In depth analysis of EU migration and the ‘refugee crisis’ in relation to labourmarket restructuring and working class composition

Translated from Wildcat no.99 – Winter 2015/16

The ‘summer of migration’ has ended.While numerous initiatives still supportthe ‘new citizens’, through organisingday-to-day support, festivals, languagecourses and much more, the politicalclass wants to invert this dynamic: theytry to erect new borders, enforcedeterioration of social standards and touse the refugees to politically divide theworking class – as a catalyst for a veryfar-reaching social re-formation.

Within the political left, views on thisdevelopment can be divided roughly intotwo sorts: some conceptualise theimpressive self-organisation of refugeesand the tearing down of border fences as‘autonomy of migration’. Others seeMerkel’s policies from a solelyfunctionalist perspective: migration isbeneficial for capital’s interest in cheap,qualified and motivated labour power andin additional contribution payers for thepension funds.

In reality these two aspects cometogether. By migrating towards thenorthern European centres many peopletry to become active subjects again.Capital wants to make use of their socialenergy for the restructuring of labourmarkets and to put pressure on local classrelations. Furthermore, mass migrationcan have similar effects, like an economicstimulus program, by creatingemployment in job centres, in teaching,in construction, in the welfare andsecurity sectors… in addition it lowers thereproduction costs of labour power(maintenance and education of a humanbeing during the first two decades of theirlife costs around 200,000 Euro –

Germany is a country of ‘old age’ anddesperately needs young people!).

To have this impact proletarian migrationmust be controlled, something whichthose in power have increasingly beenunable to do in recent years. The mostrecent stages of this loss of control werethe escalation of the ‘refugee crisis’ inGreece in early 2015, the demolition ofthe border fences in Turkey in Mid-July2015 in the aftermath of the fights overTal Abjad in Syria and finally the trek ofrefugees from the main station inBudapest towards the Austrian border. Inearly September the arriving refugeeswere welcomed with applause in Vienna,Munich and other cities. Apart from theactual border-crisis, this reaction of thelocal population is the second aspect ofthe state’s loss of control and would havebeen unthinkable in the early 1990s.Thirdly, the ruling class has no strategy ofhow to ‘fight the underlying reasons formigration’. In fact, the opposite is true:the ever more brutal and destructiverepression of oppositional movements inan increasing number of regions aroundthe globe aggravates the socialantagonism; crisis and wars result in thecollapse of entire regions.

The about-turn of the Merkel governmentin summer was both anacknowledgement of this reality and aneffort to re-claim control. Theproclamation of a ‘culture of welcoming’is part and parcel of this effort. Only bytransforming the patient long-term workof refugee initiatives into a public eventwould the political class subsequently beable to invert it.

In the following we want to elaborate onthe relation between the migration ofrefugees and labour migration intoGermany within the European context.Initially, the distinction between‘refugees’ and ‘labour migrants’ was apurely legal one: Greek workers whoescaped the military junta and came toGermany in 1967 were categorised as‘guest workers’. After the officialrecruitment ban of 1973, Turkishworkers, who were trying to escape fromthe military coup in 1980, had to claimasylum. Senegalese migrants who riskedtheir lives while crossing theMediterranean were treated as illegalagriculture workers in Spain and asasylum seekers in Germany.

In Germany, the individual andconstitutional right of asylum hardlyplayed a role before the end of the 1970sand was mainly applied to migrants fromstate-socialist countries. In 1980 for thefirst time more than 100,000 peopleclaimed asylum, about half of them fromTurkey and many others from Vietnamand Palestine. A year later 20 per cent ofthe asylum seekers came from Poland(during the peak time of the trade unionresistance of Solidarnosc).

During the 1980s there were a lot of left-wing people amongst the asylum seekers,who had to escape from state repressionor civil war, such as in Iran or Sri Lanka.They formed the backbone of a politicalmovement concerning the conditions ofasylum and against deportations toconflict areas. Bigoted propaganda, whichgathered force during the first half of thedecade mainly targeted these refugees,who not only brought with them skillsand experiences of struggle, but also

knowledge about the relations betweenGerman capital and the dictatorialregimes in their countries of origin.

From 1987 onwards the crisis in thecountries of the Eastern block becamemore visible. The numbers of ‘Aussiedler’[‘re-settlers’, people in the eastern-blockstates who could claim German ancestry]from Eastern Europe and the formerSoviet Union increased over a very shortspan of time to 400,000 in 1990 alone.The majority of these people were skilledworkers, who had learned a trade.Whoever was not able to prove their‘German roots’ had to apply for asylum:since 1988 the number of claims forasylum increased continuously, peakingin 1992 with roughly 440,000 claims.‘Left-wing’ people from the ‘Third World’formed only a small minority of theseclaimants. 75 per cent of the people camefrom east and south-east Europe – aresult of the social collapse in this region,the economic ‘shock therapies’, thesubsequent disputes over the distributionof the loot and finally the civil wars.Amongst the migrants there were also alot of people who did not claim asylum,but who worked in the ‘illegal economy’,as non-registered workers, e.g. inconstruction. [1]

In addition, during the three yearsfollowing the annexation of the formereastern ‘German Democratic Republic’one million internal migrants entered thelabour-market in West Germany, peoplewho wanted to escape from the suddenhike in unemployment after industriesand administration in their region hadbeen destroyed.

