Glossary for the Racism Monitor Website

This glossary is intended to provide context for common terms used in research on discrimination and racism in Germany. The entries reflect the current state of research but are not intended to be exhaustive and may be supplemented or revised. It covers both conceptual and methodological categories.

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Anti-Semitism functions as a hegemonic discourse for explaining the world, which, through the personalization of abstract processes (Adorno 2024; Horkheimer & Adorno 2022), divides the world Manichaeistically into good and evil. As a “bridge ideology,” it connects social milieus by using the figure of the “third party” (Holz, 2001) as a universal enemy image to deflect internal contradictions outward through pathic projection. In post-migrant society, it facilitates, through indirect communication (Bergmann, 1986), a false consensus that can serve both to deflect guilt within the majority society and to help process experiences of marginalization (Messerschmidt, 2014) through victim competition.

Beyond this discursive core, antisemitism manifests itself as a real social practice and as an institutional power dynamic that severely restricts the daily lives of affected Jewish people through discrimination, exclusion, and physical attacks. It is structured by a “Goy normativity” that establishes non-Jewish ways of life as the invisible, privileged norm and either renders Jewish experience invisible or marks it as a deviant special case (Coffey & Laumann, 2023; Kranz & Schaum, 2024). In its most radical form, it remains an eliminatory project that, through the reactivation of anti-Jewish motifs, aims at physical annihilation.

Sources:

  • Adorno, T. W. (2024). On Combating Antisemitism Today. Suhrkamp.
  • Bergmann, W., & Erb, R. (1986). Communication Latency, Morality, and Public Opinion. Theoretical Reflections on Antisemitism in the Federal Republic of Germany. Cologne Journal of Sociology and Social Psychology, 38(2), 223–246.
  • Coffey, J., & Laumann, V. (2023). Goj-Normativity: Why We Must Talk About Antisemitism Differently (2nd ed.). Berlin: Verbrecher Verlag.
  • Holz, K. (2001). National Antisemitism: The Sociology of Knowledge of a Worldview. Hamburger Edition.
  • Horkheimer, M., & Adorno, T. W. (2022). Dialectic of Enlightenment. Philosophical Fragments (26th ed.). Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag.
  • Kranz, D., & Schaum, I. (2024). A Blank Space in Contemporary Jewish Life, a Blank Space in Israel: Goy Normativity, Research on Antisemitism and Racism. In RfM Debate 2024: Toward a Stronger Connection Between Research on Racism and Antisemitism. Berlin: Rat für Migration e.V.
  • Messerschmidt, A. (2014). Educational Work in Addressing Contemporary Antisemitism. *Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte*, 64(28–30), 38–44.

The acronym BIPoC stands for “Black, Indigenous, People of Color.” The terms “Black,” “Indigenous,” and “People of Color” (PoC) are political self-identifiers used by people who experience racism. The acronym originated within the anti-racist movements of the 1960s in the United States and emphasizes shared experiences and political alliances.

The term PoC has been used increasingly in Germany since the 1990s. This self-identification made it clear that racism continued to have an impact even after 1945 and is often obscured by an unreflective whiteness that is perceived as “neutral.” Even before this concept of solidarity emerged, there were already terms that people of migrant backgrounds used to identify themselves and thus resist racist labels imposed by others, such as Afro-Germans/Black Germans, Kanak/Kanake, and Asian Germans.

Sources:

  • Eggers, Maureen Maisha/Kilomba, Grada/Piesche, Peggy/Arndt, Susan (eds.) (2020): Myths, Masks, and Subjects: Critical Whiteness Studies in Germany, 3rd ed., Münster: Unrast.
  • Ha, Noa K. “People of Color.” Inventory of Migration Terms, www.migrationsbegriffe.de/peopleofcolor, (last accessed: Nov. 13, 2023) (2023).
  • Kilomba, Grada (2008): *Plantation Memories: Episodes of Everyday Racism*, Münster: Unrast.

The abbreviation BIW*oC stands for “Black, Indigenous, Women* of Color.” For more information, see BIPoC.

The term “colorblindness” describes the phenomenon of ignoring racially based power dynamics. Typical statements in this context include: “To me, all people are equal” or “I don’t see skin color.” Even if there may be good intentions behind the conceptual assumption of universal equality among all people, such a perspective leads to the denial of differences and unequal treatment that actually exist, and makes it more difficult to talk about them and take action against them.

Sources:

  • Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo (2003): Racism Without Racists. Color-blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
  • Carr, Leslie G. (1997): "Color-blind" Racism, Thousand Oaks, Cal.: Sage.

Unlike other participatory research approaches, community-based participatory research (CBPR) aims to involve communities with experiences relevant to the research—and, depending on the study design, practitioners as well—in the entire research process to the greatest extent possible. Participation is intended to encompass the development of research questions, data collection and analysis, as well as the interpretation and application of research findings. The goal is to jointly create new knowledge, promote the empowerment of all participants, and develop strategies for action to improve the social situation of the participating communities. The methodological principles of CBPR include an explicit call to critically reflect on issues of power and disadvantage across various dimensions (including race) in every phase of the research. CBPR thus focuses on the research process itself, since racism and other processes that cause social inequality can also be reproduced in the collaboration during the research process.

