One Word Shapes a Nation demonstrates that integration politics limit how immigrants, refugees, and their descendants can participate in German society and how Germans imagine their national future. By reconstructing recent polemic media scandals, re-interpreting historical narratives about migration after the Second World War, and conducting extensive fieldwork with social work organizations that implement "integrative" programs, Johanna Schuster-Craig explores the intersection between media, capital, nation-building, and human lives in contemporary German society.