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In contrast to the other papers in this special issue, this paper reflects a specific case of co-agency between states and individual migrants, particularly students and alumni networks. Based on a qualitative case study with 29 Georgian students and 14 institutions and organizations, this paper explores the impact of Georgian alumni on polity building in Georgia. Here we can observe two phases: Firstly, the states of Georgia and of Germany act as co-agents by facilitating migration to young Georgian students by financing their studies in Germany (student scholarships) with the objective that the students return and transfer their knowledge to the country of origin. Subsequently, the Georgian alumni who studied law in Germany act as co-agents between different institutions in both countries. In doing so, they transform state institutions by themselves and contribute to the development of the legal and political system in Georgia. They do that particularly in such important legal fields like constitutional law, civic law, and criminal law, but also in the creation of parliamentarism based on a bicameral system or the promotion of separation of church and state in Georgia. That takes place after return migration as well as from Germany through transnational networks and mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do media discourses on German national identity differ before and after the arrival of refugees in 2015/16? National identity discourses are often closely linked to immigration dynamics, inter alia due to boundary making through the othering of immigrants. While this relation is well documented in the case of Germany, scholars have yet to study how the arrival of refugees in 2015/16 has been integrated in discourses on national identity in more detail. In this paper, we conduct an inductive qualitative content analysis of Die ZEIT, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Bild am Sonntag in 2014 and 2019 and find an important shift within the media representation of German national identity. While in 2014, a self-understanding of Germany as an immigration country dominated the media landscape, by 2019, national identity discourses became more fragmented and neither the idea of a tolerant Germany nor the idea of an anti-immigration Germany clearly dominated. Based on this analysis, we argue that 2015/16 can be understood as a turning point for discourses on German national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on refugee claims made by lesbians racialised as Black in Germany. While there exists a relatively large body of works that examine how categories of sexuality and gender identity underpin the assessment of LGBTQI+ asylum, very little work has been dedicated to the precarity of lesbian asylum claimants. This paper seeks to contribute to the nascent discussion in the area of queer migration that asks about how imaginations of blackness, gender, and sexuality shape perceptions of 'true' victimhood. In thinking through the 'double discrimination' lesbian asylum seekers face within Germany's asylum system – as women and lesbians – this paper explores how race as it pertains to constructions of femininity further contributes to the marginalisation of lesbians racialised as Black. I will use the example of two lesbian asylum cases from Uganda – both of which I have closely followed over the course of 14 months – so as to outline some of the main effects of such asylum practices as they relate to the question of who deserves Germany's legal protection and how this relates to normative conceptualisations of female victimhood and humanitarianism. I contextualise such in-depth analysis with data collected through semi-structured interview and case analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper brings memory and migration studies together. It focuses on the way the past was used in the context of the 'refugee crisis' in Germany in 2015/2016. The analysis concentrates on how politicians and journalists used the memory of Germans' own migrations to legitimise rhetorically the political decision to open the borders and let more than a million people into the country, as well as to call for a welcoming attitude (Willkommenskultur) towards the refugees. It shows how, by doing so, they have contributed to the reframing of one of the founding identity narratives of the FRG, namely the one about 'flight and expulsion', and thus helped to redraw Germany's identity boundaries in a more inclusive way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how undocumented Latin American migrants in Berlin manage to access therapy in the event of sickness despite their exclusion from the regular health care system in Germany. I argue that in order to receive medical attention, undocumented migrants rely on specific illegality knowledge, which, in turn, requires social capital, as information is acquired through informal social networks, mainly consisting of other Latin American migrants. Adopting a process-centred view of migration, I show how informal social networks change over the course of the migration experience, and stress the situational aspects of therapy management practices. I will offer a critical perspective on the concept of migrant social capital, and demonstrate that the social ties that undocumented Latin American migrants create in order to be able to survive on the margins of German society are inherently fragile. Depending on informal social networks constitutes a resource as well as a liability for undocumented migrants. Throughout the paper, I will use detailed case examples to from my long-term ethnographic fieldwork conducted with undocumented Latin American migrants in Berlin (2008–2011). Further data sources include interviews with health care providers and my experience as an activist/volunteer for a Berlin-based non-governmental organisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

