From Statistical Category to Social Category: Organized Politics and Official Categorizations of ‘People with a Migration Background' in Germany

Social scientists disagree over whether it is acceptable for states to collect statistical data on the racial or ethnic composition of their populations and thus institutionalize these differences. Seeking to reconcile normative concerns with political desires to combat discrimination and reduce social inequality, some countries, like Germany, have chosen the ‘migration paradigm’ (i.e. using place of birth and parents’ place of birth to focus on the act of international migration) over the ‘ethnic paradigm’ (i.e. using phenotypical markers and/or cultural and linguistic links to a particular national group) as a ‘color-blind’ measure of difference. However, while much attention has been paid to categorizations deriving from survey and census variables, debates about whether and how to measure immigration-related population differences often ignore other processes of categorization operating at the nation-state level, such as interactions in the arena of organized politics.

In this paper, we expand the terms of the debate by examining the relationship between statistical classifications and their mobilization in political interactions, in order to examine the validity of the distinction between the ‘migration’ and ‘ethnic’ paradigms in population statistics. The category of ‘persons with a migration background’ (Personen mit Migrationshintergrund), which was introduced in the German microcensus in 2005, serves as our case study. Drawing on a qualitative content analysis of 60 parliamentary documents originating in the years 2005 to 2013, we show that the way the migration paradigm is deployed by representatives of the state differs from the statistical categorization: it is implicitly ethnic, with strong class associations. Insofar as the social categorizations created by elected representatives out of statistical categorizations facilitate the construction of a stigmatizing public image, they may be of personal and material – not just symbolic – consequence to individuals thus categorized.