Understanding Ethnic-Racial Identity in a Context Where “Race” Is Taboo

ABSTRACT

Ethnic-racial identity (ERI) is an important aspect of youth development and has been well studied for the last several decades. One issue less discussed is how the construct of ERI translates across different countries and cultures. The purpose of our paper is to describe the sociohistorical context of Germany and implications for the study of ethnic-racial identity in Europe. We discuss the German adaption of the Identity Project, an 8-week school-based ethnic-racial identity exploration intervention developed in the United States. We use this as a concrete example of how we thought through the focal construct of ERI to figure out how and whether it is a salient social identity category for youth in Germany where, in response to the history of racially motivated genocide, discussions of “race” are taboo. Digging into the ways ERI may not be directly transferable to different contexts can help us understand its nature as a socially constructed identity with real-life implications. Our hope with this paper is to further discussion, question our conceptualizations, and acknowledge how a detailed understanding of sociohistorical contexts is needed for the study of ERI.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethnic-racial identity
• race
• Germany
• intervention

Ethnic-racial identity (ERI) is an important aspect of youth development and has been well studied for the last several decades. In 2014, a series of key articles were published in a special issue of Child Development by the 21st century ERI study group, integrating the various ethnic-racial identity strands of research to move the field forward (Umaña-Taylor et al., 2014). As the ERI study group has stated, the term ERI is a meta-construct, merging ethnic and racial aspects of identity (Umaña-Taylor et al., 2014). The “ethnic” aspect refers to shared traditions, customs, and language, while “racial” refers to shared characteristics based on phenotype, skin color, and other hereditary traits (Cokley, 2007). The racial aspect of identity also acknowledges societal hierarchies rooted in white supremacy, which relates directly to the racial stratification that privileges some racial groups over others (Feagin, 2020; Helms, 1990, 2020). While ethnic and racial identities have been studied separately, it is difficult to distinguish and disentangle these two constructs, as there is much overlap in how these identities are experienced and measured, particularly among minoritized youth (Umaña-Taylor et al., 2014). One issue less discussed is how ERI translates across different countries and cultures. The study group recognized the importance of national contexts by stating that ERI captures:

experiences that reflect both individuals’ ethnic background and their racialized experiences as a member of a particular group in the context of the United States. Important, similar processes may be relevant in other countries, but because the social construction of race and ethnicity is bound to the sociohistorical context, and because each nation has a unique history for specific groups, specificity is important in this regard. (A. J. Umaña-Taylor et al., 2014, p. 23)

The rest of that manuscript and articles in the special issue focused primarily on the North American context.

The purpose of our paper here is first to explicitly describe the sociohistorical context of Germany to better understand ERI in a very different context where ethnicity and race are not widely acknowledged or discussed. Then, we discuss how we have adapted the Identity Project, an 8-week school-based ERI exploration intervention developed in the U.S. (Umaña-Taylor & Douglass, 2016), to be relevant for German adolescents (Juang et al., 2020). We do not present empirical data. Rather, we offer an argument and example of how we thought through the focal construct of ERI to figure out how and whether it is a salient social identity category for youth in Germany. Our main argument is that due to the historical legacy of the Holocaust in Germany, ongoing societal racialization of German national identity, and taboo regarding the term “race,” adolescents are less likely to develop racial identities linked to a specific racial group, but rather, racialized identities embedded in other salient social categories such as migration status, religion, or cultural heritage. For this reason, although the North American language and conceptualization of ERI may not be directly translatable in research with youth in Germany, the conceptual relevance warrants greater examination and study.

Importance of sociohistorical context for identity development

Erikson’s (1963, 1968) foundational writings recognized the importance of ethnicity and race in shaping youth identities (Syed & Fish, 2018). His work with Native Americans and African Americans highlighted that the particular history of each group (e.g., experiencing historical traumas such as genocide, slavery, colonialism) carried across generations to have ongoing material consequences for a person’s identity development. Subsequently, being a member of an ethnically or racially marginalized and oppressed group has deep implications for how youth view their own group and the relation of their own group to dominant society (Erikson, 1963, 1968; Syed & Fish, 2018). Likewise, being a member of an ethnically or racially dominant group also has implications for youth identities and how they relate to and engage with the world around them (Moffitt in press; Rogers, 2018).

Galliher et al. (2017) propose a multi-level framework of identity development that details how to approach these important issues. They describe four intertwined levels of analysis: the cultural and historical context, social roles, identity domains, and enacting identity in everyday interaction. They begin with the importance of cultural and historical contexts and argue that because identity development is so rooted in a particular time and place, ignoring sociohistorical context leads to an incomplete and deficient understanding of identity. To know the ways in which ERI is relevant in Germany, then, we have to first clarify how ethnicity and race are viewed based on Germany’s particular history.

