Monat: Dezember 2020

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Migration in Germany: An Overview 1950s – present

Graphic 1: Number of immigrants in Germany from 1991 to 2019 (BAMF 2020)

After World War II,  Germany was divided into four occupational zones controlled by the US, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union. Some 8 million refugees arrived in the Western-occupied zones and some 3.6 million people in the Soviet-occupied zone.

In the mid-1950s, due to labour shortage, the Federal Republic of Germany also began to recruit workers abroad. In 1955 the first recruitment contract was signed with Italy. Then came the Spanish, the Greek, the Turkish, the Moroccan, the Portuguese, the Tunisian, and the Yugoslavian. While the Berlin Wall was being built, there was an urgent need for foreign workers, recruited by the GDR. In total, there were approximately 14 million foreign workers who came to Germany.

The recruitment of so-called „guest workers“ was terminated due to the oil crisis and the increasing number of unemployment in 1973. Only almost 4 million foreigners stayed in Germany, while 11 million returned to their home countries.

At the beginning of the 1990s immigration had risen again due to the fall of the Berlin Wall, after the recruitment ban in 1973 and the low immigrant in the early and mid-1980s. Immigration reached its first climax in reunified Germany in 1992 with more than 1.5 million people immigrated to the Federal Republic of Germany. In 2008 and 2009, Germany was considered an emigration country.

In 2015, a total of 2.14 million people immigrated to Germany, and Syria was the main country of origin of new immigrants, whose number rose more than Romania and Poland. According to „Statistisches Bundesamt“ (2020), in 2019, there were 1.55 million arrivals to Germany.

References:

1. Seifert, Wolfgang. “Geschichte der Zuwanderung nach Deutschland nach 1950 | bpb.” bpb.de, https://www.bpb.de/politik/grundfragen/deutsche-verhaeltnisse-eine-sozialkunde/138012/geschichte-der-zuwanderung-nach-deutschland-nach-1950. Accessed 15 Dec. 2020.

2. Graphic 1: BAMF. (June 29, 2020). Number of immigrants in Germany from 1991 to 2019 [Graph]. In Statista. Retrieved December 19, 2020, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/894223/immigrant-numbers-germany/

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Diversity as My Core Value

Have you ever asked yourself what your top three values are? Along with self-development and independence, my most important value is diversity. 

Diversity brings colors to life. 

I expressed my core value on a piece of cloth with watercolour.

In Vietnamese, we have a saying: “Go outside one day, learn a bunch of wisdom”. The meaning of this proverb is if you avoid getting out of your comfort zone to see the world, you will never know how much potential it can give you by meeting new people, exploring differences, and facing challenges. 

Diversity broadens my knowledge as well as mindset. As I get the opportunity to know different people from mixed backgrounds by stepping out of my country and going abroad, my knowledge bag gets heavier and more qualified day by day. The simple daily fact that not everyone knows how to use chopsticks, not all people wear sandals with socks, in some countries people drive on the left, makes me accept that I can’t expect everyone to have the same opinions as me. So I taste new food, learn new languages, observe and adopt new behaviours, listen to new points of view every time I get to know a foreign person. Every person contributes something to my life, regardless of the impact they create. 

Diversity helps me to understand that differences are crucial. The world to me would turn colorless and monotonous if there wasn’t diversity. Creativity comes along with diversity. The difference becomes the theme of lots of my daily discussions, entries, and ideas. Diversity forces me to adapt to other cultures. Being your true self is the best feeling people can have while adapting to other cultures when being out of the country plays an inevitable role if a person wants to integrate and develop in another society. 

Diversity makes me a respectful and tolerant person. Now, as I am used to facing different cultures, I accept the differences and try to put myself in other perspectives. Some behaviours that we might consider insulting are just normal for another culture. The multicultural environment got me to understand and show respect to what other cultures believe and follow without judgment. When an unpleasant situation happens, I avoid judging immediately and try to put myself in another’s position and ask such questions: “What would I have done if I were the person in that situation?”, “Would I also react that way?”. 

