The article contends that the significance attributed to the 1999 citizenship reform in Germany is closely linked to a particular reading of the history of German citizenship policies. This reading, which remained dominant until the 1990s, assigned a crucial role for Germany's exclusionary citizenship policies to the law of descent, which seemed to be deeply ingrained in successive German states policies and practices from the nineteenth century on. Arguing that recent historiography on citizenship has called attention to the significant degree of variation between periods of openness and closure, as well as highlighting restrictive naturalization policies as a key ingredient of ethnic closure, the author contends that this focus was misplaced. Accordingly, the disappointing effects of a law that focused on the automatic transmission of citizenship while paying less attention to making voluntary transition to citizenship easier are not particularly surprising.
This article puts the 1999 German Nationality Act into a comparative European perspective. By applying a common measure of the relative restrictiveness or inclusiveness of a country's citizenship policy to the countries of the EU-15 at two different time periods, it provides an analysis of change both within and across countries. From this perspective, Germany has clearly moved "up" from having the single most restrictive law before the 1999 reform to a more moderate policy today. Yet Germany's major "liberalizing change" was also tempered by a significant "restrictive backlash." The German case therefore provides support for a broader theoretical argument about the potential for mobilized anti-immigrant public opinion to nullify the liberalization that often occurs within the realm of elite politics.
Triadafilos Triadafilopoulos and Karen Schönwälder
Publication Date:
04-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
German Politics and Society
Institution:
German Politics and Society Journal
Abstract:
This article probes the consequences of Germany's 1999 citizenship reform as it pertains to the incorporation of immigrants. We maintain that the law's principled rejection of dual citizenship and related stipulation that children born into German nationality via the law's revolutionary jus soli provision choose between their German citizenship or that of their non-German parents between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three is unfair, potentially unconstitutional, and likely unworkable in administrative terms. We also argue that the decline in naturalization rates in Germany since 2000 is due to a combination of legal, administrative, and symbolic barriers in the law, as well as a lack of incentives for naturalization for immigrants from European Union member states and other rich industrialized countries. We believe that progress in the area of incorporation will require a shift in outlooks on the part of German political elites, such that immigrants are seen as potential members of a diverse community of free and equal citizens rather than untrustworthy and threatening outsiders.
Based on a five-year ethnography, this article looks at Germany's citizenship reform of 1999 from the perspective of a population that is often at the center of attention: second generation immigrant drug dealers. While the reform had the potential to make a significant difference for this group, with respect to both their legal status in the country and perception of Germany, the findings of this article show that the reform did not have such an impact. On the contrary, the reform seems to have had the opposite effect, alienating the young men even more from Germany by keeping citizenship out of reach for them. While some have argued that in the light of supranational citizenship norms and the discourse of citizenship rights as human rights, national citizenship becomes increasingly unimportant as new forms of post-national citizenship gradually emerge, this does not seem to hold true for the young men of this study.
Germany has reduced its emissions of greenhouse gases more than almost any other industrialized democracy and is exceeding its ambitious Kyoto commitment. Hence, it is commonly portrayed as a climate-policy success story, but the situation is actually much more complex. Generalizing Germany's per-capita emissions to all countries or its emissions reductions to all industrialized democracies would still very likely produce more than a two-degree rise in global temperature. Moreover, analyzing the German country-case into eleven subcases shows that it is a mixture of relative successes and failures. This analysis leads to three main conclusions. First, high relative performance and high environmental damage can coexist. Second, we should see national cases in a differentiated way and not only in terms of their aggregate performances. Third, researchers on climate policies should more often begin with outcomes, work backward to policies, and be prepared for some surprises. Ironically, the most effective government interventions may not be explicit climate policies, such as the economic transformation of eastern Germany. Moreover, the lack of policy-making in certain areas may undercut progress made elsewhere, including unregulated increases in car travel, road freight, and electricity consumption. Research on climate and environmental policies should focus on somewhat different areas of government intervention and ask different questions.
German political culture has been undergoing gradual but significant changes since unification. Military engagements in combat missions, the introduction of a professional army, and a remarkable loss of recent historical knowledge mostly within the younger generations are hallmarks of the new millennium. Extensive education about the Holocaust is still prevalent and there is a strong continuity of attitudes and orientations toward the Nazi era and the Holocaust reaching back to the 1980s. Nevertheless, a lack of knowledge about history-not only the World War II period, but also about East and West Germany-in the age group of people under thirty is staggering. The fading away of the generation of victims who are the last ones to tell the story of persecution during the Holocaust and a parallel rise of new actors and technologies, present challenges to the educational system and the current political culture of Germany.