Here is my anecdote. I was in Germany recently and met with a South American woman. We briefly talked about our immigrant experiences. She is now a German citizen married to a German man. However, she said she can't identify as a German because nobody made her feel like one. By contrast, when I became an American citizen, my American friends (white and hispanic) insisted that they attend the naturalization ceremony.
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> she said she can't identify as a German because nobody made her feel like one
As a native German, I actually have difficulties with concepts like "identifying as [nationality]", "feeling like [nationality]" or "naturalization". I really would say these are concepts that US-Americans (or people who were "shaped" by US mentality) seem to deeply care about, but Germans very typically don't.
So, my opinion/advice is: she should simply abandon such concepts ("identifying as [nationality]", "feeling like [nationality]", "naturalization") that, as a native German, are simply far away from the mentality that I observe in daily life.
Don't forget that a unified Germany was a concept that only involved in the 19th century, so "Germany" is more of a somewhat "synthetic" unification of various historical, and very different, federal states where the unifying element is rather what is now considered to be a shared language, ethicity, culture and history.
With this in mind, the advice should be obvious:
This woman should concentrate on getting really good in German, and learn about the more than 1000 years of (what is now German) culture and history, and additionally learn about the laws and rules to survive daily life. Otherwise, she should live her life.
What she should not do, is caring about what "identifying as" or "feeling like a" German means - she should put this out of her mind, since modern Germany is a very synthetic unification of what were historically very different sovereign nations that share what is now considered to be a common language, ethicity, culture and history.
I think what she meant that even if you live in Germany/work with German colleagues, basically you will enternally made to be felt that you are not one of them by all but the most liberally minded Germans (and even those are rare even in the big international cities). So your friend group (if you decide to have one, rather than concentrate on family), will consist of other expats/immigrants.
Btw most Europeans are like this - but some are more polite about this than others.
Americans are the incredibly weird outlier (in a good way!). If you speak decent enough English, then basically if you get along, they forget about where you come from. At least it felt like it - Americans basically don't make headspace for this kind of stuff.
> I think what she meant that even if you live in Germany/work with German colleagues, basically you will enternally made to be felt that you are not one of them by all but the most liberally minded Germans (and even those are rare even in the big international cities). So your friend group (if you decide to have one, rather than concentrate on family), will consist of other expats/immigrants.
Thanks for your interesting point.
Nevertheless, I think the situation is a little bit different:
Many Germans indeed also have the feeling "that [they] are not one of them", but I would say it is part of the German mentality to worry much less about that than in other countries.
A lot of connections at work are rather "communities of purpose" [English translation of "Zweckgemeinschaft(en)"], i.e. you work together because of a common goal/hobby/... which makes collaborations a really good idea.
I read somewhere that in the USA a lot more of the social life is centered around the work/company than in Germany. So, it is not untypical to get social connections at work, but this is only one way among many. I would even claim that the social connections from work are often not the most important ones.
Immigrants who are used to the US mentality that work is much more important for social connections than in Germany thus feel that "[they] are not one of them", when in reality this is not the case.
I am very certain that typically German colleagues treat immigrants colleagues as they would treat their German work colleagues (as far as possible). The misunderstanding is rather that many people from other cultures want to be treated quite differently.
> So your friend group (if you decide to have one, rather than concentrate on family), will consist of other expats/immigrants.
In my observation the reason for this is rather because many migrants have very different wishes on their surrounding group than what is common in Germany (also and in particular for Germans).
> If you speak decent enough ~~English~~ German, then basically if you get along, they forget about where you come from.
This has been my exact experience in Germany though.
I don’t think that she means it as literally as you are interpreting her. It’s a _feeling_ of not belonging to or probably feeling welcomed to join the culture that surrounds her daily life, I don’t think she cares whether she belongs to the history-based definition that you outlined of modern “synthetic” unified Germany.
This experience is usually invisible to the people who are part of the in-group, in this case Germans, but if someone lives in a foreign country for an extended period of time and tries to make it their home, I think they understand what that woman was saying.
