Based on corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis methodologies, this contribution examines how German newspaper discourses reflect debates around integration, descent and belonging. It also explores different expectations and obligations embedded in discourses on belonging, and how within those discourses, difference is constructed as a reason for / as a result of "failed" integration.
While changes to citizenship and immigration laws over the past two decades acknowledge the fact that Germany has long been a country of immigration, the formerly dominant ethnonational ideology about German identity still plays a role in public discourses. In the German context, integration has largely been measured in accordance with a degree of linguistic integration, as very clearly indicated in the National Integration Plan, issued by the government in 2007, which states that 'language is the prerequisite for integration'. This definition of integration has been much criticized as social integration that depends on a unilateral effort of the incoming minority to learn the "national" language of the state and it has been referred to as a societal view of integration that assumes that migrants owe this as a duty to the receiving country. The German education system has been criticized for its 'monolingual habitus' (Ellis, Gogolin, Clyne, 2011), where individual bilingualism or multilingualism is seen as a hindrance rather than as an asset, based on a common mindset which sees monolingualism as natural, normal and desirable. Against this background, our contribution examines how German media discourses reflect debates around integration, based on the case study of Mesut Özil, a former German football player, who left the national team stating that he felt "German when we win, but I am an immigrant when we lose" (@MesutOzil1088. "III/III MEDIA & SPONSORS". Twitter, 22 July 2018, 11:04 am). The study examines a newspaper corpus spanning the period 2000 – 2018, and it combines methodologies of corpus linguistics, qualitative content analysis, and critical discourse analysis in order to recognize how these media might play a role in reproducing essentialist construction of both 'us' and 'them (Viola & Musolff 2019). We present preliminary findings of how in the case study, media coverage about Mesut Özil reflects aspects of belonging, descent, and integration, and how these particular examples are related to larger societal and political discourses on integration in Germany. Such discourses construct integration as an obligation, a predominantly unilateral effort of migrants. As a consequence, attributions of non-belonging serve as a reason for and a result of "failed" integration, as our examples will show.
