Reinventing the Nation: Germany's Post-Unification Drive Towards Becoming a ‘Country of Immigration'

Germany’s leading role in responding to the current refugee crisis in Europe reflects a development of its approach towards migrants and cultural diversity that would have been difficult to imagine 25 years ago. German unification was a decisive trigger for changing the country’s sense of nationhood and the popular narrative of what constitutes modes of legitimate belonging and inclusion. The hypothesis of this article is that over the two and a half decades Germany has shifted the coding of its national identity from an ethno-cultural framing to one that is primarily based on civic political principles. A comparison between framing strategies of the political elite in the years following unification (1990-95) and over the past five years (2010-15) serves as an empirical indicator for the scope and nature of this transformation. The article identifies four factors to explain what has instigated the change in coding national identity based on which issues of migration and diversity are addressed in public discourse and policy making: the demographic change and transformation of civil society by immigration, the growing relevance of European communal belonging, the dynamic of competitive party politics, and the significance of the subnational level in addressing issues of migration and diversity.