Germany has been experiencing an ongoing religious and cultural diversification during the last decades. Therefore, it seems that previous national concepts of Germany being an ethnic exclusive society should belong to the past, leading to an inclusion of foreigners into dominant societal concepts.

This paper aims at uncovering the attitudes of the receiving society towards the minority population and therewith wants to help to get a deeper insight into how inclusion/exclusion processes towards minorities take place. The Muslim population, which constitutes the biggest minority within Germany, is chosen as an indicator for inclusion/exclusion mechanisms towards foreigners. With the help of symbolic boundaries as a theoretical tool, it is tried to uncover the question, if and in which ways the German majority population differentiates itself from the Muslim population. Therefore open interviews with families as research units were conducted since it was assumed that the generation one grew up is influencing the boundary drawing process. The generation affect was confirmed with respondents belonging to the first and second generation being more likely to draw boundaries whereas members of the third generation included Muslims into their societal concepts.