Imaging welcome culture: Visual border politics and Holocaust postmemory during Germany’s long summer of migration

Abstract

This article contributes to debates on visuality in international politics by focusing on how images come to matter in the context of migration and border politics. It examines how political actors mobilized photographic images during Germany’s so-called “refugee crisis” 2015 and how the mobilization of images influenced bordering practices. The article suggests understanding visual (border) politics as situated processes of meaning-making. Whether images can be mobilized to legitimate policies depends on a number of contextual factors, such as previous policies, the wider public and policy discourse, collective visual memories, and viewing habits. Developing a multimodal analytical framework and applying it to the case of Germany, I argue that visual memories of the Holocaust centrally affected how images of the “refugee crisis” were discussed in policy discourses and became politically performative. As the analysis illustrates, the iconic image of “Alan Kurdi” was not the key visual motif in Germany, but political actors primarily referred to images of welcome culture, train stations, and the “Balkan Route” when legitimating appropriate policy responses. The article concludes by arguing that this humanitarian framing and focus on German “welcome culture” contributed to create conditions of possibility for restrictive policies in the aftermath of the “refugee crisis.”

Introduction: Germany’s long summer of migration of 2015 and the politics of images

How do images come to matter in political contexts and why? This article contributes to a growing body of works in International Relations (IR) engaging with that question (Adler-Nissen et al., 2020; Bleiker, 2018; Freistein et al., 2022; Hansen et al., 2021; Schlag, 2018). It analyzes the role and politics of images during Germany’s so-called “refugee crisis” ¹ 2015 by examining what images political actors made relevant in parliamentary debates and how these images became affective and politically effective. In the late summer of 2015, Germany received international attention for its “welcoming culture,” after taking in a large number of refugees (Karnitschig, 2015). On the night of September 4, Germany had sent buses and put in place a “formalized corridor” (Beznec et al., 2016: 4) together with Hungary and Austria, after a group of people had started to walk from Budapest’s train station Keleti toward central Europe. This policy reaction soon became established as Germany’s “border opening,” although it rather represented a not-closing of the open Schengen border and a not-introduction of border controls (at first, border controls were re-introduced as emergency measures on September 15). As this “welcome culture” was soon followed by a discursive and policy backlash, Germany’s long summer of migration of 2015 is often associated with a strengthening of right-wing conservative and populist forces.

In this text, I analyze this central moment in German international politics by focusing on the role and politics of visual images at that time. By examining how political actors mobilized photographic images in German policy discourse in August and September 2015, the article illustrates how images participated in a new imaginary at the basis of migration and border policies and how the mobilization of images contributed to legitimate policies. Particularly, it will show that visual border politics in Germany at that time were highly contextual and situated practices of meaning-making that were closely related to previous policies, the wider public and policy discourse, and collective visual memories.

Already during the “long summer” of 2015, political commentators in media and academia highlighted a particular role, power, or politics of images (The Economist, 2015; Vis et al., 2015). Since then, the visualization of the so-called “refugee crisis” 2015 has received much scholarly attention, especially in media and communication studies (Chouliaraki and Stolić, 2017, 2019; Greenwood and Thomson, 2020; Lenette and Cleland, 2016; Wilmott, 2017; Zhang and Hellmueller, 2017). In visual IR, a strand of research has emerged that connects visual representations of refugees during 2015 to international politics and policy-making. Works in this field analyze for instance the relation between images, emotions and policies by focusing on the image of “Alan Kurdi” ² (Adler-Nissen et al., 2020; Schlag, 2018), the broader refugee visibilities at the background of European Union (EU) politics and policy-making (Hansen et al., 2021), or how the visual communication of humanitarian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) contributes to the securitization of migration and borders in Europe (Massari, 2021). However, they mostly do so from the perspective of visual IR, without taking the complexities of border regimes and practices of bordering into account: how territorial borders are re-produced, maintained, and challenged in an assemblage of multiple actors, discourses, practices, institutions, and technologies that comes together in the tension between irregular border-crossings and their attempted control.

This is the focus of (critical) migration, border and security studies, a body of scholarship that largely overlaps with IR. Yet, although De Genova (2013) analyzed the visual border discourse as central for governing migration in a widely acclaimed article more than 10 years ago, questions of visual politics in the context of migration and border governance have also received little attention in that field. Whereas visual approaches have long been present in the study of migration and borders in fields such as visual anthropology, visual sociology, visual culture, or critical cartography, this has less been the case for works focusing on EU border governance. However, one can recently observe an increasing interest in and a more systematic exploration of the role of images and visuality in the border regime. Moze and Spiegel (2022), for example, recently called for and observed a beginning “aesthetic turn” in critical border studies, Kudžmaitė and Pauwels (2022) proposed to study processes of bordering with visual research methods. Musarò (2017) explored the visual politics of Italy’s military-humanitarian operation Mare Nostrum, and Fine and Walters (2022) analyzed how the International Organization for Migration (IOM) uses visual images and narratives in voluntary return programs. Finally, Obradovic-Wochnik and Bird (2020) examined how the visual effects of everyday objects such as government signs, posters, flyers or directions governed space and formed part of acts of bordering along the “Balkan Route.” ³

Across disciplines, the literature on the visual representations of the so-called “refugee crisis” 2015 observes a turn toward a more humanizing representation of refugees and precarious migrants in “Western” mainstream media in the course of the summer of 2015 (Lenette and Cleland, 2016). Showing refugees increasingly as individual and deserving victims, researchers consider this visibility as having the potential to evoke compassion and sympathy in viewers and also in policymakers (Bleiker et al., 2013: 399; Chouliaraki and Stolić, 2017: 1168; Hansen et al., 2021: 372). This is especially argued with reference to the iconic image of “Alan Kurdi” (Adler-Nissen et al., 2020; Vis et al., 2015) that is widely considered to have shaped politics and policies, particularly in Germany. Roland Bleiker (2018), who points out that it is difficult to assess the precise impact of images (p. 18), argues that the case of “Kurdi” “illustrate[s] the power of images to shape political debates and phenomena directly” (p. 19). After the image went viral, Bleiker observed the following:

