ABSTRACT
Dominant discourse on development, coming mainly from Anglophonic and Germanic countries, characterises experience of very limited areas in the world as global and undervalues the development histories of the rest. The political and social situation in SE at the beginning of the 1980s was dramatically different from that of the previous decade. In the EU, the 1990s started with two inter-related geo-political and economically painful processes, with negative consequences for Southern and Eastern members and for the democratic process of European integration itself. Since 1992, all EU countries have been forced to implement the Maastricht Treaty, which entailed abandonment of redistribution policies. Gastarbeiten is the German word for guest workers, used by Central Europeans to describe the massive migration from SE countries and Turkey mainly to Western Germany but also to France, Belgium, Austria and the Netherlands in the 1960s and 1970s to work in their factories and mines, following bilateral agreements.