Sources:

  • Von Unger, Hella (2014): Participatory Research: An Introduction to Research Practice, Wiesbaden: Springer VS.

The term “diaspora” comes from Greek and means “dispersion” or “scattering.” It was originally used to describe the exile of Jewish people and their dispersion across different parts of the world. At that time, the term primarily carried negative connotations, as it stood for involuntary life in exile (Mayer 2015: 8). Since then, the usage and meaning of the term have evolved and broadened, and its definition continues to be debated. William Safran (1991: 83f.) attempted to capture this shift in meaning by developing a definition based on six criteria. For him, a diaspora is a community of migrants scattered across at least two locations who share a common memory and vision of their homeland, experience discrimination in the host country, wish to return to their homeland, want to rebuild their homeland, and are united by a sense of group belonging tied to their homeland and a spirit of solidarity. This systematization has been criticized because it does not apply to many communities and, in particular, because the criterion of the desire to return is no longer relevant (Mayer 2015: 10).

Sources:

  • Mayer, Ruth (2015): Diaspora: A Critical Definition, Bielefeld: transcript Verlag.
  • Safran, William (1991): “Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return,” in:

The gerund “demarginalizing” refers to the phenomenon of marginalization, in which structurally defined groups of people are pushed to the margins of society. In concrete terms, this means a loss of resources and greater difficulty in participating in society. The concept of demarginalization was largely coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989). She highlights the marginalization of Black women in feminist theory and anti-racist politics and advocates for placing the most marginalized groups at the center and addressing the intersection of various dimensions of inequality, such as racism and sexism. Demarginalization thus refers to the reversal of marginalization by placing marginalized people and their experiences at the center.

Sources:

  • Crenshaw, Kimberlé W. (1989): “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics,” in: University of Chicago Legal Forum 1 (1989), pp. 139–167.

The categories of “disability” (physical and mental impairment) and “ability” are used to label bodies. They serve to justify the unequal distribution of resources and power within a normative health and social system. “Dis/ability” is thus a system for categorizing bodies as “able-bodied” or “disabled” and disciplining them accordingly (Hall 2011: 17).

Sources:

  • Hall, Kim Q. (2011): Feminist Disability Studies, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Essentialization involves viewing certain perceived characteristics of a person, a group, etc., as inherent to them. Through stereotypical attributions, an “ideological homogenization of racially and ethnically essentialized groups” takes place (ibid.). Historically, this also gave rise to new collective identity constructs among colonized subjects. These collective identities were used, for example, to capture the shared suffering resulting from the transatlantic slave trade (ibid.: 142f.). The majority society bears responsibility for the invention of a cultural identity for the exploited and discriminated-against group (ibid.). “Racial essentialism” is based on the assumption that biological nature or cultural characteristics differ between various ethnic groups (Soylu et al. 2017: 2). “Strategic essentialism” is described as a “collective, performative, and politically goal-oriented response by postcolonial actors to homogenizing colonial attributions of identity” (Mackenthun 2017: 142).

Sources:

  • Harris, Angela P. (1990): “Race and essentialism in feminist legal theory,” in: Stanford Law Review 42.3, pp. 581–616.
  • Ho, Arnold K./Roberts, Steven O./Gelman, Susan A. (2015): “Essentialism and racial bias jointly contribute to the categorization of multiracial individuals,” in: Psychological Science 26.10, pp. 1639–1645.
  • Mackenthun, Gesa (2017): “Essentialism, strategic,” in: Handbook of Postcolonialism and Literature, Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, pp. 142–144.
  • Soylu Yalcinkaya, Nur/Estrada-Villalta, Sara/Adams, Glenn (2017): “The (Biological or Cultural) Essence of Essentialism: Implications for Policy Support Among Dominant and Subordinated Groups,” in: Frontiers in Psychology 8, doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00900.

The concept of “ethnicity” refers to the self-identification and/or identification by others of social groups based on an assumed shared past, collective experiences, or sociocultural characteristics such as language or religion. The result of these attributions is referred to as an “ethnic group” (see Cashmore 2008). The term “ethnic community” is sometimes used synonymously. According to Max Weber (1980), the concept of ethnicity encompasses the subjective belief in a common ancestry. It has since evolved from essentialist-biological references toward constructivist approaches.

Sources:

  • Cashmore, Ellis (ed.) (2008): Encyclopedia of Race and Ethnic Studies, London: Routledge.
  • Weber, Max (1980 [1922]): Economy and Society, Tübingen: Mohr.

The concept of “ethnicization” describes the classification of individuals into an “ethnic group” based on certain characteristics. This can involve both self-ethnicization and external ethnicization (Migrationsrat Berlin e.V. 2020). The concept of “ethnicization” is also used to describe how social conflicts and problems—such as sexual violence or crime—are attributed to ethnic groups (see Sanders et al. 2020; Jäger 2003; Jennissen/Zech 2022). It is thus a mechanism similar to that of culturalization.

