One of the initiators of The Voice is Osaren Igbinoba, who fled from Nigeria to Germany in the early 1990s. Initially, he was housed in a reception centre in Mühlhausen, formerly Russian barracks.^* As a former political human rights activist, the social isolation and inability to take political action affected him so much that he began to campaign for the rights of refugees in East Germany.

In October 1994, he founded The Voice Africa Forum with three other men from Nigeria and Liberia. Together, they tried to make people in refugee shelters in Thuringia aware of their situation and to motivate them to join forces to enact change.^* Their commitment did not come out of the blue - after all, they themselves had been persecuted in their countries for campaigning for human rights and democratic participation there.

Osaren Igbinoba's commitment repeatedly aroused social and media interest.

Contrary to what the Thüringische Landeszeitung reported on 1 May 1997, Igbinoba did not remain a „guest Jenaer“ or „temporary Jenaer“, but became a long-time local political activist. He continuously drew attention to the rights of migrants and the connection between displacement and (post-)colonial relations of exploitation.

Local newspaper coverage in the early 1990s makes it clear that Osaren Igbinoba was an active and politically active person. He also criticised the fact that many Germans were more interested in the culture of his country of origin than in the country‘s political situation.

Nigeria was subject to a military dictatorship until the end of the 1990s, which could mean imprisonment, torture and death for human rights activists. To protect people who had fled to Germany from the political regime there, he and other migrant activists campaigned against deportations and a restrictive asylum law: 

The Voice's multifaceted commitment was repeatedly supported by other initiatives, associations and organisations. In the 1990s, the Junge Gemeinde Stadtmitte (Young Community), members of the trade unions, the Foreigners' Advisory Council (as it was called at the time), the Foreigners' Commissioner and the Refugee Council, among others, actively campaigned for the rights of migrants and took a stand against racism and right-wing violence. But also people who were involved in the welfare associations or in social work tried to improve the concrete living conditions of migrants.

One of the issues that The Voice, together with other activists, brought to the media in order to generate social pressure and thus contribute to changing the situation, which was seen as problematic, was the accommodation in the reception centre in the forest, which had been the subject of fierce struggle in Jena since 1992.

The activists criticised the living conditions and the social and political isolation of the people housed there. The Voice also supported and participated in a boycott and strike actions. For example, in August 1997, some asylum seekers in the forest went on hunger strike and drew up a list of demands. In a resolution they published during the hunger strike, the activists expressed their desperation. Some had already been driven to madness and suicide by the hopelessness.

In addition to criticising the asylum system, which criminalised people who had to flee, they made basic demands. Among other things, they demanded a bus connection between the forest and the city centre as well as improvements in hygienic conditions. The desire to cook for themselves - and thus live out existential human needs - was also part of their demands.

In 1998, The Voice also participated in the Refugee Caravan, which was organised by a nationwide network of activists and subsequently travelled through 44 German cities to draw attention to the rights of migrants and refugees.

A major supra-regional campaign by The Voice took place in 2000: As part of another caravan, The Voice invited refugees and activists from all over the world to a congress at Jena University. It was the first meeting of its kind in Germany.^*

For those asylum seekers who wanted to travel from other places in Germany, this was associated with the risk of imprisonment due to the so-called Residenzpflicht (residential obligation), which was politically extremely controversial. This prohibited asylum seekers from moving beyond a predefined radius from the place where they were accommodated.

Like The Voice, the Integration Advisory Council - led by founding member and later chairperson Rea Mauersberger - was a city actor that brought the migrant perspective into city politics. While The Voice tried to build up social pressure and undertook political lobbying mainly through campaigning and public relations work, the aim of the integration advisory board was and is to help shape city politics in Jena.

The history of the integration advisory board is therefore a second example of the self-organisation of migrant interests in the early 1990s in Jena. Its history illustrates the social challenges migrants have been confronted with in the last thirty years, the reservations against which they tried to organise themselves politically and who supported them.

