Gastarbeiter
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Gastarbeiter (pronounced 
/ˈɡastˌʔaɐ̯baɪtɐ/ (help·info)) is German for "guest worker" (or "guest workers" – the plural is the same as the singular). It refers to people who had moved to Germany mainly in the 1960s and 70s, seeking work as part of a formal guest worker programme (Gastarbeiterprogramm). On a smaller scale, the Netherlands and Belgium had a parallel scheme, called the gastarbeider programme.
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[edit] Historical background
Due to a labour shortage during the Wirtschaftswunder ("economic miracle") in the 1950s and 1960s, the German government signed bilateral recruitment agreements with Italy in 1955, Greece in 1960, Turkey in 1961, Portugal in 1964 and Yugoslavia in 1968.[1] These agreements allowed the recruitment of Gastarbeiter to work in the industrial sector for jobs that required few qualifications. The labour shortage was made more acute by the creation of the Berlin Wall in August 1961, which reduced the large-scale flow of East German immigration virtually to zero overnight.
After 1961, Turkish citizens (largely from rural areas) soon became the largest group of Gastarbeiter in West Germany. The perception at the time on the part of both the West German Government and the Turkish Republic representatives was that working 60–80 hours a week in Germany would be only "temporary". The migrants, mostly male, were allowed to work in Germany for a period of one or two years before returning to the home country in order to make room for other migrants. Many migrants did return, after having built up savings for their return. However, many migrants decided not to return to their home countries and were joined in Germany by their families. Children born to Gastarbeiter received the right to reside in Germany but were not granted citizenship; this was known as the "Aufenthaltsberechtigung" ("right to reside"). As they started to settle down and form new ethnic minority communities, the government and others in society largely ignored the integration of the migrants. This led to educational, religious and social segregation of the migrants in Germany.
[edit] Currently
Today, the term Gastarbeiter is no longer accurate, as the former guest worker communities, insofar as they have not returned to their countries of origins, have become permanent residents or citizens, and therefore, are in no meaningful sense "guests". In political discourse, the term has also become loaded, having been used sometimes by right-wing extremists in conjunction with the demand to expel foreigners and their children. As a historical term, however, referring to the guest worker programme and situation of the 1960s, it is neutral and remains the most correct designation. In literary theory, some German migrant writers (e.g. Rafik Schami) use the terminology of "guest" and "host" provocatively.
The term "Gastarbeiter" lives on in Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Slovene languages, generally meaning "expatriate" (mostly referring to second generation from former Yugoslavia or Bulgaria born or living abroad). The South Slavic spelling reflects the local pronunciation of gastarbajter (in Cyrillic: гастарбаjтер or гастарбайтер). In Belgrade's jargon, it is commonly shortened to gastos (гастос), and in Zagreb's to gastić.
In modern Russia, the term gastarbeiter (гастарбайтер) is used to denote workers from former Soviet republics coming to Russia (mainly Moscow and Saint Petersburg) in search of work. These workers come primarily from Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
[edit] References
- ^ Germany: Immigration in Transition by Veysel Oezcan. Social Science Centre Berlin. July 2004.
