Description

Gastarbeiter are foreign or migrant workers, particularly those who had moved to West Germany between 1955 and 1973, seeking work as part of a formal guest worker program. As a result, guestworkers are generally considered temporary migrants because their residency in the country of immigration is not yet determined to be permanent. Other countries had similar programs: in the Netherlands and Belgium it was called the gastarbeider program; in Sweden, Denmark and Norway it was called arbetskraftsinvandring (workforce-immigration); and in East Germany such workers were called Vertragsarbeiter. The term that was used during the Nazi era was Fremdarbeiter. However, the latter term had negative connotations, and was no longer used after World War II.