- Immigrant Times
- 5 days ago
- 9 min read
Germany without Immigrants: A film describes what the country would look like without immigrants *
The film forces viewers to confront what is hidden behind abstract debates: that millions of people with immigrant backgrounds are woven into German society
By The Immigrant Times
Syrians make up the largest group of foreign doctors in Germany. Some 6,000 live and work in the country after fleeing the civil war in their homeland. Veronica Konadu is Dortmund's first black bus driver, and she wants to encourage others
December 2025: When the Niedersächsische Integrationsrat (Lower Saxony Integration Council) released its short film Deutschland ohne Migranten (Germany Without Migrants) it entered a debate that has become one of a highly charged in today’s German politics. Migration has eclipsed climate policy, economic reform and even foreign affairs as the most divisive issue in the public sphere. It is in this environment, saturated with anxiety and suspicion, that the Integration Council chose to intervene not with a political statement or a data-heavy report, but with a thought experiment: What would Germany look like if everyone with a migration background were suddenly gone?
The film, published on YouTube, offers no narration and no extended argument. Instead, it relies on a visual absence. Everyday scenes of German life appear hollowed out, as if the country had undergone a sudden demographic event. Hospital corridors stand silent. A bakery counter remains empty and unstaffed. Public transport seems suspended in time. The message, though understated, is unmistakable. Without migrants, the everyday infrastructure of Germany collapses, not metaphorically, but literally. It is a portrait of a nation stripped of the people who sustain it.
The political backdrop gives the film a sharper edge. Germany in late 2025 is wrestling with a profound unease about its identity. Although successive governments have acknowledged that migration is essential for the labour market and the country’s ageing population, public sentiment has grown increasingly polarised.
Far-right rhetoric has gone mainstream; centre-left parties are struggling to articulate coherent alternatives; and much of the national conversation is propelled by social media outrage rather than sober analysis. In this climate, the Council’s film operates as both a warning and a challenge. It forces viewers to confront what is often hidden behind abstract debates: that millions of people with migrant backgrounds are woven into the fabric of the country.
This is not the first time Germany has attempted to reflect on its multicultural reality. Over the past two decades, public campaigns have highlighted diversity under slogans such as ‘Germany is diversity’ or Made by Vielfalt’. Yet Deutschland ohne Migranten differs sharply from these earlier efforts. Those campaigns tended to celebrate success stories, showcase smiling families, or emphasise the creativity of a diverse workforce. The new film takes the opposite approach, abandoning optimism for a colder, more unsettled tone. Rather than promoting harmony, it invites the audience to imagine a rupture, and asks who, in such a moment, would be left standing.
The film is also notable for what it avoids. It does not distinguish between skilled workers and asylum seekers, or between new arrivals and third-generation German citizens. In doing so, the film rejects a narrative increasingly common in political discourse, one that sorts migrants into categories of usefulness or legitimacy. Instead, it underscores the idea that modern Germany is not divided into immigrants and Germans. It is a society shaped, in countless ways, by decades of mobility, diversity and demographic change.
Public reactions to the film reflect the broader divisions within the country. Supporters describe it as a necessary intervention, a corrective to the hardening tone of national politics. They see in it a reminder of demographic realities: without immigration, Germany’s social services, manufacturing industries and care sector would face an immediate crisis. For viewers with migrant backgrounds, the film is read almost as an act of recognition, an acknowledgement that they are not guests, but integral to Germany’s social and economic life.
Critics, meanwhile, approach the film from two main angles. Some argue that Germany’s immigration system requires fundamental reform and that a film of this nature glosses over integration challenges. These voices often point to countries such as Canada or Australia, where immigration policy is more explicitly skills-based, and complain that Germany lacks strategic direction.
A second, more strident group rejects the premise entirely. For them, the film represents an unwelcome moral lecture, a political message dressed up as social commentary. They insist that Germany should reduce migration, not celebrate its effects, and regard the film as part of a broader cultural campaign they feel alienated from.
What the film perhaps most vividly exposes is the unresolved tension at the heart of German identity. The country has long struggled with the contradiction between its self-image as a historically ethnic nation and its lived reality as an immigration society. Government policy, demographic data and cultural life all point in one direction; nostalgia, fear and political rhetoric often point in the other. Deutschland ohne Migranten pushes this contradiction to its limit. By presenting a country suddenly emptied of millions of people who live, work and grow up within it, the film invites viewers to recognise the artificiality of imagining Germany as anything other than diverse.
Of course, the film is not without its limitations. Its simplicity may alienate those who feel left out of the national conversation or who believe their concerns about migration are dismissed too easily. It offers no solutions to structural problems: asylum backlogs, housing shortages, unequal access to education, and the slow pace of labour market integration. It does not address the complexities of social cohesion nor the frustrations of local communities grappling with rapid demographic change. Symbolism cannot replace policy, and the Integration Council knows this.
Yet the film’s strength lies precisely in its refusal to engage in technicalities. It insists on a more basic truth: that imagining a Germany purged of migrants is not just dangerous, it is absurd. And in a political climate where fantasies of separation, purity or national retreat are increasingly voiced without embarrassment, such a reminder is neither trivial nor redundant.
Whether the film will reach a wide audience remains uncertain. For now, its impact circulates mainly in municipal networks, integration circles and the digital echo chambers where Germany’s migration debate plays out daily. But even in that limited arena, Deutschland ohne Migranten accomplishes something rare. It forces its viewers, supporters and critics alike, to confront the fragility of the narratives they hold about who belongs in Germany and why. It asks whether the country can continue imagining itself as something other than what it already is.
