Page - 135 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Volume 2/2016

Mobile World Passau A municipality in Lower Bavaria faces migration Extended Abstract Christine Egger “Moments that change an entire continent are not very frequent. This is one such.” (Blume 2016, 2) This was to be read in Die Zeit in September 2016. The German weekly was discussing the events that had led to about 800,000 refugees – especially from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq – coming to Germany one year before. The first trains carrying refugees arrived from Buda- pest and Vienna in Munich on 4 September 2015 and were met with large public sympathy. Many more would follow, posing major challenges to the Bavarian capital. However, Chancel- lor Angela Merkel was sure that “We can manage, and where is something in the way, we have to overcome it” (Die Bundesregierung 2015). In the political and journalistic excitement about refugees, migration and asylum, in Ger- many since then, one story has gained little attention: the story of Passau, the “German Lam- pedusa” (Coen and Sußebach 2015). Since the reintroduction of checks on the Austrian border by German police on 13 September 2015, most refugees stopped arriving in Munich after two weeks. Their new entry point was now the charming town at the end of the “Balkan Route”. Arriving in Passau during the winter of 2015 along with the 3,300 new university students were up to 10,000 refugees – women, men and children. Many stayed in the region or returned later. In summer 2016, it was estimated that around 1,500 migrants from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq were living in Passau and its surroundings. Since then it has been possible to observe in Lower Bavaria what the anthropologist Ulf Hannerz and others observed especially in major Western cities such as New York or London in the early-1990s: the city is a place where all kinds of people meet. However, recent flight and migration movements have caused small and medium-sized German cities – where over half of the population lives – to become important nodes and interfaces. This was true espe- cially for Passau, with its approximately 50,000 inhabitants, its geopolitical and socio-cultural significance as a border town and regional center, as well as its specific habit as a “middletown” (Schmidt-Lauber). Since September 2015, everyday life in the middletown of Passau has been negotiated in a way similar to life in the big cities of the future. Passau has experienced large refugee and migration movements before: especially after 1945, but also during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, after the construction of the Berlin Wall, at the end of the GDR and with the arrival of Russian Germans in the 1990s. However with the Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal, Vol. 2 2016, 135-136 Editor reviewed article Open Access: content is licensed under CC BY 3.0