ABSTRACT
Post-war immigration into Germany did not challenge education for a long time due to the fact that work migration was regarded as temporary in the 1950s and 1960s. When workers began to settle – mainly as a result of the enforced stop of recruitment in 1973 – education had to deal with the situation of migrant children attending German schools in large numbers. The first answer to this new challenge was the concept of migrant education (Ausländerpädagogik). Multicultural education (‘intercultural education’ in the German diction) was developed in Germany rather reluctantly in the 1980s as a second answer to this challenge when the concept of migrant education was no longer regarded as an adequate one by many educationalists in practice and research. Multicultural education finally got some recognition in the 1990s, when it was partly connected with international education like European aspects or global learning. Europe, but also further developments in migration, led to a new type of short term migration and further newer forms of migration, which have not fully been taken into consideration in education.
