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’m actually curious if the GP expects „yes“ or „no“ as an answer, because I couldn’t even say. It’s probably „yes“, but…
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".
(I have heard bad stories from Germany, but that was decades ago).
> and so, society tends to be more accepting of new incoming people?
I would say the topic is more multilayered:
Traditionally, Germany was not an immigration country (yes, there exist exceptions in history: migrations of big groups from other countries, but let's ignore them for the sake of the argument), so there barely exist any traditionally grown structures for immigrants from other countries or cultures; they are much more on their own.
I wouldn't say that this bare existence of immigration structures is a bad thing per se, or that such people are unwelcome etc. It's just that there exist no really structured way for immigrants from other countries or cultures to set foot in Germany's society.
On the other hand, the increased internal movement over the last decades in Germany has not lead to the situation that incoming (German) people have an easier way to get into the existing structures, but I would rather say that this lead to a more tolerance of new incoming people doing their own thing separately.
In other words: it lead to the situation that people living next to each other often having few common things in their ways of living.
So, the increased internal movement rather lead to a loss of "common grounding" of people living in some place, without anything new appearing that replaces this loss of common grounding.
That sounds like an extremely obnoxious judgement.
> If you want a deep friendship, better bring something deep to the table.
At some point sure. Are you suggesting launching into deep conversation when you meet someone?
I am strongly suggesting not to start with shallow smalltalk, as it is common in the USA.
I would start with serious conversations when I meet someone to get a feeling. But if the "vibe" is right, you can indeed get deep rather soon.
Especially since it's usually Americans that have the reputation for treating strangers overly familiar in conversation.
I don't get your point:
- Avoiding shallow talking means not wasting the other person's time - this is politeness.
- You can also talk about deep topics with people who are outside of your friendzone.
Or just a cultural difference.
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 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.
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.
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).
As for work connections - someone just landed in a foreign country and spends decisively most of the "waking hours" with a bunch of people… as in literally, it's not even a metaphor… that's called being human, social, etc.
This has been my exact experience in Germany though.
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.
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.
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.
I say this as someone who myself emigrated from America. Nobody calls me "that American guy." I'm just "that guy".
Europe the Germanic people have existed way before , a country is not tied to the ethnicity.
I’ve heard plenty of arguments about the German Volk as a distinct entity.
The argument was pretty decisively lost according to my grandfather.
Tell me, where does my Jewish German heritage fit in to Germany as an ethnicity? For some reason they didn’t feel very German when they left despite meeting all the qualifications…
That's a good point, and personally one of the reasons I disagree with the ethnic definition of "nation".
The other reason are of course the frisian, danish, sorbian, etc and many other similar minorities that have historically lived in the region of modern Germany.
I think the french definition (which defines the nation almost entirely around the language, not ethnicity or origin) is a much more interesting and useful one. Language determines who you can talk to, and what media you can read or watch.
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.
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.
"African Americans" certainly also separately underwent ethnogenesis, although the preferred nomenclature there has changed, and there wasn't really any disruption there. But I think it's certainly fair to count them as a distinctly and uniquely US ethnicity.
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."
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 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.
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.
In the end Prussia ate Germany
There was the German ethnicity, and a mosaic of Germanic languages.
But again you can continue with trying to make it seem as if everything is equal to everything else.
I'll leave you with this little thought experiment. If we put a northen German, a Swiss German and a Spaniard in a room, how long will it take for the two germans to realize they have more in common with each other than the spaniard?
Switzerland is actually quite different from Germany.
People often laugh about the Holy Roman Empire (mostly people who have not studied it) but it did actually serve as a distinct legal and cultural tradition for much the area that is now Germany (and more).
The language are different but not that different, with some effort you could understand each other. Many Germans from different parts fought together in mercenary bands or for Holy Roman Empire armies.
During the Revolution in the 1850 they tried to establish a unified Germany, so clearly the idea had wide recognition by then. You don't have movement like that spring up out of nowhere. After the Napoleonic war, German Confederation was a very recognized and understood fact.
Sure if was not fully 'unified' but neither is French or Spanish culture.
- Peter H. Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe’s History
- Helmut Walser Smith, Germany: A Nation in Its Time
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
American culture is undeniably real. American values and beliefs likewise.
Is the only thing that decides an ethnicity how far back your ancestors have been procreating within a country’s current borders?
Culture and values is a better delineator, and it is pretty undeniable that America has a distinct culture and value set.
Personally I think it's one of the strengths of this country that a first generation immigrant can come here and become an American. I don't think this is very common around the world.
Large numbers of people report their ancestry simply as "American."
I would actually argue this is the origin of a lot of political divisiveness in the US. It also sort of boils down to the "America as an immigrant/proposition nation" vs "America as a settler nation" debate. The former seems to be ascendant in the past few decades but it's definitely not consensus.