Speaking of “race” is not taboo in the context of the Holocaust

The term “race” has been used similarly in the U.S. and Germany in terms of its historical construction, as a pseudo-scientific rationale for the grouping and classification of people based on various traits and qualities, with the aim of designating whites¹ as superior. The significance of this categorization and hierarchy is also similar across contexts. Historically, racial classifications were used as justification for white dominance through slavery, genocide, and colonialism (Feagin, 2020; Zimmerer, 2013). There are differences, however, across contexts in terms of content, or racial group boundaries. In Germany race was used by the Nazis to define those who were deemed to be of the white Aryan race vs non-Aryan (mostly referring to Jewish, Sinti, Roma, Slavic, and African-heritage people).

The word “Rasse” (race) is explicitly used when referring to the Rassenideologie (racial ideologies) used during the Holocaust. This history of racially motivated genocide in Germany is widely acknowledged and interrogated via the remembrance culture. This includes discussions of WWII era racism and anti-Semitism infused into everyday life (Neiman, 2019; Salem & Thompson, 2016). In every major German city there are Holocaust memorials, every school curriculum is required to teach this history, and art, literature, culture, and politics are deeply informed by the Nazi past (Neiman, 2019). For young people in Germany, reminders of this past are frequent and familiar. Indeed, Germany has often been praised as a model for reconciling with such a devastating racial history (Neiman, 2019). In stark contrast, prominent national memorials in the U.S. that acknowledge historical racism are rare, including in relation to chattel slavery and the genocide and forced assimilation of Native Americans.²

Speaking of “race” is taboo in contemporary Germany

After World War II, to prevent the further reification and gross misuse of race and pseudo-scientifically based racial hierarchies that were the foundation of both colonial and Nazi ideology, the official use of the term “Rasse” to refer to people was banned across Europe (Möschel, 2011; Portera, 2008; Simon, 2017). Because this word was removed from daily and legal use its interpretation was frozen in time, such that in Germany “race” is still primarily associated with eugenicist notions of racial grouping. Thus, using this term to describe people is offensive as it is understood not as a social construct, but as a pseudo-scientific biological category created specifically for stratification and denigration of groups deemed non-Ayran. For this reason, “race” is never asked about on official documents, nor is it measured in the census. Moreover, explicit discussions of “race” are taboo in daily life in Germany.

Indeed, after a lengthy and difficult debate, the term “Rasse” was recently removed from Germany’s constitution, the Basic Law, where it was previously listed as a protected category alongside sex, language spoken, religious and political beliefs (Iser, 2021). Discrimination based on “racial grounds” is the new terminology, also not without critiques. Some argue that simply removing the term, not explicitly naming race, and relegating it to a pre-WWII pseudo-biological construct, dismisses the relevance of race in academic, legal, and political contexts (Roig, 2017; Simon, 2017). Further, the frequent interrogations and remembrances of racism in Germany that revolve primarily around the Holocaust means that race and racism becomes something that is limited to a specific time in the past, perpetrated by a specific group of right-wing extremists (Nazis), and expressed in the most brutal forms, which can then overshadow or discount both subtle and structural forms of contemporary racism (El & Fereidooni, 2016; El-Tayeb, 2014; Roig, 2017; Salem & Thompson, 2016). Other aspects of historical racism during Germany’s colonial rule, such as the internment in concentration camps and genocide of Herero and Nama people in Southwest Africa (now Namibia), medical experiments conducted with East Africans, as well as acts of resistance of African heritage individuals (such as Martin Dibobe who petitioned for equal rights under colonial rule), remain largely invisible and are not well addressed, memorialized, or acknowledged as linked to anti-Black racism today (Conrad, 2011; Eckart, 2002; Roig, 2017; Zimmerer, 2013).

It is more difficult, then, to connect how the racialized system that was used to maintain power and privilege (i.e., white supremacy) during Nazi times, as well as throughout colonial history in Europe, has implications for understanding contemporary, everyday racism (Boulila, 2019; El-Tayeb, 2014; Essed, 1991). This colorblind approach where race is ignored (Roig, 2017) makes it more difficult for young people to engage in important discussions regarding the relevance of race (understood as a social construct with myriad material impact) in their own lives and identities. Consequently, erasing “race” as a construct altogether impedes a collective understanding of how it is relevant and salient for youth’s identity development in Germany (Moffitt et al., 2020).

In addition to race being taboo to discuss, Germany for a long time did not see itself as a multicultural country, let alone a country of immigrants. It has, however, long been a culturally diverse country (Oltmer, 2017). African-heritage people have been in what is now Germany at least since the 1700s (Black Central Europe, n.d.). In the 19th century a large number of immigrants from Poland arrived (Bachem-Rehm, 2013) and after WWII starting in 1955 the great migration of “guest workers” (Gastarbeiter*innen) to what was then West Germany began. The guest workers contributed greatly to the recovery and reconstruction of West Germany, but nevertheless were expected to eventually return to their countries of origin. In West Germany, treaties for recruiting and contracting laborers were established with Italy, Spain, Greece, Turkey, Morocco, South Korea, Portugal, Tunesia, and Yugoslavia. In East Germany similar treaties were established with socialist and communist countries including Poland, Hungary, Algeria, Cuba, Mosambique, Vietnam, Mongolia, Angola, and China to recruit “contract workers” (Vertragsarbeiter*innen) (Oltmer, 2017). Many of these workers ended up staying – starting families, laying down roots, and creating a home in Germany – despite the governmental expectation that they were to leave after their labor was no longer needed.

