The topic of immigration is never simple. Questions such as 'who belongs to society?' and 'how
do you define national identity?' or 'what values are needed to maintain a coexisting
society?' are extremely difficult to answer. Global migration introduces unprecedented
challenges for conceptualising the integration of immigrants. On a European scale Germany can
be said to represent the first destination for immigrants since its unification in 1989. On a
global level Germany is the second largest immigrant receiving country after the United
States. Nevertheless only recently has Germany recognised and admitted that it is an
ethnically and culturally diverse society. Before the 1998 elections successive governments
have always stuck to the maxim that Germany is 'not a country of immigration'. The infamous
phrase came under increased pressure with the electoral victory of the Red-Green coalition in
1998. New laws regarding immigration integration and citizenship were on the agenda with the
aim of replacing the traditional ethnocultural model of German nationhood with a more liberal
and modern model by moving away from the concepts of Volk and ius sanguinis. The conservative
CDU however accused the Schroder government of trying to jeopardize German cultural identity
causing a fierce debate known as the Leitkultur (Guiding culture) debate. On the one side of
this debate there were the conservative CDU politicians who viewed Germany in ethno-nationalist
terms while on the other members of the Green Party and the SPD who attempted substituting
the 'volkish' tradition with a multicultural model of citizenship that guaranteed universal
human rights. The aim of this study is to assess which of these two models are currently
prevailing in moulding immigration and integration policy. Has the progressive left achieved
its objective of moving away from the traditional ethnocultural and assimilationalist model
defining citizenship towards a more inclusive multicultural model?
