Pathways of Migrant Incorporation in Germany (original) (raw)
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Germany has the highest number of immigrants in Europe. Changes in immigration and citizenship laws have intended to make Germany an attractive destination for skilled immigrant workers. The accentuated focus on the economic efficiency of migration, however, leaves open the question of how Germany's national identity is living up to the immigrant situation. Based on face-to-face, in-depth, semi-structured interviews (N=45), this question is probed through the eyes of first and second generation immigrants in southwest Germany. Perceptions of social and affective integration, group identifications and possibilities of de-differentiating native-immigrant distinctions are studied in detail. While a few respondents mention instances of personal discrimination and most are at ease with their life in Germany, even fewer see themselves as German without further qualification. Even though there are hints of a partial disintegration of the fault lines between immigrants' self and what they perceive as " German " , their answers provide little indication of an emergence of a new inclusive narrative of Germaneness. Germany's national identity still needs to broaden its understandings of " what it means to be a German " .
Digesting Difference: Migrants, Refugees, and Incorporation in Europe
McKowen, Kelly and John Borneman. 2020. “Digesting Difference: Migrants, Refugees, and Incorporation in Europe.” In Digesting Difference: Migrant Incorporation and Mutual Belonging in Europe, edited by Kelly McKowen and John Borneman, 1-27. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan., 2020
McKowen, Kelly and John Borneman. 2020. “Digesting Difference: Migrants, Refugees, and Incorporation in Europe.” In Digesting Difference: Migrant Incorporation and Mutual Belonging in Europe, edited by Kelly McKowen and John Borneman, 1-27. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. This Introduction argues that the most critical issue posed by migration in Europe is the effect of sociocultural difference on the maintenance and emergence of social bodies. This issue is typically glossed in political and public discourse as integration, though we show that this “thin” concept is plagued by various limitations. We propose instead a “thick” concept of incorporation, which grounds a theoretical framework that focuses on two critical processes. The first is the incorporation—or digestion—of sociocultural difference itself in diverse European societies. The second is the incorporation—or constitution—of new social bodies and their associated senses of mutual belonging and identification. We argue that processes of incorporation are remaking Europe, its people, and the communities in which they live and interact.
Africans, Immigrants and the question of Identity in Germany
2000
In this paper, I seek to discuss my notion that the issue of identity is closely related to the deeply entrenched xenophobic approach to people of colour which has always been prevalent in Germany. For, how are people supposed to integrate culturally when they cannot move professionally, economically or even geographically? Just over 50 years ago, the US supreme court banished the "separate but equal" policies that segregated state schools here; it seems Germany is embracing a dogmatic version of its antithesis -"united but unequal". There are not many opportunities for people of colour and immigrants to fully integrate into the culture and the economy. Those who try to protect their children by making them aware of their dual origins are said to fail to get themselves integrated into the society. But what is happening is that this new generation rejected by the country they call home need a sense of identity; a sense of belonging. This paper centres on this is argument. I intend to make use of books like Zwischen Charleston und Stechschritt: Schwarze im Nationalsozialismus (Martin, Peter and Christine Alonzo, eds., 2004), TheBlackBook, 2005) among others.
Becoming German: Integrationism, Citizenship and Territorialization of Germanness
Geoforum, 2020
Seeking to contribute to recent research on integrationism and its country-specific modalities, this article provides a spatial analysis of transformations of the institutional, legal and discursive landscape of state-migrant relations in Germany over the past few decades. Conceptually, it brings geographic focus on territory and the territorial into the analysis of state and population relations. Empirically, it traces changing understanding of integration and Germanness, stressing in the first place how the ascendance of integrationism since the turn of the century superseded the previous regime of completely bifurcated policies for immigrants of German descent versus for those without it. This supersession has conceptually centered the German state's acknowledgment of the foundational importance of one's actual experience of moving across the territorial border. The paper also examines the changing positionality and conception of integration policies and state-sanctioned discursive renditions of Germanness over time. Finally, bringing transformation of formal citizenship legislation in Germany into the analysis, the paper stresses the recent centrality of the expansion of the principle of ius domicile and the emergence of the statutory right to naturalization. I argue that such transformations integral to the integrationist era signal first and foremost the territorialization of belonging and citizenship in Germany. The paper concludes by reflecting on the potentials and limits of such territorialization within the context of broader neoliberalization of citizenship as well as on the assessments that integrationism has re-nationalized citizenship. 2
Strangers like us. Germans in the search for a new identity, 2020
The decision to leave the borders open, the influx of more than one million people to Germany and the resulting migration crisis in late 2015 and early 2016 were formative experiences for the current political class in Germany and have exacerbated the country’s social and political crisis. The latent, protracted dispute about the character of Germany as a migration state resurfaced with renewed force and will divide the German public for many years to come, since Germans’ sense of national identity lies at the centre of the dispute. German decision makers already know that one of the key consequences of the migration crisis is that they need to make the entire German public realise that Germany has irrevocably become a migration state. A debate is still ongoing about what particular form the German version of such a state should assume and how citizenship should be defined. The divisions in this dispute run across the political divide and different social strata, both within the electorate and among politicians. The only common view seems to be that migration and integration constitute a challenge to maintaining the status quo, which has been relatively favourable for Germany and its people. The realisation is now dawning that the integration of migrants will only be successful if Germans have no complexes when approaching their national identity, because it is not possible to integrate with a nation that constantly questions it.
2003, 2003
The article explores the increasing gap between the cultural dynamics of transnationalisation in Germany and the national self-perception of the German society. While concepts of "in-migration" (Zuwanderung) and "integration" still stick to notions of the nation-state as being a "container" embracing and controlling a population and a culture of its own, the various processes of material and imaginary mobility across the national borders contradict and challenge this notion as well as its political implications. By drawing on the transnational lifeworlds and the cultural productivity of migrants, anthropological research has made important contributions to render visible this challenge. It is argued, however, that an all too exclusive focus on migration may, in fact, rather conceal the wider effects of transnationalisation and cultural globalisation on the society and its cultural fabric as a whole.
Aigne Journal, 2011
What is identity really? What gives a person identity? Is it birthplace, colour, gender or legal papers that prove who a person is? Can identity be acquired by integration? These are some of the questions that this paper seeks to answer in the context of African immigrants in Germany. It is also important to note that most of the immigrants have a lot of unanswered questions in relation to identity. This paper is motivated by the conditions of Afro-Germans who have learnt to live with the following questions: 1) "Where do you come from or Woher kommen Sie?" 2) "When are you going back to Africa or Wann werden Sie zuruck zu Ihrem Land?" These two questions will guide this paper in its reflection on the identity crises of African immigrants in Germany. Empirical data was gathered through random and unstructured interviews with thirteen Afro-Germans in Bayern. The paper also makes use of secondary literature obtained from newspapers, published journals and academic texts that deal with immigrants.