Despite this long-standing history of diversity, politicians and other national leaders did not officially recognize Germany as a country of immigration until the 1990s (Salem & Thompson, 2016). Today, it is the second most popular destination country for immigration (International Office of Migration, 2020), and one in three school-aged children are immigrants or direct descents of immigrants (Statistisches Bundesamt 2020). Yet until 2000, German citizenship was available only to those with German ancestry. Subsequently, immigrants and people of immigrant families who had lived in Germany for generations were excluded from full participation in society.

Despite formal citizenship now being attainable for those without German ancestry, being perceived and accepted as German by mainstream society can be problematic. A study of mostly second-generation Turkish German and Arab German adolescents shows they report being perceived as a foreigner (being asked “Where are you from?” due to their cultural background or appearance, or being referred to as an Ausländer*in, a “foreigner” with a derogatory connotation), more often than Eastern European Germans who are more likely read as white (Juang et al., under review). These findings are in line with a study reporting that the majority of white Germans (58%), when asked “When you think about foreigners in Germany, which group are you thinking of?”, responded with “Turkish heritage” individuals, while fewer (13%) responded with “Eastern European”, and individuals from Austria, the Netherlands, and other Western countries were rarely mentioned (Asbrock et al., 2014).

Being perceived as a perpetual foreigner is a form of identity denial whereby one’s group identity is questioned or challenged (Armenta et al., 2013). Identity denial may disrupt youth’s ability or desire (especially at younger ages) to engage in identity exploration and create bonds to their own ethnic, racial, or cultural groups (Jones, 2021). It may also make it more challenging to develop nuanced and inclusive dual- and multicultural identities beyond the binary categorization of German or not German (Moffitt et al., 2018). Taken together, structural, macro-level policies such as citizenship laws, as well as interpersonal interactions of identity denial and racialized exclusion, are important to consider for adolescents’ ERI development (Galliher et al., 2017).

Experiences of everyday racism suggest the ongoing salience of race in Germany

The term “everyday racism” was coined by Dutch scholar Philomena Essed in the early 1990s to highlight the lack of discussion about contemporary racism in the Netherlands (Essed, 1991). As in the Netherlands, everyday racism in Germany has not been widely recognized by politicians or mainstream society (Roig, 2017), nor widely studied by researchers (Federal Government Expert Commission, 2021). In contrast, the German form of this word, “Alltagsrassismus” is commonplace in activist and minoritized communities, who are well aware of the lived experience of this phenomenon (Florvil, 2020; Sow, 2008). It is clear that “race” as a social construct continues to shape daily life long after “race” as a pseudo-scientific, biological construct has been relegated to the history books. In sum, although race-related experiences are salient and acknowledged on an individual level and by communities directly affected by racism, they are still taboo to name in mainstream society.

The reluctance, however, to openly acknowledge the relevance of race as a social construct shaping everyday interactions on interpersonal, institutional, and structural levels (Center for Intersectional Justice, 2020) suggests that an identity explicitly based on race may be very difficult to articulate. Youth in the U.S. can consistently self-identify their ethnicity and/or race by middle childhood, and this element of identity constancy is considered a developmental milestone (e.g., Williams et al., 2020). Yet, posing this question to youth in Germany would prove problematic, as neither “race” nor “ethnicity”³ is used in daily conversation and these terms are not conceptually linked to social groups within society.

Migration and religion: dimensions of diversity deemed acceptable to discuss

Although ethnicity and race may not be recognized or articulated out loud as salient identity categories (at least on a societal level in Germany), migration status and religion are. Over the past decades, “migration background” has become a prominent and socially acceptable way to describe the racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity in Germany. Self-reported racial data is not collected in the German microcensus.⁴ Instead, individuals are asked about their own and their parents’ place of birth and citizenship status (Statistisches Bundesamt 2020). Based on this, people are categorized into either “German without migration background” or “person with migration background” (with or without German citizenship). The term “migration background⁵” refers to someone who is an immigrant themselves or has at least one parent or grandparent who did not have German citizenship at birth. Notably, a nationally representative study found that a majority of people falling into this classification do not identify with this ascribed label (Nesterko & Glaesmer, 2019).

“Migration background” is often used interchangeably with the term “migrant”. Both terms are applied to multiple generations to include new immigrants, those who have not experienced migration themselves but were born and raised in Germany, and those with German citizenship. In everyday discourse, the two terms rarely include individuals read as white, regardless of their migration status, but instead are applied across generations to individuals read as not white, particularly anyone perceived as Muslim (e.g., El-Tayeb, 2014; Moffitt & Juang, 2019). The resulting binary of German vs. immigrant is reinforced in school textbooks, where images of immigrants are almost always nonwhite and framed as the “other” who are different from “us” Germans (Kotowski, 2013; Niehaus et al., 2015). One potential consequence of this assigned, broad, and homogenizing binary is that identity exploration, resolution, or coherence can be challenging if there is not a recognition of or language to support, for instance, dual or multiple identities that encompass being both German and another heritage (Moffitt et al., 2018).

