From Nevim ?il, ?The Other and the Foreign Outsider: Second and Third Generation Turks in Reunited Germany"
The reunification of the two German states in 1990 not only enlarged Germany’s territory; it served to solidify and conserve an idea of German as an ethnic community. The slogan of revolt in the GDR—“We are das Volk”—was reformulated as a motto of reunification—“We are ein Volk.” The intention was to bring together the German people and symbolize the end of the Cold War. Yet euphoria about reuniting families and relatives quickly gave way to issues of difference, poverty, lack of understanding, and mistrust. In the eyes of the West Germans, the socialist past of the East-German brothers and sisters made them incapable of becoming a productive part of a free, democratic society.
Exhibit A: the East Germans’ fear of change and their rejection of migrants because of their appearance. During the years after the fall of the Wall, the foreignness of migrants was played up, with emphasis on the differences between them and the Germans. What was talked about was the supposed danger they represented for German society, not their efforts at integration. The process of reunification led to a deep rift between the migrants and German society, yet it also changed the way Germans perceive and treat outsiders. In the new social structure, the two-group constellation—West German and non-German—became a three-group constellation (West German, East German, and non-German), reshuffling the groups in the process.
Klaus J. Bade aptly describes Germany’s new political situation when he notes that “the process of reunification brought with it additional burdens in which not only Germans encounter foreigners but non-Germans born in Germany encounter Germans born outside Germany.”
In Ifade (ed.), Insider-Outsider: Bilder, ethnisierte R?ume und Partizipation im Migrationsprozess (Bielefeld: transcript-Verlag, 2005), 58.
