Abstract
Irene Götz’ ethnographic case study on the debate on dual citizenship in Germany illustrates how symbolic politics plays out in political debates on nationhood. Her main argument is that the reform of the citizenship law in 1999 triggered two opposite developments, in which sacrality and secularity mutually inform each other in regard to the legitimate conception of the nation state in times of immigration. On the one hand, the reform was meant to serve as a step towards a new culture-blind notion of citizenship in Germany, which should no longer merely be based on ‘descent’. On the other hand, this step towards opening Germanness to the notion of ‘demos’ led to a conservative counter-movement of re-sacralizing national belonging, which recalled long-lasting nationalist sentiments and resentments from the times of the national movements in the nineteenth century.
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Notes
- 1.
This debate only addressed ‘the Turks’ despite other religious prohibitions of pork existing for Hindus and Jews, among others. This focus on the German-Turks is not only due to their mere number and visibility in Germany compared to other non-Christian groups, but it is always ‘the Turks’ who are complained about in such calls for a Leitkultur (i.e. the predominant culture to which ‘the Muslims’ in particular are suspected not to be adjusted, see Pautz 2005a, b).
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- 4.
In how far the social state is retrenched in Germany in the wake of the Hartz IV-reforms is brilliantly explained by Lessenich (2008).
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- 6.
Here the writer was wrong: New Zealand nationals are allowed to hold a passport from another country if the other country allows it (see https://www.govt.nz/browse/nz-passports-and-citizenship/getting-nz-citizenship/dual-citizenship/?OpenDocument and http://nomadcapitalist.com/2014/04/25/countries-allow-dual-citizenship/).
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See Balibar/Wallerstein (1991), who were one of the first in academia dealing with the relation between class struggles, immigration and a new nationalism, whereas xenophobia and racism are related to contemporary capitalism and the division of labor in the national state.
- 8.
It should be mentioned that the plebiscite protest was initially started in the Bundesland Hessen just before the regional elections took place and that these elections were won by the Conservatives as a result of the successful populist campaign.
- 9.
This slogan of the CDU’s campaign could be read on their flyers and posters.
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- 11.
See Götz (Ed.) (2000). The sources of the students’ and my fieldwork were threefold: First, our research was based on field diaries and minutes taken between January and April 1999. They contain observations on the discussions around the tables of CDU in the streets of Berlin (Wedding, Neukölln, Kreuzberg) as well as short interviews with opposing participants of these discussions. Second, we collected letters to the editor and articles in different newspapers, such as the Berlin dailies, the Berliner Zeitung and the Tagesspiegel, additionally the Süddeutsche Zeitung, die tageszeitung, Frankfurter Rundschau, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, as well as in weeklies, such as Die Zeit, Spiegel and Fokus. Third, the following analysis is drawn from flyers, posters and advertisement of the political parties.
- 12.
Die tageszeitung: ‘Einbürgerungshemmnis Frau’ (1999/02/13, VII).
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Götz, I. (2020). ‘We’ and ‘The Others’ as Constituents of Symbolic Politics: On the Populist Exploitation of Long-lasting Nationalist Sentiments and Resentments Regarding Citizenship in Germany. In: Balkenhol, M., van den Hemel, E., Stengs, I. (eds) The Secular Sacred. Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38050-2_3
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