>
I don’t think that she means it as literally as you are interpreting her. It’s a _feeling_ of not belonging to or probably feeling welcomed to join the culture that surrounds her daily life
I wrote something about a related point in my parallel post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48824800
With this in mind, I think that
> This experience is usually invisible to the people who are part of the in-group, in this case Germans, but if someone lives in a foreign country for an extended period of time and tries to make it their home, I think they understand what that woman was saying.
is not a feeling that is felt as strongly by people from Germany as for people from other countries.
1. As I have hinted in my original post, there simply is not that much of a feeling of "belonging" also for Germans who live in Germany.
2. I wrote in the linked post
"I would really say that a lot of life in Germany is organized around 'if you don't have anybody to do something specific together (and be it because of different interests), you simply do things alone on your own'. There is simply not a feeling of urgency/necessity to socialize if not both sides profit from it."
So, people from Germany are often much more used to the situation that they do things alone on their own, and thus in my opinion indeed have much more internal tolerance to the situation what people from other cultures would call "a feeling of not belonging".
This is exactly why I wrote further above:
"This woman should [...] learn about the laws and rules to survive daily life. Otherwise, she should live her life."
The reason is not knowing the laws and rules can get her into trouble, but living your life on your own (without a sense of "belonging") is something that is easily doable (as I hinted: quite some Germans feel this about their life in Germany) - if you don't "belong" or have few contacts, you can still live.
I can only speculate, but usually when such phrases come up, it's about things like not being part of the in-group - people they know throwing parties and not inviting them, etc.
> I can only speculate, but usually when such phrases come up, it's about things like not being part of the in-group - people they know throwing parties and not inviting them, etc.
Concerning "part of the in-group": It is very usual that in Germany, you don't become a "friend" fast (the German translation of "friend", [der] Freund, has a much deeper meaning than the US-American understanding of the English word). Friendship is much deeper and takes much longer to establish, but is also there to stay.
The same is said about Nordic countries.
If you come from a country where you become a friend much faster, but in a much more shallow sense, you will indeed likely be disappointed.
My advice based on my feelings/observations:
- If you do shallow smalltalk (as it is very common in the USA), you signal that you only want a shallow relationship. If you want a deep friendship, better bring something deep to the table.
- In particular referring to the point "people they know throwing parties and not inviting them": I would really say that life in Germany is much more "live your own life" (which is also what I wrote in my post above: "Otherwise, she should live her life."), i.e. you do much more things on your own. For me, for example, a very common evening is filled with learning (which I do on my own).
I would really say that a lot of life in Germany is organized around "if you don't have anybody to do something specific together (and be it because of different interests), you simply do things alone on your own". There is simply not a feeling of urgency/necessity to socialize if not both sides profit from it.
With this in mind, I think that "people they know throwing parties and not inviting them" is not something that you will commonly experience (and people likely would consider this to be unfair), it's rather "people not throwing parties, so you are not invited to a (non-existing :-) ) party".
> since modern Germany is a very synthetic unification of what were historically very different sovereign nations
This is fairly revisionist. Germany is no more synthetic than most other modern European countries in that regard. The lands of modern Germany were more culturally and linguistically unified than say, France or Spain (which had more diverse minority languages that were suppressed, e.g. Catalan, Basque, Occitan, Breton).
Virtually everything that is now Germany (and lots that isn't) was part of the same polity, the Holy Roman Empire, for roughly 1000 years before being dissolved by Napoleon in 1806. Yes, it was highly decentralized even for the time, but the fact that there was a common language in the core lands was not lost on people at the time, and a gradual informal standardization of the written language was already taking place during this time.
So Germany's unification in 1871 was essentially re-unifying lands that had been part of the same state for centuries before, only this time they did it under the justification of the then-fashionable concept of the nation state and with a centralized power in control of the whole thing.
Unfortunately for everyone, that centralized power was Prussia.
She should also not listen to fringe left extremism wanting to disolve the nation state.
would you say that a swiss german and someone from Hamburg have more in common than someone from Bavaria and someone from Helsinki?
That's an interesting question. Personally, I'd say the north of Germany has more in common with Danish and Dutch people than with Bavarians (who in turn have more in common with the Austrians than with us).
