Gastarbeiter
The term is widely used in Russia (Russian: гастарбайтер, gastarbayter) to refer to foreign workers from post-USSR or third-world countries.
[3][4] Following World War II there were severe labour shortages in continental northern Europe, and high unemployment in southern European countries including Turkey.
[8][9] These agreements allowed the recruitment of guest workers to work in the industrial sector in jobs that required few qualifications.
[12] 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.
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.
The United States, however, put some political pressure on Germany, wanting to stabilize and create goodwill from a potential ally.
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.
[16] After 1961 Turkish citizens (largely from rural areas) soon became the largest group of guest workers in West Germany.
The government started paying jobless people from a number of countries, such as Turks, Moroccans and Tunisians, a so-called Rückkehrprämie ('repatriation grant') or Rückkehrhilfe ('repatriation help') if they returned home.
[24] Half of the Turkish guest workers returned home, others brought in their wives and family members and settled in ethnic enclaves.
[26] Several SPD politicians, such as former chancellor Helmut Schmidt and his chief of staff Hans-Jürgen Wischnewski, as well as Hesse Minister-President Holger Börner were also in favor of restricting migration of Turks.
In many cases guest workers integrated neatly into German society, in particular those from other European countries with a Christian background, even if they started out poor.
[33] Muslims were often also not pleased to find the Christian cross displayed in German classrooms, something that at the time was relatively common.
[37][38] The guest workers in East Germany came mainly from the Eastern Bloc, Hungary, Poland, Algeria, Vietnam, North Korea, Angola, Mozambique, and Cuba.
Following the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and German reunification in 1990,[44][45][46] the population of guest workers still remaining in the former East Germany faced deportation, premature discontinuation of residence and work permits as well as open discrimination in the workplace.
Ten years after the fall of the Berlin wall most Vietnamese were granted the right to reside however and many started opening little shops.
[50] However, the agreements signed with Turkey (1963) and Yugoslavia (1966) were more successful, resulting in approximately 265,000 people migrating to Austria from these two countries between 1969 and 1973, until being halted by the early 1970s economic crisis.
[52] There are concerns about brain drain in Kenya, as professionals such as doctors and nurses could leave for better-paying jobs in Germany.
[53] The German government has already signed or is negotiating migration partnerships with Morocco, Nigeria, India, Colombia, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Georgia and Moldova.
However, although many of the former "guest workers" have now become German citizens, the term Ausländer or "foreigner" is still colloquially applied to them as well as to their naturalised children and grandchildren.
Gastarbeiter, as a historical term however, referring to the guest worker programme and situation of the 1960s, 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.
In Belgrade's jargon, it is commonly shortened to gastoz (гастоз) derived by the Serbian immigrant YouTube star nicknamed Gasttozz.
Sometimes, in a negative context, however, they would be referred as gastozi or Švabe, after the Danube Swabians that inhabited the former Yugoslavia, most of whom now live in German-speaking countries.
