bureaucracy

December 18, 2015 1

Lens: Four Hours at Lageso

This is Lageso (Das Landesamt für Gesundheit und Soziales), the State Office for Health and Social Affairs. This is Berlin's primary registration center for the initial reception of asylum seekers. This is Germany's most infamous symbol of the refugee crisis. Two days prior I had signed up to volunteer on a website called Volunteer Planner. After a cursory registration process, a click of a button was all it took to commit to a shift at a registration center, refugee home, or other institution in the city where help is needed (read: basically everywhere). [Read More!]

May 10, 2014 1

Review: Seeing Berlin Through The Homeless

They wait for the subway doors to close before they address the car with a rehearsed speech. "Excuse the interruption, I am one of Berlin's annoying homeless people"... it usually begins, as they peddle newspapers and scan the crowd for an outstretched hand holding change or food. The majority of us keep our hands tucked away or firmly gripping our phones. Some of us fall into convenient bouts of exhaustion, promptly leaning back and closing our eyes. In this moment, we are restricted to a shared space... [Read More!]

November 20, 2013 2

Roma in Berlin: Bureaucracy in Lichtenberg

On the first Tuesday of every month, the Migrantenrat Lichtenberg (immigrants' plenary) meets to address issues of migration affecting the district and its neighborhoods. The gospel of November's session: The Roma are coming! 2014 will be a year of change for Roma in Berlin, primarily for those who have come from Bulgaria and Romania. They will have access to the social welfare system, the situation will change dramatically. But this is about families, not simply numbers... [Read More!]

May 22, 2013 3

Lens: Becoming Berlinerin at the Bürgeramt

Bureaucracy is there to keep the rules in check, to decide who can be a part of the stacks of paper and benefits that make up either citizenship or the ominous category of legal (or illegal) residency status. Oftentimes, the line between these two categories is arbitrary, not reflective of individuals but of rules and their guardians. This is my story in a two-part lens about how blood and ink can define who you are in a city, how, as a German citizen, a ruler was used to cleanly draw a line in my passport across my former American city of residence, replacing it with a German one... [Read More!]