E
chapter 9
Mobility and Migration
in Divided Germany
Maren Möhring
M
igration and mobility, as well as the desire to move within and be-
tween the two Germanys, contributed signifi cantly to the decisive
political, social, and cultural transformations that took place in the last
three decades of the twentieth century. Calls for the freedom to travel,
for example, were one of the major catalysts behind the upheavals that
engulfed Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980s. Similarly, public aware-
ness of the great number of people moving around in the wake of these
transitions was particularly high. Furthermore, the topic of migration
between East and West Germany embodies the idea of “entanglement”
almost more so than any other, although it leaned more heavily in one
direction than the other.^1 This chapter therefore looks not only at the
myriad forms of mobility that bound East and West Germany together,
but also those that divided them. It examines the migration that occurred
between East and West Germany, as well as the immigration of people
from other countries to the Federal Republic and the GDR, and then later
to reunifi ed Germany. In doing so, it contextualizes these two kinds of
migration within a larger framework that encompasses other forms of
mobility, such as travel.^2 Although the number of foreigners living in East
Germany is still rather low even today, this chapter nonetheless compares
how both German states dealt with non-German labor migrants in par-
ticular and how the growing number of non-Germans has infl uenced de-
bates about national identity. The following analysis will not only address
the socioeconomic motives and eff ects of migration, but also look at the
cultural implications of these processes of mobility, the transformation of
society, and the semantics of the debates over migration.
