German Migrants Research Articles

The state of voluntariness? (Re)migration policy in Post-Fascist Germany between denazification, decolonization and development

ABSTRACT Between 1949 and 1980, voluntariness became a key element in West Germany’s post-fascist migration regime, intended to ethically frame the forced deportations of migrants. Voluntariness appeared in German migration legislation as a euphemistic term for forced removals. Politicians and lawyers emphasized the need to offer voluntary repatriation to those facing inevitable deportation. To avoid any association with Nazi deportations, both liberals and ‘former’ Nazis involved in Germany’s migration policy underscored the notion of voluntariness in what were essentially forced deportations. The paradigm of voluntariness in repatriation management was influenced by a specific German need to denazify deportations and migration practices, as well as by a global shift towards voluntariness associated with liberalization, decolonization, development, Cold War rivalries and the rise of liberal internationalism. Global practices and discourses of return migration both emerged from and helped shape this paradigm of voluntariness, as the liberalizing world sought to distance itself from its fascist legacy and align with emancipatory and progressive ideals, despite the ongoing deportation of migrants from the Global South. I argue that West Germany played a significant role in shaping and globalizing the concept of voluntary repatriation within this historical context, transforming it from a paradigm into a dispositive.

Earnings assimilation of post‐reunification East German migrants in West Germany

AbstractWe investigate the wage assimilation of East Germans who migrated to West Germany after reunification (1990–99). We compare their wage assimilation to that of ethnic German immigrants from Eastern Bloc countries and international immigrants to West Germany who arrived at the same time. The analysis uses administrative as well as survey data. The results suggest that East Germans faced significant initial earnings disadvantages in West Germany, even conditional on age and education. However, these disadvantages were smaller than those of international immigrants, supporting the beneficial role of cultural similarity. The earnings gap relative to West German natives narrowed over time for all immigrants. These findings are robust to controlling for potentially endogenous return migration and labor force participation. Controls for fixed effects reveal that positive assimilation for East German and international immigrants was concentrated among highly educated immigrants.

Who Counts in Official Statistics? Ethical‐Epistemic Issues in German Migration and the Collection of Racial or Ethnic Data

ABSTRACTIn European countries (excluding the UK and Ireland), official statistics do not use racial or ethnic categories, but instead rely on proxies to collect data about discrimination. In the German microcensus, the proxy category adopted is ‘migration background’ (Migrationshintergrund): an individual has a ‘migration background’ when one or more of their parents does not have German citizenship by birth. We apply a coupled ethical‐epistemic analysis to the ‘migration background’ category to illuminate how the epistemic issues contribute to ethical ones. Our central claim is that these ethical‐epistemic issues with the ‘migration background’ category are best analysed in terms of Charles Mills's ‘white ignorance’. Appealing to Annette Martín's structural account of white ignorance, we highlight the cyclical reinforcement of ignorance and racial injustice in the use of the ‘migration background’ variable. Colourblind eliminativism about race perpetuates the use of ‘migration background’, which sustains and intensifies racial injustices.

“Let the State Decide It All for Me”: The Role of Migration and Integration Policy in the Decision-Making of Ukrainian Refugee Women in Germany

While German migration policies aim to provide temporary protection and integrate Ukrainian refugees into German society as early as possible, the procedures and ideas of integration might be perceived differently by the beneficiaries. The feeling of “permanent temporariness” has been persistent among Ukrainians since March 2022. In this situation, some of the refugees renounce their agency and put responsibility on decision-making onto the state, while others oppose the idea of “being integrated” since they see their time in Germany as temporary, and their future in Ukraine as soon as the security situation allows them to return.Drawing on the experiences of single Ukrainian women who received protection in Germany, the paper presents an anthropological perspective on person–state interactions in the context of refugees’ future-planning. How do German policies for supporting Ukrainian refugees impact their “stay or return” decision-making? Do the policies address their needs now and allow them to make investments for the future, or, on the contrary, contribute to their decision to return to Ukraine, which appears to be “simpler” and “more predictable”? How does the experience of going through bureaucratic procedures contribute to the sense of having agency and being capable of shaping their today and tomorrow? To answer these questions, I am going to present the reasonings and emotions concerning bureaucratic procedures that are closely intertwined with the planning of their future by Ukrainian refugees in Germany.

