German Post War Immigration

For decades Germany has not viewed itself as a country of immigration. These views were reflected in both public opinion and German constitution and citizenship law. Germans have traditionally viewed their nation as an ethnically defined nation-state, and have long perceived immigration to be a temporary measure. However the continuous flow of migrants in the years following 1945 contradicts this viewpoint. As the geographic and cultural distances of immigration countries have increased over time so has the ethnic composition of Germany.

German immigration history can be separated into four distinct phases. Immediate Post-war immigration mainly consisted of ethnic German Refugees expelled from Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

From 1955 to 1973 the West German Government sought to address labour shortages through labour recruitment from within Europe using ‘guest workers’, recruiting labour from mainly Mediterranean countries on temporary contracts. This policy was eventually abandoned due to the high cost of training new arrivals by extending existing contracts, reinforcing the permanency of guest workers

In the wake of the 1973 Oil crisis and subsequent economic downturn, The West German government attempted to curb migration inflows, and the recruitment of guest workers was stopped. The main source of migration consisted of the families of existing migrants joining them.

The final phase of migration followed the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, leading to an inflow of people from Eastern Europe. World conflicts resulted in large amount of asylum seekers entered Germany due to their generous asylum seeker policies.

The initial period of immigration was not met with a great deal of resistance, as the main sources of migrants were those of ethnic German origin. Further migration from within Europe was met with more resistance, however due to chronic labour shortages most migrants were hired in manual labour fields unwanted by Germans , and as such this was not considered a pressing issue.

But as the main drivers of immigration transformed from labour migration to family unification and asylum, so did public opinion .

Negative opinions of immigrants were particularly strong in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s , due to the large scale influx of immigrants from Eastern Europe and Russia caused by the fall of the Iron Curtain. The percentage of Germans who thought Germany had too many immigrants was 79% in 1984, which has declined to 53% as at 2008 .

Germany’s liberal asylum policies impacted public opinion, as the number of asylum seekers rapidly expanded from 100,000 in 1988, to 438,000 by 1992 . Although only a small portion of asylum claims were accepted by the government, the long processing time led to large scale de-facto residence, as applicants could not be deported back to their home countries in case