The crisis at the beginning of the 1990sThe escalation of the ‘refugee crisis’ 25years ago, like today, formed thefoundation for the massive dismantling ofwelfare standards and standards ofcollective contracts and labour rightsduring the economic crisis which kickedin shortly after. The German model of ahighly productive export industry, whichhas been successful for the last 15 years,is based on a working class which is moreseverely divided and segmented thanduring the previous decades.

On 8th of August 1991 more than 10,000refugees from Albania stormed the rustytin-pot freight-ship Vlora and forced thecrew to change course and to cross theAdria. The Italian police deported thembrutally after their arrival in Bari. Thisevent provided the visual context for therhetoric of ‘the boat is full’. The liberalpolitical magazine ‘Der Spiegel’ blatheredon about migration being the “war of thethird millennium” and prophesied thearrival of 50 million refugees from theformer Soviet Union (Der Spiegel, 19th ofAugust 1991).

While the federal government instigatedthe fear of an uncontrolled influx ofpeople from abroad it at the same timeactually brought more cheap workersfrom Eastern and Southern Europe intothe country, through so-called contractsfor work and services (contracts tied to aspecific job) and recruitment agreementsfor specific sectors, e.g. from 1991onwards more foreign seasonal workerswere employed in German agriculture.

Labour migration both in its unregulated

form and in form of contracts tied tospecific projects, e.g. on construction orin the meat industry, exercised anenormous pressure on local workers. Themigrants who worked for much lowerwages were also systematically cheatedout of their wages: sometimes they werepaid less than promised, sometimes notat all. This became a trigger for manydisputes and some self-organised strikesby workers from England, Ireland andItaly.

The unequal treatment of the differentgroups of migrants created the ground fordivisions, fear and pressure on workers toaccept the conditions they foundthemselves in: employed workers againstthe unemployed, workers from WestGermany against the ‘lazy Ossis’ (easternGermans), re-settled ‘Russian-Germans’against those migrants who had arrivedearlier… and the list goes on.

The fact that the state was able todelegate the political responsibility forracism to the losers of ‘German re-unification’ was based on cleverly playingdifferent groups off against each other.The political and media hate-propagandaagainst ‘economic refugees’ was and is aconscious instruction ‘to act’ (violently),taken up by the militant right-wing. InSeptember 1991, the CDU generalsecretary Ruehe wrote a circular in whichhe called on his party branches to raisethe “worrying issue of increasingnumbers of asylum seekers” at allparliamentary levels. He provided draftdocuments for councils to vote on andtemplates for local press releasesconcerning asylum seekers, containingcalculations which counterposed the lackof nursery places with an increase in

refugee spending or which made refugeeshelters in school gyms responsible forcancellations of school lessons in general.A few days afterwards, attacks againstrefugee shelters and workers fromMozambique started in Hoyerswerda(eastern Germany); the council used thisopportunity to get rid both of refugeesand of the remaining workers fromMozambique (workers from Vietnam andMozambique were the few migrantworkers in the former republic of‘socialist’ East Germany). [2]

Much like today, the administrativemeasures first resulted in local‘emergencies’ or shortages (e.g. inhousing) and subsequently to a situationof competition, which could be taken upby the anti-migrant propaganda. Thelocal councils were obliged to houserefugees in mass shelters and in mostcases they did this by using dilapidatedhouses without adequate infrastructure.In order to discourage future refugeesand stigmatise current refugees the stateenforced a very strictly organised massprocessing of asylum seekers, in whichrefugees were not granted benefits inmonetary form like everyone else, but inform of food or clothes donations.

In some areas the stigmatisation led toviolent racist outbursts, but in manyplaces also to ‘civil society’ engagement insupport of refugees and to resistance byasylum seekers in the form of foodboycotts, hunger strikes and occupationsof benefit offices. In order to neutralisethese acts of solidarity, pogroms anddeadly firebomb attacks were initiated bynazi-gangs infiltrated by the intelligenceservice. Even in cases of murder thepolice turned a blind eye.

Shortly after the pogrom in Rostock-Lichtenhagen [3] in August 1992 thegovernment and opposition agreed to the‘asylum compromise’, substantiallycurbing the right to asylum. Ademonstration of 350,000 people inBerlin became the final exclamation markof the resistance against the attack on theright to asylum.

The change of Article 16 of theconstitution in May 1993 was an essentialstep towards the Europeanisation of theright to asylum. By creating the constructof ‘safe third countries’ the legalprocedures were delegated to the EUborder-states; the declaration of ‘safecountries of origin’ factually abolished theright to asylum for people from theseregions.

The next legal change affected the‘migration law’ [Auslaendergesetz]. Thestate declared that refugees fleeing warwould be granted temporary asylum onlyas a contingent defined by the state andonly for a certain period of time – whichmeant that residency ceased to be anindividual right, but an administrative actrelating to a defined group of people thatcould be revoked at any time. This lawwas applied for the first time on a bigscale to war refugees from Kosovo. Since1993, the so-called ‘asylum seeker benefitlaw’ [Asylbewerberleistungsgesetz]created a legal justification for theunequal treatment of refugees when itcame to the basic minimum socialbenefits.

