Position In Germany Research Articles

Family, global conflict, and imperial migration: Paul Messi’s First World War

ABSTRACT The German Empire collapsed at the end of the First World War, necessitating a re-negotiation of the legal and social status of its former imperial subjects. This article discusses the wartime experience of Paul Messi, a Cameroonian language assistant at the Colonial Institute, Hamburg. Messi moved to Germany in 1913 to succeed his uncle, Karl Atangana who had returned to Cameroon to become Paramount Leader of the Ewondo and Bane. Atangana had secured the position in Germany for his nephew along with providing him with a stipend. The outbreak of war saw Messi stranded in Hamburg, suffering from ill health and cut off from financial assistance. However, due to Atangana’s petitioning to the German government, his daughter Katharina, and Messi were reunited in Madrid before repatriation in 1919. The return to Cameroon was difficult, Messi, despite his desire to leave Germany, was treated as a suspect person by the French authorities. Focusing on Messi’s account of his experiences, this paper highlights how the war not only disrupted intra-empire familial connections but also how these connections enabled a negotiated return to Mandate Cameroon in the early post-war period.

Social benefits for European Union immigrants? A survey experiment on misperceptions

Using new experimental panel data for Germany, I investigate the role of income misperceptions for welfare restrictive preferences toward European Union immigrants. A majority of respondents misperceive their relative income position in Germany and the European Union and demand that European Union immigrants work and pay taxes before obtaining equal rights to social benefits. Randomized treatments inform subjects about their position in the national and European Union income distribution. My results provide evidence that welfare restrictive preferences are formed in the context of misperceived own income positions: Respondents become more welfare restrictive when they learn about a higher national or lower European Union income position. Information about European Union misperceptions has a persistent treatment effect after 3 months, driven by respondents with larger initial misperceptions, but becomes insignificant after one year.

«Gedächtniskirche à la carte». Notes on the Political Fortunes of a «Pile of Stones»

The life-cycle of an ordinary building typically begins with a plan and ends with a quiet process of decay. Not so, when national interests are at stake, as is the case with Berlin’s Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche (Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial church, consecrated in 1895). In such cases, a building’s collapse, especially if caused by deliberate ruination, tends to entail either a radical damnatio memoriae or a second life in the form of its physical reconstruction (a process ominously demonstrated in the demolition and subsequent reconstruction of the Berliner Schloss 1951- 2023). In the present case, what happened was the monumentalization of the remains that document its downfall. The essay tries to highlight some moments in that process. That the Gedächtniskirche’s long history roughly coincides with the growth and decline of the illustrated postcard as a means of mass communication is perhaps a coincidence. Yet if what one may call the political symbolism of a building is the result of complex dynamics of production and reception, then the magnitude of the visual archive left behind by postcards, “the first world-wide social network” (Lydia Pyne, 2021), turns out to be a stunningly vivid visual record of such processes. Especially so in the case of the Memorial Church, given its key position in Germany’s troubled history of imperial ambitions and subsequent self-awakening as a modern Western democracy.

Experiences of migration from Turkey to Germany: the female guest worker in contemporary documentaries

ABSTRACT This article examines two documentaries that go beyond the audio-visual canon representing the guest worker from Turkey to Germany. Look, Listen Carefully (Özlem Sarıyıldız, 2021) and Gurbet is a Home Now (Pınar Öğrenci, 2021) provide a platform for migrant women to reveal their stories, expanding the sphere of representation of guest workers. Indeed, men’s labor is always at the forefront of the historical guest worker migration narrative, while women’s labor in the factory and domestic sphere has largely ignored. Moreover, the documentaries hold a mirror to the ongoing migration from Turkey to Germany. Both filmmakers are women and new wave migrants from Turkey to Germany, referencing a migration resulting from the growing authoritarian context in Turkey over the last ten years. The filmmakers examine the history of migration to understand their own position in Germany, engaging with the subjects of their documentaries to forge intergenerational links between migrant women. I argue that these documentaries are decolonial feminist works; they expand the sphere of representation of female guest workers, working against their historical invisibility, centralizing their voices, and contextualizing the power dynamics that have shaped their experiences.