When response categories do include possibilities for hyphenated and heritage-based identities, adolescents of immigrant descent vary in how they self identify. One study found that some youth self selected an identity label of dual German and heritage culture origin (e.g., German Turkish, 41%), some only German (33%), some only heritage culture (e.g., Turkish, 24%), and a few chose a mix of non-German heritages (e.g., Norwegian Turkish, 3%) (Vietze et al., 2019). Another study found that half their sample of German adolescents of immigrant descent self identified as both German and a heritage country label (49.6%), a little more than a third identified only with their heritage country (37.3%) and a minority self identified only as German (13.1%) (Jugert et al., 2018). A qualitative study of Turkish-heritage German adolescents showed that they have “hybrid ethnonational, ethno-local, and national European identities” and what is emphasized depends on social class, school, and community experiences (Faas, 2009, p. 299). Thus, while the official census uses the criteria of birthplace and citizenship status to categorize people into groups from the top down, empirical studies show that adolescents self select a wider range of identity categories that include familial cultural heritage, beyond the binary of being German or “person of migrant background.”

It is important to note that these social identity categories are also racialized. Visible minorities (meaning nonwhite individuals and those who wear religious headscarves, for instance) are often labeled immigrants and non-German even when they were born and raised in Germany and have no direct experience with migration (Ahyoud et al., 2018; Antidiskriminierungsstelle des Bundes, 2019; El-Tayeb, 2014; Hubbard & Utsey, 2015; Will, 2019). Religion is also racialized, such that being Christian is associated implicitly with being white (El-Tayeb, 2014). In Germany the term “anti-Muslim racism” is more precise than “Islamophobia” as it captures the intersection of racism and anti-Muslim sentiment (Attia & Keskinkılıç, 2016). Subsequently, developing a racial identity tied to specific racial groups is not likely in Germany, but a racialized identity that centers around other relevant social categories such as migration, religion, and heritage culture may be. Yet, if one’s migration status, religion, and heritage culture are seen as fixed and unchangeable as skin color, this essentialization does the same work as biological racism, to judge certain groups as inferior (or superior) based on these characteristics (Foner, 2015; Goldberg, 2006).

Summary of contrasting contexts

Germany focuses intensely on the horrific example of racism in relation to the Holocaust, while minimizing the ongoing significance of race in the present, while the U.S. discusses race openly and recognizes its salience in the present, but often fails to link past racism to the present. Both scenarios are not optimal because they restrict understanding and clarity about how the past informs the present and future. To illustrate what the German sociohistorical context means for adolescent identity development more concretely, we describe briefly how we adapted the U.S. Identity Project intervention Umaña-Taylor & Douglass, 2016) to be appropriate for adolescents in Germany. In adapting the intervention we deliberated what aspects of ERI were relevant and could be transferred from the U.S. to the German context and which aspects needed to be reconsidered in light of the specific context and local language.

Adapting the Identity Project to a German context

Studies in North America (see review by Rivas-Drake, et al., 2014) and Europe (e.g., Baysu & Phalet, 2019), focusing predominantly on ethnic minority adolescents, have found that those with stronger ethnic-racial identities report more positive adjustment in terms of greater academic achievement and motivation, life satisfaction, self-esteem, positive mood and lower loneliness and depressive symptoms. The few studies in Germany show that heritage culture (i.e., family heritage culture of origin) identity exploration is linked positively to intercultural competence and prosocial behavior among adolescents of immigrant and non-immigrant descent (Schwarzenthal et al., 2017). And for adolescents of immigrant descent, stronger heritage identity commitment is linked to higher self-esteem and life satisfaction, as well as fewer depressive symptoms and behavioral problems (Schachner et al., 2018; Schotte et al., 2018). In contrast to U.S. findings, stronger heritage identity in Germany is related negatively to academic adjustment, suggesting that the demand for assimilation reduces the promotive effects of strong heritage identification, at least for mid-adolescents (Schotte et al., 2018). A limitation of this accumulated knowledge is that almost all of these studies are cross-sectional. Therefore, much less is known about whether stronger ethnic-racial or heritage cultural identity leads to more positive youth adjustment. The experimental design of the Identity Project study addressed this gap in the literature (Umaña-Taylor et al., 2018).

The Identity Project is an 8-week school-based intervention developed in the U.S. for 9th graders to promote greater exploration of their ethnic-racial identities (Umaña-Taylor & Douglass, 2016). For young people, a better understanding of who they are in terms of their own ethnicity, race, cultural heritage, worldviews, and values can help them understand themselves in relation to others (Rogers, 2018). Importantly, longitudinal findings from the Identity Project showed a chain reaction whereby adolescents who participated in the intervention engaged in greater ERI exploration, which then led to greater ERI resolution and global identity resolution, ultimately leading to more positive adjustment in terms of higher self-esteem, lower depressive symptoms, greater academic engagement, and more positive other group attitudes one year later (Umaña-Taylor et al., 2018).

