Brett Klopp. German Multiculturalism: Immigrant Integration and the Transformation of Citizenship. West Port and London: Praeger, 2002. xii + 235 pp. $65.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-275-97627-9.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Jurgens (Anthropology Program, Bard College)
Published on H-German (December, 2004)

For scholars interested in the multi-faceted impacts of immigration on public and political life in contemporary Germany, German Multiculturalism combines a useful overview of national-level policy with a focused investigation of post-WW II immigrant incorporation processes in one city, Frankfurt am Main. At its most basic level, this book aims to bring political theory to bear on the social, political, and ideological consequences of immigration on receiving societies. The author, a political scientist, is particularly concerned with key municipal institutions (including labor unions, schools, housing authorities, and political bodies dedicated to the concerns of "foreign" residents) as sites where the cultural definitions and policy blueprints of immigrant integration are implemented, contested, and sometimes transformed. To state his project in somewhat different terms, Klopp sets out to examine not only how these local institutions unevenly facilitate and attenuate immigrants' inclusion in the polity, but also how they and their policies are altered by immigrants' engagements with them. He is convinced that immigrants in Germany, despite restrictive naturalization laws, exclusionary public rhetoric, and the lack of any federal integration policy, are not confining themselves to "homeland"-oriented social associations. Rather, they are turning to municipal institutions to participate actively in both local and national affairs in their country of residence. This conclusion guides the author's broader intervention in recent scholarship on citizenship and multiculturalism, including his pointed criticism of Yasemin Soysal's proposal for an emergent "postnational" form of citizenship.[1]

Klopp uses the first few chapters of his book to situate his study conceptually and historically. Following the work of Rogers Brubaker, he argues that an ethnocultural understanding of German identity has, since the late-nineteenth century, consistently informed the efforts of successive German governments to regulate the inflow of temporary migrant labor and to prevent the long-term "pluralization of culture and society" (p. 34).[2] Germany thereby constitutes an intriguing case in which to consider integration practices because "it has never had an immigration law per se, only asylum, labor recruitment, and family unification policies" (p. 9). These piecemeal initiatives have meant that at the level of federal policy, "the legal integration or incorporation of immigrants has been indefinitely delayed," even as multiple waves of immigrants have settled on a permanent basis in (West) Germany since the late-nineteenth century (p. 9). Moreover, this dynamic has only been complicated by the ongoing process of European integration. The European Union recently adopted legislation that enabled some immigrants' participation in local elections. It only did so in the late-1990s, however, and it only extended these local voting rights to EU citizens. Needless to say, this arrangement still leaves non-EU citizens, most notably Germany's sizable immigrant population from Turkey, without means for formal political participation).

In these circumstances, it has consistently fallen upon municipalities to manage the social and political issues attending large-scale immigration with little to no central coordination from the federal government. It is thus imperative, Klopp suggests, for scholars to attend not only to policy formation at the level of the nation-state, but also to decidedly local institutional policies, practices, and interactions. The author's point here is well taken, and his attention to Frankfurt am Main is a welcome addition to existing scholarship on migration to Germany, much of which has either addressed national discourse and policy and/or focused on the capital Berlin. Accordingly, each of the next four substantive chapters examines a specific institutional realm in Frankfurt and its role in promoting and/or inhibiting immigrants' inclusion. In each case, Klopp briefly outlines the organizational structure of each set of institutions and situates it within its relevant historical, political, and economic contexts. He then supplements these framing discussions with "ethnographic" vignettes and interview excerpts that are intended to illustrate the complexities of local integration processes.

