Project Details
Love of (host-)country? Nationalism and patriotism from the perspective of Germans with a migrant background
Applicant
Dr. Marlene Mußotter
Subject Area
Empirical Social Research
Term
since 2024
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 555278471
The project addresses a timely and understudied question of both social and academic relevance that has long been neglected in one of the world's largest immigration countries, where 29.7% of the German population (24.9 million) has a migration background, (Statistisches Bundesamt, 2024): To what extent do Germans with a migrant background exhibit any patriotic and/or nationalistic attachment to their host country? Focusing on Turkish-Germans, Polish-Germans and Russian-Germans, the project compares Germany’s three largest groups of migrants who have not been simultaneously and in particular systematically analysed in terms of host-country patriotism and host-country nationalism. What is more, and given the recent resurgence in anti-Semitism within Germany and beyond, it examines the implications of nationalism and patriotism on anti-Semitism. Thus, the project’s second research question is: What kind of impact do nationalism and patriotism have on anti-Semitism? In so doing, it will not only examine nationalism and patriotism towards the host country, i.e., Germany, but also take into account nationalistic and patriotic attitudes towards the respondents’ country of origin, i.e., Turkey, Poland or countries of the former Soviet Union. In addition to the perspectives of the three migrant groups, the project takes into consideration the views of Germans without a migrant background. In so doing, it will enable to make comparisons between both the three groups of migrants as well as between Germans with and Germans without a migrant background. Thus, one of the project’s merits lies in synthesising two different disciplines, i.e., research on the nationalism-patriotism distinction in the field of political psychology on the one hand, and empirical migration research on the other, that have hitherto been held in isolation. Overall, it contributes to real-world challenges by exploring in depth what role different attachments, that is nationalism and patriotism, can play in fostering the seemingly waning social cohesion in an increasingly multicultural society.
DFG Programme
Research Grants