State-assisted return programmes (SARPs) have emerged as key components of diaspora mobilisation strategies in countries of origin. Especially in countries where the principle of jus sanguinis underpins citizenship regimes, these programmes have often been drawn from ostensibly national(istic) discourses in order to encourage the repatriation of (mostly highly skilled) citizens residing abroad. Drawing on interviews with public officials and migrants as well as content analysis of primary and secondary materials, this paper examines SARPs deployed by Israel and Germany. It argues that while the discourse and practice within which state programmes are embedded (re-)construct the nation in certain ways that are commensurate with perceived determinants of return, migrants have often rejected these formulations, underscoring instead a range of neglected personal and professional return-oriented risks. The paper's main contribution lies in better clarifying the links between highly skilled return migration policy, national identity and migration determinants and uncovers the diverging articulations of return used by state and migrants alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are small or large outgroup populations more closely related to an ingroup's prejudice? This paper addresses this question with national probability survey data from Germany focused on resident foreigners. Two interlocking processes underlie the complex relationship between population proportions and prejudice. Typically, larger outgroup population proportions simultaneously increase both threat and intergroup contact. The first process increases prejudice, the second decreases it. Using structural equation modelling, our analysis reveals that these two processes can be effectively combined into one complex model. Threat is perceptual; it involves what people think is the outgroup proportion and thus can be easily manipulated by political leaders and the mass media. Contact is experiential; it can reduce individual and collective threat as well as prejudice. The intricate relationship between threat and contact can be substantially altered by numerous moderators. Hence, rigid group segregation can limit contact, while unemployment can amplify threat. The paper provides evidence that reductions in prejudice have important consequences for intergroup relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the emergence of immigrant writing in Germany and Austria with a view to explaining why a guestworker literature emerged in Germany in the 1970s but not in Austria despite the fact that the two countries' immigration histories were comparable. Whilst these differing developments can be traced back to a number of factors, the paper argues that a critical factor is the opportunity structure within the receiving countries. Using this approach and Bourdieu's theory on the literary field, I show that the changes in the literary field in Germany were conducive to such a development at the time, while the structure of the literary field in Austria hampered such a development. However, when the first immigrant and ethnic minority publications eventually appeared in Austria in the 1990s, the circumstances were comparable to those in Germany in the 1970s: the writers positioned themselves as immigrants to express their opposition to mechanisms of political and cultural exclusion. Yet, the responses to these developments differed: while the works written in 1970s' West Germany display a strong belief that change can be brought about by workers' solidarity in the fight against capitalism, the novels published in the last decade in Austria seem to subscribe to a more individualised approach to social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 9/11, Islamic organisations have been expected to function as integration facilitators, as 24-hour contact partners for politics and media, and as counter-terrorism activists. How does this affect these organisations? And what are their desires for their members in this context? In contrast to existing studies, this research closely examines the perspective of Islamic umbrella organisations vis-à-vis their changing political and institutional environments. It analyses their organisational behaviour from an innovative research perspective based on organisational sociology. Through a comparative analysis of three major Islamic umbrella organisations in Germany, distinct patterns of organisational behaviour emerge. While politicians wish for organisational adaptation to their expectations, the study also reveals a potential for decoupling and protest behaviour due to conflicting member interests and a perceived lack of external resource opportunities. Organisational protest is mainly directed at the securitisation and islamification of integration debates, and the often rather symbolic politics of cooperation and recognition. At the same time, legitimacy and efficiency considerations can explain why Islamic organisations attempt to overcome internal disputes when trying to satisfy political expectations. The paper also outlines open research questions and critically discusses possible future developments within this emerging organisational field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the interplay between hegemonic discourses on segregation and small-scale segregation in neighbourhoods. In the German mass