Racism, Nationalism and Citizenship

Ethnic Minorities in Britain and Germany

Nicola Piper

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429830877
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Discrimination & Race Relations
• Index: Social Sciences

First published in 1998, this book is about the consequences of the permanent settlement of former labour migrants in contemporary Germany and Britain and the extent to which these 'new' minorities are regarded as citizens in both societies as well as citizens of the European Union. It is argued that a socio-historical link between processes of racialization and nationalism lead to an exclusionary concept of citizenship in both countries. This link is concretized by the intermingling of nationality and citizenship as reflected in law and/or in the perception by civil society. Thus, the concept of citizenship can only function as a mechanism for inclusion of ethnic minorities if de-linked from nationality (i.e. ethnic descent). In addition, recent supra- and sub-national development on the EU level lead to the suggestion of a three-layered conception of citizenship (i.e. local, national, European), and it is argued that the local level is probably the most effective to resist the power of racism and nationalism.

1 Introduction

1.1 General introduction

1.1.1 Background

Virtually every advanced industrialized country¹ has experienced international labour migration in the form of legally admitted foreign workers, undocumented aliens, political refugees or permanent immigrants. There are an estimated thirty million foreign workers and unauthorized aliens in all parts of the world, with an additional fifteen million political refugees (Castles 1993:18). The movement of people across national borders has undoubtedly become a global issue and will likely become an even more salient one in the future as the economic inequalities and the global knowledge about the existence of these inequalities increase.

Of the world's approximately thirty million foreign workers and undocumented aliens, almost half are to be found in western Europe. These migrants originally came during the post-war period as workers to meet the growing demand for labour. Despite a general tendency in Europe towards restrictive immigration policies in the early 1970s, intensified family reunification as well as 'family formation'² (Menski 1994) have resulted in a continuous or even higher proportion of immigrants, and meanwhile the permanent settlement of some fifteen million foreigners in western European countries has become the new reality (Layton-Henry 1990). Among European Community member-states, Germany has the highest number of foreign residents with currently around seven million. The largest group in 1991 was the Turks (1.9 million) (OECD 1995). Germany is followed by France with a foreign population of 3.6 million (Castles 1995:298) and Britain where the number of foreign citizens was two million in 1990 (OECD 1995). In the latter case, however, when British-born persons of Afro-Caribbean and Asian origin are included, the overall population of immigrant origin is estimated at 4.5 million (Castles 1995: 300).

Set against a general trend towards restrictive policies dealing with future immigration in western Europe are various differing socio-political responses of each individual state to the situation of newly settled ethnic minorities (Hammar 1985b). In the German context, the dominant aspect of the government's 'foreigners' policy' (Ausländerpolitik) was a double strategy of integration and 'assistance to return' (Rückkehrforderung). In contrast to the de facto permanence of the immigrants' settlement, the immigration status of former 'guest-workers' is still officially denied as reflected in the absence of a governmental immigration policy and the continuous official claim that Germany is not a country of immigration (Layton-Henry 1990:8; Martin & Miller 1990:9; Schönwälder 1995:423).

Britain, as opposed to Germany, solved its manpower shortage partly through recruitment from its former colonies in the Caribbean and the Indian sub-continent (the highest number of labour migrants came in actual fact from Ireland) and granted members of the Commonwealth a privileged status as citizens until the introduction of the first Immigrants Act in 1962. In sharp contrast to Germany, legal equality of the ex-colonial immigrants bound up with paternalistic colonial traditions of British society led, as early as the 1960s, to developments of various ideas about integration (Bahringhorst 1991). However, similar to Germany, a double strategy was implemented, although of different character: On the one hand, harsher immigration legislation, and on the other, measures of inclusion such as the introduction of the 'Race Relation Acts' began to be introduced in the early 1960s (Layton-Henry 1992). The final aim was the same in both countries: to limit primary labour migration. With increased secondary immigration (i.e. family reunification and formation) and fairly unsuccessful 'return policies', immigrant or ethnic minority communities of a considerable size developed as permanent parts of both societies.

1.1.2 The topic of this book

Given this very brief portrait of immigration in Germany and Britain, this book examines the question of whether citizenship functions, or could function, as a mechanism for inclusion and participation for settled, post-war labour migrants of non-European origin³ and their descendants. This means that in the German context, the focus will be on the experience of the Turks, who are by far the largest non-European minority, and on the experiences of the diverse ethnic minorities from the Indian sub-continent and the West Indies in the British context (see Appendix I for figures).

The presence of settled non-European immigrant populations of an unprecedented size⁴ and diversity 'constitutes a major challenge to the concept of citizenship in modern industrial democracies' (Layton-Henry 1990:vi). Large communities of foreign residents have been established in western Europe and high proportions of these 'as yet,....show little sign of following the path of previous immigrants by integrating, assimilating and becoming naturalised citizens of their new countries of work and residence' (Layton-Henry 1991:107).