People reacted with a level of empathy that was unusual. All of a sudden, public attitudes toward refugees changed across Europe but particularly in Germany, where one witnessed the emergence of what was called a Willkommenskultur, a culture of welcoming refugees. There were images of refugees arriving in Munich and being welcomed to cheers by German people. Everywhere, Germans were helping out. This shift directly correlated with the image of Alan Kurdi going viral. (. . .) In the case of Alan Kurdi, the image changed both public attitudes and policies: the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, adopted a much more progressive policy toward refugees. She famously declared ‘wir schaffen das’—‘we’ll manage that’. (. . .) [T]he image of Alan Kurdi did, at least in the short run, have an impact on public attitudes and policies (p. 19).

In a similar sense, Lisle and Johnson (2019) write that after the image of “Kurdi” went viral and changed public opinion in Europe, “policy changes followed, particularly in Germany—all supposedly spurred by an image of a child” (Ticktin, 2016: 260).

However, I argue that the iconicity of an image is not enough to draw conclusions about its politics. Instead, a broad and context-sensitive approach can help to understand more thoroughly how images become politically performative. Whether images can be mobilized to legitimate policy responses in a certain context depends on a number of contextual factors, as I will illustrate further below, such as previous policies, the wider public and policy discourse, and prefigured collective visual memories and viewing habits.

Based on a poststructuralist discourse analysis and a wide intertextual/intervisual reading of the German policy discourse during 2015–2016 with a focus on the late summer of 2015, my analysis shows that the image of “Kurdi” was not the key visual motif that “made” policy in the German policy discourse in September 2015. When legitimating the policy of taking in refugees, actors did not centrally evoke “Kurdi,” but referred to other images, mainly of welcome culture, train stations, the refrigerator truck found at an Austrian motorway, and the “Balkan Route.” They constituted and interpreted these images as representing a new Germany that stands in stark contrast to a historical Germany, namely Nazi Germany. Apart from this direct textual link, also an intervisual link can be drawn between the Holocaust and the images mobilized, since the latter echo the visual language of Holocaust “postmemory” ⁴ (Hirsch, 2002, 2012). The article makes the argument that the visual memories of the Holocaust and its postmemory were unacknowledged political forces in the way that images of the refugee crisis were discussed in formal politics and became politically performative.

The article’s contribution is twofold. On a theoretical-methodological level, it conceptualizes visual border politics and presents the reader with a four-tier framework to analyze the politics of images by focusing on (1) the wider context and policy discourse, (2) visual patterns and (visual discursive) practices: the images that political actors make relevant in policy discourses, (3) their intertextual/intervisual relation with collective visual memories and viewing habits, and (4) the policy discourse and policies adopted afterward. On an empirical level, it allows for a complex understanding of visual border politics and of how images formed part of performative practices of bordering in Germany by discursively constituting a national Self and the boundaries of the political community/communities. By highlighting the centrality of visual collective memories and their relation with international politics, especially migration and border politics, it particularly speaks to the academic literatures of visual and interpretative IR, migration, border, and security studies, as well as memory studies.

The paper proceeds as follows: the following section presents a theorization of borders, images, and their politics, before translating it into a framework for analysis. The third section outlines the study’s research design and data collection. The fourth section, then, examines what images did take precedent in the formal political discussion and why, in four steps. First, it maps the context and wider policy discourse surrounding Germany’s alleged “border opening.” Second, it analyzes how political actors mobilized images in the two parliamentary debates immediately after. Third, it illustrates how these motifs are intervisually related to constitutions of collective identities and collective memory in Germany, arguing that it is their reminiscence of Holocaust postmemory that made them so affective and effective. Fourth, it discusses these selective in/visibilities against the background of political developments following Germany’s long summer of migration 2015 to examine what their mobilization enabled on the level of policies.

Visual border politics: theory and methodology

This article builds on established bodies of scholarship in (critical) migration, border, and security studies as well as visual IR. It brings into dialogue conceptualizations of borders and images to make ontological claims about their entangled politics. This section develops an analytical framework to analyze how images form part of performative practices of bordering—the re-production of territorial borders in discourses and other practices—in situated processes of collective meaning-making.

At the basis of this study stands a discursive understanding of borders and images. It starts form the assumption that both images and borders are polysemic and not universally readable. Instead of having an essence and simply “being there,” I understand territorial borders as socially constructed through discourses and other practices (Brambilla et al., 2016; Hess, 2018; Mezzadra and Neilson, 2013; Paasi, 2009; Salter, 2012). They need to be constantly re-produced and re-articulated in performative processes of bordering that are not limited to territorial borders. As Balibar (2002) famously argued, borders are polysemic because they do not have “the same meaning for everyone” (p. 81). I argue that borders are also polysemic because their meaning—how they should work, whom they should (differentially) include and exclude, and so on—is not fixed, but subject to permanent social and political conflicts. Processes of bordering are thus also always intersubjective processes of meaning-making about the boundaries of political communities, and of Selfs and Others.

Images are particularly relevant for such processes of border-making because they invoke emotions (Adler-Nissen et al., 2020) and form “part of the collective fabric through which people and communities make sense of themselves” (Bleiker, 2018: 8). It is often argued that because of their quality to invoke emotions, images work more immediately and viscerally, but also more indistinctly than texts (Hansen, 2011: 55). Besides, like borders, also images are polysemic. Instead of being universally readable, they need to be interpreted and their meaning needs to be constituted, for instance, in spoken and written discourse (Barthes, 1977; Bleiker, 2018; Hansen et al., 2021). As Cooper-Cunningham (2022) writes, images “are multivocal in that audiences determine what they say through their interpretations” (p. 389). Moreover, as Adler-Nissen et al. (2020) remind us, images do not have a specific emotion associated to them and do not “speak” a specific policy, but this needs to be inter-subjectively produced and performed in policy discourses (p. 75). This makes images analytically relevant as sites of political struggles and potential interventions into politics.

