DEUTSCHLANDS ZWEITE WENDE?
The number of refugees that Germany has to adjust to this year is around 1.5 million. Chancellor Angela Merkel has recognized that such unprecedented immigration will fundamentally change Germany. And Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel speculates that it is quite possible that in the near future more than 500,000 people will come to Germany every year. While Gabriel is confident that Germany can successfully absorb such a large number of immigrants, he also acknowledges that this will be the greatest challenge since the fall of the Wall.
Are the social changes that Germany is currently confronted with synonymous with a "second turning point"? A cartoon recently published in the New York Times suggests this: it shows the "new fall of the Berlin Wall" with Angela Merkel and jubilant Germans welcoming refugees through a torn down wall between the Global North and South. If the current influx of people represents a social transformation on a scale comparable to that of German reunification, what consequences could it entail?
One should be careful not to overdo the comparison between today's so-called refugee crisis and the turning point, since – like the caricature – it is intended to be metaphorical. Suffice it to say that any profound event of this kind inevitably entails or will entail far-reaching political, economic and social restructuring. Even 25 years after German reunification, the process is not yet complete.
East and West Germany still show significant differences, both in socio-economic terms and in terms of public attitudes. In this case, too, it will take decades for the changes brought about by the new great wave of immigration to fully unfold, and they will in all likelihood lead to very different outcomes in different areas of German society.
Gabriel's assumption that in the foreseeable future 500,000 or more newcomers could come to Germany each year is probably an accurate prognosis. Germany can indeed assume that a growing number of people will immigrate. Because new migration leads to further migration, as we know from migration research. As borders are crossed, transnational social networks expand. Supported by smartphones, they promote the flow of information to the remaining family members and friends regarding travel opportunities, job and apartment searches and much more.
Nor will the driving forces of today's migration simply vanish into thin air. Migration rarely has just one cause and in very few cases is it either only forced or only voluntary. The causes of migration are manifold. Several factors usually work together or reinforce each other.
The reasons for migration can be of different nature: political (civil war, terror, political repression or persecution), social (family strategies to improve living conditions), economic (prospect of a sustainable wage income and access to goods and services), demographic (population size or –dense, especially with regard to the local labor market) or environmental (various forms of soil degradation and impacts of climate change affecting life and livelihoods).
This combination of causes makes it increasingly difficult to find solutions to the migration problem. And that currently applies to almost every country from which the newcomers to the refugee crisis come to Germany. In each of these countries, the constellation of interacting causes of migration is completely different, and none of these causes can be eliminated in the short term. Rather, it is more likely that those reasons for migration that are triggered by deteriorating environmental conditions will increase and have a significant impact on all other causes.
Immigration from abroad is certainly not a new phenomenon in Germany. There have already been several distinct waves of immigration. From the 1950s to the early 1970s it was the “guest workers” from Italy, Yugoslavia and Turkey. Family reunification in the 1980s and 1990s brought with it a further increase in these population groups. Since the 1990s, when there was massive immigration from war-torn Yugoslavia, Germany has experienced changing immigration from all over the world. This development has led to a significant diversification of the immigrant population.