Between International Solidarity and Ethno-Nationalist Exclusion: West German Naturalization Policy toward Citizens of “Developing Countries”

In 1969, the West German Federal Ministry of the Interior presented the West German federal states with a new draft of Einbürgerungsrichtlinien, a set of administrative guidelines with criteria that were to be used when deciding upon applications for naturalization. These guidelines contained instructions on the processing of applications from individuals from “developing countries” who had studied or undergone vocational training with financial support from the West German government. The guidelines stipulated that “in the interest of a good cooperation with their countries of origin, Germany must do everything legally possible to ensure that citizens of developing countries” return to their homelands.

One way West Germany sought to do this was by creating extra hurdles to naturalization of such individuals. The greatest hurdle was the requirement that they pay back all money that was spent on their education or training before a naturalization could be performed, with sums reaching tens of thousands of Deutschmark being common. Those unwilling or unable to pay such sums were excluded from naturalization, even if they were married to German citizens and had German children.

The initial impetus for the development of this policy was a 1967 UN resolution protesting against “brain drain” from developing countries into industrialised nations, and in the early period of the policy’s existence, it was regularly justified with reference to the needs of the developing world. Yet as increasing numbers of such individuals acquired permanent residency rights in West Germany after their studies, the extra hurdles to the naturalization of individuals from “developing countries” became increasingly untethered from practical aims of international aid and development policy, and ever closer entangled with the West German government’s intensifying ethno-nationalism. This paper examines the origins, application, and radicalisation of this policy through a general overview and several individual case studies.