Beschreibung
It is often emphasized that the act of opening the German borders by the end of August 2015 was a political decision of chancellor Merkel against the bipartisan consensus - the „raison d’etat“ - of migration policy in Germany. What is underestimated in such an account is the role of civil society and grassroot organizations in support of refugees which became increasingly important over the last few years. When Merkel famously decided that „we can do this“, the paper argues, this was possible because of the growing number of volunteers throughout German society. Based on the results of a study conducted among volunteers who support refugees in different places in Germany, encompassing both individual volunteers and representatives of organisations, the paper will argue that supporting the cause of refugees has become socially acceptable within the last few years. The data was collected in November 2014 and again in November 2015, after what has been largely coined the „refugee crisis“. The number of respondants, which rose from 450 in the first survey to more than 2200 in the second allows both to provide insights in the transformation and composition of the field and the blurry boundaries between political activism and volunteering.