Sources:

  • Jäger, Margarete (2003): “Criticism of Patriarchy in the Discourse on Immigration: An Analysis of Discourse Intertwining,” in: Handbook of Social Science Discourse Analysis [Online], Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, pp. 421–437.
  • Jennissen, Tom/Zech, Louisa (2022): “The Myth of ‘Clan Crime’: The Ethnicization of Crime,” in: CILIP 129, August 12, 2022, www.cilip.de/2022/08/12/mythos-clankriminalitaet-die-ethnisierung-von-kriminalitaet/ (last accessed: June 22, 2023).
  • Migrationsrat Berlin e.V. (2020): “Ethnicization,” in: Glossary of Terms, www.migrationsrat.de/glossar/ethnisierung/ (last accessed: June 7, 2023).
  • Sanders, Eike et al. (2020): Women’s* Rights and Misogyny: Anti-feminism and the Ethnicization of Violence, 2nd ed., Berlin: Verbrecher Verlag.

Exoticization is a form of othering. It involves attributing certain characteristics—such as “a special connection to nature, liberal sexuality, healthy physicality, or emotionality”—to racialized people and using them as the basis for their supposed otherness. Conversely, these attributions serve to reinforce the identity of white individuals (IDA e.V.). Exoticization is evident, for example, in non-fiction books for children and adolescents, in which people from certain regions are associated with group constructs. A “causal link between appearance and origin” is constructed, and racist images are reproduced through exoticization. For example, Black people were depicted as a population group living in “village structures without stone buildings” and characterized as having “promiscuous sexuality” (Fereidooni 2017: 256, 259). Exoticization also manifests itself in a “fascination with the ‘foreign’” and the desire to consume this supposed “otherness” (IDA e.V.).

Sources:

  • Fereidooni, Karim/El, Meral (eds.) (2017): Critique of Racism and Forms of Resistance, Wiesbaden: Springer VS
  • Information and Documentation Center for Anti-Racism Work (IDA) e.V.: Glossary, www.idaev.de/recherchetools/glossar (last accessed: November 13, 2023).

Femonationalism is a term coined by sociologist Sara R. Farris to describe “feminist and femocratic nationalism.” Specifically, it refers to the exploitation of feminist issues by nationalists and neoliberals in anti-Islamic and anti-immigration (political) campaigns, as well as to the participation of certain feminists in the stigmatization of Muslim men under the guise of gender equality. The concept encompasses both the instrumentalization of gender equality by right-wing parties in Western Europe to advance racist agendas and the participation of prominent feminists, for example, in portraying Islam as an inherently misogynistic religion. Farris thus understands femonationalism as an ideology produced by a specific economic logic, which arises from the convergence of various political projects (see Farris 2017: 4–6).

Sources:

  • Farris, Sara R. (2017): In the Name of Women’s Rights. The Rise of Femonationalism, North Carolina: Duke University Press.

The term “frame” was coined by the American sociologist Erving Goffman in 1974 and describes a constructed perception of reality. Accordingly, frames are “horizons of meaning [...], which highlight certain information and positions while obscuring others” (Matthes 2014: 10). Frames are based on selection and salience because they adopt a specific perspective on problems, interpretations, and evaluations in order to communicate a particular message (Entman 1993: 52).

Sources:

The term “genocide” (from the Ancient Greek genos, meaning “race,” “tribe,” “descendant,” “clan,” or “people,” and the Latin caedere, meaning “to kill,” murder)) or “genocide” refers to the act of carrying out the intent to murder, in its entirety, a national, ethnic, religious, political, social, gender-based, or economic group—as defined by the perpetrator—regardless of how successful this act may be. The term was first coined in 1944 during World War II by Raphael Lemkin, inspired by the extermination of the Armenians (1915–1916) and the Nazi extermination of European Jews, the Holocaust (1941–1945). He coined the term in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which was adopted as a resolution by the United Nations General Assembly on December 9, 1948, and entered into force as a treaty on January 12, January 1951 as a treaty, and has since been the subject of numerous scholarly debates that classify the concept of genocide within static or dynamic (legal) frameworks.

Sources:

  • Jones, Adam (2006): Genocide. A Comprehensive Introduction, London/New York: Routledge.

Cultures possess different bodies of knowledge, modes of communication, value systems, and so on. Interculturality refers to the exchange between different cultures that come into contact with one another. Interculturality occurs when cultures interact with one another, exchange knowledge, and adapt to one another for the duration of the interaction. This interaction can lead to new forms of knowledge or behavior, but it can also lead to complications. It always involves the construction of and awareness regarding both one’s own culture and that of others. The situation is different with transculturality, which views cultures as mutually influencing one another through modern developments such as globalization, thereby dissolving the boundaries between individual cultures. In contrast, multiculturalism refers to the coexistence of different, homogeneous cultures within a heterogeneous society.

Sources:

  • Neubert, Stefan/Roth, Hans-Joachim/Yildiz, Erol (eds.) (2002): Multiculturalism in Debate: Recent Contributions to a Controversial Concept, Opladen: Leske und Budrich.
  • Thomas, Alexander/Kinast, Eva-Ulrike/Schroll-Machl, Sylvia (eds.) (2005): Handbook of Intercultural Communication and Cooperation, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, doi.org/10.13109/9783666461866.

Intersectionality refers to the interrelationships and overlaps (intersections) among multiple dimensions of inequality within social power and dominance structures. Intersectionality should not be understood as the sum of categories of inequality, but rather refers to the mutual reinforcement and overlap of various dimensions of inequality in social power relations, such as gender, ethnicity, age, or class.

