Search

This article analyses the CDU/CSU's immigration policies and discourses during the Chancellorship of Angela Merkel. In doing so, it makes four observations. First, the article highlights that the CDU/CSU became proactive when it came to passing new and far-reaching immigration and integration legislation. Second, it is argued that these policies have sent conflicting messages, torn between the opening and closing of Germany's borders, and between welcoming diversity and demanding cultural assimilation. Third, this article identifies and explains six ways in which the parties have framed immigration in their common election manifestos from 2005 to 2017: as a cultural, economic, security, humanitarian, European, and gendered issue. Fourth, this study analyses the intra-party divisions that came to a head during the migration crisis: the place of Islam in Germany and the creation of a cap on the number of refugees that Germany would take in. Here, it is highlighted that in contrast to Merkel, the CSU, but also parts of the CDU, have called for more restrictive immigration policies and cultural assimilation. These findings are explained with reference to the political context: the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany and the 2018 Bavarian regional elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past 10 years of German history give evidence of a paradigm shift in Germany’s national narrative. The early years of the decade were marked by widespread denial at the elite level that Germany was a country of immigration and adherence to an assimilationist model of integration but progressed to the creation of a National Integration Plan by Christian Union Chancellor Angela Merkel and the liberalization of public opinion. Germany’s recent history shows dramatic discursive and policy changes. This article documents the changes in elite discursive scripts, showing the gradual acceptance and rejection of discourses about integration and their implications for national identity. It concludes that, though the changes are not universally liberal, the decade as a whole constitutes a remarkable liberalization of both elite discourse and public opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Focuses on the politics of identity in Germany. Contentions to the notion that Germany is not a country of immigration; Introduction of new laws for immigration, integration and citizenship; Credibility to accusations that the government is jeopardizing the cultural identity of Germans; Emphasis on the country's predominant culture which was characterized by the notion of the clash of civilizations and the incompatibility of different cultures.

This article argues that the massive differentialist turn of the last third of the twentieth century may have reached its peak, and that one can discern signs of a modest "return of assimilation". The article presents evidence of this from the domain of public discourse in France, public policy in Germany, and scholarly research in the US. Yet what has "returned" is not the old, analytically discredited and politically disreputable "assimilationist" understanding of assimilation, but a more analytically complex and normatively defensible understanding. The article concludes by specifying the ways in which the concept of assimilation has been transformed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]