Work 13

The Spaniards are not only intended to help alleviate the general shortage of staff: they are above all intended to relieve the many women on whom Swiss Post has had to rely for months. More than half of the 1,700 employees at the main post office – 900 to be exact – are women. Oberpostdirektor Kröpf: “Our work is often so difficult that we shouldn’t actually be harming women. Here now – mainly in the loading service at the station – the Spaniards are supposed to step in.”

Quote: Quoted from Ceren Türkmen. Original source: Local daily newspaper: Rheinische Post from 16.11.1962. Without page reference. Picture: pics.de

Unknown journalist from the daily newspaper Rheinische Post.

The historiography of the guest worker discourse is usually described from hegemonic sources, as in this quote from the Rheinische Post, which focuses on the poor German of male labor migrants and at the same time represents the attitude widespread in West Germany in the 1960s that German women should not actually do paid work. While there has been migrant resistance since the beginning of "guest worker recruitment", it is only in the last two decades (e.g. with Feridun Zaimoğlu's book "Kanak Sprak. 24 Mißtöne vom Rande der Gesellschaft" from 1995) has been recognized in the mainstream.

*Ceren Türkmen (2017). The history of guest labor between migration regime, state and communal liberation. In glokal: Connecting the Dots. Learning from the history(ies) of oppression and resistance. *Ceren Türkmen (2011): Discontinuity and coherence. Guest worker migration and the organization of the division of labour in Germany. In: Jane Angerjärv, Hella Hertzfeldt (eds.): Gender - Migration - Integration. Manuscripts 94, Berlin, pp. 51-65.