Rethinking Immigrant Integration in Germany
By Dr. Simon Green

Of the many serious political challenges facing Germany today, few can be considered more pressing and at once elusive than the successful integration of its large migrant and non-national population. For it is becoming increasingly clear that, over the past thirty or so years, immigrants and non-nationals in Germany, as in many other EU member-states, have developed some striking deficits in their socio-economic profile when compared to the population as a whole, with lower educational outcomes, lower language skills (especially those who are not in the labor market) and an unemployment rate which is normally twice that of the indigenous population. Put bluntly, at the dawn of a new millennium, Germany finds itself in the situation that a substantial (and growing) proportion of its population is socio-economically marginalized.

Not surprisingly, therefore, the goal of improving 'integration' has been a recurrent theme of domestic German politics over the past decade. Whether it is the introduction of formal courses in the 2004 Zuwanderungsgesetz, the debate about headscarves and Muslim women teachers, or the first ever national Integrationsgipfel in June 2006, integration has never been out of the news for long.

Yet while this debate is not new, it is becoming abundantly clear that its terms of reference are increasingly misplaced. By this, I am referring specifically to the macro-political debate, which may or may not shape actual policies, but which certainly does influence the general political climate within which immigrants and non-nationals live in a country. I am explicitly excluding the very wide variety of initiatives and projects which are undertaken mainly at local level, independently of the terms of the national debate, and which often achieve excellent results. I am also excluding from this the increasing number of immigrant entrepreneurs who have made their businesses a success often against the odds.

Instead, what I am arguing is that the pervasive socio-economic problems of immigrants and non-nationals mean that integration as the overall paradigm for their inclusion has failed and must be rethought. There are a number of reasons for this failure, many of which have to do with both the nature of the concept and the way it has been interpreted in Germany. In order to illustrate this, it is useful to conceive of 'integration' as one model of 'inclusion.' In that context, integration, which, put simply, refers to a situation whereby both immigrants and the indigenous population adapt to each other's cultural identities while agreeing on a common base of political values, represents the mid-point of a continuum between 'assimilation' and 'multiculturalism.' Of these, the former requires immigrants to adapt completely to the indigenous population's values and norms, while the latter provides for the equal recognition and status of all cultures, whether indigenous or immigrated.

The key problem with the political debate on integration in Germany over the past thirty years is that it has essentially been about assimilation, not integration. Of course, the term assimilation was almost never used, given its historical connotations with National Socialism. But whether one takes any number of policies and political positions since the mid-1970s, for instance the Einbürgerungsrichtlinien of 1977 or the Leitkultur debate of 2000, the emphasis has invariably been on the immigrant's underlying duty to adapt to existing and established norms in Germany. Most notably, Otto Schily used an interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung on June 27, 2002, to declare that 'the best form of integration is assimilation.'

But there is more to this question than political leaders confusing integration with assimilation, a feature which is not exclusive to Germany. Increasingly, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the model of integration itself, which seems to be the a priori 'common sense' solution to immigrant inclusion, by focusing on the need for both immigrants and the indigenous population to 'give and take,' is inherently flawed. For ultimately, successful integration presupposes a very clear delineation between that which is tolerated and that which is not. Yet such delineation is almost impossible to give, as it requires an answer to the question 'what is an immigrant supposed to integrate into, and when is the process completed?' In turn, this question requires a clear and coherent definition of our own societies, presupposing a degree of homogeneity which complex nation-states such as Germany simply do not display - not to mention immigrants themselves, who are generally also highly diverse in their origins and traditions. Yet the failure to establish such a positive definition, which has in fact characterized most European countries, means that integration is defined on an ad hoc basis around each new issue that arises, with the concomitant risk of this being framed on anti-immigrant or even xenophobic lines. The various policy responses to Muslim headscarves in European countries are a perfect example of this - purely reactive and usually negative.

There is a further problem with the demands of integration. In the final analysis, any demands that are placed on immigrants to adapt to prevailing identities raise the prospect of hypocrisy. The debate about naturalization tests, which first sprung up in the context of the Land election campaign in Baden-Württemberg in early 2006 and which were supposed to guarantee that an adequate level of integration had been achieved, is a classic example of this. On the one hand, Baden-Württemberg originally proposed a kind of Gesinnungstest in order to try and establish, using methods so crude as to be ridiculous, the degree to which applicants for German citizenship accepted Germany's overall constitutional order and values. On the other hand, Hessen initially developed its own test to establish whether applicants had enough general knowledge about Germany.

The risk of double standards is of course plain to see. Not all German nationals will agree that homosexuality is an acceptable lifestyle choice, as was originally put to applicants in the Baden-Württemberg test; not all German nationals will be able to name three mountain ranges (Mittelgebirge) in Germany, as Hessen's test originally asked, or indeed know that this is a geologic rather than a geographic term. The double standards over access to German citizenship become even more glaring in light of the fact that ethnic German immigrants (Spätaussiedler), who strikingly display the same kinds of socio-economic deficits in their integration that are seen among 'normal' immigrants, are not subjected to this kind of test - they receive their passport by right. Perhaps the crassest example of double standards in Germany lies in the treatment of headscarves. Laws passed by several Länder forbid female Muslim teachers (please note: not pupils) from wearing a headscarf, yet explicitly permit Christian and Jewish religious symbols (such as crucifixes and skullcaps respectively) in the classroom - despite Germany formally being a secular state.

Ultimately, by focusing on an idealized notion of harmonious cohabitation, and by brushing over the inevitable double standards that it creates, integration has revealed itself to be something of a naïve notion. Of course, that is not to say that either assimilation or multiculturalism are more practicable forms of inclusion; the overt expectations of assimilation suffer from the absence of any credible sanctions, and it is currently almost impossible to imagine a European country such as Germany adopting formal multicultural policies a la Canadienne. But by virtue of being relatively clear in terms of their expectations, both assimilation and multiculturalism at least avoid the potential definitional quicksand of integration.

Effectively, there are arguably only two developments, both of which ironically are external, which could yet reprieve integration as the paradigm for inclusion. The first is the economy. Germany's sluggish growth, and indeed economic Stillstand from 2001 to 2003, has inevitably hit its immigrant communities disproportionately hard. A period of sustained economic upswing, the tender shoots of which are now becoming visible, would go a long way to resolving both the substantive and symbolic aspects of Germany's integration dilemmas.

The second is the new 2006 Gleichbehandlungsgesetz (AAG). For decades, immigrants in Germany had no effective legal remedy against the often low-level, but nonetheless ubiquitous discrimination they experienced. Now, this will change, at least formally, but it remains to be seen how the law will be implemented and therefore how effective it will be.

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Dr. Simon Green is Deputy Director of the Institute for German Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK, and a regular contributor to AICGS.

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This essay appeared in the December 21, 2006, AICGS Advisor.