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Immigrants and Minorities
Nation-states draw distinctions between two groups: minorities and
immigrants. On the one hand, a minority is the “other” who does not
belong to an imagined homogeneous nation—someone who is almost
one of “us” but not quite.
4
Minorities become members of the state invol-
untarily through occupation of land or federation.
5
Immigrants, on the
other hand, become members of the state—permanent residents or full
citizens—through voluntary immigration. Since they consent to being in
a “minority situation” in the receiving country, immigrants are expected
to learn the language of the majority, conform to its values and norms,
and assimilate into the host society.
Sujit Choudhry refers to Will Kymlicka’s assumption that “immi-
grants have waived their right to live in accordance with their own cul-
tures through the decision to immigrate to a society in which they knew
that they would constitute a minority.”
6
Minorities have not waived that
right, because they were involuntarily incorporated into the majority.
7
Therefore, minorities possess shared memories, values, practices, and
institutions whereas, according to Kymlicka, immigrants are unable to
construct this institutional completeness that the minorities enjoy.
8
Minority associations make demands for distinctive social, political,
and cultural rights that recognize their differences. Take, for example,
the case of German Jews who receive state-collected taxes for syna-
gogues and welfare organizations, have the right to practice religious
slaughtering, and maintain religious schools. Through such “recognition
of difference,”
9
they are able to maintain a certain level of institutional
completeness that includes their own community organizations, news-
papers, bookstores, restaurants, and schools. In other words, minorities
may possess group rights that allow them to establish and run their own
institutions and pursue their own values, norms, and lifestyles.
Immigrants’ associations, however, are assumed to be social services
to facilitate the incorporation of immigrants into the broader society. They
may provide “cultural events,” such as folk dances, language courses
for second or third generations, or traditional celebration days. But they
are not expected to make claims on the state authorities or to politically
mobilize immigrants. In contrast to the situation of minorities, immi-
grant associations must facilitate incorporation rather than maintaining
institutional separateness.
10
In this context, we argue that the boundaries
Jews and Turks in Germany after 9/11 · 77
between immigrants and minorities are not clear-cut. In fact, some im-
migrant communities consciously choose specific historical minorities as
their models. Therefore, in order to understand the process of immigrant
incorporation, it is not sufficient to analyze macro structures, in terms
of the political structure of the receiving country and majority-minority
relations.
11
In fact, it is essential to have a framework that distinguishes
between minorities and explores immigrant and minority relations, to
understand what kind of strategies immigrants create to incorporate into
the mainstream society.
Ideally, liberal states introduce clear-cut policies for immigrants and
minorities according to the principle of “consent in incorporation.”
12
However, the difference between these two groups is not always obvi-
ous. Immigrants do not always incorporate into the host society in the
same unilinear and developmental fashion. In some cases, the children
and grandchildren of immigrants still consider themselves foreigners.
Similarly, ghettoizing immigrants into residential clusters can be seen
as aiding in the construction of a minority. Moreover, immigrants asso-
ciate themselves with minorities and claim that discrimination against
immigrants is an extension of historical racism against the minorities in
that country. Accordingly, immigrant associations hope to achieve social,
cultural, and political recognition by drawing parallels to the minority
associations. For example, Turkish immigrant associations emphasize the
relationship between “anti-Semitism and racism”; they state that they
want “minority rights instead of immigrant rights,” and they say “no
to assimilation.” Their campaigns and projects aim to set up “non-dis-
criminatory schools and workplaces, and generally a non-racist social
structure.”
13
The fact that immigrant associations interact with minorities does not
imply their solidarity. In fact, many immigrant groups and minorities
are in conflict with each other.
14
The historical minorities may hold some
political and economic power that they have earned as privileges in the
past. The lack of these rights and privileges may cause resentment among
immigrants. Nevertheless, all these differences and rivalries show that
there is an important relationship between minorities and immigrants
that is overlooked in the literature. In order to bring these into discus-
sion, we briefly introduce the Jewish and the Turkish communities in
Germany.
78 · Gökçe Yurdakul and Y. Michal Bodemann
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