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read about what Germany’s new citizenship laws might mean!

On June 27, new citizenship legislation [[link removed]] will come into effect in Germany. The new laws will mean that citizenship is equally available to all regardless of nationality — and allow for dual nationality, which, until now, has not been permitted in Germany.

Writing in Hyphen Online, Lynne Tiller notes that nearly 40 million people residing in Germany are from migrant backgrounds, and many of them are from Muslim-majority countries. Hyphen spoke to three about how the new legislation would impact them.

One, Rohlat Ibrahim, 50, a Kurdish Syrian, said voting rights are important to him (he always votes for the left, and that the left is “like oxygen for Germany”), and shared, “Feelings for my homeland are all but dead.” But another, a 41 year old from Sudan who used a pseudonym, said that he didn’t think a passport would make him feel more German: “When I have the German passport the people that don’t know me will still say that I am not German because I look different. They won’t know that I have the passport and they can see that I am from Africa. I cannot forget my culture; I will always feel Sudanese.”

Projection Onto Palestinians

Writing in +972, Amos Goldberg and Alon Confino argue [[link removed]] that antisemitism at protests on college campuses, while real, has been “heavily inflated,” and that harsh criticism of Israel and Zionism has been conflated with antisemitism.

Goldberg and Confino say that this is not only cynical and hypocritical, and not only hurts the fight against actual antisemitism, but “also allows Israel and its supporters … to deny Israel’s own crimes and violent discourse by inverting and projecting them onto the Palestinians and their supporters, and calling it antisemitism.”

Goldberg and Confino take the readers through the past several months of discourse around antisemitism and demonstrate the way in which charges of antisemitism have been used to shield Israel from criticisms around its war while also putting those criticisms onto those protesting for Palestinian rights. Or, as the authors put it, “Thus, what Israel and its supporters accuse Palestinians of inciting, Israeli officials and public figures are explicitly and openly declaring, and the Israeli army is prosecuting. And while Palestinians and their supporters chant for liberation ‘from the river to the sea,’ Israel is enforcing Jewish supremacy ‘from the river to the sea’ in the form of occupation, annexation, and apartheid.”

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] Love’s Scammers

In New Lines, Snigdha Poonam writes [[link removed]] about fraudsters scamming single women in India.

The story opens with the tale of one woman who believed she was chatting with a British man but in fact “had fallen victim to the Nigerian gift scam, one of the latest in the ever-growing range of romance and matrimonial scams targeting Indian women. At its center is an expensive gift that does not exist.”

Such scams have been carried out in various parts of the country. In addition to losing money, they face “the stigma attached to being single and open to romantic relationships. Once their name enters the public record, they risk having to endure lifelong shaming. Most prefer to suffer in silence.” Poonam makes the case that these particular women were self-possessed and independent — and were effectively being punished for using agency, both by the scammers and by the potential husbands who consider the fact that they are educated or professionally ambitious to be red flags. And fraudsters turn to places like Instagram instead of wedding websites because the latter are family affairs, whereas on social media, they can prey on an isolated woman’s vulnerabilities.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] DEEP DIVE It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s Super Identity!

A “superordinate” identity is one that brings different subgroups together, making them all one group. But how does doing so change their attitudes toward outgroups?

That is the question at the core of a new study [[link removed]], “European identity's effect on immigration attitudes: Testing the predictions of the common Ingroup identity model versus ingroup projection model,” written by K. Amber Curtis and recently published in Political Psychology.

The common ingroup identity model (CIIM) predicts that such reorganization would “ameliorate outgroup bias” by lowering intergroup threat. On the other hand, the ingroup project model (IPM) says it will exacerbate outgroup bias, since groups will project their own characteristics onto the new superordinate group and thus more strongly dislike the former outgroup for not fitting in.

Curtis suggests that both can be correct depending on conditions. But which describes European identity? By looking at data from an original 2015 Political Attitudes and Identities Survey carried out in Germany, Poland, and the United Kingdom, Curtis found that increased identification with Europe almost always came with a better outlook toward outgroup immigrants, even for those more predisposed to ingroup projection.

The three countries were selected to “maximize variation” on experience with migration, time as EU members, and relationship to the EU. International Polling Firm Opinium LLP sent Curtis’s online survey to 2002 standing panelists in Germany and Poland and 1020 United Kingdom-based respondents. Respondents got “a battery of items probing sentiments towards 25 different types of immigrants.”

They were also asked to say how strongly they identified with Europe, their nation, or their region on a scale of one to seven. Curtis also “generated a series of proxies for ingroup projections,” asking things like whether respondents believed being European meant a certain cultural heritage and about respondents’ ethnic and religious background. Respondents also shared their attitudes toward immigrants.

This new evidence supports the CIIM over the IPM, Curtis writes, “by showing that a collective identity improves intergroup relations by mitigating prejudice.” Curtis thus suggests that it would behoove the European Union to continue to help member states break down the East-West divide, emphasizing what they have in common and that they have a shared project.

Curtis suggests that future researchers widen the net, looking at the European Union more generally or looking at regions outside the European Union. Curtis also cautioned that the findings in this study couldn’t speak to the causal relationship, though future research might, and welcomed deeper dives into ingroup projections (for example, other studies have suggested that “national and European identity are less compatible in contexts of low trust in EU institutions, high inequality, more restrictive immigration policies, and a communist past”).

Curtis is also interested in the “specific mechanism” that makes European identification be associated with pro-immigrant attitudes. For now, though, Curtis’s study suggests that a new “we” makes the “other” seem less othered, something for politicians and policymakers alike to keep in mind.

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Narayani Sritharan and Timmy Tasler asked [[link removed]] why sanctions have not stopped atrocities in Myanmar. The two noted that the sanctions were political and economic, and “struggled to change social factors that facilitated the genocide, such as deep-seated anti-Rohingya racism.” Sanctions were also, according to the authors, hindered by a lack of international coordination. They also pointed out that the government of Myanmar is “well-insulated from foreign pressure compared to democratic governments.” The authors argued that the United States needs to reevaluate the role of sanctions in its Myanmar policy, and also differentiate between harming Myanmar’s military and helping its victims.

Camille Pohle looked at [[link removed]] whether the United States can gain some advantage over China in the Pacific Islands. Pohle made the case that the United States “needs to facilitate more meetings between the president of the United States and regional leaders, preferably one-on-one,” and that these regional leaders often do get one-on-one meetings with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Pohle also warned that “the United States should not expect China’s pressure to let up.” Pohle also offered that improving American rhetoric matters, too.

Gerry Hadden reported [[link removed]] on a French group for a different kind of addict: people who are worried about their consumption habits. Its founder, Julien Lamy, says the group “means recognizing that we’re participating in a system that’s destroying life on our planet” and aims to “break through our denial.” Lamy believes capitalism is a particularly tough “addiction” to break, so embedded is it in our everyday lives. And so, to not feel overwhelmed, “Lamy suggests people take small steps to reduce their impact just to feel better in their personal lives, such as biking to work or cutting back on red meat.”

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The earthy apple of my eye [[link removed]].

Do not go to Transylvania for this [[link removed]].

The future is now [[link removed]].

You need to be Gouldmaxxing [[link removed]].

A picture’s [[link removed]] worth 1,000 party registrations.

Meanwhile, on Rat Twitter [[link removed]].

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Critical State is written by Emily Tamkin with Inkstick Media.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news and insights from PRX and GBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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