Politicians saw the decline of asylumclaims during the first decade of the newmillennium as a success. All legalregulations in recent years are based on

the underlying dictum ‘Germany is not animmigration country!’ and they first of allexpress the refusal to integrate people ingeneral, meaning, to give them equalrights.

During the half century from 1950 to2000 on average 200,000 more peopleimmigrated to Germany than left thecountry. During the first decade of 2000this figure declined sharply and evenbecame negative. During these yearstemporary labour migration from the newEU-states (Poland, Romania etc.) becamethe dominant form of immigration. Onlyin 2010 more people entered Germanythan left again: most of them from otherEU-states, although a considerable sharealso came from outside Europe and asasylum seekers. The mainorigin/citizenship of the refugees changedevery year; important regions of originwere the Balkans and the Middle East.

A new phase begins in 2008The only exact figure in relation to theamount of refugees arriving in Germanyis the number of initial applications forasylum. Since the onset of the globaleconomic crisis in 2008 this figureincrease slowly at first from less than30,000 to 64,000 initial applications in2012, it then nearly doubled to 110,000 in2013, increased to 170,000 in 2014 and tomore than 390,000 in 2015 – which isless by a long shot than the ‘over onemillion’-figure which is usually used. Howmany of the one million refugees who hadbeen registered by November 2015 leftthe country again, either by continuingtheir journey or by returning, no oneknows, not even the administration –

they also don’t know how many double ormis-registrations happened or how manyrefugees evaded registration when facingan ever more rigid interpretation of theright to asylum. The Institute forEmployment Research (IAB) of theFederal Employment Agency[Arbeitsagentur] [4] estimates thataround 70 per cent of refugees inGermany will stay there.

In many occasions the EU-states lostcontrol, they were not able or willing tocorrectly register the refugees. Somecountries did not pass on the registrationfigures to the EU-administration, in ordernot to become responsible for futureasylum claims. Both at and between theborders of the Balkan states the refugeetreks were frequently and arbitrarilystopped, food supplies and other aid waswithheld, producing a situation ofscarcity. At other times governmentsprovided free train transport for all thoserefugees who agreed to subjectthemselves to the act of registration andto wait for their turn for days underdisastrous conditions in registrationcamps. All this helped to produce imagesof refugee treks as suddenly emerging‘natural catastrophes’ which overwhelmthe state administrations despite theirbest efforts. On this background the stateleaders justified states of emergency andrepressive political measures – inparticular once the created conditions ledto resistance and refugees refused todisplay the ‘gratitude’ demanded of them.

During the last four decades none of thegovernments in Germany were able toformulate a ‘migration policy’ in the senseof a complete regulation and control ofimmigration. Since summer 2015 they

have had to come to terms with this fact:wars have moved increasingly closer toEU borders and become morewidespread. In consequence many morepeople have had to leave their homespermanently. The construction oftemporary refugee camps in the statesneighbouring the war regions is notsufficient to keep the problems fromGermany, because these regions aresimilarly destabilised by the scope ofmigration and because refugees fightagainst encampment and its conditions.This is why more and more peoplearrived in Germany since 2012.

In July 2012, of all possible points intime, the federal constitutional court[Bundesverfassungsgericht] ruled thatthe constitutionally guaranteed ‘dignifiedminimum level of subsistence’ applied toall people residing in Germany. Althoughthe implementation of this ruling is stillwaiting to happen, it was a blow to thepolitics of deterring migrants throughlowering standards of welfare. The rulingcan only be understood as a result of thebroad support of asylum seekers and thepersistent resistance against theirunequal treatment. This growingmovement was also one of the reasonswhy the state has deported fewer peoplein recent years. In 2013 and 2014 around10,000 deportations took place each year,in 2015 this figured increased to 18,360,most of them during the second half ofthe year – this is a high number ofdeportations, but it affects only about aquarter of all people who have beenrefused asylum and issued withdeportation orders. In reality the statewas not able to enforce the lowering ofthe quota of recognition of asylum claims

to below 1 per cent, which would havemeant the factual abolishment of theright to asylum.

Since about 2012 refugees who come toGermany have entered a situation that isincreasingly characterised by theconfident and organised presence ofpreviously arrived refugees, who,amongst others, protested against the‘residence rule’ (in which refugees werenot allowed to leave their designatedtown), occupied buildings and organisedhunger strikes. Out of these acts ofresistance the movement of theLampedusa refugees formed in 2013. Thismovement gets a lot of sympathy andsupport from civil society, as shown bythe increase in church asylums (peopleare granted shelter and protection bylocal parishes), which are supposed toprevent deportations, (currently 450people in 300 communities have beengiven church asylum). Another exampleare the protests of school students againstthe deportations of their class mates.

During the 1990s only a few people on theradical left or within small civil societygroupings supported refugees. However,actions against the ‘Fresspakete’ (parcelsof food, often of lower quality, issued torefugees instead of monetary benefits)did take place, which in many cases alsotargeted the charities and businesses thatmade money with the plight of refugees.Today, in contrast, hundreds ofthousands are involved in refugee supportas ‘volunteers’, and the ‘left-wingers’ are aminority within them. A study by theProtestant Church claims that eightmillion people engaged in one way oranother in helping refugees in 2015. Thisengagement, the contact with refugees

and with their struggles has radicalisedpeople, e.g. in regards to the involvementof Germany in wars or the role of Germanexports of weapons.

