate other migrant 
groups, while other memories refer to previous buildings: 

“Here, in the early 90s, Bosnian refugees were accommodated at the 
beginning [of the reception period]. There were probably around fi ve 
hundred at the peak, which, from my memory, went relatively trouble-
free. There was also civic engagement by the churches, especially to 
help the people. And so this was the start of the reception center [in 
Town I].” (interview 145, mayor, own translation)

Several interviewees compared refugees and previous migrant groups and how 
they were perceived and compared to each other by the local population. Many of 
the former migrant groups were living in the same reception facilities or the same 
parts of town, e.g., contract workers in the GDR and ethnic German immigrants from 
Eastern Europe and Central Asia in the 1990s. Still, they were not as visible as the 
newly arrived refugees. 

“Several years ago, a number of migrants, ethnic Germans and so on, 
came here from Kazakhstan. But I have to say for the majority of them 
it was only a temporary stopover. (…) There are still quite a few of this 
group, and, from my point of view, they don’t attract attention. So 
they don’t stand out too much in society.” (interview 296, civil society/
volunteer, own translation) 



•    Hanne Schneider428

One example from Town II also shows that the perception of different migrant 
groups can be comparable. In the following quote, a social worker refers to one part 
of the town: 

“Here in [Town II], we had (...) immigration of ethnic Germans in the 1990s, 
and the mood was ‘Well, ... we ’don’t want these Russlanddeutsche 
[ethnic Germans from Russia] here.’ Then, people got used to each 
other and they were no longer an issue. ‘Oh yes, they are very well 
integrated, they can speak German well by now and the children were 
in kindergarten and the next generation had grown up, so the issue was 
settled. Then, the refugees came: ‘It ’won’t work with the refugees. We 
don’t want them.’ Everyone was skeptical. And then, the picture changed 
again, because now EU citizens have come and are basically causing 
problems that the other immigrants had not yet caused, so that the 
[migrant group of] refugees are no longer an issue.” (interview 311, civil 
society organization, own translation)

Refugee housing is a locally recurring issue in media coverage from 2009-2019: 
Even before 2014/2015, the topic of local housing and accommodation constituted 
a signifi cant part of the articles dealing with migration and asylum issues in three 
of the four case studies (except for Village I, where no refugees were housed 
before 2014/2015). Figure 2 shows the trend of the number of published articles 

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

58 33 72 77 70 129 212 138 89 46 36 16

35 18 43 26 36 57 92 52 24 10 8 7

2009: Closure of former
asylum shelter in
neighboring town within
the county, discussions
about location search for
new facilities and funding

2011: New reception center, protests of right-
wing party (NPD) including campaign ("Kein
Heim") against the reception center, new civil
society initiatives for tolerance as a counter
movement, several letters to the editor on the
issue by residents

2015: Rising numbers of asylum seekers,
positioning of municipalities and mayors
regarding the reception, ad hoc reception of
asylum seekers, reports on volunteers,
distribution within the county

2018: Security concerns
due violent incidents in the
accommodation, current
asylum figures, population
development

Newspaper articles in total

Articles on housing / reception

Fig. 2: Town I: News coverage of the accommodation of refugees (keywords 
“asylum”, “migration”)

Source: own design



Local Migration Regimes in Rural Areas    • 429

and selected years with information collected in the summarizing memos for Town 
I. 409 of 960 articles cover the issue of housing, with a peak of 92 articles in 2015. 
There was also a signifi cant share in the years before and after. These numbers 
clearly illustrate that certain local events, moments of social contention (e.g., anti-
immigrant-protests), and the opening of new reception facilities are prominently 
featured in local newspapers. 

The conditions of accommodation are themselves shaped by local history and the 
socio-spatial context: A notable feature in the four municipalities is the availability 
of municipal housing stock and residential blocks built in the GDR. Former military 
buildings and schools were also used for accommodation. 

