Blockade und Befreiung: Identitätskrise, Ersatzdebatten und neue Selbstbilder in der Einwanderungsgesellschaft [2013]

Abstract

For decades, German scientists, writers, and experts from many fields related to immigration and integration have permanently – but unsuccessfully – been prompting politicians and the government to abandon populistic defensive attitudes against immigration. Instead they called, unsuccessfully too, for the shaping of clear concepts for migration control and integration promotion. Furthermore, they demanded not to spread fake news about ‘failed integration’ but instead to report on the in fact relatively successful integration. However, it was not before the first decade of the twenty-first century that powerful state initiatives were established to promote integration and, to a certain extent, also to re-orientate migration politics. This turn, however, came too late for many people in the country. The result was a paradoxical tension between integration processes that were successful on the whole and wrong perceptions of ‘failed integration.’ Ways out of this dilemma of socially and culturally deficient self-descriptions might be found by open discussions about new narratives activating cultural and social cohesion in the immigrant society with its multitude of identities.