ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the violent turn taken by an appalling number of young Germans in an effort to “reclaim” their national identity since unification. It provides a review of the complex legal distinctions used by FRG-officials to determine who is German and who is not-German, concentrating on those who might best be understood as immigrants. Legal impediments to immigration and naturalization are but the formal manifestation of persistent socio-cultural barriers to integration. The chapter considers the status of an especially controversial group of foreigners, asylum-seekers, whose conditions for entry were radically redefined through a revision of the Basic Law in 1993. It aims to evaluate shifts in public attitudes towards foreigners before and after unification. The chapter describes select acts of rightwing violence that have taken place on FRG soil since 1990, coupled a “psychogram” of unified German youth. It explores old and new linkages between the concepts of citizenship, identity and security in the nation-united.
