466 MAREN MÖHRING
the countries of origin became more diversifi ed. In addition to the mili-
tary coup in Chile, the end of the Vietnam War and Khomeini’s seizure of
power in Iran tipped the scales so that by the late 1970s, the majority of
refugees and asylum-seekers came from non-European countries.^114 This
trend remained in place until the late 1980s. After this point, most of the
asylum-seekers once again came from southern and eastern Europe, fi rst
Poland, and then Yugoslavia as the country began to collapse.^115 West
Germany and Austria were popular destinations for these migrants be-
cause of their geographic locations, but also because of the migrant net-
works that had been set up during the era of the Gastarbeiter.
The number of asylum-seekers climbed steadily in the FRG from the
1970s onward, reaching the hundred thousand mark for the fi rst time in
- West Germany was the recipient of seven hundred thousand of the
1.7 million petitions for asylum that were submitted between 1983 and
1990 in Europe. When compared to the country’s population in 1985,
there was one asylum-seeker for every 827 West Germans, whereas this
fi gure was one to 567 in Sweden, and one to 666 in Switzerland.^116
Not only the increasing number of asylum seekers was signifi cant in
terms of migration history, but also the fact that the only people who
could still immigrate to West Germany after the recruitment stop in 1973
were either ethnic German Aussiedler or those who submitted petitions
for asylum. As a result, petitions for asylum after this point, as Klaus
Bade puts it, functioned as a partial “substitute for absent regular op-
tions for immigration.”^117 But this by no means meant that the major-
ity of asylum-seekers had exclusively economic motives, as the polemic
talk of “economic refugees” would suggest. This buzzword, which soon
came to dominate the debates on asylum in the FRG and elsewhere, was
used to diff erentiate between supposedly legitimate and illegitimate asy-
lum-seekers. Often, however, there was a mix of economic, social, and
political reasons that motivated people to seek asylum. Politically per-
secuted Kurds often came to West Germany as Gastarbeiter during the
recruitment phase, for example, but after 1974 the only way for them to
enter the country was to petition for asylum. For people without relatives
in the FRG or without German ancestors, the only legal migration channel
was as refugees escaping persecution, which led to a rapid widening of
this immigration route. The increasing numbers of asylum-seekers also
led to an increase in the politicking that surrounds immigration issues.
The low recognition quotas, for instance, were touted as proof of the sup-
posed misuse of the right of asylum, even though many asylum-seekers
were successful with their appeals or could not be deported because they
were given a de facto status as refugees although they were not legally
classifi ed as such.