Introduction

The making of migration policies is a multidimensional and complex process. It both involves and affects different spheres of society – local, regional, national, international – and calls for interaction across a multitude of social-political actors. What's more, policies have a double nature: their intentions and outcomes are not necessarily one in the same. Besides intentionally constructed policies, it is important to consider the effects of shadow decision-making as well as the non-policies and contra-intentional outcomes of policy measures. These aspects of post-war Germany's policy formulation and outcomes, both intended and unintended, will be described in this chapter. The following sections will suggest possible linkages between these driving factors and their reciprocal influence.

German migration history is marked by the continual employment of foreign labour, beginning with agriculture in the Prussian era and shifting to industrial work in World War II, which has remained a major source of employment up until the present-day. In 1944, several sectors, such as agriculture, mining and chemicals, saw the share of foreign labourers grow up to 40 per cent (Bade 1983: 56). This pattern was interrupted only during the economic crisis at the end of the 1920s and during the end of World War II when, in four years, 13.7 million refugees and expelled ethnic Germans from Central Europe immigrated to the three western zones of what would become the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) (Bade 1983: 59). Although immigration constitutes an integral part of German history, the first substantial migration movements to the country took place as a consequence of World War II. This benchmark, therefore, marks the starting point of this chapter.

In post-war West Germany, a large share of the labour demand could be met by returning German prisoners of war (4 million until the end of 1950), refugees of German descent from Central Europe (approximately 4.7 million) and by persons emigrating from the German Democratic Republic (GDR) (approximately 1.8 million until 1961) (Bade 1985: 60). In 1950, these three groups of migrants amounted to 16.7 per cent of the West German population, increasing to 23.9 per cent in 1960 (Herbert 1990: 196). Although by law they were treated like Germans and considered themselves Germans, their integration took place not without conflicts.