Post-Perestroika Ethnic Immigration from the Former Soviet Union to Germany: Challenges of Integration Twenty Years on

There is a broad consensus that mass immigration of ethnic Germans from the former Soviet Union to Germany over the past two decades significantly changed Germany's migration landscape and enhanced its cultural diversity. Despite the fact that migrants' integration has been noted as problematic and incomplete, little has been published on Spätaussiedler integration over the last ten years. Yet, ethnic German immigrants and their families continued to integrate with varying degrees of difficulty and relatively robust parallel communities appear here to stay. Aim of his paper is to trace why this happened, and why these problems of integration have been so persistent. Reasons for piecemeal integration during the late 20th and early 21^st century are multivariate and combine structural as well as individual factors, which are documented. The paper argues that if we are to understand the tenacity of these problems in 2013, however, we must turn to the analysis of cultural capital, identificational factors and intergroup relations. In doing so, this paper asks a question which so far has not been paid enough attention to: To what extent are, and ethnic Germans (and continue to be) different to other, foreign migrants in Germany? The paper draws on 81 semi-structured interviews in Russian and German with migrants and experts in Germany between 2006 and 2011, embedded in ethnographical research, triangulated with the analysis of statistical data.