The first of these chapters examines the impact of organized labor on immigrants' socioeconomic positioning in Frankfurt. It builds upon fieldwork Klopp conducted in the local branches and national offices of four unions affiliated with the German Trade Union Federation (Deutsche Gewerkschaftsbund), the DGB's youth organization, and personnel managers from several service and manufacturing firms. As the author points out, unions were often the first West German institutions with which recruited immigrant workers engaged after arrival. As organizations, they are characterized by high levels of immigrant mobilization and grassroots participation, and they have traditionally professed staunch support for immigrants' economic, civil and political rights. This support has usually been couched in terms of an internationalist, solidaristic ideology that ostensibly grants formal equality to immigrants in the workplace, and Klopp notes that both "foreign" and "German" union representatives subscribed to this view during interviews. To his credit, though, he notes that this universalist ideology has sometimes inhibited unions' ability to perceive and address immigrants' particular concerns. Moreover, he draws due attention to the conspicuous lack of immigrants in high-level union positions, as well as the only partial effectiveness of unions' multiculturalist and anti-racist initiatives. In the end, "it is debatable whether they [unions] have helped the socioeconomic advancement of foreigners" (p. 90). This situation is only further complicated by recent global economic restructuring, which has led to a marked decline in industrial production in Frankfurt and Germany more broadly, undermined the country's social market economy, and reduced the power of organized labor in relation to employers and the state. Immigrants and their descendants, who are generally less qualified in educational and occupational terms than the native population, stand to suffer disproportionately from the effects of economic globalization.

The second chapter details attempts to promote the integration of immigrant youth in and through public education. Its empirical basis primarily rests on the author's analysis of policy debates in the Continuing Conference of the State Ministers of Education and Culture, his visits to several Frankfurt public schools, and oral commentaries from students, teachers, parents, and other immigrant advocates. Klopp argues that integration efforts in public schools have been hampered by shifting policy goals, a dearth of comprehensive federal guidelines, and perhaps above all a lack of political will to recognize the reality of immigrants' permanent settlement. As a consequence, public schools have not only failed to confront, but also unwittingly contributed to a marked concern with the assertion, recognition, and maintenance of distinctive cultural identities among immigrant children, their parents, and other advocates. Such preoccupation with ethnic specificity has most pointedly expressed itself in immigrants' calls for native language instruction and Islamic religious education in German public schools.

Klopp adopts a differentiated perspective on these proposals. He is appropriately critical of the essentialist notion that immigrant children's "native" language and culture are necessarily those of their parents and grandparents. Further, he is wary of what he considers some advocates' misplaced preoccupation with matters of identity recognition, and he instead expresses more concern about the current and future prospects of immigrant young people on the labor market. Thus, Klopp calls for a policy focus on immigrant young people's equal competence in German rather than the learning of putative "native" languages. He does, however, support the availability of Islamic religious instruction in a manner comparable to the classes currently available for Christian, Jewish, and other legally recognized moral-religious traditions.

The third chapter discusses public housing policy in Frankfurt and, above all, recent efforts to counteract patterns of residential segregation among immigrants and asylum seekers. In this case, the chapter revolves around Klopp's analysis of Frankfurt's Housing Office and the Frankfurt Contract, the Office's primary policy instrument for the allocation of public housing. The author paints a relatively grim picture of the city's residential situation. Since the 1970s, many immigrants have lacked the financial resources to participate in broader suburbanization processes of their own accord. In addition, real estate developers have lacked compelling financial incentives to construct new residential properties in central areas of the city, an absence that coincides with a broader decline in the availability of publicly subsidized housing. The end result is that immigrants are notably concentrated in districts with high residential densities and high percentages of welfare recipients. They also constitute a disproportionate percentage of the local population seeking publicly subsidized housing. In response to these patterns, the Frankfurt Housing Office, in conjunction with participating non-profit housing agencies, instituted a quota system in 1994 that aimed to limit the proportion of immigrants and welfare recipients in specific public housing enterprises to no more than their proportion of the city's population at large. Not surprisingly, the measure generated a good deal of local controversy, and Klopp documents a pattern of opposition to the placement of immigrants and other social welfare recipients in historically affluent districts and in areas previously occupied by U.S. military forces. He also critically discusses local anxieties about incipient "ghetto" formation as well as the relative absence of immigrant residents (and working-class residents more generally) from activist housing initiatives. Klopp ultimately favors some form of government-mandated quota arrangement, which in his estimation is the one measure preventing yet higher rates of residential segregation.

