IMMIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP IN GERMANY - CONTEMPORARY DILEMMAS

The paper starts from a paradox of contemporary German politics: after the unification of the two Germanies the ethnocultural grounding of G erman citizenship has lost its historical meaning; at the same time vi olent conflicts and heated debate over the rights to full membership f or immigrants in the German state have developed. After a theoretical discussion of the notions of nation state, citizenship, and immigratio n, the development of the contemporary paradox of citizenship is sketc hed historically using two pairs of distinctions: nationhood v. stateh ood and political v. social (state-mediated) inclusion. The paradox of 'ethnicized' conflicts over Germans v, foreigners is interpreted as a discrepancy between membership in the state on the one hand and membe rship in the welfare state system on the other - a discrepancy which c urrently is 'overdetermined' by the socio-economic consequences of uni fication.