Becoming independent and self-employed
Dependent employees – this was initially the intended position of migrant workers on the German labour market.
These boards from the connector office in Istanbul show the fields of activity for which workers were sought in Germany...
...the migrant workers Özer Yıldıral and the Mattick family, who had once been recruited, then also searched for and found shop premises where they set up their own tailoring business and travel agency in Germany.
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Metal signs, 1960s and 1970s -
Headgear, around 1975 & photo, around 1980
Becoming independent and self-employed – background information
The jobs of migrant workers were mainly in industrial mass production. They often carried out physically demanding work in shifts and on assembly lines. Since 1975, the number of self-employed labour migrants has risen steadily. The move into self-employment was often also an expression of the decision to stay. It was based on the admission that they would be living in Germany for a longer period or even permanently, actively participating in the (economic) organisation of the country and at the same time expressing a self-confidence that emancipated itself from the position it had been assigned. Today, the so-called ‘migrant economies’ make up a significant part of the local economy, especially in large cities, as they take on neighbourhood revitalising functions, secure local supplies and can meet specific consumer demands.
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‘Here I have just come up from the mine. A souvenir for life, so you can see how to earn your money,’ wrote Sotiris Peretzoukas to his family in Greece in 1963. -
Break room of Cologne's street sweepers in 1982, mainly employing people who had migrated to Germany. -
The former ‘guest workers’ Nezire and Hasan K. around 1985 are standing in their own shop in Gelsenkirchen. -
Weidengasse in Cologne in the 1980s.