The establishment of a municipal foreigners' advisory council - the contemporary term - was initiated by several actors from 1991 at the latest. First, a working group „Foreigners in Jena“ was set up. Initially, it was not possible to establish a separate municipal advisory board within the city administration.

Margot Eulenstein, the Commissioner for Foreigners at the time, explained this in an interview as follows^* :

On 17 November 1992, the Commissioner for Foreigners was able to invite all „foreigners“ living in Jena to a founding meeting of a joint working group. It took place in the trade union building on Johannisplatz.

Margot Eulenstein enclosed a draft of possible tasks and structures of the working group with the invitation to the founding meeting. She also pointed out that „nobody had to go home in the dark“ – a sign that migrants had to pass through places they perceived as fear zones when crossing the city in the early nineties.

On 20 November 1992, the Thüringische Landeszeitung reported that 37 women and men had elected a seven-member executive committee for the working group at the founding event.^* The working group was supported, amongst others, by representatives of welfare organisations, the German Federation of Trade Unions (DGB) and the Commissioner for Foreigners.

When the working group was founded in November 1992, Mayor Dietmar Haroske signalled his willingness to set up an advisory board. However, it was to continue to include the Commissioner for Foreigners and representatives from the housing support, social, education and culture departments. Thus, the advisory board did not represent exclusively migrant interests.

However, migrants in the city wanted to establish their own advisory board in order to exert influence on city politics. They therefore looked for a way to establish an advisory body to the city administration. To this end, they contacted the Integration Advisory Council of the twin city of Erlangen and had its members advise them on the drafting of an association statute.^*

Rea Mauersberger, who is still active in the Integration Advisory Board, describes her work for the board as „politically hard work“.^* She herself had already been active as a political speaker in Brazil and was already familiar with the issue of racism at that time - especially from a colonial perspective. She gained contact to other politically active people through the university and the Latin American community there, which in turn already existed in Jena during GDR times.

It was not until 1994 that a „foreigners' advisory council“ was approved in Jena by the city council.^* In a meeting in January 1994, the SPD parliamentary group introduced a draft resolution for the constitution of such an advisory council.

The majority of the parliamentarians were in favour of the bill. However, there was also a minority who did not agree. According to the minutes of the meeting, one councilor described the proposal as „extremely inappropriate, since it concerns only 1% of Jena's citizens. Thus, other minorities could also appear and demand similar advisory councils. Furthermore, the bill does not define what is meant by foreigners.“^* The city councilor felt it was „coercion that the statute asks us to pass the implementation of 6 meetings per year.“^*

Councilor Christoph Boock (Free List parliamentary group) even expressed „astonishment that attempts are repeatedly made to install bogus institutions that are supposed to enforce rights of minorities in political bodies. Based on the current laws, there is no reason to integrate such institutions in the city parliament or in the city administration.“^*

Other parliamentarians sharply criticised the debate. Günter Graupe of the SPD, for example, was „shocked by the previous discussions. The group of foreigners in our city asks that they can come to us with their problems and interests. That one denies such a thing is incomprehensible.“^*

At the end, the mayor at the time, Peter Röhlinger, pointed out „the city of Jena has to give a political signal at this time. The city of Jena is striving for partnerships, for international relations, which are vital. Narrow-minded behaviour is out of place here.“^* Röhlinger (FDP) thus also brought the aspect of a city image policy and related economic policy aspects into the debates.

While the Ministry for State Security was already observing „fascist“ slogans in public spaces and right-wing skinheads in Jena in the 1980s, right-wing violence and the propagation of right-wing ideologies became publicly visible at the beginning of the 1990s. As a social problem, however, these ideologies only now became open to public discussion.

Racist attacks and hostilities were thus also part of the news in local and regional, but also nationwide media coverage from 1990 onwards. From the mid-1990s onwards, the city could hardly resist integrating migrant interests without damaging its image.