Sources:

  • Degele, Nina/Winker, Gabriele (2010): Intersectionality: An Analysis of Social Inequalities, Bielefeld: transcript Verlag.

In empirical social research, an “item” refers to a single question, statement, or task in a test or questionnaire. The individual items are assigned to the characteristics to be measured. The various possible answers or responses for each item have a defined value. Using various mathematical operations, these values can then be used to draw conclusions about the distribution and magnitude of the measured characteristics.

Sources:

  • Diekmann, Andreas (2007): Empirical Social Research: Fundamentals, Methods, Applications, Reinbek: Rowohlt.

“Culturalization” refers to a presumed causal relationship between the origins of a social group—conceived as coherent—and the social actions of its members. The reference to culture presupposes a difference (compared to the dominant society) that is intended to justify special treatment for the group in question. By attributing a collective identity, social space is symbolically defined and subdivided, and individuals and groups are constructed as predictable entities. The association of cultural categories with certain personality traits and abilities (e.g., temperament, diligence, athleticism) treats these characteristics as unchangeable, partly biological traits of a group, thereby obscuring the racist nature of the statements or actions that accompany them. For those affected, culturalization can have the same consequences as overtly racist discrimination.

Sources:

 

The “matrix of domination” is a concept developed by Patricia Hill Collins (2014: 276) to explain how racist, sexist, and classist oppression are interrelated and organized. The matrix comprises four domains of power, each of which performs specific functions: While the structural domain is responsible for the organization of oppression, the disciplinary domain administers oppression. The hegemonic domain justifies oppression, and the interpersonal domain encompasses everyday experiences of oppression (ibid.).

Sources:

  • Hill Collins, Patricia (2014): Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, revised edition, London/New York: Routledge.

This term was introduced by the Federal Statistical Office not only to distinguish between different nationalities in Germany (primarily German and other nationalities), but also to shed light on the migration history of people living in Germany (Will 2022). The goal was to include these individuals in population statistics, which was officially implemented following the citizenship reform that took effect in 2000. “Migration background” is an ascribed category and is defined as follows: “A person has a migration background if they themselves or at least one parent do not hold German citizenship by birth” (Federal Statistical Office 2019: 4). The term describes a heterogeneous group and refers to people of non-German origin (Razum/Spallek 2009). The term does not differentiate based on ethnic origin (which, for example, can lead to racist, anti-Roma, anti-Semitic, or anti-Muslim characterizations) and thus excludes diverse experiences. For example, people may experience racism without having a migration background (Pürckhauer 2022). This applies in particular to many Black Germans whose families have lived in Germany for several generations. Conversely, many people fall into the “migrant background” category who are not identified as racialized—such as white people who immigrated from Denmark themselves or whose parents did so.

Sources:

In the context of discourse and media studies, normalization refers to the process by which statements, positions, or worldviews that were initially considered extreme or marginal come to be gradually perceived as self-evident or acceptable. This process often unfolds insidiously and is facilitated by repetition in media debates (Wodak, 2015).

For example, if racist interpretive patterns are repeated over a long period of time in the media or on social networks and are rarely questioned, they can gain acceptance in the public perception without this necessarily being consciously recognized (Wodak, 2018). Research examines how such shifts arise and what societal consequences they have.

Sources:

  • Wodak, Ruth (2015): “Normalization to the Right”: Political Discourse at the Intersection of Neoliberalism, Populism, and Critical Public Sphere, in: Linguistik Online, 73(4), https://doi.org/10.13092/lo.73.2191.
  • Wodak, Ruth (2018): From the Margins to the Center—“Shameless Normalization,” in: Politische Vierteljahresschrift, 59(2), pp. 323–335, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11615-018-0079-7.

In a quantitative survey, if information cannot be obtained from a person, this is referred to as a nonresponse. The nonresponse rate measures the proportion of these individuals relative to the target sample (Häder 2015: 178).

Sources:

  • Häder, Michael (2015): Empirical Social Research: An Introduction, 3rd edition, Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien.

A Large Language Model (LLM) is an AI system that has been trained to understand human language and generate text on its own. This is achieved by using very large amounts of text data, from which the model learns typical linguistic patterns and relationships (Thapa et al., 2025).

LLMs can, for example, answer questions, summarize texts, translate content, or generate new texts (Törnberg, 2024). They are used in chatbots, digital assistants, and text analysis applications, among other things. However, LLMs do not “understand” language in the human sense; rather, they recognize statistical patterns within it.

Sources:

  • Thapa, Surendrabikram/Shiwakoti, Shuvam/Shah, Suraj Bahadur/Adhikari, Sunil/Veeramani, Hariram/Nasim, Mehwish/Naseem, Usman (2025): Large Language Models (LLM) in Computational Social Science: Prospects, Current State, and Challenges, in: Social Network Analysis and Mining, 15(1), 4, https://doi.org/10.1007/s13278-025-01428-9.
  • Törnberg, Petter (2024): How to Use Large-Language Models for Text Analysis, London: SAGE Publications Ltd.

