Integrating Syrian Refugees in Eastern Germany: A Cultural Textbook, (Hardcover)

Formerly an Arab refugee in Germany, Rostom covers integration conceptually before moving on to Germany's eastern developments. In 2016, contributing to EU refugee policy, she made history as the first Arab ever to work at the EU Commissions DG Education and Culture. Later she volunteered at Berlins Templehof camp. Her main study sites are Berlin and Hennigsdorf, Brandenburg－Germanys No. 1 integration hellhole. Rostom delivers social science enlightened by a poets eyes. She treats myths, dicta and taboos to show how German politics thwart refugee integration. Rostom thus touches the German psyches most sensitive cultural components. This study adds a new blade to that Swiss army knife genre of literary or creative nonfiction. The problem was the books dual audience. She needed within one book to teach Syrians to understand Germans and Germans to understand Syrians. Her novel solution was to put the writer into the picture, a character reacting bi-culturally to the facts her text presents, thus teaching her book from within the book itself. This "teddytext" holds two built-in teachers, one eastern, one western. It's ideal for pandemic remote learning. Rostom dramatizes the Syrians salvation in highly instructive ways. Creative nonfiction gains its compelling quality by drawing readers in emotionally, giving them a sense of taking part. This is especially useful where one has a textbook but no class or teacher. To encourage Germans and Syrians to read a foreign-language text, she adds further interest with a wit thats wry and dry. Rostom's underground notes look up, not down, reflecting a refugees' perspective to illuminate control mechanisms that mainly operate invisibly through taboo-enforced dicta and stigmas. Rostom also treats extensively deep structural forces now preventing full integration of Ossis themselves, much less refugees. This adds cultural criticism to a lively text, which also analyzes social and political techniques easterners use to prevent integration. First comes a historical overview, then a literature review forms an original comprehensive analysis of the situation. Third, is a treatment of integration both as measured by authorities and as lived reality. To comprehend this collective action, Rostom supplies a novel working vocabulary. Fourth is synthesis. Here, for the first time and from all walks of life, refugees speak out freely and extensively to help Rostom tell their stories and the integrative lessons they provide. Not just for refugees, volunteers will find this work enlightening. Social scientists will find a solid study of cooperative governance, and a Tocquevillean feel for current German society's deepest structural fault lines. The book shows why this integration is succeeding, a matter of interest to all. Once read, it doesn't easily unread, which for any text is the gold standard. Jon Alexander, Professor Emeritus, Political Science, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada.