ABSTRACT
Labour migration and associated policies of implicit and explicit discrimination have been a feature of the German economy and society from the late nineteenth century through the forced-labour policy of National Socialist Germany to the present. During the postwar boom, the German Federal Republic’s massive demand for labour soon could not be met even by the millions of refugees, displaced persons and returning soldiers, a situation exacerbated in 1961 when the construction of the Berlin Wall stopped the influx of workers from the German Democratic Republic. In these conditions of full employment the officially regulated recruitment of foreign workers was widely accepted. In 1955 the Federal Republic signed an agreement with Italy for the employment of Italian workers. Between 1960 and 1968, further agreements followed with Spain, Greece, Turkey, Morocco, Portugal, Tunisia and Yugoslavia. At first all signatories regarded these measures as temporary. The term Gastarbeiter (guestworker), which became established in the 1960s, also explicitly stressed that integration of foreign workers into German society was out of the question.