The term “Orientalism” critically highlights the way in which so-called images of the Orient are constructed in Western societies—in everyday life, in art, and in academia. These images are shaped by colonial stereotypes. The term traces back to the 1978 book *Orientalism* by the American literary scholar Edward Said. In it, Said describes the origin of Western images of the Orient as a process of “othering” (see below). This means that “the West” constructs “the Orient” as a negative mirror image within the context of (post)colonial power relations. One of Said’s central conclusions is that this dichotomous relationship between the Occident and the Orient permeates the entire European tradition of thought. The “Orient” is always imagined as the exotic Other, devoid of historical context. Furthermore, its discursive construction as a contrast is necessary to justify the “West’s” self-perception.

Sources:

  • Attia, Iman (2007): Images of the Orient and Islam—Interdisciplinary Contributions to Orientalism and Anti-Muslim Racism, Münster: Unrast Verlag.

  • Said, Edward (1981): Orientalism, Berlin: Ullstein Verlag.

“Othering” refers to the process by which people are constructed as “others” and set apart from and devalued relative to an “us.” Through this process, people are reduced to socially constructed categories, such as class, religious beliefs, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, nationality, or “race.” These categories are thereby naturalized and serve to devalue and exclude certain individuals and groups from a “we” group that is thereby elevated and normatively constructed.

Sources:

  • Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (1985): “The Rani of Sirmur: An Essay in Reading the Archives,” in: History and Theory 24.3, pp. 247–272.

Oversampling refers to the deliberate overrepresentation of certain population groups in a survey dataset in order to obtain a sufficient number of cases for robust analyses. In the NaDiRa.panel, this was achieved through disproportionate sampling of individuals with a migration background as well as through the use of so-called onomastic methods: These methods use first and last names to specifically include people from certain ethnic or cultural backgrounds in the sample. As a result, individuals of Asian, Muslim, or Black descent, among others, are represented more frequently in the sample.

The NaDiRa.panel thus deliberately takes a methodological approach that counters the underrepresentation of these groups found in many population surveys. The higher number of cases allows for more nuanced insights into living conditions and experiences in areas such as health, housing, work, and education, as well as experiences with discrimination and racism. This enables analyses that often cannot be conducted—or can only be conducted to a limited extent—in other German population surveys due to small sample sizes (Ruland et al. 2022; DeZIM 2023).

Sources:

  • DeZIM – German Center for Integration and Migration Research (2023): Racism and Its Symptoms. Report of the National Discrimination and Racism Monitor, Berlin: DeZIM.
  • Humpert, Andreas and Schneiderheinze, Klaus (2000): Sampling for Telephone Surveys of Immigrants. Applications of Name Research. In: ZUMANachrichten 24 (47), pp. 36–63
  • Ruland, Michael/Link, Sebastian/Malina, Aneta (2022): Methodological Report. Establishment of an Online Access Panel and Initial Survey in the National Discrimination and Racism Monitor (NaDiRa), Bonn: infas Institute for Applied Social Sciences.

The acronym PoC stands for “Person of Color” in the singular and “People of Color” in the plural. The term is a political self-identification and describes individuals and groups who are perceived as non-white and, as a result, experience racism.

For more information, see BIPoC.

In English-language political science, a distinction is made between three levels of politics: polity, politics, and policy. The “policy” level refers to the substantive dimension, which encompasses specific political measures within policy areas such as economic policy or immigration policy.

Sources:

  • Schubert, Klaus/Klein, Martina (2021): The Political Science Lexicon: Terms, Facts, and Context, 8th edition, Bonn: Dietz.
  • von Alemann, Ulrich (1994): Political Terms, in: von Alemann, Ulrich/Loss, Klaus/Vowe, Gerhard (eds.): Politics, Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.

The term “post-migrant” was coined in Germany by theater director Shermin Langhoff and her concept of post-migrant theater (see Foroutan 2019: 46). In the social sciences, the term is also used as an analytical perspective. It is not intended to suggest an end to migration, but rather to serve as a catalyst for examining the processes that take place in a society following migration (ibid.: 54). The goal is to “question the implicit hierarchy and the deficit-based, binary categorization into ‘established’ and ‘outsiders’ as societies become increasingly pluralistic” (ibid.: 55).

Sources:

  • Foroutan, Naika (2019): The Post-Migrant Society: A Promise of Pluralistic Democracy, Bielefeld: transcript Verlag.

Human “races” do not exist in the biological sense. The biological concept of race has long been scientifically discredited and is itself based on racism. In a departure, in particular, from the “race doctrine” that culminated in the Nazi “Nuremberg Race Laws,” the term “race” is generally no longer used in Germany and—due to its historical baggage—is subject to a strong taboo. Nevertheless, the word still appears as a legal term in anti-discrimination provisions such as Article 3, Section 3 of the Basic Law. In the English-speaking world, there is a longer and more diverse tradition that seeks to  beyond biological concepts and to reinterpret it instead as a socially constructed category, which is considered indispensable for the analysis of racist systems of oppression and emancipatory movements. Race, and in particular “racial consciousness”—that is, the process by which people become politically aware of their racialization and discrimination—can thus become the basis for practices of resistance against racism. Race thereby becomes part of self-definition and fosters identity for political self-articulation.

Against this backdrop, translating the terms “race” and “racial” into German proves to be a complex task. This is evident, among other things, in different spelling conventions: ranging from the use of the original English terms to various ways of emphasizing “Rasse” (e.g., italics, quotation marks), which are intended to convey this translational distance.

