Introduction: The Changing Politics and Policies of Migration in Germany

Abstract

Not only is Germany one of the principal destinations for immigration in Europe, but its policies and politics have also evolved substantially over the past half-century. This introduction argues that the time is now right to bring back the national perspective into the study of migration, but to do so from a cross-disciplinary perspective. The article provides a context for the contributions within this volume by setting out some key turning points in the development of this area, as well as pinpointing the contradictory nature of the challenges facing policy-makers.

If, in a moment of boredom, an enterprising member of the Twitterati were to invite nominations for the top 10 issues to have shaped Europe since 1945, there would be little doubt that immigration would feature near the top of that list. For immigration from former colonies, other European and Mediterranean countries as well as refugees from the world's trouble spots has profoundly, permanently and progressively transformed almost all European states.¹ That degree of transformation is all the more remarkable for the fact that, prior to 1945, Europe was largely a continent of emigration. Indeed, for several countries, including the UK, net emigration continued until well into the 1980s.

Even so, few countries in Europe have changed to the extent that Germany has. In 1950, both West and East Germany were still ethnically largely homogenous countries. Moreover, the partition of Germany in 1949 made an ethnically based definition of citizenship politically indispensable, at least in West Germany, which the 1913 Imperial Citizenship Law (Reichs- und Staatsangehörigkeitsgesetz), with its emphasis on the jus sanguinis tradition of ascription, conveniently provided.²

Compared to that starting point, Germany's demographic and political transformation has been nothing short of remarkable. At the end of 2014, there were 8.2 million non-nationals resident in Germany, and over 20 per cent of the population had a ‘migration background’ (Migrationshintergrund). Most large cities, such as Frankfurt or Stuttgart, are now ethnically and culturally diverse urban centres. Germany has thus become one of the world's principal destinations for immigration as well as Europe’s top destination for asylum seekers, especially in 2015.³ Indeed, today, few would deny that Germany is a de-facto country of immigration, marked by rich ethno-cultural diversity. Certainly, this process of transformation has been at times both controversial and hotly contested: witness the decades-long debate over whether Germany even was a ‘country of immigration’ (Einwanderungsland). In addition, there have been more recent polarised discussions about the challenges of integrating large numbers of refugees to Germany, as well as around Thilo Sarrazin's incendiary thesis Deutschland schafft sich ab, over the status of Islam as part of (or otherwise) German society.⁴ Yet successive German federal governments, especially since 1998, have also implicitly acknowledged this reality by virtue of the laws they have passed, which together represent a ‘paradigmatic’ change in the way the country thinks about migration and integration.⁵ Thus, German citizenship is now acquired through a mixture of jus sanguinis and jus soli, while dual citizenship, despite some persistent reservations, is no longer the political taboo it once was.⁶ The OECD has declared Germany to be among the countries in Europe with the fewest restrictions on highly skilled labour migration.⁷ Regular Islam summits and remarkably detailed and comprehensive national integration plans demonstrate how important the issue of migrant integration is for policy-makers.

This deep transformation of German society and politics merits closer scrutiny, and the purpose of this collection is to make a contribution to our understanding and interpretation of these changes. With 2015 marking the 60th anniversary of the first recruitment treaty (Anwerbevertrag) which in turn heralded the beginning of organised recruitment of labour to West Germany, the time to do so is undoubtedly right. But what is more, this collection is also timely from the perspective of the scholarly literature on migration to Europe, which has, broadly speaking, shown two key themes since the late 1980s. Initially, this literature was often focused around single country studies, which were moreover frequently historically based.⁸ These valuable studies helped to set the context and provide the foundations for the second, complementary trend, which has developed since 2000. This has witnessed the publication of a range of comparative sectoral analyses of migration, including of asylum, labour migration and integration.⁹ Such studies have typically been structured around disciplinary perspectives, often reflecting the issue under discussion: thus studies of asylum have often drawn on international law, while those of labour migration have tended to be grounded in political economy. The burgeoning field of studies on integration has been led by sociologists, with notable contributions also from political scientists.

There is no question that each of these broad approaches has been hugely valuable in developing a rich and varied corpus of scholarship in the area of migration. At the same time, there is a growing case to be made for bringing back the perspective of individual destination countries. On the one hand, the various elements of the migration policy domain are ultimately interlinked: thus, one of the largest forms of immigration, namely dependant family members, only takes place because others, typically labour migrants, have entered the country of destination beforehand. Likewise, the challenge of legal and societal integration applies, albeit in different ways, to all migrants, irrespective of the rubric under which they entered a country in the first place. On the other hand, migration policies and politics are not formulated in a vacuum compared to other policy areas; in fact, quite the opposite is true. Migration policy tends to be among policy areas which draw most heavily on, and overlap with and inform, other policy areas, such as education, health, housing, labour and social affairs. Furthermore, despite the growing influence of the institutions of the European Union (EU) in this domain, the EU's role varies significantly between the various constituent policy areas.¹⁰ Even in those areas where integration is most advanced, such as asylum policy, individual member-states remain centrally involved in the formulation and implementation of policy. So here too, the focus on a given country is justified, especially when that country is Germany, which is not only one of the principal destination countries of immigration in the EU, but also has a unique and ‘semi-sovereign’ governance structure, placing high value on the structures of federalism and the role of political parties.¹¹

