Berlin is growing at a frantic pace, with almost 3.7 million people now living in Germany’s capital city. Many new Berliners come from places as diverse as Brandenburg, Ukraine, Spain, the United States, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Berlin is a city that has long been defined by migration. For people who come from another country or cultural background, it can often be quite difficult to find their bearings in this city and to call it home. Their experiences navigating the urban spaces inevitably leave a series of impressions in their minds. Researchers now want to record and interpret these subjective maps as part of the MAPURBAN research project.

How Do New Arrivals Find Their Way Around the City?

“We want to gain a better understanding of how refugees and migrants move around Berlin,” explains Sylvana Jahre, a doctoral candidate and member of the research team with a background in geography, sociology, and urban and regional planning. “These new arrivals attempt to find their own way through the city. They overcome challenges in their everyday lives and receive help, of course, but they also experience marginalization and face rejection. The worlds they inhibit are the focal point of our project,” she says.

The MAPURBAN project is interdisciplinary and multinational in nature. Researchers from sociology, geography, and urban planning in the UK and Sweden are also participating in the project so that comparisons can be made between Berlin, London, and Stockholm as cities with high immigration rates.

The researchers have been evaluating administrative concepts and analyzing political decisions. But the team has even greater plans in mind. “We want to talk to the people whose lives we’re researching,” says Antonie Schmiz, a professor of human geography at Freie Universität and head of Berlin’s MAPURBAN research team. She says it is crucial to make their voices heard in the public sphere and to shine a spotlight on their perspectives.

The research group has been conducting interviews with representatives from Berlin’s Senate as well as other government offices and social initiatives. It also aims to establish contact with people who have migrated to the city from abroad, such as a group of refugee women who regularly meet in Lichtenberg. Their maps and stories convey what their everyday lives look like in a way that goes far beyond the process of their immediate arrival with protracted visits to bureaucratic government agencies that reveal systemic racism, searches for halal products, or scenes of discrimination on public transport.

Urban Infrastructures and Resources Difficult to Access

Within this framework the research team organizes workshops together with the orangotango collective and urban planner Ingeborg Beer. The participants describe the environment in which they live out their lives by sketching a map. They reconstruct the routes they typically take and flag the places that are important to them personally – as well as talking about what is missing. The MAPURBAN team want to make these findings available online in an anonymized format and present them as an exhibition in Berlin.

Conversations with government employees and refugees reveal how difficult it often is for new residents to access urban infrastructures and resources. This is frequently because they simply don’t know about different services available in the city or the information has not been translated into languages they know. Many doors may be open to them, but they don’t necessarily always find them.

“People usually have enough to do just to keep their heads above water – they have to take care of children, get a work permit, deal with administrative stuff, and get their bearings in the city,” says Jahre. “The ‘built environment’ – the materiality of the city – has a major influence on how people navigate their surroundings.” The key question for the city’s administration is how they can better communicate with these people.

Many Productive Changes – But Still Much More to Do

Jahre adds that many changes have been set in motion over the last few years. Government employees have been attempting to better understand changing realities and living conditions in Berlin and open themselves up to a multicultural perspective – for example, information that is important for the city’s residents needs to be translated into different non-European languages.

However, Jahre points out that a lot more action has to be taken when it comes to discrimination and racism. Berlin offers many benefits to its new residents, even if bureaucratic processes slow some things down and the channels for accessing resources seem overly complicated. New arrivals are often able to rely on friends, family members, or acquaintances in their new city of residence, which makes it easier for them to settle in. Networks of migrant communities that provide a sense of community and support also exist.

Nevertheless, the research group emphasizes that people from a refugee background face significant challenges, having to answer questions like, “How do I get permanent residency?,” “How do I find work?,” and “When and how do I leave my collective accommodation center and move into a new home?” “We have to find out more about the realities of people’s lives. We have to be able to identify their needs. That is the only way that city governments will be able to truly support them,” says Jahre.

Berlin, London, and Stockholm All Handle Migration Differentlyh

The MAPURBAN project’s research outcomes will most likely be invaluable to policy makers. That is why the research team is also writing a policy paper. It is important to them that people from a migrant background get an equal say in decisions related to their concerns and interests.

The society of the urban environment as a whole plays a central role in this respect. “We also see this in London and Stockholm, although the three cities work very differently when it comes to migration,” explains Jahre. “In London diversity is pretty much par for the course, which means that policies tend to focus on older people or single-parent families. It is much easier to access the healthcare system in Stockholm than in Berlin because healthcare in Sweden is universal and decentralized.” What all three cities have in common, however, is that their housing markets are under extreme pressure.

Cities have always been the products of waves of migration. They are propelled forward, transformed, and enriched by these people. Berlin, too, is sustained and invigorated by migrants – but changes are needed on the political level in order to allow diversity to flourish.

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This article originally appeared in German on February 26, 2022, in the Tagesspiegel newspaper supplement published by Freie Universität Berlin.