Human Capital, Institutions and Development: Insights from German Migration in the Russian Empire

Human Capital, Institutions and Development: Insights from German Migration in the Russian Empire

Earnings Assimilation of Post-Reunification East German Migrants in West Germany

Earnings Assimilation of Post-Reunification East German Migrants in West Germany

Earnings Assimilation of Post-Reunification East German Migrants in West Germany

Earnings Assimilation of Post-Reunification East German Migrants in West Germany

From asylum to labour: track change in German migration policy

Asylum and labour migration used to be processed along sharply separate legal-political tracks, recognising either humanitarian need or individual performance, respectively. This binary is losing traction, as neoliberal performance criteria and mundane labour needs hold entry in the asylum domain. This trend is illustrated along the Spurwechsel (track change) in German migration policy. While the preference for track change traverses party lines, it is marked by a tension between the imperatives of migration control and migrant integration. This allows for political variation, the right tending towards the control and the left towards the integration horn of the dilemma. Under a recently left-dominated government, which is at the same time receptive to business calls for more Fachkräfte (skilled labour), the control versus integration dilemma has been decisively resolved in favour of integration, up to a point that the state’s sovereign migration control function and the integrity of asylum policy are put at risk.

Migration as Crisis? German Migration Discourse at Critical Points of Nation-Building

This article enquires how the Federal Republic of Germany has governed migration at critical junctures of German nation-building within a growing European Union. Drawing on the documents on “Einwanderung” (immigration) from the archive of the German Bundestag from 1949 until 2022, and on secondary literature and media representations of (forced) migration, migrants, and refugees, this article traces different depictions of migration in German political discourse at critical moments of German nation-building to answer the question: Which role does the narrative of “migration as crisis” play for the German nation-building project? I argue that to answer this question, it is necessary to understand whether an incoming migrant group is considered beneficial or dangerous (“critical”) for the hegemonic articulations of an imagined German national identity.

Who blames Brexit for their decision to leave the UK? The departure of skilled Germans from Britain after the referendum

ABSTRACT Brexit created uncertainty for migrants living in the UK and a potential reason to leave the country. Some of the consequences of the Brexit referendum, such as the loss of skilled workers, may have been unintended. This article investigates the relevance of Brexit for German migrants who decided to return to Germany from the UK in the two years following the 2016 referendum. Our analysis relies on a register-based probability sample of German migrants. We find that more than half of German migrants from the UK assert that their decision to return was strongly affected by Brexit. Furthermore, Brexit as a motive for returning positively correlates to dissatisfaction with the political situation, the lack of social security, and dissatisfaction with life in the country as other reasons for their return. Our results indicate that skills and the Brexit return motive are positively related. Whereas attachment to the UK does not affect whether German migrants blame Brexit for their return, those with better English skills and longer durations of stay are more likely to mention Brexit as a return motive.

Персуазивный потенциал языковых средств пропаганды миграционной политики в программе партии «Альтернатива для Германии»

The aim of the study is to identify the means of creating a persuasive effect in the programme of the ‘Alternative for Germany’ (AfD) party. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the identification of persuasive tactics and linguistic means for representing the position of the AfD in relation to migration policy. As a result of the study, it has been found that in order to ensure a persuasive effect, the following tactics are used in the party’s programme: stating the problem, discrediting the opponent, pointing out ways to solve the problem, using a national stereotype, emphasising negative information, creating a ‘circle of strangers’, comparing German migration policy and that of the leading world powers, relying on pan-European democratic values, calling for change. The part of the text of the AfD programme devoted to the problems of migration is based on the antithesis that presupposes the opposition of the German key culture and various manifestations of foreign cultures. At the same time, one can clearly see an attempt to introduce such elements of meaning as ‘incompatibility’, ‘the need to counteract’ and ‘prohibition’ into the MIGRANT concept.