5.2 Responsibilities for reception and housing as power mappings and 
supra-local alliances 

The arena of accommodation and housing can be used for a situational mapping 
to showcase power constellations within the local reception regime in a broader 
sense. This became particularly clear when most interviewees, while speaking 
about accommodation, positioned themselves towards other actors and/or other 
decision-making levels. Moreover, many interviewees rejected their responsibility 
for reception and housing. This might not be a surprising result for civil society 
actors, but it is for local authorities and mayors.

For example, representatives of municipal authorities often refer to decisions 
made by county authorities or even the national government to frame their local 
governance approaches. This position is grounded on the fact, that the initial 
reception of asylum seekers is the responsibility of the federal state and then 
handed over to the county authorities. As the reception of refugees was heavily 
discussed within the population, several mayors dissociated themselves from the 
decisions made, even though they were infl uential in the decision-making process. 
Thus, the accommodation issue is perceived as a local problem, but apparently 
without any local mandate to act. This self-positioning is not only performed during 
the interviews, but can also be found in certain practices, as one example in Village I 
illustrates:  In 2015, the county authorities decided to rent a former school building in 
the village for accommodating asylum seekers. The mayor then regularly reported 
in the offi cial journal of the municipality to keep residents updated as the reception 
was heavily discussed and criticized: 

“In order to fulfi ll the constitutional mandate with regard to the right of 
asylum, the distribution among the federal states is regulated by the 
‘Königsteiner Schlüssel’ [distribution quota]. The federal states have 
agreed on who receives how many and which refugees because they are 
the receiving destinations. They also decide the determination of safe 
third countries. By law, the Länder act as accommodation authorities 
for the asylum seekers. [...] The county itself is only the sum of its 
municipalities, in which the accommodations are set up.” (offi cial journal 
of the municipality, 2015, own translation)



•    Hanne Schneider430

The mayor refers to the legal obligation and decision-making of the federal and 
county authorities and thereby distances himself from the political decisions made 
at the national and state levels. 

In both counties, most mayors were not willing to welcome asylum seekers 
voluntarily in 2015. This positioning of municipal leaders led to supra-local alliances: 
In November 2015, 48 mayors of municipalities in the county of Bautzen started 
a joint initiative by writing a position paper (“Grundsatzerklärung“), addressed to 
former chancellor Angela Merkel, to take a stand against the further reception of 
migrants and national asylum politics. Due to the centralized distribution mechanism 
in Bautzen, only a few of the mayors who joined the position paper actually had 
to accommodate asylum seekers, while the others nonetheless felt the need to 
position themselves against any possible future allocation: 

“We bear responsibility for many active citizens and responsible people 
who helped to build this country over the past 25 years, especially here 
in East Germany. We are increasingly concerned to see the decrease in 
social harmony, internal security, and human values; it endangers our 
country.” [letter by mayors in Bautzen County to chancellor Merkel, 
November 2015, own translation]

This quote illustrates the close links between public discourses at the local 
level and policymaking at the national level as perceived by municipal actors. The 
participating mayors chose to emphasize the rejecting attitudes of the population 
rather than the supportive ones. Immigration to the localities, as stated in the letter, 
was seen as a threat to society. In this way, the mayors did not demand more local 
power but rather asked for the “exclusive responsibility” [letter of mayors 2015] over 
asylum procedures from the federal government. Haselbacher and Segarra also 
found such strategic partnerships in their work on mayors in rural municipalities, 
who formed alliances to “regain power and control over the reception process” 
(Haselbacher/Segarra 2022: 11).

Another strategy could be found in the county of Nordsachsen: The mayor of 
Village II described that many other municipalities were not willing to take in asylum 
seekers, so he tried to talk to other mayors and tried to fi nd collaborators for the 
reception of migrants: 

“In the beginning [2015], it became clear that many other mayors looked 
away. They ducked their heads and created a situation so that they ’didn’t 
have to accommodate people. They said, ‘I don’t have any apartments 
available’, they just ducked out, said ‘that’s a federal matter, ’it’s none of 
our business’. Some of it is true, because it was imposed on us, to be 
fair. (...) But I see it [the reception of refugees] as my job and that’s why 
I do it. And of course, I also try to talk to other colleagues, to know their 
opinion. We have collaborations in the sense that we communicate with 
each other. We have WhatsApp [messenger] groups where we simply 



