is the country of Western Europe with the strongest attachment to the principle of ius sanguinis, which stipulates that German citizenship is generally limited to those whose ancestors are German."15 This has made it difficult in the past for persons with no ethnic claim to German citizenship to obtain it through naturlaisation, although it was possible after a long waiting perior and after meeting numerous requirements designed to ensure that the individual had integrated into German society and culture.
Additionally, naturalisation was at the discretion of the German administration,16 which added to the perceptions of a rigged system for many Indian-Germans. This framing of citizenship in regards to ancestral property rights is a flawed framing of migration and naturalisation, because it calculated Indian emigrants simply in regards to economic worth - often applied with more stringent standards when compared to other ethnicities. This mismatch exasperates ethnic tensions and resentment from either side.
Reforms to German laws have both helped incentivise and dis-incentivise Indians to migrate to Germany at different times. The pull factors can be divided into positive and negative incentives. One such positive incentive was that there were many pro-Indian citizenship and migration reforms. One commonly cited reform is the Green Card Initiative that was directed at attracting Indian IT professionals.17 This policy was met with some degree of cultural backlash. Events at the localised level spill over into the international political economy. Recent hate crimes toward Indians and campaign such as the Kinder statt Inder (children instead of Indians) to remove the subsidisation of Indian IT professionals help show the tit-for-tat racial relations.18
15. Brubaker 1992
16. Freeman and Ogleman 1998
17. Guha 2000
18. Zingel 200
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