ADP
>because nobody made her feel like one
I'm German. Very rarely is the issue that people will in principle treat her as foreign, there's sometimes still the stereotype that you "can never be German" but in most places in the country that's not my experience.
However what is important is that you need to elbow your way in. There's a saying "nur sprechenden Menschen kann geholfen werden*. (only people who speak up can be helped). If you think someone's gonna carry you in that's not gonna happen. That's the biggest mistake I see immigrants make. It's a private and personal culture but people respect someone from the outside who shows initiative, and nobody is easily offended by someone being assertive, that's seen as a good thing.
It's not the kind of place where you can just wait and people will read what you want off your face. Doesn't even work for Germans, if you feel left out, you'll have to stand up and say you want to be in.
You hit the nail in the head.
Those who say stuff like "nobody makes me feel integrated" would also very much struggle to befriend people in their own country if they got dropped anywhere else other than their home cities away from friends and family.
Making new friends after school is hard, no matter where in the world.
As an American, to me it's always felt like non-white Americans are never really accepted as "full" Americans by people as a whole. If a German guy moves to America and gets citizenship, he might be known as that German American guy, sure. But if he has kids, they'll just be called American. Over 100 years ago, some Chinese people moved to America. Those people had kids. Those kids had kids. Those kids had kids. Some of those kids also had kids. But what are those 5th or 6th generation Americans called? Asian Americans or even Chinese Americans, even if they've never been outside of the US and nobody in their family several generations up the line has either. And people who were forcefully brought to America 300 years ago still have their descendants being called "African American" instead of simply "American."
I say this as someone who myself emigrated from America. Nobody calls me "that American guy." I'm just "that guy".
I think the test for being accepted is when you screw up. For example, if you parked wrongly do you become “that foreigner/ethnic guy” or do you remain “one of our idiots”.
It is an interesting divide. "German" is both an ethnicity and a citizenship, and it's possible to become one but not the other. "American" on the other hand is purely a citizenship, and so it is possible to become an American after immigrating.
> "American" on the other hand is purely a citizenship ...
This may be how you perceive or feel about it, and of course you're not alone, but many other Americans feel differently. Those of us with Colonial ancestors maintained much the same culture and mores for generations; it's evident in the manners and the literature; it's something distinct that we certainly feel as close to an ethnicity. Granted, we comprise multiple European heritages, but those heritages did not define any of us after a few generations. The concept I am trying to outline her is also a very old one: e.g., first Speaker of the House Frederick Muhlenberg, referring to some of his own constituents, said, "The faster the Germans become Americans, the better it will be."
There has always been some concept of a process by which people can become American and join in that culture through assimilation and integration.
I've had ancestors in North America since 1650, including a vice president and a union admiral, but I also have friends whose parents arrived from Somalia or Vietnam in the eighties and nineties who grew up in largely the same cultural soup I did, speak with the same accent, have the same humor, drink the same beer and eat the same food. Some have served in the US military. In my eyes, they're just as American as I am.
there were english dutch spanish french colonials. five ethnicities at least
If German is an ethnicity, I don't see why the US, which is older than the German Confederation (let alone the subsequent countries that have existed since then on that same land) has a distinct culture and set of shared values, cannot be.
The word you’re looking for is ethnogenisis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnogenesis. There is no “American” ethnicity, though “white people” might come close to being considered a synthetic ethnicity resulting from the immigration restriction and birth rate boom from 1921-1965.
But even that is too broad. It might be more accurate to get even more granular. For example, you might identify someone like Tim Walz as belonging to a synthetic Scandinavian-Midwestern ethnicity: although he has no actual Scandinavian ancestry, he grew up in Minnesota in what’s a recognizably distinct ethnocultural subgroup.
A far more useful analogy might be that “American” is a college football team.
Native Americans would be a ethnicity but the US was taken over my European settlers.
Europe the Germanic people have existed way before , a country is not tied to the ethnicity.
There are shared values in the US, but not many. Love of the US, and 'freedom' is about all, for the later we don't agree in what freedom means.
There are many different distinct cultures in the US. Cowboys from north Dakota and Texas are both cowboys but have little cultural connection, and the hill billies Tennessee are very different from each.
