Abstract
The marginality resulting from a family history of migration to Germany emerges in stark relief in Unwanted, a study of fifty-five 16- to 31-year-old men, most of whose parents “had been recruited . . . as low-skilled workers in the 1960s and early 1970s to fill jobs in the booming German economy that no one else wanted to do” (p. 4). The mean age of these men was 23, a fact that is significant because the new German citizenship law of the year 2000, providing citizenship eligibility to children of migrants of non-German blood, was not retroactive and therefore denied citizen status to some of the men in the study. Most of the study group were Muslim and Turkish and, despite their birth in Germany, were designated as “foreigners” by Germans either formally (because of their lack of citizenship) or informally as a result of physical features suggesting non-German heredity.
Sandra Bucerius discusses the problems of multiple marginality faced by these young men. She uses their outsider perspective to explain the consequences of exclusionary social policies in Germany directed toward its second-generation Muslim religious minority composed largely of the children of guestworkers.
Thirty-eight of the fifty-five men involved in the study were already “involved in drug dealing” (p. 79) when Bucerius began her fieldwork in 2001, and she describes them as having “drifted into dealing” (p. 78) because of their limited options in the formal economy. The younger men planned to finish school and vocational training; but by the end of the study period in 2006, only three members of the original fifty-five were not involved in drug dealing. Bucerius describes the men’s plans for only temporary involvement in the informal economy, even in the face of what they knew to be reduced life chances for success in legitimate careers. Most planned that they would marry and then quit drug dealing and break with their friends who were involved in it. Their plight as participants in the underground economy, as foreigners in the eyes of Germans, and as unskilled laborers in a post-industrial society is evident in their inability to achieve these goals. They viewed themselves as both Muslims and Brockenheimers (identifying with Brockenheim, a section of Frankfurt, Germany). But state policy, economic marginalization, and social exclusion prevented them from fully identifying as German. Although they feared being deported to their parents’ homeland (Turkey for many of them), because they knew little about it and in many cases did not speak the language, they had still internalized the image of themselves as outsiders in Germany.
Bucerius argues that because the young men “were aware of the structural barriers facing them . . . they rationalized their actions to themselves and others and did not fully adopt the identity of a dealer” (p. 176). On the basis of her research and with reference to the spirit of the annual German Islam Conference, the author offers some “general policy recommendations to address marginalization” (p. 180). These include increasing recognition that “it is Germany’s historical responsibility to integrate its immigrant population” (p. 183, emphasis in the original) in light of the nation’s guestworker recruitment; reducing use of the term “foreigners” by German politicians and newspapers in referring to second-generation immigrants; discussion of the policies of guestworker recruitment to Germany in history and social science classes; Turkish language classes in high schools; changes in the streaming system to encourage more educational mobility for second-generation immigrants; required diversity seminars for aspiring teachers; and required kindergarten classes to provide for socialization in the German language and with Germans before the elementary school years.
In the following sentence, the author highlights many of her subjects’ comments about the difficulty of being Muslim in Germany: “Being Muslim in an overtly Christian country and an overtly Christian school system clearly sends the message that Muslims are outsiders in German society” (p. 186). She summarized complaints that while students take religion in school every year, most schools only offer classes in the Protestant or Catholic religions. Finally, Bucerius stresses the importance of citizenship acquisition for “second-generation immigrants born in Germany before 2000” (p. 187), the group currently excluded by law. Bucerius implicitly argues that whether or not they have a criminal record, second-generation immigrants belong to Germany; and state policy is in part responsible for their current situation. On a broader level, Bucerius underscores “the absence of room for marginalized people in the formal system” (p. 189) and the importance of police officers’ cultural awareness of the norms of minority communities (illustrated in an example of officers failing to remove their shoes in a Muslim household).
This book and the research on which it is based are both convincing and useful in clarifying the pain, resilience, and agency of second-generation Muslim minorities seeking to make a life for themselves in Germany, the country in which most of them were born. Bucerius got to know these men, slowly and carefully. They shared with her their experiences of being sidelined academically in school and their difficulties in joining the formal economy. She recognizes the impact of structural barriers in their complaints. She reports on their determination to make a good, “pure” (p. 125) life for themselves when they finish drug dealing, a plan that they feel they can accomplish if they don’t get “carried away” (p. 77). Even as she chronicles their ambitions, rationalizations, and activities, Bucerius recognizes that the energy, innovation, and optimism of these second-generation immigrant young men caught up in the drug trade are no match for the limitations on their life chances imposed from the outside and by their own criminal activities. They often make poor decisions because they don’t believe that the legitimate system will work for them. Most members of the second-generation Muslim immigrant population in Germany do not involve themselves in criminal activity. But like the group of men studied by Bucerius, their access to many legitimate opportunities in Germany is blocked by exclusionary state policy and discriminatory attitudes. As a result, the state does not benefit fully from the talents of those of immigrant background, and the pain experienced by Bucerius’s study group is widely shared by many who do not violate the law.