The purpose of this collection, therefore, is to combine the best of both approaches by bringing together a cross-disciplinary, comprehensive, cross-sectoral perspective of migration, while at the same time maintaining the cohesive structure of a single country framework. Last, but by no means least, although immigration has featured prominently in the annals of this distinguished journal, this is the first special issue of German Politics to be devoted to the topic. By uniting political scientists, sociologists and political economists from Germany, the UK, the USA and Canada, each of whom specialises in a particular area of German migration, this volume provides a methodologically diverse analysis of policies and policy-making processes, as well as their reception by German society and migrants. This collection thereby both draws on the best traditions of Migration Studies, which have reflected the multiple dimensions of this phenomenon, and contributes to them.

In the remainder of this introduction, we will therefore first briefly set out the context for the current discussion before introducing the contributions to this collection.

THREE CRITICAL JUNCTURES

Although the post-war history of German migration has received extensive scholarly attention,¹² there are a number of key trends and critical junctures which deserve to be mentioned, first because of the insights they yield about why, how much and in which way policy making changed; and second, because these changes have direct relevance to the more recent trends which the authors in this issue examine in depth.

To this end, the Stunde Null of Germany's complete defeat in 1945 constitutes an obvious starting point. In the turbulent years up to the partition of Germany in 1949, an estimated 12 million expellees from Central and Eastern Europe arrived in both West and East Germany. Their integration not only posed a significant challenge in terms of integration, and thereby shaped West Germany's citizenship law, but also created the legacy of providing a sanctuary for ethnic Germans from across countries which had never even been part of Germany, a legacy which was enshrined in the 1953 Expellees and Refugees Law (Bundesvertriebenen- und Flüchtlingsgesetz).¹³ In addition, West Germany received approximately 2.7 million Übersiedler from the Soviet zone of occupation and East Germany until the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961.

But more importantly, West Germany's flourishing economy in the 1950s soon created strong demand for additional labour, which was met through active recruitment programmes in Southern European and Mediterranean countries, notably Turkey. Especially during the 1960s, millions of so-called guestworkers (Gastarbeiter) were employed in West German factories up and down the land; although the majority also returned home in accordance with the temporary nature of this programme, around 3 million remained in the country by the time of the first turning point in late 1973. Similarly to West Germany, the GDR (albeit much later) also recruited close to 100,000 guestworkers (Vertragsarbeitnehmer), principally from Vietnam, Angola, Mozambique, Cuba and Poland. These were also recruited on a temporary basis and worked and/or trained in the country's state-owned enterprises. Although other Northern European countries also ran such recruitment programmes, none had the scale or the extent of West Germany's.

The First Turning Point: The End of Labour Recruitment in 1973

On 23 November 1973, the federal government of the social-democratic SPD and the liberal FDP imposed a ‘recruitment ban’ (Anwerbestopp) on guestworkers, reflecting concern over both the 1973 oil shock and rising unemployment, as well as escalating social and welfare expenses.¹⁴ The difficult economic climate of the 1970s made a resumption of recruitment unlikely, and by the 1980s, the Anwerbestopp had mutated from a temporary measure into the permanent element of Ausländerpolitik of the new government of the Christian-democratic CDU and its Bavarian sister the CSU together with the FDP, under Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

However, contrary to the intention of policy-makers, the ca. 3 million remaining guestworkers in West Germany at the time of the Anwerbestopp gradually assumed the character of classical chain migration, as many were soon joined by their existing families, or started their own, often choosing to marry from their home countries. Indeed, family reunion has continued as a major source of immigration ever since, thereby contributing to what Stefan Luft has termed ‘the illusion of controllability’ (Illusion der Steuerbarkeit), a dynamic which elsewhere has been characterised as the ‘gap hypothesis’.¹⁵ From the early 1980s, this trend was compounded by increasing numbers of asylum seekers, and (West) Germany has over time, received far more applications for refugee status than any other country in Europe.

The Second Turning Point: Unification

Immigration levels rose even further as a result of unification.¹⁶ These provoked what came to be perceived by the public as well as policy-makers as a genuine ‘immigration crisis’ and a significant turning point in policy priorities. After several decades of travel restrictions, the breaking down of the iron curtain meant that more than 1.4 million ethnic Germans from Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union arrived in (West) Germany between 1989 and 1993.¹⁷ In addition, 1.2 million asylum applications were lodged between 1990 and 1993, with over 438,000 arriving in 1992 alone.¹⁸ In an atmosphere of growing concern over violence against asylum seekers and migrants more generally, combined with a resurgence of extremist parties such as the Deutsche Volksunion (DVU), the mainstream parties agreed a far-reaching compromise on 6 December 1992, which involved the restriction of Germany's constitutional right to asylum in return for the curtailment of ethnic German migration from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.¹⁹ This led to a sustained reduction over time of both types of immigration (see Figure 1). Policy-makers, however, saw the need to curb ethnic German migration still further. After 1996, language tests were introduced in the country of origin, which immediately reduced the decreasing, but still high annual influx by yet another third.

