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'''Gastarbeiter''' 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.

Contents

Historical background

Currently

External links

Historical background

Due to a labour shortage during the Wirtschaftswunder in the 1950s and 1960s, the German government signed bilateral recruitment agreements [1] with Italy in 1955, Greece in 1960, Turkey in 1961, Portugal in 1964 and Yugoslavia in 1968. These agreements allowed the recruitment of 'Gastarbeiter' to work in the industrial sector for jobs that required few qualifications.
The migrants, mostly male, were allowed to work in Germany for a period of one or two years before returning back to the home country in order to make room for other migrants. However, many migrants decided not to return to their home countries and were joined in Germany by their families. Children born to Gastarbeiters received the right to reside in Germany but were not granted citizenship; this was know as the "Aufenthaltsberechtigung" ("Right to reside").
As they started to settle down and form new ethnic minority communities, the government and others in society ignored the integration of the migrants. This led to educational, religious and social discrimination of the migrants in Germany. A factor contributing to the creation of these problems was Germany's birth laws, which did not automatically grant citizenship to those born in the country; a new born would automatically gain the nationality of his parents. A change to German law in 2000 now grants German-born children citizenship if one of their parents has resided lawfully in Germany for at least eight years.

Currently

Today, the term ''Gastarbeiter'' is no longer accurate, as the former guest worker communities, in so far as they have not returned to their countries of origins, have become permanent residents and 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 Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian/Slovene languages, generally meaning "expatriate" (mostly referring to 2nd generation from former Yugoslavia born or living abroad).
The phonetic spelling is "gastarbajter". In Belgrade's colloquial lingo it is commonly shortened to "gastos.".
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.

External links

★ German Embassy: Reform of Germany's citizenship and nationality law

★ Germany: Immigration in Transition by Veysel Oezcan