expulsion

Which translation, when

Why

Expulsion translates as Ausweisung, and the German institute is a weighing decision before it is anything else. Under § 53 Abs. 1 AufenthG the expulsion issues where the foreigner’s stay endangers public security and order, the free democratic basic order or other substantial interests of the Federal Republic, and where the weighing of all circumstances of the individual case shows the public interest in departure outweighing the interest in remaining; the statute then structures the scales, § 54 grading the expulsion interest as especially serious or serious, § 55 doing the same for the interest in remaining, with both catalogues open to unlisted circumstances, the length of stay, the ties in Germany and abroad, the consequences for family members expressly among the factors, and general deterrence available as a ground within the limits drawn for protected groups. The order is an administrative act, so the general machinery of the Verwaltungsakt entry stands behind it. Its force is status-destroying and gate-closing rather than physical: the residence title expires, § 51 Abs. 1 Nr. 5 AufenthG, the duty to leave arises, § 50, and the entry and residence ban of § 11 AufenthG is ordered as an act of its own together with the expulsion order, to be limited in time by the authority of its own motion; nobody is moved by the Ausweisung itself, the physical side is the Abschiebung, and the deportation entry holds the warning against crossing the two. For the translator the surrounding vocabulary is layered: the human-rights instruments say expulsion for the decision itself, the EU Return Directive says return decision, Rückkehrentscheidung, removal names the enforcement, and the German answers are Ausweisung and Abschiebung in that order; calques like Vertreibung or Ausschluss belong to history and to club law and misplace the text entirely. Union citizens stand outside this frame, their loss-of-rights regime runs under free-movement law, which the free movement entry holds.

Typical mistakes

• The Ausweisung is the weighing order that ends the lawful stay, so rendering it as the physical removal, or expulsion as Abschiebung, moves the text between decision and execution.
• The order is issued together with the entry and residence ban of § 11 AufenthG and extinguishes the title, so a translation that treats expulsion as a mere request to leave understates its force.
• Vertreibung and Ausschluss are words of history and of club law, the statutory term is Ausweisung.

What matters

An immigration decision notice or a country report heading into German: the translation should say Ausweisung for the weighing order, keep the § 11 entry ban and the loss of the title attached, and reserve Abschiebung for the enforcement the source may describe separately.

Examples