Migrationsland DDR? Recuperating the Histories of Non-European Vertragsarbeiter*innen in the GDR and Beyond

Abstract

The current focus on diversity and inclusion amid calls to decolonize the German curriculum prompts us once again to examine what we understand to be “German” about German Studies. This article pursues this agenda by addressing a lacuna in our understanding and representation of migrants to Germany, specifically the presence, history, and legacies of labor migrants to East Germany. The first half of this article contextualizes the German Democratic Republic's (GDR) recruitment of foreign workers and examines key similarities and differences between the East and West German guest worker program models. This section focuses particularly on the labor migrants recruited from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the People's Republic of Mozambique – the largest cohorts of non-European workers recruited by the GDR – and concludes with a brief overview of the long afterlife of the Vertragsarbeiter*innen through the Wende, reunification, and beyond. The second section offers a range of texts and assignments keyed to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) guidelines for integrating the narratives of Vertragsarbeiter*innen into German language and Studies curricula. Recuperating the history of non-European contract workers in East Germany serves to expand our conception of German Studies and to dismantle artificially exclusive boundaries, thereby working toward the deterritorialization of the discipline.