Migrant ‘Integration’: What does it Mean and What are its Effects?

The National Integration Plan is a set of goals and distinct programs emphasizing

language learning and cultural reorientation towards democratic values that are determined on state levels, rather a centralized, detailed list of steps for individual states to take to guide the federal reception of migrants. Participation in this initiative is also voluntary (Gogolin et al.,

2 _{Though Berry’s taxonomy was largely revised in the last chapter, his paradigm largely organizes the discourses}

2019), making these ‘plans’ more akin to ‘ideologies’ or ‘integration paradigms’, but they still remain important as a guiding, if not heavily contested, federal initiative (for a critical review, see Bendel, 2014). A significant component of this National Integration Plan is to prepare adolescents to continue their education and facilitate adults to obtain jobs in Germany. On the Federal Agency for Migration and Refugee’s online informational page about integration, it heavily emphasizes ‘integration courses’ that are designed around supporting these goals. Describing the efficacy of this project, the Agency writes that

If you want to live in Germany, you should learn German. This is important if you are looking for work, have to fill out applications, support your children at school or want to meet new people. You should also know a few things about Germany, for example its history, culture and legal system (Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge).

The first link on this website is titled “language is the key to integration”, further emphasizing the importance of learning German in order to function in daily life. However, this sentiment is not a neutral portrayal of adapting to life in Germany. While Glick Schiller et al. (2004) highlight that there are individuals with migration backgrounds who have no German language skills and posit this as a viable option for incorporating migrants, this national initiative frames such adaptation as ‘failed integration’ (Schneider et al., 2013). Clearly, particular forms of integration are idealized, necessitating an investigation into the framing of these debates and assumptions about migrants and Germans through this new ‘cultural identification’ citizenship paradigm.

The national debates discussing how to integrate migrants (especially youth) are predicated on studies that evaluated adolescent academic achievement on different variables to ascertain methods of facilitating their adaptation. Gogolin et al. (2019) outline a history of

reflections on cultural and linguistic habitus (Bourdieu, 1983). For example, Tepecik (2013) reflects that the Program for International Student Assessment’s (PISA’s) study framed migrant experiences through a cultural deficit lens, thereby supporting an 'integration’ ideology that opposes ethnic enclaves (see also Giesen, Studer, & Yildiz, 2013). However, Moffitt and Juang (2019) reflect that because ‘Germanness’ is not critically disentangled, these statistics are appropriated to demonize Muslim migrant experiences, especially for Turkish- and Syrian- Germans. This sentiment finds considerable resonance with studies that correlate immigrants with high crime rates by conceptualizing Aussiedler as ‘Germans’, thereby skewing migration statistics, but “such – often complicated – analyses usually find less public resonance than the seemingly unequivocal, hard data of the official statistics” (Koopmans, 1999, p. 636). These studies inform the official, national discourses (Halm, 2012) by providing the image of a socially dangerous, ubiquitous Muslim migrant that must be ‘integrated’ to avoid destruction.

These official discourses furthered an ideology of integrating migrants (perceived as ‘Muslims’) that drew heavily on earlier conceptualizations of a German Leitkultur. Schäuble stated that “integration… presupposes the unconditional recognition of the free democratic basic order of our country as the foundation of social tolerance and openness” (Brettfeld & Wetzels, 2007, p. 1). The federal government emphasized this particular integration ideology, as their ‘integration courses’ feature lessons about “the values on which German society is based” (Bundesregierung, n.d.) alongside language learning. These democratic values are represented through gender equality and freedom of speech, which are perceived to be antithetical to a monolithic Islamic culture but integral to modern, Enlightened Germany (Green, 2015; Stabile & Kumar, 2005). Thus, these national initiatives emphasize that Muslim

immigrants (perceived to be all migrants) must align with German democratic values and learn German to facilitate social cohesion and reduce the potential for homegrown terrorism.

Taken together, these various components form the crux of the National Integration Plan: learn German, respect democratic values, and understand how German history informs these contemporary circumstances. Through this analysis, it becomes evident that these ‘integration’ strategies are actually repackaging assimilation discourses under the guise of liberal humanism (Warner, 2014). Ehrkamp (2006) reminds scholars that “as politicians and members of immigrant-receiving societies demand that immigrants adapt to the host country's norms, cultures, and values, they produce assimilation discourses” (p. 1673). Following this trajectory, Bock & Macdonald (2019) forward that these assimilation discourses were disguised through ‘integration’ since the 1970s during debates about Gastarbeiter and Binnenintegration. This is not an arbitrary decision, for “the term ‘Integration’ is preferred in German-language scholarship because ‘assimilation’ has a strong negative connotation in German because of ‘its association with forcible Germanization’” (Ehrkamp, 2006, p. 1675), this association stemming from the Nazi regime. Thus, as citizenship became redefined through cultural identification through the 2000 law change, images of a guiding Leitkultur reinvigorated assimilationist aspirations for a pure, modern Germany that necessarily characterized other cultures as

deviant, dangerous, and backwards. These policies also emphasized the importance of migrants integrating themselves and blamed migrants for ‘failed integration’:

