Neoliberalism and the Economic Utility of Immigration: Media Perspectives of Germany's Immigration Law

Abstract

Germany's new immigration law, which took effect in 2005, was hotly debated over a period of four years. This paper follows the debate on the law through the newsprint media, examines the representation of immigration as an economic utility, and investigates the contents of this economic‐utility perspective of immigration in light of neoliberal restructuring in Germany. The analysis focuses on 609 articles sampled from five major German daily newspapers published between July 2001 and August 2005. A discourse analysis suggests that the newsprint media represented immigration on the one hand as an economic necessity to replenish the labor market and ensure the international competitiveness of key industrial sectors. On the other hand, immigration was depicted as an economic liability that raises unemployment rates and burdens the public welfare system. Although the media emphasized the economic necessity of immigration, the final law does not permit any significant immigration of labor. The paper resolves this contradiction by situating media discourse in a wider context of neoliberal reforms and European Union expansion.

“But One Needs to Work!”: Neoliberal Citizenship, Work‐Based Immigrant Integration, and Post‐Socialist Subjectivities in Berlin‐Marzahn

“…Despite the transnational turn challenging the bias of methodological nationalism in migration scholarship by stressing cross-border nature of contemporary migrant lives, most contemporary migrants continue to create attachments to their places of settlement and strive for inclusion also in these places (Ehrkamp 2005 The importance of this economistic optic of immigration, most obvious in Germany during the negotiations about the new immigration law (Bauder 2008), has become also a structuring principle behind the renewed state interest in immigrant integration policy (for Holland see e.g. Schinkel and van Houdt 2010).…”

Effect of Welfare and Employment Policies on the Correlation between Migration and Unemployment

“…Some claimed that immigration would constitute an additional economic force that would contribute to the local industry and ensure the international competitiveness of its products. Others were concerned that immigration might raise the local unemployment rate and overburden the German welfare system (Bauder, 2008). …”

Highly‐skilled Migration from China and India to Canada and the United States

“…The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act in the United States and the 1967 Immigration Act in Canada abolished race‐based immigration quotas. Despite obvious neoliberal‐political motives behind their construction in the same way recent immigration policies are premised on (Arat‐Koc, ; Bauder, ; Dobrowolsky, ), they were considered pioneers in modern immigration policies aiming to attract highly skilled migrants. The United States adopted a quota system, designating up to 80 per cent of the annual quota for family reunification and the rest for employment‐based immigrants or humanitarian‐clause refugees.…”