media, segregation is mainly discussed in the context of so-called 'problematic neighbourhoods'. Thereby the discourse concentrates on cultural differences and blames immigrants for building parallel societies instead of integrating into German society. However, boundaries in neighbourhoods are often due to racialised stereotypes rather than differences in cultural practice. Small-scale segregation is not necessarily related to migration or cultural differences but corresponds to racialised images of who is perceived as German and who is not. Qualitative interviews with White German residents of three neighbourhoods in Berlin indicate that the discourse about 'problematic neighbourhoods' in itself furthers small-scale segregation and racialised stereotypes in neighbourhoods. Instead of interpreting small-scale segregation as immigrants' lack of will to integrate into German society, I suggest Bourdieu's concept of Habitus and social space as an explanation for boundaries in neighbourhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous discussion of the opportunities for young people with an ethnic minority background to integrate into society has focused on advantages or disadvantages caused by human capital or by ethnically motivated, individual, group or institutional discrimination within society. However, in recent years there has been a growing interest in subjectively or collectively perceived discrimination and its effects on ethnic identity and (re-)ethnicisation. This paper reports on the processes involved in the (re-)ethnicisation of young people with a Turkish ethnic background which results from perceived personal and group discrimination. A discrimination/(re-)ethnicisation path-model is proposed where perceived discrimination influences the perceived non-permeability of group boundaries and ethnic identity. This results in a direct and positive effect on (re-)ethnicisation. Analyses of empirical investigations partly support the model, in accordance with which perceived personal and group discrimination produce direct effects on the perceived non-permeability of group boundaries and indirect effects on ethnic identity and (re-)ethnicisation. Against the model proposed here, perceived personal and group discrimination have a direct impact on (re-)ethnicisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 2001 and 2004, an initially innovative proposal of a German immigration law was transformed into a rather conservative piece of legislation. This paper systematically analyses media discourse during this period. A content analysis of five prominent German newspapers reveals that media attention to the issue of immigration in the context of the new law fluctuated considerably and that different models of argumentation were mobilised in different stages of the debate. While economic arguments occurred with consistent frequency, arguments stressing the dangers of immigration were used mainly in the context of other world events, such as the attacks in Madrid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents statistical and qualitative data on the response of Turkish immigrants and their descendants living in Germany to the changes in the German citizenship 'reform' of 1999. My findings suggest that the effects of the new citizenship and naturalisation regulations on Turkish immigrants were mediated by their generational status and the time period in which they arrived or were raised in Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With more than 10 million Muslims living in Western Europe, states are struggling to accommodate the religious needs of Muslims in state-supported institutions. Such issues include whether to fund separate Islamic schools and how or whether to teach Islam in state-supported schools. Despite these common concerns, national governments vary widely in their response to the religious needs and practices of Muslim citizens and permanent residents. This paper looks at how Britain, France and Germany have resolved these issues. We explore how pre-existing Church-State practices and institutional arrangements structured the politics of state accommodation of Muslims' religious needs in each country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the ways that Turkish immigrants create places of belonging in a German city. I suggest that transnational ties enable immigrants to forge local attachments through the production of place. Drawing on a neighbourhood case-study of Duisburg-Marxloh, I show how immigrants' transnational ties and practices visibly transform their current place of residence through transnational consumption, mass media, and the establishment of communal places such as mosques and teahouses that also contribute to conflicts between groups. Their placing of identities also forms an engagement with the receiving society, as immigrants are actively carving out belonging in the face of often hostile attitudes from German residents. Viewing immigrants' attachments from the perspective of places they create teases out the complexities of multiple and sometimes conflicting attachments of contemporary migrants, and allows for an understanding of transnational ties and engagement with the host society as complementary rather than contradictory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines political attitudes and behavioural intentions of immigrants in the field of voting behaviour. Based on a quantitative survey of the population of Turkish origin in Mannheim, Germany, and data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), we show that the political attitudes of immigrants reflect their marginal legal status: immigrants show a lower