What earlier forms of “working for Germany” had in common with the incipient “guest labour” was that both involved working under far worse working, social and legal conditions than those of German workers. Migrant workers were paid the same as Germans, but this was mainly to protect the German workforce from cheap competition. There was also what was known as “domestic primacy”, which meant that German applicants were given preference in filling jobs. The migrant workers were supposed to take the jobs that the Germans were unwilling to do because of poorer conditions and pay, in the metal industry, in the mines, as cleaners and, for women, in light industry. This perpetuated inequality in the labour market. This creation of an “underclass” also ensured that Germans could move up to become skilled workers and managers.

Living conditions and the degree of state regulation and control of German and non-German workers also remained unequal. The main means of controlling labour migration was residence law, which was implemented locally in relation to both the labour market situation and population policy. For groups of people whose origins made them undesirable to the German state as a category, this could mean collective denial of residence.

This is what happened between 1963 and 1965, for example, to Jordanian (Palestinian) workers. They were very popular with employers in the ports of Mannheim because they did the heavy work that even the Italian and Spanish “guest workers” were unwilling to do. In 1962, however, the interior minister of the state of Baden-Württemberg, Hans Fillbinger, introduced a state policy to ensure that as few “Afro-Asians”, as they were referred to in internal files, as possible were allowed to come to Germany to work, and that those who were already there were deported. This procedure was later extended to the entire territory of West Germany.

Examples like this illustrate how precarious the status of foreigners was. In the mid-1960s, almost all people with this status were foreign workers. They usually received a residence permit for one or two years. Until 1965, residence permits were still issued on the basis of the Ausländerpolizeiverordnung (Police Decree on Foreigners) of 1938, which had been reinstated in 1951 when the Allies transferred foreigner policy to the sovereignty of West Germany. This decree included a passage stating that a foreigner would only be granted residence if they were “worthy of the hospitality granted”. It is possible that this wording inspired the term “guest worker”. The assessment of “worthiness” was left to the discretion of the local authorities.

When a new Ausländergesetz (Foreigners Act) was passed in 1965, it did not significantly change the way in which the immigration authorities dealt with the granting of residence in practice. Although the rules were improved on paper, the authorities remained restrictive in their implementation. At the beginning of the 1970s, only one per cent of all foreigners in Germany had a full residence permit, the most secure right of residence. A much larger number should have been entitled to this based on their length of residence.

However, the wants of individual “guest workers” played little part in the decision to stay or become a citizen. The life stories and plans of many migrant workers were and still are unknown to many people, because the often-repeated narrative that they mainly wanted to save money and then return home corresponded to the internal logic of the labour migration system and the expectations of German politics and society. It was not necessarily what all migrant workers wanted. In any case, fixed plans do not correspond to the processual character of migration, the course of which depends on the agency of the migrants and the opportunities available to each of them. For labour migrants in Germany, these opportunities have improved because of the recruitment agreements and the European legislation that has gradually come into force in the course of the Germany’s westward orientation. Nevertheless, according to an early migrant trade union official, Greek Patroklos Klinis, in 1975, “uncertainty and living with the feeling of being constantly threatened by deportation” were the “predominant elements of everyday life”. The almost annual trip to the immigration office epitomised how migrant workers were unable to take control of their own lives.

This uncertainty was the result of a political and societal consensus of Germans that labour migration should not become permanent immigration. The extremely restrictive practice of naturalising “guest workers” and many other structures of exclusion, be it the discriminative housing market or the lack of opportunities for political participation, were fully in line with this. All this was an expression of the enduring goal of not becoming a country of immigration, despite labour migration. Behind this was the long-standing tradition in German society of defining “Germanness” through an assumed common ancestry. Migrants, especially those who were not considered equal, were perceived in this light as a threat from which the “German people” had to be protected. This was no less than a continuation of the inventories of racism that continued to place different “peoples” in a hierarchy of origin.