Integration is mainly talked about… in cultural terms, framed as a process of adjusting one’s ways and adapting to cultural norms and values, which are implicitly posited and constructed as homogeneous and often as universal… [and] entangling references to the diversity of culturally shaped attitudes and practices with delinquency reinforces the assumption that Muslim immigrants in

Migrants are thus required to change their ideas, habits and behaviors (Kosnick, 2019, p. 175).

These assimilation discourses are further reflected in naturalization requirements to obtain German citizenship and ‘become’ German that stipulate B1 language proficiency and an alignment with modern democratic values. Drawing on the relation between academic studies and national discourses, these ideologies certainly inform perceptions of immigrant

acculturation by reflecting on the dangers of discordant perceptions of ‘appropriate’ acculturation attitudes (Rohmann, Florack, & Piontkoweski, 2006), thereby advocating that migrants reconfigure their identification to avoid intergroup stress and violence. Other studies have drawn links between naturalization and host-country identification (e.g., Fick, 2016; Maehler, Weinmann, & Hanke, 2019) which is framed as a positive acculturation strategy within a non-multicultural German context. Maehler & Shajek’s (2016) review of psychological

acculturation research in Germany reflected a tendency to rely on Berry’s taxonomy and perceive integration or acculturation strategies as an active choice. While integration initiatives may be voluntary, migrants that do not pursue a pathway towards naturalization by

participating in these courses are demonized for their ‘failed integration’ and rejection of modern, democratic German values.

The ideology of cultural identification as a prerequisite for naturalization reflects this scholarly perception of migrants choosing particular strategies (Pautz, 2005), so migrants are blamed for their failure to integrate appropriately. Binnenintegration is therefore perceived as a half-hearted attempt at identifying with German culture through the maintenance of ethnic identity in a space that is occupied by the non-German, unintegrated ‘other’ (Ehrkamp, 2006;

Schneider et al., 2013). Frankenberg et al. (2013) reflects on these equivocal understandings, for “public discourse has been characterized by a misleadingly inaccurate use of terms such as ‘integration’ in which the aspect of cultural maintenance is still widely neglected, reducing it to discussions on optimizing assimilation” (p. 165). This context conflates Muslim religious identity with the non-German, ethnic ‘other’ that is established as a potentially dangerous entity within society, necessitating a new National Integration Plan that advocates a modern, democratic German identification. Packaged under ‘integration’, this assimilationist ideology prioritizes acquiring German language proficiency and learning German history / culture to facilitate intercultural contact and societal cohesion.

In 2014, the new citizenship law allowing for naturalization on cultural grounds was revised to allow for dual citizenship, indicating an important departure from this assimilationist discourse. As the 2000 law change granted citizenship to children of foreign parents, individuals were originally required to choose between nationalities upon turning 21. The 2014 ratification altered this provision, no longer requiring these individuals who grew up in Germany to make this decision (Bundesministerium des Innern, 2014). This marks a departure from earlier assimilationist positions by postulating the coexistence of German citizens with other ethnic representations. At the same time, this was not extended to naturalized Germans who did not grow up in the country, indicating that migrants from abroad are potentially still dangerous by not being socialized around German democratic ideals, impacting their habitus. Therefore, while this change was important in recognizing dual citizenship possibilities and opening the door for integration-based incorporation ideologies, this ratification does not apply to

In the context of national integration discourses that predominantly advocate

assimilationist ideologies under the guise of liberal humanism with some aspects of integration, certain individuals are distinctly marked as non-German ‘others’. These differences are

mediated through citizenship regulations that privilege particular pathways of incorporation, and ethnic spaces (i.e., Binnenintegration) are perceived as ghettos that disrupt the integration process for newly arrived Germans (in contrast to ius soli citizens; cf. Elwert, 1982). The

previous historical analysis helped conceptualize evolving notions of ‘Germanness’ in tandem with ‘otherness’ within the context of dynamic national discourses. Notions of ethnicity, religion, language, and race have arisen throughout this analysis, yet their conceptualizations within a German space and their interrelationships still remain largely unexplored. Therefore, the following section will explore how ‘otherness’ is created in the contemporary German context by contrasting these individuals with ‘integrated’ immigrants through conflations of racial identity, ethnic heritage, religious affiliation, and linguistic proficiency.