Between Two Worlds: Immigration and Citizenship Policy and Politics in Canada and West Germany after World War II.

This paper examines developments in immigration and citizenship policymaking and politics in Canada and West Germany in the immediate post-WWII era. I argue that key events related to the war and its aftermath led to a reappraisal of prewar attitudes toward race and ethnicity both internationally and within the respective countries. I also demonstrate that this reappraisal was limited by the continuing influence of prewar policy regimes. In line with a key postulate of historical institutionalist theory, policymakers in Canada and West Germany reached back to earlier solutions to the migration-membership dilemma when confronted with the challenge of resuming mass migration to meet postwar labor market needs. Although the most egregiously discriminatory elements of past practices were pruned and offensive language in statutes modified, postwar solutions bore an uncanny resemblance to those enacted in the early twentieth century. Thus, Canada sought to facilitate mass migration while simultaneously endeavoring to limit entry as much as possible to whites, while West Germany resumed temporary labor recruitment and restored its descent-based citizenship regime, effectively shutting the door to national membership for foreign "guest workers" and their descendants. Critics of postwar policies took advantage of changed normative conditions to frame their protests. Canada and West Germany?s commitment to ascendant liberal democratic principles put policymakers in an awkward position when confronted with evidence of hypocritical conduct. The discrediting of integral nationalism and scientific racism and rise of human rights granted reformers a powerful discursive grammar with which they could phrase challenges. Thus, while the period was marked by evasion and a good deal of policy continuity, it also gave rise to reform initiatives that would ultimately advance very different answers to the migration-membership dilemma. As such, it truly stood between two worlds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]