NEW:

Transit Deutschland: Debatten zu Nation und Migration is a significantly revised and expanded edition of Germany in Transit, published in German by Konstanz University Press in March 2011.

The German sourcebook presents a new introduction and close to 300 documents in the original language, including texts by Fatih Akın, Klaus Bade, Ulrich Beck, Maxim Biller, Hartmut Böhme, Henryk M. Broder, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Günter Grass, Jürgen Habermas, Wilhelm Heitmeyer, Elfriede Jelinek, Barbara John, Wladimir Kaminer, Necla Kelek, Helmut Kohl, Udo Lindenberg, Monika Maron, Angela Merkel, Franz Müntefering, Armin Nassehi, Michael Naumann, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Cem Özdemir, Orhan Pamuk, Wolfgang Schäuble, Alice Schwarzer, Zafer Şenocak, Theo Sommer, Thomas Steinfeld, Yoko Tawada, Mark Terkessidis, Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Sigrid Weigel, Feridun Zaimoğlu and many others.

The documentation clearly demonstrates that migration has been a European project with global implications from the 1950s on, despite national preoccupations of current debates on integration of migrant populations in Germany and other countries.

Reviews:

Anna-Lena Scholz in: Der Tagesspiegel. 21 July 2011

Andreas Eis in: Portal für Politikwissenschaft. 16 June 2011

Marcel Berlinghoff in: H-Soz-u-Kult. 10 October 2011.

Deniz Utlu. “Das Archiv der Migration.” Der Freitag. 27 October 2011.

Yasemin Dayıoğlu-Yücel. Rezension Transit Deutschland in Seyda Ozil / Michael Hofmann / Yasemin Dayıoğlu-Yücel (Hg.) 50 Jahre türkische Arbeitsmigration in Deutschland. Jahrbuch für türkisch-deutsche Studien 2 (2011)

Germany in Transit: Nation and Migration, 1955-2005 is the first sourcebook in any language to document Germany’s transition into a multiethnic society – from the arrival of the first guest workers in the mid-1950s to the most recent reforms in citizenship and immigration law. The book charts the highly contentious debates about migrant labor, multiculturalism, and globalization that have unfolded in Germany over the past fifty years – debates that resonate far beyond the country’s borders.

Divided into eleven thematic chapters, Germany in Transit includes 200 original texts in English translation, as well as a historical introduction, chronology, glossary, bibliography, and filmography.

Reviews:

“A pathbreaking book about postwar Germany on its way to Europe and the modern world… precisely researched and creatively organized. This is indispensable reading for any who wishes to take part in the conversation about cultural diversity. It is perhaps telling that no such book has yet been published in Germany: the perspective from abroad opens new horizons.” (Zafer Senocak, author of Atlas of a Tropical Germany: Essays on Politics and Culture, 1990-1998).

“The book is first-rate: historically accurate, thickly textured, and methodologically cutting-edge. Even experts in migration studies an German studies will be inspired by the astonishing range of materials gathered in this important yet readily accessible book.” (Leslie A. Adelson, author of The Turkish Turn in contemporary German Literature: Toward a New Critical Grammar of Migration).

Sara Wallace Goodman in German Politics and Society (Winter 2007) Issue 85, Vol. 25, No. 4, 99-110 (PDF Link)

Eli Nathans in Nations and Nationalism (2008), 196-198 (PDF link)

Julia M. Woesthoff in H-Net Reviews in the Humanities & Social Sciences (2008) 1-2 (PDF link)

Yasemin Yıldız in The Germanic Review (2009) 84: 3, 259-280 (PDF link)

From the Book:

Table of Contents (PDF link)

Documents List (PDF link)