Refugee Workers' Agency: Displaced Persons Shaping Relief and Rehabilitation Work in Postwar Austria and Germany

At the end of the Second World War, Allied-occupied Austria and Germany became places of transit for hundreds of thousands of displaced persons (DPs) and refugees, as well as sites of employment for various internationally composed teams of relief workers. Through its analysis of personal documents produced by both United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and Quaker relief workers, administrative correspondence by UNRRA and later the International Refugee Organization (IRO), organizational bulletins, as well as the diary of a DP, this paper shows how DPs themselves played an active part in the postwar rehabilitation of displaced people. Their duties within the camps and their close collaboration with non-DP relief workers highlight various forms of refugee agency. This paper further examines what UNRRA and the IRO gained through their collaboration with DPs, as well as to what extent DPs could themselves benefit from this. Despite the hierarchies embedded in the labour policies of UNRRA, the IRO and the Allied occupation forces, this paper demonstrates that focusing on refugee workers and the diverse ways in which they utilized their skills to administer relief measures and sustain camp life reveals the interrelation between refugee agency and the agency of non-DP relief workers.