Images can be instrumentalized to legitimate policies, to convince others, and to organize majorities. But they are also central for collective making-sense of political events or crises as well as for re-articulations of collective “wes” [pl.] and political communities. This making-sense takes place in a variety of practices and locations, that is, on Twitter, in journalism, or in political debates. The making-sense in parliamentary debates is central for policy formulation, since it takes up public debates, their visualization, and constitutions of identity. What images “we” find relevant is also collective, intersubjective, and above all situated.

Images are open to multiple, but not any number of readings and interpretations. Their meaning is narrowed down through anchoring (Barthes, 1977; Bleiker, 2018: 16; Hansen et al., 2021: 7). This can happen through spoken and written discourse (Hansen, 2011) or through intertextuality and intervisuality (Adler-Nissen et al., 2020; Hansen, 2011: 54; Kristeva, 1980) when certain elements of an image, for example, its motifs, modes of presentation or production invoke collectively handed-down norms, narratives, expectations, or epistemic claims that affect its interpretation and potential for mobilization. As Barthes (1977) argued, images have a denoted message and a connoted message, with the latter being “the codes that a particular society employs to read it” (Hansen et al., 2021: 6, my emphasis). Anchoring is, thus, also highly situated and contextual.

From this conceptualization of the ontology of images, borders, and their politics follow epistemological consequences for their analysis. I propose to analyze visual border politics with a four-tier framework that takes into consideration the context and deploys a wide intertextuality/intervisuality. To situate the circumstances and the image’s potential for mobilization, I propose to focus first on the wider political and discursive context on which the image arrived. This step maps previous policies adopted in the policy field, the wider policy discourse, and related (political) developments.

Second, I propose to focus on visual patterns and (visual discursive) practices: what images political actors make relevant in policy discourses when legitimating appropriate policy responses and how they do so. Political actors evoke images in policy discourses, that is, when struggling about appropriate policy responses or when making sense of a policy response in retrospect, as is the case in this study. Images become interesting for political analysis especially through their “social life” (Bleiker, 2018: 24), what actors do with them and what implications this has. This was also recently stressed by Megan MacKenzie (2020) who also suggested to focus on visual patterns and practices when analyzing visual international politics, instead of only on the image itself. Whereas MacKenzie (2020) takes into consideration a variety of visual practices related to the production, circulation, and consumption of images in her analysis of illicit images in military contexts (p. 343), I focus here on visual discursive practices: which images political actors evoke in political debates, how they instrumentalize them politically, and how the images evoked form visual patterns.

To further understand the contextual potential for mobilization of images, I propose to focus, third, on the situated intertextuality/intervisuality of the images made relevant. How are they related to collective visual memories and collective viewing habits of the (imagined) political community within which they are mobilized? This is based on the assumption that emotional and affective responses to images need to be understood as constituted and performed in policy discourses (Adler-Nissen et al., 2020). To become affective and politically effective, images need to “click” with an audience in a way that they appear as legitimate justification for a certain policy. Therefore, I argue that in order to comprehend the complexities of visual international politics, a contextual approach that focuses on local specificities and vernacular processes of meaning-making can be particularly insightful (see also Kinnvall, 2017).

Finally, to analyze how certain images become politically performative, their mobilization needs to be examined, fourth, against the background of policies that were adopted in their aftermath. Understanding policies as discursive, I do not consider the relation between representations and policies as causal, but as mutually constitutive (Adler-Nissen et al., 2020; Bleiker, 2018; Connolly, 1991; Hansen, 2006, 2011, 2015; Hansen et al., 2021). Therefore, the task is not to search for direct causal relationships between the mobilization of images and policies. Instead, it is to carve out how visual discursive practices in policy discourses contributed to creating conditions of possibility and a discursive space within which some policies became more possible than others, that is, by integrating an image in a political narrative that made a certain policy appear more legitimate than others.

The four-tier reading of images suggested here, thus, is decidedly context-sensitive and deploys a wide intertextuality/intertextuality to analyze how images became politically performative in the context of migration and border politics. It is rooted in a wide reading of documents and image analysis, including German policy documents and media analysis, thereby adding complexity to many of the previous readings of the visual international politics of the “refugee crisis” 2015 and the image of “Kurdi” in Germany. As Cooper Cunningham (2022) pointed out, although all images are polysemic, epistemologically some readings are more rigorous than others, that is, because they take into account the situated intertextual/intervisual anchoring of a visual representation in the specific context it is made relevant (pp. 313–314). In the following section, I outline how I translated this theoretical-methodological framework into analysis.

Data and research design

To summarize, to analyze visual border politics as situated practices of meaning-making, I propose a four-tier framework that examines (1) the wider context and policy discourse, (2) visual patterns and visual discursive practices, (3) their intertextual/intervisual relation with collective visual memories and current collective viewing habits, and (4) policies adopted and the policy discourse following the mobilization of the image(s).

In order to map the context on which the visual border politics analyzed here played out, I first collected policy documents in a wider sense during the weeks prior to and after the so-called “border opening” (night of 4 September 2015): speeches, press releases, and media comments of central policymakers in Germany (chancellor Angela Merkel and other government representatives) as well as the two parliamentary debates after September 4. Broadening the time frame, and including the months from January 2015 till March 2016, I complemented this corpus with documents on developments in Germany and Europe in the context of migration and border politics: policies, developments of migratory routes, public attitudes, and media debates.

