Academic literature on the topic 'Greece – Emigration and immigration – Germany (West)'

The end of the Cold War has been marked by the re-emergence of nationalism. This article is focused on Turkey and Turkish emigration abroad. It examines integration of second generation immigrants in Western Europe and various forces fostering Islamic identity. It then compares political discourse on immigration in France and Germany. It concludes that the resurgence of ethnic identity as the basis for effective political action in widely divergent societies is a key feature of the post-Cold War period. Immigrants have been actively involved in this general process as witnessed by the role of immigrants in recent conflict in Yugoslavia and Turkey.

The Cossack émigré as a socio­historic phenomenon was created like result of the emigration of a part of the Cossacks after the defeat of the White movement in the Civil war in Russia. The Cossacks of the south­east part of the European Russia emigrated mostly to the West. The main countries of the Cossack emigrants’ settlement initially became Turkey and Greece, later Bulgaria, Germany, Poland, France, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia. Members of the Cossack forces of the Asian Russia were going to the East. Most of them were placed in China, less in Australia. Total amount of the Cossacks abroad was about 100 thousand people.

Josef Lainck, a German national emigrated to Canada in July 1927. He arrived in Quebec City and travelled west to Edmonton, Alberta where he became a burglar and shot a police officer. Lainck was arrested in November 1927 and deported to Germany in 1938, upon arrival he was arrested and interned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp until April 1945. This article will examine Lainck’s emigration to Canada, arrest and deportation to Nazi Germany. Lainck’s case is illuminating as it reveals information on deportations from Canada and the Third Reich’s return migration program and how undesirables were treated within Germany. The Third Reich’s return migration plan encouraged returnees to seek their deportations as a method of return. Canadian extradition procedures cared little for the fate of foreign nationals expatriated to the country of their birth regardless of the form of government or the turmoil that plagued the nation. This work will compare Canadian to American deportation rates as an illustration of Canada’s harsh deportation criterion. In this article, the policies and practices of immigration and deportation are discussed within a framework of insecurity as a key driver for human mobility in the first half of the 20th century.

Migrations from Yugoslavia to Germany have a long tradition. There have been various economic and social causes, and in some periods even political ones for that phenomenon. Taking into consideration the historical aspect and also the contemporary migration flows, the dynamics of migrations of the Yugoslav population to Germany has the following stages in its development. The first stage had begun in late XIX century and ended with the World War I. Although the overseas migration flows prevailed, yet the German agriculture and its mine industry attracted a part of the Yugoslav population. Between the two world wars mostly "Westfahl Slovenes" and Croats and Serbs from Bosnia-Herzegovina got "temporary employed" in the Rhine-Westfahl industrial area, along with several thousand Serb-Croat-Slovene agricultural seasonal workers per year. The second stage began immediately after the Second World War when most of about 200,000 citizens from the former Yugoslavia, being mostly refugees, moved from the West European to overseas countries, but some of them stayed in Germany. Involuntary migrants and refugees, however, returned in great number from Germany to Yugoslavia. At that stage non-extradition of war criminals on the part of the West occupying powers on German territory, then disregard of West German Governments of the anti-Yugoslav activities of the part of extreme Yugoslav emigration, and different interpretation of the bilateral agreement on extradition, became the essential problem in relations between SFR Yugoslavia and FR Germany. The third stage in development of migrations commenced in early 1960s. At that time, Germany and other Western countries became prominently immigrational, while since mid-1960s till 1973 economic emigrants from Yugoslavia became more and more important in the German economic space. From 1954 to 1967 migration of Yugoslav citizens had not yet been intensive and their intention was mostly to work abroad. Illegal employment was, however, prominent at that time. Due to the normalisation of political relations, re-establishment of diplomatic relations and conclusion of bilateral agreements that legally defined employment of foreign workers, since 1968 till 1973 a great number of Yugoslavs got employed in FR Germany. The contemporary migrations from FR Yugoslavia to Germany resulted from the economic and political crisis in the former SFRY as well as from the civil wars that were waged in the Yugoslav territory. FR Germany became the most important destination country of Yugoslav migrants - workers, refugees, false asylum-seekers and political emigrants. Different categories of migrants from Yugoslavia to Germany enjoy the treatment that is in accordance with the immigration policies of the German governments as well as with the degree of development of the German-Yugoslav political and economic relations, and the degree of the established co-operation in the field of legal assistance and social welfare. Migrant workers, who have legally regulated their employment and residence status, could in the future expect to gain assistance from their mother country in getting efficient protection of their rights and interests in all stages of the migration process. Numerous migrants asylum-seekers, in spite of the proclaimed international protection, share, however, the fate resulting from the politically motivated measures and actions taken by the German authorities within the arbitrary decision-making of the right and/or abuse of the right to asylum. This is the reason why as early as in late 1994 the Government of FRG announced that it would expel foreigners from the country. The remaining refugees, or actually the so-called false asylum-seekers in FR Germany, share the fate of forced repatriation. Within this category special emphasis should be placed on the attitude of the German government to the Albanians and Roma from Kosovo. At first, the Germans treated the Albanians from Kosovo as politically persecuted persons, offering them refuge. Then they declared them (and Roma also) to be false asylum-seekers and insisted on readmission - their gradual repatriation to Kosovo. Considering both positive and negative implications of the migration process, the key issue for the citizens from Serbia and Montenegro who live in Germany remains the following: maintenance of their national identity, cherishing of their mother tongue and culture, keeping up relations with their mother country, social gathering - in various associations, clubs and organisations, education in their mother tongue, what particularly includes comprehensive additional teaching for children in Serbian, as well as better information dissemination.