I don't think you are disagreeing with the parent commenter as much as you think. The clear belief statement you are making and not considering your ancestry is a pretty core value of Americans (and one I like) that is not seen in other countries.
Most countries in the world automatically default to "my ancestors were X so I am X, if someone else's ancestors were Y then they are Y, no matter how many generations or how illogical this is". Example: people keep commenting how many players of African descent there are on the French men's soccer team. No one cares or talks about the ancestry of the players on the USMNT.
Your data and percentage, is very wrong. America has significant Black and Indigenous (usually referred to as Indian or Native) populations. Around 15% Black and 3% Indigenous. Combined, they make up around 18% of the US population, with wild and vigorous arguments they are even a greater percentage than that (20% or so).
1.4% of the U.S. population is "American Indian and Alaska Native alone". 2.9% is "alone or in combination with another race" per the 2020 census.
I have no idea what you're going on about.
Being multiracial, and of indigenous ancestry, does not necessarily mean or always count as immigrant. It is nebulous. No definitive conclusions, in regards to immigration, is made about those of mixed and indigenous ancestry. Speaking of mixed ancestry, the US has a very significant percentage in that category, from both the census and DNA testing.
There are also Canadian and Mexican indigenous people, who refute or argue about immigrant status, regardless of their present citizenship. Making the argument that their people were already in America or pushed out of their lands.
Immigrants go through a set immigration process, where they make a voluntary move to a new country. A huge portion of the American population were not immigrants, but were rather subject to involuntary migration (aka slavery), going as far back as 1526 (hundreds of years before the USA was created). Thus a better term would arguably be "migrants" (without distinguishing between voluntary and involuntary).
> And that is what binds them together... they all seperated from the old world... The us is a phyle of choice and you must have made that choice...
It is a false dichotomy or representation, that America is about those who are indigenous or not, or old world choice for the new.
[1]: https://lithub.com/dont-call-slaves-immigrants/ (Don't Call Slaves "Immigrants")
[2]: https://www.thewitnessinc.org/blog/african-slaves-not-immigr... (African Slaves Were Not 'Immigrants')
[3]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/03/09/... (Slaves weren’t immigrants. They were property.)
Also what's the point of making "immigrant" and "migrant" apply to different groups of people? This seems like the worst way to make the distinction.
Edit: This article has a pull quote of the definitions of 'immigrant' and 'slave' and both of them apply. This is not convincing.
Edit 2: You added "Slaves weren’t immigrants. They were property." The article isn't loading but I can respond to the title. Even by the logic of them not being people at the time of the slave trade, what, the idea is that when they became people again that resets their history and we act like they just appeared in the southern US? That seems far more disrespectful to me.
Also can you explain why "involuntary migrant" is fine but "involuntary immigrant" isn't? (I mean I'd probably default to stronger language than "involuntary" but let's stick with that for now.)
Well, except for the people who didn’t have any choice.
well, because she isn't one. had she moved to China, she wouldn't magically become Chinese.
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'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.
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.
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.
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.
> There are notable issues
What are the issues? Which (English speaking) Americans have been so negatively impacted because of this, and how?
I don't live in the Southwest, but we have them here as well. They speak little/no English. Yet both they and the people around them live just fine.
Are you still in your 20s?
I said:
"When I hear people say this, it's not because of any experience they've had, but just a repetition of talking points"
You pointed out a potential problem. So my followup is: "What negative experience have you had because of this?"
I'm not claiming integration problems don't exist (see my original comment). I'm claiming they are very minor, and blown way, way out of proportion. So much so that while I've known many who complain about the integration problem, I've yet to find a single person who's had direct negative experience related to this.
And, as an aside, give people in their 20s a bit more credit!
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.
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.
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.
I don't even know how to begin to respond to such nonsense.
Define tolerated. It's quite a divisive issue in the U.S and I'd say there's a majority who doesn't want open borders or a policy that de facto lets anyone who entered the U.S stay regardless of their legality.
Please, if you do not understand the indian caste system, don't use that term, even in the context of a comparison. This is like comparing a balloon popping to a thermonuclear explosion. The scale, history, and implications are entirely different.
What you are referring to is xenophobia, not a caste system. Xenophobia can manifest in many different ways, only one of which is racism. Are you going to seriously argue that west germans and dutch people are two entirely separate ethnicities? Yet, go to the Netherlands and Hans Muller will likely be treated differently compared to Jan van Assen. The two are almost certainly indistinguishable on the surface but their names give away their origins. This is what you are getting at, but the differences between ethnicities are not sharp, rather they are a smooth continuum. Xenophobia relies heavily on perceptions. Often, differences are difficult to perceive, but sometimes they are, as in the case of Japan which is famously a monoculture.
As a counter to your last point, the UK was and is at the forefront of integrating immigrant groups into mainstream society. Most historical immigrants to the UK are well settled, although there is now a renewed push for racism and xenophobia in politics.
The idea that there is a single European society is laughable to anyone who has visited more than one European country.