National Identity in Contemporary Germany: Citizenship, Diversity, and Belonging - Detailseite

ECTS Points: 5

Language requirements: min. English B2

In this course we will explore elite and everyday notions of citizenship and identity. Germany is a culturally and ethnically diverse country, and has been for many decades. Yet, it was only in the year 2000 that laws were changed to allow for non-heritage based citizenship, and only in the past few years that politicians began to acknowledge Germany as a country of immigration. In common usage, the word “German” is still often used to mean exclusively White Germans, drawing a boundary between those with and without so-called migration background. We will discuss the impact of such interpersonal issues, as well as more policy-based regulations using psychological, sociological, and related theories, examining how understandings of German identity affect norms (re)produced in media, policy, education, and everyday life. A focus will be given to narrative and discourse, both as tools for analysis and ways of understanding identity. Berlin will be used as a case study for many of the topics covered, and students will be encouraged to reflect on their own identities and the identities they see enacted around them as they get to know Berlin.

El-Tayeb (2016) European Others

Statistische Bundesamt (2017) Persons with a migration background

Tajfel & Turner (1979) An integrative theory of intergroup conflict

Andreouli (2010) Identity, positioning and self-other relations

Reijerse et al. (2012) Beyond the ethnic-civic dichotomy: Cultural citizenship as a new way of excluding immigrants

Meeus, Duriez, Vanbeselaere, & Boen (2010) The role of national identity representation in the relation between in-group identification and out-group derogation

Condor (2011) Towards a social psychology of citizenship?

Sindic (2011) Psychological citizenship and national identity

Stevenson & Muldoon (2010) Socio-political context and accounts of national identity in adolescence

Antonsich (2015) The ‘everyday’ of banal nationalism – Ordinary people’s views on Italy and Italian

Giles & Shaw (2009) The psychology of news influence and the development of media framing analysis

McLean & Syed (2016) Personal, master, and alternative narratives

Auer (2005) Postscript: Code-switching and Social Identity

Çelik (2015) ‘Having a German passport will not make me German’: Reactive ethnicity and oppositional identity among disadvantaged second-generation youth in Germany

Müller (2011) Far away so close: Race, whiteness, and German identity

Hubbard & Utsey (2015) A qualitative study of bi-racial identity among Afro-Germans living in Germany

Faas (2008) From foreigner pedagogy to intercultural education - an analysis of the German responses to diversity

Kotowski, J. M. (2013). Narratives of immigration and national identity: Findings from a discourse analysis of German and U.S. social studies textbooks

Anderson (2017) When Muslim women are allowed to wear headscarves in Germany, and when not

Gillborn (2005) Education policy as an act of white supremacy: Whiteness, critical race theory and education reform

Holmes & Castañeda (2016) Representing the ‘European Refugee Crisis’ in Germany and beyond: Deservingness and difference, life and death

Vertovec (2011) The cultural politics of nation and migration

Baban (2006) From Gastarbeiter to “Ausländische Mitbürger”: Postnational citizenship and in-between identities in Berlin

Ehrkamp & Leitner (2003) Beyond national citizenship: Turkish immigrants and the (re)construction of citizenship in Germany

This seminar carries 5 ECTS.

For international incoming students and HU students.

Language requirements English B2 minimum.

NO registration via Agnes.

Application via Berlin Perspectives ONLY: BP Module application

Internationale Programmstudierende / International exchange students.

HU-Studierende im ÜWP.