Relative to South America, Germany is going to feel very unfriendly. I think it's a matter of perspective. Also, countries that are very homogeneous (ie everyone looks the same) are probably going to have some ethnic ideas built in their idea of citizenship so your citizenship will be question if you don't look like them or behave like them. South America and Germany are very different regions culturally sitting at opposite ends of most cultural traits so her experience isn't surprising.
My prejudice is that there are only a few countries in the world (US, Canada, Australia, Mexico, possibly others I don't have experience with) where coming as an immigrant they take you in and you can be considered from that country.
There is deep history here. For most of the past centuries, most Europe was from where you immigrated FROM, not where you immigrated TO.
There just is not the kind of immigration culture as in America. Some people don’t even have a notion why anyone would want to come to Europe.
The oldest american "citizens" are merely 250yo. Like the country.
My point being, everyone in America is more or less an "immigrant" if you go back enough on their family tree, but the Native Americans.
Germany is a much newer country.
But a much older culture.
Yes on paper but no
In the end Prussia ate Germany
In that case, the oldest German citizens are 155 years old. Like the country.
And by that logic even many native Americans are immigrants. The Apache and Sioux people were living up in canada by the Great lakes near the time Spaniards were on the continent and then started migrating south westward. Not to even mention all of the natives who were forcibly moved out of their original places or fled due to war/famine/etc
no, that's not true. The nation of Germany might not have existed, but the ethnic groups who would later define Germany very much did.
>she can't identify as a German because nobody made her feel like one
well, because she isn't one. had she moved to China, she wouldn't magically become Chinese.
As much as Europeans might find the North American notion of identity and citizenship odd and ahistorical and anachronistic, the reverse is also true. The idea of "nationhood" tied to ethnicity isn't even that old on the continent. Just dates to the modern era. People in feudal Europe were not calling themselves Germans. They could barely think beyond their village or fiefdom or whatever.
I don't even have to go far back in the history of Germany and the defunct states that preceded it to find a patchwork of languages and cultures all of which would only be colloquially called "German" but many of which would be in fact mutually unintelligible from a linguistic POV and often quite apart culturally too.
I've also always found it more than a bit absurd that I as a second generation son of a German immigrant to Canada could -- because of blood descent -- claim a German passport and citizenship despite never having lived there.
Then again with the way North America is going, if I wasn't tied down here, I'd be tempted to do that and spend my retirement there, instead.
it doesn't matter whether you call them "German" or "people whose ancestors hail from the region of modern Germany". they are unique people, ethnically and culturally different even from their neighbors, let alone from those being imported from all around the world to suppress their wages and keep their rents high.
it's not controversial, for example, to say that Ukrainians and Russians are different people. the intent behind equating our superficial similarities to us being "one people" is obviously malicious. likewise, it shouldn't be controversial to say that Europeans and South Americans/Asians/Africans/etc are different people. the notion that Hassan ibn Hassan from Mogadishu magically becomes a German if he moves to Frankfurt is as absurd as the notion that Hans Hanssen from Frankfurt would magically become a Somali if he moved to Mogadishu.
How is your English compared to her German?
As someone who lived in the US briefly, I found Americans are just a lot more hospitable to foreigners, than Germans and most other Europeans in general.
Probably because there's no such thing as an US-American ethnicity, but there definitely is at least one or more unique and very distinct ethnicities and cultures for every European country, and simply getting the passport as a foreign adult, does not also buy you into those clubs, you just got a piece of paper, not the culture and belonging the locals with ancestry there have.
It's not something you can learn as an adult living in a big international city with lots of expats and international companies, it's something you get from growing up there surrounded by that culture and ethnic ingroup created by your ancestors.
The equivalent for americans would probably be those whose ancestors were there before the civil war but that's a smaller % of the population today vs the more recent immigrants compared to Europe. Sure, there's as much immigration to Europe as well, per-capita as in the US, but a lot of it is undesired and the native Europeans have various cultural and bureaucratic glass ceilings to keep working class immigrants in the least desirable jobs, while they kept the more desirable governmental, academic and managerial jobs.
