ABSTRACT
A commonly held view among migration scholars and the wider public is that Germany and France represent two fundamentally of Integration' structuring the relation between the state and foreign nationals: an ethno-national, pre-political model on ius sanguinls in Germany, and a universalist, republican model based on ius soli in France (Brubaker, 1992). Looking at the frames of reference guiding migration research in the two countries since the 1980s, this chapter introduces the view. It is shown that, ironically, ethno-cultural concerns relating to 'assimilation' and Integration' in the republican nation are much stronger in the French literature, while German scholars have largely circumvented culture-based arguments and have framed the 'integration' question in much more universalist terms as a question of socio-economic insertion in the social welfare state.