FIGURE 1 MIGRATION TRENDS TO GERMANY, 1991–2013

Source: Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge, Migrationsbericht 2013 (Berlin: Bundesministerium des Innern, 2015), available from http://www.bamf.de/SharedDocs/Anlagen/DE/Publikationen/Migrationsberichte/migrationsbericht-2013.pdf;jsessionid=A9A70521BDC6BFBF9C8E224075A4D287.1_cid294?__blob=publicationFile (accessed 20 May 2015).

The Third Turning Point: The 1998 Federal Election

The third major turning point to be considered here is the election of the first SPD–Green federal government under Gerhard Schröder in 1998.²⁰ Its principal effect was to drop quietly the illusion that Germany was not a ‘country of immigration’, which had hitherto been maintained by governments of all political hues. In a major development, a new Citizenship Law was passed in 1999, which, through its introduction of jus soli, has served gradually to redefine the basis on which citizenship can be acquired.

A second key development was the growing political realisation after 2000 that Germany was facing major demographic change, due to the long-term effects of very low fertility rates as well as the general trend towards an ageing population experienced across the developed world.²¹ This coincided with emerging shortages in highly skilled professions, especially in the areas associated with the economic boom in the so-called ‘New Economy’ of the late 1990s (see Figure 2). In turn, this prompted Chancellor Schröder to announce the now famous ‘Green Card’ scheme at the 2000 Hanover trade fair.²² This initiative also helped pave the way for the passing in 2004 of Germany's first immigration law (Zuwanderungsgesetz) – probably the single most significant piece of legislation in the migration policy domain for almost 40 years.

FIGURE 2 REAL GDP GROWTH IN GERMANY (PER CENT), 1991–2013

Source: Statistisches Bundesamt, Volkswirtschaftliche Gesamtrechnungen: Bruttoinlandsprodukt seit 1970 (Wiesbaden: Statistisches Bundesamt, 2015), available from https://www.destatis.de/DE/ZahlenFakten/GesamtwirtschaftUmwelt/VGR/Inlandsprodukt/Tabellen/BruttoinlandVierteljahresdaten_pdf.pdf?__blob=publicationFile (accessed 24 May 2015).

However, the buoyant economy of 1999 and 2000 quickly subsided and as Figure 2 shows, Germany spent much of the next decade attempting to overcome only very sluggish growth rates, by means of a lengthy process of internal economic adjustment symbolised by Chancellor Schröder’s Agenda 2010, which was announced in 2003. This dynamic also clearly impacted on migration patterns: Figure 1 illustrates how net migration to Germany dropped sharply after 2001, and even turned negative in 2008 and 2009, as especially German citizens increasingly looked abroad for opportunities to work. It also helped shape Germany’s approach to free movement of labour in the context of EU enlargement, with seven-year transition periods being imposed for both the 2004 and 2007 accession waves.

Indeed, this third turning point also coincided with a growing presence of the EU in the migration sphere. Under the 1997 Treaty of Amsterdam, immigration and asylum became integrated into the supranational ‘first pillar’, and from 2004 became subject to qualified majority voting (QMV) and co-decision with the European Parliament. In practice, though, the impact of the EU has found expression principally via individual pieces of legislation rather than across the entire policy domain, notably two Anti-Discrimination Directives in 2000 and the introduction of an EU-wide ‘Blue Card’ for skilled labour in 2009.

Crucially, the return of the CDU/CSU to government after 2005, first in a Grand Coalition with the SPD, then after 2009 in a coalition with the liberal FDP and after 2013 in a second Grand Coalition with the SPD, did not herald a further turning point in the trajectory of migration policy. On the contrary, under Angela Merkel's Chancellorship, the CDU continued the trajectory begun by the SPD and Greens in highlighting integration as a primary societal challenge. Its ministers brought in innovations such as a National Integration Plan as well as a National Islam Conference; the CDU (but less the CSU) also made a conscious effort to promote politicians with Migrationshintergrund.²³ Elsewhere, German universities began to attract more overseas students through offering more programmes in English and, most obviously, the absence of anything other than symbolic tuition fees. Moreover, some efforts were made towards retaining their skills by increasing the amount of time available for non-EU students in Germany to find work following the end of their studies.