These promising findings encouraged us to adapt this intervention to be appropriate for adolescents in Germany. In our adapted intervention study we found that adolescents who engaged in greater heritage identity exploration also reported greater global identity resolution, and those reporting greater global identity resolution also had more positive outgroup attitudes, but only for adolescents who participated in the Identity Project and not the control group (Juang et al., 2020). These initial findings offer support that our adaptation was appropriate and had a positive impact on the identities and perspectives of the youth who took part in it.

The adaptation process followed recommended practices for cultural adaptations of evidence-based interventions: (a) information gathering, (b) preliminary adaptation design, (c) preliminary adaptation test, and (d) adaptation refinement (Barrera & Castro, 2006).⁶ There are two main ways the intervention was adapted to be more culturally appropriate. We 1) shifted the focus from race, ethnicity, and genetics to family, heritage, and culture; and 2) added explicit discussions of Germany as an immigrant country and about German national identity.

Shifted focus from race, ethnicity, and genetics to family, heritage, and culture

One of the main adaptations was trying to understand what “ethnic-racial identity” could mean in Germany when “race” and thus discussions of “racial identity” would not make sense , as the concept of “race” remains frozen in time. The term “ethnicity” and thus “ethnic identity” was perceived as too academic. After much deliberation, we decided on the terminology and framing of “heritage culture identity” as a part of a person that is based on their family and cultural heritage. If ethnic-racial identity encompasses one’s lived racial experiences due to group membership and the sense of belonging, thoughts, feelings, and experiences that individuals have based on their cultural or ethnic ancestry (Umaña-Taylor et al., 2014), “heritage cultural identity” is an appropriate term to use for a construct that substantially overlaps with, but is not the same as, the construct of ethnic-racial identity. The term also uses everyday language (“culture”, “heritage”) that is understandable and meaningful to adolescents in Germany.

Further, taking into account that religion and cultural or national identities overlap (Fleischmann et al., 2019; Sixtus et al., 2019), the word “cultural” acknowledges the salience of religious background in Germany. The term “heritage” also makes more concrete the importance of family and ancestry. Every person has a family with rituals, traditions, customs, and language that are signifiers of culture. Ancestry highlights connections to the past, reaching across generations to a sense of self in the present and future, helping to define, understand, and make meaning of one’s ethnic or cultural background (Erikson, 1963, 1968; Morning, 2014; Verkuyten et al., 2019). Thus, the terms “heritage” and “ancestry” highlight the importance of shared history, tradition, common descent, and an enduring connection to a group (family) that is passed down from generation to generation and continues to the present day to inform one’s identity. To concretize the concept for 7th graders, we found in our earlier studies that explaining cultural heritage as something tied to one’s family background was easy to understand. Thus, we shifted the focus and terminology from race, ethnicity, and genetics to family, heritage, and culture.

We note that when using the term “heritage cultural identity” as we do in our study, we lose the explicit recognition of racialized experiences. It is an imperfect term. Yet it is accurate in terms of what we actually discussed in the project and measured in the data. Within the Identity Project, using terminology such as “heritage culture identity” was a useful entry point for discussions and reflections on racialized experiences that are not widely discussed. Once adolescents understood that everyone has a family ancestry and culture, we allowed space for reflections of how family ancestry and culture may overlap with other positionalities including immigration status, skin color, religion, etc., for instance, by recognizing that some adolescents and their families experience discrimination because of religion or accent, while others do not, even if their parents are also immigrants (for example, a white adolescent with immigrant parents from Belgium). These discussions beyond customs and traditions associated with cultural heritage highlight the nuanced and intersecting identity markers and experiences that contribute to adolescent identity development. For adolescents to understand themselves in relation to broader society, it will be necessary to not ignore these racialized aspects that are tied up within heritage cultural identity.

Another difference from the original intervention is that we included explicit discussions of national identity (i.e., feeling, being German) to make clear that one’s sense of belonging to the country in which one is living may be different from their sense of belonging to family heritage culture. Who is considered German, and who is allowed to identify as German, are basic questions we made room to explore and discuss. By explicitly addressing this we made clear that German identity is broad and inclusive, not limited to a particular ethnicity⁷ or race, and can include identifying with multiple heritages. The importance of emphasizing the inclusive nature of German national identity is highlighted by experimental research showing that altering conceptions of German national identity, from being fixed and descent-based (e.g., based on a particular ethnic or religious ancestry) to something that is malleable and changing over time, leads to less prejudice against immigrants (Bauer & Hannover, 2020). Thus, helping adolescents to deconstruct and take apart the tightly fused and overlapping ethnic, racial, cultural, and religious identities captured in who is considered “German,” is how our adapted intervention promoted an exploration of a more inclusive German identity.

