Simon Green. The Politics of Exclusion: Institutions and Immigration Policy in Contemporary Germany. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004. xii + 162 pp. $74.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7190-6588-0.

Reviewed by Brian McCook (School of Cultural Studies, Leeds Metropolitan University)
Published on H-German (April, 2006)

Immigration and Integration in the Bonn and Berlin Republics

Shortly before the end of last year's federal elections in Germany, the popular newspaper, Bild, published one of the more inflammatory headlines in recent memory when it asked readers: "Will Turks decide the election?"[1] Specifically referring to the more than 600,000 German citizens of Turkish descent who Gerhard Schroeder was trying to court for the SPD/Green coalition, the headline clearly called into question the loyalty of naturalized Turks and sought to tap into voter fears about immigration and the integration of millions of non-ethnic Germans now permanently residing in the country. German ambivalence regarding immigration and integration is nothing new. The oft-heard refrain that Germany is "not a country of immigration" has a long history--if not in fact, then at least in the popular imagination. Yet, with growing numbers of young, underemployed and disillusioned second- and third-generation immigrants stuck in a permanent underclass, the stakes are presently much higher than they were in the 1970s and 1980s, when concerns about contemporary immigration first arose. As recent violence in France highlights, the radicalization and withdrawal of many immigrants into ethnic, religious and youth sub-cultures presents a clear political, social and security threat that must be countered by bold policies promoting greater economic and political integration. Unfortunately, as Simon Green suggests in this superb, compact study, Germany's "semi-sovereign" model of governance will continue to constrain the federal government's ability to promote immigrant integration for the foreseeable future.

Green, a lecturer at Birmingham's German Studies Institute, is part of a new generation of scholars critically questioning whether Germany's traditional consensus-style politics can adequately address the contemporary problems associated with globalization and post-unification reform. Building upon the work of Cornell's Peter Katzenstein, Green begins by describing how the decentralized, federal nature of state authority in Germany combined with the autonomous political role played by independent public actors, such as political parties, centralized societal interests (for example, unions and employer associations) and para-public institutions, places a premium on cooperation and consensus in the policy-making arena.[2] Historically, this "semi-sovereign" model of governance has served Germany well, most notably by helping the West German government gain democratic legitimacy, maintain internal stability and establish a model social welfare system during the Cold War. However, Green suggests that in post-unification Germany, "semi-sovereignty" might have reached its limits as a viable form of governance. Nowhere is this suggestion more applicable than in the case of Germany's Ausländerpolitik, an awkward term encompassing a broad array of immigration, residence, integration and citizenship policies towards foreigners, an area in which consensus politics have clearly failed.

As Green emphasizes, over the past forty years, the German government's approach to Ausländerpolitik has been largely ad hoc and ineffectual, marked mostly by half measures and incremental changes that often leave resident aliens in legal and administrative limbo and provide them with little incentive to integrate. A more coherent, stable system regulating immigration and promoting integration has been impossible to achieve because of the difficulty in reaching consensus among the multiple policy players in the "semi-sovereign" system. The issue of immigration is highly contentious, awakening strong feelings on both the right and the left, and the threshold for one or more actors to delay, water down or scuttle proposed legislation is low. Furthermore, those policies that have emerged over the years as a result of political compromises tend to become "path dependent" and difficult to alter in the face of changing political and social circumstances. Most damning, past political practice has largely excluded representatives from the one group that a "semi-sovereign" model of governance should incorporate in addressing issues of Ausländerpolitik, namely immigrants themselves.

To support his argument, Green divides his political study into four chapters, smartly focusing on three specific aspects of Ausländerpolitik, namely residence, citizenship and family reunification policies towards non-German immigrants permanently residing in the Federal Republic. Issues of asylum and ethnic-German migration (the Spätaussiedler) from the former Soviet bloc are touched upon only tangentially. The first chapter provides an overview of the Federal Republic's initial policies towards resident aliens between 1955 and 1982, with primary attention given to understanding the ramifications of the 1965 Ausländergesetz (Law on Foreigners), the 1977 Federal-Länder commission on Ausländerpolitik and Guidelines on Naturalization and the restrictions placed on family reunification in the early 1980s. Green then explores the difficulty in modifying existing policy over the past twenty years, dedicating a chapter each to examining: the debates during the 1980s that led to the adoption of the 1990 Ausländergesetz, the drive to reform citizenship policy in the 1990s and the failed 2000-2002 attempt to pass a new Zuwanderungsgesetz (Immigration Law). Throughout his discussion, Green shows the conflicting nature of Germany's policy towards foreigners, alternating between restricting immigration on the one hand and promoting integration on the other.

