Immigrant integration and the transformation of national self-understanding in Germany

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In the "foreigners' policy" of the 1980s, West German politicians and intellectuals discussed and practiced "the restriction of immigration" from the conservative viewpoints or "a multicultural society" from the liberal and left-wing viewpoints", both taking the cultural differences between "foreigners" and "Germans" for granted. This study calls this type of discourse "the discourse of cultural differences". But as the new citizenship law and the immigration law were promulgated in the 2000s, the "integration" of immigrants became a pivotal issue of debates, in which the belief in the common "liberal" values and norms as well as the German language skill were more rigidly required for immigrants.As the "Sarrazin debate" in 2010 shows, the pressures for "integration" is now strengthened in the German politics and public opinions. This leads to the rise of xenophobic "right-wing populism", which critically condemns "Islams" who it claims have no "will to integrate themselves".