Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-n9wrp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-16T11:48:17.586Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

8 - Welcoming Culture

from 1989

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 March 2023

Jan Plamper
Affiliation:
University of Limerick
Get access

Summary

The final chapter begins with the “welcoming culture” toward Syrian refugees in 2015 and asks where this groundswell of positive attitudes – and real solidarity, as in helping children with homework or charity donations, making it the largest social movement in German postwar history – towards migrants came from. It shows that what mattered most here were the interlocked processes of civil society initiatives since the middle of the 1980s and a grassroots, unified refugee movement since the late 1990s. Time and again backlashes – Kohl’s conservative government in the 1980s, Thilo Sarrazin’s book Germany Abolishes Itself in 2010, right-wing populism, the NSU Nazi terror group’s murders of nine persons with migration background between 2000 and 2009 – led to resistance, self-organization, and ultimately and painfully, positive change. Legally, the coalition government of the Social Democrats and Greens (1998–2005) engendered the final shift away from an ethnobiological understanding of German nationhood. The chapter closes with an evaluation of the Left’s debate between restricted migration (Paul Collier et al.) and open borders, arguing in favor of the latter.

Type
Chapter
Information
We Are All Migrants
A History of Multicultural Germany
, pp. 183 - 217
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Welcoming Culture
  • Jan Plamper, University of Limerick
  • Book: We Are All Migrants
  • Online publication: 16 March 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009242264.009
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Welcoming Culture
  • Jan Plamper, University of Limerick
  • Book: We Are All Migrants
  • Online publication: 16 March 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009242264.009
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Welcoming Culture
  • Jan Plamper, University of Limerick
  • Book: We Are All Migrants
  • Online publication: 16 March 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009242264.009
Available formats
×