Abstract
Nowhere is the fear, guilt, and pain of Germany’s dreadful past more evident that in contemporary debates over immigration policy. This debate has pit successive Christian Democratic Union politicians, who define Germany in ethno-nationalist terms, against the German left, which seeks to replace the volkish national tradition with a post-national multicultural identity. Ethno-nationalists and multicultural post-nationalists speak powerful, but mutually exclusive, moral languages that galvanize large segments of the German public. At the national level, extremists rarely succeed in Germany’s immigration debates, and the legislation that prevails represents a chaotic mix of liberal and nationalist policies.
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Further Reading
Barbieri, William. (1998). Ethics of Citizenship. Durham: Duke University Press.
Crawshaw, Steve. (2004). Easier Fatherland. New York: Continuum Books.
Green, Simon. (2004). Politics of Exclusion. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Joppke, Christian. (1996). “Multiculturalism and Immigration.” In Theory and Society (25).
Joppke, Christian. (1999). Immigration and the Nation State. New York: Oxford University Press.
Joppke, Christian. (2005). Selecting By Origin. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Ozment, Steven. (2004). A Mighty Fortress. New York: Harper Collins.
Teitelbaum, M., & Winter, J. (1998). A question of numbers. New York: Hill and Wang.
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Carle, R. Citizenship Debates in the New Germany. Soc 44, 147–154 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-007-9029-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-007-9029-5