Another important aspect we emphasized more in the adapted version is that all adolescents have a heritage cultural identity and not only those of immigrant descent. To date, most studies of ethnic identity in Germany have only included youth who are immigrants or of immigrant descent, using a bidimensional acculturation perspective (e.g., Schachner et al., 2018). But focusing solely on ethnic minority or immigrant descent adolescents when studying ERI may reinforce the idea that only they have heritage or culture. For non-immigrant majority adolescents, usually only national identity is assessed, as it is assumed they do not have a separate ethnic heritage to identify with. Further complicating how non-migrant majority adolescents think about and express heritage or national identity is the possible association with right-wing attitudes⁸ (Blank & Schmidt, 2003). Yet non-immigrant majority adolescents also have ethnicity, and using the term “heritage culture identity” seemed to be the most appropriate way to get them to consider and disentangle national identity with an identity based on family ancestry. The difficulty for some of the white adolescents of non-immigrant descent in our study to grasp they also had culture supports findings that those with dominant identities report lower levels of identity awareness as they tend to see themselves as simply “normal” (Galliher et al., 2017 Rivas-Drake, et al., 2014). The notion that being white German is simply “normal” implies that having any other identity is not normal. For this reason, an emphasis on the plurality of identities and heritages represented in Germany is not only important for the development of minoritized youth, but for all youth.

Germany is a multicultural and immigrant country

Different from the original U.S. intervention, we added information about Germany as a country of immigration, as well as a very brief history of the founding of Germany in 1871 to unite the many small states that covered central and north Europe. We added these discussions to emphasize that the nation of Germany included diverse peoples from the very beginning (Oltmer, 2017). We wanted the students to understand that migration and multicultural communities are not new phenomena in Germany, and that diverse peoples have been in Germany for a very long time (Black Central Europe, n.d.). We also highlighted in our adapted intervention that many white Germans were also immigrants themselves or had immigrant heritage. We reinforced this by focusing on Germans living in former German territories who then had to flee due to the land being narrowed after WWII, to show parallels to the experiences of current Syrian refugees.

As stated above, for some non-immigrant white Germans, identifying with Germany is complicated by the legacy of the Holocaust and Nazi ideology, with its nationalistic, militaristic, and authoritarian foundations, and the resulting intergenerational collective trauma and guilt. For non-Jewish majority Germans, these associations create unease and uncertainty related to expressing a strong national identity or openly celebrating being German (Seiffge-Krenke & Haid, 2012). Yet, by emphasizing the ways in which Germany is diverse, and that being German does not just mean being white, the narrow conceptual link between Nazism and German national identity can be further split.

In the U.S. intervention, stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination were discussed based on social groups defined by race. In our adapted intervention we centered these discussions not on race but on social groups defined by citizenship, immigration status, and religion. These social groups are visible in different ways – by skin color, clothing, language, and culture, and are targets of discrimination at different historical time points. In the original intervention, students were encouraged to think about variation within each social group to illustrate that oftentimes there is more variation within social groups than between. Rather than focusing on racial groups, our adapted version aimed to highlight variation within two major groups at the forefront of discussions regarding education, community cohesion, and civic participation in Germany: being labeled a foreigner or person with migration background versus being German with no so-called migration background. We have also highlighted an intersectional perspective to these issues, to point out that being of immigrant descent, for instance, recognizes just one part of a person. A Turkish-heritage girl versus Turkish-heritage boy versus Turkish-heritage diverse⁹ person may face different issues, have access to different opportunities, and confront different expectations from teachers, other adults, and peers. Emphasizing an intersectional perspective encourages adolescents to see beyond broad categories (such as “immigrant” vs. “German”) to be more sensitized to shifting power dynamics depending on situation and context, to find commonalities across social groups and, importantly, with their classmates (e.g., Moffitt et al., 2020).

We adapted the intervention to be appropriate for the current context and climate in Germany. We are aware that the sociocultural context of Germany has and continues to change. We began adapting the intervention in 2017, two years after the height of the refugee “crisis.” From the initial “welcome culture” (e.g., when public attitudes toward refugees were positive) to the backlash, to a changing discourse in the media regarding migrants and refugees in German society (Holmes & Castañeda, 2016), we carried out the intervention with two cohorts in the academic years of 2018–2019 and 2019–2020. A mass shooting in Hanau of immigrant descent individuals in February 2020 led to immediate calls by government leaders for more attention to right-wing racism. Explicitly linking such acts to racism was not done in the past, for instance, when German authorities failed to uncover the links between the murders of nine Turkish-heritage people between 2000–2007, carried out by a right-wing extremist group, the National Socialist Underground (McGowan, 2014). The recent increase in hate crimes (Federal Ministry of Interior, 2020), including shootings at a Jewish synagogue in Halle, a hookah bar in Hanau, and attacks and killing of politicians who support refugees and immigration in Kassel and Leipzig (Heitmeyer et al., 2020), has again changed the climate toward greater awareness of the urgency to address race and racism. Anti-racism protests worldwide, including in Germany in June 2020 after U.S. police murdered George Floyd, an unarmed African American man, has further highlighted the need to address race and individual- and state-level racism. What has been taboo to discuss may become less so in this rapidly changing climate. This changing climate also means that we may see a generational shift in the relevance of race-based identities in Germany, as well as in other European countries that are grappling with similar issues regarding race, racism, and youth identities (Gyberg et al., 2018; Svensson & Syed, 2019).

