Citizenship and migration policies under Merkel's Grand Coalition

Mindful of Germany's looming demographic deficit and its likely consequences for the national economy, Chancellor Angela Merkel has embraced the fact that Germany is a land of immigration, in stark contrast to other CDU/CSU stalwarts. Assuming power shortly after the enactment of a new Citizenship Law (2000) and the passage of the country's first real immigration cum integration law (2004), Merkel has introduced a pro-active strategy for integrating minorities of migrant descent with the National Integration Plan of 2007; she has done so, in part, by utilising recent EU developments to commit Germany to a socially inclusive approach as a ‘national’ priority. Her holistic strategy owes much to the complex interaction of various socialisation factors: while ‘the Easterner’ and/or ‘the Protestant’ takes the lead in matters of policy substance, ‘the physicist’ seems to prevail with regard to programme design and evaluation. The Chancellor's collaborative leadership style inevitably brings gender back into focus, although the ‘many colours of Merkel’ all remain in the mosaic mix.