Sources:

  • Arndt, Susan/Ofuatey-Alazard, Nadja (eds.) (2011): How Racism Speaks Through Words: The Legacy of Colonialism in the German Language Knowledge Archive. A Critical Reference Work, 1st ed., Münster: Unrast.
  • Stam, Robert/Shohat, Ella (2012): Race in Translation: Culture Wars Around the Postcolonial Atlantic, New York: NYU Press.

In German research on racism, “racialization”—sometimes also referred to as “racialization” or “racization”—is understood as the process of differentiating people into distinct groups based on specific characteristics. These characteristics vary historically and relate to different facets of human existence. Over time, the following characteristics have become established: “a) morpho-physiological characteristics (these may be visible or invisible; they are considered natural/evident and suitable for distinguishing between groups); b) sociological characteristics (languages, economic systems, customs, diet, clothing, music, etc.); c) symbolic and spiritual characteristics (political practices, attitudes, worldviews, cultural and religious behaviors, etc.), as well as d) imaginary characteristics (such as phantasmal notions of occult power, etc.)" (Guillaumin 1991: 167; 1992: 83). These characteristics and their manifestations are regarded as “natural” and biologically reproducible, as are the resulting group constructions.

Robert Miles, who has significantly shaped the concept of racialization, refers to the construction of races as “race-making” (Miles 1992: 23), whereby individuals are assigned to a specific “race” according to a purely ideological definition. It is, therefore, a practice of “making ‘race’” that powerfully distinguishes between groups (ibid.: 22). Mark Terkessidis refers to this as a “primordial form of the naturalization of differences” (Terkessidis 2004: 98). The nature of the groups is thereby defined in a mirror-image relationship to one another. It is controversial whether an explicit negative evaluation of the respective groups or their members is required, or whether the described type of difference construction is not always based on at least an implied evaluation (ibid.: 99). In some cases, an explicit attribution of meaning through stereotyping—that is, the ascription of certain characteristics—is required. Racialization thus describes both a process in which racist knowledge is produced and the structure of this racist knowledge.

Sources:

  • Eggers, Maureen Maisha (2005): “Racialized Power Differences as an Interpretive Perspective in Critical Whiteness Studies in Germany,” in: ibid. et al.: Myths, Masks, and Subjects. Critical Whiteness Studies in Germany, Münster: Unrast, pp. 56–72.
  • Essed, Philomena (1991): *Understanding Everyday Racism: An Interdisciplinary Theory*, London: Sage.
  • Guillaumin, Colette (1991): “RACE. The Word and the Concept,” in: Uli Bielefeld (ed.): The Self and the Other. New Racism in the Old World?, Hamburg: Junius, pp. 159–173.
  • Miles, Robert (1992): “The Connection Between Racism and Nationalism: The Perspective of the United Kingdom,” in: Rudolf Leiprecht (ed.): Among Others: Racism and Youth Work, Duisburg: DISS, pp. 20–43.
  • Terkessidis, Mark (2004): The Banality of Racism, Bielefeld: transcript Verlag.

Racial profiling refers to the practice in which individuals are stopped, searched, or suspected by government authorities—such as the police or security services—based on their actual or perceived ethnic origin, skin color, or religion, rather than on the basis of concrete evidence of a criminal offense (Hunold & Singelnstein, 2022). This practice is considered a form of institutional discrimination.

Racial profiling is often the subject of controversy in media and political debates: While those affected and researchers identify it as a structural problem, others defend it as a legitimate security tool (Arnold et al., 2025). An analysis of these debates sheds light on how racism is embedded in state and societal structures.

Sources:

  • Arnold, Sina/Yendell, Alexander/Salheiser, Axel (2025): Introduction: Racism in German institutions: between denial and emerging accountability, in: Patterns of Prejudice, 59(2–3), pp. 125–132, https://doi.org/10.1080/0031322X.2025.2606500.
  • Hunold, Daniela/Singelnstein, Tobias (eds.) (2022): Racism in the Police: A Scientific Assessment, Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-37133-3.
  • Wa Baile, Mohamed/Dankwa, Serena O./Naguib, Tarek/Purtschert, Patricia/Schilliger, Sarah (eds.) (2019): Racial Profiling: Structural Racism and Anti-Racist Resistance, Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839441459.

 

The working definition of racism provided by the “Expert Council on Anti-Racism” offers a practical framework that serves as the basis for government and internal administrative action by the Federal Government Commissioner for Anti-Racism (Expert Council on Anti-Racism 2025):

Racism is based on a historically developed classification and categorization of people based on certain external characteristics or on actual or perceived culture, ancestry, ethnic or national origin, or religion (essentialization and naturalization). Certain characteristics are attributed to these groups (homogenization), which characterize them and the individuals assigned to them as superior or inferior (hierarchization). Groups categorized as inferior are disparaged and devalued on the basis of negative stereotypes and prejudices. The assignment of people to a specific group leads to a societal perception of them as “belonging” or “foreign” or “not belonging” to Germany, which in turn leads to exclusionary practices and experiences (dichotomization).

