Western Europe without the "Gastarbeiter" program?

In the 50s-70s, mainly Germany, but other countries like Scandinavia, Belgium and Netherlands also had foreign guest workers come in to help out. It started out mainly with Europeans from more poorer countries but soon a big chunk of Middle Eastern/North African workers who started coming.

Many never actually followed with the "guest" part and stayed. I believe many even tried to reunite their families into the country. I've read an article that claimed in Germany for example, the influx of Turks in Germany had an effect on their society and the German governments handling of it all impacted led German chancellor Angela Merkel in late 2015 to say that Germany must learn from their guest worker "mistakes".

So I wondered what happened if this program never happened? Would those countries find other ways to get workers or was this inevitable?
 
It was pretty much unavoidable, but you could have seen some alternative countries they originated from. You could also have seen a ban on them bringing their families with them. If the latter had existed, most would likely have returned to their countries of origin in the late 70ties. of course some places like the former colonial migration was unavoidable. But we could have seen fewer people from Turkey emigrate to Europe. The question is where the guest workers would come from instead. Spain was as example planned to be the country from which they could arrive from in the case of Denmark, but relative few Spanish people emigrated to the rest of Europe, alternate we could see agreement with Warsaw Pact countries for them to send some of their population abroad as guest workers.
 

NoMommsen

Donor
It was pretty much unavoidable, but you could have seen some alternative countries they originated from. You could also have seen a ban on them bringing their families with them. If the latter had existed, most would likely have returned to their countries of origin in the late 70ties. of course some places like the former colonial migration was unavoidable. But we could have seen fewer people from Turkey emigrate to Europe. The question is where the guest workers would come from instead. Spain was as example planned to be the country from which they could arrive from in the case of Denmark, but relative few Spanish people emigrated to the rest of Europe, alternate we could see agreement with Warsaw Pact countries for them to send some of their population abroad as guest workers.
You know, the "guest workers" aquisition program first started with also in Germany with workers from Spain (lesser numbers) and mostly from Italy.
The aquisition of workers from Turkey started quite later ... as another bow to industry as their workers being even cheaper as the italians.

For the warsaw pact countires as a "work-force" reservoir to maybe be tapped ...
Beside the ideological problems (of the ways to force these workers to really come back or not being the commies 5th column in western europe) : there was a shortage of workers as well and they "imported" workers from "befriended" socialist countries as well, for the former GDR mainly from Vietnam and Angola, dunno much about the other warsaw pact countries (howerver, a topic these countries, Germany included, are eager to swash under the carpet).
 
In the 50s-70s, mainly Germany, but other countries like Scandinavia, Belgium and Netherlands also had foreign guest workers come in to help out. It started out mainly with Europeans from more poorer countries but soon a big chunk of Middle Eastern/North African workers who started coming.

Many never actually followed with the "guest" part and stayed. I believe many even tried to reunite their families into the country. I've read an article that claimed in Germany for example, the influx of Turks in Germany had an effect on their society and the German governments handling of it all impacted led German chancellor Angela Merkel in late 2015 to say that Germany must learn from their guest worker "mistakes".

So I wondered what happened if this program never happened? Would those countries find other ways to get workers or was this inevitable?

The richer European countries were starting to become destinations for immigrants in the mid-19th century, France standing out particularly as a net receiver. By the early 20th century, as colonial empires consolidated, some of these immigrants started to be non-European. France again took the lead, with Algerians starting to come as early as 1905.

https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_algérienne_en_France

The gradual shift, over the 1960s, from European countries to non-Partisan ones was entirely natural. As labour-exporting countries in southern Europe started to become richer themselves, and as the influx of ethnic Germans to West Germany (from East Germany and from German minorities elsewhere in central Europe) started to dry up), turning to non-European sources was inevitable. This immigration followed pre-Second World War connections, if in larger volume.

The fact that central and southeastern Europe was Communist did not prevent them from becoming labour-exporting. Yugoslavia was Communist and a major sending country, after all. The big problem was the Cold War rivalry: Communist states on poor terms with the West has no interest in risking losing their human capital to the West. Things would need to be very different.
 

TruthfulPanda

Gone Fishin'
Pre-1950 France was an oddity as it had very little natural population growth. All other European countries exported population - only France imported.
Limiting guest workers to Christians - or simply non-Muslims - would had produced higher social cohesion and faster assimilation.
 

oberdada

Gone Fishin'
Entirely is complicated, reducing it is possible. (basing this on Germany)

-Make it as normal for women to work full-time as in countries like the GDR. Making Family and Children (Kind und Karriere) the socially accepted normality.

