Multiculturalism in Germany

• Main Author: Milan Mesić
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies 2010-12-01
• Series: Migracijske i Etniĉke Teme
• Subjects: multiculturalism; Germany; multiculturality; migrants; integration
• Online Access: http://hrcak.srce.hr/file/98447

The paper starts out from the recent statement by the German Chancellor Angela Merkel that multiculturalism in Germany is dead. The author draws attention to the unfavourable conditions for the development of multiculturalism in Germany. The reasons are historical, especially the experience of Nazism as well as the German social state. Namely, foreign workers in Germany, although without political rights and socially non-integrated, enjoyed a high degree of working and social rights, including high employment security. In this respect their position significantly differed from that of American workers (immigrants), which is why the struggle for civil rights was not in the foreground for German immigrants. Therefore, “the crisis of multiculturalism” appeared with the immigrants’ “second generation” (children), who have been first hit in the current times of crisis and the increasing deregulation of the labour market. They have remained socially non-integrated and without civil and political rights. It is interesting that the churches, particularly the Protestant one, lead in Germany in the efforts to begin to look at immigrants in a cultural (human) sense as well, and have thus been the first to acknowledge that Germany has become a multicultural society. But this term and concept in Germany have remained sketchy, both in the theoretical and political sense. However, they have gained certain sympathy, mainly in parts of liberal-democratic circles – the Green Party leading the way – but more in a symbolic sense in countering xenophobia and cultural exclusion in German society. When multiculturalism was accused of developing “parallel society”, both the right and the left renounced it in favour of the (seemingly) neutral concept of integration. The author proves that Germany has become and has remained multicultural, although not a multiculturalist country.