“You can’t always get what you want”: Prevalence, magnitude, and predictors of the aspiration–attainment gap after the school-to-work transition

This study examined the prevalence, magnitude, and predictors of the aspiration–attainment gap (AAG) after the school-to-work transition. We operationalized the AAG as the discrepancy between the socioeconomic status (SES) of young people’s realistic occupational aspirations and that of the position they actually attained. As a case in point, we investigated non-college-bound students transitioning into a vocational education and training (VET) position in Germany. Our aims were twofold: first, to establish how many students experience an AAG of what size; second, to identify characteristics that predict whether students experience an AAG. We considered sociostructural characteristics, cognitive ability and school grades, and Big Five personality traits as predictors (i.e., potential determinants) of the AAG. Analyses in a representative sample (N = 2,478) of intermediate secondary school (Realschule) students/graduates from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS; Starting Cohort 4) revealed that 45.9% of students experienced an AAG. Two-part regression models showed that the level of aspirations was the strongest predictor of the experience and size of an AAG, followed by school grades. Aspirations also mediated the effects of several other predictors, most importantly parental SES and school grades. Parental SES, female gender, and Emotional Stability had contradictory effects: They indirectly increased the risk of experiencing an AAG by raising aspirations, but at the same time they lowered this risk by directly increasing attainment. Overall, our results suggest that the AAG during the transition from school to VET is a widespread experience among students in Germany that is worthy of further investigation.

No Adornian Godfather?. A Search for a Comparable British Figure in Music Aesthetics

There is no doubt that Theodor W. Adorno impacted the American and British Musicology and Music Theory movements – in particular, his Philosophy of New Music and Dialectic of Enlightenment are major works that are still discussed. However, his role in America and Britain was quite different from his position in Germany. His immense support for Schönberg, his tremendous aesthetic tirades against Stravinsky, the “point-zero-situation” after World War II and the misperception of his approach to serialism – he was not an advocate, but a critic – were major grounds upon which German avant-garde music was based. Avant-garde in Germany without Adorno – what would that be? In that context, his impact on German musicology is interesting to explore. His writings, although often sharpened by harsh, non-deductive and even highly subjective aesthetic evaluations (cf. his gloss on Sibelius), set the philosophical basis from which every (German) musicologist had to start his line of argument. Even if someone did not agree with Adorno, it was unthinkable within German musicological discourse not to discuss him. The long-standing discourse between Dahlhaus and Eggebrecht would have run differently without Adorno’s almost almighty habitus. This article compares selected twentieth-century British musicologists, their roles in academia and their methodological approaches with Adorno’s. Two possible candidates for a “British Adorno”, namely Hans Keller and Roger Scruton, are discussed in detail.

Bridging the Gap: Making Sense of the Disaccord between Migrants’ Education and Occupation

Social mobility is a central topic of interest within sociology and whilst it has been theoretically linked to spatial mobility, there is still little empirical research on the interplay between the two. Using a subsample of highly educated family migrants from a German mixed-methods project, this study qualitatively analyses the impact of geographical mobility on objective social position and on its subjective perception. Six qualitative interviews are analysed and supplemented with descriptive quantitative data from the German Socio-Economic Panel to firstly, reconstruct the spatial mobility trajectories of the individuals and secondly, determine their social position in Germany and ascertain whether they experienced occupational downgrading. These two analyses are integrated to explore how respondents experienced their change in social position. Across the board, respondents migrated as young adults, before or shortly after labour market entry. Five of the participants experienced occupational downgrading. Strikingly, this objective downgrading, whilst acknowledged, was not perceived negatively. The participants constructed a narrative that employed three legitimation strategies to cast their current social position in a positive light: (1) emphasising the rights, stability and security that they experience in Germany, (2) drawing attention to the economic improvement that they experienced and (3) displaying an inner attitude that is marked by modest life aspirations and a high regard for leisure time. By drawing on multinational frames of reference and thus drawing comparisons between their home country and Germany, participants highlighted the experienced benefits.

The German Question in the Foreign Policy of the Austrian Empire in 1850—1866

For centuries, the House of Austria (the Habsburgs) maintained its leadership in the Holy Roman Empire, and later in the German Union. But in the middle of the 19th century the situation changed, Austria lost its position in Germany, lost to Prussia in the struggle for hegemony. The article examines what factors influenced such an outcome of the German question, what policy Austria pursued in the 50—60s of the 19th century, what tasks it set for itself. The paper traces the relationship between the domestic and foreign policy of Austria. Economic weakness and political instability prevented the monarchy from pursuing a successful foreign policy. The multinational empire could not resist the challenge of nationalism and prevent the unification of Italy and Germany. Difficult relations with France and Russia, inconsistent policy towards the Middle German states largely determined this outcome. The personal factor was also important. None of the Austrian statesmen could resist such an outstanding politician as Bismarck.

