Immigration and Citizenship in Germany

In: German politics and society, Volume 17, Issue 4, p. 1-33

Abstract

In Germany, as in many other European democracies, immigrationand citizenship are contested and contentious issues. In the Germancase it was both the magnitude of postwar and recent immigration aswell as its interference with questions of identity that created politicaland social conflict. As a result of World War II, the coexistenceof two German states, and the persistence of ethnic German minoritiesin central and eastern Europe, (West) Germany's migration andnaturalization policy was inclusive toward expellees, GDR citizens,and co-ethnics. At the same time, the Federal Republic of Germany,despite the recruitment of several million foreign labor migrantsand—until 1992—a relatively liberal asylum practice, did not developsimilar mechanisms and policies of absorption and integration of itslegal foreign residents.