Local Migration Regimes in Rural Areas    • 431

exchange ideas (...) And so, we try to fi nd some collaborators.” (interview 
167, mayor, own translation)

Here, the mayor acted in a pragmatic matter, seeing reception as a municipal 
duty. Still, he also offered fl ats for two reasons: the signifi cant public housing stock 
in the village, and a forward-looking stance concerning local demographic decline: 

“Our kindergartens are empty, and we have some capacity in schools. 
[…] What we need is people.” (interview 167, mayor, own translation)

These examples give a brief impression of positioning processes that often boil 
down to being for or against shelters, affecting all actors. Civil society interviewees 
often took a more distanced stance towards the municipal representatives and 
demanded, for example, long-term strategies for societal integration and for mayors 
to clearly distance themselves from right-wing protests:7

“For example, I think we have the wrong [integration] strategies here at 
the local level. (...) The migrants are our people, even if they are only 
temporary residents, they belong here. And I think someone in the town 
[administration] should also take responsibility for this.” (interview 299, 
political actor, own translation).

This is a highly regionally infl uenced issue, as the numbers of racist incidents 
– often happening at reception facilities – are higher in Saxony, and Bautzen in 
particular, than elsewhere in Germany (Osigus et al. 2019: 91-92). 

5.3 Reception facilities as drivers of solidarity and confl ict 

In the context of refugee reception and especially the set-up of new accommodation 
facilities, processes of social change can be observed in the case studies. As 
throughout Germany, in all four cases, civil society played a signifi cant role in 
the practical challenge of taking in refugees (e.g., setting up accommodation, 
distributing clothes). They also conducted integration measures, social counseling, 
and language courses. This was particularly evident in the data of municipalities 
with centralized reception facilities, where formal volunteer groups were established 
around collective accommodation facilities (Bautzen County). All interviewees from 
civil society groups had also previously been active members of the local community, 
such as church groups, political parties, and other local non-profi t organizations. 
In many cases, the opening of a reception center represented a starting point for 

7 In this paper, it is not possible to take a closer look at the reactions of the population itself, 
but the fi eldwork, interviews, and documents showed signifi cant polarization. These reactions 
were also perceived by political stakeholders. Therefore, access to some locations as well as 
interview requests were refused. Several municipal stakeholders were worried about their 
reputation, because refugee reception is not perceived a “positive“ political issue.



•    Hanne Schneider432

long-term volunteer work regarding refugees. For example, several interviewees 
began to take care of language courses in a center. This was especially important in 
both villages, which had no offi cial language classes. Over time, the commitment 
of many volunteers decreased, and fewer people are involved. An example of this 
is the welcome initiative in Village I, which was founded at the time the center was 
set up: “Well, we manage everything almost alone. Currently, there are only three of 
us left.” (interview 156, civil society/volunteer, own translation), reports one of the 
founding members of the group. Here and in other case study sites, many retirees, 
former church employees, and teachers got involved. This also applies to follow-up 
housing, as volunteers helped to look for fl ats and provided help and equipment for 
moving. But reception facilities remain central places of engagement. 

The reception of refugees also led to new cooperation between different local 
actors: Over time, exchange formats, such as round tables, were created at the 
county level for volunteers from the municipalities and professionals in integration 
work (mostly at county level). Unlike in many urban regions, there were only few 
associations and professional staff with intercultural expertise.

In both villages, volunteers represent the only on-site contacts, especially in the 
reception centers; and therefore often act as troubleshooters on short notice for 
issues such as trips to the foreigners’ offi ce. This creates a two-way dependency 
between the administration and civil society. Thus, situations of frustration for both 
administration and volunteers are common. For example, in several interviews 
and fi eld trips, access to the reception centers and the use of facilities (e.g., for 
language classes) was an issue of discussion between the local authorities and civil 
society actors. The distribution of funding by the Ministry of Social Affairs covering 
expenses for volunteers has also been a subject of discussion, as the volunteers 
must apply through the county offi ces, not directly with the state ministry. This 
example illustrates the strong interrelationships of (in particular regional and local) 
levels and actors. 