In a second step, I identified and collected references to images by policymakers in this corpus. I collected both specific images and general motifs made relevant in constitutions of political problems and appropriate policy responses. Many of them were generic icons, such as images of people standing at train stations and welcoming refugees. To familiarize myself with the material and to get an overview of common themes and their relation with each other, I coded the references in an open coding process in MaxQDA (see also Rose, 2016). ⁵

In a third step, I went through the references several times and analyzed them in regard to recurring motifs and common themes, selective in/visibilities, key motifs structuring the discourse, intertextual/intervisual relations, as well as Selfs and Others. Based on this, I clustered the references in groups. In the first cluster, I identified images of German welcome culture and their constituted opposite, images of Hungarian culture of rejection. The second cluster consists of a group of references to images of suffering, death and children, which also include specific references to “Alan Kurdi” ⁶ and the refrigerator truck. The third cluster assembles references to “Balkan Route” and train station imagery.

Visual border politics during Germany’s long summer of migration

This section analyzes the visual border politics during Germany’s “long summer of migration” by focusing on the time of the alleged “border opening” in early September 2015. It examines which images did take precedent in the formal political discussion and why, and illustrates why trains and trucks were more engaging to the German political actors than a drowned child. Concretely, it will make the argument that the visual memories of the Holocaust and its postmemory were unacknowledged political forces in the way that “refugee crisis” images were discussed in formal politics. To do so, it first outlines the wider policy discourse and context prior to Germany’s alleged “border opening” in early September 2015. Second, it maps references to images by political actors in the two parliamentary debates immediately after. Third and synthesizing the results of the first two steps, it discusses the constitution of Selfs and Others in these references, before it, finally, explores the conditions of possibility created for policies. As the analysis will show the mobilization of mainly images of German “welcome culture” mattered politically because it allowed to constitute Germany as doing more than enough and laid conditions of possibility for a weakening of Germany’s “open door policy” and “welcoming culture,” and ultimately a restriction of refugee, migration, and border policies.

The wider policy discourse and context

In early September 2015, Germany accepted a large number of people on the move after a group had started to make their way by foot from Budapest’s main train station Keleti toward central Europe on September 4. This movement was soon coined #MarchOfHope on social media and led to the creation of a “formalized corridor” from Hungary via Austria to Germany (Beznec et al., 2016). This so-called “border opening” is often directly linked to the image of “Alan Kurdi” going viral. However, when taking in a contextual perspective and including international and domestic developments in the analysis, we can see that the link between the image and this policy reaction becomes weaker.

First, the alleged border opening did not happen in a vacuum, but in line with other European actors and especially in light of migratory movements and migrant agency (De Genova, 2017; Hess et al., 2017). Flight-migrations toward Europe had intensified since 2013, with a deteriorating situation in Syria, the emergence of DAESH, and escalating conflicts in countries such as Eritrea, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan, or Yemen (Triandafyllidou, 2018). In the course of 2015, the situation became increasingly tense in southeastern Europe as a growing number of people tried to make their way via Turkey, the Aegean Sea, and the so-called “Balkan route” (Triandafyllidou, 2018: 200–202). Although it had been obvious since spring 2015 that an emergency was developing, no reactions followed on the EU level. With the Hungarian government beginning to build a fence at the Hungarian–Serbian border in July (Blume et al., 2016), an increasing number of refugees attempted to make their way to the EU while this was still possible. More and more became stuck in Hungary, with Budapest’s main train station turning into a “de-facto refugee camp” (Hartocollis, 2015). When a group of people started to make their way to central Europe along motorways by foot, the Hungarian government eventually sent buses to transport the people to the Austrian border, coordinating this with Austria and Germany, which decided to join (Blume et al., 2016).

Second, when situating this policy reaction against the background of domestic developments in Germany, it becomes clear that it did not constitute a break, but rather continued a recent shift in the German government’s refugee rhetoric and policy. Moreover, public attitudes did not change all of a sudden (Bleiker, 2018), but had been leaning in a pro-refugee-direction already for some months (Delcker, 2015; Harding et al., 2015). The same holds for voluntarism and civil society solidarity with refugees that had been on the rise since 2011 (Karakayali and Kleist, 2015, 2016). In light of this strong pro-refugee sentiment, public criticism toward Merkel had mounted since early summer. Merkel was criticized for not adopting a more inclusionary refugee policy and for not decidedly condemning right-extremist violence, which had also been on the rise in recent months (Bundesinnenministerium, 2015). In late August, Merkel gave up her cautious reaction to the polarized debate by taking in a clear position against right-extremist violence at a visit of a first reception center for refugees in Heidenau that had been attacked by right-extremist protesters (Bundesregierung, 2015a; Delcker, 2015). Besides, she focused on refugees coming to Germany at her yearly summer press conference on August 31. There, she again denounced right-extremist hate speech and violence, highlighted the “welcoming culture” of German civil society, and issued what would become her iconic statement: “Wir schaffen das” (“we can do it”; Bundesregierung, 2015b).

Shortly afterward, on September 3, the image of “Alan Kurdi” went viral. Much has been written about how this “instant global icon” (Adler-Nissen et al., 2020) shaped attitudes, public discourses, and policy reactions in many places around the world (Mortensen, 2016; Schlag, 2018; Vis et al., 2015). Since the “formalized corridor” was put in place on the day after, it might be easy to assume a direct relation between the two. However, my analysis found that the political debate during that time in Germany did not evolve centrally around the image. Instead, other motifs, particularly of “welcome culture,” train stations, and the “Balkan Route” were made more relevant. Whereas a number of government leaders across the world referred to the image of “Kurdi” immediately after and in the weeks following its publication to legitimate policy reactions, I did not find a direct reference by Merkel or other government representatives to it (Adler-Nissen et al., 2020). Instead, Merkel repeatedly referred to another image circulating widely at that time, of a refrigerator truck found at an Austrian motorway on August 26 with the bodies of 71 people who had suffocated in it. She did so during the summer press conference, in parliament on September 9, and in a press statement published on the Chancellory’s official website titled “Chancellor Merkel expressed her shock at the death of 71 refugees in Burgenland, Austria” and featuring the image of the truck (Die Bundeskanzlerin, 2015).

