Immigration, Integration, and Belonging in German Textbooks for Refugees: Maintaining Germanness and Otherness.

Since 2005 most immigrants to Germany have been required to complete integration courses that include language instruction and a concluding orientation course on German history, the political system, and society. The state-approved textbooks for the orientation course are an instructive instance of state-sanctioned discourse about national belonging, immigration, and integration. This article applies a critical perspective to four such textbooks guided by the following questions: How are Germanness and national belonging portrayed? What understandings of immigration and immigrants, cultural differences, and integration do these texts present, and how do these compare to official, academic, and popular understandings? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]