However, the initial motivation of many volunteers must not only be seen as 
driven by  a humanitarian mindset, but as a product of social demarcation. Several 
groups, especially in the county of Bautzen, started their activities in reaction to 
right-wing protests against new housing facilities and other forms of rejection of 
asylum seekers (such as petitions). 

“We are a group of citizens who agree that we must stand up for refugees. 
It actually started because the NPD [a far-right party] was planning to 
protest in front of the reception facility. Then our alliance was founded 
and citizens of the town said, ‘Okay, let’s stand up against the right wing 
and see what we can do about it.’ In the beginning, it was no formal 
association. Then in 2016, [association name] was founded.” interview 
298, civil society/volunteer, own translation)

Most initiatives, also in other municipalities, use terms such as “democracy”, 
“diversity” and “humanity” in their names, refl ecting principles of democratic 
coexistence. However, despite being highly motivated to stand up against right-



Local Migration Regimes in Rural Areas    • 433

wing groups and their activities (e.g., through counterdemonstrations), most do 
not see themselves as “activists“. This observation shows that migrant reception in 
localities is not only conditioned by legislation, policy, and legal obligations. Rather, 
migration regimes constitute “arenas of confl ict and cooperation” (Oltmer 2018: 7). 
The decision-making on accommodation but also the housing facilities themselves 
constitute such spaces of confl ict and cooperation. 

5.4 Housing and reception facilities as spatial and temporal production 
of migration 

Another set of fi ndings relates to local practices. Practices such as housing 
strategies and discourses about these strategies function as spatial production of 
migration. The results show that the negotiation about and decision-making for new 
reception facilities play a signifi cant role in the debate about migration. In many of 
the interviews, housing strategies serve as a yardstick of integration in a broader 
sense: For example, decentralized housing is often associated with the idea that it 
promotes social integration; centralized housing and mass accommodation, on the 
other hand, are usually associated with a lower likelihood of integration.

Another fi nding points to the exclusionary consequences of housing practices 
usually known from urban contexts: Most asylum seekers and recognized refugees 
live in municipal housing stock, as it is widely available in both counties, and access 
is provided mostly with the support of social workers and municipal offi cials. This 
was particularly evident in the two examined towns. Municipal apartment buildings 
are often placed near each other, sometimes for practical reasons for social 
workers and the municipal housing society. These apartments are also often set in 
stigmatized neighborhoods because municipal housing mainly hosts residents who 
receive social welfare. This is a specifi c problem in Town II (Nordsachsen): Since 
the 1990s, different migrant groups have largely lived in one part of the town, and 
refugees have also been brought there. For years, the number of Eastern European 
migrants increased, often working in precarious factory jobs. This is accompanied 
by problems in the neighborhood and the perception of migration as a problem.

“In this respect, [this town district] is a ‘problem zone’ because it has 
developed into a socially troubled area, because not only a lot of 
newcomers from abroad but also many socially deprived Germans live 
here.” (interview 310, civil society organization, own translation)

In Town I, most of the refugees also live in the same neighborhood: 

“Almost all [of the refugees] live here in [town district]. There are two 
blocks of fl ats where they distributed them, but that doesn’t work. It 
always depends on the housing situation, the capacity, the possibilities. 
And here, it is like a small Kreuzberg [district in Berlin].” (interview 298, 
civil society/volunteer, own translation) 



•    Hanne Schneider434

In many cases, these municipal apartments are placed in large residential blocks 
(built in the GDR). Consequently, even so-called “decentralized“ accommodation 
(meaning own apartments rather than collective reception centers) does not 
necessarily mean that refugee households are mixed with other households in a 
building, to provide opportunities for encounter and inclusion. 

Furthermore, it became evident that there is a temporary character in the local 
negotiation of refugee reception. For example, several interview partners described 
them as “guests.” One of our interview partners assumed that this could also have 
to do with the structure of rural societies between “newcomers“ and “residents“. 