At the same time, the degree of violenceagainst refugees has reached levels as badas in the early 1990s. Merkel even warnedof a “new NSU”. [5] We are witnessing aradicalisation of the political right beyondthe organised militant milieu – but todayfascists are not able to pose as theexecuters of a relatively homogeneoussocial refusal of migrants, their violence israther an expression of a wideningdivision within society. Pegida [6] andcompany blame weaker sections ofsociety for their own fears of socialdegradation. By declaring migrants to besubhuman they want to enforce theviewpoint that these ‘others’ are notentitled to what they claim. A dumbresistance against the program ofmodernisation of capital which poses nothreat to the latter, but instead helps topromote it. This is why the cops largelyallow Pegida to carry on and why in mostcases the deep state tolerated firebombattacks and other violence againstrefugees.

European Union – The crumbling fortressIn terms of its impact on the EU therefugee crisis in the second half of 2015was more severe than the ‘Greece crisis’in the first half. The EU drifts apart, theSchengen agreement is in pieces. To beclear: the Schengen agreement was notabout the hermetical closure of the EU’souter borders, but the hurdles were (andare) supposed to be high enough that only

certain people would be able to make it –those who are physically and mentally fit,who have some money and personal orfamily resources and are dedicated andhighly motivated. In order for this towork the division of labour between thevarious EU states had to run smoothly asit was designed in the Dublin agreement– but the Italian and Greek governmentsjust pushed the refugees on towardsnorthern Europe without registeringthem. After that, in 2015, every countryjust followed its own interests.

The eastern European ‘front states’categorically refuse to take on refugees,but apart from tacitly tolerating short-term ‘circular’ labour migration[Pendelmigration] they engage in anopen-handed naturalisation of peoplefrom neighbouring states. The Polishstate remembers its ‘Polish’ minorities inUkraine, Hungary remembers‘Hungarian’ family members in Ukraine,the Romanians welcome their long lostsisters and brothers in Moldavia etc. Theapproach of these nationalistgovernments is similar to the Germanpolicy regarding the ‘late re-settlers’[Spaetaussiedler – Russian-Germans].The states hope for politically conformistimmigrants (who would do the largelybadly paid jobs in agriculture or inconstruction, replacing those ‘native’workers who had left the country to workin the western EU states) and continuewith their aggressive stance towardscertain parts of the population which aresupposed to be exempt from citizenship.The Vanguard in this regard were theBaltic states, which expatriated all thosepeople and their progeny who had arrivedfrom other Soviet states after 1940,

making them stateless. The systematicexclusion of Roma in south-easternEuropean states follows a similar logic.

Many regions of origin of refugees duringthe 1990s have become EU memberstates in the meantime or have settledagreements for immigration without visarequirements. The expansion of EUborders has facilitated the outsourcing ofbadly paid jobs in the supply industries tothese new member states and regulatedthe migration from these states throughgradual ‘free movement of labour’[Arbeitnehmerfreizuegigkeit]. For theworkers in eastern Europe access to theEU labour market was tied to long-termnational transition periods (temporarilyrestricting entrance of labour), which hadbeen demanded particularly by theGerman trade unions. During the sevenyears after the first round of expansion in2004 people from Estonia, Latvia,Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, theCzech Republic and Hungary (the so-called EU-8 countries) were already ableto work as (formally) ‘self-employed’ or asemployees of foreign companies inGermany, for low wages and low levels ofsocial welfare. In 2011 nearly 470,000people from Poland lived in Germany,which is more people than from all theother EU-8 countries put together. TheEU-2 countries Romania and Bulgaria –which were integrated in 2007 undersimilar conditions – ranked second andthird with 160,000 and 94,000 peoplerespectively.

The abolishment of visa requirements forsome of the western Balkan states in2009/2010 led to an additional influx ofworkers who could be easily blackmailedand therefore forced to work for low

wages. Non-EU citizens from Serbia orBosnia are now able to enter the EU as‘contract workers’ [Entsendearbeiter]once they have a work contract with aSlovenian or, in the near future, with aCroatian company. In 2014, 60,000 so-called A1-certificates (confirmation ofsocial insurance in the country of originof the main contract company) wereissued for citizens of neighbouring Balkanstates in Slovenia alone. Whoever doesn’thave a work contract can enter the EUwithout a visa and, e.g. by claimingasylum, can obtain at least a temporaryright to residence and basic income. Asimilar scenario is on the horizonregarding the abolishment of visarequirements for the Georgian Republicand Ukraine, which the EU commissionhas recently recommended.

According to the German central registerfor foreign citizens[Auslaendezentralregister – publicadministration] from October 2015 themigrant population has increased by820,000 people within one year, out ofwhich 340,000 people came from EUstates, 260,000 from recognised war andemergency regions and 120,000 from thewestern Balkans. Now around 650,000people from Romania and Bulgaria areofficially registered in Germany; 80 percent of them arrived during the last fiveyears. The permanent migration fromPoland has also increased since 2011;today around 600,000 people from theEU-8 countries engage in full or part-time work in Germany. Since theachievement of full freedom of movementon the labour market in January 2014,the number of people from Romania andBulgaria working with German work

contracts has also increased rapidly.

