The Nexus of Political Violence and Economic Deprivation: Pakistani Migrants Disrupt the Refugee / Migrant Dichotomy

Abstract

There have been discussions about how the labels “forced migrants,” related to political violence, and “voluntary migrants,” associated with economic factors, cannot be understood in categorical ways. However, there has been less focus on the specificities of the asylum-migrant nexus from the perspective of migrants. This essay discusses how such factors intersect as understood by Pakistani migrants residing in Germany. Through enacting a critical view of Pakistan, the migrants demonstrate how aspects of corruption, economic deprivation, and political violence come to intersect so that is becomes impossible to classify asylum seekers in binary/dichotomous ways.