“From my perspective, this is often linked to sort of a two-class society. 
So that even the municipal authorities and decision-makers perceive 
them [the refugees] as guests and not as residents.” (interview 306, civil 
society organization, own translation)

This example clearly shows the relevance of spatially sensitive perspectives in 
migration studies: “The rural“ not only serves as a spatial but also as a societal 
category, including ideas of a homogeneous society that is reluctant to social 
changes (Hubbard 2005: 62-63). However, it cannot be determined conclusively 
whether these phenomena are produced by rural or social-structural regional 
phenomena (“super-homogeneous”, Rees et al. 2022).

6 Discussion: Understanding refugee reception through the lens of 
Local Migration Regimes

The perspective of Local Migration Regimes promises useful insights for case 
studies and comparative locality studies by emphasizing spatial context, actors, and 
power constellations. As a fi rst step towards addressing Local Migration Regimes 
through empirical studies, I suggest highlighting contextual factors (see Section 4) 
as recognition of space in empirical designs.

The counties of Bautzen and Nordsachsen provide distinctive contexts as rural 
counties  and post-socialist immigration societies. In the municipalities discussed 
here, refugee reception is seen as a (temporal) challenge rather than as a chance for 
rural development. To a certain extent, this might be explained by past experience 
(or rather non-experience) with migrant integration, resulting in a lack of awareness 
of local migration history. Furthermore, the right-wing political landscape infl uences 
decision-making and actor constellations. This was particularly notable in the two 
case studies of Bautzen. It remains unclear to what extent these attitudes are rooted 
in the rural context or the post-socialist setting (see, e.g., Hinger/Schäfer 2019: 73-74). 

As previous research suggested, the area of refugee accommodation is an 
essential fi eld for negotiating migration. As one issue within a broader Local 
Migration Regime, it shows actor constellations on the local level, including 
confl icts and collaborative practices (e.g., in the decision-making for collective 
accommodation). The “long summer of migration“ in 2014/2015 can be described 



Local Migration Regimes in Rural Areas    • 435

as a driver for social change and the emergence of civil society action on migration-
related issues. This has been linked to the set-up of housing facilities. However, 
civil society action, municipal self-perception, and local solidarity discourse are far 
from the “solidarity city“ movements observed in many urban contexts (Bendel et 
al. 2019). The fi ndings support Cabral and Swerts’ regime analysis in rural Portugal 
in that the pressuring role of civil society/pro-migrant groups is rare or absent 
when compared to urban contexts (Cabral/Swerts 2021: 192). In the case studies 
in Saxony, more pressure coming from anti-migrant groups and petitions was 
found. Migrant reception in localities is conditioned by legislation, policy, and legal 
obligations because migration regimes create “arenas of confl ict and cooperation” 
(Oltmer 2018: 7) also driven by societal perceptions of migration and political actor 
constellations. 

The fi ndings also challenge the image of rural areas as idyllic places of migrant 
reception: Even though certain “urban problems“ such as a shortage of housing are 
less pressing, the study demonstrates spatial challenges which have often been 
described as urban phenomena: Similar to Kreichauf’s (2015) fi ndings, this paper 
shows exclusionary processes such as “spatial isolation” and “decentral location” by 
housing strategies (Kreichauf 2015: 20). The placement of refugees within localities 
can also be seen as a refl ection of societal negotiation surrounding the housing 
question. This shows how rural regions not only constitute “spatial contexts” for 
the reception of migrants, but also contribute to “spatial production” of migration 
(Pott 2018: 121-122). The latter can be shaped, for example, by social practices that 
affect migration and, for example, generate exclusionary mechanisms. However, 
the spatial features might impact this social production of migration. In the case 
studies such practices were seen, for example, in solidarity initiatives but also 
counter-movements, such as xenophobic protests.

The protests organized by right-wing parties as well as actions by local offi cials 
and civil society illustrate how contentious refugee accommodation is at the 
local level. Some municipal authorities have built supra-local alliances against 
national decision-making, especially in Bautzen County. In contrast, the mayor 
of the Nordsachsen village case chose a more receptive approach based on 
socio-economic assumptions of demographic development. This highlights the 
fragmentation of reception policies. Thus, the rural case studies imply that Local 
Migration Regimes are not only “local”, but also strongly embedded the county 
and state levels. Due to limited resources and less experience with the reception of 
migrants, supra-municipal cooperation and dependencies of the intermediate level 
are more distinct than in the context of cities.

