15/12/2025
[15.12.25, 11:28:20] Kofi Owusu: Assimilation vs. Integration: A Case of Hamburg, Germany
Hamburg, one of Germany’s most cosmopolitan cities, offers a powerful case study in the debate between assimilation and integration in contemporary multicultural societies. As a major port city with a long history of global trade and migration, Hamburg has evolved into a diverse urban space where people from more than 180 national backgrounds live, work, and interact. This diversity makes the city an ideal setting to examine whether cultural coexistence is better achieved through assimilation or integration.
Assimilation refers to the expectation that migrants abandon their cultural identities in order to conform fully to the dominant culture. Integration, by contrast, allows individuals to participate in social, economic, and political life while retaining elements of their cultural heritage. In Hamburg, everyday life reflects the latter model more clearly. The city’s streets, neighborhoods, and public spaces reveal a multicultural reality in which difference is visible, practiced, and increasingly normalized rather than erased.
Official data shows that over 40% of Hamburg’s population has a migration background, a figure that continues to grow and spans multiple generations. This diversity includes a significant and increasingly visible African presence. Communities from Ghana, Nigeria, Togo, Senegal, Eritrea, and other African countries have established themselves across the city, contributing socially, culturally, and economically. Their presence is evident in churches, cultural associations, small businesses, music scenes, and community events that celebrate African identity and heritage.
African migrant communities in Hamburg regularly organize cultural festivals, independence day celebrations, and religious gatherings that showcase traditional food, music, dress, and languages. These events often attract people beyond the African diaspora, fostering interaction rather than isolation. Such expressions of identity demonstrate integration in practice: maintaining cultural roots while actively participating in the wider society. At the same time, African migrants contribute meaningfully to Hamburg’s workforce, entrepreneurship, and community life, reinforcing their role as stakeholders in the city’s future.
Critics of multiculturalism often argue that visible cultural differences undermine social cohesion. However, Hamburg’s reality challenges this assumption. With over half of the city’s population under the age of 18 having a migration background, diversity is no longer an exception but the norm. In such a context, insisting on assimilation—cultural uniformity—appears both unrealistic and exclusionary.
This raises a critical question: are members of Hamburg’s African communities integrating into society, or are they being pressured—implicitly or explicitly—to assimilate? When people are welcomed to participate fully while celebrating their origins, integration flourishes. When cultural expression is viewed with suspicion, assimilation becomes a silent demand. Hamburg’s experience suggests that true cohesion is built not by erasing differences, but by allowing them to exist within a shared civic framework.
*Kofi Owusu*
*Panelist, Radio TopAfric*
![[15.12.25, 11:28:20] Kofi Owusu: Assimilation vs. Integration: A Case of Hamburg, GermanyHamburg, one of Germany’s most ...](https://img5.medioq.com/057/378/1448935800573789.jpg)
