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This essay criticizes two conventional approaches to migrants in Germany. One focuses on racism in German history while the second examines the tradition of repressive laws which exploit and dominate foreigners. This essay finds these approaches appropriate until the 1970s. From that point, German governments tend to accept foreigners and develop programs of integration. Yet, the essay concludes with ways future research can uncover in these same policies of integration new and subtle forms of control and domination.

"This article examines past and present migrations to Germany from the perspective of nation-state formation.... Focusing on the many experiences with the Polish minority (ranging from the eighteenth century to the present), this essay suggests that Germans have never discovered an acceptable and workable approach for dealing with large non-German minorities in the German nation-state. Rather, different regimes at different times have vacillated between an exclusive approach founded on nationalist principles and practices and an inclusive one founded on liberal principles and practices.... The confusion over the two approaches produces not only a confused immigration policy, but also reflects deep-seated confusion over the definition of the new German state and identity of the newly united German nation."

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