Monika Mattes

Difficulties and Strategies of the Official Government Recruitment of Female „Guest Workers" into the Federal Republic of Germany, 1955-1973

Toward the end of the 1950s West German firms increasingly asked the employment offices for female workers from southern Europe. The politics of recruitment vis-à-vis foreign female workers is at the centre of this article, which employs the example of the recruitment of women to study how the category of gender was written into the state's politics of recruitment. After a general introduction to the political-legal framework of the recruitment of workers from Southern Europe, the essay examines the workplaces for which the workers were recruited. These workplaces belonged, without exception, to the low-wage segment of the female labour market, a segment where wages were in danger of going up because of the scarcity of German workers. Third, and indeed, at the centre of this study, is an examination of how German recruiters interpreted the difficulties facing the female immigrants, and what sort of special strategies they developed to work against these. Among other things, they attempted to break down the hesitation and misgivings of the societies from which the immigrants came. This occurred through improving the places where the "guest workers" lived as well as in trying to find accommodations where immigrants could share a room or, indeed, to recruit married couples.