Vol. 20 · No. 2 · Issue 63 · Summer 2002 · pp. 1-48 (48)
The Myth of HeimkehrillusionAndrea Klimt
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Vol. 20 · No. 2 · Issue 63 · Summer 2002 · pp. 1-48 (48)The Myth of HeimkehrillusionAndrea Klimt
AbstractMany observers of the German scene have argued that the long-term non-German resident populations have become de facto permanent members of German society. Beginning in the 1980s, the term Heimkehrillusion, the "illusion of returning home," gained prominence in accounts of the guest workers' trajectories, as many social scientists and policy makers came to dismiss the continued assertions of some migrant populations of their intention to eventually return "home." The increasingly accepted view was that "even though many [migrants] have the goal to return sometime, this goal becomes increasingly unlikely the longer they stay in Germany. For many families who have established themselves here, there are no possibilities left in the country of origin" (Institut für Zukunftsforschung, 15). The evidence that "most of the 'guest-workers' would not return to their home countries" continues to be pointedly cited in more recent efforts to push the German state into reforming citizenship laws and taking responsibility for the multicultural reality of German society (Hagedorn 2000, 4). |