ABSTRACT
The serious economic crisis that over a decade ago began to affect southern European countries, including Spain, and the resulting high unemployment rates, especially among the younger generation in the country, led to a wave of mass emigration of labor from Spain to Germany. One of the German federal states with the greatest demand for labor is North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state in Germany and one of the most industrial regions in Europe. The chapter describes the situation of Cologne as a global city, noting the advantages it holds as an immigrant destination and an attractive cosmopolitan place of residence for labor migrants. The local vernacular German, called Kolsch, plays an important role in Cologne even though the use of dialects is still generally stigmatized in Germany. Especially during the final decades of the 20th century the use of local vernaculars was considered vulgar and old-fashioned.