The fourth and final substantive chapter concerns those institutions intended to offer immigrants local-level political representation and participation, alongside (and in spite of) historically restrictive federal immigration and citizenship policies. This chapter's centerpieces are Frankfurt's Office of Multicultural Affairs and the city's Local Foreigners Council. Regarding the Office of Multicultural Affairs, Klopp draws particular attention to staff members' efforts to promote immigrants' social incorporation, combat discrimination, and mediate conflicts between immigrant residents and local governmental institutions, above all the Frankfurt police. As for the Local Foreigners Council, his emphasis falls on its long-standing structural and procedural difficulties, which have substantially contributed to its inefficacy and to the low voter turnouts that have characterized its elections. Klopp appreciates what these institutions have managed to accomplish under often difficult circumstances, but he rightly notes the way in which the Office of Multicultural Affairs tends to speak paternalistically for immigrants without directly involving them in its projects. Moreover, he criticizes the subordinate and often conflictual relationship that the Local Foreigners Council is compelled to maintain with the Office of Multicultural Affairs, an arrangement which only serves further to undermine the Council's autonomy. In the end, "neither [institution] achieves the normative goal of meaningfully incorporating foreigners as active participants in civil society" (p. 179).

This final substantive chapter, along with the book's conclusion, also returns to Klopp's earlier discussion of citizenship in order to offer a more elaborate critical response to the arguments of Yasemin Soysal and other like-minded scholars. Briefly, Soysal asserts that the significance of national state citizenship has begun to erode in Europe under the combined weight of multiculturalist discourse, transnational migration, and the ascendence of universalist notions of human rights. In turn, a postnational mode of citizenship is emerging in which supranational discourses and institutions, rather than the nation-state, serve as the source of legitimacy for individual rights. As a consequence, European welfare states are beginning to extend postnational membership status to non-citizen residents by granting them some civil and social rights, even as they continue to lack the full political rights possessed by citizens.[3]

Klopp acknowledges the relevance of postnational discourse and institutional practice in a restricted number of cases. Based on his research in Frankfurt, however, he insists that Soysal's invocation of postnational membership "does not represent the everyday experience of the overwhelming majority of disenfranchised immigrants living in Western Europe, nor does it appear likely that it will become the case in the near future.... The national state and the municipalities--or local states--are still the primary sites of rights guarantees, privileges, and services for citizens and noncitizens alike" (p. 162). Further, Klopp does not believe that the extension of this partial membership status, in the absence of full naturalization and political incorporation, ultimately constitutes a necessary or desirable long-term solution. In any event, his field research leads him to argue that most immigrants are not satisfied with a partial array of entitlements: they instead desire the full gamut of civil, political, and social rights that other citizens possess.

Needless to say, Klopp covers an immense amount of territory in this book, and for the most part does so quite capably. In particular, I find his criticisms of Soysal, if not entirely novel, well-conceived intellectually and well-supported empirically. I also agree with his claim that many immigrants are turning to municipal institutions and seeking full political incorporation, although I would add that most, in my experience, would ultimately prefer some form of dual citizenship. I do, however, have two sets of concerns. The first involves the role of immigrants as autonomous actors in processes of social and political incorporation. As I have already noted, Klopp argues not only that immigrants are included and/or excluded from the polity through the mediation of municipal institutions, but also that they actively shape and reshape those institutions. The author introduces the concept of "reciprocal integration" in an attempt to capture this sense of dynamic, multi-faceted interaction. Yet while he provides a few examples of how immigrants' involvement at least potentially reconfigures the practices and policies of several local institutions, most of the book continues to emphasize the capacity of institutions both to foster and inhibit immigrants' incorporation. One could reasonably argue that immigrants' capacities for autonomous action in this regard are highly circumscribed. Yet the problem is also at least partly conceptual. However much Klopp may emphasize "reciprocal integration" in his introduction and conclusion, the concept is not as tightly incorporated into his substantive chapters' arguments as it might be.