The German economy's return to growth after 2006, and especially its resilience following the 2008 financial crisis and ensuing recession (see Figure 2) have also been reflected in net migration flows, which show a sharp upturn after 2010, especially as a result of intra-EU migration (see Figure 1). In parallel, and after a long period of gradual decline, the number of asylum seekers has also started to rise again, exceeding 100,000 in 2013 for the first time since 1997; this trajectory has continued to rise, with over 200,000 asylum claimants in Germany in 2014 and a record 477,000 in 2015 (see also Crage in this collection). By the same token, even a type of migration already frequently – and prematurely – pronounced dead, namely that of ethnic Germans and their families from the former Soviet Union, is increasing once more (see Hess in this volume).

THE CHALLENGE OF MIGRATION AND INTEGRATION TODAY

This lengthy and intertwined migration history has created a series of challenges for Germany to face today, which are moreover linked to individual types of migration. What complicates these challenges is that, upon closer scrutiny, they are somewhat contradictory. For the sake of simplicity, these can be grouped under two key headings: pressures towards liberalisation and pressures towards restriction.

On the one hand, there are clear and compelling arguments for Germany to open itself up more to migration. As well as the looming demographic crisis of an ageing and shrinking population, Germany faces employment shortages in key sectors of the economy. Moreover, these shortages are both in the skilled and unskilled sectors, reflecting the often-observed migration dynamic that labour is recruited to fill those jobs which the indigenous population is either not qualified or unwilling to perform. And yet, this is much easier said than done: despite an increasingly open recruitment regime, the actual number of high-skilled migrants arriving in Germany remains low.²⁴

Alongside these economic considerations stand the humanitarian obligations of asylum and refugee policy, where Germany, by its own recognition, has a unique historical responsibility. For almost 15 years after the amendment of the constitutional right to asylum in 1993, numbers of applicants declined to a low of 19,000 in 2007. In part at least, this can also be put down to Germany's relatively restrictive approach, like that of other countries, to interpreting and implementing its national asylum legislation.²⁵ Nonetheless, the sharp upsurge in asylum applications after 2011, as well as the ongoing refugee tragedy in the waters of the Mediterranean serves as a clear reminder of how politically ‘live’ and salient this issue remains.

Against these pressures towards liberalisation are ranged some clear interests towards restriction. First and foremost, these are structured around the challenge of integration, which has become particularly acute in light of record levels of asylum claims. As well as those who reject Germany's emerging cultural pluralism out of principle, there are persistent gaps between the population with and without Migrationshintergrund in areas such as employment, poverty and education.²⁶ Significantly, this label includes many migrants with German nationality, notably, as Hess points out later in this volume, the group of Spätaussiedler from the former Soviet Union. In addition, structural problems of integration tend disproportionately to affect non-labour market active migrants. This group consists primarily of dependants who have come to Germany via family reunification and it is this perspective which has underpinned the periodic argument, advanced principally by conservative elements within the CDU/CSU, that the maximum age for dependent children to immigrate to Germany (Kindernachzug) should be six. The integration argument is flanked by ever-present concerns, especially after the terrorist attacks on the United Stated in September 2001, about security. Ultimately, as the Sarrazin debate showed, the question of migration and ‘belonging’, both legal and emotional, remains as contentious in Germany as it does elsewhere in Europe.

The translation of these two broad positions into policy is complicated considerably by the fact that they are not clearly aligned with political parties. On the contrary, especially the CDU cuts across all of these. Thus, its economic wing argues in favour of liberalisation, while its social conservative wing points to the cultural challenges of integration and its Christian wing emphasises the party's humanitarian obligations. Electoral considerations play a role too: with ethnic Germans preferring the CDU/CSU over other parties by roughly 3:1, some CDU politicians have argued in favour of relaxing the migration restrictions, while others highlight the persistent integration deficits of this group.²⁷ Last but by no means least, all political discussions about migration take place against a background of a broadly sceptical electorate.

OVERVIEW OF CONTRIBUTIONS

The purpose of this volume, therefore, is to explore a number of aspects of this increasingly complex policy domain. The contributions it contains do so from a range of disciplinary and methodological perspectives and thereby provide a differentiated picture of the changing politics and policies of migration in Germany today. The pieces are grouped around three principal themes, which examine types of migration, citizenship and integration and party politics.

Theme One: Labour Migration and Asylum

In his contribution, Georg Menz notes that recent major changes to German migration policy have most notably included policies concerning labour migration. As a result, the restrictive approach associated with the end of active recruitment in 1973 has been gradually abandoned. Since 2000, a variety of liberalisation measures have been pursued, facilitating legal labour migration. In his contribution Menz discusses to what extent this policy change marks a substantial break with the post-1973 restrictive approach. On the one hand, he suggests that German skilled migration provisions are now fairly liberal by international comparison. However, despite this liberalisation, which Menz judges to be ‘remarkable’, he also argues that overall, creating specific channels for labour migrants remains the exception in Germany. Moreover, unlike the post-war era, the focus rests firmly on the recruitment of skilled immigrants. Menz adopts a comparative political economy (CPE) angle in analysing recent policy developments, arguing that employer preferences typical of a coordinated market economy (CME) are being articulated and help shape the policy agenda. A brief comparison with CMEs in Austria and Sweden is pursued to illustrate this point.