Mobilizing images in parliamentary debates

When examining what images political actors in Germany made relevant in the two parliamentary debates following the set-up of the “formalized corridor,” my analysis also showed that “Kurdi” was not the key motif. The parliamentary debates on September 8 and 9 were the first sessions German Members of Parliament (MPs) came together after the weekend of the alleged “border opening” and their summer breaks. My analysis is based on transcripts of both sessions that were about 8 and 9.5 hours long in total (Deutscher Bundestag, 2015a, 2015b). Although both meetings focused on the 2015–2019 federal financial plan, the first item on the agenda of the plenary debate on September 8 was “Refugees coming to Germany.” Besides, MPs repeatedly brought up the topic on both days, often by referring to images.

Instead of a conflictive political debate, both sessions were rather a collective making-sense of what was constituted as a momentous political decision that will change Germany. Although MPs expressed concerns about the consequences, they did not (yet openly) question the decision itself. That the current situation constituted a humanitarian emergency and that Germany needed to accept refugees appeared to be common ground among political actors—at least they did not express themselves otherwise at that time. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) was not yet part of the Bundestag and criticism within Merkel’s own party and the government would only rise a month later. However, although representatives of all parties backed Merkel’s border policy at that point in time, differences regarding appropriate policy responses became apparent. Merkel was criticized for not having acted earlier—in light of intensifying flight-migrations and right-extremism on one side, and for providing too many incentives for people coming to Germany on the other side. I grouped the images political actors made relevant in three clusters according to common themes and groups of generic icons.

Cluster 1: German culture of welcome, Hungarian culture of rejection

MPs most widely referred to images representing the welcoming of refugees in Germany by volunteers at train stations and other welcoming practices. A pattern in these references is the expression of emotions with MPs saying that the images moved them (Gädechens, CDU/CSU 11674; Schulz-Asche, The Greens, 11546) and made them feel proud (Göring-Eckardt, The Greens, 11614). Adler-Nissen et al. (2020) suggest understanding “emotionally-laden responses to images (. . .) as performed in foreign policy discourses” and theorize images as “objects of interpretation and contestation, and emotions as socially constituted rather than as individual states” (p. 75). They remind us that images neither “cause particular emotional responses” (p. 75), nor do specific images directly legitimate certain policies. This is illustrated by references to images of welcome culture in this sample. MPs mobilized images to legitimize contrasting ideas of appropriate policy responses: as either showing the need to quick, un-bureaucratic and long-term help and solidarity (Schulz-Asche, The Greens, 11546), or as signaling the need to not get carried away and keep the costs of these welcoming efforts in mind (Ralph Brinkaus, CDU/CSU, 11527), as illustrated in the quotes below. ⁷

Madam President, Ladies and Gentlemen! In view of the moving images of completely exhausted people who arrive here after a long and exhausting flight and are welcomed with open arms and outstanding help from very many volunteers, we need to talk here about how we can help quickly, unbureaucratically and, above all, in a spirit of solidarity and in the long term (Cordula Schulz-Asche, The Greens,11546).

Ladies and gentlemen, at the moment we have wonderful pictures in Germany. People are standing at railway stations with balloons. There is a great willingness to donate for initial reception facilities. However, honesty also means saying that these are the first 10 m of a marathon run, and this marathon run will be damn long for all of us and a very big challenge for us who have to budget and economize well (Ralph Brinkaus, CDU/CSU, 11527).

Like Merkel during the summer press conference, MPs linked images of “welcome culture” to Germany’s wider image in the world and constituted an image of a new Germany as a country where people fleeing persecution and violence dream of living and to which other countries look up (Gädechens, CDU/CSU, 11674). In so doing, they constructed images of German “welcome culture” as (inner and outer) counter-images to first, a previous image of Germany in the world and second, to images of right-extremist protest and violence. According to MPs, while images of “welcome culture” evoked pride, right-extremist violence produced shame (Sigrid Hupach, The Left, 11635; Monika Grütter’s, CDU/CSU, 11633; Angela Merkel, CDU/CSU, 11613).

Another counter-image MPs constituted frequently to the welcoming Germany is that of Hungary. In juxtaposition to a compassionate, humanitarian, efficient, and strong Germany that is capable to master the challenges of a complex 21st century world order, Hungary was constituted as chaotic, barbaric, backward, and as a place where refugees suffer (Thomas Oppermann, SPD, 11619; Michael Leutert, The Left, 11646):

A total of 20,000 refugees in one weekend! I think Munich handled this situation brilliantly. While chaos and helplessness dominated in Budapest, there were images from Munich of helpfulness, solidarity and mutual respect. I would like to express my sincere thanks to all the public service employees and volunteers who have done this. (Applause from the SPD, the CDU/CSU and the Left) Thanks to these helpers, Germany is showing its best side to the whole world these days (Thomas Oppermann, SPD, 11619).

I know we are facing difficult tasks in Europe and must not pour oil on the fire. But when, with the image of the boy in mind, I hear sentences from Hungary like ‘These are not refugees; this is an invasion,’ it makes me angry. When I hear that Orbán is considering using the army against refugees, it does not only make me angry, but also perplexed. What does he want to do? Shoot refugee families? Dear colleagues, these are words and thoughts that have no place in 21st century Europe (Michael Leutert, The Left, 11646).

Although references to “Kurdi” (“the boy”) do come up in the transcripts, as in the quote above, references to German “welcome culture” and Hungarian “culture of rejection” are by far more dominant. I argue that this constitution of Hungary was central in legitimating Germany’s “open door” policy in retrospect. Constituting Hungary as radical European Other represented Merkel’s policy as being without alternative. According to the dominant narrative, people on the move were already in Europe. They had been suffering not only in their respective countries of origin, but also on their way in Europe and in light of terrible conditions in Hungary. At the same time, as I will elaborate further below, this constitution of Germany as a humanitarian champion vis-à-vis a barbaric Hungary, would enable a restriction of migration and refugee policies in Germany in the long summer’s aftermath.

