CHAMPIONING THE MIGRANT CAUSE: WHY GERMANY?

Not for the first time in its recent history, Germany is facing a migrant crisis of frightening proportions.  In 1992, at the height of the human fallout from the collapse of the former Yugoslavia, the number of asylum applications registered in Germany (438,200) exceeded those in all other European OECD countries combined (SOPEMI, 1994).  The numbers of foreign entrants completely overwhelmed the reception and care facilities available in Germany.  Opinion polls revealed that public attitudes towards foreigners were becoming severely strained and polarised.  At the time, Germany’s response was similar to that of other traditional host nations facing unwanted mass immigration: to close and bolt the doors.  An arms-length approach to incoming foreigners was to set the tone for the next two policy decades. A major overhaul of Germany’s archaic immigration rules followed by a knee-jerk response to the Al-Qaeda attacks of the new millennium introduced radical changes.  Asylum laws were hedged around to restrict entry while retaining compatibility with the Geneva Convention.  The arrest and deportation of high-profile radical Islamists led to the stepping up of immigrant surveillance and a growing suspicion of the Muslim community. A ‘Green Card’ initiative was introduced to recruit foreign key workers and professionals on a selective basis.

As the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean has spiralled out of control over the last few weeks, a different Germany has emerged: a Germany championing the rights of migrants. In stark contrast to David Cameron’s dehumanising rhetoric of a ‘swam’ of migrants, Angela Merkel has called for a more flexible German response, respect for the human dignity of every individual (a phrase chosen to echo Germany’s constitution) and for a concerted European effort to help those fleeing from desperate conditions. Yet, of the northern European countries, Germany stands to bear the brunt of the Mediterranean crisis.  Germany now expects to receive between 800,000 and 1 million asylum-seekers this year.  Why would Germany willingly re-invoke the destabilisation of 1992 – or worse?

As with many issues involving German politics, the answer is not straightforward.  One curiosity of German political culture is the galvanising force of legal principle. Once a legal principle is established, it does not simply represent a measure that may or may not be invoked.  Rather, it acts as a policy imperative.  This is most evident in shifts in the status quo.  In 1994, for example, in response to the Gulf crisis, Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court ruled that German troops could legitimately take part in ‘out-of-area’ operations specifically sanctioned by the UN and the Federal Parliament, the Bundestag.  This has since been interpreted as a moral obligation for involvement in the resolution of conflicts overseas, most recently expressed in the leading strategic concept of Vernetzte Sicherheit (‘networked’ or integrated security) that integrates military, economic, humanitarian and political tools and incorporates private and public actors to improve overall security in volatile post-conflict settings.  A similar imperative entered the field of immigration policy with the astonishingly late conferment, in 2005, of legal status on immigrants.  Until this point, Germany had laboured under the fiction that if immigration was not recognised in law, it could not formally exist: hence the repeated mantra of Germany as ‘kein Einwanderungsland’ (not country of immigration).  It was believed that to offer immigrants legal recognition would be to encourage unwanted mass immigration. Since the formalisation of immigrant status, though, Germany policymakers have been assiduous in developing not only a system of constraints on unwanted entry, but in catering for the needs of vulnerable individuals who enter the country and are permitted to stay.  This moral precept is not only confined to national law, but is evident also in the German approach to European Union (EU) law.  Germany is one of the EU member states to uphold its responsibility to provide EU minimum standards of care for asylum seekers entering its borders.  In this way Germany struggles more than some other EU member states with the conflict between the economic costs of unwanted migrant entry and a firm commitment to humanitarian practice.     

There is no doubt also a growing sense of frustration with the apparent inability of the EU to respond to the crisis on Europe’s doorstep.  The irony is that Germany must take some responsibility for the unworkable division of responsibility between the EU and its member states for different aspects of immigration policy.  Back in the 1990s, the Kohl government helped to promote an ad hoc ‘export’ of immigration issues to European decision-makers because of a reluctance to deal with the highly volatile policy area within Germany’s national institutions.  Now, though, in spite of attempts by German Chancellor Angela Merkel to mediate, the EU finds itself unable to agree a common quota system to share the burden of desperate refugees.  In the last few days, Germany has broken ranks by announcing that it will waive the ‘Dublin procedure’ and allow Syrians to pass through other EU member states in order to claim asylum in Germany.  While this will no doubt relieve pressure on the over-burdened ‘gateway’ member states on the EU’s Mediterranean border, it throws down the gauntlet to other more reluctant northern and western members, notably the UK, to take up their share of responsibility.  Germany’s singling out of Syrians is worth mentioning in connection with the ‘policy imperative’ noted above.  Stung by its unhappy experience of military intervention in Afghanistan, Germany has skirted nervously around the issue of Germany’s potential participation in international actions against Syria.  Apparently in compensation for its reluctance to commit, Germany has opted to offer refuge to Syrians fleeing the conflict.  

With Merkel now being cast as the ‘compassionate mother’ of Syrian refugees, it is perhaps inevitable that cynical voices have accused her of playing for political advantage at home. In fact, what is at stake here is not only a short-term electoral advantage, but the opportunity for Merkel to forge a lasting legacy as chancellor of a new era in German politics.  With its heart-rending images of drowned children, exhausted refugees camped out at the railway station in Budapest and bodies recovered from a van in Austria, the Mediterranean migrant crisis has become a focus for Germany’s defining debate of the decade: the choice between ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ Germany.  ‘Bad’ Germany is the anti-Muslim Pegida movement; the baying crowdsoutside immigrant hostels.  A common theme in Germany’s internal debate has been that there will inevitably be a resurgence of ‘Bad’ Germany: that Germans are somehow doomed to remain a Schicksalsgemeinschaft (community bound by fate) defined by its national socialist past.  On the other hand, ‘Good’ Germany is the opening of the door to Syrian migrants; and the growing organisation on the ground of local people willing to welcome refugees and provide practical support for traumatised incomers.  What the refugee crisis has highlighted for Germans is that, in 2015, they are no longer the passive victims of a dark history, but that they have a real choice in the kind of society they want to become.  If Angela Merkel can become the figurehead of a Germany free from historic guilt, her legacy will indeed be assured.

Patricia Hogwood is Reader in European Politics at the University of Westminster, and a member of the PSA German Politics Specialist Group (GPSG).

Image: Duncan Hall CC BY-NC-ND