Suspect Outsiders or Prospective Citizens? Constructing the Immigrant/German Boundary in Germany’s Integration Courses

Daniel Williams

doi:10.3390/socsci7040061

Abstract

Most scholarship on integration and assimilation in Europe has examined laws, policies and quantitative data to understand the integration of immigrants. Fewer studies have looked at the meaning of integration for immigrants and host societies. This article helps to fill this gap in scholarship by examining the construction of immigrants and Germany in mandatory integration courses in contemporary Germany. Using ethnographic observations of integration courses and discourse analysis of curricular materials, I analyze these constructions using a boundary-construction approach, where both the content of what separates immigrants from host society members, and the brightness of the boundary are used as a basis for viewing immigrants as outsiders versus citizens. I use the terms suspect outsiders and prospective citizens to describe the nature of the immigrant/German boundary based on these constructions. The findings show that three themes—gender and family norms, democracy and rights, and religious freedom—form the content of the immigrant/German boundary. Within these themes, Germany’s civic integration courses generally construct immigrants as prospective citizens by blurring the immigrant/German boundary. The nature of the immigrant/German boundary is crucial for both the integration of immigrants and for Germany. A bright boundary that invokes the notion of immigrants as fundamentally different places the burden of integration on them to change, while a blurred boundary potentially redefines what it means to be German.

Highlights

In the early 2000s, Germany and other European Union countries began to introduce integration courses as part of a new emphasis on the integration of immigrants (Goodman 2014; Bertossi 2011; Joppke 2007; Council of the European Union 2004)
The nature of the immigrant/German boundary is crucial for both the integration of immigrants and for Germany
In the integration courses I observed, three themes emerged as important for constructing the immigrant/German boundary: (1) gender relations and gender equality; (2) democracy and rights; and (3) religious and expressive freedom. These were the themes that elicited the most interactions, elaborations and conversations among teachers and students in the courses I observed. They are themes that are central to both policy and public discourse about immigrant integration in Europe (Goodman 2014; Green 2015; Ewing 2008)

Summary

Introduction

In the early 2000s, Germany and other European Union countries began to introduce integration courses as part of a new emphasis on the integration of immigrants (Goodman 2014; Bertossi 2011; Joppke 2007; Council of the European Union 2004). While large-scale data comparing statistics on unemployment and education or citizenship policies are more often used to analyze boundaries between immigrants and citizens, such approaches cannot account for interactional or local contexts, and risk overgeneralizing national models (see cf Simonsen 2016) Germany was seen as ‘no better’ as instances of boundary blurring, since in doing so immigrants were constructed as equals who did not necessarily need to change or assimilate to become integrated, and were prospective citizens Because these elaborations are spontaneous, interactive, and take place in real time, ethnographic methods are ideal for analyzing the immigrant/German boundary. I later reviewed these notes for themes where immigrants could be constructed as suspect outsiders or prospective citizens, and coded them using the themes I examined

Constructing Immigrants and Germany in Real Time

Gender and Family Norms

Democracy and Human Rights

Freedom of Religion and Expression

Discussion