How Can Migrants’ Language Proficiency Be Measured? A Discussion of Opportunities and Challenges When Studying the Impact of Language Skills on Social Position

Language proficiency is crucial for migrants’ social position in the labour market and therefore plays a key role in the (re-)production of social inequalities in modern societies. There are different ways of capturing language skills in quantitative studies. However, it is important to question the extent to which existing language measures mirror migrants’ realities and relevant linguistic everyday life practices. In our paper, we contribute to this question by disentangling various measures of language proficiency. We use a large sample of migrants in Germany (GSOEP) that contains numerous language measures. We conduct detailed quantitative analyses on how various language variables influence migrants’ social position, by which we mean migrants’ socioeconomic status (as measured by ISEI). The ISEI is mainly based on occupation, but also on education and income. Our findings indicate that especially the self-assessed German speaking proficiency is an important and parsimonious predictor for migrants’ social position in Germany.

Diakonie and Caritas as civil law nonprofit performers in kind within the public warranted system in Germany

Diakonie and Caritas in Germany are mainly run by more than ten thousand autonomous nonprofit legal entities of private law nature. They are constitutionally considered as part of the protestant and the catholic church. The public opinion is interested in tangible medical, nursing and social results for all local residents in Germany. Multiple interdisciplinary quality is as important as the fact that these services are performed on a local level. Moreover people also care about the underlying motive and the attitude of humanity that guides such professional services. The charity service by Diakonie and Caritas in Germany is almost entirely financed by public social insurances. The human services are performed in kind (Sachleistungen) by a variety of different groups of actors. The services are also financed by public tax funds. Hence the work of Diakonie, though performed in private law structures, is as a matter of fact overlapped by planning and financial resources of public law origin. As such Diakonie must be judged and accepted from individual customers and the individual citizens who engage with the Diakonie by civil contract and tort law. In order to maintain its unique position in Germany, Diakonie must permanently adapt with transparence their own governance structures by dialogue with the church and with the society as a whole.

Subjective status comparisons and depressive symptoms among migrants and refugees to Germany

Abstract Background Prior research has identified perceptions of relative social status to affect mental health. We investigated whether migrants to Germany who perceive that they would have a higher relative social status if they were still in their country of origin experience more depressive symptoms than those who perceive no such status discrepancy. Methods Cross-sectional data were derived from a random sample of residents in the Berlin-Brandenburg region with a Croatian, Polish, Romanian, Syrian and/or Turkish citizenship (n = 728). Participants’ perception of their relative social status in Germany was measured using the MacArthur Scale of subjective social status (SSS). An adapted version of this scale was used to assess respondents’ hypothetical SSS in their country of origin if they had not migrated. Depressive symptoms were measured with the eight-item depression scale of the Patient Health Questionnaire. Diagonal reference models were used to examine whether discrepancies between the two status ratings were associated with depressive symptom severity. Results Most respondents reported a higher (35.6%) or similar (49.0%) hypothetical SSS in their country of origin compared to their SSS in Germany. Respondents whose SSS in Germany was lower than their hypothetical SSS in their country of origin experienced the most severe depressive symptoms. In the diagonal reference models, this association remained statistically significant (p < 0.05), even after adjusting for objective socioeconomic position and other covariates. The pattern was similar for both refugees and non-refugees. Conclusions Our findings indicate that perceptions of having a lower social status in Germany than hypothetically in one’s country of origin are concomitant with poorer mental health among migrants. Prospective data are needed to address questions of causation and the direction of effects. Key messages Migrants who perceived that they would have a higher social status if they had not left their country of origin reported higher depressive symptoms than those with no such status discrepancy. This association persisted after adjusting for objective socioeconomic position in Germany.

First Female President for the DFG

AbstractAt the beginning of July, Katja Becker became the first woman to be elected to the top position in Germany's largest research funding organisation and central self‐governing body of the research community. The Giessen‐based biochemist will succeed Peter Strohschneider on 1 January 2020.

The consequences of contractual incapacity in private international law

In this article, the issue of which legal system should govern the consequences of contractual incapacity is addressed, for instance, that a contract is void, voidable or unenforceable (or that it is valid only after ratification) and that restitution has to be made. Most legal systems do not specifically identify an applicable law in this regard. Exceptions are the position in Germany and Oregon and under a proposal for a Puerto Rican codification. Taking policy considerations, national models and related provisions in regional, supranational and international instruments into consideration, the author submits that the consequences of contractual incapacity should be governed by the putative objective proper law of the contract.