In addition there is a statistically difficultto grasp number of temporarily employedmigrants; a study of the Boecklerfoundation estimated for the year 2012that around 800,000 workers had beensent on temporary contracts to work inGermany, 80 per cent of which camefrom eastern Europe.

In general migrants arrive in the EU fromtwo directions: from the Middle East andNorth Africa and from eastern Europe. Inthe southern European countries ‘illegalmigrants’ are the main work-force insectors like agriculture, construction andlogistics. There is a close relation between‘external migration to the EU’ and ‘EUinternal migration’. Across Europe manyyoung people are try to get away fromfactory jobs, from agriculture and frommanual jobs in general. A major share ofyoung people study for and aspire to a jobin the state sector – even if employmentis temporary – or want to have a career ina booming branch of the economy. The‘scarcity of labour’ in the dirty jobs in thefields, on construction sites and in carework is compensated for by migrants.During the boom years after the turn ofthe millennium, migration to Greece,Italy, Spain, Portugal, … made the‘uplifting’ of the native youngergeneration possible. Since the onset of thecrisis a lot of young unemployed peoplefrom these southern European states whohave an academic education, but few jobprospects, have moved further north, e.g.to Germany and the UK. During the lastyears the net-migration of people fromthe southern European crisis states toGermany was 30,000 – 40,000 eachyear.

The process of downward segmentation of the workingclass in GermanyIn Germany, too, the downwardsegmentation of the labour marketthrough the specific combination oftechnical development and migrant cheaplabour enabled many young Germanworkers to escape sinking wage levels bymoving into more qualified jobs. Oneexample is the regional boom in theOldenburger part of the Munsterland inwestern Germany. Although an estimated25,000 jobs were lost in the meatindustry up until the year 2005, duringthe same period the total figure oflivestock slaughter has doubled and a‘cluster’ of food processing and machineengineering industries was established.According to the estimates of the tradeunion NGG [food and hospitality] only 10per cent of all workers employed in themeat industry have permanent contracts,if one includes the unofficial butcher-teams, industrial cleaners and packagingworkers, who are normally excluded fromthe category ‘employees in meat industry’.‘Officially’ a quarter of all workers areemployed as migrant contract workers offoreign companies – nearly seven timesas many as in 2011.

In construction this development hadalready taken place in the 1990s. Backthen the trade union IG BSE tried to pushout competition from cheap labour bycalling workers to denounce otherworkers who were employed withoutcontracts or residence permits and bycalling for state organised raids – all ofwhich helped to instigate a racistatmosphere. Via a collective agreement

the regulation of migrant contract labour[Arbeitnehmerentsendegesetz –employee assignment law], which waspassed in 1996 and initially only appliedto the construction sector, led to theintroduction of a sectorial minimum wagefor construction workers – separatewages for workers in East and WestGermany. An important aspect of the lawis that it assigns the final legalresponsibility to the main constructioncontractor. This makes it possible forworkers to claim outstanding wages evenin the case of the bankruptcy of a sub-contractor. The expansion of the scope ofapplication of the ‘employee assignmentlaw’ beyond the construction sector firstin 2007, then in 2009 and lastly in 2014refer to those branches with a highproportion of migrant labour: cleaning,various construction jobs, refuse andrecycling, elderly care, laundry work andthe meat industry.

Facing the crisis in eastern Europe,(skilled) workers left for Germany inincreasing numbers – and they arrived atthe right time for the expansion inGermany of the ‘low wage sector’ to thelogistics sector in its wider sense, e.g.through the introduction of ‘servicecontracts’ or ‘contracts for work labour’[Werkvertraege] [7] in the automobilesupplier-industry and in assemblydepartments of the main car factories,where people once used to earn bigmoney. The German trade unions werelargely able to maintain their social peacewith capital based on the low wages in thesupply-chains in eastern Germany. Theunit labour costs of the workers in thecore companies could be lowered through‘rationalisation’, intensification of work

and flexibilisation of working hours, buttheir annual wages remained more or lessstable – which allowed the unions toportray themselves as ‘goodrepresentatives’ to their membership andas ‘efficient partners’ to management.Workers in the core companies weredisciplined by the threat of ‘worseconditions’ in the industrial margins andby the de-regulation of welfare rights.

The increasing segmentation of thelabour market excludes local workersfrom certain jobs: for example, if aparticular work-force is recruited throughRomanian sub-contractors a Germanperson wouldn’t be able to get a job inthat work-force, even if they wanted to –this is equally true for countries insouthern Europe where very high degreesof youth unemployment are accompaniedby a high level of employment ofmigrants. Early on in the 1990s, secondgeneration migrants – particularlychildren of 'guest-workers’ and of so-called ‘Russian-Germans’ [Aussiedler –re-settlers] – were marginalised on thelabour market through the employmentof recently arrived migrants. Previously itusually took about one generation formigrants to fight themselves into thelabour market and obtain equalconditions. This is not the case anymore.Today, for many of the second-generationmigrants ‘social mobility’ meansbecoming the lower level ‘middlemen’ of amafia-economy, mediating between the‘German economy’ and more recentlyarrived migrants who share theirlanguage, as landlords, labour gang-masters and subcontractors.