In her piece, Suzanna Crage then sets out to explore whether the shift towards greater acceptance of economic migrants which Menz discusses in his article is also reflected in Germany's treatment of its asylum seekers. The 2004 Immigration Law, which added new grounds for asylum, has been cited to suggest attitudes have indeed changed across types of migration. Crage demonstrates that after an in-depth analysis of public attitudes and federal legislation Germany has not only maintained an antagonistic approach to asylum seekers, it has continued to increase restrictions on them. She also maintains that recent legal changes suggest that the historically greater acceptance of recognised refugees compared to asylum seekers has begun to weaken. While some restrictive policies have been limited by domestic and EU court cases and also domestic implementation decisions, Crage concludes that German attitudes and practices towards asylum seekers continue to aim at limiting their arrival and impact, and new asylum seekers continue to inspire protests.

Theme Two: Integration and Citizenship

The next two pieces of the collection turn their attention to Germany's recent integration and diversity policies.

First, Karen Schönwälder and Triadafilos Triadafilopoulos interrogate the widespread consensus among scholars that the 1990s and 2000s witnessed a re-orientation of immigrant policies across Western European countries encouraging migrants to embrace of mainstream cultures and political norms of receiving societies. Schönwälder and Triadafilopoulos ask whether immigrant policies have really bent towards assimilationism and whether ‘differentialist’ policies celebrating a positive valuation of cultural diversity have truly been abandoned. Has the era of group politics and multiculturalism proclaimed by Will Kymlicka in the late 1990s been eclipsed? The authors argue that the shift in immigrant and immigration policy in Germany since the 1990s is not as clear-cut as many academic discussions suggest. While there have been moves compelling migrants to adjust, there have also been a variety of policies which acknowledge, accept and seek to deal more positively with cultural diversity. By drawing on Rogers Brubaker's terminology in referring to current policies as a ‘new differentialism’, the authors argue that this phenomenon in Germany represents a novel trend in policy, reflective of broader societal transformations.

Staying with the topic of integration policies and trajectories, Christin Hess examines a group of migrants in Germany who, after their mass immigration in the late 1980s and 1990s, have not received much scholarly attention during the new millennium. Yet ethnic German immigrants and their families, especially continued to experience severe difficulties in their integration throughout the past decade. Relatively robust ‘parallel communities’ have developed among the first, and sometimes also the second generation. Building on a large qualitative study, Hess traces why this happened, and why these problems of integration have been so persistent. She concludes that the tenacity of integration problems stems from a complex interplay of policy rhetoric and concomitant expectations, socialisation, cultural difference and structural hurdles. Her article is intended as a form of stock-taking in 2015, which addresses a decade of scarce research outputs on the topic of Spätaussiedler integration in Germany. While she focuses on ethnic Germans in Germany, insights from her parallel study among ethnic Greeks enable a greater reliability of findings about context (in)dependence.

Theme Three: Party Politics

The final two discussions in this collection focus on party politics in relation to migration and the relationship between parties and immigrants. Oliver Schmidtke kicks off this final section by examining a conundrum in the approach of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) to issues of immigration and integration. On the one hand, the SPD has traditionally been the ‘party of and for immigrants’, enjoying the support of the overwhelming majority of the guestworkers and their descendants. At the same time, the SPD has been extremely timid when it comes to promoting immigration and integration policies and capitalising on the immigrant vote. Using a framework of party discourse, Schmidtke explores the reasons for the SPD's unwillingness to address immigration more forcefully. Schmidtke finds that, unlike its main counterpart, the CDU/CSU, the party is still struggling to integrate issues of immigration with its vision of fairer and more equal society and incorporate this into its political identity and electoral appeal. He argues that this very issue highlights the difficulties endemic to the transformation of European Social Democracy over the past few decades: the traditional redistributive agenda of the centre-left is challenged by the emergence of a left-libertarian cleavage.

The collection is rounded off by Andreas Wüst, who offers a descriptive analysis of saliency and positions in party manifestos from 1990 until 2013. It is followed by an exploration of the specific contexts (constituencies) in which candidates, especially those of immigrant origin, ran in the 2013 Bundestag election. Wüst analysed candidates' core positions with respect to the influence that the immigrant origin of a candidate might have on respective positions, before matching the attitudes of the different party candidates with the attitudes of the different party electorates. Wüst's article is driven by the question of whether a specific background can be characterised as a modifying element for issue congruence expected to be predominantly structured by parties as collective actors. His findings confirm the traditional, party-centred ‘politics of ideas’ approach, supplying substantial and differentiated evidence that parties fulfil their function as linkages also with respect to migration-related issues.

CONCLUSION

Against the backdrop of a country which has undergone substantial transformations over the past 60 years, in terms of its demographic development, economic performance, political make-up and ethno-cultural composition of society, the contributions to this volume collectively discuss the contribution to this picture of migration as one of the most powerful agents of social and political change in Germany. In their variety of approaches, the authors also underline the complexity of migration as a social phenomenon and thereby also help to advance the debate from the comparative perspective.