The Sirinic district is located in one of the four mountain valleys (Sirinic, Sredska, Opolje and Gora) in the Sara mountain region. Its geographic boundaries almost match the administrative borders of the commune of Strpce. It is first mentioned in Serb manuscripts of the first half of the XIV century. The census taken in 1455 by the Turks shows a relatively high density of Serb population. The Albanians immigrated to the Sirinic district from northern Albania after the second mass migration of Serb population in 1737. They came from north and east, from southern parts of Kosovo, Kacanicka gorge and the Valley of Skoplje. A larger-scale settlement of Albanians into the Sara mountain region was prevented by massive Islamization of native Serb population in the districts of Gora, Opolje and Sredska. Thus, a multi-ethnic buffer zone was formed during Turkish reign which has been basically preserved until today. For this particular reason the region has attracted interest of many domestic and foreign researchers ever since early XIX century. Elaboration of two multi-disciplinary scientific research projects by the Institute of Geography "Jovan Cvijic" of the Serb Academy of Science and Arts in the period from 1989 to 1994 was based on the same considerations. One of the projects is fully concerned with the Sirinic district and the author of this paper was asked to study migrations and the origins of Albanian population as well as to organize and conduct a population census in the commune of Strpce. Immigration of Albanians to the Sirinic district took place in several phases which ultimately led to the formation of five mixed Serb-Albanian settlements located between a group of four homogenous Albanian and seven such Serb settlements. Thus, a relatively stable ethnic and geographic structure was formed as early as in the XIX century. Its territorial and demographic proportions did not substantially change regardless of all tumultuous historical and political events that had since taken place. A more detailed analysis shows that the share of Albanians in total population of the district rose from about 29% in 1931 to only 33% in 1989 in spite of the natural increase in population in excess of 30 per thousand ever since the early 1980s. However, demographic growth of Albanian population remained much below the level of the biological reproduction rate due to intensive emigration i.e., a negative migratory balance ranging from 21.8 per thousand in 1961 to 26.5 per thousand in 1989. The causes for emigration were economic and, for decades, bound toward Kosovo, Western Macedonia and the Valley of Skoplje. Emigration to Turkey began in late XIX century, resumed during the Balkan Wars and was recorded again in the early 1980s (encouraged by the Balkan Treaty signed by the FPRY, Greece and Turkey) but did not much affect total demographic movement of Albanians in the Sirinic district. Economic emigration of population to Switzerland and Germany has been growing from the 1960s onward. This paper also reviews parallel existence and functioning of two crucially different homeostatic demographic systems - the Albanian and the Serb - in the same compact geographic environment. The paper also points to the preserved awareness of a fixed (tribal) affiliation and finally displays a detailed review of migratory dynamics and origins of Albanian population, number of houses (families) and the number of members of each clan in 1989.

Defence date: 31 January 2022
Examining Board: Professor Laura Lee Downs, (EUI); Professor Corinna Unger, (EUI); Professor Emerita Efi Avdela, (University of Crete); Professor Lauren Stokes, (Northwestern University)
This doctoral thesis is a social history of the Greek migrant workers in West Germany, with an emphasis on the role of the sending country in all the stages of their migration journey. It examines the different ways the Greek migrants’ transnational bonds were formed, expressed and preserved in their daily life in West Germany in the period 1960-1989. Heated debates about the desirability of emigration and return, confrontations and divisions in the realms of the Greek migrant community in West Germany, manipulation efforts and failed initiatives of the sending state are at the centre of my investigation. Starting from the postwar reconstruction period, I set the background of the political and social transformations in Greece and West Germany, which made up the push and pull factors of the Gastarbeiter system. In the three Cold War decades, the Greek Gastarbeiter were present in West Germany and continuities and ruptures in policymaking and social attitudes determined their fate. In a nutshell, this research project seeks to answer the following questions: who were the Greek Gastarbeiter? What did the Greek state do for them? How was their agency expressed? The Greek Gastarbeiter might have been “birds of passage”, but their imprint in the evolving realities of postwar Greece was indelible.

AbstractGermany today is one of the world’s most important countries of immigration but at the same time a country of emigration. During the last three decades, more than 3.3 million German citizens have left the country whereas 2.5 million have returned. Overall, 3.8 million Germans live outside Germany in another country of the OECD. The chapter analyses basic structures of German emigration and remigration. Germany’s development as a country of emigration includes major historical predecessors but also a more recent, slowly increasing level of international mobility of the German population. The geographical pattern of departure from Germany describes emigration as a heterogeneous phenomenon related to urban regions with higher shares of well-qualified people, but also close spatial links, at least with the neighbouring countries in the south and the west. In the long term, Europe has stabilised as the major destination region whereas the Americas, overall, have lost their attraction compared to earlier periods of emigration. Demographically, international mobility is a phenomenon of the younger population in particular and closely related to other transitions within the life course including changes in relationship status. The motives of migration illustrate the close link between economic, but also partnership and family-related reasons to help us understand Germany’s recent experiences with international mobility.