Data Protection and Competition Law: The Dawn of ‘Uberprotection’

Our contribution aims at giving a comprehensive overview over the intertwining of competition law and data protection law in the EU legal framework, prompted by the rising and disruptive importance of amassed data, including personal data (‘Big Data’), for competition. Big Data has quickly penetrated most business areas in the past decade, posing challenges for the effectiveness of existing data protection rules, on one hand, but also for different aspects of competition law and its enforcement, on the other hand. Access to customer contact data or customer preferences has impacted on competitive parameters, raising completely new questions of competition law, e.g. in the context of data portability or digital cartels. However, the more fundamental issue arises if and how data protection compliance can or should be a parameter in the assessment of competition authorities around the world, being a well-known fact that, in principle, competitive assessment is bound only by welfare considerations. Personal data has had multiple impacts on all pillars of competition law – anticompetitive agreements, abuse of dominance and merger control. While abuse of dominance and merger control relate to competitive harm via the access to greater customer data, the classic price fixing cartels are being replaced by seemingly irretraceable, big data based price fixing algorithms. Proceeding empirically, from the recent practice of several competition authorities, including the European Commission, as well as the German and French competition authorities, this contribution identifies three phases of development of the intersection between data protection and competition law. At the beginning, competition authorities were acknowledging data protection law as being a separate issue without relevance for the purpose of merger control proceedings and thus placing the two areas of law on parallel pathways. In a second phase, the realization that data protection rules may in fact have a role in hampering or enabling competition took more and more space both in policymaking and in adjudication, with Data Protection Authorities starting to play a role. We are currently at the dawn of the third phase identified: data protection law considerations are at the core of at least one current case looking into an abuse of dominant position in Germany, a Digital Clearinghouse started to meet twice every year in Brussels and the European Commission is laying the groundwork for potential changes in the way it enforces competition law in the digital economy. We call this last phase “Uberprotection”, which we define as the protection of the rights of individuals and their welfare as data subjects, participants to the market and consumers, afforded by concerted enforcement and facilitated by coherent policymaking of competition authorities, data protection authorities and consumer protection authorities.

Vaccination and the refugee camp: exercising the free choice of vaccination from an abject position in Germany and Greece

ABSTRACT This article explores the public discourses that accompany vaccination campaigns targeted at the refugees in the context of the European refugee/migrant crisis. The argument is that such campaigns are embedded in the provision of humanitarian healthcare and yet connect the refugees with the citizenry in the host countries in that both populations are deemed to share the universal need to vaccines and the right to accept or deny them. But if immunisation for citizens is a matter of liberal choice, as current scholarship argues, how much scope for individual decision is left to the camps’ occupants? In which way do discourses and practices of refugees’ vaccination correspond to the camps’ ambiguous characteristics of being places of emergency, where refugees lead an abject life, and still acting as possible bridges to host societies? I explore these questions drawing on contemporary sociological and social science scholarship on vaccination and the camp-debate and use two case studies conducted in Germany and Greece. The case studies reveal that the discourses on the refugees’ vaccination additionally reflect internal social tensions: in the German case related to vaccine hesitancy, and in the Greek case to controversy about the provision of public goods to foreigners and the inclusion of refugees in the local societies.

The Determinants of Promotion to High Public Office in Germany: Partisan Loyalty, Political Craft, or Managerial Competencies?

The politicization of bureaucracy is a widespread strategy to increase the political control of ministerial departments in parliamentary democracies. It is, however, largely unknown why executive politicians promote some officials rather than others to high public office. Based on a unique dataset of all senior officials in German federal ministries and agencies that held office in the period 1997–2015, this article investigates whether partisan loyalty, political craft, and managerial competencies influence the chance of promotion to the highest civil service position in Germany (state secretary). We apply event history modeling to draw inferences on the relative importance of different selection criteria used by ministers when recruiting state secretaries from a candidate pool of senior officials. A key finding is that ministers consistently prefer politically loyal to nonloyal candidates. Although ministers also consider candidates’ political craft and selected managerial competencies, they are likely to trade-off partisan loyalty against those qualifications. The article contributes to the literature on politicization in the public sector by comparing potential and actual office holders and by including a broad set of selection criteria, moving beyond the literature’s dominating focus on partisan loyalty. The methodological approach developed in this article may well be transferred to other institutional contexts and used for comparative studies in this area.

