Figurational change and primordialism in a multicultural society: A model explained on the basis of the german case

Abstract

Now that ‘guest worker’ immigration has ended but immigration continues, Germany’s immigration society is entering a hierarchical conflict between established residents and migrants. The mere fact that migrants used to be regarded as ‘guest workers’ but are today seen above all as Muslims suggests that the hierarchial conflict is currently undergoing a process of culturalization. By ‘culturalization of conflicts’, I refer to the process of attributing allegedly incompatible primordialist cultural qualities to the disputants involved in order to legitimize the aim of dominating one’s opponent.