This book is an investigation of the ways in which, and the reasons why, these settled immigrants do not enjoy a fully equal status as citizens, despite their long periods of residence and the emergence of subsequent generations raised and/or born in German or British society. Although these migrants generally enjoy secure rights of abode, their political and social participation in the countries of residence is challenged in many ways, such as by right-wing extremist parties and neo-nazi movements (usually in a crude and open way) as well as by members of mainstream parties, supporting a general climate of restrictive immigration/inclusion policies.

Rights to citizenship are central to the issue of who should be included in the national society as a participating member with full access to civil, political and social rights - the three main elements of citizenship, according to Marshall (1950) - and who should be treated as an outsider with lesser rights. However, exclusion from socio-national membership is also reflected in the mingling of nationality and citizenship laws, whereby the notion of 'descent' impedes the acquisition of citizenship. Furthermore, not only the dimension of rights and laws is central to the issue of inclusion, but also the wider dimension of social participation and recognition within civil society⁵. Hence, in addition to citizenship/nationality as a legal status, the aspects of identifying a national/citizen and recognizing a 'newcomer' as belonging (or not belonging) to a socio-national community are also highly relevant.

1.2 Integration into the research context

1.2.1 The particular cases of Germany and Britain - a comparative perspective

This book is mainly a comparison of the socio-political responses to postwar labour migration in Germany and Britain. The primary purpose of discussing these two 'nation-states' is to show that, despite particular historical circumstances, there have been similar trends with regard to the citizenship status of permanent non-European immigrants and their descendants in both societies. As Britain and Germany are members of the European Community, an investigation will follow of how this trend is dealt with, or reflected, on the European level, i.e. whether the European Community has made any difference to national policies of immigration and inclusion.

Generally speaking, the benefits of comparison are that such an analysis helps to illustrate, firstly, the complex issues involved in different historical and cultural contexts of immigrant-receiving countries and, secondly, an understanding of the dissimilarities and similarities of immigrant peoples' socio-political status in Britain and Germany. In terms of broad characteristics, the comparative analysis of Germany and Britain involves two less divergent societies rather than highly divergent ones. This can be shown with regard to their 'societal frameworks' (for instance, such features as being highly advanced industrial societies based on democratic political systems within the framework of a nation-state and as being de facto multi-ethnic societies).

Apart from sharing similar societal frameworks, there are differences with regard to their histories of developing national membership (based on national identity) and their histories of immigration. A detailed comparison of Britain and Germany, however, will show that despite these different histories, different concepts of membership to the nation-state have become more similar when approached from the point of view of immigrants. Although these different histories have resulted in different statuses of formal citizenship (i.e. in legal terms) for immigrants in these two countries, there have been similar processes of 'ethnicization' (Bös 1993) or 'racialization' (Small 1994) of the concept of membership. Citizenship and nationality tend to be coterminous.

Existing comparative studies which contextualize citizenship and immigration have not emphasized the latter point strongly enough. Brubaker, for example, presents Germany and Britain in the introduction to his edited book Immigration and the Politics of Citizenship in Europe and North America (1989) - a historical account of nation-formation processes - as rather opposing examples by emphasizing the early periods of these processes⁶. Thus, he neglects the post-war developments during which unprecedentedly large-scale immigration of non-Europeans took place resulting, as suggested by Bös (1993), in similar 'ethnicization'⁷ processes of the concept of membership in both countries.

Comparative studies of societal responses to immigration, such as by Layton-Henry (1990) and Hammar (1985b), rightly point out the liberal position of Britain with regard to naturalization procedures, dual nationality and the granting of voting rights to its ethnic minorities, as opposed to Germany's illiberalism in this respect. However, these studies, which are in places somewhat descriptive, fail to emphasize the particular British historical circumstances which resulted in a more liberal position vis-à-vis its labour migrants, i.e. the peculiarity of the Empire with regard to Britain's concept of common subjecthood and the colonial link between Britain and most of its post-war immigrants. Moreover, they fail to show post-war tendencies of the British and German position approaching each other (i.e. from liberal to less liberal in the former case and from extremely exclusionary to less exclusionary in the latter case) with similar exclusionary implications for ethnic minorities.