interest in the political processes of the host country and a lower identification with its political institutions than natives, and this difference is only partly explained by immigrants' lower socio-economic status. Alienation from institutions in the host country increases migrants' likelihood of considering ethnically segregated immigrant parties as more suitable for representing their interests than the political parties of the host country. A closer look at the political attitudes of these supporters of immigrant parties reveals, however, little evidence of collective interest formation among this group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Christian Democratic Union's (CDU's) recent proposal for a national 'guiding culture' as the basis for immigrant integration has aroused considerable controversy in Germany. This paper examines the underlying assumptions and framework of this approach to integration. It argues that this approach rests on a Romantic understanding of culture that obscures fundamental internal differences within majority cultures and further marginalises minorities. In postulating a unitary, homogeneous vision of German national culture, the CDU has forgotten the sharp conflicts that long divided German Protestants and Catholics, and which reached their apex during the Kulturkampf of the 1870s. Moreover, focussing on immigrant integration as primarily a cultural matter ignores the relationships of power that shape any integration process. The importance of looking at the institutional and structural dimensions of such a process is made clear by comparing the Federal Republic's experiences with integrating the expellees/refugees of the 1950s and the East Germans after 1990. The CDU's notion of a 'guiding culture' for immigrants should be understood as illustrative of a broader pattern among elites in modern liberal-democratic states to invoke cultural and other ascriptive characteristics as a rationale in order to deny full and equal membership to minorities and other disadvantaged groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The link between international mobility, class, and social mobility is often framed in binary terms. While high-skilled labour migration is usually considered to lead to upward social mobility, forced or irregular migrants are often described as poor and marginalised members of their host communities. This article focuses on forced migrants' own perceptions of their mobility experiences to uncover how they make sense of the links between migration, class, and social mobility. Based on interviews with migrants in Germany, I show that the value they assign to international mobility for social status enhancement is affected by their perceived range of choice over mobility and settlement options. Considering growing global inequality of access to cross-border movement and settlement, the findings contribute to academic debates on the factors influencing the relative importance of migration for increasing people's chances in life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The precarious nature of caregivers' migration is one of the fundamental characteristics of the growing marketisation of home-based care at the transnational level. Against this background, scholars have dedicated increasing attention to the role of private actors involved in the transnational recruitment/employment of migrant caregivers, such as the for-profit agencies, asking whether these intermediaries are a good or a bad thing. In order to understand the dilemmas facing this complex scenario, we interviewed trade unionists, activists, and academic experts in Taiwan and Germany, both of which are countries where the growing care needs of the ageing population are addressed by employing caregivers from abroad. In these interviews, research participants in both countries strongly criticised the emergence of transnational agencies as influential actors in the field and accused them of reproducing an exploitative temporariness of work for migrant caregivers and of the care services they provide, grounded in the temporary dimension of their mobility patterns. The research participants also evaluated the current situation as they tried to imagine alternative arrangements. Advocates for migrant caregivers' rights expressed intense frustration at the widespread acceptance of today's situation but they also suggested that other forms of intermediaries and of temporariness might be developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do the processes underlying destination-language acquisition differ between recently arrived refugees and other new immigrants? Based on a well-established model of language learning according to which language fluency is a function of efficiency, incentives, and exposure, this study addresses general processes of language learning as well as conditions specific to refugees. Longitudinal data on refugees (IAB-BAMF-SOEP Sample of Refugees in Germany) and other immigrants (IAB-SOEP Migration Sample) in Germany indicate that exposure to the destination language is the main driver of proficiency, followed by efficiency, whereas incentives matter less. Moreover, refugees profit substantially from structured learning in language courses, while other immigrants benefit more from informal exposure in their everyday environments. Overall, the findings suggest that language acquisition is a general process that is similar across different types of immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Western hegemonic discourses, cross-border marriages in which ethnic minority members, especially Muslims, take a partner from a 'country of origin' are framed as patriarchal and backward and women are portrayed as victims within such marriages. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, the article focuses on the marriages of men from rural Kosovo, who have moved to Austria or Germany because they married a woman from a 'Kosovan' background, and on the gender roles that are negotiated here. The men in these cross-border marriages do not fit into the dominant Western image of 'patriarchal' ethnic-minority men. After migration, married male migrants find themselves in multiple dependencies and take up diverse roles that are framed by their educational profiles and economic performance, by the support they receive from their wives, as well as the diverse and partly translocal social fields they relate to. Depending on their social position, male marriage migrants may be doubly marginalised, by the majority society as well as within their ethnic communities. But men with higher education who successfully integrated into the labour market may also set up intra-ethnic boundaries, be it to members of their rural community in Kosovo or within ethnic-minority communities in Austria or Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyses the role of life satisfaction for the intention of migrants to return to their country of origin. It is argued that the utility function of return migration is a function of life satisfaction gains and losses due to migration. Using the German Socio-Economic Panel and the World Value Survey, first-generation migrants from 26 countries were studied on the country level and within a random intercept logistic regression framework. The results suggest that cross-country differences in the intended return rate can be explained by expected cross-country differences in the life satisfaction gains/losses of migrants that return. However, the effect might be quadratic rather than linear. On the micro data level as well, migrants tend to settle or return depending on the life satisfaction in Germany and their country of origin. This effect seems to be driven by relatively recent arrivals and migrants with transnational social ties. The study concludes that migration decisions are to some degree determined by life satisfaction maximisation and that this life satisfaction maximisation behaviour can be best observed when migrants know what to expect from their move. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A common argument in the literature on loss of citizenship has been that after 1945 most if not all countries liberalised their laws on loss of citizenship until the beginning of a countermovement in 2001. This article focuses on Germany and Switzerland which do not fit this pattern and where after the early 1950s laws on loss of citizenship became less liberal, although not dramatically so. This distinctive German and Swiss pattern can be explained in part by distinctive historical starting points. Late in the nineteenth century, Switzerland started out with very broad protections against loss of citizenship, and after 1945 Germany adopted much more extensive protections against loss of citizenship than before. Subsequent legal changes represent a regression toward the mean. Loss of citizenship is also closely related to laws on dual citizenship. Although both countries today tolerate dual citizenship to varying degrees, laws on loss of citizenship are still used to contain the spread of dual citizenship although neither country engages in futile attempts to eliminate dual citizenship. Court decisions and party politics also played a role but neither can explain the overall trajectory of German or Swiss laws on loss of citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As notions of human capital and personal autonomy have become integral to constructions of social membership, we have witnessed the incursion of market mechanisms into many areas of social life. Immigration policy has been no exception to this trend. By tracing policy developments in Canada and Germany, this article examines the extent to which human-capital citizenship has come to shape immigration policy across policy regimes. Examining economic and family immigrant admissions, the article tests two sets of propositions. First, that human-capital citizenship has come to transform economic immigration policies in ways that have stratified core rights – that is, residence and family unification rights – by skill level, rather than economic contribution. As a second proposition, the article contends that economic considerations are being increasingly applied to immigrants who arrive through non-economic streams. As the desirability of immigrants has come to correspond to their rank in the labour market hierarchy, the accompanying process of market invasion has led to an increasing blurring of longstanding normative and policy distinctions between economic and non-economic immigration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines gender role attitudes of native and migrant adolescents in Germany and attempts to explain why adolescents of Turkish, former Yugoslavian, and Eastern European origin tend to have more traditional attitudes than their native peers. In order to do so, it combines a migrant-native comparative approach that highlights the impact of religiosity and host society integration with an intergenerational transmission perspective that emphasises the continuity of gender role attitudes across generations. The empirical analysis relies on dyadic parent-adolescent data (N = 2744) from the first wave of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries. It demonstrates the importance of incorporating intergenerational transmission processes to fully understand attitude differences between natives and migrants: a substantial part of native-migrant gaps in gender role attitudes can be attributed to migrant parents’ more traditional attitudes and a strong transmission of attitudes across generations. Once intergenerational transmission and the influence of religiosity and integration have been accounted for, the remaining differences between gender role attitudes of native and migrant adolescents are small. