Sandra Gruner-Domic´

Immigrants from Latin America to Germany before and after 1989. The Development, the Form and the Motivations underlying Migration between two Societies

This article analyses the migration of women from Latin America to Germany before and after 1989. Before 1989, of course, the immigration was to two separate German states. The first large group of immigrants to both the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic consisted of Chilean refugees, who left after the Putsch by General Pinochet in 1973. Rather atypical in this context were the Cuban workers, who came as a result of a 1978 treaty with the GDR. Women from Latin America were underrepresented in East Germany; in West Germany they were over-represented. Those Latin Americans who have recently arrived in Germany are no longer people who were recruited to work here or political emigrants who have not returned home but immigrants of a new sort. Women form the majority. As a result of globalisation and the new mobility they have left Latin America and come to Germany in order to learn something, or to collect new experiences. These women should not be seen as victims. We need to show that they are actors themselves, who do not fit into the schema so often put forward of economic refugees. Furthermore, as a rule they have quite specific problems, and quite specific experiences of discrimination, with which they have to struggle.