Not knocking them for it, they're free to run their societies the way they see fit, but then they also shouldn't be surprised when, unlike in the US, the second or third generation migrants growing up in the ghettos who are full citizens now, decide to blow themselves up, shoot up a cafe or drive a truck through a crowd, because of how unaccepted and held down they feel by the native European society.
The issue I see seems to be on how US and EU treat integration of migrants. In the US you ge equal opportunities and freedom to do whatever you want as long as you don't hurt anyone, while in the EU you get endless strict rules and welfare which not only don't compensate the glass ceilings and isolation, it also pisses off the locals to see their high taxes going to foreigners who don't integrate. The other reason might be that migration to the US is more from Canada and latin america which is culturally similar to the US, while EU migration is mostly from africa and middle east which are very different culturally.
sad to see this downvoted because it is very much true. European society loves to pretend that they are these progressive, enlightened people. In reality, what they are is just better at hiding their racism and xenophobia.
Your last point is largely wrong. The primary difference between immigrants to the US and to Europe is in qualifications. The majority of US immigrants are skilled. The majority of immigrants to Europe are not skilled. It is then no surprise that immigrants to the US tend to integrate better than immigrants to Europe.
> European society loves to
The idea that there is a single European society is laughable to anyone who has visited more than one European country.
>In reality, what they are is just better at hiding their racism and xenophobia.
It's not xenofobia, it's just a rigid caste system with little to no upward mobility for immigrants, setup for the economic benefit of the locals at the expense of most immigrants. Sweden and others for example has no inheritance taxes so locals inheriting property and assets get a massive leg up at advancing in society with little effort, over even the hardest working immigrants making the system feel unfair and rigged against you if you're a high earning immigrant paying high taxes. Something less of an issue for immigrants in the US.
Xenofobia implies discrimination based on skin color or ethnicity, but that's not the case here, as white european immigrants also fall under this trap because they don't have the citizenship, language, bureaucratic system knowledge, connections, inheritance to get the chill lives the locals do, and get stuck in less desirable jobs with little to no upward mobility even if they learn the language. I'm EU native living and working in another EU country and feel this regularly across all society along with the other immigrants I know here.
> The majority of US immigrants are skilled.
Maybe in SV tech companies, but most illegals to US are not skilled, but they're tolerated as long as they don't break any major laws because they do the tough and dirty jobs for low pay the natives don't want to do otherwise they risk deportation.
The difference is EU doesn't do deportations and instead showers illegals with welfare, meaning they're not forced to integrate and become self sufficient ASAP like in US, and it's easier to stay a perpetual victim in need of state assistance.
The whole immigrants who don't integrate seems to be a constant issue in every developed country across the globe, with the exception of maybe Japan, who is xenophobic enough that you wouldn't want to try to become Japanese anyway.
Canada, England, France, and the US, to name a few, seem to have done it wrong considering how immigration is a constant complaint and weaponized topic in their politics, but likewise Japan has too, just on the other end of the spectrum.
I'm unsure who does it well.
> The whole immigrants who don't integrate seems to be a constant issue in every developed country across the globe
I can't speak for the other countries, but in the US it's almost entirely an agenda being pushed. When I hear people say this, it's not because of any experience they've had, but just a repetition of talking points. Virtually none of them had a negative story to tell. I've heard far, far worse stories in some European countries.
Immigration isn't a binary decision for a state. Its a complex set of policy decisions. What is the state of the local economy? What skills do the new immigrants have? How much experience does the local population have with the incoming culture? What is the culture of the incoming migrants? All of these and many other things comes into play when evaluating or deciding upon immigration policies. For example, taking in Catholics from northern Mexico is nothing like taking in people from the tribals of Pakistan. Most European (quite naive) immigration policies from 10 years ago seemed so poorly thought out that they were doomed to fail. The swing the other way seems guaranteed based upon how bad those previous policies were.
PS The US does it well in general but there were periods of madness recently. The political discourse of many still shows extreme madness is still possible.
PPS The very wealthy are normally the main beneficiaries of immigration and undocumented immigration just creates an underclass with few to no legal protections.