Integrate Into Migrant Cultures To Make Newcomers Welcome, Germans Told

A sociologist in Germany has blamed Germans for the lack of progress in integrating new migrants to the country claiming that the Germans themselves need to integrate into migrant cultures.

Sociologist Annette Treibel has a message for Germans when it comes to the problems of integrating the huge amount of migrants who have flooded into the country: it’s probably your fault.

Posing the question of why migrants would want to integrate into Germany when Germans refuse to learn their culture and language, Dr. Treibel claims that it is Germans who need integration courses into migrant cultures, not migrants who should adapt to Germany reports Die Welt.

At a discussion in Dusseldorf Treibel pushed the narrative that Germany is an “immigration country” meaning that there is no overarching dominant culture in Germany, but rather the country is a mosaic of different cultures.  This academic idea, that Germany has no dominant culture, has been promoted by several German academics like political scientist Ulrike Guérot who, along with Islamist expert Kurt Edler, have advocated for migrants to be given their own cities rather than expect them to integrate.

For Teibel, immigration is an essential factor of the modern societies of Europe and the Western world. She claimed that the mass migration over the past year didn’t need to create conflicts of integration as both Germans and migrants could simply integrate into each others cultures.

Teibel, who teaches as a professor at the Institute of Transdisciplinary social science at the University of Karlsruhe, claims that some Germans haven’t come to terms with the fact that they are an “immigration country.” She asks: if Germans aren’t willing to recognize this fact, instead holding on to what she claims is a non-existent German culture, why should migrants want to integrate?

In line with her theory, the professor says that every asylum seeker, immigrant and refugee have the right to claim that they are “indigenous” to Germany.  Being native to an area is therefore redefined as “when one is familiar at his residence with the circumstances,” while the idea that anyone is indigenous in the traditional sense of the term is refuted.

Academics and left wing politicians in Germany have toyed with the idea that solving the issues of integration of migrants in Germany requires Germans to become more like migrants, rather than migrants adapt to German culture. Several educators have said that Germans should learn Arabic to help migrants who are unable, or unwilling, to learn German.

One commentator, a migrant himself from Syria, claimed that all European countries should put up street signs in Arabic because it would make it easier for the new migrants.