Immigration, Asylum, and Anti-Foreigner Violence in Germany

Abstract

In the early 1990s, Germany went through a difficult debate about changes in its generous asylum laws. Much more dramatic, however, were the increases in the number of violent attacks against foreigners (and also some Germans), mainly by alienated young males. The paper discusses both, the asylum migration and the ethnocentric violence, and also possible connections between the two. In the first part, we present a typology of the perpetrators and various theories which try to explain the new violence, such as: Nazi revival, modernization theory, a theory of civilizational crisis, political culture and dominance culture, and hegemonic masculinity/masculinity crisis. In the second part, we discuss the problems of mass migration and asylum applications, and in particular the debate about it. This debate has contributed indirectly to the violence, although it is not its root cause: through open racism, through scapegoating, and also through a polarization between the two major political camps. In this polarization, different ideological traditions have led to the denial of new dimensions of social reality: the reality of multiculturalism as well as the necessity of limiting and regulating migration. In the final section, we offer a number of suggestions as how to deal with both immigration and violence against foreigners.

Discursive Opportunities and the Evolution of Right‐Wing Violence in Germany

“…Debates on ethnic violence in Germany have long argued that socioeconomic deprivation and disintegration of community ties are primary causes of radical right violence (e.g., Heitmeyer et al 1992;Krell, Nicklas, and Ostermann 1996;McLaren 1999). 2 This familiar argument holds that under worsening economic conditions social groups threatened with marginalization designate specific racial or ethnic minorities as responsible and therefore worthy of exclusion and violence.…”

The Diffusion of Ethnic Violence in Germany: The Role of Social Similarity

“…In line with the classical work of Durkheim, it is argued that the absence of social ties in combination with organizational dissolution and deteriorating solidarity increases the propensity for citizens to get engaged in collective violence (Oberschall, 1973). This strand of theorizing is particularly influential in the study of the extreme right and xenophobic violence and emphasizes that the "losers of the modernization process" (Heitmeyer et al, 1992) are susceptible to scapegoating immigrants for their problems (e.g., Krell et al, 1996;McLaren, 1999). In contrast to ethnic competition theory, high levels of immigration are in this view not a necessary condition for xenophobic violence, as the main causes of ethnic violence are related to the anomic condition of the perpetrators, and immigrants may become scapegoats even where there are relatively few of them.…”

Diasporic and Transnational Social Practices in Central Asia

“…As noted earlier, German immigrants to Germany from the Soviet Union encountered not only policy obstacles to reintegration, but often resistance from certain segments of the population. Neo‐Nazi groups targeted ‘Russian Germans’, while former East Germans and guest workers (Turks, Kurds) often saw these new arrivals as competition for jobs and housing (Kolosov 2001; Krell et al. 1996).…”

“…As noted earlier, German immigrants to Germany from the Soviet Union encountered not only policy obstacles to reintegration, but often resistance from certain segments of the population. Neo-Nazi groups targeted 'Russian Germans', while former East Germans and guest workers (Turks, Kurds) often saw these new arrivals as competition for jobs and housing (Kolosov 2001;Krell et al 1996). Kazakh 'repatriates' to Kazakhstan have struggled to reconcile return myths relating to a linguistic and cultural 'land of the Kazakhs' with the multinational, highly russified reality of the independent Republic of Kazakhstan (Diener 2005a,b).…”