In German-speaking countries, the term Gastarbeiter (; both singular and plural) refers to foreign or migrant workers, particularly those who had moved to West Germany between 1955 and 1973, seeking work as part of a formal guest worker program ().
Other countries had similar programs: in the Netherlands and Belgium it was called the program; in Sweden, Denmark and Norway it was called (workforce-immigration); and in East Germany such workers were called Vertragsarbeiter.
Terminology In Nazi Germany, the term used to refer to foreign workers was . However, the term obscured the compulsory nature of the work, and after World War II, the term has since been used to distinguish worker policies of the Nazi era to the Gastarbeiter programs of the Federal Republic of Germany. After the war, Germans no longer spoke about 'troops of nomads', but 'guestworkers'.
As a loanword, Gastarbeiter is also widely used in Russia (, ) to refer to foreign workers in the country from post-USSR or third-world countries.
Historical background Following World War II, there were severe labour shortages in continental Northern Europe, and high unemployment in Southern European countries including Turkey. West Germany set the pace for large-scale guestworker programs, and in many cases, German employers collaborated with states facing high unemployment rates to organize and promote these programs. Therefore, migrant workers from Southern Europe went to West Germany to find work and addressed the labor shortage in the country.
West Germany
During the 1950s and 1960s, West Germany signed bilateral recruitment agreements with a number of countries: Italy (22 November 1955), Spain (29 March 1960), Greece (30 March 1960), Turkey (30 October 1961), Morocco (21 June 1963), South Korea (16 December 1963), Portugal (17 March 1964), Tunisia (18 October 1965), and Yugoslavia (12 October 1968).Germany: Immigration in Transition by Veysel Oezcan. Social Science Centre Berlin. July 2004.Kaja Shonick, "Politics, Culture, and Economics: Reassessing the West German Guest Worker Agreement with Yugoslavia," Journal of Contemporary History, Oct 2009, Vol. 44 Issue 4, pp 719-736 Japan also had an agreement (January 1957), although the number of coal mine workers recruited was relatively small. These agreements allowed the recruitment of guest workers to work in the industrial sector in jobs that required few qualifications.
There were several justifications for these arrangements. Firstly, during the 1950s, Germany experienced a so-called or "economic miracle" and needed labourers. The labour shortage was made more acute after the building of the Berlin Wall in August 1961, which drastically reduced the large-scale flow of East German workers. Secondly, West Germany justified these programs as a form of developmental aid. It was expected that guest workers would learn useful skills which could help them build their own countries after returning home.Gerling, Vera: Soziale Dienste für zugewanderte Senioren/innen: Erfahrungen aus Deutschland, , S.78 Germany, as well as Switzerland, prioritized close neighbors for guestworkers as a safeguard for their return. However, a policy called Inländerprimat was implemented, gave priority to hiring native German workers. Kristin Surak states that by the 1970s, 2.5 million foreigners were laboring in Germany across manufacturing and services.
Since West Germany and Italy were both founding members of the ECSC and later EEC, recruitment of Italian workers dropped sharply soon, as the Treaty of Rome signed in 1957 provided for freedom of movement for workers, which in the 1960s gradually came into force. Thus by 1962, Italians no longer needed a visa to enter West Germany (an identity card would suffice), and both the recruitment agreement and the German recruitment commission for Italian workers declined in importance. Also, by 1964, the priority of domestic workers was abolished, and from 1968, a work permit was no longer required for citizens of EEC member states. In 1961, of the 165,793 Italian job seekers who came to West Germany, 107,030 (64.6%) were recruited through the commission, whereas from 1966 on, no more that 8% per year were recruited through the commission, and in 1972, only 2,092 out of 154,184 (1.4%) were. As West Germany adapted to the influx of immigrants into its labor market, its unemployment rate increased, and the population migrated from areas with higher immigrant inflows to areas with fewer immigrant inflows.
The first guest workers were recruited from European nations. However, Turkey pressured West Germany to admit its citizens as guest workers. Theodor Blank, Secretary of State for Employment, opposed such agreements. He held the opinion that the cultural gap between Germany and Turkey would be too large and also held the opinion that Germany didn't need any more labourers because there were enough unemployed people living in the poorer regions of Germany who could fill these vacancies. The United States, however, put some political pressure on Germany, wanting to stabilize and create goodwill from a potential ally. West Germany and Turkey reached an agreement in 1961.Heike Knortz: Diplomatische Tauschgeschäfte. "Gastarbeiter" in der westdeutschen Diplomatie und Beschäftigungspolitik 1953-1973. Böhlau Verlag, Köln 2008
The Heuss Turks were the name given to around 150 young Turkish citizens who came to Germany in 1958. They followed an invitation that the then Federal President Theodor Heuss had extended to Turkish vocational school graduates during a visit to Turkey in Ankara in 1957. The exchange, which was intended as a vocational training measure and began for some of the group as apprentices at the Ford plant in Cologne, became the starting point for their immigration to the Federal Republic for some. A number worked at Ford until they retired in the late 1980s/early 1990s. It was the first large group of Turkish workers to come to Germany together, even before the start of actual Turkish immigration with the recruitment agreement between the Federal Republic of Germany and Turkey in 1961. According to DOMiD reports, they were given a warm welcome in Germany and were extremely popular with their work colleagues.
