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When the German Unification Treaty went into effect on October 3, 1990, the Federal Republic of Germany added some 16 million new citizens. In terms of citizens' rights, the new population now enjoyed virtually the same social, economic, and security protections, as well as the same obligations, as the approximately 63 million who held West German citizenship prior to this date. They were also accorded certain privileges as provided for under the Unification Treaty, as well as financial ones by virtue of the financial equalization principle and in the form of transfer allocations funded by the so-called Solidarity Surtax. If one ignores for the moment the economic hardships triggered by privatization and property restitution policies since the early 1990s, East Germans have been the beneficiaries of one of the most heavily funded state-sponsored welcoming policies imaginable for integrating newcomers into an existing social context. The fact that East Germans had long since been regarded legally and culturally as latent citizens of the Federal Republic, and that, unlike most newcomers, they brought with them a considerable piece of real estate, are important considerations. Nonetheless, I would like to entertain a comparison of the project of integrating eastern Germany and its denizens into the Federal Republic with that of integrating other kinds of newcomer populations, particularly guest-workers. In particular, I will look at German reunification from the standpoint of citizens' rights versus human rights. From this standpoint, the integration of East Germans may perhaps serve as a kind of baseline for comparison to other cases-one in which the granting of citizenship and subsequent cultural integration were undertaken under extremely favorable circumstances, by most standards, and in which the virtual absence of differences in national language, race, and religion, could be assumed. Other sorts of cultural differences, which only became evident in the course of time, will concern me a little later. In view of this starting point, the stumbling blocks encountered since 1990, including the emergence of what has been called the Invisible Wall between East and West, can be thought of as owing in part to the inherent difficulties of incorporating any new population into an existing society, while seeking to preserve the way of life and social identity of the receiving society, and in part to redistributive and cultural policies that have left large numbers of East Germans feeling as though they are treated as "second class citizens," in spite of their formal equality with West Germans and their privileges by contrast to non-citizens. Its successes, on the other hand, can perhaps suggest lessons for dealing with other cases more effectively. This comparison should be of particular interest in view of two other models of integration of a somewhat different kind. The first concerns Germany's citizenship and naturalization laws. Until recently, conventional wisdom has held that that German understanding of national belonging, as expressed in citizenship and naturalization law, embodied an ethnic conception of the nation. This model equating ethnic national belonging with state membership was a crucial normative basis for reunification. In consequence of prevailing law, German citizens are nearly always born into that status. Automatic citizenship is accorded automatically at birth only if at least one parent also holds it. And even where naturalization provides a mechanism for acquiring German citizenship, only a tiny fraction of resident aliens-some 6 percent between1975 and 1984-have chosen to take apply for that status. In 1998, after the new Social Democratic-Green coalition assumed a majority in the Bundestag, this emphasis on descent-based citizenship began to erode. On November 10 of that year, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder announced in official address: "No one who wants to be a German should have to give up or deny his foreign roots. For this reason, we are making possible dual citizenship." This policy change had been argued for by advocates of immigrants rights-particularly by the Green Party-for many years. Following the conclusion of coalition negotiations between the SPD and Bündnis 90/the Greens, plans for the expansion of dual citizenship and a shortening of the residency requirement for naturalization were among the first new initiatives announced. The policy was heralded by its defenders as a long overdue modernization of German citizenship law that would bring Germany closer to prevailing European norms and promote social and cultural integration of a sizable fraction of the over 7 million resident aliens currently living in Germany, by a 1998 estimate. Opponents, however, feared it could have the opposite effect, worsening the "ghettoization" of new emigrant groups and splitting the loyalties of dual citizens among competing homelands there and abroad. Three months later, the loss of the majority in the Bundesrat and pressure from other parties improved the bargaining power of Liberal Democrats leading to the addition of several restrictions, including the requirement of an oath to the federal constitution for naturalizing aliens and the forcing of a choice between citizenships by the age of 23 for those holding dual citizenship. Nonetheless, the proposal, passed in May of this year, marked a historic change in the conception of the nation as embedded in German citizenship and naturalization law. No