Challenging ethnic citizenship: German and Israeli perspectives on immigration

Abstract

Levy, Daniel, and Yfaat Weiss, eds. Challenging Ethnic Citizenship. German and Israeli Perspectives on Immigration. New York: Berghahn Books, 2002.282 pp. $75 hardback, $25 paperback. Germany is the last place one would expect Israel to turn for lessons regarding citizenship and identity. Their fates inextricably intertwined by way of the Holocaust, these countries were forced to shape and legitimize their nation-building and migration policies in direct response to World War II. Both embraced a type of ethnic citizenship warranting a right of return to German emigre and Jewish diaspora groups, paradoxically invoking the same jus sanguinis ideal that had precipitated mass expulsions and genocide in the first place. Both states employed an ethno-organic concept of citizenship after 1948, as an ideological weapon against other populations making claims on the same territory and as a barrier to the incorporation of easily exploited migrant laborers across three decades. Levy and Weiss have compiled fifteen fascinating essays on German and Israeli citizenship, rules, minority dynamics, incorporation regimes, and the transformation of ethnic identities. Rainer Muenz supplies a data-rich, demographic overview of migration patterns in Germany encompassing migrant laborers, WWII expellees, and ethnic resettlers. Yinon Cohen surveys migration waves to Israel encompassing North Africans, Ashkenazi, and a dramatic influx from the former Soviet Union. The temptation to draw immediate comparisons between the lousy treatment of non-German Turks and non-Jewish Arabs is almost irresistible. Dieter Gosewinkel draws a clearer line between the two, reviewing nationally unique aspects of German citizenship law across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. he shows that bureaucratic discretion, usually secret in nature, rendered akin to an act of grace (62) under Prussian rule; the German lack of faith in the assimilatory power of naturalization persisted until 1999. Ralf Fuecks explores the contentious nature of dual citizenship in the FRG as rooted mainly in this psychological and political resistance. Yfaat Weiss contends that the self-proclaimed Jewish state has created its own Golem, allowing ever more non Jews (as defined by orthodox halachic criteria) to enter Israel to strengthen a nation-state positing Jewishness as its sole raison d'etre. Israel finds it impossible to embrace Palestinians as citizens under this definition; amendments to the Law of Return have rendered it a multi-ethnic society devoid of equal rights, or any rights at all, if the ethnicity in question is Arab. Prior to 1999, the Federal Republic used comparable blood-and-culture arguments to declare generations of Turkish residents incapable of Germanness. Gilad Margalit weaves German-Jewish parallels into the fabric of the post-war Federal Republic, offering an intriguing comparison of Roma and Sinti efforts to render themselves full members of the polity. Ironically, the Sinti succeed in securing legitimation by echoing post-war Jewish activities and insisting on their Holocaust-victim status. Levent Soysal attempts to situate Turkish youth of the second and third generations, rejecting notions of cultural in-betweenness (the analysis is too abstract for my tastes). Zeev Rosenhek's description of Israeli migration regimes and social rights accorded (or not) to migrant workers conveys the sense of deja vu all over again vis-a-vis Turkish guestworkers in the FRG. …