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This book provides the first English-language history of the postwar labor migration to West Germany. Drawing on government bulletins, statements by political leaders, parliamentary arguments, industry newsletters, social welfare studies, press coverage, and the cultural production of immigrant artists and intellectuals, Rita Chin offers an account of West German public debate about guest workers. She traces the historical and ideological shifts around the meanings of the labor migration, moving from the concept of guest workers as a "temporary labor supplement" in the 1950s and 1960s to early ideas about "multiculturalism" by the end of the 1980s. She argues that the efforts to come to terms with the permanent residence of guest workers, especially Muslim Turks, forced a major rethinking of German identity, culture, and nation. What began as a policy initiative to fuel the economic miracle ultimately became a much broader discussion about the parameters of a specifically German brand of multiculturalism.
This volume represents a clear attempt to learn something from the events in Eastern European countries. It does not start with simplistic or old assumptions based on convenient Western communication models, but instead takes a new approach. If chaos theory could fundamentally change how physicists looked at order in the universe, then it may be of value for communication scholars to attempt to understand the diversity of chaos or order in the human universe, rather than attempt to force existing models on it for their own explanatory purposes. This book is not merely based on the study of select groups of university students or on laboratory settings created in the minds of social scientist...
Winner of the Social Science History Association President’s Book Award East Germany was the first domino to fall when the Soviet bloc began to collapse in 1989. Its topple was so swift and unusual that it caught many area specialists and social scientists off guard; they failed to recognize the instability of the Communist regime, much less its fatal vulnerability to popular revolt. In this volume, Steven Pfaff identifies the central mechanisms that propelled the extraordinary and surprisingly bloodless revolution within the German Democratic Republic (GDR). By developing a theory of how exit-voice dynamics affect collective action, Pfaff illuminates the processes that spurred mass demons...
Provides a rich examination of how Turkish immigrants and their children created spaces of belonging in West German society.
First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Christian Joppke and John Torpey show how four liberal democracies—France, Germany, Canada, and the U.S.—have responded to the challenge of integrating Muslim populations. Demonstrating the centrality of the legal system to this process, they argue that institutional barriers to integration are no greater on one side of the Atlantic than the other.
The fall of the Berlin Wall and the unification of East and West Germany in 1989/90 were events of world-historical significance. The twentieth anniversary of this juncture represents an excellent opportunity to reflect upon the evolution of the new Berlin Republic. Given the on-going significance of the country for theory and concept–building in many disciplines, an in-depth examination of the case is essential. In this volume, unique in its focus on all aspects of contemporary Germany - culture, historiography, society, politics and the economy - top scholars offer their assessments of the country’s performance in these and other areas and analyze the successes and continued challenges.
In Pillars of Salt, Lianne Merkur offers an account of early 21st century immigration as experienced by Israelis in Berlin and Toronto. Commonly portrayed as contrary to the territorial emphasis of national integrity, these individuals and communities appear to explore a sense of belonging that evaluates and incorporates both foreign and familiar elements. Social media allows for an alternative space to balance between new home and homeland, studied here as developing simultaneously in multiple sites. The author makes use of innovative methodologies to document the participants’ own perspectives expressed online, at events or on paper. She thereby challenges established norms of interpretation to prove that personal decisions, primarily regarding preferred language or simply self-identification, are the cornerstones of collective character.
"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.