The working definition distinguishes three interrelated levels at which racism operates and which influence access to material and immaterial resources:

  • Individual racism arises from conscious and unconscious attitudes and beliefs and manifests itself in statements, actions, and behavior of individuals or groups of people.
  • Structural racism is embedded in state and societal structures—in language, widespread stereotypical assumptions, and the unequal distribution of resources and privileges.
  • Institutional racism arises from legal requirements, organizational structures, and everyday, often unquestioned routines and patterns of behavior in both governmental and nongovernmental institutions.

Individual, structural, and institutional racism are mutually reinforcing.

This perspective can be explored in greater academic depth: Racism refers to a social relationship of power and interpretation that divides people into supposedly natural, immutable groups based on real or attributed characteristics and arranges these groups hierarchically. Following Birgit Rommelspacher, racism can be described as a consensus that operates with—or aligns with—constructions of “race” and that permanently assigns social groups different positions within a hierarchy based on real or attributed differences —to the advantage of the groups that carry out this hierarchization (Rommelspacher 2009).

As Étienne Balibar has shown, contemporary racism often dispenses with the term “race” and instead invokes culture, nation, or religion as supposedly insurmountable differences (“racism without races”). Colonial and biologistic knowledge is thus translated into new, seemingly neutral forms of language, yet it retains its function—the legitimization of unequal treatment and exclusion.

Stuart Hall accordingly describes racism as an ideological discourse that classifies, naturalizes, and fixes difference in order to establish and reproduce social, economic, and political power relations. Racism operates not only at the level of individual prejudices but also structurally and institutionally, for example in laws, administrative practices, or in unequal access to education, employment, and housing.

Sources:

  • Balibar, Étienne (1990): “There Is No Racism Without Races: On the New Forms of Racism,” in: Balibar, Étienne/Wallerstein, Immanuel: Race, Class, Nation: Ambivalent Identities, Hamburg/Berlin: Argument-Verlag, pp. 41–56.
  • Expert Council on Anti-Racism (2025): Working Definition of Racism, edited by the Federal Government Commissioner for Migration, Refugees, Integration, and Anti-Racism, Berlin, https://www.integrationsbeauftragte.de/antirassismus/arbeitsdefinition-rassismus (last accessed: August 6, 2026).
  • Hall, Stuart (1989): “Racism as an Ideological Discourse,” in: Das Argument, 178, pp. 913–921.
  • Rommelspacher, Birgit (2009): “What Is Racism, Anyway?”, in: Melter, Claus/Mecheril, Paul (eds.): Critique of Racism, Vol. 1: Theory and Research on Racism, Schwalbach/Ts.: Wochenschau Verlag, pp. 25–38.

"Racially labeled individuals/groups" is an analytical term used in the NaDiRa.panel to refer to individuals who identify themselves in the survey as Black, Asian, Muslim, or Eastern European. This term serves to group together those groups that may be particularly affected by racist labeling and institutional discrimination in Germany. It does not describe objective or fixed groups, but rather a categorization for research purposes intended to make social labeling processes and associated experiences of racism empirically measurable.

The background to this is that the previously common practice of using migration categories as placeholders for experiences of racism is increasingly coming under criticism. In particular, the official category “migration background” has proven insufficient for adequately capturing the processual nature of experiences of racism (Ahyoud et al. 2018; Will 2022). To capture racial discrimination in a more nuanced way, we therefore need approaches that do not primarily focus on legal status or origin, but rather on societal attributions and social positioning.

One experience-based approach involves collecting self-attributions, as is done in the NaDiRa.panel. This approach enables respondents to make their own self-identifications visible—regardless of whether they are captured in official categories. The underlying self-identifications are not understood merely as individual identity statements, but as expressions of social positioning shaped by historical power relations as well as by experiences of belonging and exclusion.

At the same time, this categorization is necessary for research purposes, yet it remains a construct and has the potential to reinforce social attributions. It is precisely here that a fundamental tension lies at the heart of quantitative racism research: On the one hand, categories are necessary to empirically examine inequalities and discrimination; on the other hand, there is always the risk that the very social lines of difference intended to be analyzed are simultaneously reproduced through their identification and naming.

Sources:

  • Ahyoud, Nasiha/Aikins, Joshua Kwesi/Bartsch, Samera/Bechert, Naomi/Gyamerah, Daniel/Wagner, Lucienne (2018): Those Who Are Not Counted Do Not Count. Anti-Discrimination and Equality Data in an Immigrant Society—An Application-Oriented Introduction, in: Diversity Matters—Diversity in Leadership, Citizens For Europe (eds.), Berlin.
  • Brubaker, Rogers (2002): “Ethnicity without groups,” in: European Journal of Sociology, 43(2), pp. 163–189, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003975602001066.
  • Kim, Tae Jun/Sinanoğlu, Cihan/Steinhilper, Elias (2025): Committed to Combating Racism: Potential and Practice in Germany, DeZIM Data.insights 18, Berlin: German Center for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM).
  • Will, Anne-Kathrin (2022): “Migration Background,” in: Inken Bartels/Isabella Löhr/Christiane Reinecke/Philipp Schäfer/Laura Stielike (eds.), Inventory of Migration Terms, Jan. 20, 2022.

“Black” is a political self-designation used to describe a specific social position and collective experience shaped by racism. To make it clear that the term “Black” refers not to an individual position but to a social position—and to the shared experiences resulting from anti-Black racism—it is capitalized.

