monious `Heimat' and Disturbing `Auslander'

This article aims to set an agenda for further research into the following issues: which concepts of `homeland' ('Heimat') lead to anxieties about those defined as foreigners' ('Ausldnder') and which ones are able to include the `newcomers'? How do these concepts relate to people's ability to intervene into contradictory social structures? In order to do this, it presents some results from a study which explores concepts of `Heimat' and `Ausldnder' held by the ethnic majority. Statements made by the sample of middle-class women and men in Switzerland and Germany suggest that the holding of harmonious images of Heimat tends to be associated with perceiving `Auslander' as the source of social conflicts. However, the inability to appropriate even an imaginary space seems to be related to an inability to open up to new experiences as neighbourhoods change.