Germany: From a Non-Immigration Country to a Country of Integration and Back?

Abstract

When Thilo Sarrazin published his book Deutschland schafft sich ab (“Germany abolishes itself”) in 2010, he reanimated the immigration debate he had begun one year earlier. The former social-democratic Senator of Finances of Berlin slurred Turkish and Arab immigrants in the book, saying they “produced only headscarf girls”. He also said that Muslim immigrants caused trouble and lived in “parallel societies,” which recalls the Western European debate on Muslims’ ability to integrate.