Cluster 2: images of suffering

A second group of images MPs mobilized frequently were images of suffering and death, often showing children. In some cases, MPs specifically referred to the image of “Alan Kurdi” or the refrigerator truck, in other cases, they remained vague and spoke of inconceivable or insupportable images. Much has been written about the often gendered and racialized mobilization of images of suffering, death, and children in the so-called “West” (Butler, 2016; Manzo, 2008; Sontag, 2003). Images of suffering are so affective and effective because they evoke emotions. They create a link between the spectator and the depicted by making the suffering of Others seemingly conceivable and understandable (see also Bleiker et al., 2013). However, the link is superficial and even though spectators might be moved, the suffering of Others finally remains unconceivable for them. This is underscored by the fact that who is (frequently) looking and who is (frequently) looked at in suffering is entangled with global power relations.

In the German policy discourse, MPs referred to images of suffering when signaling an urgency to act as well as a responsibility of the humanitarian Self. However, as written above, the exact nature of the appropriate policy response is far from clear and does not ultimately result from the respective image. Whereas many argued that an image testified for a more inclusionary refugee policy, others suggested that it signaled the need for more migration control (Dagmar Wöhrl, CDU/CSU, 11685). As works in critical migration and border studies have long argued, humanitarianism at the border does not necessarily lead to more inclusionary border policies. Instead, a humanitarian logic can lend itself to and is often entangled with a securitarian one, leading to more restrictive border policies (Aradau, 2008; Cuttitta, 2014; Little and Vaughan-Williams, 2017; Pallister-Wilkins, 2015; Perkowski, 2021; Ticktin, 2016). As Aradau (2008) argued, those represented at risk in migration and border discourses quickly become a risk for society. Therefore I am not convinced that differentiating between images signaling “humanitarianism” and “border control” (Hansen et al., 2021) is insightful when analyzing visual border politics. Particularly humanitarian protection is often mobilized for border control in the sense of a “stopping the boats to save lives” rhetoric, what Little and Vaughan-Williams (2017) analyzed as “compassionate borderwork” (p. 353).

Cluster 3: “Balkan route” and train station imagery

In the third cluster, I collected references to “Balkan route” and train station imagery. Here, MPs referred to images showing people on the move in crowded trains, on train stations, or walking along train tracks and dirt-roads from the East toward Germany. As I will elaborate below, this group of images played a central role in the visual politics of Germany’s “summer of migration” and in constituting a new German Self in delineation from a historical Germany. Moreover, this group of images represents a change in the visual archive of photojournalistic refugee representations that shifted parallel to migratory routes in the course of 2015. Before, the dominant iconography mainly featured images of border-crossings on boats or via the fences in Ceuta and Melilla.

De Genova (2013) analyzed this visualization of the border as the “border spectacle”: a visual order that spectacularizes irregular transgressions and interceptions of migrant Others at Europe’s turbulent fringes while leaving other migration-related issues, such as the exploitation of migrants in European economies in the dark. Many of the images made relevant in September 2015 break with this representational pattern, for instance, by showing refugees not only outside Europe or at its borders, but also far inside Europe. One could assume that such a representation would create a space for more inclusionary policies, since refugees do not only become visible at failing to legitimately enter Europe. However, as works on the visual representation of migration during 2015 have shown, even when refugees are represented inside Europe, they are continuously represented at the outside of the European political communities (Chouliaraki and Stolić, 2019; Holderied, 2022, 2023). The visual discourse remains centered on Europe and Europeans. Refugees appear in it merely from a European perspective and through a white gaze (Holderied, 2022, 2023). In what follows, I illustrate how this centering on the Self in migration and border discourses can also be observed in visual discursive practices of German political actors during September 2015 and after, and how performing a new and welcoming German Self formed part of bordering practices.

Evoking a new German self and visual Holocaust postmemory

As the previous section showed, German policymakers mobilized a range of images when making sense of the alleged “border opening.” Instead of revolving primarily around the iconic image of “Kurdi,” the imagery made relevant combines a number of images and motifs, especially generic icons of “welcome culture,” train stations, train travel, and the “Balkan Route,” and the image of the refrigerator truck.

The diversified visual repertoire can be explained contextually and geographically. In contrast to other European contexts where the image of “Alan Kurdi” was widely mobilized, that is, the United Kingdom, the mobilization of images in Germany did not constitute a spectatorship of distant suffering. Instead, it was a looking at (formerly) suffering Others coming to the own space. Therefore, the change of trope and visualization of arrival, relief, and a “happy ending” is not surprising as this presented those looking with closure. We can assume that images of welcome culture figured prominently in the German policy discourse, since this allowed constituting a morally superior Self in delineation from immoral and hostile Others, such as Hungary.

Moreover, I argue that these specific motifs—trains and trucks, arrival scenes at train stations, and people fleeing on trains or walking along the “Balkan route”—were made relevant because they resonate with prefigured and deeply anchored collective visual memories in Germany. More concretely, I suggest that they echo socially established images of and about the Holocaust. Hereby, I do not refer to actual images of the Holocaust. Rather, I argue that the images mobilized parallel the visual language of Holocaust postmemory (Hirsch, 2002, 2012) that has developed in the context of the German memory politics of Vergangenheitsbewältigung.

Cornelia Brink (2000) analyzed images of the Holocaust as “secular icons” and a central part of collective visual memoires in the West. Hereby, she referred to black and white photographs taken by the Allies during the liberation of the concentration camps, such as “half-dead and sick survivors” at Buchenwald or “wagons full of corpses” (p. 135) in Dachau. The images have since then been reproduced countlessly and have become symbols of “the inhumanity of National Socialism” (p. 136). During the period of “de-nazification” after the war, the Allies showed them, for example, before film screenings in cinemas to confront the German population with the horrors they had tolerated or participated in. As Brink explains, “whenever the photographs from the camps are discussed in the Federal Republic, the subject of guilt comes up. (. . .) In German collective memory (. . .) the accusation has remained inextricably connected to the photographs until the present day” (pp. 146–147).