longer ethnic descent alone, but also place of birth and residence, would help determine who is by law a German citizen. Of course, ethnic and territorial conceptions of national belonging are only general concepts, not perfect descriptions of legal and cultural realities. Thus, for example, naturalization after long-term residence or special dispensation has been possible in Germany throughout the post-war period. Moreover, the new legislation places new restrictions on citizenship for certain groups, namely the children of German citizens living abroad. Nonetheless, the symbolic importance of the change is undeniable. From the standpoint of its advocates, the new policy represents a normalization of national belonging in Germany and a step forward into the future. Now this shift from ethnic to territorial criteria of citizenship coincides with another, in some ways competing, model that has acquired prominence in recent years. According to this model, the idea of citizens' rights are believed in some circles to be giving way to human rights in many countries, especially in Western Europe, as a consequence of the tremendous flow of laborers and entrepreneurs from other parts of the world during the post-war period. In this view, the traditional model of universal rights guaranteed by national states and focusing on the concept of the citizen is being superseded by a new model of post-national membership based the concept of the person as a member of the human community. This affects above all the populations of resident non-citizens in the countries of Europe who plan to remain abroad for the foreseeable future, as opposed to those who arrive for shorter-term reasons. Yasemin Soysal, a political sociologist who has written extensively on the transformation of citizenship norms in Europe, describes this trend thus: "[I]ndividual rights, historically defined on the basis of nationality, are increasingly codified into a different scheme that emphasizes universal personhood…. The articulation of this model sets the stage for the further elaboration of dualities in the rules of the postwar global system, which, while insisting on the nation-state and its sovereignty, at the same time, legitimate a new form of membership that transcends the boundaries of the nation-state" (Soysal 1994: 136-7). In other words, many of the rights formerly the sole privilege of citizens are, according to this model, increasingly being offered to non-citizen residents by the national state of the territory in which they reside, rather than by their country of their nationality. These rights, couched in more universalistic terms of human rights accruing to individuals and including social welfare benefits, equal treatment under the law, and in some countries even political participation, are becoming indistinguishable from formerly more privileged rights guaranteed to citizens as co-nationals. Both of these trends-the expansion of opportunities for citizenship and the rights retained by those who remain non-citizens-lead in the same direction. And this is the crux of my argument. At the end of the twentieth century, citizenship and cultural identity are increasingly disassociated from one another. On the one hand, the inclusion of new populations from different parts of the world under the citizenship of a particular nation inescapably leads to greater diversity within the national culture. Thus, citizenship is an ever poorer indication of cultural identity and cultural practices. On the other hand, cultural background is an ever poorer indicator of the range of rights enjoyed by an individual as a citizen. Instead, region of residence-more or less irrespective of citizenship-is what is determining rights for long-term residence in European countries. This disjuncture between cultural belonging and rights is where the example of German unification becomes most relevant. A crucial premise of German reunification was the assumption of a basic cultural commonality among Germans and their fundamental desire to belong to the same state of the German nation. At the same time, the question of citizens' rights played an important role in motivating the reunion. From the standpoint of those East Germans who wished to emigrate to the Federal Republic before 1990, that state offered distinct benefits, in terms of civil liberties and economic well-being with which their current state could not compete. From the standpoint of the majority of West Germans, the question was how best to extend these benefits to a population of compatriots believed to be held hostage by a state with a competing political economy, without inviting unacceptable levels of in-migration that would overload the absorption capacity of the Federal Republic. Shared citizenship covering East and West Germans alike appeared to be the only workable solution, and one that was quite popular in both Germanys. As is widely discussed in the German public sphere, the assumption of cultural commonality as the basis for shared citizenship has led to a measure of disappointment following the emergence of the so-called Wall in the mind between East and West Germans. Although very few regret the fact of reunification itself, most East and West Germans remain deeply attached to certain aspects of their own culture and identity, leaving some observers wondering what has become of the "growing together" heralded by Willy Brandt and others along the path to reunification. But culture is only one aspect of the new tensions. Reunification attached new rights and obligations to citizenship