ABSTRACT
Migrants, or ‘foreigners’ (Ausländer) in official language, have been considered generally as a burden to the economy since the economic downturn in the mid-1970s in Germany. These ‘foreigners’ who mainly comprise the ‘guest workers’, ethnic Germans (Aussiedler) and asylum seekers are often represented in the press and media reports as undesirable and problematic, used as scapegoats for socio-economic problems, such as persistent unemployment, rising criminality and lack of economic growth, especially since the mid1970s. The image of migrants has taken some new turns since the beginning of the twenty-first century, when the Social Democratic Party (SDP)-Green coalition brought forth the economic advantages of migrants and foreigners. These welcomed migrants range from the sorely needed information technology (IT) experts from Eastern Europe and South Asia to children or grandchildren of the ‘guest workers’ who are fortunately staying in Germany and making contributions to the shrinking retirement fund of the ‘local’ population.1 One of the positive aspects highlighted in the media and literature is the rising rate of entrepreneurship among migrants. The number of selfemployed of the largest sub-group, Turkish migrants, for example, rose from 1990 to 1999 by 42.4 per cent, accounting for 47,000 enterprises in 1999 (Wolber, 1999). Geographers Laux and Thieme (2002) further estimated that Turkish migrant enterprises generate an annual turnover of more than C28 billion and employ over 330,000 people. The increasing importance of migrant entrepreneurship in Germany indicates more than economic significance. It can also function socially and politically to raise the general respect for migrants and foreigners generally. As argued by the authors of a cover story ‘Unsung heroes’ in Business Week (February 2000) about successful migrant businesspeople in Europe, underlying the contribution of migrants to the European economy would be ‘[a] kind of hard-core economic argument [that] provide[s] one of the Continent’s best weapons against the antiimmigrant rhetoric of politicians such as Haider’ (Echikson et al., 2000).2