Diversity drives my creativity. I’m working voluntarily for a youth organization, where I spend a lot of my time working with an international team. Interacting with different cultures brings me lots of ideas when it comes to brainstorming, discussing, or working together. The amount of inspiration is endless since each individual experiences various things and analyses one matter from their perspectives.

And with diversity as one of my core values, I become a world citizen. Acknowledged that I am also a small particle contributing to a big colorful picture, apart from encouraging other people to show their cultures, I actively and confidently represent my culture to the world. Diversity gives me the chance to become an ambassador for my country.

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The Research Process

1. The Research Theme:

The term „cultural diversity“ has become more and more popular for several decades in Germany, yet it is also a controversial topic. The topic fascinates me as an international student who belongs to the target group (20-27, a student in Germany). What is indeed „cultural diversity“? What do young people think of „cultural diversity“? How do they benefit from it personally? What is their opinion on how cultural diversity contributes to society? Are we losing our own cultural traits when we get together in a diverse world?

2. References:

Books from the library, newspapers and internet sources (statistics, graphics, images…). A list of references will be fully uploaded on page „REFERENCES“.

3. Research Field:

Students in Germany who are between 20-27 years old.

4. Working Devices:

Laptop, smartphone, camera, pen, notebook.

5. Methods:

A combination of narrative interviews (recordings) and visual anthropology (in the form of a video) will be represented in every article throughout the project.

6. Field Trip:

Due to the current lockdown situation in Germany, I would not be able to travel to the South and do face-to-face interviews with chosen people. Therefore, I will be using WhatsApp and Skype as two means of communication.

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About Me

Hi everyone!

My name is Thu, I’m a 22-year-old Vietnamese who is now a student from the University of Bremen. I am an open-minded, humorous, sociable and emotional individual; a fair, creative mind; a global citizen. I am extremely passionate about discovering different cultures. It is so fascinating to see people from everywhere in the world gather in one place and share different opinions and personal experiences. There is nothing more exciting than being at a table with Chicken Tikka Masala, Schnitzel, Pho, Tacos, Tajine…Because it is the moment I acknowledge that not everyone uses chopsticks and eat rice three times a day like I used to do.

I look, observe and respect diversity. I take what I consider beautiful from each culture I encountered, learn from them and sharpen my personality. I stand for justice and fight against discrimination, racism and negative stereotypes. All these characteristics have driven me to the decision of taking cultural studies as my main subject for my bachelor program. 

My project is called „Cultural Diversity & The Youth„. To get a clear overview of the project, you can have a glance at this link. With this project, I have clear, positive goals for myself. I’m looking forward to getting into what actually „Storytelling“ and the goals of it are, how to carry out scientific research, how to use scientific methods on my products and how to make my scientific project interesting and attractive to the audiences. 

You can contact me via my university e-mail: thu@uni-bremen.de or via LinkedIn.

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About My Topic

Link to video: DEFINE CULTURE IN ONE WORD

7 people, 7 different words have been used to describe the term „culture“. Everyone has his or her own word to define culture. Even when people might use the same word for their interpretation, the explanation varies from person to person. It is because everybody was born, raised, educated differently, and therefore have various beliefs, perceptions, and ideologies. I call it diversity.

Cultural diversity has always been a popular topic throughout history. To its simplest definition, when different cultural groups exist in a society, cultural diversity will be formed. When different groups come into contact with each other, we recognize differences, compare and contrast our respective cultural traditions.

With this project, I aim to bring my audience a closer look at what cultural diversity means for young people, especially students from 20-25 years old who are currently studying in Germany, regardless of their races, genders, nationalities, marital status, etc. Furthermore, the blog will focus on which positive impacts cultural diversity brings to the youth, how young people have changed by interacting with various cultures, and which ideas they have in mind about how cultural diversity positively influences society.