In particular, the author's analysis focuses on municipal institutions at the expense of organizations formed and run by immigrants themselves. Klopp's general position on these associations is that while they have offered emotional support, self-help, and recreational opportunities, they have not focused or coordinated their efforts in the service of immigrants' political engagement in Germany. This may or may not be the case in Frankfurt, but based on my own ethnographic research in Berlin, I am familiar with several immigrant organizations that are heavily involved in local political activity and that coordinate their efforts with other similarly oriented associations. Indeed, one umbrella organization, the Turkish Federation of Berlin-Brandenburg, enjoys considerable influence with local governmental officials, and it issues regular pronouncements on immigration-related matters that receive prominent coverage in the local and regional German-language press. Thus, I am concerned that Klopp may privilege those institutions that political and other social scientists customarily discuss in relation to Euro-American nation-states while giving short shrift to alternative forms of political activity that tend to fall "under the radar." He may thus lose sight of institutional realms and practices where serious efforts at "reciprocal integration" are being undertaken.

My second set of concerns is related to what Klopp explicitly calls his ethnographic research and representational strategy. On the one hand, his interview excerpts and vignettes are not as rigorously interpreted as the anthropologist in me would like. He often seems to treat his fieldwork interactions rather prosaically as sources of relevant information that complement the data provided by other documentary sources. There is nothing particularly troubling about this approach in and of itself, but it does mean that Klopp does not really consider these interactions as a series of speech events wherein he might observe how particular individuals use, question, and potentially re-work meaningful cultural concepts. In other cases, Klopp does not, to my mind, sufficiently reflect upon the ways that the institutional locations of his informants may shape their words, perceptions, and actions. This is particularly the case in his interviews with the personnel managers of several manufacturing and service firms. He seems to take their pronouncements about the harmonious interethnic relations that prevail in their companies basically at face value, without assessing the extent to which these managers, as key corporate representatives, may be toeing an optimistic "company line" or engaging in favorable "spin" (pp. 86-89). And lastly, there are a few moments when Klopp's vignettes have the feel of relatively unpruned field notes. He provides very extensive records, for example, of meetings within the local branch of Immigruen (a national immigrant organization affiliated with the Green Party) and an activist housing organization (pp. 19-21 and 147-149), but does not supplement them with close, equally detailed interpretations of the actors' utterances and behavior. "Thick description," after all, entails not merely description of social action, but interpretive inference about the cultural meanings that motivate and guide that action (indeed, "description" and "interpretation" cannot be separated from one another).[4]

Thus, although Klopp claims to be doing ethnography, he does not entirely conform to the conventions and expectations that currently prevail in anthropology and related disciplines. It would be unfair, however, to dismiss this book as a result, since the author never claims to be an anthropologist, and his disciplinary training and inclinations lie elsewhere. Klopp's eclectic combination of political theory and field research ultimately yields useful insights and many reasonable policy recommendations. He makes a convincing case for fine-grained analyses of local processes of immigrant incorporation, and he is largely successful in his attempt to offer a synthetic treatment of diverse social, cultural, and political phenomena.

Notes

[1]. Yasemin N. Soysal, Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).

[2]. Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1992). Brubaker's account remains a central work on the history of German citizenship policy, but some of its conclusions have been challenged by Andreas Fahrmeier, Citizens and Aliens: Foreigners and the Law in Britain and the German States, 1789-1870 (New York and Oxford, England: Berghahn Books, 2000). See Eli Nathans's review of Fahrmeier for a thorough critical reading of both works: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=38191059590170 .

[3]. In adopting the distinction between civil, political, and social rights, both Soysal and Klopp follow T. H. Marshall's conception of citizenship in the modern welfare state. See T. H. Marshall and Tom Bottomore, Citizenship and Social Class (London, England: Pluto Press, 1992).

[4]. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973).

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Citation: Jeffrey Jurgens. Review of Klopp, Brett, German Multiculturalism: Immigrant Integration and the Transformation of Citizenship. H-German, H-Net Reviews. December, 2004.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=10054

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