for both West and East Germans. On the one hand, East Germans gained civil liberties and economic freedoms while West Germans obtained the right to travel, live, and invest in the East. On the other hand, both share the economic burdens of financing restructuring in the East, while East Germans disproportionately absorb the costs in terms of unemployment and loss of self-esteem associated with preserving Germany's high wage policy under globalizing labor markets. Ironically, the post-nationalization of rights seems to have attenuated the gains brought by German citizenship. The dividends of social prestige and sense of ownership accruing to members of the dominant national group seem in some ways offset by new disadvantages in terms of unemployment, while resident non-citizens are acquiring many of the economic and social rights formerly the privilege of German nationals. In Berlin, for example, non-German labor from Eastern Europe and the EU is preferred for economic reasons to German labor in sectors like the construction industry. Thus, what appeared to be a benefit of German citizenship-namely the numerous social amenities associated with regular employment-has become a handicap for over 4 million unemployed Germans seeking work today. (It cannot be surprising if this turn of events has led to a rise in antipathy against foreigners, not only in Germany but also in most other countries of the European Union and the United States). East Germans, by the same token, find themselves having given up legal guarantees of full employment under the old GDR regime only to face unprecedented levels of unemployment precisely as a consequence of reunification. East Germans in particular lament being deprived of those few advantages they enjoyed under the old regime, and in addition feel as though have not been accorded an equal level social prestige to that of West Germans. The idea of "second-class citizens" pertains, I suggest, not to formal bifurcation but to the prevalence of cultural stereotypes labeling them as backward. In short, cultural identity and national citizenship have ceased to be a guarantee of rights-they can also be a handicap, at least under current conditions. What lessons can be drawn from this? Above all, post-nationalization means that one of the key premises on which German reunification was based is under assault-not from political groups, but by changes in international migration patterns and the efforts of national and transnational bodies to guarantee the rights of non-citizens abroad. The premise is that the rights of residents in a national state should coincide with membership in the national citizenship and cultural identity. First of all, the German citizenry has become more culturally diverse. This is a consequence of the first trend I discussed, namely naturalization and citizenship reform, which makes German citizens of former Turks, Italians, Yugoslavs, and others. But it is also the result of reunification which has German nation which brought nearly 17 million new Germans with a different cultural experience into the German nation. East and West Germans differ from one another in more dramatic ways than do Bavarians and North Rhine-Westphalians or Saxons and Brandenburgers, and they will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Shared membership in the German state and identification with the epithet "German" were insufficient to change this-a fact that became abundantly clear only after reunification. By the same token-and this is my concluding point-differences of citizenship and cultural loyalties need not define divergences of interest. The expansion and deepening of the European Union, for example, is based on the opposite faith, namely, that commonalities of interest can exist among European nations without requiring them to abandon their national identities and cultures entirely. The same principle holds within any given nation today as we enter the 21st century. The definition of rights on the basis of citizenship alone will not be able to withstand the levels of in- and out-migration the future is sure to hold, and most states are unwilling to deny basic rights to newcomer populations nor to block their entry altogether. With birth rates at a historic low, newcomers will continue to be welcomed into European states for the foreseeable future. As a result, these states are struggling to find new models for managing the distribution of benefits and obligations of residents, both citizen and non-citizen. The advantages of citizens' rights over human rights are no longer clear and will become even less so with time. If German reunification was based on a declining model that equated rights and cultural identity, it can also provide a more positive model, if it leads to greater acceptance of cultural pluralism, both within a national culture and among the populations of non-citizens. Finally, I must emphasize that although I have spoken of trends that promote particular models of integration and rights guarantees, there is no reason to assume that any one model will win out decisively. My argument should not be taken to mean that the cultural model of citizenship will die out and that post-national belonging is some kind of inescapable historical telos. Indeed, unifications of different kinds may be on the horizon-at the regional, national, and supranational levels. These can be expected to face similar challenges. Europe's future is likely to see a continuing competition of models of integration, rather than the final victory of a single model. |