Migration

After World War II Germany received more than 12 million refugees and expellees from former German territory east of the Oder and from areas with substantial German ethnic populations in central and eastern Europe. These numbers were swollen by the ranks of “displaced persons”—non-Germans unwilling to return to their former homelands. After Germany was partitioned in 1949, the demographic histories of the two parts of the country diverged, with West Germany becoming the prime target of continuing migration flows. Although immigrants, principally ethnic Germans, continued to drift in from the east, their numbers were overshadowed by a mass desertion of some two million people from East Germany. Because these immigrants from East Germany were mostly young and highly skilled, their arrival was a major gain to the booming West German economy but a grievous loss to the much smaller East Germany. In 1961 the East German government blocked further desertion of its people by building strong defenses along the inner-German border and around West Berlin (including the Berlin Wall). East Germany enjoyed relative demographic tranquillity for most of the following three decades. After the disintegration of communist regimes throughout central and eastern Europe, however, the population of West Germany began to surge again, because of flows first from newly liberalized Hungary and Czechoslovakia and then from East Germany after the inner-German boundary was opened and the Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989. In 1989–90 alone nearly 700,000 East Germans poured into West Germany; thereafter the stream continued, though from 1994 to 1997 net immigration occurred at a sharply reduced rate before increasing again because of ongoing economic problems in eastern Germany.

The arrival of these new migrants caused some resentment among western Germans because of the pressures placed on an already overburdened housing market and on social services. Because the new arrivals were mainly young and skilled, they fueled a postunification boom in western Germany and continued to drain the economy and society in the east, which still faces economic and social problems. Several hundred thousand eastern Germans also commuted to jobs in western Germany.

To spur economic growth, West Germany began as early as the mid-1950s to encourage workers to migrate from other countries. At first these migrants were to be “guest workers,” coming to work for a limited period of time only, but increasingly they sent for their families; thus, even when economic recession occurred in 1973 and the further immigration of workers was discouraged, the number of foreign residents continued to grow, reaching more than seven million people—nearly one-tenth of the total—by the beginning of the 21st century. Because of higher birth rates among the foreign-born population, non-Germans have accounted for a majority of natural population growth since the 1950s. The Turks represent the largest group of foreign residents, followed by Poles, Syrians, Italians, and Romanians. Immigrants typically were employed in the heaviest, dirtiest, and least-remunerative jobs, and in times of economic difficulty they generally were the first to lose their jobs and the last to be reemployed. Their children—of whom more than four-fifths have been born in Germany—are among the last to be considered for an apprenticeship or training place. Immigrants also inhabit the least-desirable housing. Turks, in particular, have formed distinctive quarters in the poorest “inner city” areas. Although the East German state prided itself on its nonreliance on guest workers, some Poles, Vietnamese, Angolans, Cubans, and Mozambicans were imported, ostensibly for “education and training.”

With the opening of the eastern frontiers and a more liberal attitude of the Soviet Union toward emigration, the influx of ethnic Germans became a veritable flood. Nearly 400,000 came in 1989, followed by more than 200,000 annually between 1991 and 1995; subsequently the number of immigrants fell but remained substantial. These new immigrants were less easily assimilated into western German culture than those from eastern Germany; many had difficulties with the German language and lacked marketable skills. With some apprehension, united Germany realized that a further million ethnic Germans could arrive from eastern Europe in the future, and there was a further fear that the freedom to travel and political or economic problems might produce a flow of untold millions of non-German residents of the former Soviet Union. Partially in response to these concerns, Germany’s relations with Russia focused on attempting to improve the lot of ethnic Germans living in Russia, thereby diminishing the likelihood of mass emigration to Germany.

West Germany’s constitution guaranteed the right of asylum to those forced to flee their native countries because of political oppression. This privilege was regarded as compensation for the asylum granted to 800,000 German victims of political and ethnic persecution during World War II. Criticism of this constitutional provision mounted in the 1980s with the arrival of asylum seekers from non-European countries such as Sri Lanka, Iran, Lebanon, Ghana, and India, together with stateless Palestinians; it was difficult to distinguish those hoping to better themselves economically or to avoid compulsory military service from genuine victims of oppression. The issue of asylum became even more pressing when the eastern borders were opened, admitting a flood of foreigners—most prominently Poles, Romanian Roma (Gypsies), and Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims). Between 1990 and 1993, one million people sought asylum in Germany, and, as antagonism toward immigrants increased, there was a surge of violent attacks against foreigners. Although the government and citizen groups condemned such xenophobic sentiment and behaviour, foreigners continued to be subjected to discrimination and sporadic violence. Beginning in 1991, legislation brought Germany in line with the more restrictive policies practiced by other members of the European Community (since 1993 the European Union) regarding immigration from outside the Community. But while cooperation with neighboring states reduced the flow of illegal immigrants and somewhat abated the problem, Germany nevertheless became embroiled in a domestic debate over the rights of noncitizen residents, including the right to naturalization, which had become somewhat easier for long-term residents in the late 1990s.

Germany’s asylum rules faced fresh scrutiny in 2015, when more than one million refugees entered the country from war-torn areas in North Africa and the Middle East. As the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel struggled to achieve a balance between compassion and controlled entry for migrants, the political price of this stance quickly became apparent. Support for the explicitly anti-Islamic and anti-immigrant AfD surged, and in 2018 that party entered the Bundestag for the first time.