ABSTRACT
Citizenship has become a major topic of discussion in politics and social science since the 1980s. Debate about citizenship revolves round the expectations and is thus linked to debate about the nation-state – its formation, its political traditions and national identity. Its elective and political concept of a nation contrasts with Germany's cultural and ethnical notion of it based on having common ancestors and belonging to the same cultural community. This is expressed through different ways of granting citizenship – in France largely based on 'the law of the soil' and in Germany exclusively according to 'the law of blood'. The question of citizenship is all the more important for being tied to that of recognition. In Germany, the demand for recognition is tied in a complicated way to the status of an ethnic minority based on a national Turkish identity and on a Muslim religious identity, both of them perceived as foreign to German collective identity.
