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Crisis of Constraint: The Federal Republic of Germany's Current Refugee Imbroglio

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Matthew J. Gibney
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Extract

THE WEST GERMAN STATE HAS FACED TWO DAUNTING challenges brought about by the movement of refugees into its territory since the end of the Second World War. The first occurred immediately after the end of the war and involved the resettlement of ten million refugees of German nationality expelled from East European countries and 3.5 million evacuees from Soviet-controlled East Germany. It was a challenge that was met with dramatic success. With the help of a number of governmental programmes, and a rapidly expanding economy, these refugees were fully integrated into West German society in the two decades after 1945. Indeed, by the end of the 1960s, the success of this massive resettlement attempt, along with the country's uniquely broad constitutional article which recognized a right of asylum for all political refugees, had rendered the Federal Republic, in spite of its catastrophic past, something of a model for all states in the handling of refugees

Type
Original Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 28 , Issue 3 , 01 July 1993 , pp. 372 - 393
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1993

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References

1 Asylum status is not necessarily equivalent to refugee status. The grant of asylum is made at the discretion of a particular state, whereas refugee status is attained when a person satisfies the UN definition of a refugee. I will however use these terms interchangeably in this article because the West German Constitutional Court uses the UN definition of a refugee as the basis on which it assesses claims for asylum.

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13 A 1981 Christian Democrat resolution in the West German Federal Parliament accurately reflected this hostility toward integration: ‘The role of the German Federal Republic as a national unitary state and as part of a divided nation does not permit the commencement of an irreversible development into a multi‐ethnic state’. ( Castles, S., ‘Racism and Politics in West Germany’, Race and Class, Vol. 25, No. 3, 1984, p. 46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar)

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19 Only approximately 2.9% of Germany's Italian population, 2.8% of its Spanish and 0.75% of its Turkish population are naturalized citizens. (See Räthzel, N., ‘Germany: One Race, One Nation?’, Race and Class, Vol. 32, Jan-March 1991, No. 3, p. 33.Google Scholar) The rate of naturalization of foreign residents in Germany is far lower than that of almost every other European country.

20 Some (albeit imperfect) evidence for the rise in the number of ‘economic refugees’ can be gleaned from the increase in rejected asylum‐applicants in recent years. In 1979 approximately 88% of all asylum claims were rejected. The corresponding figure for 1991 was 93%.

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25 In 1989 alone the cost to the German government of resettling the Aussiedler was DM2,000 million. In addition to this cost, one could also add the social security payments of die almost 33% of edinic Germans, who after arriving in 1987 and 1989, were unemployed at the end of 1989. See Treasure, C., ‘Search for a Homeland’, Geographical, Vol. 63, No. 4, 04 1991, pp. 24–27.Google Scholar

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31 Dempsey, J., ‘Bonn Parties Find Compromise to Calm Asylum Row’, Financial Times, 8 12 1992, p. 2 Google Scholar.

32 I am indebted to Professor John Dunn and to Jacky Cox for helpful advice on this article.