Germany – a postmigrant society?

Prof. Dr. Naika Foroutan

Europe is in a crisis – a crisis that is framed around migration, refugee movements, border security, increasing diversity, and growing anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim attitudes. While Germany is at the forefront of this European migration debate it is internally challenged by its own notion and understanding of being a country of immigration. New explanation clusters are needed in order to understand the ambivalences, ambuigities and increasing antagonism in Germany surrounding the topic of migration and integration. A new paradigmatic approach explains the developments of 'postmigrant societies' - societies that deal with the effects caused (a) after migration has taken place, (b) after migration has been politically considered an irreversible fact of societal construction and (c) after migrants have entered the public sphere claiming representation, participation and equal rights.
This presentation discusses the theoretical framework of ‘postmigrant societies’ while exemplifying Germany’s ambivalent struggle between a state vision accepting immigration and a society lagging behind its diverse reality.

About the speaker

Naika Foroutan is Professor of Social Sciences at the Humboldt-University in Berlin. She specializes in integration and migration research with a particular focus on countries of immigration, their shifting identities as well as their prevalent attitudes towards minorities. She has been appointed Vice-Director of the Berlin Institute on Integration and Migration Research – a research institute based at Humboldt University aimed at providing empirical analysis for migration and integration debates in Europe. Naika Foroutan led on the two much acclaimed research projects HEYMAT (Hybrid European Muslim Identities) and JUNITED (New Islam-related-topics in Germany). She has published widely on the themes of shifting identities in Germany, attitudes towards Muslims in Germany as well as on postmigrant societies - a newly developed theoretical framework for analyzing transformations in migration-impacted societies.

Naika Foroutan also serves as an adviser and consultant to German political parties and other national and international institutions such as The German Marshall Fund , as well as the Migration Policy Institute and is also a board member of the Council on Migration in Germany .

Organiser: Centre for Migration and Diaspora Studies

Contact email: cb92@soas.ac.uk