In sum, examining refugee reception through the lens of Local Migration Regimes 
highlights the “complexity of constellations” (Bernt 2019: 11) but challenges an 
empirical analytic framework: The perspective of Local Migration Regimes indicates 
a multi-method approach, which is a challenge for empirical analysis. It, therefore, 
limits the analytical depth of the particular aspects and qualitative data material. 
However, this heuristic framework provides an overview about most important 
contextual features of the case studies and the societal negotiations of migration-



•    Hanne Schneider436

related issues. A further benefi t of this concept is the interdisciplinary links between 
perspectives inspired by political scientist, human geographers and sociologists. 

7 Concluding remarks

This paper examines the reception and housing of refugees by applying the Local 
Migration Regime perspective to rural contexts. Using this heuristic framework, 
the fi ndings illustrate that the negotiation of migration and also the reception of 
refugees is not a new issue, but a recurrent and contested one in the last decade. 
Additionally, the example of refugee reception reveals a broad picture of social 
structures such as positioning processes among civil society and political actors 
driven by regional public opinion.

The analysis goes beyond commonly-examined urban settings, providing both 
empirical and methodological insights. Four municipal contexts in two counties 
in Saxony (Bautzen and Nordsachsen) are explored. These counties developed 
different approaches towards the reception and housing of refugees. The fi ndings 
highlight the importance of studying migration through a local lens, showing a 
fragmentation and strong dependencies between the different levels constituting 
migration regimes (national, regional and supra-local).

The study has certain limitations: Migrant/refugee perspectives were not 
directly included in the analysis since the questionnaire of the migrant interviews 
is only of limited relevance to the research question of this paper. However, these 
perspectives are part of the fi eld experiences (and memos) of the framework project 
from which the data originated.8 In further research, both perspectives should be 
addressed. 

The framework itself sets another restriction: It is limited to capturing regime 
settings as a whole, as opposed to using, for example, a discourse method or 
empirical framework on local policies. However, it carries implications for further 
case studies in rural areas. From a conceptual point of view, the regime perspective 
broadens the analysis of local cases but also challenges research concepts with 
respect to operationalization. In this contribution, the inductive analysis of interviews 
and examination of other data sources (newspaper articles, collected documents, 
and fi eldwork memos) were helpful in applying this broader view. For more in-
depth studies of Local Migration Regimes, I suggest fewer numbers of cases and 
longer-term fi eldwork to cover temporal developments. Further, the aspects of 
local regimes should be linked to existing explanatory concepts. For rural regions, 
research remains a practical challenge, mainly due to the larger research area and 
long travel distances, compared to cities (covering municipalities and counties as 
“the local“). 

8 For further insights see, e.g., Weidinger/Kordel 2020; Glorius et al. 2021.



Local Migration Regimes in Rural Areas    • 437

Funding Note and Acknowledgement
The research which led to this paper was supported by funds of the Federal Ministry 
of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) based on a decision of the Parliament of the Federal 
Republic of Germany via the Federal Offi ce for Agriculture and Food (BLE) under 
the rural development program (“Future for Refugees in Rural Areas”, Funding code 
2817LE0XX, project period 01.01.2018 – 31.05.2021).

I want to thank all our respondents and participants for their time to partake in 
the study. I am also indebted to all colleagues as well as student assistants of the 
joint research project. Last but not least, I am thankful for the fruitful suggestions of 
the reviewers as well as those of Birgit Glorius. 

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Date of submission: 15.06.2021  Date of acceptance: 29.08.2022

Hanne Schneider (). Technische Universität Chemnitz. Institut für Europäische Studien 
und Geschichtswissenschaft. Chemnitz, Germany. 
E-mail: hanne.schneider@phil.tu-chemnitz.de
URL: https://www.tu-chemnitz.de/phil/iesg/professuren/geographie/Mitarbeiter/hs.php



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