Education and Cultural Transition: The Case of Immigrant Youth. Labour Migration and the Role of Education.

West Germany represents a typical case of how most West European countries have dealt with labor migration, common since World War II. West Germany's foreign workers are called "Gastarbeiter" (guestworkers), which implies that they are in Germany at the behest of the Germans, and for only a short period of time. Nonetheless, statistics show that the number of foreign workers is less than the number of foreign residents. This indicates that social immigration is occurring more often than simple transitory labor migration, that West Germany has indeed become an immigration country. Furthermore, the migrant population is apparently undergoing a process of normalization (i.e., the wage earner's separation from his family and the male/female imbalance in the foreign population are being eliminated). This makes necessary an immigration policy that addresses the needs of the new immigrants for social integration, higher social status, and, especially, improved employment prospects. Because the Gastarbeiter are concentrated in positions requiring less education, they are the most vulnerable to job loss and discrimination in personnel policy. Existing systems for educating immigrants include bilingual programs (allegedly, to give the chance of return to the origin country), but these actually help to hold immigrants at the lowest social step. The immigrants and their children must be given the linguistic and cultural means of integration that will, in turn, improve their employment prospects. (The paper concludes with a list of recommendations for migration policy and intercultural education; nine statistical tables are appended.) (KH)