This book is one of the first to use citizenship as a lens through which to understand German history in the twentieth century. By considering how Germans defined themselves and others, the book explores how nationality and citizenship rights were constructed, and how Germans defined—and contested—their national community over the century. The volume presents new research informed by cultural, political, legal, and institutional history to obtain a fresh understanding of German history in a century marked by traumatic historical ruptures. By investigating a concept that has been widely discussed in the social sciences, Citizenship and National Identity in Twentieth-Century Germany engages with scholarly debates in sociology, anthropology, and political science.
This innovative volume explores ways in which the idea of citizenship can be seen as a unifying concept in understanding contemporary social change and social problems. The book outlines traditional linkages between citizenship and public participation, national identity and social welfare, and shows the relevance of citizenship for a range of rising issues extending from global change through gender to the environment. The areas investigated include: the challenge of internationalization to the nation state and to national identities; the contested nature of citizenship in relation to poverty, work and welfare; the implications of gender inequality; and the potential for new conceptions of citizenship in response to cultural and political change.
"In contrast to most migration studies that focus on specific "foreigner" groups in Germany, this study simultaneously compares and contrasts the legal, political, social, and economic opportunity structures facing diverse categories of the ethnic minorities who have settled in the country since the 1950s. It reveals the contradictory, and usually self-defeating, nature of German policies intended to keep "migrants" out - allegedly in order to preserve a German Leitkultur (with which very few of its own citizens still identify). The main barriers to effective integration - and socioeconomic revitalization in general - sooner lie in the country's obsolete labor market regulations and bureaucratic procedures. Drawing on local case studies, personal interviews, and national surveys, the author describes "the human faces" behind official citizenship and integration practices in Germany, and in doing so demonstrates that average citizens are much more multi-cultural than they realize."--BOOK JACKET.
He examines debates over fundamental issues that included citizenship qualifications, minority liguistic rights, Jewish emancipation, and territorial disputes, and offers valuable insights into nineteenth-century liberal opinion on the Jewish Question, language policy, and ideas of race."--BOOK JACKET.
Citizenship, Belonging, and Nation-States in the Twenty-First Century contributes to the scholarship on citizenship and integration by examining belonging in an array of national settings and by demonstrating how nation-states continue to matter in citizenship analysis. Citizenship policies are positioned as state mechanisms that actively shape the integration outcomes and experiences of belonging for all who reside within the nation-state. This edited volume contributes an alternative to the promotion of post-national models of membership and emphasizes that the most fundamental facet of citizenship—a status of recognition in relationship to a nation-state—need not be left in the 'relic galleries' of an allegedly outdated political past. This collection offers a timely contribution, both theoretical and empirical, to understanding citizenship, nationalism, and belonging in contexts that feature not only rapid change but also levels of entrenchment in ideological and historical legacies.
Through innovative interdisciplinary methodologies and fresh avenues of inquiry, the nine essays collected in A Peculiar Mixture endeavor to transform how we understand the bewildering multiplicity and complexity that characterized the experience of German-speaking people in the middle colonies. They explore how the various cultural expressions of German speakers helped them bridge regional, religious, and denominational divides and eventually find a way to partake in America’s emerging national identity. Instead of thinking about early American culture and literature as evolving continuously as a singular entity, the contributions to this volume conceive of it as an ever-shifting and tangled “web of contact zones.” They present a society with a plurality of different native and colonial cultures interacting not only with one another but also with cultures and traditions from outside the colonies, in a “peculiar mixture” of Old World practices and New World influences. Aside from the editors, the contributors are Rosalind J. Beiler, Patrick M. Erben, Cynthia G. Falk, Marie Basile McDaniel, Philip Otterness, Liam Riordan, Matthias Schönhofer, and Marianne S. Wokeck.
Fifty years of large-scale immigration has brought significant ethnic, racial, and religious diversity to North America and Western Europe, but has also prompted hostile backlashes. In Fear, Anxiety, and National Identity, a distinguished multidisciplinary group of scholars examine whether and how immigrants and their offspring have been included in the prevailing national identity in the societies where they now live and to what extent they remain perpetual foreigners in the eyes of the long-established native-born. What specific social forces in each country account for the barriers immigrants and their children face, and how do anxieties about immigrant integration and national identity differ on the two sides of the Atlantic? Western European countries such as Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom have witnessed a significant increase in Muslim immigrants, which has given rise to nativist groups that question their belonging. Contributors Thomas Faist and Christian Ulbricht discuss how German politicians have implicitly compared the purported “backward” values of Muslim immigrants with the German idea of Leitkultur, or a society that values civil liberties and human rights, reinforcing the symbolic exclusion of Muslim immigrants. Similarly, Marieke Slootman and Jan Willem Duyvendak find that in the Netherlands, the conception of citizenship has shifted to focus less on political rights and duties and more on cultural norms and values. In this context, Turkish and Moroccan Muslim immigrants face increasing pressure to adopt “Dutch” culture, yet are simultaneously portrayed as having regressive views on gender and sexuality that make them unable to assimilate. Religion is less of a barrier to immigrants’ inclusion in the United States, where instead undocumented status drives much of the political and social marginalization of immigrants. As Mary C. Waters and Philip Kasinitz note, undocumented immigrants in the United States. are ineligible for the services and freedoms that citizens take for granted and often live in fear of detention and deportation. Yet, as Irene Bloemraad points out, Americans’ conception of national identity expanded to be more inclusive of immigrants and their children with political mobilization and changes in law, institutions, and culture in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement. Canadians’ views also dramatically expanded in recent decades, with multiculturalism now an important part of their national identity, in contrast to Europeans’ fear that diversity undermines national solidarity. With immigration to North America and Western Europe a continuing reality, each region will have to confront anti-immigrant sentiments that create barriers for and threaten the inclusion of newcomers. Fear, Anxiety, and National Identity investigates the multifaceted connections among immigration, belonging, and citizenship, and provides new ways of thinking about national identity.
The turn of the millennium has stimulated much scholarly reflection on the historical significance of the twentieth century as a whole. Explaining the century’s dual legacy of progress and prosperity on one hand, and of world war, genocide, and mass destruction on the other, has become a key task for academics and policymakers alike. Not surprisingly, Germany holds a prominent position in the discussion. What does it mean for a society to be so closely identified with both inflicting and withstanding enormous suffering, as well as with promoting and enjoying unprecedented affluence? What did Germany’s experiences of misery and abundance, fear and security, destruction and reconstruction, trauma and rehabilitation have to do with one another? How has Germany been imagined and experienced as a country uniquely stamped by pain and prosperity? The contributors to this book engage these questions by reconsidering Germany’s recent past according to the themes of pain and prosperity, focusing on such topics as welfare policy, urban history, childbirth, medicine, racism, political ideology, consumerism, and nostalgia.
