“France will continue, as long as necessary, to reestablish controls on its own borders, as permitted by European rules, and as Germany has just done”announced Michel Barnier during his general policy statement on 1Ahem October. Since September 16, in application of a modification of the Schengen area statutes, Germany has de facto reestablished individual controls at all its borders, including France, for six renewable months, in a measure of great symbolic significance.
The decision comes after a historic electoral result: the German far-right won the regional elections for the first time since 1945, on 1Ahem September, in Thuringia, and witnesses the divisions along the Rhine over the issue of political refugees, particularly Syrians and Afghans, the most attacked. However, Berlin’s decision is part of a long history, specific to Germany: that of immigration, as essential as it is criticized.
The postwar, an asylum policy and a need for labor
The right to asylum is enshrined in the West German Constitution, the Grundgesetzor “fundamental law”, since 1949. It is the only fundamental right granted to foreigners, and a commitment made at the end of the Second World War. “Germany has experienced the trauma of National Socialism and has become aware of its responsibility and wishes to promote human rights.”deciphers Jeanette Süss, researcher at the French Institute of International Relations.
This welcoming policy was quickly accompanied by a need for labor, in the midst of the post-war economic miracle. Thus, Bonn, the capital of West Germany, signed its first agreements with Italy (1955), Spain and Greece (1960), Turkey (1961), Morocco (1963), Portugal (1964), Tunisia (1965) and later. Yugoslavia (1968) to recruit Gastarbeiter“guest workers”.
In the opinion of the leaders at the time, they should only stay for two years at most. But, explains historian Wolfgang Benz in Migrations, integrations and multiple identities (New Sorbonne Press, 2011), “ [les] In contrast, migrant workers wanted to bring their families and did not want to return home after a short stay. “They had children in Germany who had few ties to their country of origin.”
Thus, from the first 2,500 Turkish workers in 1961, the country’s first community of foreign origin grew, estimated in the early 1990s at 3 million people. Although it claims the opposite and despite measures to encourage return, West Germany has, in fact, become a country of immigration.
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