MOBILITY AND MIGRATION 463
non-Europeans, which also aff ected the negotiating position of the coun-
tries who supplied labor recruits.
Even though neither East nor West Germany saw itself as a country of
immigration, the Federal Republic was forced to permit families to follow
their migrant worker relatives into the country and leave open the door
for permanent residence permits because of its professed commitments
to social and humanitarian rights. For this reason, as well as the signifi -
cantly high amount of labor migration into the country, West Germany
de facto became a country of immigration over the course of the 1970s.
Neighborhoods full of migrants with their own shops, restaurants, and
mosques made it clear that these labor migrants who were only supposed
to stay in the country over the short-term were there to stay, which would
change the face of West German society forever. The GDR, however, did
not experience anything like this pluralization or transformation of urban
space and society through migration.
Refugee and Asylum Policy in the Federal Republic and the GDRWhereas World War I fi rst brought the problem of refugees to the inter-
national political stage, it was National Socialism and World War II that
prompted the affi rmation of the right of asylum within the framework of
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights passed by the United Nations
in 1948. In West Germany, the experience of political and racist perse-
cution between 1933 and 1945 led to the inclusion of a right of asylum
in the Grundgesetz that was very liberal when compared internationally.^93
The Federal Republic granted asylum not only on the basis of the Ge-
neva Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, as in other European
countries, but also on the basis of Article 16, Paragraph 2, Section 2 of
the Grundgesetz (“Persons persecuted on political grounds shall have the
right of asylum”) until 1993. Consequently, individuals could petition for
the right to protection against political persecution on the basis of con-
stitutional law.
The GDR Constitution of 1949 granted those foreigners asylum who
had been persecuted for fi ghting for the basic principles that were out-
lined within it (Article 10, Paragraph 2). The GDR, which did not guaran-
tee its citizens the right to leave the country, was not a signatory to the
Geneva Refugee Convention.^94 In the GDR Constitution of 1968, the right
of asylum was only formulated as “may grant asylum” and not “shall,”
and the decision to take on refugees was in the hands of the politburo, or
rather the secretariat of the Central Committee of the SED.^95
The right of asylum and refugee policy was therefore of major polit-
ical importance in both German states. The GDR’s refugee and asylum