Immigration, integration and the ethnicization of politics

Since the 1960s research on immigration and integration in the Federal Republic of Germany has evolved from an emphasis on 'social problems' of labor migrants (Ausliinderforschung) to questions of immigration control, citizenship and ethnic pluralism ('multiculturalism'). Early research on migration in the 1960s and 1970s dealt with the specific problems associated with the recruitment of labor migrants, i.e. their labor market position, housing, education and the transition from school to work of their children and the economic effects of 'guestworker' employment on the German economy (Reuter & Dodenhoeft 1988). This research gradually became connected to a wider historical perspective on migration, including emigration from Germany in the 19th century and immigration of groups such as Poles in the late 19th century, forced laborers during World War Two, expellees during the Cold War and labor migrants since the 1960s (cf. Bade 1984, 1992). With the settlement of labor migrants in the 1970s and 1980s, the steep increase of asylum seekers, and a renewed influx of ethnic Germans (Aussiedler) from Eastern Europe during the 1980s and early 1990s, immigration has come to occupy center stage as a policy issue. In the course of these developments came the realization that Germany is a 'de-facto immigration country' (Heck-mann 1981), or an 'undeclared immigration country' (Thranhardt 1988). It was only gradually that political science research in Germany began to address the distribution of membership and citizenship rights in the German polity-with a primary focus on political rights and naturalization. High levels of immigration in Germany have been accompanied by long-term structural developments, such as a restructuration of labor markets, the 'crisis of the welfare state' and seminal events such .as German unification. In the early 1990s political conflict and academic debates on immigration and integration came to focus on the asylum question. The debate on asylum that went through several cycles in the 1980s and early 1990s drew attention to the question of immigration control and the consequences of migration for the welfare state. These developments raise questions such as: Why has the debate on immigration in Germany centered around the question of political asylum? Moreover, the gradual settlement of labor migrants ('guestworkers') in the 1970s and 1980s raised the question of naturalization