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UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 7th Annual International Postgraduate Conference

Inclusion Exclusion

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Friday 17 February 12:00 – 1:30: Panel E3: Minority Rights

Katharina Stankiewicz (European University Viadrina, Frankfurt an der Oder): ‘Exclusion from multicultural citizenship: struggles of national identity and the case of Polish-oriented Aussiedler in Germany’

In academia as well as in public discourse, it is often maintained that Aussiedler coming from Poland to Germany were effectively included into German society. The fact that they refrained from active political participation, however, challenges the common sense of a successful integration story. This paper rejects the apparent conclusion that these migrants in focus did not wish to claim any special rights of multicultural recognition. It holds, instead, that they did not find any favorable opportunities to act as Polish-oriented or multicultural-oriented citizens. Once a multidimensional citizenship model is applied, Germany’s immigration and integration politics can be shown as culturally differentiating between specific migrant category groups. This is of specific consequence to the migrant group of Polish-oriented Aussiedler. Empirical evidence leads to the conclusion that all lobbies that could possibly represent the interests of Polish-oriented Aussiedler, including the lobby of expellees, lack the potential of successful claims-making for multicultural citizenship. The invisibility of Polish-oriented Aussiedler, in this vein, does not indicate an inclusive path of integration. Rather, it indicates structural constraints of German multiculturalism, which is applied differently to specific migrant category groups. Struggles for a German national identity are considered as a context variable contributing to explain the exclusionary effects in respect to Polish-oriented Aussiedler. It will be shown that external factors, such as German-Polish relations and struggles for a Polish national identity, are of crucial importance to understand the conditional way of inclusion of Polish-oriented Aussiedler in Germany. The analysis of the case of Polish-oriented Aussiedler may finally serve for a further discussion of processes of inclusion and exclusion that are taking place in Poland today in respect to minority groups. Nation-building and legacies of boundary changes in German-Polish history appear to be quite relevant context variables. To analyze the mechanism of exclusion from multicultural citizenship, however, political and structural determinants permitting or prohibiting active political involvement of migrant/ minority groups are worth being analyzed.