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The collective migratory experience is at the heart of this special issue, which deals with the politics of immigrant integration in Germany since 1945. Whereas the dominant legal, social and historiographical conceptions have long isolated migratory flows from each other, for example by limiting the ability to become “German” to specific migrant groups, a global migratory experience has nonetheless developed on the basis of the lived experiences of migrants (regardless of their origin), and of the often reused integration instruments deployed by public policies. Interlinkages between different migration flows, long neglected or even denied, are now an integral part of the current research agenda.