Although space constraints mean that they cannot provide a comprehensive view of the policy domain, the articles in this special issue do demonstrate the varying pace and extent of policy change in Germany with regard to migration and integration over the last 25 years. During the 1990s, often termed a ‘laggard’, from 1998 successive governments implemented what cumulatively can only be described as a landmark change in thinking about, and practically dealing with, migration and diversity characterising a ‘new Germany’. Following a distinction advanced by Peter Hall, the extent and impact of such an alteration needs to be viewed as ‘third order change’, indicating all of the following: a reformulation of policy tools, a reconsideration of the spectrum and type of tools used, as well as an overall recasting of political priorities.²⁸ While it would probably be premature to term Germany as a ‘leader’, despite the OECD's view of its framework for labour recruitment,²⁹ the period after 2005 may well come to be regarded as a ‘period of consolidation’, where essential modifications of German citizenship and immigration policy undertaken after 1998 became embedded institutionally and culturally to inform, gradually, new ways of thinking of and debating migration to Germany and the country's new and rich ethno-cultural diversity.

Another observable phenomenon is that, rather than still being based on a broad elite consensus reminiscent of the post-war guestworker era, migration has, since the early 1990s become a party-political issue in Germany (as indeed in a series of other European countries), utilised at critical junctures, most notably election campaigns, to enhance party-political profiling and mobilise electoral support.³⁰ However, as Schmidtke's contribution eloquently demonstrates, given the controversial manner in which it is often debated, migration is not necessarily an issue which lends itself easily to political and strategic mobilisation. Schmidtke in fact concludes that it has been the CDU/CSU which has most productively employed the migration issue in competitive party politics. It did so by claiming ownership of the immigration issue by linking it to policy fields in which it commands public trust, namely, economic and security policies (see Schmidtke in this collection).

Furthermore, this collection further allows us to draw a number of inferences in respect of Germany’s comparative position in Europe, in terms of its politics and policies of migration. As Menz reminds us, its approach to labour migration seems to be reminiscent of that of many other developed Western and Northern European nation-states, such as Sweden, Austria and the UK: there is a distinct emphasis on the recruitment of the highly skilled to fill particular shortages in the labour market. At least to some extent, this also tends to tie in with a latent expectation, as one SPD spokesperson recently put it, that ‘we don’t expect the highly skilled to have any integration problems’.³¹ In terms of confronting the perennial challenge of honouring its human rights obligations while staying attuned to frequently negative public opinion on asylum seekers, Germany, like the UK, exercises a highly restrictive approach. Crage alerts us to the fact that this is unlikely to change in the near future.

More than other countries, Germany shows a concern about conceptualising, organising and operationalising its approach to integrating its diverse ethno-cultural immigrant population, owing to its historical trajectory and legacy of a nation which since early nationhood until recently defined itself in ethno-cultural terms. As Hess demonstrates, despite these efforts, we cannot assume that the integration of all migrant groups, not even that of flagship ‘ethnic’ migrants, is successful and/or complete.³² However, the typically deployed distinction between ethnic and civic nationhood is only partially useful in the case of Germany. While its incorporation of jus soli into its citizenship codex has yet to lead to tangible recognition, or appreciation, of a civic sense of nationhood, integration in Germany does not equal assimilation in the way this tends to be the case in France. The contribution by Schönwälder and Triadafilopoulos showcases that there is still debate among scholars about whether developments in Germany signal a more positive framing of immigration and integration. What has changed undoubtedly is the way integration has changed from an elite-driven agenda to a genuinely open, societal process in which more and more actors are now involved, including civil society organisations, local government and last but not least, migrants themselves and their organisations.

Besides shedding light on the changing politics and policies of migration, this collection also enhances our understanding of migration policy as an inherently complex and often contradictory policy domain. What tends to convey the image of a neatly delineated policy field is in reality a multifaceted compound policy area which consists of several sub-fields according to the type of migrant concerned and the length of settlement. Despite, or indeed because of, the inherent complexity of this policy field, this special issue sets out to contribute a comprehensive account of migration which explores all of the relevant sub-sectors and their manifold dependencies, thus appreciating their interconnectedness and providing the reader with an integrated framework for understanding migration politics, policy and policy making, as well as the impact of these processes on migrants and society at large.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This article draws on research funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) as part of its Promoting German Studies in the UK programme. The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the DAAD. The authors would also like to thank the IASGP and Professor Randall Hansen, Director of the Centre for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, for their generous support of a preparatory workshop for this special issue in November 2013.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Dr Christin Hess is Lecturer in Contemporary European History and Politics at the University of Maastricht. After receiving her doctorate on post-Soviet migration with summa cum laude she went to work in comparative migration policy analysis both at Aston University (UK) and for the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, examining Germany and the United Kingdom. Her research focuses most broadly on the study of migration in its consequences, with a regional specialisation in Central and (South-)Eastern Europe and Russia. Her new research project explores global Greek diaspora migration. She has published numerous articles on citizenship, ethnicity and nationhood, most recently in Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies. She is also a Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy.