Since then, another kind of Holocaust iconography has developed in Germany in light of the country’s Vergangenheitsbewältigung. This “coming to terms with the past” is a central part of German memory politics that has increasingly formed the country’s identity since the 1980s (Czollek, 2018). It focuses on the commemoration of Nazi Germany’s crimes, while assuming that a Nazi-free Germany is possible. In this memory politics, visual and cultural artifacts in the form of literary or cinematic representations are central. Apart from schoolbooks, museums or memorials, the remembrance of the Holocaust takes place widely in theater plays, novels, and movies. Examples are the prominent movies “Nowhere in Africa” (2001) that won an Oscar as best international feature film in 2003 and “When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit” (2019), both by Caroline Link. Both are based on autobiographies, tell the stories of Jewish families fleeing Berlin, and show their expulsion, flight, and arrival in exile via trains. ⁸ On a visual level, these visibilities offer a much more sanitized image of the Holocaust, than the original images taken by the Allies—although also those represent a selection (Buettner, 2016: 155). This underscores the constructed nature and selectivity of collective memory and memory culture. As Nishimura (2011) writes by drawing on Ricoeur (2006), remembering is closely related to forgetting and memory allows actors to grasp themselves (Nishimura, 2011: 104). This is particularly relevant for collective actors, such as political communities (see also Adams et al., 2023). As Forde (2016) reminds us by drawing on memory scholar Aleida Assmann (2008) “memory or the ability to perform memory establishes group membership” (Forde, 2016: 469).

It has been argued that the commemoration of the Shoah and the recognition of guilt “has established a new German sense of community,” ⁹ (Czollek, 2018: 96), or, as Horkheimer (1974) wrote, a new völkisch “we” (p. 200). Germany’s memory politics has become a source for (careful) new national pride and self-valorization, since the country is widely considered exemplary in its dealing with the past. However, as Wittlinger (2018) argues, in contrast to the narrative of Germany’s Vergangenheitsbewältigung as exemplary “good practice,” German–Israeli reconciliation cannot be considered particularly successful, especially when looking at the grass-roots level (p. 507). Whereas reconciliation seems to have taken place at the “elite” and political level, this does not appear to be the case on the societal level with survey data suggesting that a majority of the German population is critical of Israel and a significant proportion continues to hold latent anti-Semitic views (Hagemann and Nathanson, 2015: 40; Wittlinger, 2018: 521–522). Moreover, Wittlinger suggests that memory politics and German–Israeli reconciliation were highly influenced by geopolitical considerations and “that German regret emerged rather reluctantly, took a long time to establish itself formally and that emphasis on German suffering rather than suffering caused by Germans has always played an important role in German collective memory since 1945” (p. 509).

In a similar sense, Max Czollek (2018) discussed Germany’s “coming to terms with the past” as “memory theater” (Gedächtnistheater) by drawing on Michal Bodemann (1996). According to Czollek, the “memory theater” is less about an actual coming to terms with the past that establishes justice, but oriented toward German desire. Jews appear in it merely as extras testifying to the German catharsis and the commemoration of the Holocaust is reinterpreted as something positive. Czollek (2018) argues that this framing made the sudden outburst of national pride during the World Cup 2006 in Germany possible, which many “experienced (. . .) as a collective relief” (p. 38). Also in September 2015, German MPs expressed feelings of relief concerning their now seemingly legitimate national pride in light of Germany’s welcoming culture. For instance, Katrin Göring-Eckardt (The Greens) linked both events by stating: “we are suddenly world champions in helpfulness and philanthropy. (. . .) And for the first time I can say that I am unreservedly proud of my country” (pp. 11614–11615).

From this analytical lens, we can see that the motifs evoked by MPs such as people transported in overcrowded trains or walking along train tracks parallel the “popcultural archive of the Shoah” (Czollek, 2018: 84) and “primary associations” (p. 84) of the Holocaust in Germany. The same holds for images of the “Balkan route” showing groups of people walking along dirt roads from the East that immediately trigger memories of flight and expulsions of ethnic Germans (Blume et al., 2016). This is important because the images are reminiscent of an established victim discourse in Germany that has always been present in post-1945 Germany (Wittlinger, 2018: 509) and that has intensified in recent years. As studies on historical consciousness and family memories in Germany have shown, a reinterpretation has widely taken place with a large majority of interviewees considering their own relatives not perpetrators, but victims and arguing that “Granddad was no Nazi” (Welzer et al., 2014; Wittlinger, 2018: 519–520). In light of Germany’s reaction to the “refugee crisis” 2015, another reinterpretation took place, constituting the German population not as predators or victims, but as morally superior saviors of refugee Others. I argue that images of civil society welcome culture were also so affective and effective in legitimating and validating the policy reaction not to close the border because they are closely linked to the Holocaust and its postmemory, but allow for a reinterpretation and “happy ending.”

This might also be part of the reason, why the refrigerator truck is more central in the German policy discourse than “Alan Kurdi.” While Merkel referred to the refrigerator truck three times, she never referred to the image of “Kurdi” directly. However, this does not necessarily mean that the image did not play a role in the German policy discourse or become politically performative. Understanding the meaning of images as created through intervisuality, one could argue that the image resonated in its absence. Images of refugee children arriving at German train stations could have unfolded their power even more because they implicitly represented those children that did not die, but were saved by the collective “we.” Yet, with a collective visual memory formed by a specific visualization of the Holocaust, images that invoke being transported in a confined space possibly resonate differently with people socialized with this visual archive.

