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A New German ‘We’? Everyday Perspectives on Germanness and its Boundaries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 January 2023

Nadya Ruth Nedelsky Open the ORCID record for Nadya Ruth Nedelsky [Opens in a new window]
Nadya Ruth Nedelsky*
Affiliation:
Macalester College, St. Paul, MN, USA
*
Email: nedelsky@macalester.edu
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Abstract

This study employs the “everyday nationhood” approach to explore how ordinary, ethnically diverse, native-born Germans in Berlin, Dresden, and Leipzig understand what it means to be German and whether outsiders can join that group. It puts findings from qualitative interviews conducted in Berlin in fall 2015 and in Dresden and Leipzig in April 2016 into conversation with two large-scale surveys conducted at about the same time. The interviews complicate the surveys’ finding that Germanness is now based primarily on language skills, citizenship, and workforce participation, as the respondents indicated that phenotype, ethnicity, and religion act as daily barriers to membership. This highlights the utility of the everyday nationhood approach for identifying how social categories are both understood and enacted through everyday practices of social inclusion and exclusion.

Keywords

Germanyimmigrationeveryday nationhoodintegration
Type
Article
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 51 , Issue 6 , November 2023 , pp. 1215 - 1234
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for the Study of Nationalities

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