In the post-war period, Germany and Britain have accommodated comparatively large numbers of labour migrants from non-European backgrounds with non-Christian religions. They both stopped immigration of workers during the early 1970s and since then implemented harsher and harsher immigration legislation or other types of control. In both countries the 'ethnic' or 'racial' issues have been major components of daily politics (van Dijk 1993) which have been recently characterized by a certain revival of nationalistic and anti-immigrant tendencies⁸. The restrictive immigration policies are, however, not confined to the right-wing/conservative discourse, but it has been suggested that all of the governments elected to office in Germany and Britain took a strong stand on immigration as well as asylum (Small 1994; Faist 1994a and b; Layton-Henry 1991). This has certain implications for settled immigrants in that they are pictured as undesired or even criminalized in the context of immigration control and repatriation (Castles 1993:24). Nonetheless, it seems to be in particular the New Right's discourse⁹ which revived a form of 'racially based theory of nationalism' (Cohen 1994:202) where 'the process of national decline is often presented as 'coinciding with the dilution of one homogeneous stock by alien strains' (Sarup 1991; as quoted by Cohen, ibid.). This sort of discourse also involves the question of 'scapegoating' of immigrant populations in times of socio-economic crises. Statements put forward in both countries which centre upon the 'scrounging of welfare service' or defending a narrow nationalism - for whichever reason - do much harm by rendering respectability to intolerant ideas.

Ethno-centric or racist views as to who should qualify as a full member of the national community are either enshrined in constitutional form, as in the German case, or in immigration legislation, as in the British case. Discourses around 'repatriation' of immigrants have played an important role in both countries (Small 1994; Bahringhorst 1991), although a clear policy, by which immigrants were offered financial support for returning to their countries of origin, existed only in Germany. Thus, despite ideals of freedom, equality and democracy, both countries have systematically excluded a significant portion of their population from the benefits of such ideals.

Another aspect of common ground shared by Germany and Britain with regard to their socio-political structure can be found in their membership of the European Community. It has to be noted, however, that Germany was among the founding countries and Britain did not enter until 1973 - a fact which partly explains the different levels of commitment to the European idea¹⁰ and the differing perceptions of the role of the Community. This is also likely to have an impact on the understanding of European citizenship. Therefore, although with the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty both countries are equally involved in the process of European integration and in the materialization and development of European citizenship, the actual ideas behind these processes might not be the same. The latter is of crucial interest here regarding the issue of granting European citizenship to peoples of non-European background living permanently in EC territory. Moreover, a comparative analysis of Britain and Germany should enable the assessment of the likelihood that the European Community could harmonize the various policies of inclusion (e.g. nationality laws, anti-discrimination legislation) that already exist in the individual member-states.

With regard to academic discourse, in both countries a considerable amount of literature has been produced on historical and ideological aspects of nationhood, citizenship and/or nationality. However, in Britain there has been an emphasis on research into what Banton has called the 'race relations problematic' (Banton 1991; see also Wrench & Solomos 1993:157; Wilpert 1993:67). A comparative analysis of Germany and Britain is useful to explain why there is a lack of such theorizing of racism in contemporary German society and why there is a difference in concepts, as reflected in the terminology of racism versus Ausländerfeindlichkeit (hostility towards foreigners).

Furthermore, there seems to be a new trend among 'British' academics towards a greater interest in ethnicity and nationalism rather than 'race relations' (Anthias 1995). Authors such as Barker (1981), Gilroy (1987) and Miles (1993) argue that racist discourse now revolves more around cultural identity and national boundaries rather than biological concepts. This line of argument has, however, so far not been contextualized with the issue of citizenship - neither in Germany nor in Britain.

It will be emphasized throughout this book that, despite historical differences and quite different policies of inclusion, the effects of nationalism and racism have had similar results in Germany and Britain viz. racialized 'new' ethnic minorities who are excluded from citizenship and whose social and cultural position is mostly below that of the majority.

There is, among others (which are mainly the subject of the chapter on racism), one terminological issue which needs clarifying when employing a comparative analysis of Britain and Germany. This comparison is that of two nation-states. However, in the British case, the overwhelming concentration of ethnic minorities from former colonies are resident in England and all the sources of the empirical data (groups and organizations interviewed) are located in England (in fact in London). In addition, there is this complex issue of Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English identity incorporated in the whole of the United Kingdom. It seems, therefore, almost more appropriate to refer to England. However, all legal provisions (the national as well as the EC legislation) regarding citizenship hold for the entire United Kingdom. Also, contemporary attitudes and conduct towards outsiders seem to have their larger British manifestation. Ireland is viewed in this respect as a special case, as its historical attachment to Great Britain has not been as long as that of Wales and Scotland. More importantly, its attachment to Britain has always been violently contested by certain parts of the Irish people so that it is preferred here to exclude Ireland (in particula...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Methods of Research
• 3 The European Context
• 4 Racism
• 5 National Identity and Exclusion
• 6 Citizenship
• 7 Mass Discourse
• 8 Parliamentary Debates on Ethnic or 'Racial' Issues
• 9 The Interviews
• 10 Conclusion
• Appendices
• Bibliography