In the end, the film suggests that the fantasy of a migrant-free Germany is not only morally troubling but practically impossible. The question it raises, though unstated, is whether the nation is prepared to embrace this reality or continue wrestling with a version of itself that no longer exists.
Viewers’ comments
(Translated from German)
Editor’s note: We are publishing here a selection of the comments the film received. What struck us was that most of the positive comments reflect personal experience, while negative comments tend to be more general in nature.
• Why are migrants always seen only as workers? They are also friends, colleagues, neighbours, sometimes even family! Our closest friends have Turkish roots; we’ve known each other for decades, and we would miss them terribly if they were no longer here.
• Our letters are Latin, our numbers are Arabic, and our cultural and political foundations lie in ancient Greece. Our food and entertainment come from all over the world. We are Europeans, and yet in most countries on Earth, we are considered foreigners. Isolationism isn’t meant to strengthen the nation-state; it’s meant to weaken unions of peoples and their cooperation so that the big players can grab the best pieces for themselves.
• Without our nurses, cleaners, kitchen staff, doctors and so on who have a migration background, we would have to close our clinic. I’m sure it’s the same in other hospitals. In fact, in virtually every sector.
• We are Germany. I’m from Turkey myself and have lived here my whole life. I grew up with both German and Turkish cultures, and I’m proud of both. Racism is, and remains, a cancer of the mind. I’m a German Turk and glad about it. It’s a pity that so many people fail to see the value of others.
• I live in Germany, and the topic is migrants. As a Muslim woman, I have experienced the greatest freedom here. I believe Germans are not against hardworking people, I can understand that; even I see that some people lack culture. The behaviour of some women in shops sometimes reminds me of a market in a faraway village. Still, Germans in general are correct and civilised; they accept differences, even if sometimes everything becomes a bit too much for them.
• If fewer low-skilled workers are available, the negotiating power of employers shrinks and that of employees increases. Businesses then have to offer higher wages or better conditions to attract staff. That would drive up wages in low-pay sectors such as gastronomy, cleaning and logistics — meaning Germans would take on those jobs again. And the demand for such services would also decrease disproportionately.
• I can’t even remember the last time I saw a German parcel courier, at least in Berlin. Apart from that, a person’s value does not depend on their job. Thank you for the film.
• I work in a three-shift company with around 800 employees, maybe 50 of them German. People who support the far-right AfD have a screw loose, something’s not right in their heads, and so do their voters.
• Oh, please, let’s not kid ourselves. Of course, there are many exceptions. Some immigrants have been here for decades, who learned the German language and culture, and then there are those who only cause trouble. Some people learned our language and everything else; others refuse everything. Spot the difference…
• Which red-green-brained genius came up with this film? When will people in Germany finally understand that no one has anything against migrants who want to build a life here and do everything to integrate? The issue is with those who just live off the welfare state and those who create all kinds of disorder. What’s so hard to understand? I know enough migrants who agree with me, all lovely, hardworking people I would never want to miss.
• We can make Döner and pizza ourselves. But no more freeloaders and knife-wielders. No one groping our girls at the swimming pool or hitting our kids. We’d be better off without that rabble. And we’d save so much in taxes that we’d have more money for our own children.
• Well, it’s quite simple. ALL people with a migration background should take one week off work, collectively. The country wouldn’t last two days. It would be like putting someone in solitary confinement for three days or letting a few Germans, who keep whining about how bad they have it — spend a week in a refugee shelter. Let’s see what they have to say afterwards.
• I’d like to raise a point. I am a German with a migration background, and I recently noticed that on construction sites, almost exclusively foreigners are working. German construction workers are mostly only seen as supervisors or foremen. The number of German labourers in this sector is noticeably declining. This is a reality we must acknowledge.
• A Germany without foreigners and migrants will no longer exist in the future. Instead of judging people based on their origins, we should consider how to integrate them into our society in a respectful and humane way. People are the most valuable resource this country has, all people, regardless of background. Even those without an asylum claim should be offered a perspective here.
• A society that excludes migrants and immigration will stagnate and will not have a future. Politicians know this, yet migrants are often used as a tool to stir emotions and to win votes.
• I once experienced in a hospital how a Syrian senior doctor told an alcoholic ethnic German with pancreatitis that he would always be welcome on his ward, after the patient explained that the hospital in his own neighbourhood had turned him away. And then Alice Weidel, the leader of the far-right AfD party, stands there and talks about Syrian doctors like that, while she herself gets treatment in Switzerland. It’s shameless. Pride comes before a fall, as they say. Nothing good can come from the AfD and its supporters who applaud this. Impossible.
• True, at least for the migrants who came here in the 60s, 70s and 80s and today cut the Döner, bake the pizza, collect the rubbish and build the houses. They are part of us, they contribute to value creation, and they make this country better. As for the 2015 group, I’ll keep my opinion to myself.
• My grandfather came from Turkey to Germany in 1960. My father grew up here in Germany, and I was born here too. My father works as a foreman in a large company, and my father-in-law does as well. My husband studied, and I myself am a primary school teacher.
* Around 25.2 million people with a migrant background live in Germany (as of 2024), which corresponds to about one third of the total population; of whom 13 million are German citizens (by birth or naturalisation) and 12.2 million have a different nationality. The majority of Germans with a migrant background are themselves immigrants or represent the first generation in Germany, while almost two-thirds of the entire group have their own experience of migration. (Source: German Statistical Office)
Further reading: Foreign nationals in German towns and cities || A Syrian refugee elected mayor of a German town || Apprenticeship places in Germany || Teaching and training refugees in Germany ||
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