How to define a foreigner? The symbolic politics of immigration in German partisan discourse, 1978-1992

Der Autor analysiert die Integrationspolitik im deutschen Parteiendiskurs 1978-1992 nach verschiedenen Kategorien. (IAB)'This analysis tries to answer two questions: First, how did Germany, a country of de facto immigration, manage to espouse a counterfactual ideology in the 1980s and early 1990s? Second, what have been the political consequences of upholding a political discourse that denied the reality of immigration? In a polity that officially denies migration and the emergence of a multiethnic society, issues such as immigration regulation and the settlement of labor migrants have not been directly addressed in partisan discourse. An ethno-cultural conception of citizenship eased a politics of exclusion of 'guestworkers' from but inclusion of ethnic Germans in voting ringhts and a redefinition of refugee flows as labor migration. This development reinforced the symbolic uses of politics by political parties and politicians: Immigration, asylum and the multiethnic policy cambe to be meta-issues that could be referred to as causes of manifold problems in a context of rising unemployment and a 'crisis of the welfare state'. Even the main alternative to the dominant partisan discourse -'multiculturalism' -has remained a mirror image of an ethno-cultural conception of membership by advocating a similarly one-dimensional image of cultural autonomy of ethnic groups in multiethnic states and excluding issues of socioeconomic and political participation.' (author's abstract)German title: Was ist ein Auslaender? Die symbolische Einwanderungspolitik in der deutschen Parteiendiskussion 1978-1992Available from IAB-91-OA91.3-10 AY 846 / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekSIGLEDEGerman