Facing high walls – why access to politics is still difficult for people with a migration background

“People with a migration background often first have to overcome a ‘presumption of mistrust’ in politics,” says Iftikhar Malik, a lawyer and member of the Hamburg Parliament for the SPD. Malik was born in Germany, his parents come from Pakistan. He has to overcome people’s reservations time and again. He has been repeatedly confronted with prejudices: that he is misogynistic or has anti-democratic attitudes. “That takes a lot of energy, which I would rather put into political work.”

The results of the research project REPCHANCE – Diversity in Parliaments!, funded by the Robert Bosch Stiftung, show that Malik is not alone in his experience. It analyzed the representation of people with a history of migration in Germany’s  parliaments.

A key finding of the study is that people with a migration background are underrepresented in Germany’s parliaments. While more than one in four (27.2 percent) of the German population has a migration background, this figure is only 11.4 percent among members of the Bundestag. The gap is even greater in the state parliaments, where people with a migration background make up just 7.3 percent.

The researchers also looked for the reasons for this. “Among other things, we asked MPs what circumstances were favorable for their careers,” explains Andreas M. Wüst, Professor of Political Science at Munich University of Applied Sciences and head of the research project. “For example, we asked whether certain funding programs helped them to enter parliament.” According to the researcher, it was surprising that larger, highly formalized support programs were hardly used by many respondents and were viewed critically in some cases. On the other hand, the survey found that mentoring relationships that develop on a personal level are extremely beneficial for a successful political career.

“For people with a history of migration, the walls in politics are often made of concrete,” says Ekin Deligöz, Parliamentary State Secretary in the German Bundestag. She moved to Germany from Turkey with her family when she was a child. She decided to pursue a career in politics and has been a member of the German Bundestag for Alliance 90/The Greens since 1998. As a member of parliament with a migration background, Deligöz repeatedly comes up against limits: “Prejudice and discrimination tendencies are omnipresent in my working environment. No matter what position I take on, I start from the very beginning. A woman with a migration background always has to prove herself,” she says.

The parties are crucial to this situation. Political scientist Wüst attributes a gatekeeper function to them: “Parties are selectors. They use their national lists to determine who has a good chance of entering parliament and who doesn’t,” he says. There are many factors that determine how you end up on one of these lists. In some cases, parties have to fulfill certain proportionality requirements (regions, party wings) or quotas (especially for women), which tend to kick migrant candidates out of the running.

Standing as a directly elected candidate is even more difficult, as Ekin Deligöz notes: “The more direct the election, the fewer opportunities people from underrepresented groups have.” She demands that it must be the duty of the parties to bring them into the public eye and make them visible. “Otherwise, these people won’t stand a chance.”

How well people with a migration background are represented depends heavily on the party in question. Parties on the left of the spectrum have three times as many MPs with such a background, compared with the right spectrum. “MPs with a migration background reported that there are still deficits in parties, particularly with regard to a political career,” says Wüst. “They realize that they don’t have the same opportunities as their colleagues without a migration background. And they believe that there are structures in political parties that make it difficult for them to succeed.” Access to internal party networks is very important for a political career. However, this is particularly difficult for people who do not come from the majority group of society.

There are also other reasons why people with a migration background are less likely to be elected to parliament. For example, they often lack access to informal knowledge about political processes. In the interviews with 60 MPs, the research team learned that many at the start of their political career have insufficient knowledge of how political work is conducted and how to get nominated within parties. “For people with a migration background, a political mandate is also often beyond their imagination,” adds the researcher.

Progress can also be seen in the REPCHANCE survey. Since 1990, the number of MPs with a migration background has increased significantly at both federal and state level. However, there are various stages of development. The proportion of parliamentarians with a migration background in the city states of Hamburg, Berlin, and Bremen is even higher than the proportion of eligible voters with a migration background. Nevertheless, a notable discrepancy exists between the representation of individuals with a migration background in the state parliaments of the western German territorial states and the representation of this population in the population as a whole. The representation gap for people with a migration background is therefore particularly large here.

After an election, people in parliaments often encounter patterns of instrumentalization and discrimination. They are, for example, often entrusted with issues relating to migration – regardless of whether this is actually their area of expertise. It is also striking that, on average, they sit in parliaments for a much shorter period of time: leaving the Bundestag on average after just 1.7 mandates, while MPs without a migration background serve an average of 2.7 mandates. According to the study, the MPs are often not renominated or re-elected. The surveys conducted by Andreas M. Wüst and his team suggest that MPs with a migration background are often expected to take up token positions in parliaments in order to make the respective party appear more diverse and may, accordingly, be regarded as interchangeable by their parties more often than other MPs.

From the perspective of parliamentarian Iftikhar Malik, it is important to find new strategies when it comes to marginalization. “It helped me to realize that I am not alone and that all underrepresented groups are struggling with similar problems,” he says and advises finding allies. Malik is convinced that more diversity in parliaments will benefit everyone in the long term.