This 1973 photo from a railway station is a visual cliché for the migrants’ lives on the move. The Greek Gastarbeiter or guest workers were part of the West German labor recruitment program in the 1960s. This presentation will be a panorama of their transnational experience(s) including work, leisure and political participation. My intention is to show how the ever-changing Greek politics exerted a major influence on the life of the migrants in West Germany and how the migrants - not as a homogenous, but rather as a fragmented block - negociated their belonging.
Maria Adamopoulou, PhD candidate in History, European University Institute (Florence)
Maria is a historian by training, but always open to interdisciplinary debates. She is currently working on her thesis concerning Greek labor migration to the Federal Republic of Germany in the period 1960-1989. Her thesis focuses on the initiatives of the Greek government towards the guest workers in West Germany and their response and counter-initiatives. Her main research interests are social and cultural history, oral history and memory, and migration studies.