Die aard van wetgewende diskresies by die Suid-Afrikaanse uitvoerende gesag

This article focuses on the nature of legislative discretions in the hands of the executive authority of the state.Relevant concepts are analysed, followed by an exposition of the position regarding delegation of legislative authority to the executive under the previous constitutional dispensation when the country had a sovereign Parliament. This is followed by a discussion of the legal position in Germany, which shows similarities to the situation in South Africa. It appears that differences in approach to the problem exist worldwide, but one similarity is to be found in all, namely that a complete parliamentary abdication of legislative authority is always disallowed. What follows from this is that South African law seems to follow the German example regarding the delegation of legislative powers. It seems that the South African Constitutional Court considers the delegation of essential legislative authority as undesirable. Limits have to be placed on the extent of Parliament's competencies pertaining to legislative delegation. Furthermore the manner and form requirements in the Constitution must be met when legislation is adopted. This however does not occur in all instances of legislative delegation to the executive authority. When legislative delegation takes place, it is consistently done by granting the executive the authority to adopt subordinate legislation, which in any event has the same legal effect as legislation of Parliament itself.Next the Transitional Constitution of 1993 is considered against the background of relevant case law. It appears that the legal position was not changed by the promulgation of the ("final") Constitution of 1996. Empowering legislation that delegates any legislative authority must lay down guidelines providing direction regarding the exercise of the delegated authority. Delegated legislation may of course not contain substantive norms.Like the German Bundesverfassungsgericht, the South African Constitutional Court seems to require empowering legislation to lay down the content, extent and purpose of the empowering provisions before it will enjoy legal effect. This content, extent and purpose will not primarily be evident from the delegated legislation, but must be contained in the empowering legislation itself. If this is not the case, the delegation of authority will have exceeded constitutional limits. Therefore, a wide delegation of legislative authority without limitations regarding its exercise, at least as far as content, extent and purpose are concerned, will without doubt be unconstitutional.

Sex/Gender-Responsive Health Research: New Funding Guidelines of the USA National Institutes of Health Can Bring a New Impetus to Germany

In June 2015, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) of the USA published a new funding guideline entitled "Consideration of Sex as a Biological Variable in NIH-funded Research". This guideline is part of the NIH policy to enhance quality and generalizability of health research. Its core element is the classification of sex as a key element of rigorous study designs. The requirement is that sex be defined as a biological variable, and taking the potentially relevant sex/gender related anatomical and physiological characteristics into account. In Germany, the "Guidelines and recommendations to assure good epidemiological practice" (GEP) of 1998 specify that the study design and research methods are to be designed so that sex/gender-specific aspects of the research question can be adequately detected. Mostly health research is restricted to the categorization of the study population into men and women and to the consideration of the sex/gender variable (man*woman) in the analyses. Research in accordance with the NIH guideline as well as with the German GEP needs to investigate differences and similarities between men and women, and also to look for factors that explain in what way being a man or a woman poses a risk or is protective against the development of diseases. This scientific basis is essential for the development and implementation of sex/gender equitable prevention, health promotion and health care, which in turn enables statutory health insurances to take sex/gender differences into account regarding the medical services they provide. The latter is a consequence of the current legal position in Germany, which is based on the Prevention law that was passed in 2015. In addition to the categorical sex/gender variable (man*woman), there is therefore the need to analytically differentiate between the dimensions sex (the biological factors) and gender (the socio-cultural ascriptions) as well as their interaction. For conceptual clarity, this paper proposes that the terms sex and/or gender be used only where the biological and/or socio-cultural aspects of being a man or a woman are explicitly taken into account. For the common sex/gender variable man*woman (based on self-reports, register data etc.) the term Survey sex (German: Erhebungsgeschlecht) can be used. Further, the establishment of a Federal Institute "Geschlecht und Gesundheit - Sex/Gender and Health" is recommended.

Headwind or Tailwind: Do Partners’ Resources Support or Restrict Promotion to a Leadership Position in Germany?

This article examines the extent to which people’s partners’ social capital and processes that take place at the inner couple level influence gender-specific probabilities of obtaining a leadership position. First, well-established theories are examined that offer different assumptions as to how a partner’s resources can influence occupational career. This article adds to research by applying a relational perspective on partners’ resources beyond looking only at the individual’s and partner’s resources. To resolve the research question, data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (waves 1984 to 2010) were used in a longitudinal design employing event history analysis (N=11,050 men and N=8,988 women). The results show different outcomes for women and for men. For women, the relation of resources between partners plays a significant role in their promotion to the top, espe-cially their own comparative advantage; whereas for men, their own resources—independent of women’s resources—seem to be more relevant.

The AfD and its Sympathisers: Finally a Right-Wing Populist Movement in Germany?

Is the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) the exponent of a successful right-wing populist movement in Germany? By analysing the positions, the discursive links and the sympathisers of the AfD, this article aims to draw a comprehensive picture of the new party and its environment. The link to populism research offers a conceptual framework for a mixed-method study which focuses on important aspects of the party's history, self-description and position in Germany's public discourse as well as its supporters by analysing two sets of quantitative and qualitative data. We argue that the AfD follows a nuanced and diverse communication strategy and can be regarded as a functional equivalent for a right-wing populist party in a country where right-wing politics are strongly stigmatised.