Simon Green is Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Executive Dean of the School of Languages and Social Sciences at Aston University. He has written widely on German politics and is the author (together with Dan Hough and Alister Miskimmon) of The Politics of the New Germany (Routledge, 2012, second edition).

Notes

1 C. Crouch, ‘Change in European Societies since the 1970s’, West European Politics 31/1–2 (2008), pp.14–39.

2 R. Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp.165–71; also P. Hogwood, ‘Citizenship Controversies in Germany: The Twin Legacy of Völkisch Nationalism and the Alleinvertretungsanspruch’, German Politics 9/3 (2000), pp.125–44; K. Hailbronner, ‘Citizenship and Nationhood in Germany’, in W. Brubaker (ed.), Immigration and the Politics of Citizenship in Europe and North America (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1989), pp.67–80.

3 S. Green, ‘Germany: A Changing Country of Immigration’, German Politics 22/3 (2013), pp.333–51, esp. p.344.

4 T. Sarrazin, Deutschland schafft sich ab. Wie wir unser Land aufs Spiel setzen (München: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2010); S. Green, ‘Citizenship, Migration and Cultural Pluralism’, in S. Padgett, W. Paterson and R. Zohlnhöfer (eds), Developments in German Politics 4 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2014), pp.262–78, at pp.273–4.

5 U. Davy and A. Weber (eds), Paradigmenwechsel in Einwanderungsfragen? (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2006).

6 S. Green, ‘Much Ado about Not-Very-Much? Assessing Ten Years of German Citizenship Reform’, Citizenship Studies 16/2 (2012), pp.173–88.

7 OECD, Recruiting Immigrant Workers: Germany (Paris: OECD, 2013); see also Sachverständigenrat deutscher Stiftungen für Integration und Migration, Unter Einwanderungsländern: Deutschland im internationalen Vergleich (Berlin: SVR, 2015), available from http://www.svr-migration.de/publikationen/jahresgutachten-2015/ (accessed 15 July 2015).

8 For example, S. Green, The Politics of Exclusion: Institutions and Immigration Policy in Contemporary Germany (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004); R. Hansen, Citizenship and Immigration in Post-War Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood; D. Klusmeyer and D. Papademetriou, Immigration Policy in the Federal Republic of Germany: Negotiating Membership and Remaking the Nation (Oxford: Berghahn, 2009).

9 For instance, C. Joppke, Immigration and the Nation State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); A. Messina, The Logics and Politics of Post-WWII Migration to Western Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); G. Menz, The Political Economy of Managed Migration (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); M. Gibney, The Ethics and Politics of Asylum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); S. Goodman, Immigration and Membership Politics in Western Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); L. Cerna, ‘The Varieties of High-Skilled Immigration Policies: Coalitions and Policy Outputs in Advanced Industrial Countries’, Journal of European Public Policy 16/1 (2009), pp.144–61; L. Cerna, ‘Attracting High-Skilled Immigrants: Policies in Comparative Perspective’, International Migration 52/3 (2014), pp.69–84.

10 C. Boswell and A. Geddes, Migration and Mobility in the European Union (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2010).

11 P. Katzenstein, Policy and Politics in West Germany: The Growth of a Semisovereign State (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1987); S. Green and W. Paterson (eds), Governance in Contemporary Germany: The Semisovereign State Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); also J. von Blumenthal, ‘Migrationspolitik nach der Föderalismusreform: Zentralisierung und Dezentralisierung im deutschen Mehrebenensystem’, in Europäisches Zentrum für Föderalismusforschung (ed.), Jahrbuch des Föderalismus 2012 (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2012), pp.125–37; P. Bendel, Coordinating Immigrant Integration in Germany: Mainstreaming at the Federal and Local Levels (Brussels: Migration Policy Institute Europe, 2014), available from http://www.migrationpolicy.org/research/coordinating-immigrant-integration-germany-mainstreaming-federal-and-local-levels (accessed 1 July 2015).

12 For example, D. Hoerder, Geschichte der deutschen Migration: Vom Mittelalter bis heute (München: Beck, 2010), esp. pp.100–15; K. Bade, Vom Auswanderungsland zum Einwanderungsland. Deutschland 1880–1980 (Berlin: Colloquium, 1983); J. Oltmer, A. Kreienbrink and C. Sanz Díaz (eds), Das “Gastarbeiter”-System: Arbeitsmigration und ihre Folgen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und Westeuropa (München: Oldenbourg, 2012); R. Münz and R. Ulrich, ‘Changing Patterns of Immigration to Germany’, in K. Bade and M. Weiner (eds), Migration Past, Migration Future: Germany and the United States (Oxford: Berg, 1994), pp.65–119; S. Goodman, ‘The Politics and Policies of Immigration in Germany: A Rearview Look at the Makings of a “country of Immigration”’, German Politics and Society 25/4 (2007), pp.99–110; U. Herbert, Geschichte der Ausländerpolitik in Deutschland (München: C.H. Beck, 2001).