After 1961 Turkish citizens (largely from rural areas) soon became the largest group of guest workers in West Germany. The migrants, men and women alike, were allowed to work in Germany for a period of one or two years before returning to their home country in order to make room for other migrants. Some migrants did return, after having built up savings for their return. The recruitment treaty was changed in 1964 so that the Turkish guest workers could stay longer. The influx of immigrants into the West German labor market led to a 1.51% decrease in the expected discounted lifetime labor income of native West German workers, and the loss in native labor income reached 5.91%.
For Turks, Tunisians and Moroccans, special rules applied: only unmarried people would be recruited; family reunification was not allowed; a health check and an aptitude test for work had to be passed; and they would not be allowed any extension past two years, and then would have to return to their home countries.
Until 2015, Germany had not been perceived as a country of immigration () by both the majority of its political leaders and the majority of its population. When the country's political leaders realised that many of the persons from certain countries living in Germany were jobless, some calculations were done and according to those calculations, paying unemployed foreigners for leaving the country was cheaper in the long run than paying unemployment benefits. A ('law to advance the willingness to return home') was passed. The government started paying jobless people from a number of countries, such as Turks, Moroccans and Tunisians, a so-called ('repatriation grant') or ('repatriation help') if they returned home. A person returning home received 10,500 and an additional 1,500 for their spouse and also 1,500 for each child if they returned to their country of origin.S. Dünkel (2008) "Interkulturalität und Differenzwahrnehmung in der Migrationsliteratur", p. 20IAB: "Gesetz zur Förderung der Rückkehrbereitschaft von Ausländern"
There were 2 coups d'état between 1960 and 1971 in Turkey and the recruitment agreement with West Germany was signed by the head of 1960 Turkish coup d'état (the first coup in Turkey) committee, Cemal Gürsel. And 6 years after the pro-military coalition governments created around Kemalist CHP were collapsed, the military intervened again with another coup in 1971. While Turkey was in this process of turmoil of events and economic collapse, the agreement between West Germany and Turkey ended in 1973 but few workers returned because there were few good jobs in Turkey.Stephen Castles, "The Guests Who Stayed - The Debate on 'Foreigners Policy' in the German Federal Republic," International Migration Review Vol. 19, No. 3, pp. 517-534 in JSTOR Half of the Turkish guest workers returned home, others brought in their wives and family members and settled in ethnic enclaves.Gottfried E. Volker, "Turkish Labour Migration to Germany: Impact on both Economies," Middle Eastern Studies, Jan 1976, Vol. 12 Issue 1, pp 45-72 In 1981 legal restrictions on the relocation of families to West Germany came into effect.
By 2010 there were about 4 million people of Turkish descent in Germany. The generation born in Germany attended German schools, but some had a poor command of either German or Turkish, and thus had either low-skilled jobs or were unemployed. Most are Muslims and some are presently reluctant to become German citizens.Katherine Pratt Ewing, "Living Islam in the Diaspora: Between Turkey and Germany," South Atlantic Quarterly, Volume 102, Number 2/3, Spring/Summer 2003, pp. 405-431 in Project MUSERuth Mandel, Cosmopolitan Anxieties: Turkish Challenges to Citizenship and Belonging in Germany (Duke University Press, 2008)
Germany used the principle in its nationality or citizenship law, which determined the right to citizenship based on a person's German ancestry, and not by place of birth. Accordingly, children born in Germany of a guest worker were not automatically entitled to citizenship, but were granted the ('right to reside') and might choose to apply for German citizenship later in their lives, which was granted to persons who had lived in Germany for at least 15 years and fulfilled a number of other preconditions (they must work for their living, they should not have a criminal record, and other preconditions). Today, children of foreigners born on German soil are granted German citizenship automatically if the parent has been in Germany for at least eight years as a legal immigrant. As a rule those children may also have the citizenship of the parents' home country. Those between 18 and 23 years of age must choose to keep either German citizenship or their ancestral citizenship. The governments of the German States have begun campaigns to persuade immigrants to acquire German citizenship.