Fear of the Family

Abstract

Since the mid-1970s, so-called family migration has been the predominant legal pathway for migration into Europe and North America. But what has it meant for millions of people to be defined primarily through their role as “family migrants,” whether at the immigration office, in the courtroom, in the workplace, or in the family itself? Fear of the Family addresses these questions by investigating the history of guest worker migration to the Federal Republic of Germany. Ironically, West German employers initially turned to foreign “guest workers” to avoid the complications of families. Foreigners were meant to work in Germany in the prime of their productive years while raising their children and growing old elsewhere, with another country bearing the costs of their education, retirement, and medical care. But guest workers refused to offshore their family life, pressuring the state first to tolerate and later to open an official legal pathway for family reunification. The state’s perspective on the role of family migration changed over time, and debate over this form of migration also continues to this day, as politicians call for “managed migration” to capture the best brains and most in-demand skills while demanding an end to the “chain migration” that is imagined as nothing but a burden. Fear of the Family shows how these categories were established and how generations of migrant families have fought against the assumptions contained within them.