Anne von Oswald

Volkswagen, Wolfsburg and the „Guest Workers" from Italy, 1962-1975. The Mutual Reinforcement of a Provisional Transition"

This article investigates the processes of decision-making within the VW management and the city of Wolfsburg vis-à-vis the recruitment and employment of Italian workers. The article investigates as well the behaviour of the Italians themselves as regards their mobility and integration. How did the VW management and the worker's councils respond to the lasting scarcity of workers and to the high fluctuation among Italian workers? Why did they keep in place a prohibition against female Italian employees till the end of the 1970s? Why did, surprisingly, the majority of Italians chose to leave Wolfsburg very quickly after their arrival? And how did the interaction between the two cultures, the living together in the city, develop?

To answer these questions the author has examined the personnel files of individual Italian workers, the files of the personnel division, the files of the worker's councils and of the VW board of directors. These files provide an important view into the movements and mechanisms of migration as well as into the processes of decision-making within the firm itself. The present article shows how the idea that this was just a time of transition – a conception on the side of the firm as well as of the city and among the Italians themselves – strengthened the perception that this was just transitory, and indeed, allowed this perception to become a lasting phenomenon. The author also addresses the question to what degree was this a special case in the period of recruitment or to what degree was this a normal case in the development of immigration into Germany.