No one can be born twice.

Why and how does the eighteenth birthday make such a huge difference in the lives of migrants in Germany? What happens if Black German children do not receive a birth certificate? And how do these existential issues and contemporary inequalities hang together with colonial and racist structures of power?

On this website, we present the unaltered stories, interpretations and visions from refugees in their original spoken and written form. We collected and analyzed them in our collaborative work as refugee activists and citizen anthropologists. Our goal is to challenge age determinations and the denial of birth certificates: No one can be born twice!
A group of protestors holding two large banners.

“Give us our age back - and give us our lives!”

Refugees and migrants who reach EUrope and Germany today face a complicated system of classifications. One of them divides migrants into “unaccompanied minors” and “adult asylum seekers”. This classification - carried out in age estimations by means of interviews and medical tests - has multiple harsh consequences for people arriving in EUrope/Germany. This is why the activists of Together we are Bremen resist and why we developed visions for a future beyond racist classifications that divide human lives.

Key themes:

A group of protestors demonstrating in a town square, pushing around strollers as protest symbols strollers

“The denial of birth certificates is a denial of belonging.”

Over the past years, Bremen's Standesamt denied Birth Certificates to over 200 Black German children. As a consequence, basic human rights and living conditions were denied to the kids and their mothers. So, the mothers started fighting for their and their babies' rights and lives.

Key themes:

The website is divided into two topical parts - Age Estimations and Birth Certificate Denial. Both parts are organized in subsections, which follow specific themes that we identified in our joint discussions during several workshops. In each of these subsections, the website features original quotes from our research through which the research participants provide sharp analyses of the situation they face. Clicking on these short quotes, you will find longer versions and the original audio, which provides more context and depth. To protect the identity of our interviewees, we anonymized all references to them. The website also features original films by Anne Frisius (cooperativa-film.de). Many of the pictures shared on this website are hers, too.
Team members posing in front of bulleting boards with note cards and writing posted to them.

Our mission.

This website evolved out of a collaborative research project by refugee activists from Together We Are Bremen and anthropologists from the University of Bayreuth.

Chevron arrow facing upward.