Sources:

  • Bute, Evangeline/Harmer, H. J. P. (2016): The Black Handbook: The People, History, and Politics of Africa and the African Diaspora, London: Bloomsbury Academic.
  • Neue deutsche Medienmacher*innen (n.d.): “Black People, Black Person,” in: NdM Glossary, glossar.neuemedienmacher.de/glossar/schwarze-menschen-schwarzer/ (last accessed: Aug. 15, 2022).
  • Oguntoye, Katharina/Opitz, May/Schultz, Dagmar (eds.), with a foreword by Audre Lorde (1986): Showing Their Colors: Afro-German Women on the Trail of Their History, Berlin: Orlanda

 

Anti-racist resistance movements and migrant movements remained invisible in the media and public discourse for a long time. Migrant self-organizations are important for political action and for empowering those affected; they are a coalition of actors with shared interests and motivations: “Self-organization is rooted in personal experience, requires participation, and opposes the principle of representation, which is always a form of pretense” (A3 – Initiative Minderheiten 2006: 31). Self-organized groups develop their own definitions and categories, thereby distancing themselves from hegemonic structures in order to communicate their perspective (ibid.: 43). They also engage in networking with NGOs.

Sources:

 

The tendency of survey participants to present a more positive, socially desirable image of themselves by providing false information during an interview or while filling out a questionnaire is referred to as “social desirability bias” (Paulhus 2002). For example, the respondent attempts to meet perceived expectations by downplaying supposedly undesirable behavior or by exaggerating supposedly desirable behavior. In doing so, the person generally bases their responses on the social norms of their own environment (Kreuter/Presser/Tourangeau 2008).

Sources:

  • Kreuter, Frauke/Presser, Stanley/Tourangeau, Roger (2008): “Social desirability bias in CATI, IVR, and web surveys,” in: Public Opinion Quarterly 72.5, pp. 847–865.
  • Paulhus, Delroy L. (2002): “Socially Desirable Responding: The Evolution of a Construct,” in: H. I. Braun/D. N. Jackson/D. E. Wiley (eds.): The Role of Constructs in Psychological and Educational Measurement, Mahwah, NY: Erlbaum, pp. 49–69.

The term “subaltern” refers to social groups within a society whose agency is severely restricted by the hegemonic, ruling groups of that society. Different subaltern groups may be subjected to varying degrees of subjugation. The term, as it is currently used in the social sciences, can be traced back to Antonio Gramsci (1991–2002) and was later taken up in postcolonial theory, particularly by Gayatri Spivak (2008).

Sources:

  • Gramsci, Antonio (1991–2002): Prison Notebooks, ed. by Klaus Bochmann and Wolfgang Fritz Haug, 10 vols., Hamburg: Argument-Verlag.
  • Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (2008): *Can the Subaltern Speak? Postcolonialism and Subaltern Articulation*, Vienna/Berlin: Turia + Kant.

The concept of gender stems from the assumption that at least some aspects of our understanding of gender are socially constructed and that, consequently, specific binary gender identities are created and reproduced through social practices and processes. Accordingly, practices or identity characteristics can be described as gendered based on their historical coding—as, for example, female or male—with gendering understood as an active, ongoing process.

Sources:

  • Butler, Judith (1991): Gender Trouble, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

“White” and “whiteness” do not describe people’s skin color, but rather their privileged position within the power structure of racism. To make it clear that this refers to a socially and politically powerful position rather than physical markers, “white” is often written in lowercase and italics.

Sources:

  • Eggers, Maureen Maisha/Kilomba, Grada/Piesche, Peggy/Arndt, Susan (eds.) (2020): Myths, Masks, and Subjects: Critical Whiteness Studies in Germany, 3rd ed., Münster: Unrast.

Belonging describes how people perceive themselves and others as part of social, national, or cultural communities, and how these classifications are socially recognized or challenged. Nira Yuval-Davis distinguishes between the emotional experience of belonging (“belonging”) and the “politics of belonging”—the political processes of negotiation, boundary-drawing, and criteria used to determine who is considered to belong and who is not. Belonging is thus not a fixed state, but is continuously socially constructed and is closely linked to issues of racism, nation, and citizenship.

Paul Mecheril expands on this perspective with the concept of natio-ethno-cultural belonging: Belonging is understood here as the result of ongoing processes of attribution through which people are classified more or less “unquestioningly” or as so-called “precarious” members within national, ethnic, and cultural contexts—depending on the extent to which their belonging is questioned by the majority society (Mecheril 2003).

Naika Foroutan has described these negotiations in the context of post-migrant society in Germany: here, she argues, belonging is often negotiated not formally—such as through citizenship—but informally, including through attributions of origin or racist labeling. As a result, even people with German citizenship can be treated as “not belonging.”

Sources:

  • Foroutan, Naika (2019): The Post-Migrant Society. A Promise of Pluralistic Democracy, Bielefeld: transcript Verlag.
  • Mecheril, Paul (2003): Precarious Conditions. On Natio-Ethno-Cultural (Multiple) Belonging, Münster: Waxmann.
  • Yuval-Davis, Nira (2006): “Belonging and the Politics of Belonging,” in: Patterns of Prejudice, 40(3), pp. 197–214.