The False King Olaf and His Necklace of Letters

The False King Olaf and His Necklace of Letters

Under the Yoke of Ottoman Domination: Slavery and Central European Philhellenism During the Greek War of Independence

Slavery remained a problem for Central Europeans after the defeat of Napoleon. Concerns over White, Christian enslavement animated German-speaking European responses to the Greek Independence movement. As most antislavery advocates turned their attention to the increasing volume of the slaves traded between Africa and the New World, as well as the persistence and entrenchment of New World slavery, Central Europeans turned their attention to the Christian, Greek subjects of the Ottoman Empire. The so-called ‘Barbary Problem’ ( Barbareskenfrage) became enmeshed with the Eastern Question as Greeks revolted in Ottoman lands. Central Europeans had long viewed the domination of Christians in Islamic North Africa as the central problem of slavery until increased German migration and involvement in the New World brought new tensions to the ideas surrounding slavery. Greek insurrectionists against the Ottoman Empire breathed new life into older ideas about Christians enslaved in Islamic portions of Europe and Africa. Greek Independence gave Germans a bête noir closer to Europe than that of slavery in the Americas. Much of this interest owes to an enduring German philhellenic tradition which has been seldom analysed. Indeed, as Sue Marchand has written ‘the obsession of the Schillerian German literary and scholarly elite with the ancient Greeks has become an accepted-if severely underanlaysed-cliché’. This paper uses archival documents to shed more light on how Central Europeans’ interest and participation in the Greek War of Independence helped to revive old ideas about Christian enslavement at a time when New World slavery became the central concern of a broader European humanitarian protest against servitude.

Between welcome culture and border fence

Newspaper reports provide a rich source of information on the unfolding of public debates, which can serve as basis for inquiry in political science. Such debates are often triggered by critical events, which attract public attention and incite the reactions of political actors: crisis sparks the debate. However, due to the challenges of reliable annotation and modeling, few large-scale datasets with high-quality annotation are available. This paper introduces DebateNet2.0, which traces the political discourse on the 2015 European refugee crisis in the German quality newspaper taz. The core units of our annotation are political claims (requests for specific actions to be taken) and the actors who advance them (politicians, parties, etc.). Our contribution is twofold. First, we document and release DebateNet2.0 along with its companion R package, mardyR. Second, we outline and apply a Discourse Network Analysis (DNA) to DebateNet2.0, comparing two crucial moments of the policy debate on the “refugee crisis”: the migration flux through the Mediterranean in April/May and the one along the Balkan route in September/October. We guide the reader through the methods involved in constructing a discourse network from a newspaper, demonstrating that there is not one single discourse network for the German migration debate, but multiple ones, depending on the research question through the associated choices regarding political actors, policy fields and time spans.

Citizens and Refugees: Stories from Afghanistan and Syria to Germany.

Joachim Häberlen’s Citizens and Refugees is a critique of Germany’s immigration regime and of its highly touted welcoming culture (Willkommenskultur). Häberlen, writing both as a professional historian and as a volunteer working with refugees since 2015, has produced an eminently readable book that utilizes an eclectic array of sources: interviews, text messaging and social media posts. A major problem that motivated the author is the pervasive humanitarian gaze of German officials and volunteers, which reduces refugees to mere objects of compassion. By recounting their lives before becoming refugees, their journeys and their struggles and successes in Germany, Häberlen demonstrates that refugees are subjects with agency. This book is a highly original and important contribution to the rapidly expanding field of German migration studies, and to the critical scholarship on human rights and humanitarianism. The book is organized in four parts, with an introduction and a brief epilogue. The first two parts, ‘Where Stories Begin’ and ‘Becoming Refugees’, are primarily a work of recovery. The road to becoming refugees for Sabrina, Zaki, Reza or Mariana did not start with their arrival in Europe. Häberlen takes the reader back to Afghanistan and Syria. He relates stories of persecution and privation, but also of self-empowerment: the young woman who became the head of a UN-sponsored women’s centre in Afghanistan or the young man who joined demonstrations to replace the Assad regime with a democratic alternative in Syria. They were citizens before becoming refugees. Their exile was the result of advocating for women’s rights, debating the prevalent legal system, or speaking up about government abuses. In short, acts of citizenship that most Germans take for granted turned Afghan and Syrian citizens into social pariahs and/or enemies of the state. At the same time, Häberlen is careful to explain that not everyone has political reasons for fleeing. Motivations ranging from self-realization, career opportunities and material well-being matter just as much. Dismantling the objectified ‘needy refugee’ entails paying attention to the kaleidoscopic and contingent path towards exile.