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immigration policy is shaped by the legacies of the past. Historical legacies create national immigration ideologies that delineate the range of viable policy responses well into the future. Is it the case, then, that policy choices must conform to an immigration ideology even long after its emergence? What is the scope for meaningful policy choice within a legacy's substantive bounds? This article examines the relationship between Germany's legacy of postwar guest worker recruitment and subsequent policy choices in the 1990s. The failure of the postwar system to prevent settlement left behind a no-immigration ideology that precluded the future pursuit of economic immigration. I argue that the ability of government officials to resume recruitment in the 1990s critically hinged on their ability to devise a recruitment system that could credibly commit to settlement prevention. Policy-makers pursued policies that—in contrast to the past—were premised on worker rotation, annual quotas, the denial of family unification and the absence of labour market integration. This article shows that policy legacies not only have constraining but also enabling effects. By providing opportunities for policy learning, legacies can create opportunities for policy innovation even within the constraints of paradigmatic path dependence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interethnic ties are considered important for the cohesion in society. Previous research has studied the determinants of interethnic ties with cross-sectional data or lagged panel designs. This study improves on prior research by applying multilevel growth curve modelling techniques with lagged independent variables, which provide better estimates of causal relationships than methods previously applied. Longitudinal data are used from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), covering a 15-year period. The study analyses within- and between-person differences in contacts with native Germans for Turkish, (ex)Yugoslav, Spanish, Italian and Greek immigrants in Germany. Immigrants who learn the German language and get employed are more likely to subsequently establish contacts with Germans. Furthermore, immigrants who intend to settle permanently in Germany develop more interethnic ties than those who intend to return. No evidence is found for investments in education. The multilevel growth curve models not only confirm some of the earlier established determinants, but also question the causal impact of others. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article looks into the scope and causes of both ethnic discrimination intentions and discriminatory behaviour in the sphere of close private interactions. In practice, German students' willingness to move into flats which would be shared with a Turkish student is analysed by conducting a direct survey, a factorial survey and a field experiment. Results show that, independent of the method used, ethnic discrimination against Turks does not, overall, play a substantial role among university students looking for a place to stay. However, data from the factorial survey and from the field experiment reveal that ethnic discrimination does occur in specific scenarios: while male applicants, in particular, prefer places inhabited by females, this is only the case if the females are German. In sum, our analyses demonstrate that the gender dimension needs to be taken into account when investigating discrimination intentions and ethnic discrimination in the field of close private interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study explores the media consumption of members of the Arab minority in Germany, and addresses the implications of the modes of media consumption on this group in general and in terms of differences according to gender and generation. The main claim of this study is that the access of minority members to the Arab satellite media in the 1990s has strengthened their sense of belonging to their Arab homeland and identity. Consequently, in national terms it creates a form of ‘instant Arab nationalism’ while, from a religious perspective, the media functions as a ‘cyber mufti’. Members of the first generation tended to consume mainly television media, while the younger generation, who grew up in the German culture and possess computer skills, tended to rely more on the Internet. