Municipal policies of foreigners and multiculturality in Germany

Abstract

Town councils are the primary public institution to be confronted with the reality of immigration, it is they that have the responsability in different areas of the inmigrants everyday life. This article centers on the policies of the town councils in the German Federal Republic, one of the European countries with the highest relative and absolute number of immigrants proveeding from other culture circles. The lack of preventive town council measures and of political will to achieve this haas driven different cities who critical situations and oper explosions of violence and xenophobia. This article exposes the deficiencies and duplicity of local goverment policy and the lack of concepts relating to inmigration and integration of foreigners in a city with an elevated number of then deficits that are only coreved by initiatives of bases created by the immigrants thenselves. However, an alternative in the long run continues being the recognition of multiculturality and the creation of the corresponding town council areas.