StrugglesMigrants from eastern Europe resist.Striking workers in the meat industry aresometimes attacked by armed groups,sent by the company. The trade unionsand the core work-force do notparticipate in these struggles and they seemedia reports about them as threats tothe companies’ viability. They try to pushout ‘cheap competition’ from thecompanies or sector by systematicallytreating these (migrant) workers asunequals. Only from 2012 onwardsprotests by migrant workers becameincreasingly public. For many migrantsmaking use of the media seemed morepromising than actual strikes, and thelegal advice from some of the tradeunions and from church institutionssupported that view. At least the lowwages are nowadays seen as a publicscandal – though in small towns or in thecountryside in social situations wheremany local people benefit in some formor other from the exploitation of migrants(e.g. as landlords, shop-owners) open anddirect confrontations are difficult.Protests are therefore mainly organisedaround language groups or nationalcommunities, or around work-gangs andsub-contractors which are based in thesecommunities. In Lohne or Emsdetten(rural small towns in western Germany)demonstrations by supporters have nevermanaged to gather more than 200 peoplein the streets.

The access to social security and legalrights granted by the formal ’freedom ofmovement for workers’[Arbeitnehmerfreizuegigkeit] offers acertain security for the individual person,

but does not entail an equal status withGerman citizens. The state wants toprevent that entitlement to social benefitsalso in times of unemployment makes itmore difficult to pressure migrants intobadly paid jobs and to keep badly paidjobs. Therefore the state creates newpossibilities for blackmailing migrantworkers by increasingly intertwiningsocial legislation and the right to reside.For example, for EU citizens residing inGermany the ‘freedom of movement ofworkers’ is only granted for six monthsand only on the condition that they havetheir own income and that they arecovered by a health insurance policy.Only after five years are people entitled toa permanent right to reside and toHartzIV unemployment benefit. Prior tothe five years, staggered entitlements andrights are applied. According to thedecision of the European Court of Law anindividual obtains worker status oncethey work at least 5.5 hours per week(which equates to 200 Euro per month ona minimum wage). People with workerstatus are then entitled to ‘in-workbenefits’ under HartzIV to prop up theirwages. Amongst other reasons thisexplains the high numbers of so-called‘mini-jobbers’ amongst migrants fromEU-2 states, but also from Poland: manypeople work full-time unofficially andreceive ‘in-work’ benefits for their officialpart-time or ‘mini’-job – as many‘German’ workers do, too. In contrast totheir German fellow workers the migrantsare less able to break out of thisarrangement: if you quit the job or lose itby standing up to your boss you run therisk of losing your right to reside due tounemployment.

After one year of full-time work peopleare entitled to half a year ofunemployment benefit (income based),plus half a year HartzIV benefit(minimum social welfare payment). Manysocial welfare administrations inform themigration office once people claimbenefits, the migration office then orderspeople to leave the country – this alsohappens to EU citizens from the ‘corestates’, e.g. Spain or Italy. Thebureaucratic intertwinement of theadministration responsible for work andwelfare on one side and the migrationoffice on the other – which has beenproclaimed as a future way to deal withthe refugees – is already a reality forlabour migrants. This following a certainlogic given that the campaign against‘asylum abuse’ targeting refugees fromBalkan states was immediately proceededby the propaganda against‘poverty/benefit migration’ from Bulgariasince the end of 2013.

The ‘potential for future employment’[German new-speak:Erwerbspersonenpotenzial] of therefugees

There are two opposing poles within theruling class: liberalism, whose mostconsequential proponent is the GreenParty, demands the opening of theborders and the deregulation and down-sizing of welfare benefits and socialguarantees; whoever wants to come hereshould do so, but has to figure out how tosurvive by themselves. The other extremeis represented by some members of thedeep state and on the political stage byNPD/AFD/CSU (parties of the political(far-)right) and parts of the SPD andCDU: closure of the borders,

intensification of migration controls,further bolstering of the policing forces.The current process of negotiationoscillates between these two poles, butthey both have a common main goal, ascan be seen in the debate about themigrants’ ’duty to integrate’[Integrationspflicht]: they want to turnthe migrants into something like ‘Turbo-Germans’ and use them to enforce the re-structuring of the European labourmarket – secured internally andexternally through the ‘War on Terror’.

Depending on the sector, employers wantto prescribe different roles to refugees onthe labour market. The IAB predicts thatthe ‘numbers of people who canpotentially be employed’[Erwerbspersonenpotential] amongstasylum seekers will increase by 380,000people in 2016, after it has hardlyincreased in 2015 (according to‘migration monitor’[Zuwanderungsmonitor], November2015). According to the magazine SpiegelOnline the ‘expert council for economicdevelopment’ [Sachverstaendigenrat zurgesamtwirtschaftichen Entwicklung] [8]predicts only a slow rise in theemployment of recently arrived refugees,stating that over the next two years hardlymore than 100,000 people will enter thelabour market.

In mid-October an open dispute over theintegration policy erupted within theemployers’ camp. Michael Knipper fromthe Association of the GermanConstruction Industry [Verband derDeutschen Bauindustrie] lamented the“uncritical euphoria amongst large partsof German industry”. The constructionindustry is a very cyclical/seasonal and

transnational sector with a largelymigrant work-force. Employers in thesector don’t bank on the ‘know how’ of alocal working class and ‘innovativeabilities’, but on the re-structuring andlowering of production costs enforcedthrough increasingly worse pay andconditions. Some employers in themanufacturing industry have a differentperspective. They desperately need ‘freshenergy’ in their companies and they lookfor workers who still believe in careersand want to do something about theirupward mobility – characteristics whichlarge parts of the second and thirdgeneration of migrants learnt to give upon a long time ago.

