Germany, Multicultural Education in

Diversity and Migration

Multicultural education is an education that is affected by the variety, plurality, and diversity within a society. In Germany, homogeneity has been of high relevance in education for many years, which can easily be shown by the different possibilities to keep a school class homogeneous with regard to achievement. Thus, students may have to repeat a class or even to change to a lower school type although the early selection between schools has already led to a first homogeneity. The strict orientation toward homogeneity has become a great barrier to acceptance of new diversity resulting from migration; it took a long time before schools developed the insight that each class is heterogeneous with regard to ethnicity, but also because of gender, achievements, social backgrounds, interests, and traditions. The phases of migration to Germany in the 20th century have finally changed the understanding of plurality in German society.

There are three types of immigrants:

Work migrants were “guestworkers” in the 1960s who mainly decided to stay in Germany after the recruitment ban in 1973. Most work migrants now live with their families in Germany. Meanwhile, there are also many work migrants from European Union countries who often only stay for a few years.

Refugees have come from all countries in war or other troubles, but their number has been dramatically reduced since 1993 by a new law under which refugees who enter Germany from a “secure” country (which applies to all neighbor states) are not accepted but sent back to the neighbor country. Thus, only refugees who arrive by plane have a chance to be accepted.

Resettlers are persons of German origin who lived in the territory of the former Soviet Union and its satellites and who suffered in World War II because of their German origin. Their ancestors had [Page 984]emigrated from Germany in the 17th and 18th centuries into the then Tsarist Empire. Resettlers have to pass a test in German before they are allowed to come to Germany, but eventually can get German citizenship.

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