McGill Journal of Political Studies 2014 April, 2014 | Page 36

system, while the necessary infrastructure
to integrate immigrants would cost one
hundred and fifty to two hundred thousand
DM16.
Klaus Bade, a migration expert and
former chairman of the German Foundation
for Integration and Migration, adds that,
next to higher costs, the German defensive
and self-proclaimed status as a nonImmigrant nation was also rooted in strong
fears of social burdens and cultural ‘overalienation17.’ This supports the view that
guest workers “were tolerated, as long as they
were of use to the economy and caused no
costs…it was most important that they left
again when they were no longer needed18.”
While this highlights the fact that a
certain level of labour integration had been
attained, social and cultural integration had
been completely ignored. The main feature
of the German mode of integration was to
open ‘core institutions,’ such as the labour
market, training systems, and housing, and
to include them in the general welfare state.
The effects of welfare state inclusion on
overall integration were counteracted by a
lack of legal integration, however, since the
naturalization law remained restrictive19.
Echoing this, Borkert et al. from the
European Foundation for the Improvement
of Living and Working Conditions find
that, “Welfare state integration without
citizenship gave integration policy in
Germany an ambivalence that resulted in a
lack of integration of migrants20.”
Rauer,”Migration and Integration Policies in
Germany,” 126.
17
Klaus Bade, “Klaus J. Bade: Integrationspolitik
Muss Als Gesellschaftspolitik Für Alle
Verstanden Werden,” [Integration Policy a Necessary
Social Policy for All to be Understood], Interview in
Deutsch Türkische Nachrichten, (March 2013), http://
www.deutsch-tuerkische-nachrichten.de.
18
Gottschlich, Knopf and Özdemir, Currywurst Und
Döner, 33.
19
Lang and Takle, German Policy on Immigration, 227.
20
Maren Borkert, Wolfgang Bosswick, Friedrich
Heckmann, and Doris Lüken- Klaßen, “Local Integration Policies for Migrants in Europe,” European
Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working
Conditions (2007), http://www.eurofound.europa.eu.
16

36 | McGill Journal of Political Studies 2014

Following the fall of the Berlin Wall
in 1989, politicians across party lines
sustained that the inflow of immigrants
was ‘temporary,’ and integration policies
were not a responsibility of the state21.
The government therein maintained
the denial of its status as an immigrant
nation long after facts showed otherwise,
and continued to put off the crucial task
of reforming naturalization policies.
Not until the late 1990s did integration
become a formally recognized issue, and
new efforts arose seeking to complement
economic integration with social and
cultural provisions. Due to the absence of
an institutional framework, however, the
delayed realization impeded the efficacy
with which positive integration could be
attained. This led to serious gaps in German
integration policy – most fundamentally
with respect to naturalization inclusivity,
the extremely restrictive policies of which
were not amended until late 1999.
Assessing the Role of Citizenship
In his essay on citizenship and the
social class, T.H. Marshall argues that
inclusion and social solidarity are fostered
through the extension of civil, political,
and social rights within the framework of
citizenship22. With this, he highlights the
importance of citizenship provisions in
upholding the democratic value of liberal
states. While the case of immigrants was
not directly addressed in his work, Wright
and Bloemraad note, “from [Marshall’s]
perspective, the failure to accord equal
citizenship to immigrants should impinge
on their sense of identification with the
adoptive nation” – and many analyses
support this allegation23. Klopp establishes
that citizens have more access to political
Lang and Takle, German Policy on Immigration, 236.
Irene Bloemraad and Matthew Wright, “Is There a
Trade-off between Multiculturalism and Socio-Political Integration? Policy Regimes and Immigrant Incorporation in Comparative Perspective,” Perspectives
on Politics 10 no. 1 (2012), 79.
23
Bloemraad and Wright, “Is There a Trade-off,” 79.
21
22

and certain economic rights than noncitizens do. These rights are essential to
democracies, “because it is those with
the right to vote and to be voted for who
may make, amend, and repeal the laws,
including those concerning citizenship and
naturalization criteria24.” Klusmeyer comes
to a similar conclusion, alleging, “Ethnonationalist thinking and the jus sanguinis
tradition [have] severely retarded the
general course of development, leading to
a quite belated acceptance of social reality
on the levels of programmatic and l egal
declarations25.”
Citizenship is furthermore an essential
component in establishing not only a legal
but also social framework for positive
integration. Wright and Bloemraad find
that immigrants – regardless of citizenship
status – “feel more welcomed in countries
with inclusive citizenship laws, [because]
law and policy on citizenship may provide
symbolic legitimacy and a general sense of
membership26.” To support this ecological
view of citizenship further, their empirical
analysis shows that immigrants perceive
“less discrimination in countries with
more liberal citizenship policies and the
least discrimination in countries that
offer both liberal citizenship and political
multiculturalism27.” Open and inclusive
citizenship rights are crucial to upholding
democracy both because it provides a legal
framework for immigrants to become
formal members of the polity and because
it instils in society a more accepting and
culturally accommodating attitude.
Citizenship and Integration in
Comparative Perspective
The critical role of citizenship
becomes additionally clear when drawing
Brett Klopp, German Multiculturalism: Immigrant
Integration and the Transformation of Citizenship,
(Westport CT: Praeger, 2002): 14.
25
Klusmeyer and Papademetriou, Immigration Policy,
iiv.
26
Bloemraad and Wright, “Is There a Trade-off,” 80.
27
Ibid, 83.
24

comparisons with the Netherlands, a nation
with a similar guest worker program and
comparably large population of foreigners,
but more open citizenship laws28. The greater
success of Dutch integration highlights
that naturalization laws are a fundamental
components of integration policy. The
Dutch government recognized much earlier
that foreign guest workers were becoming
a permanent component of the country’s
demographic, and accordingly introduced
comprehensive integration policies in the
early 1980s29. These resulted with more
foreign pupils in higher education, better
integration into the workforce, and less
overall social discrimination30.
Several studies outline the cases of
German and Dutch integration, as the
two countries follow a similar historic
path of immigration. Like Germany,
the Netherlands experienced a period of
strong economic growth in the late 1950s,
and wrestled with a shortage of workers31.
Three years after Germany started its guest
worker program with Turkey in 1961, the
Netherlands entered into a recruitment
agreement with the Mediterranean nation
as well32. While the Netherlands never
followed an active demigration policy as
Germany did in the early 1980s, it did
make similar efforts to push Turks to return
to their home countries during times of
Maurice Crul and Jens Schneider, “Children of
Turkish Immigrants in Germany and the Netherlands: The Impact of Differences in Vocational and
Academic Tracking Systems,” Teachers College Record
111 no. 6 (2009), http://www.tcrecord.org/library,
1510.
29
Han Entzinger, “Changing the Rules While the
Game Is On; From Multiculturalism to Assimilation
in the Netherlands,” In Migration, Citizenship, Ethnos:
Incorporation Regimes in Germany, Western Europe
and North America, Y. Michal Bodemann and Gökçe
Yurdakul eds., (New York NY: Palgrave Macmillan,
2006): 129.
30
Entzinger, “Changing the Rules,” 129.
31
Crul and Schneider, “Children of Turkish Immigrants,” 1510.
32
M.J.M. Maussen, “Constructing Mosques: The
Governance of Islam in France and the Netherlands,”
Dissertation at University of Amsterdam (2009): 122.
28

Immigration, Integration and the Threat to German Democratic Quality | Weber | 37