Immigration and Citizenship in Germany

Contemporary Dilemmas

Bibliographic Data

ID6344874
AuthorsJost Halfmann (0000-0003-3184-4022, Technische Universität Dresden, corresponding author)
Year1997
Volume45
Issue2
Pages260-274
Publication date1997-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePolitical Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0032-3217 • E-ISSN: 1467-9248
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1111/1467-9248.00080
OpenAlexW1971720841
LanguageEN
Citations received18

The paper starts from a paradox of contemporary German politics: after the unification of the two Germanies the ethnocultural grounding of German citizenship has lost its historical meaning; at the same time violent conflicts and heated debate over the rights to full membership for immigrants in the German state have developed. After a theoretical discussion of the notions of nation state, citizenship, and immigration, the development of the contemporary paradox of citizenship is sketched historically using two pairs of distinctions: nationhood v. statehood and political v. social (state-mediated) inclusion. The paradox of ‘ethnicized’ conflicts over Germans v. foreigners is interpreted as a discrepancy between membership in the state on the one hand and membership in the welfare state system on the other – a discrepancy which currently is ‘overdetermined’ by the socio-economic consequences of unification

Citizenship · Epistemology · German · Immigration · Inclusion (mineral · Linguistics · Meaning (existential · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · State (computer science · Unification · Welfare state · Law · Philosophy

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