Immigration to Europe 1221larly from the poorer countries of southern and eastern Europe, has also
continued to be significant. The mass movement of people from the Third
World, particularly from Africa and Asia, must be seen in the context of the
rapid growth of the world’s population. The population of Africa in 1950
was half that of Europe; by 1985, the two populations stood about even,
and within several decades the population of Africa will probably be three
times that of Europe. In some cases, it was newly independent colonies
that sent immigrants to their former colonizers, as in the case of Indians
and Pakistanis moving to Britain and of North Africans to France. Europe
now has an estimated 18 million foreign workers.
Beginning in the late 1960s, foreign-born “guest workers” (as they are
called in Germany) made up an increasing proportion of the workforce in
every Western European state. Encouraged by European governments con
cerned about a labor shortage, they took up a variety of skilled but mostly
unskilled work. The government of the German Federal Republic estab
lished recruiting offices in southern Europe and North Africa, hoping to
encourage immigration. The number of foreigners living in Western Eu
rope tripled in thirty years. In Switzerland, foreign workers make up about
a quarter of the workforce. The ethnic composition varies from country to
country. Turks have settled in Germany in great numbers because of the
relative proximity and historically close ties between Turkey and Germany.
Portuguese make up the largest non-French ethnic community in the Paris
North African immigrants captured by a patrol boat after trying to