Germany’s quest for integration: a work in progress

    Today, every fifth person in Germany is of an immigrant background, but it was not until 2005 that Germany eventually declared itself a country of immigration and started implementing policies for integration of immigrants into mainstream German society.

Since then, integration has been one of the most debated issues in this European Union heavyweight, creating divisions within German society and the political elite. The conservative-led government has been striving to find ways for a smooth integration of the country’s large immigrant population -- the majority of whom are the offspring of Turkish “guest workers.” But the process is not running very smoothly, as immigrants complain about not-so-equal opportunities in education, political inclusion and employment while government efforts are visibly focused on cultural integration. Critics go so far as to accuse the German policies of seeking to assimilate, rather than integrate, the country’s immigrant community.

“There are attempts to create a German or European Islam; this is a fact,” said one representative of the Turkish community, who wished to remain anonymous, late last month. His statement was a response to efforts to find a common theological ground between Islam and Christianity -- often associated with vague calls for reform in Islam -- and the German government’s search for a representative to speak on behalf of the Muslim immigrants -- similar to the dialogue between government bodies and the Orthodox and Catholic churches.

Even critics agree that this search for a representative to speak on behalf of the Muslims may well be a very well-intentioned attempt to create a dialogue mechanism so that Muslims can communicate their problems to the government and search for solutions. But the lack of a hierarchically organized class of clerics in Islam that would represent the faithful and the vast diversity among Muslim groups -- even among those who come from the same country and same ethnic background -- both hinder efforts at dialogue and spark suspicions among Muslim immigrants about whether such efforts are aimed at creating a “tailor-made Islam” to suit the mainstream German culture. “Why should we get modeled on the basis of churches so as to have rights as a religious group? We are different,” said the Turkish representative.

But the German government believes change is essential to integration. “I don’t want to change Islam, but if there is to be a European Islam, it must incorporate European values,” said Wolfgang Schäuble, a Christian Democrat politician who introduced the Islamic Conference in 2006 as a platform for dialogue between Muslim groups and the government, in a 2006 interview with Der Spiegel. “During the centuries-long process of Reformation and Enlightenment, Christian churches had to accept some things they didn’t like. Islam will have to do the same; otherwise, it isn’t part of Europe.”

Last week, an academic advisory council recommended that Germany establish centers for Islamic studies at state universities to educate Muslim scholars. Germany’s Muslim organizations should offer advice to help develop these Islamic institutes, it said.

A sizable group of the Turkish community, on the other hand, complains that the extensive focus on cultural integration and religion relegate them to the status of a “religious group” and believes the whole debate is mostly irrelevant to the challenges of daily life, such as education or employment. “The integration problem is a problem of education,” said Gıyasettin Sayan, a member of the regional Berlin Parliament from the Left Party, to a group of Turkish journalists visiting Germany late last month. “Children of Turkish families grow up in a traditional setting not in touch with mainstream society and cannot learn German until they reach school age. This is something that the state should address; the state should reach out to these children, teach them the language and send them to pre-school and kindergarten.”

Education is not a field where Germany presents a successful model. A 2006 study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) revealed that immigrants in Germany perform much worse at school than immigrants in other industrialized countries. What is most striking is that second-generation immigrants, who spend their entire school life in Germany, perform well below the average of first-generation immigrants.

Conservative politicians, such as those in the ruling Christian Democrats, insist parents should do much better in teaching their children the German language and culture. But critics say there is only so much parents can do when they themselves are unable to speak fluent German. are unemployed and are thus too poor to pay their children’s kindergarten fees.

They blame the complex German education system, which classifies schoolchildren on the basis of achievement at the age of 10. Many children coming from immigrant families find it hard to learn the German language, culture and social norms – the knowledge of which is essential to success on the achievement test -- by the time the test is taken because they lack the family assistance that their native German peers enjoy. Higher achieving students are put onto the university track, while others effectively lose their chance to ever receive a university education.

“I have met several families sending their children to Turkey for high school and university education,” Memet Kılıç, a lawmaker in the German parliament from the Greens, told Sunday’s Zaman. “I was initially disturbed by this practice, but the more I talked to the families, the more I realized their hardships.” According to Kılıç, the education system condemns children to failure at a very young age, while they are still in the process of learning German.

With no decent education prospects comes unemployment. Figures show unemployment is twice as common among immigrants when compared to native Germans. Even among those who do get a university education and a respectable job, the rates for employment in public service and federal government jobs are very low. In another sign of minimal Turkish immigrant representation in public life, only five out of 622 lawmakers in the German parliament are of a Turkish immigrant background.

Experts say Germany’s strict naturalization codes, which ban people with an immigrant background from retaining the nationality of their native country, are a common reason why Turkish immigrants are so removed from democratic life. A 2000 law allowed nationality by birth but made it compulsory to denounce one’s native nationality if seeking to acquire German citizenship because, as one Christian Democrat politician put it, it would be right to question to which country a holder of dual citizenship is loyal.

Figures show that there has been a significant decline in the number of Turkish immigrants seeking to be naturalized in Germany since 2000. Many Turkish immigrants, even those who were born in Germany, refuse to give up their Turkish citizenship in exchange for German nationality because they still retain family and business links with Turkey.

Official statistics from 2006 show that 1.7 million of the 2.4-million-strong Turkish community are still Turkish nationals. Thus, a large portion of the Turkish community is unable to vote and participate in democratic life. Asked whether the government has any plans to ease the ban on dual citizenship, Oliver Mohr, a spokesman for Federal Government Commissioner for Migration, Refugees, and Integration Maria Böhmer, said “no.” But he did say, however, that the government is committed to making sure more people from an immigrant background are employed in public jobs, although quota proposals are not being considered at this stage.

Mohr says the government acknowledges that there are difficulties to be overcome in the integration process. But discussions on obstacles should not put the bright side in the shade: For decades, immigration from Turkey has transformed German society, deepened ties between Turkey and Germany and led to more than a few success stories accomplished by the offspring of the “gastarbeiter” of the 1960s.

“Today’s Germany is very different than the Germany of 50 years ago [thanks to immigration],” German Ambassador Eckart Kuntz told Sunday’s Zaman in an interview last week. “There are 15 million people from an immigrant background in Germany, and I am their ambassador, too.”