AGI

Society, Culture & Politics

The AGI Society, Culture & Politics Program focuses on crucial topics within the German-American dialogue, including: demographic change, migration/integration, and aging societies; electoral politics at the national, state, and European levels, and comparative analysis of Germany and the United States; diversity within Germany, Europe, and the United States; the politics of collective memory and identity, Holocaust remembrance and reconciliation, and shifting conceptions of national identity that shape perspectives and policy responses.
Reset

Life in a new land: a refugee’s journey

AGI Senior Migration Fellow Victoria Rietig tells the Christian Science Monitor that refugees face a clash of needs: the need to make money versus the need for skills training. Read the full …

German-Greek Relations: A Recipe for Reconciliation?

In the March 2017 negotiations over Greece’s bailout review, Germany persisted in its two-pronged approach of rejecting international debt relief and insisting on domestic austerity. This stringent stance in the …

The Limits and Opportunities of Reconciliation with West Germany During the Cold War: A Comparative Analysis of France, Israel, Poland, and Czechoslovakia

The seventieth anniversaries in 2015 of the end of World War II and the Holocaust have generated renewed interest in reconciliation and the question of whether the German and European experience holds lessons for Japan and East Asia. Much of the thinking on comparative lessons, developed in the last fifteen years, has focused on an idealized notion of Germany’s successful international reconciliation.

From the AGI Bookshelf: What Is Populism?

With the ripple effect of Donald Trump’s election still being felt not only in the U.S., but all over the world, many are scrambling to find explanations for how that …

Germany’s Population is Growing and Changing as It Adjusts to New Realities

In January, Germany’s Federal Statistical Office (Statistisches Bundesamt) announced that the country’s population is likely growing again—a direct result of an increase in immigration since 2012.  The latest preliminary survey results indicate …

Working Against Mental Shortcuts: Learning to Value Different and Complex World Views

“This is how the Americans truly are…” is a sentence we keep hearing in Germany these days. We keep trying to summarize people from or living in certain countries as …

Standing United: The Women’s March on Washington

President Donald Trump’s sexist remarks made during the 2016 campaign, such as calling a former Miss Universe winner “Miss Piggy” or alluding to a female reporter’s menstrual cycle, have caused …

Despite Trump, Germany Should Not Fall for “Equidistance”

The election of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States has sent shockwaves through Berlin. Among others, Trump’s sympathetic gestures toward Russia put Germany in an awkward …

Danke Kamera! How Germany Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Video Surveillance

On October 27 at a subway station in the Berlin hipster neighborhood of Neukölln, a group of young men walked aggressively past a young woman slowly making her way down …

Trump’s Potential Upheaval to Israel Policy

On December 15, 2016, President-elect Donald J. Trump nominated his former bankruptcy lawyer, David Friedman, to be the U.S. ambassador to Israel. The prospective appointment reiterates for the nth time …

Thinking Through the Future of Memory

Report for the Inaugural Conference of the Memory Studies Association, 3-5 December 2016, Amsterdam As part of AGI’s work on reconciliation, we are pleased to present readers with a report …

The Power of the Young?

Populist parties and governments have gained in popularity in many countries across the world in recent months. Their success is in part based on citizens’ fear of globalization, immigrants, loss …