Circling the Wagons: Immigration and the Battle for Space in West Berlin, 1970–1990

Abstract

In cities across West Germany, the growing presence of ethnic minorities in the course of the 1950s and 1960s represented a serious challenge to established local milieus recovering from the devastation caused by the National Socialist regime and the Second World War. As ideological conflict over the future course of the Federal Republic fostered conflict or cooperation between politicized immigrants and German activists, immigrant political movements also became embedded into distinct local and regional political cultures. Just as representatives of national movements and institutions had to balance the broader goals of their organizations with the particular interests of the milieus they belonged to, leading members of transnational immigrant organizations had to ensure that their wider campaigns did not undermine the position of their members on a local level. At their most effective, disciplined local immigrant networks connected with a strong transnational diaspora could often become an attractive partner for German political movements.