To professionally qualify and to makethem feel a long-term loyalty towards thecompanies and their fate in Germany,refugees are required not only to have asecure residence status and to takelanguage courses, but also to break theirties with their country of origin. Whoeverhas to send money home will not get byon the relatively low wages paid duringapprenticeships and so will instead takethe minimum wage doing unskilled jobsin a warehouse. This is why capital needsa mixture of pressure and promises offuture prospects when it comes to therefugees. Since the 1st of August 2015,refugees’ “integration into the labourmarket” starts with work that pays belowthe minimum wage, e.g. through long-term internships or courses to obtain‘basic skills’ [Einstiegsqualifikation,(EQ)], whose maximum length has justbeen extended from six to twelve months.This period can be easily extended andauthorities can sign young adults or thelong-term unemployed up to these

courses before or after an actualapprenticeship by using the argumentthat they have a “lack of employmentskills”. [9] The pressure to accept thisextension of low paid work is built up bythe fact that people lose their right toreside once they lose their job – the real“intertwinement of job centre andmigration office”!

Frontex’s mercenariesThe migration regime of the EU is onlyable to function if it manages to structurelabour markets beyond its own territory.Economic agreements such as the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EUROMED)[10] are accompanied by political-militarycooperation. Agreements about themilitary securing of borders and thetaking back of unwanted migrants alsocontain, as a ‘bonus’, the offer oftemporary labour migration (usually tiedto a specific work contract) from differentregions outside of the EU to the EU, aslaid out, i.e. in the ‘EU-mobilitypartnerships’ with both Mediterranean oreastern European states. Turkey plays astrategic role as a door-keeper in thesouth-east. During the G20-summit inAntalya a three billion Euro deal wasforged, according to which the Erdogangovernment is supposed to grantresidence rights and permission to workto Syrian people in Turkey and at thesame time deport other refugees back totheir country of origin. In return for thecloser policing of the EU external bordersby Turkey the EU considers liberalisingthe visa requirements for Turkish citizensand thereby also expand the possibilitiesfor Turks to work inside the EU. Suchagreements rely on the cooperation of all

of the state actors involved, butgovernments in Pakistan and Afghanistanrecently refused to ‘take back’ their statecitizens deported from the EU. And noamount of money will stop the Erdogangovernment from opening borders orclosing them or provoking militaryconflicts etc. as part of its fight forpolitical survival.

Neither was the grand-sounding finaldeclaration of the EU-Africa summit onMalta at the beginning of November 2015able to disguise how little control stateshave over migration. The politicalcalculation of the EU to detain the bigmasses of refugees in its neighbouringregions and to let people entertemporarily and to push them back againwhen needed, would only be able tosucceed if there were possibilities of livingand working in these regions. Thesepossibilities seem further out of reachthan ever, not only in northern Africa, butalso in the Balkans, such as in Kosovo.This is why the EU frequently openssafety valves and temporarily opens itsborders. In the case of some of the Balkanstates new recruitment agreements weresettled in summer 2015: from 2016onwards also “less qualified” workersfrom the western Balkan states (whoalready reside in Germany) are allowed towork in Germany if they can prove theyhave a concrete apprenticeship or joboffer – but only under the condition thatthey withdrew their application forasylum by 24th of October 2015 andreturned to their countries of origin (inorder to re-enter when required).

Chances for generalisation?Workers’ work [Arbeiterarbeit], meaninggeneral manual labour – whether inagriculture, construction or inmanufacturing/industries – isincreasingly performed by migrantworkers. Migrants put up with this workbecause they are used to worse.Organising struggles together with their(local) work-mates is difficult insituations where migrants are used tolower standards in general – and evenmore difficult, if the ‘higher incomestrata’ (landlords etc.) benefit from themigrants’ over-exploitation. Duringrecent years migrant struggles emergedmainly in work places where the vastmajority of the work-force were migrants,e.g. in the agriculture or logistics sector inItaly. In Germany, where access to thelabour market is very regulated andmultiply segmented, there have beenmany conflicts, but hardly any majorstruggles of migrants.

During 2015 refugees not only forced thegovernment to change its course andthereby also politicised hundreds ofthousands of supporters, but throughtheir mass they made issues such aswages, working conditions, housing etc.into ‘public’ issues. None of these issueswill solve themselves, they are allcontested and conflicted. The statecreates competition, e.g. in terms ofhousing supply when more social housingwas built again, but initially only forrefugees. This is why the struggles aroundhousing and the current occupations areof such importance! They are aboutaffordable housing for all.

