Guest Workers and City Policy in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1955–73

Labor migration has proven to be transformative to the Federal Republic since the first guest worker recruitment agreement was signed with Italy in 1955. Much of the historical scholarship on the issue has focused on the economic impetus behind recruitment and the political debates at the federal and state level on policies regarding the guest workers. However, more recent scholarship has focused on the response by municipalities to labor migration. This is an area of particular significance because it is at the local level that the impact of policy regarding the support and integration of guest workers was felt and where the interaction of the official authorities, businesses, the local population, and the guest workers themselves took place.        

            This paper will examine the policy by West German municipalities toward guest workers from 1955 to immediately following the 1973 Anwerbestopp, which ended guest worker recruitment. First, the paper will review the development of research on municipalities and guest workers. It will explore how city policy sheds light on the possibilities and limits of integration of guest workers and how developments at the local level challenge the dominate narratives of labor migration into the Federal Republic. It will argue that many city administrations understood from early on that the guest workers were not temporary, that they increasingly conceived of the guest workers as members of the cities’ community, and that they sought to integrate guest workers into not only the cities’ economic, but also social and civic life. Second, the paper will examine the role that the municipalities’ pressure group, der Deutsche Städtetag (German Association of Municipalities) had on coordinating information and potential policy responses among cities and how it advocated for a more integrative policy toward guest workers.