One of Green's best examples of the oftentimes incongruous, incremental and path-dependent nature of German Ausländerpolitik can be found in citizenship policy. With regard to immigrants, the first major post-war reform in this area occurred with the 1977 Guidelines on Naturalization, which at the time resulted from a compromise between the SPD-led federal government and the CDU-led Länder. In theory, the 1977 Guidelines eased barriers for non-German immigrants to become citizens by relaxing jus sanguis, or ethnic bloodline descent, requirements in the infamous 1913 Citizenship Law. Nevertheless, naturalization criteria under the 1977 Guidelines remained highly exclusionary. A given applicant needed to reside in Germany for at least 10 years; the granting of citizenship was left to the administrative discretion of the individual Länder; the naturalization of an individual could not conflict with Germany's "public interest" in remaining a non-immigration country; dual citizenship was forbidden except under extraordinary circumstances; and immigrants needed to display satisfactorily a "lasting commitment to Germany" and its culture. Not surprisingly, given the daunting and ambiguous nature of these requirements, the vast majority of immigrants during the 1980s and 1990s found the naturalization option unattractive. Even after the adoption of simplified naturalization procedures as part of the 1990 Ausländergesetz, which guaranteed naturalization "as a rule" after fifteen years, the number of immigrants who became citizens remained quite low. Per annum, less than 1 percent of the total non-national population became citizens through 1995.

By 1998, the continuing problem of immigrant integration gave impetus to the newly elected SPD-Green coalition government to make citizenship reform a top priority. Officially acknowledging that Germany was a country of immigration, the new coalition offered dramatically new proposals to reform Germany's citizenship law by: significantly lowering the residence requirements for naturalization, introducing provisions for second- and third-generation immigrants to acquire citizenship automatically under the territorial principle of jus soli and, most remarkably, allowing dual citizenship. However, the reality of attempting major reform within a "semi-sovereign" system soon caught up with these lofty goals. After the 1999 state election in Hesse, which the opposition CDU won, in part through an unashamedly populist petition campaign that sought to capitalize on voter fears of the new reforms, the governing SPD-Green coalition lost its majority in the Bundesrat (Upper House). In the aftermath, the SPD and Greens were forced to negotiate with the opposition FDP in order to ensure the passage of a scaled-back citizenship bill.

As adopted, the 1999 compromise legislation fell far short of original proposals. While the residence requirement for simple naturalization was reduced to eight years and jus soli for second-generation children introduced, there was generally no change from the 1977 Guidelines prohibiting dual citizenship. Further, although the introduction of jus soli represented a significant advance in citizenship law, in actual practice only about half of the number of second-generation immigrants born in Germany qualified to take advantage of this provision. To prevent the proliferation of dual citizenships, those who gained German citizenship under jus soli will, in the future, also risk having it revoked when they turn 23, unless they can prove their release from the original citizenship of their parents. In addition, other elements of the new bill were decidedly less accommodating to immigrants than previous policy. Most notably, the right to citizenship could be denied if the applicant did not possess sufficient German language skills. In addition, naturalization fees were raised from 100 DM (approximately 50 Euro) to 500 DM (255 Euro). Immediately after the bill went into effect in 2000, the number of naturalizations that year climbed to an impressive 187,000, or 2.6 percent of the total foreign population. Nevertheless, two years later this number fell back down to 155,000, or 2.1 percent, representing only a slight increase over 1999, pre-reform naturalization rates. Altogether, the effect of the 1999 citizenship bill on levels of naturalization since its passage has been underwhelming and indicative of the long road Germany still needs to travel in order to integrate immigrants into mainstream society more effectively.

