Scott Stock Gissendanner was a DAAD/AGI Research Fellow in 2010. He received a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Georgia in 2001 and has held the position of Juniorprofessor at the Georg-August-Universität in Göttingen since 2003. His research focuses on local politics in all its facets, including elections, mayoral leadership, institutional reform, regimes and networks, and, most recently, the political incorporation of immigrants. His doctoral dissertation, Strategic Action in Hard Times, was a comparison of local government responses in the United States and Germany to the challenge of deindustrialization.
Dr. Stock Gissendanner’s DAAD/AGI Fellowship project follows a similar track in that he will compare the ways in which different local governments work together with community based organizations, church hierarchies, and individual religious congregations to address the challenges of immigration.
Kommunale Integrationspolitik
Former DAAD/AICGS Fellow Dr. Scott Stock Gissendanner writes that a paradigm shift has occurred in the national framework for local integration policies, resulting in a higher level of policy standardization at the local level. In an essay that was supported by research completed during his stay at AICGS, Dr. Stock Gissendanner argues that as communities try to integrate immigrant populations, the goal is for full integration with permanent residence, a goal which comes from centralized planning at the federal level. This essay originally appeared in the February 14, 2011, edition of Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte and is available in German only.