Heterogeneity in the Utilization of Fecal Occult Blood Testing and Colonoscopy among Migrants and Non-Migrants in Austria: Results of the Austrian Health Interview Survey

Many European studies report lower participation in colorectal cancer screening among migrants than non-migrants. A major limitation of these studies is that usually, the heterogeneity of migrants cannot be accounted for. The aim of this investigation was to examine differences in the utilization of fecal occult blood testing and colonoscopy between non-migrants and the five largest migrant groups residing in Austria using data from the Austrian Health Interview Survey 2019. The two outcomes were compared between non-migrants and migrants using multivariable logistic regression adjusted for socioeconomic and health variables. Migrants from a Yugoslav successor state (OR = 0.61; 95%-CI: 0.44–0.83), Turkish (OR = 0.35; 95%-CI: 0.22–0.55), Hungarian (OR = 0.37; 95%-CI: 0.16–0.82) and German migrants (OR = 0.70; 95%-CI: 0.51–0.98) were less likely to have used a fecal occult blood test compared to non-migrants. Participation in colonoscopy was lower among Turkish migrants (OR = 0.42; 95%-CI: 0.27–0.67) and migrants from a Yugoslav successor state (OR = 0.56; 95%-CI: 0.42–0.75) than among non-migrants. The findings are consistent with studies from other countries and highlight barriers migrants face in accessing the health care system. To address these barriers, the heterogeneity of the population must be taken into account when developing educational materials in order to promote informed decisions about whether or not to participate in colorectal cancer screening.

МІГРАЦІЙНА ПОЛІТИКА ФРН НА СУЧАСНОМУ ЕТАПІ: АНАЛІЗ ПІДХОДІВ ДО БІЖЕНЦІВ В КОНТЕКСТІ МІЖНАРОДНИХ ВИКЛИКІВ

The article examines the main principles of the refugee migration policy of the Federal Republic of Germany, highlights the main migration laws and documents regulating migration flows. Aid to refugees from the countries of North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia in 2015 and Ukrainian refugees who arrived in Germany due to the full-scale aggression of the Russian Federation are compared. On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, triggering another war in Europe and leading to a significant humanitarian crisis with over three million Ukrainian refugees. This part of the article explores whether refugees from Ukraine are perceived differently compared to those from other countries. Notably, while the 2015 refugee influx into Germany primarily consisted of young men from the Middle East, the current situation involves mostly women, children, and elderly people from Ukraine. This shift has led to different public and political responses in Germany. Furthermore, the article discusses why Ukrainian refugees have received better conditions compared to the 2015 scenario, highlighting factors like political dimensions, Ukraine's orientation towards Western democracy, geographical proximity invoking a sense of shared fate, and the cultural closeness reflected in the European character of Ukrainian cities. The article also studies the legal mechanisms affecting refugee reception, particularly the “Mass Influx Directive” enacted in 2001 following the displacement during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. This directive offers a bureaucracy-free method of accepting refugees outside the usual asylum procedure but requires a decision from the EU for its activation. Notably, in 2015, this directive was not applied to Syrian refugees. Instead, Germany unilaterally decided to accept large numbers of Syrian refugees on September 4, 2015. Contrastingly, in 2022, the EU nations collectively decided to activate this directive for Ukrainian refugees soon after the Russian invasion. This directive, triggered in situations like war or persecution impacting large population groups, allows for a bypass of the standard asylum procedure, granting Ukrainian refugees direct protection within the EU without the need for thorough application scrutiny and additional burdens. The conclusion of the article synthesizes the observations on the complexities and dynamics of migration processes in the contemporary world, with a focus on Germany's role as a key player in shaping European migration policy. The analysis of Germany’s approaches to refugees from various regions, especially in the context of Russia's military aggression against Ukraine in 2022, highlights differences in attitudes and methods of assistance. It was established that key German migration laws and documents reflect the dynamic and adaptive nature of state policy, responding to global challenges and changes. The assistance provided to Ukrainian refugees underscores Germany's particular approach towards this group, considering their situation induced by military actions. The primary conclusion is that recipient countries' migration policies are not static; they adapt to external challenges and internal needs. The situation with Ukrainian refugees has been another significant test for the German migration system, where humanitarian commitments intersect with political realities. Germany's efforts in this domain should be considered in formulating international policy aimed at supporting stability and cooperation in Europe. Key words: migration policy, Germany, refugees from the Middle East, Ukrainian refugees, migration space, migrants, cooperation, visa regime, illegal migration.