Another example are massaccommodation in marginal districts withbad commuting infrastructure and publictransport, short supply of nursery spaces,schools and GPs etc. Often civil societyinitiatives emerge in opposition to theseand sometimes they articulate themselvesin a rather contradictory fashion. Theinitiative “No! to politics – Yes! tosupport” in the Hamburg suburb ofNeugraben, which has attracted a lot ofmedia attention during recent months, isan example of pragmatic opposition tothese kinds of state policies on refugees.By emphasising their anti-racist positionthey clearly differ from the way thatPegida raises the issue. In these cases thepolitical left occasionally should listencarefully, before they accuse people ofbeing fascists

The hegemony of the political right insome regions is based on socialinsecurity, which does not just derivefrom fear of material losses. The increasein capitalist competition also dissolvesfamiliar social networks and a personalsocial environment. It is evident that aclear ‘antifascist edge’ is needed to fightback against the cultural hegemony of thepolitical right – but a ’cultural struggle’alone is not enough. We have to developfurther ideas on how to relate our actionsto social antagonism. Due to the arrival ofhuge numbers of refugees the potential todo this is higher than in recent years. Wecan take up the questions raised byrefugees and make them public, common,social questions again. The radical leftcan also support migrant struggles byhelping overcome community boundaries– this is where self-organised languagecourses become useful. The resistance

against deportation and for a right toreside is a precondition for struggles todevelop – and here we refer less to legaldecisions than to practical resistanceagainst repression, against policing,against raids in town and at work.Wherever we support refugees, we will beconfronted by the state – according to thesituation the state will make offers ofintegration or will attack repressively. Wewill only be able to oppose both optionsonce we start from the conditions of theentire class – and once it is clear that wedefinitely don’t want to get integratedinto the state ourselves._________________________________________________________

Footnotes:[1] “In 1988 the numbers of asylum seekersagain crossed the 100,000 mark. During the year of the European Revolutions in 1989 this number increased to 120,000. In re-unified Germany in 1990 around 190,000 asylum seekers were recorded, in 1991 nearly 260,000 and finally in 1992 nearly 440,000 – by then many of these people came from East and South-East Europe, mainly refugees from ex-Yugoslavia, but also Roma from Romania.

As early as 1987 the numbers of re-settlers (‘Russian-Germans’) increased rapidly. In 1988 more than 200,000 arrived, in 1989 nearly 390,000 and in 1990 nearly 400,000. In addition the by then legal migration from the agonising German Democratic Republic (East Germany) towards West Germany resulted in nearly 390,000 people ‘going West’ in 1989 and 395,000 in 1990. The east-west migration declined in the following years to 250,000 in 1991 and 200,000 in 1992, 172,000 in 1993. Between 1994 and 1997 the figure stabilised at around 160,000 to 170,000.”

Bundeszentrale fuer Politische Bildung (2005): Anstieg der Asylgesuche 1988 – 1992

[2] The wildcat article in issue no.57 that provides more information about this incident has not been translated. Unlike this article in issue no.60, which deals with the question of racist attacks and the state in the early 1990s:http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/60/w60e_ros.htm

[3] Trailer of a documentary about the attacks:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBQnc7MQLt0

[4] http://www.iab.de/en/iab-aktuell.aspx

[5] National Socialist Underground (NSU) is a fascist terror-group which killed severalmigrants during the 2000s and which was heavily infiltrated by agents of the intelligence servive.https://viewpointmag.com/2014/09/11/the-deep-state-germany-immigration-and-the-national-socialist-underground/

[6] Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident (Pegida) is a right-wing platform which revived the ‘Monday-demonstrations’ in the east of Germany, this time against muslim and other immigrants. Pegida demonstrations spread from eastern towns like Dresden to other towns in Germany, mobilising up to 10,000 people.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegida

[7] Through ‘service contracts’ companies can evade having to hire people directly as permanent employees; formally they are hired as ‘service providers’ for a certain job;collective agreements often don’t apply

[8] http://www.sachverstaendigenrat-wirtschaft.de/index.html

[9] What has been decided in the ‘law for the acceleration of asylum proceedings’ [Asylbeschleunigungsgestz]?– the categorisation of the ’western Balkan states’ as safe states of origin (meaning, it is close to impossible for people to claim asylum)– only non-cash benefits in refugee shelters, instead of cash benefits– acceleration of deportations: in future theauthorities are allowed not to announce thedate of deportation once the deadline for a voluntary departure of the refugees has passed; the maximum suspension period ofa deportation has been reduced from six to now three months; the federal states will hardly be able to suspend a deportation due to political pressure– the prohibition for skilled asylum seekersand refugees with a ‘tolerated status’ to work for temp agencies is lifted three months after recognition; for unskilled refugees the prohibition is maintained for fifteen months– the federal government pays contributions towards social housing and costs for refugee accommodation– lowering of legal construction standards for refugee housing (e.g. insulation and fireprotection requirements!)– intertwinement of ministries for labour and migration; the exchange of data between the administrations are not supposed to detect ‘welfare benefit abuse’, but to check whether asylum seekers actively seek work; the job centre is supposed to use the data regarding the claim for asylum, e.g. about its prospect, in order to decide whether a person is offered courses or other help, put under more pressure or discarded completely

[10]http://eeas.europa.eu/euromed/index_en.htm

The escalation of the ‘refugee crisis’

25 years ago, like today, formed

the foundation for the massive

dismantling of welfare standards

and standards of collective contracts

and labour rights during the

economic crisis which kicked in

shortly after. The German model

of a highly productive export industry,

which has been successful for the

last 15 years, is based on a working

class which is more severely divided

and segmented than during the

previous decades.