13 Hogwood, ‘Citizenship Controversies in Germany’; Joppke, Immigration and the Nation State.

14 C. Boswell, ‘The Evolution of Post-War European Migration Policies’, in C. Boswell, European Migration Policies in Flux (London: Blackwell, 2003), p.17.

15 S. Luft, ‘Die Anwerbung von “Gastarbeitern”: “Temporäre Arbeitsmigration” und das Problem der Steuerbarkeit’, in S. Luft, Staat und Migration (Frankfurt: Campus, 2009), pp.35–98; also W. Cornelius and T. Tsuda, ‘Controlling Immigration: The Limits of Government Intervention’, in W. Cornelius, P. Martin and J. Hollifield (eds), Controlling Immigration (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), pp.4–15.

16 S. Green, ‘Immigration, Asylum and Citizenship in Germany: The Impact of Unification and the Berlin Republic’, West European Politics 24/4 (2001), pp.82–104.

17 C. Hess, ‘The Contested Terrain of the Parallel Society: The Other Natives in Greece and Germany’, Europe–Asia Studies 60/9 (2008), pp.1519–37; C. Hess, ‘What Can Co-Ethnic Migrants Tell Us about Ethnic Visions of the National Self?’, Journal of Comparative Research on Sociology and Anthropology 2/1 (2011), pp.103–33.

18 Green, ‘Germany: A Changing Country of Immigration’, p.339.

19 K. Bade, Ausländer, Aussiedler, Asyl: Eine Bestandaufnahme (München: Beck, 1994); F. Blahusch, ‘Flüchtlinge in Deutschland nach der Asylrechtsänderung im Grundgesetz’, in R. Münz, H. Korte and G. Wagner (eds), Internationale Wanderungen, Demographie Aktuell 5 (1994), pp.143–57.

20 Green, ‘Germany: A Changing Country of Immigration’, pp.342–3.

21 S. Green, ‘Societal Transformation and Programmatic Change in the CDU’, German Politics 22/1–2 (2013), pp.46–63.

22 H. Kolb, ‘Die Green Card: Inszenierung eines Politikwechsels’, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte B27 (2005), pp.18–24; also Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, ‘Als Einwanderung wieder als Gewinn galt’, 1 March 2010.

23 E. Musch, ‘Consultation Structures in German Immigrant Integration Politics: The National Integration Summit and the German Islam Conference’, German Politics 21/1 (2012), pp.73–90; see B. Donovan, ‘Minority Representation in Germany’, German Politics 16/4 (2007), pp.455–80; A. Wüst, ‘Migrants as Parliamentary Actors in Germany’, in K. Bird, T. Saalfeld and A. Wüst (eds), The Political Representation of Immigrants and Minorities: Voters, Parties and Parliaments in Liberal Democracies (London: Routledge, 2011), pp.250–65.

24 Green, ‘Citizenship, Migration and Cultural Pluralism’, pp.267–8.

25 See, for instance, M. Gibney and R. Hansen, Asylum Policy in the West: Past Trends, Future Possibilities (UNU-WIDER: WIDER Discussion Paper No. 2003/68), available from http://www.wider.unu.edu/publications/working-papers/discussion-papers/2003/en_GB/dp2003-068/ (accessed 1 July 2015).

26 Details in Beauftragte der Bundesregierung, 10. Bericht der Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für Migration, Flüchtlinge und Integration über die Lage der Ausländerinnen und Ausländer in Deutschland (Berlin, 2014), available from http://www.bundesregierung.de/Content/Infomaterial/BPA/IB/10_Auslaenderbericht_2015.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=3 (accessed 1 July 2015).

27 A. Wüst, Wie wählen Neubürger? Politische Einstellungen und Wahlverhalten eingebürgerter Personen in Deutschland (Wiesbaden: Leske + Budrich, 2002); see also Der Spiegel, ‘Runter von der Bremse’, 3/2006, 16 Jan. 2006, p.50.

28 P. Hall, ‘Policy Paradigms, Social Learning and the State: The Case of Economic Policymaking in Britain’, Comparative Politics 25/3 (1993), pp.275–96.

29 OECD, Recruiting Immigrant Workers: Germany.

30 Katzenstein, Policy and Politics in West Germany; Green, The Politics of Exclusion.

31 Interview, Deutscher Bundestag, SPD Fraktion, 24 June 2014.

32 On the relevance of ethnic migrants to changing conceptions of German nationhood see C. Hess, ‘What Can Co-Ethnic Migrants Tell Us about Ethnic Visions of the National Self?’, Journal of Comparative Research on Sociology and Anthropology 2/1 (2011), pp.103–33.