CIAO DATE: 06/2013
Volume: 30, Issue: 1
Spring 2012
Introduction: Assessing the Consequences of the 1999 German Citizenship Act
Triadafilos Triadafilopoulos
Coming to Terms with a Misinterpreted Past? Rethinking the Historical Antecedents of Germany's 1999 Citizenship Reform
Andreas Fahrmeir
The article contends that the significance attributed to the 1999 citizenship reform in Germany is closely linked to a particular reading of the history of German citizenship policies. This reading, which remained dominant until the 1990s, assigned a crucial role for Germany's exclusionary citizenship policies to the law of descent, which seemed to be deeply ingrained in successive German states policies and practices from the nineteenth century on. Arguing that recent historiography on citizenship has called attention to the significant degree of variation between periods of openness and closure, as well as highlighting restrictive naturalization policies as a key ingredient of ethnic closure, the author contends that this focus was misplaced. Accordingly, the disappointing effects of a law that focused on the automatic transmission of citizenship while paying less attention to making voluntary transition to citizenship easier are not particularly surprising.
Germany's Citizenship Policy in Comparative Perspective
Marc Morjé Howard
This article puts the 1999 German Nationality Act into a comparative European perspective. By applying a common measure of the relative restrictiveness or inclusiveness of a country's citizenship policy to the countries of the EU-15 at two different time periods, it provides an analysis of change both within and across countries. From this perspective, Germany has clearly moved "up" from having the single most restrictive law before the 1999 reform to a more moderate policy today. Yet Germany's major "liberalizing change" was also tempered by a significant "restrictive backlash." The German case therefore provides support for a broader theoretical argument about the potential for mobilized anti-immigrant public opinion to nullify the liberalization that often occurs within the realm of elite politics.
A Bridge or Barrier to Incorporation? Germany's 1999 Citizenship Reform in Critical Perspective
Triadafilos Triadafilopoulos, Karen Schönwälder
This article probes the consequences of Germany's 1999 citizenship reform as it pertains to the incorporation of immigrants. We maintain that the law's principled rejection of dual citizenship and related stipulation that children born into German nationality via the law's revolutionary jus soli provision choose between their German citizenship or that of their non-German parents between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three is unfair, potentially unconstitutional, and likely unworkable in administrative terms. We also argue that the decline in naturalization rates in Germany since 2000 is due to a combination of legal, administrative, and symbolic barriers in the law, as well as a lack of incentives for naturalization for immigrants from European Union member states and other rich industrialized countries. We believe that progress in the area of incorporation will require a shift in outlooks on the part of German political elites, such that immigrants are seen as potential members of a diverse community of free and equal citizens rather than untrustworthy and threatening outsiders.
"What Do You Expect? That We All Dance and Be Happy?" Second-Generation Immigrants and Germany's 1999 Citizenship Reform
Sandra Bucerius
Based on a five-year ethnography, this article looks at Germany's citizenship reform of 1999 from the perspective of a population that is often at the center of attention: second generation immigrant drug dealers. While the reform had the potential to make a significant difference for this group, with respect to both their legal status in the country and perception of Germany, the findings of this article show that the reform did not have such an impact. On the contrary, the reform seems to have had the opposite effect, alienating the young men even more from Germany by keeping citizenship out of reach for them. While some have argued that in the light of supranational citizenship norms and the discourse of citizenship rights as human rights, national citizenship becomes increasingly unimportant as new forms of post-national citizenship gradually emerge, this does not seem to hold true for the young men of this study.