In this regard, towards the end of his study, Green touches upon perhaps the most fundamental problem continuing to plague German policies towards foreigners, namely, how to define integration in the first place. As Green correctly emphasizes, integration in theory "consists of both immigrant and host society modifying their behavior around universally accepted norms and standards; it does not consist of a unilateral adaptation of the immigrant to the host society, which is assimilation" (p. 116). Yet a key legacy of Germany's decades-long self-identification as a non-immigration country is that many Germans view integration as synonymous with outright assimilation into a core national culture or Leitkultur, as the CDU's Friedrich Merz once famously put it in 2000. Correspondingly, naturalization represents the logical end to the integration process, not a stepping-stone on the way.

While over the past twenty years, a counter-discourse from the Left emphasizing a more pluralistic understanding of "Germanness" has emerged, enabling citizenship reforms such as occurred in 1999, the sense that cultural assimilation is a necessary precursor to economic and political integration nevertheless remains strong. As Renate Künast, the current opposition leader for the Greens in parliament, declared shortly before the recent election in reference to immigrants: "'Multikulti' is possible, but there are two ground rules: Rule One: subject yourselves to the Constitution! Rule Two: German will be spoken here!"[3] This ethno-cultural understanding of integration contrasts with present-day Anglo-American conceptions, where emphasis is placed on political and economic integration, achieved through more liberal citizenship regimes and less regulated markets, as the means to eventual cultural integration. Ultimately, the common thread running through German integration policy over the past forty years is the idea that immigrants need to abandon significant elements of their ethnic culture in order to properly integrate. This price, however, is one that many foreigners currently living in Germany are not willing to pay. Consequently, until the German mind-set behind integration policy shifts, levels of integration will most likely remain low.

Taken as a whole, Green provides an excellent contribution to understanding the politics behind contemporary immigration and integration policies in Germany. The study will interest the specialist and general reader alike. Moreover, given its conciseness, the work lends itself well for use in the classroom. I only wish that a less expensive paperback version were available.

Moreover, although they are few in number, Green's work does have certain weaknesses. The analysis suffers from the author's constant reminders to the reader about how his findings fit into Katzenstein's theory of "semi-sovereignty." This unneeded and distracting repetition obscures Green's own very useful contributions in showing how the policy making process in matters of Ausländerpolitik has, in fact, been transformed in recent years, most notably by the growing power of political parties as sources of competency in their own right and the virtual disappearance of centralized societal groups and para-public institutions as influential policy actors. Further, the critique of Rogers Brubaker leveled in the Introduction and Conclusion, specifically that his Citizenship and Nationhood[4] study neglects contingency in favor of historically determined "nationhood traditions," seems a bit worn and ineffectual, especially in light of Green's general emphasis on "path dependency," which strikes the reader simply as tradition writ small.

More substantively, while Green aptly highlights the deficiencies of a "semi-sovereign" system, he does not suggest any alternatives that would be more effective. As the French example shows, a centralized, top-down model of governance certainly does not necessarily secure better policy outcomes. Hence, the question remains as to what other, concrete solutions the author would suggest? In this regard, it could have been useful to compare German policy and its effectiveness briefly to that of other Western European countries, especially Britain and France. Given the timeliness of the topic, I also wish that Green, instead of concluding the study in early 2002, had provided greater discussion of Germany's more conservative, security-minded orientation since September 11, Beslan and the downturn in the German economy. Finally, although he touches upon it, Green might have offered a greater discussion of the role of the European Union, both in influencing and being influenced by German policy towards foreigners.

When considered in light of the entire work, however, these criticisms are minor and should not detract from this enjoyable, solidly written political history. Although Green remains pessimistic that Germany can achieve anything but incremental change in its Ausländerpolitik, he does conclude that "any major departure from established norms was possible only in a 'grand coalition' setting" (p. 138). Let us hope that the current German government soon takes these words to heart.

Notes

[1]. "Entscheiden Türken die Wahl?" Bildzeitung, September 13, 2005. Surprisingly, unlike in years past, reaction to the provocative headline within political circles and among the general populace was generally muted, reflecting the doubts many Germans have about the idea of a "multi-cultural" Germany.

[2]. Peter Katzenstein, Policy and Politics in Germany (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987).

[3]. Süddeutsche Zeitung, Sept. 2, 2005.

[4]. Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992).

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Citation: Brian McCook. Review of Green, Simon, The Politics of Exclusion: Institutions and Immigration Policy in Contemporary Germany. H-German, H-Net Reviews. April, 2006.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=11706

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