Willkommenskultur in Berlin: A critical discourse analysis of national identity construction in Germany. How is the German public discourse about Willkommenskultur shaped by and a contribution to national identity construction?

Abstract

Since the summer of 2015, the ambiguous term Willkommenskultur has been part of the increasingly polarized migration debate in Germany. This ambiguous term is used in a variety of different contexts – political, social, historical – and seems to be part of the process of national identity construction. In using Willkommenskultur several German authors contextualized the term within the historical case of the Huguenot refugees re-settling in Brandenburg from 17th century France. This thesis has thus analyzed ways in which Willkommenskultur is shaped by and a contribution to the process of national identity construction, and how this process is related to the case of the Huguenots. The research was conducted through a critical discourse analysis, wherein five German articles were analyzed with regard to Willkommenskultur and the Huguenots of 1685, and a content analysis wherein forty-one articles were analyzed for general trends and indications about the uses and contributions of Willkommenskultur. This complex thesis concludes that Willkommenskultur is used in the contemporary migration debate in order to create a national identity, and the term uses the history of the Huguenots as a reference of how an “in-group” acts.