The Construction of national identity in Germany: "Migration Background" as a political and scientific category

Migration has far-reaching effects on the construction of national identity. It can lead to established concepts of national identity and societal affiliation being questioned. In this working paper, it will be demonstrated on the basis of the contemporary German situation that the recognition of Germany as an immigration society does not come along with an overall recognition of migrants as equal members of society. Indeed it is still not sufficient to possess German citizenship to be accepted as a full member of society. It can be proven, that the distinction between "ordinary Germans" and "Germans with migration background" plays an important role in designating allegedly different elements of society. The paper discusses how the social sciences are involved in the process, which makes this differentiation appear plausible and acceptable. Keywords: Germany, immigration, construction of a national identity, societal affiliation discrimination, social and scientific categories

Realizing a Global Survey of Emigrants through Facebook and Instagram

Research on international migrants has seen a sharp increase during the last decades, yet sampling them remains a major challenge, especially in a cross-national setting and on a global scale. While various sampling methods are established in the field, most of them cannot easily be implemented globally due to their dependence on specific administrative or infrastructure elements or simply their costs. Since Social Networking Sites (SNS) operate on a global scale, they provide a sampling frame that can be utilized for the targeted recruitment of migrants worldwide. Increasingly used for research purposes and among the largest and most popular SNSs are Facebook and Instagram. In our project GEOOS (German Emigrants Overseas Online Survey), we utilize paid advertisements on these networks to target German emigrants, particularly Germans living outside of Europe. Our research aims to ascertain whether such ads could be used to recruit a nonprobability (migrant) sample on a global scale. More specifically, we are interested in the success of this approach concerning three performance indicators: Cost efficiency, coverage, and sample size. Our advertisement campaign ran for 18 days and resulted in total costs of about 2,223 Euro. This investment led a total of 3,895 individuals to complete the survey; of those, 98 percent belonged to the target population, meaning they were (a) either born in Germany or held German citizenship and (b) did not live in Germany. GEOOS participants lived in a total of 148 countries and territories around the globe. Similar to findings reported in previous studies on this target population, the largest sub-groups resided in predominantly Anglo-phone countries; however, taken together, participants in these countries only constitute 38 percent of our overall sample, with nearly a quarter of GEOOS participants (n = 867) living in Middle and South America, 862 residing in Asian countries, and 476 in Africa. Furthermore, a considerable share of our sample is constituted by individuals who would either not have been included in a sampling frame based on German population registers or who would have been unlikely to be reached through this method due to incomplete or outdated information.

The Construction of national identity in Germany: "Migration Background" as a political and scientific category

Migration has far-reaching effects on the construction of national identity. It can lead to established concepts of national identity and societal affiliation being questioned. In this working paper, it will be demonstrated on the basis of the contemporary German situation that the recognition of Germany as an immigration society does not come along with an overall recognition of migrants as equal members of society. Indeed it is still not sufficient to possess German citizenship to be accepted as a full member of society. It can be proven, that the distinction between "ordinary Germans" and "Germans with migration background" plays an important role in designating allegedly different elements of society. The paper discusses how the social sciences are involved in the process, which makes this differentiation appear plausible and acceptable. Keywords: Germany, immigration, construction of a national identity, societal affiliation discrimination, social and scientific categories

Staatsangehörigkeitsrechtliche Maßnahmen im Rahmen der Terrorismus- und Extremismusbekämpfung

The deprivation of citizenship as a counter-terrorist measure has been implemented by other countries for several years, whereas security-related amendments to the German law of nationality have only recently been discussed. The so called „Third Amendment to the German citizenship law“ introduced a legal means for depriving a person‘s citizenship based on security-related grounds. This book addresses this topical issue and examines whether citizenship law is a suitable area for counter-terrorist and counter-extremist measures.

José F. A. Oliver zwischen Politik und Literatur: von Häusern, Müttern und Muttersprachen

José F. A. Oliver between Politics and Literature: of Houses, Mothers and Mother Tongues. Born in the Black Forest to Andalusian parents, the poet José F. A. Oliver has developed in recent decades a complex oeuvre in which multiple languages (German, Spanish, Alemannic and Andalusian) and plural kinships play a chief role. The present paper analyses the prose works of José F. A. Oliver as a fragmentary “language memoir” (Kaplan/Kramsch) while at the same time trying to reconstruct his nomadic identity between and across regions and languages. Special attention will be paid to José F. A. Oliver’s use of the metaphors of multiple mothers and the two-storey house when referring to his own multilingual upbringing and literary habitus. In stark contrast to conceptual models of monolingualism which posit the mother tongue as the unique and irreplaceable buttress of national loyalties and literary creativity, José F. A. Oliver’s work pleads for an alternative affective relationship to a multiplicity of mother tongues (in plural). In so doing, the present paper underscores the political dimension of José F. A. Oliver’s metaphors for multilingualism. His alternative vision allowing the peaceful coexistence of multiple affective loci expressed in very different mother tongues questions the rigid exclusivity of German citizenship politics while simultaneously bringing to light the emancipatory and democratic potential of transregional and multilingual (e.g. Black Forest – Andalusia / Alemannic – Andalusian) identities beyond a national monolingual rationale.

Closing a Backdoor to Dual Citizenship: The German Citizenship Law Reform of 2000 and the Abolishment of the “Domestic Clause”

The German citizenship law underwent a paradigmatic amendment in 2000. One often overlooked change of this reform was the abolishment of the domestic clause (“Inlandsklausel”) that implied a substantial restriction to de facto dual citizenship acceptance. Combining data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (waves 1993–2006) with original data on origin country policies on dual citizenship and citizenship reacquisition, we analyse the impact of the abolishment of the domestic clause on naturalization rates. We apply a difference-in-difference design to investigate the causal impact of this element of the reform which has remained under-studied. We do not find an impact of the abolishment of the domestic clause on naturalization rates, neither among the general migrant population, nor among Turkish migrants who are alleged to be targeted specifically by this reform. These results suggest that a more restrictive approach to dual citizenship did not dissuade migrants from acquiring German citizenship after 2000.

Young ethnic German late resettlers from Poland –“(quasi)-forced nature of migration” vs. success of integration

“(Late) resettlers”, or to put it in simple terms, people of German ancestry who came to Germany from Eastern Europe after World War II, constitute a peculiar case within the spectrum of German migration. On one hand, they are distinct from foreigners, on the other hand, despite having German citizenship, they stand out from the native German population.L. Wilkiewicz refers to this category as “quasi-forced resettlers”. The forced nature of the young resettlers migration may then be seen as doubly strengthened by the fact that they had no impact on their parents decision to leave the country. They were, in a sort of way, uprooted from their original environment and planted into a new, alien one. Having accepted German citizenship and having been attributed the purpose of “living as Germans among Germans”, the resettlers were expected to show a higher degree of integration with local society than “ordinary” migrants. In this study, I shall confine myself to a few selected aspects affecting the success of integration. Presented below are some of the memories that the young resettlers have of the moment of their “(quasi)-forced” migration, of their early days in Germany, of Poland as the country of their childhood, of the reasons for departure as given by their parents, and of the main factors – apart from those personality-related such as intelligence –that contributed to their successful integration.