Can the Family Member Integrate? Family Migration and European Identity in West Germany, 1973–90

Since the 1970s, the majority of legal migration into Western Europe has been classified as family migration. The paper argues that attempts to stabilize family norms for the purpose of regulating migration flows have been a key site for the production of normative “European” gender roles and family forms.

Taking the development of policies about family migration in West Germany as a case study, the paper shows that family migration was tolerated in the 1960s and 1970s, when families were understood as a way to stabilize single men. Over the course of the 1980s, there was an increasing tendency to understand the foreign family not as a form of support, but as a dangerous locus for the reproduction of foreign values.

Reflecting this attitude, West Berlin introduced the first “integration test” for migrating family members in 1981, requiring teenagers to prove their “willingness and capacity to integrate” in order to be able to remain in West Berlin after turning 18. This definition of integration included an appropriately “European” relationship to the family—teenagers had to prove that they had migrated out of love rather than access to the labor market, but also that they expected to quickly become independent from their families.

Mass protest by the affected youth forced the state to soften its initial stance. This paper analyzes both the state action and youth protest as producing not only new understandings of the role of the family in the migration process, but also definitions of “European” and “non-European” family relationships. The skeptical attitude towards families has persisted in the further elaboration of the European migration regime, including through the introduction of further “integration standards” for migrating family members.