The discursive construction of national identities through narratives of immigration in German and American social studies textbooks

Rather than challenging the foundations of the nation-state itself, immigration is better understood as one of the most critical socio-political issue for the future development of national identities in advanced industrial societies. This dissertation is a comparative study of two such nation-states, the U.S. and Germany, which have often been incorrectly portrayed as polar opposites in both their understanding and management of immigration. Specifically, the cliched and ambiguous narratives of the American "nation of immigrants" and of the German "(non-) immigration country" are used as historical starting points for a critical engagements with the modern-day phenomena of de facto mass immigration and its often hostile, yet sometimes also celebratory, public and political resonances. Focusing on the dominant contemporary immigration discourses---however internally contested they may be---also has the objective to critically engage with these narratives and to emphasize their significance for ongoing processes of national identity construction in the German and American "host societies.".;The empirical focus is on the U.S. and German educational systems because of their function as agents of national identity construction as well as their role as discursive reproducers of broader public and political debates. In the tradition of discourse analysis, the dissertation offers a detailed qualitative textual analysis of representations of immigration in high school social studies textbooks. The latter are of particular importance, as they constitute one of the few official and/or state-approved formulations of national self-understandings.;Among the dissertation's most crucial findings is that in Germany, the country's decade-old self-denial of its status as a country of immigration is no longer a tenable official position, but, at the same time, the conscious self-identification as an immigration country has not yet profoundly reshaped German national identity. In the United States, on the other hand, the cliched self-designation as a "nation of immigrants" has not lost its appeal as a rhetorical device and grand narrative of national history, but it seems increasingly anachronistic with regard to the prevalence of the reignited "hot-button issue" of illegal immigration. In fact, the uncomfortable political realities of today's immigration are concealed by the celebratory narrative of the "nation of immigrants.".