Recommendations and future directions

We offer several recommendations for the further study of ERI in contexts outside of North America. First, we recommend engaging in researcher reflexivity while actively interrogating the basic terms and constructs that we use in our studies when transplanting to another context. Researchers’ own social identities, world views, community engagement, and biases contribute to the framing of questions, theories used, samples recruited, and epistemologies adopted (Nzinga et al., 2018; Roberts et al., 2020), suggesting that attention to the composition of an adaptation team is no small matter. To arrive at a meaningful adaptation, it was important to have a diverse translation and adaptation team to ensure that different perspectives, lived experiences, and academic expertise, especially those of minoritized communities, were represented. The research team that adapted the intervention included two cisgender women and two cisgender men from Germany (African American Slovenian German, white German, Iranian Kurdish German and Polish German) and two cisgender women from the U.S. (Asian American and white U.S. American).

Second, we recommend that researchers explain explicitly the terms being used, and when using a term such as “ethnic identity,” to also consider the ways in which the scientific term may vary across contexts, especially when literature and researchers using that term are predominantly from the U.S. We used the term “heritage culture identity” instead of “ethnic identity” in our publications to be transparent about the wording used with our participants, as well as to be clear that we did not (could not) ask directly about ethnicity or race. And yet, we also know that the terms heritage and culture may not capture racialized experiences. This is the dilemma – we do not name ethnicity or race in our German studies and struggle with finding ways to capture how race and racialization still play role in identity development. We also acknowledge that the terminology that we use today may be judged to be insufficient or less appropriate later. Our paper aims to highlight the need to continue to question and reflect upon the terms used, especially if taken from another cultural context. We suggest that researchers always be explicit regarding how and why they use specific terminology in their studies.

Third, another recommendation is to include national identity in studies of ERI. In the intervention we added a more explicit discussion of German identity to reinforce the idea that being German is more inclusive than what may be portrayed in the media or in everyday discussions. We adapted the intervention to a context where 85% of adolescents had family migration history, so explicitly acknowledging that embracing both their family heritage as well as being German, was important.

One area for future directions for ERI studies in contexts where discussions of race is taboo, is to establish collaborations with researchers who are dealing with similar issues. The Identity Project is now being adapted in Greece, Sweden, Norway, and Italy, all contexts where discussions of race are taboo to varying degrees, though the national contexts differ greatly. The researchers are sharing ideas and experiences in adapting ERI to uncover similarities as well as differences specific to that context. One example is that while in Germany “race” and “ethnicity” are not everyday or acceptable terms, in Norway “ethnicity” and sometimes “race” are acceptable, and in Sweden, “ethnicity” is acceptable. Work by Svensson and Syed (2019) and Gyberg et al. (2018) describe the Swedish context in detail so that readers can better situate and understand the terms and concepts. Their work highlights some similarities to Germany, in that “Swedish” and “migrant” are racialized terms and are often used in opposition to one another. Research networks such as this one will help push the study of ERI to a more global understanding of this concept.

Another area for future research is to incorporate the sociohistorical moment into the study design when studying ERI (Rogers et al., 2020). Within the last four years that we have been working on the Identity Project, conversations of race, racism, identity, and belonging in Germany have opened up considerably. Collecting data before and after significant sociohistorical events (such as the worldwide anti-racism protests) and including a research question of how these events may have sparked exploration or understanding of race- and ethnicity-related experiences would shed light on how such moments could potentially explain adolescent ERI exploration rather than developmental age (Rogers et al., 2020). Doing so contributes to a more dynamic understanding of development that is not too rigidly tied to competencies and characteristics at specific ages and stages.

Another important area for future research is to understand how adolescents who are white and non-immigrant German explore their ethnic-racial identities. A question that is often asked when we discuss the Identity Project is what this exploration means for those youth. Because of Germany’s history, to focus on what it means to be white and in the majority can be very uncomfortable. This is similar in the U.S. But maintaining silence on these issues may perpetuate an uncritical stance regarding race-based discrimination and inequities (Hagerman, 2014). White children are also racialized and uncovering this is important, especially in relation to understanding their own heritage and cultural identities and how this informs their attitudes, interactions, and relations with those from other groups (Helms, 2020; Rogers, 2018). Promoting adolescent identity exploration that encourages an understanding of societal hierarchies based on racialized categories is necessary for all adolescents. This awareness would provide a good starting point to be able to actively critique and develop notions of German identity that easily includes youth of multiple heritages.

