Infrastructure epistemologies: Water, wastewater and displaced persons in Germany

Recent years have seen historically unprecedented global disaster migration; in 2016 Germany received 1.3 million displaced individuals. Regardless of past resources and future potential, disaster migrants are a new, vulnerable population. This new population increases demand for water and wastewater infrastructure services, despite being temporarily unable to pay for services. As such, this kind of sudden population increase is a resiliency challenge for the receiving infrastructure systems. Qualitative analysis of 1,884 open-ended survey responses was blended with a statistical analysis to discover how and why the German public perceives water and sanitation services have been provided to the disaster migrants. Unprompted, 36% (112/314) of respondents referenced at least one of three infrastructure epistemologies, including water and wastewater as a service, as a basic need, and as a human right. These epistemologies share statistically significant relationships with how long respondents feel water and wastewater should be provided to displaced persons. A temporally limited, normative perception of water and sanitation as a humanitarian good functions to enable water and wastewater infrastructure to deliver a high level of service despite the significant disruption of the large and vulnerable population influx, and has practical implications for the structure of cost recovery.