Dr. Dagmar Soennecken

CCGES Faculty Affiliate Dagmar Soennecken (School of Public Policy and Adminstration) has contributed an article to the winter edition of the Canadian European Union Centres of Excellence Newsletter analyzing both German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s recent remarks pronouncing multiculturalism “an absolute failure” and the international response to these statments.

“Merkel’s Integration Rhetoric” argues that much of the reaction to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s recent statement labeling multiculturalism an “absolute failure” has failed to take the specifics of the German context into account, preferring to use the remarks as ammunition in attacks on the shortcomings of multiculturalism in a variety of national settings. In her article, Dr. Soennecken reveals some of the history and domestic politics which motivated Chancellor Merkel’s strong remarks and suggests that removing these statements from context is not especially useful.