One Word Shapes a Nation: Integration Politics in Germany

Professor Johanna Schuster-Craig’s forthcoming book One Word Shapes a Nation demonstrates that integration politics limit how immigrants, refugees, and their descendants can participate in German society and how Germans imagine their national future. By reconstructing recent polemic media scandals, re-interpreting historical narratives about migration after the Second World War, and conducting extensive fieldwork with social work organizations that implement "integrative" programs, Schuster-Craig explores the intersection between media, capital, nation-building, and human lives in contemporary German society, arguing that "integration politics" in Germany is defined by a selective approach to who qualifies as a citizen, as well as beliefs about German national identity that require assimilation to cultural values beyond mere naturalization.

 

 

 

Johanna Schuster-Craig is associate professor of German Studies and Global Studies at Michigan State University. She has written extensively on integration politics and right-wing nationalism. Her articles have appeared in the German Studies Review, German Life and Letters, Feminist German Studies, German Politics and Society, German Quarterly and others.