German-Polish Migration: The Elusive Search for a German Nation-State

1992 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 373-387 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter O'Brien
Keyword(s):  
German History ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
German State ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
German Nation ◽  
Migration Crisis ◽  
The Many ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Nation State Formation

This article examines past and present migrations to Germany from the perspective of nation-state formation. Much of modern German history has been characterized by repeated (and failed) attempts to establish and sustain a strong, independent nation-state like France or Britain. But each attempt, including the recent reunification, has forced Germany to absorb large numbers of non-Germans either as a result of 1) expanding borders and annexations and/or 2) the appeal and labor needs of a robust economy. Focusing on the many experiences with the Polish minority (ranging from the eighteenth century to the present), this essay suggests that Germans have never discovered an acceptable and workable approach for dealing with large non-German minorities in the German nation-state. Rather, different regimes at different times have vacillated between an exclusive approach founded on nationalist principles and practices and an inclusive one founded on liberal principles and practices. In the current migration crisis, brought on by the raising of the Iron Curtain, both approaches, despite the contradictions between them, are being employed to determine who should and should not be permitted to immigrate to the “new” Germany. The confusion over the two approaches produces not only a confused immigration policy, but also reflects deep-seated confusion over the definition of the new German state and identity of the newly united German nation.

scholarly journals Channeling Janus: The Birth of the West German State and Rebirth of the German Nation

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack Jacovou
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Direct Consequence ◽  
German History ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Extremism ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
German State ◽  
Basic Law ◽  
German Nation

CESAA Essay Competition 2018 – Undergraduate winner: Jack JacovouThis essay will submit three arguments which will sustain this thesis respectively: 1) the incorporation of expellees, the expellee movement, and their irredentism which romanticised the Nazi period, saw a form political extremism rise as a direct consequence of the breakup of Germany after World War II (WWII)1; 2) the decline of the German Communist Party (KPD) and National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) reflected Germans becoming critical of the political extremism prevalent between the 1919 until 19452; 3) influenced by both the War and German history wholistically, the Allies and Germans crafted a Basic Law (Grundgesetz) which embodied a strong parliamentary and federal system.3 With all this in mind, the first argument to highlight how Germany drew upon its history to craft new political institutions and a new culture, is the incorporation of the expellees and their irredentism.

scholarly journals The Plasticity of Our Fears: Affective Politics in the European Migration Crisis

Society ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Volker M. Heins
Keyword(s):  
Critical Variable ◽  
Albert Hirschman ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The World ◽  
German Sociologist ◽  
Migration Crisis ◽  
Immigration And Asylum ◽  
The Many ◽  
Migration Politics ◽  
European Migration

AbstractIn the field of migration politics, a dominant rhetoric argues that liberal immigration and asylum policies must be avoided because they will inevitably lead to anti-immigration backlashes that exacerbate the very conditions they were supposed to remedy. Drawing on the work of German sociologist Heinrich Popitz and empirical data on the aftereffects of the European migration crisis, the article criticizes this “rhetoric of reaction” (Albert Hirschman) for ignoring the many variables shaping the consequences of more open borders. Backlashes to immigration are real and pose a constraint for liberal immigration policies, but these backlashes are not necessarily politically successful. Societies react neither uniformly nor automatically to rising immigration. A critical variable is the fear engendered by the (real, expected, or imagined) arrival of large numbers of migrants, and this fear can be either ramped up to paranoid levels or calmed by a politics of hope aimed at restoring what Popitz called the “human openness to the world.”

Gender Politics in the Berlin Republic: Four Issues of Identity and Institutional Change

2010 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 189-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Myra Marx Ferree
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Change ◽  
National Policy ◽  
Economic Restructuring ◽  
German State ◽  
Representation Of Women ◽  
The Past ◽  
German Nation ◽  
The Face ◽  
Berlin Republic ◽  
Definition Of

This article traces four contested identity claims that carry gender meanings into politics and express the gendered tensions awakened along specific dimensions of institutional change across the past twenty years. The cultural definition of the German nation in the face of immigration, the integration of the German state in a transnational project of making a single Europe, the economic restructuring of unification and its effects on the resources and opportunities available on each side of the former wall, and political changes in the representation of women in state offices, by parties and in national policy-making all reflect continuing struggles over the institutionalized boundaries of inclusion and exclusion as a nation, an imagined community. All of these processes engage passionate feelings about gender relations and have implications for the ordinary lives of women and men as citizens and family members in the new Berlin Republic.

