Online Document Assignment 28

ARMANDO RODRIGUES

Postwar Rebuilding and the Creation of a Multicultural Germany

While migration has always been an important element in the development of human societies, the process accelerated dramatically in the modern era. New forms of transportation made it possible for more people to travel farther from home than ever before. At the same time, increases in the speed and scale of long-distance transportation were matched by increases in the speed and scale of information dissemination. Thus labor shortages in one region quickly became common knowledge in others, prompting migration from areas of relative economic hardship to areas of relative economic opportunity. Each nation has faced its own particular challenges in responding to the global flow of people.

The migration of foreign workers to Germany in the decades following World War II began at the invitation of the German government. During the 1950s and 1960s, as Germany recovered from the devastation of the war, the key limiting factor in German economic growth was a shortage of labor. By the early 1960s there were more unfilled jobs in Germany than there were Germans on the official unemployment lists. The government responded by signing agreements with a number of countries to allow the temporary migration of “guest workers.” When those guest workers defied government expectations and sought to settle in Germany, a host of unexpected questions arose. How would these “foreigners” fit into German society? What adjustments would Germans have to make as their country grew more diverse? How did the foreign workers’ permanent presence challenge prevailing notions of what it meant to be German?

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