Conclusion

Through adapting the Identity Project intervention we had to think deeply about the sociohistorical context of Germany and contrast that to the U.S. where it was developed. We had to consider how the key construct of ethnic-racial identity had been defined and investigated primarily in one country, which meant we needed to be cautious when applying that construct in a new context. We also found that an interdisciplinary approach drawing from literature in other fields was important. Scholars in sociology, history, and law have examined and discussed issues of ethnicity, race, and identity in Germany for some time. Drawing from that knowledge enriched our psychological and educational perspectives and clearly demonstrated that issues of identity, race, and racism are global issues that are shaped by each country’s specific sociohistorical context.

ERI has been conceptualized and studied as a key aspect of youth development and a developmental asset, particularly among minoritized youth (Neblett et al., 2012). We described how an understanding of the specific sociohistorical context of Germany is necessary for determining whether ERI is still meaningful in this setting. Because of the history of racially motivated genocide, developing an identity linked to race as a social construct as conceptualized in the U.S. context may not be tenable. Developing a racialized identity embedded in heritage culture, migration, and religion may be more likely. Because race and racism are still relevant yet not openly discussed, the adapted Identity Project required a modification in terminology as well as a re-centering of discussions around heritage, culture, and family instead of race and ethnicity. Our hope with this paper is to further discussion, question our conceptualizations, and acknowledge how a detailed understanding of historical and sociocultural contexts are needed for the study of ERI. Studying how both minority and majority adolescents develop ERI within inequitable societies such as Germany and the U.S. may end up highlighting similarities as well as differences. Doing so will clarify not only how ERI contributes to adolescents’ well-being across contexts, but has implications for the well-being of the broader communities in which they live.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Who is considered white shifts over time, demonstrating that race is not a static category but relevant for the process of racialization.

2. The first major national memorial dedicated to African American history to include slavery opened in 2018 in Washington D.C., over 150 years after slavery ended. The first national memorial to focus on racial terror lynching was opened in Montgomery, Alabama in 2019. And the National Museum of the American Indian of the Smithsonian Institution was founded in 1989, serving also as a living memorial. Unlike in Germany, most people in the U.S. are not exposed to these few memorials on an everyday basis to remember and reflect on the U.S.’s violent racist history.

3. The term “ethnic identity” is used in German acculturation literature, but usually only for immigrants and not meant to capture experiences of non-immigrants, meaning ethnic identity tends to refer to heritage culture. Yet, the term “ethnic German” also is used to refer to a shared ancestry, such as between East and West Germans, or so-called German repatriates, (Spät)Aussiedler, from Poland or the former USSR (Titzmann et al., 2011). (Spät)Aussiedler were automatically granted German citizenship, even for children born and raised outside of Germany, while citizenship remained unattainable for generations of immigrants and their descendants until 2000. This is a good example of how being “German” was still officially constructed as having German ancestry and being white (Müller, 2011), a narrative that is still prevalent today, although no longer as explicitly supported by legal structures (Moffitt et al., 2018; Reijerse et al., 2015).

4. The general population census does not gather this information.

5. The Federal Government Expert Commission (2021) has recommended no longer using the term “migration background” to aggregate immigrant, second, and later generations, but rather “immigrants and their direct descendants”. The commission also recommends that “migrant” should be replaced with “immigrant”. Most of the adolescents included in our studies are not immigrants but born and raised in Germany. Thus, we chose to use the term “adolescents of immigrant descent” in this paper.

6. For more detail in how we implemented these steps please refer to Juang et al. (2020).

7. It has been argued that one reason for the emphasis on coupling ethnicity to Germanness was to foster a shared identity in a formerly divided country of East and West Germany. This, however, ended up being exclusionary and is now considered “outdated” (Federal Government Expert Commission, 2021).

8. For German adults without immigrant heritage, a strong German national identity (positive sense of belonging to a nation) has been associated with nationalism (Blank & Schmidt, 2003). Nationalism can be a consequence of national identity, the idea that being German is defined by a specific racial or cultural ancestry, is homogenous, and superior to other groups (Blank & Schmidt, 2003). And yet, the same study found that national identity is not synonymous with nationalism, it also is related positively to patriotism, defined as being critical of one’s nation, supportive of democratic principles, and inclusive of different views. Patriotism is a “counter-concept” to nationalism. Thus, both nationalists and patriots love their country, but for different reasons. One leads to denigration of outgroups while the other leads to acceptance. In their study stronger national identity was related to both nationalism and patriotism, but nationalism was linked to more outgroup hostility while patriotism was linked to less. Further, more adults were oriented toward patriotism (66%) than nationalism (about 40%). Indeed, other studies find that German adults and adolescents do not necessarily define being German as being a nationalist, but also including being multicultural, open, tolerant, and embracing diversity (Calmbach et al., 2016; Ditlmann & Kopf-Beck, 2019). Nonetheless, there is still a mainstream public discourse whereby being German to some extent reflects nationalistic beliefs where “ethnic” and “national” are blurred categories.

9. In 2013, Germany was the first European country to allow a third option (diverse) for registering babies’ gender at birth as a way to acknowledge gender diversity beyond the binary.