Governmental migration research in Germany : knowledge production at the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees / Vinzenz Kratzer

Cover -- Contents -- What Makes Knowledge Governmental? -- Knowledge Production and Migration Policy Making -- Seeing Like a State -- Four Features of Governmental Knowledge -- Research Program -- History of Governmental Migration Research -- Refugee Research -- "Guest Worker" and "Foreigner" Research -- Policy Legitimization -- Conclusion -- A "Lost Decade" -- Legitimatory Knowledge -- Conclusion -- Instrumental Narratives and Institutional Traditions -- Structural Conditions of Knowledge Production -- Paradigm Change -- Implementation -- Establishment of the Research Group

The Research Group as a Departmental Research Institution -- Institutional Conflict and Cooperation -- Strategic Orientation of the Research -- Conclusion -- Analysis of Governmental Knowledge Production -- Framework of Analysis -- Quantitative Overview -- Qualitative Analysis -- Knowledge for Administration -- The Migration Report -- Practical Relevance: Legibility -- Effects on the Knowledge: Governmentality -- Conclusion -- Integration Research -- Towards a Hegemonic Understanding of Integration -- Practical Relevance: From Migrant Assimilation to Migration Management

Effects on the Knowledge: Selective Blindness towards Discrimination -- Conclusion -- Calming Public Debate through Objective Knowledge -- Muslim Life in Germany -- Practical Relevance: Dispelling Myths -- Effects on the Knowledge: The "Gaze from Nowhere" -- Conclusion -- Migration Potential -- Migration Potential and Potential of Migration -- Practical Relevance: Ex-Post Legitimization -- Effects on the Knowledge: "Fuzzy Logic" -- Conclusion -- The Revenge of Practical Relevance -- Appendix -- Bibliography -- List of Interviews

The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) is the central executive authority on migration and integration policy in Germany. Vinzenz Kratzer analyses the Federal Office's research output between 2005 and 2015 with a joint perspective of Ethnography and Political Science. In the wake of political reforms after the "paradigm change" around the turn of the millennium, the development of practically relevant knowledge can be traced. While governmental researchers were able to establish themselves in the bureaucracy with some success, they bought this influence with uncontroversial, depoliticized knowledge production, while the production of seemingly politically irrelevant knowledge - most importantly on racism and discrimination - is underdeveloped