-Relocate certain industries to countries like Turkey, made get a free trade agreement or something similar.

-Be a lot stricter with Work visa,

-Keep foreigners from getting access to unemployment benefits / social security

- Basicly treat guest workers like it is done in the gulf states

- Stop subsidies for industries like coal mining. (Basically any industries that can't find employees in the domestic work force. )

-Unionize those who still come
 

TruthfulPanda

Gone Fishin'
-Make it as normal for women to work full-time as in countries like the GDR. Making Family and Children (Kind und Karriere)
Oh, I did not know what the "three womanly K's" got modified that way :)


-Unionize those who still come
Now that is just cruel ...

A friend of mine worked as a Gastarbeiter in the BRD in the 1980s where she was part of a purely non-German brigade. She said that her Forewoman (a Kurdish lady) ended their workshift pointing to the locker-room and with a tongue in cheek cry of "Auslaender - raus!"
 

oberdada

Gone Fishin'
Now that is just cruel ...

A friend of mine worked as a Gastarbeiter in the BRD in the 1980s where she was part of a purely non-German brigade. She said that her Forewoman (a Kurdish lady) ended their workshift pointing to the locker-room and with a tongue in cheek cry of "Auslaender - raus!"

Dark humor!

But I don't see why integrating foreign workers into existing unions would be cruel.

Explain. Explain! EXPLAIN!!
 
It was pretty much unavoidable, but you could have seen some alternative countries they originated from. You could also have seen a ban on them bringing their families with them. If the latter had existed, most would likely have returned to their countries of origin in the late 70ties. of course some places like the former colonial migration was unavoidable. But we could have seen fewer people from Turkey emigrate to Europe. The question is where the guest workers would come from instead. Spain was as example planned to be the country from which they could arrive from in the case of Denmark, but relative few Spanish people emigrated to the rest of Europe, alternate we could see agreement with Warsaw Pact countries for them to send some of their population abroad as guest workers.
Why?
 

oberdada

Gone Fishin'
I do not like unions - I see them as business killers, i.e. a company with unions will go bancrupt - hence my joke.

Well almost all large German companies from the industrial sector have relevant union membership among the employees.
But my point was that it makes harder to cut wages by employing guest workers, making getting them less attractive in the first place.
 
Now here's a question to come at it from the opposite end-what if naturalization was seen as an end-goal or even likely possibility with gastarbeiter or foreign workers? Not that all of them would naturalize or settle, but that there would be some proportion who would return after a few years (as tended to happen) and some proportion who settled. That might affect decisions about getting visas and taking the issue of acculturation more seriously, as well as giving an incentive to acculturate since for example it would help them naturalize.
 

NoMommsen

Donor
Interesting thread. I'll pose my own question, what if the program started earlier?
Quite unlikely, as the percentage of german unemployed 'just' droped from around 8 % to below 6 % in 1955, the year of the first "recruitment"-agreement between Germany (BRD/FRG) and Italy.

Btw, such a recruitment arrangement was for some years already before pressed for by acrtually Italy, which suffered economically much more with its post-war-rebuilding than Germany (and : no, NOT due to "Marshal-Plan" or other 'specials' for Germany).
This recruiment was not unopposed esp. by Adenauer, who still saw too much german uneployed for such a recruitment. However
-the Minister of economics, Ehrhardt, did not want to loose Italy as a customer due to its miserable trade-balance and lack of cash of the people
-the Minister of Foreign affairs did not wanted to loose a friendly ally
-the Minister for ... "special tastks" Franz Josef Strauß wanted to use the "Guest.workers" for wage-dumping purposes agauinst the unions.​
(Just for some background ...)
 

NoMommsen

Donor
Now here's a question to come at it from the opposite end-what if naturalization was seen as an end-goal or even likely possibility with gastarbeiter or foreign workers? Not that all of them would naturalize or settle, but that there would be some proportion who would return after a few years (as tended to happen) and some proportion who settled. That might affect decisions about getting visas and taking the issue of acculturation more seriously, as well as giving an incentive to acculturate since for example it would help them naturalize.
Nice idea, but ... much too idealistic to have a chance to become politics at that time.
 
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