Conditions of possibility for exclusionary policies

In this final analytical section, I discuss the images political actors mobilized in policy debates during September 2015 against the background of policies that were adopted and the policy discourse that followed afterward. I argue that the mobilization of imagery of German welcome culture and humanitarianism can be related to policies adopted in the “long summer’s” aftermath.

Central hereby is the narrative of the “border opening.” As written above, instead of a “border opening,” Germany’s policy-reaction in the first weekend of September was rather a not-closing of the border, a not-introduction of border controls (at first), and a continued suspension of the Dublin regulation not only for Syrian but also others nationals. ¹⁰ Yet, the narrative of the “border opening” soon became hegemonic in the Germany’s domestic discourse and the dominant interpretation of Germany’s policy-reaction in mainstream media. Despite ongoing counter-voices arguing for a continuation of the late summer’s inclusionary policies, the notion of a “border opening” becoming established and closely tied to Angela Merkel, led to increasing accusations against Merkel. Besides it created conditions of possibilities for political developments in Germany that also influenced European migration and border politics.

I argue that the narrative of the “border opening” becoming accepted as the dominant one can be related to the political right-wing shift following in Germany from autumn 2016. The adoption of this framing by the liberal political center and mainstream media as well as its association with a ‘loss of control’ ¹¹ suggesting the necessity to “take back control” led to a normalization and legitimation of the political positions of the AfD and the AfD as such. These debates have largely driven election campaigns and are considered to have influenced the German federal election in 2017 where the AfD first entered Bundestag.

Moreover, I argue that the narrative of the “border opening” becoming hegemonic also had consequences on the level of policies. It contributed to a space where a discursive backlash and policy restrictions became (more) possible. Only a month after its “open door” policy, Germany severely restricted its migration and asylum legislation in October 2015 and March 2016 with two legislative packages (Asylpaket I and II). The so-called “EU Turkey Deal,” also adopted in March 2016 is the European counterpart of this. I argue that these policy restrictions were also enabled by German “welcome culture” becoming the central frame to make sense of the long summer of migration and the so-called “border opening.” This humanitarian framing represents the acceptance of refugees to Germany not as rights-based, but as charity and thus as something that can be taken away again. This is juxtaposed by the constitution of Hungary as Germany’s opposite and as a place where refugees had suffered most—more than, for example, in Syria, which is almost left out of the debate—and thus renders the actual reasons for flight invisible. This spectacularizes Germany as a champion of humanity and puts its welcoming culture in focus, whereas people on the move and reasons of flight become mere side notes. The framing of a charitable Self can easily shift to a too generous one that risks to be overstrained. This notion of looming overstrain became the dominant interpretation in the following autumn and winter 2015/2016, followed by calls and policy measures to “take back control.” It has become louder again recently in spring 2023 after the welcome euphoria during a new “refugee crisis” in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine started to dwindle.

Conclusion

This article analyzed the mobilization of photographic images in German policy discourse during the so-called “refugee crisis” 2015. It argues that images mattered for migration and border politics and policies, but that visual border politics—how images come to matter for migration and border politics—need to be understood as highly contextual and as situated practices of meaning-making.

In September 2015, Germany was in the spotlight of international media because of its “open door” policy and “welcoming culture.” Both were widely linked to the iconic image of “Alan Kurdi” going viral. To better understand the visual politics of this event, I developed and employed a poststructuralist visual discourse analysis with a fourfold focus: (1) on the discursive context and wider policy discourse, (2) visual patterns and (visual discursive) practices: how political actors made images relevant in two parliamentary debates immediately after Germany accepted a large number of refugees, (3) the images’ intertextuality/intervisuality, and (4) policies adopted afterward. My analysis showed that in comparison to other European contexts (Adler-Nissen et al., 2020), the iconic image of “Kurdi” was not the key visual motif in the German policy discourse. Instead, other images and motifs did take precedent in the formal political discourse and were made more relevant by MPs across the political spectrum when legitimating this policy-reaction: images of “welcome culture” at German train stations, people on the move traveling in crowded trains, people walking along the “Balkan route,” and the image of a refrigerator truck found in Austria in which 71 people had died.

In references to these images, MPs constituted a collective Self of a humanitarian and morally superior Germany in delineation from first, Hungary as European Other and second, Nazi Germany as historical Other. Images of migration and flight became a projection surface to perform a new image of a new Germany—both before itself and on the international stage. I argued that the mobilization of this set of images can be explained with situated seeing habits and collective visual memories in Germany. More concretely, I analyzed them as intervisually related to the (visual) politics of coming to terms with the Holocaust in the context of the country’s Vergangenheitsbewältigung. I showed that trains and trucks were more engaging to the German political actors than a drowned child because this visibility “clicked” with this specific audience in this specific context. The visual memory of the Holocaust and its postmemory were central political forces in the way that images of the “refugee crisis” were discussed in formal politics and could be mobilized to legitimate policy.

As this illustrates, visual politics in the sense of how political actors mobilize images in policy discourse, is highly situated and contextual. The article showed that visual patterns and visual discursive practices, what images were mobilized and how images were mobilized in policy discourses, influenced bordering practices. Not the most iconic freestanding images are necessarily mobilized, but also generic icons if they resonate with situated collective seeing habits and visual memories. This way, my analysis nuanced widespread assumptions that the image of “Alan Kurdi” centrally affected Germany’s welcoming culture on the level of politics and society (Bleiker, 2018). Besides, it echoes other works on visual international politics arguing that images do not work in straightforward ways (Adler-Nissen et al., 2020; Bleiker, 2018; Hansen, 2011; Hansen et al., 2021).

Apart from an empirical contribution, the article provided theoretical and methodological contributions for the study of visuality in IR by conceptualizing visual border politics, and presenting an analytical framework to analyze the mobilization and political performativity of images in policy discourses. Although it focused on migration and border politics, this can be applied to other areas of international politics. Further studies that comparatively analyze the visual politics of an event in different political contexts would give important insights about the “situatedness” of visual practices and the relation of collective visual memories and memory politics with other policy areas.