Germany as a ‘Country of Immigration’
Whether to protray Germany as a ‘country of immigration’ has served as controversial political symbol for decades. That description cannot be contested from an empirical perspective any longer, but this does not entail that the formula is a self-fulfilling prophecy whose recognition entails how the migration and integration policies should look like. In an Open-ed for the FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG (‘Migration gestalten statt verwalten’, in German), Daniel Thym discusses the consequences of an increasing awareness of the reality of immigration. Some distinctive features of German migration and integration policies over the past decades entail that society and politics have to learn some lessons.