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study aims to shed new light on the role of ethnic residential segregation in explaining immigrants' inter-ethnic friendships with host-society members. Using multilevel regression techniques, the analyses draw on individual-level survey data from a large metropolitan area in Germany, supplemented with contextual-level measures of ethnic residential segregation. Controlling for well-known individual characteristics, the results bring new evidence that friendships of immigrants with host-society members are less prevalent in residential areas with greater degrees of ethnic segregation. The strength of this negative association, however, proves to be contingent on immigrants' educational attainment: the lower an immigrant's level of educational attainment, the stronger the negative association between ethnic residential segregation and their inter-ethnic friendships. This cross-level interaction suggests that the role of ethnic residential segregation in shaping the inter-ethnic friendships of immigrants is more nuanced than indicated by most previous research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study adds another piece to the puzzle of naturalisation among individuals with an immigrant background by further developing the application of social identity. I suggest that two important determinants of an intention to naturalise are identification with one's country of origin, and discrimination. The effects of these and other predictors associated with social identity theory are empirically tested with data from the 1995 to 2002 waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel. The models additionally account for institutionally generated opportunities for naturalisation and their advantages. Findings from conditional fixed-effects models show that intentions to naturalise correspond only partially to the assumptions of social identity theory. Discrimination decreases the odds of respondents intending to naturalise; increasing in-group identification does not. Social and cultural integration are also found to decrease rather than increase the odds, as do unemployment and a short duration of stay. Replicating previous results, political utilities increase the odds that respondents will demonstrate positive naturalisation intentions. The data do not confirm the claim that the higher rates of naturalisation among Turkish nationals are associated with their lower social status and their desire to improve it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflecting complex migration dynamics, gender often determines 'who stays, who moves, where, why, how often'—and what they do once they get there. Comprising 46 per cent of Germany's 'foreign-born' residents, women can no longer be discounted as merely family dependents; however, this is only half the battle regarding their struggles for occupational opportunity. This study explores the experiences of five migrant groups, each of which has undergone a different type of gender-role reconfiguration—owing to divergent legal categorisations and employment rights—resulting in varying opportunities for social integration and political enfranchisement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contrast to the riots in the French banlieues in Autumn 2005, Germany has not reached the point of such social conflicts with an ethnic background. To explain this difference, this article compares the situation of marginalised youth of North African origin in France with its counterpart of Turkish origin in Germany. As a central explanatory factor for unrest that does or does not take the form of violent protest, the foremost hypothesis is that the experience of frustration that results from the discrepancy between the expectation of recognition and social reality is stronger in the case of France than of Germany. As a follow-up to this hypothesis, the article investigates, firstly, the corresponding processes of exclusion and integration of these young people. Secondly, the consequences of urban policy on the situation of young people in each case are examined against the background of the different models of integration. Finally, the article considers the differences in political mobilisation and how conflicts are played out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political representation of immigrant associations is central for immigrants to become political actors in Germany. I offer a comparative analysis of two Turkish immigrant associations to point to the diverse approaches in terms of immigrant incorporation and citizenship rights. By illustrating these associations’ views on incorporation/assimilation, nationalism/ethnicity, secularism/Islam and their relations with the mainstream German political parties, I attempt to show that immigrants are not victims of the political decisions of the German state. On the contrary, Turkish immigrant elites become important political actors to negotiate rights and memberships in the name of this ethno-national group. In conclusion, I suggest an approach that recognises the agency of the immigrants in the socio-political discourse and also in the governing process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1960s and 1970s, hundreds of thousands of Turkish workers migrated to Germany. Some settled there, others returned to Turkey after a few years. To explore how the experience of life between two cultures and in transnational families affected the decision to return, we conducted focus-group sessions with male returnees in Turkey who had spent varying lengths of time in Germany. Return was rarely based on purely economic or health-related motives; value-oriented and emotional themes almost always played a role. There were complex interactions between particular themes, e.g. perceived health status and economic success. We organised our findings into three ‘ideal types’: first, the ‘nostalgic’ returned migrant who is facing socio-economic problems in Turkey and has a transfigured notion of life in Germany which he would like to but cannot resume; second, the ‘cultural traditionalist’ who considers Turkish culture superior and left Germany without remorse after having made some money; and third, the ‘player of two systems’ who thrives in both Turkey and Germany. This typology helps to structure and understand the complex themes underlying the decision to return-migrate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]