Our tours are means of civic education in urban space.
They invite both Berliners and people visiting the city, both adults and young people aged 14 and above.
Stories of migration
Tours in Berlin
Berlin would be inconceivable without migration, without the diversity of identities and lifestyles. Our city tours are led by people who themselves have a history of migration. They invite you to change you rperspective: Which places facilitate the arrival in a foreign city? What does the situation in Görlitzer Park have to do with the European asylum system? And how is the Gendarmenmarkt connected to a culture of welcoming newcomers? Where do people who experienced (forced) migration make politics in the city today?
Our tours are about individual perceptions rather than typical sights. The tour guides present their own experiences and contrast images commonly associated to them by others with their own stories.
Our tours
offer biographical access to the topic of flight and migration,
open up new perspectives on Berlin,
create space for exchange and encounter,
and invite you to rethink stereotypes.
Anna’s tour shares the real-life tale of a sudden refugee from war in Ukraine. It unfolds the challenges and moments of hope encountered by those who had to leave their homes in search of a new one.
The tour, led by Yauheni, a Belarusian student activist in exile, provides insights from his immigration experience and addresses the political environment in Germany and Belarus.
Until 2015, Mohamad lived in Syrian Aleppo. Today, he traces the migration history of Neukölln together with participants, a district where he feels particularly at home.
Abuhanna’s tour takes you through Neukölln, where he has lived for seven years. Along the way, you’ll learn how his fresh start in Berlin has changed him and the ongoing challenges he still faces.
Neukölln, a district in Berlin, and Tehran, the capital of Iran, are both full of contradictions and difficult to understand. Salome’s tour invites you to explore the everyday life and interpretations of urban realities in these cities in order to gain a nuanced understanding of the lived realities and their significance.
Muhammed’s tour leads through Kreuzberg, which he, as an activist, freelance journalist, social worker and resident, knows like the back of his hand. Along the way, you will learn to what extent the upheavals of the European asylum system are becoming visible in this district and how old and new Berliners shape their neighbourhood together.
Jennifer Kamau´s tour follows the trail of the “Oranienplatz movement” through the vibrant Kreuzberg area. She talks about her involvement as a feminist within the protest movement against the asylum policies of that time and the impact these had on the lives of those affected.
Rasha is a city planner from Damaskus. On her tour along the subway line 6 the architecture alternates between stately buildings and social housing. She follows traces of escape and migration and puts them into the context with her autobiography.
In Iraq, Ahmed worked as an official in the city administration — until he had to flee the violence in 2015. On his tour he shows the most prominent places in the heart of Berlin and explains how they relate to global power relations and his own migration history.