A transnational practice between fractured homes: Second‐generation Turkish–German migrants’ experiences of visiting and being visited

AbstractThe paper explores the multiple ways in which visits affect the understanding of home for the Turkish–German second generation who have relocated to Turkey. Based on thematic–narrative analysis of 116 life‐story interviews with second‐generation ‘returnees’ in five regions of Turkey, three types of visits are identified: (i) family visits to Turkey whilst growing up in Germany; (ii) visits to Germany after the second generation has ‘returned’ to Turkey; (iii) visits to Turkey by the second generation's Germany‐residing relatives and friends. Each type has different meanings for the visitors and the visited, creating fluid reflections on the meaning of home, which, especially for the second‐generation ‘returnees’, tends to become fractured. Constantly comparing their two home(‐land)s since childhood, they often simultaneously feel both ‘here’ and ‘there’ as a result of changing attachments and a mix of positive and negative experiences in both locales with their families, friends and the dominant others.

Reconsidering the Lacemaker

The few published analyses of Caspar Netscher’s Lacemaker (1662) conclude that Netscher captured a straight-forward portrayal of a middle-class housewife modeling ideal feminine domestic virtue. I contend that previously overlooked ambiguities in Netscher’s canvas complicate this simplistic interpretation, in which details, such as the elegant red bodice and sturdy, unfashionable skirt, confuse rather than clarify this space and the woman depicted. Considering the artist’s visual cues within the sociohistorical context of the work, I theorize that The Lacemaker represents a German immigrant and a maidservant working in a middle-class household, rather than a Dutch housewife as specialists have maintained. By centralizing a working-class migrant, Netscher challenged the expectation that Dutch genre paintings should construct and reinforce ideals of feminine domesticity as a singularly middle-class endeavor. He also challenged biases about outsider identities circulating at the time. Given the negative stereotypes of both maidservants and German migrants, Netscher portrayed this figure in a revolutionary manner: as a woman caught between cultures who, like Dutch women, embodied industriousness and virtue. However, this sympathetic vision did not arouse support in The Hague. Netscher’s Lacemaker became an anomaly in his oeuvre, its perplexing details and apparent modesty out of fashion.

Associations of Internal Migration and Somatoform Symptoms, Depression, and Anxiety in a German Representative Sample

The aim of the present study was to determine, if internal German migration was associated with mental distress, somatoform symptoms, depression, and anxiety. Data from two representative studies from 2020 and 2021 were analysed (N=4922). Mental distress, including the dimensions somatoform symptoms, depression, and anxiety, was assessed with the short version of the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI-18). Linear regression analyses were performed to examine associations between internal migration and mental distress while controlling for sociodemographic factors (gender, age, partner, household equivalised income, and education). Internal migrants from East to West Germany reported more mental distress, somatoform symptoms, depression, and anxiety than those who grew up and stayed in the East. This finding remained after controlling for sociodemographic factors. No differences were found between internal migrants from West to East Germany and those who grew up and stayed in West Germany. German internal migration should be taken into account when examining differences in mental health in East and West Germany. Our results suggest that particularly the group that had moved from the Eastern to the Western part of Germany reported significantly signs of mental distress.