On the economic and social situations of immigrant groups in Germany

Stefan Bender

Wolfgang Seifert

pp. 45-67

in: Richard Alba, Peter Schmidt, Martina Wasmer (eds), Germans or foreigners?, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003

Abstract

To comprehend the integration process of immigrants and their descendants in Germany, one must start with the peculiarities of German immigration policy. Although Germany has one of the highest immigration rates in Europe, it has long denied its status as a country of immigration. When the recruitment of immigrants from the Mediterranean rim began in the late 1950s, it was considered as an inter-mediate-term bridge across a period of extreme labor shortage. Work permits were granted for specified periods of time, and prolongation was allowed only if demand on the labor market persisted (Seifert, 1995). The policy was designed to keep the foreign labor force harnessed to the demands of the German labor market. Due to the restrictions of the "guest-worker" system, immigrants were recruited predominantly for jobs in mass production and heavy industry that did not require specific skills, since the temporary status of the immigrants made lengthy on-the-job training pointless. Consequently, one result of the labor migration of the 1960s and early 1970s was an ethnic segmentation of the German labor market, as the foreign labor force formed a closed stratum in the occupational hierarchy and was positioned below the lowest strata of the native labor force.