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Abstract
This paper examines the German (Spät)Aussiedler regime as a long-standing yet evolving form of citizenship restitution situated at the intersection of historical justice and contemporary migration governance. Grounded in Article 116(1) of the 1949 Basic Law and the 1953 Federal Expellees Act, the policy grants ethnic Germans from Central Asia, Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe a legally codified “return” and access to German citizenship. Initially framed as a moral duty toward communities displaced by mid-20th-century upheavals, it has been repeatedly altered since the early 1990s in response to the increasing post-Soviet migration, and shifting state interests, yet remains a durable legal pathway. Adopting a mixed-method, multilevel approach, the paper traces changing narratives, expectations, and contestations around the acquisition of (Spät)Aussiedler citizenship. At the political level, semantic topic modelling of parliamentary debates (1949–2023) reveals shifting justificatory logics—from historical responsibility and demographic needs to concerns about integration, security, and national belonging. At the individual level, semi-structured interviews with twenty interlocutors from Kazakhstan, Romania and Russia illuminate how applicants and their families interpret restitution-based citizenship across two generations, highlighting evolving notions of ancestry, entitlement, mobility, and ambivalent attachments to Germany. Juxtaposing these political and personal perspectives, the paper shows how citizenship restitution seeks to offer a compromise between symbolic redress and migration control. It identifies points of convergence and friction between official narratives and lived experiences, offering broader insights into changing conceptions of migration, citizenship, and historical (in)justice in contemporary Europe.