In and Out of the Ostmark Migration, Settlement, and Demographics in Poznania, 1871–1918

Itinerario ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-86
Author(s):  
Drummond Elizabeth A.
Keyword(s):  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
German History ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
Local Conditions ◽  
German Empire ◽  
German Nation ◽  
Global Presence ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dominant Narratives

Historians have often viewed the history of the German empire with Berlin firmly in the centre of the lens, thus privileging the nation-state to the neglect of both the local and the transnational. Zooming out to include transnational processes such as migration and to globalise German history enables us to complicate the dominant narratives of the German nation-state. The movements of Germans overseas—whether as migrants, missionaries, or merchants—helped to forge a global presence for the German empire, but also entailed complex negotiations both among Germans and between Germans and their various “others,” thus revealing the ways in which German nationalist and colonial discourses and practices adapted to local conditions. While the German empire sought to establish itself as a colonial power abroad only in the late nineteenth century, Prussia-Germany was already a colonial power at home, in its eastern provinces. Zooming back in from the global to the local, and refocusing from Berlin to the borderlands, further complicates our understandings of the German empire, by revealing the ways in which local conditions in the eastern borderlands, themselves influenced by transnational phenomena such as international migration, informed the development of German nationalism there. Most notably, the demographics of the Prussian eastern provinces—and the movements of Jews, Germans, Poles, and Ruthenians/Ukrainians in and out of the region—required German nationalists to integrate greater flexibility into their discourse.

Religious Narrative

2013 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 3-9
Author(s):  
Armin Geertz
Keyword(s):  
Special Issue ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Religious Narrative ◽  
The Many ◽  
Definition Of

This introduction to the special issue on narrative discusses various ways of approaching religious narrative. It looks at various evolutionary hypotheses and distinguishes between three fundamental aspects of narrative: 1. the neurobiological, psychological, social and cultural mechanisms and processes, 2. the many media and methods used in human communication, and 3. the variety of expressive genres. The introduction ends with a definition of narrative.

scholarly journals Has the Credibility of the Social Sciences Been Credibly Destroyed? Reanalyzing the “Many Analysts, One Data Set” Project

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 237802312110244
Author(s):  
Katrin Auspurg ◽  
Josef Brüderl
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Causal Reasoning ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Skin Tone ◽  
Data Set ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Many ◽  
Definition Of

In 2018, Silberzahn, Uhlmann, Nosek, and colleagues published an article in which 29 teams analyzed the same research question with the same data: Are soccer referees more likely to give red cards to players with dark skin tone than light skin tone? The results obtained by the teams differed extensively. Many concluded from this widely noted exercise that the social sciences are not rigorous enough to provide definitive answers. In this article, we investigate why results diverged so much. We argue that the main reason was an unclear research question: Teams differed in their interpretation of the research question and therefore used diverse research designs and model specifications. We show by reanalyzing the data that with a clear research question, a precise definition of the parameter of interest, and theory-guided causal reasoning, results vary only within a narrow range. The broad conclusion of our reanalysis is that social science research needs to be more precise in its “estimands” to become credible.

scholarly journals Reactivity in social scientific experiments: what is it and how is it different (and worse) than a Placebo effect?

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
María Jiménez-Buedo
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Data ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Placebo Effect ◽  
Placebo Effects ◽  
Causal Inferences ◽  
Scientific Experiments ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
The Many ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
In Virtue Of

AbstractReactivity, or the phenomenon by which subjects tend to modify their behavior in virtue of their being studied upon, is often cited as one of the most important difficulties involved in social scientific experiments, and yet, there is to date a persistent conceptual muddle when dealing with the many dimensions of reactivity. This paper offers a conceptual framework for reactivity that draws on an interventionist approach to causality. The framework allows us to offer an unambiguous definition of reactivity and distinguishes it from placebo effects. Further, it allows us to distinguish between benign and malignant forms of the phenomenon, depending on whether reactivity constitutes a danger to the validity of the causal inferences drawn from experimental data.

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