For the past few months the topics of migration and the handling of refugees have been among the main points of bourgeois political discussion. Racist statements and attacks are by no means reserved only for the opposition parties which politically stand to the right of the government, such as the christian-conservative CDU or the fascist AfD.

Rather, the Bundesregierung, the german government, is at the forefront of driving the corresponding political and social atmosphere. Last fall, german chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) gave an interview with the Spiegel, one of the country’s most important weekly magazines, in which he positioned himself as the defender of tightening the asylum laws, portraying himself on the title page with the caption “We must finally deport on a large scale”.

Indeed, the past few months have been marked by numerous attempts on the national and European stage, to take the fundamental right to asylum, which had already been hollowed out by previous reforms, to the point of absurdity and to fully subordinate all forms of migration into Germany to the needs of german capital.

The fact that between mid January 2024 and mid March 2024 demonstrations “against the right”, “against fascism” took place, was an important appearance for political life in this country. These protests had been triggered by a leaked meeting of representatives of the AfD, entrepreneurs and other fascists, in which plans for so called “remigration”, i.e. mass deportation of migrants form Germany, were discussed. The comparatively broad political protests against the AfD’s national party conference in June 2024 are also part of this counter-trend.

On the one hand, communists must, with their mass work, build on the honest disgust of their class towards these plans. At the same time we must peek behind the curtain and realize that these protests are likewise a governments strategy of the ruling coalition of SPD (labor imperialists), Green Party (centrist) and FDP (classical liberal), to break out of their defensive position in all political arenas. Since the focus of these actions remains directed toward the criticism of openly fascist forces, who up until now have managed to merely seize municipal mayoral positions, they serve as a de-facto distraction from the very real racist deportation-politics of the supposedly liberal government.

This has become particularly clear since an Islamist-fundamentalist terrorist attack at the end of August 2024, which the whole governing coalition, especially the Green party, took as an opportunity to implement a so-called ‘turnaround at home’¹ as a joint project of all bourgeois parties (without the direct participation of the AfD). The measures that have been taken since include the removal of state support for refugees, for whom another state is responsible under current EU regulations, as well as an expansion of the powers of security authorities, including the legalization of facial recognition software to hunt down suspected terrorists. In addition, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) ordered stricter controls at all of Germany’s external borders for six months in order to turn refugees away at the border as much as possible.

The measures were presented immediately before the state elections in Saxony and Thuringia on September 1, in which the AfD achieved significant electoral successes. The spokespeople of this fascist party are essentially absolutely right when they criticize the German government for the fact that its policies in recent weeks are little more than a copy of large parts of the AfD programme of recent years.

The importance of the issue for the ruling class in various countries is currently also demonstrated by the fact that various governments within the EU are prepared to accept major economic disadvantages and political conflicts, including the de facto dissolution of unified action at EU level, in order to limit the number of refugees entering their own countries.

The fascist government led by Victor Orban from Hungary has been at loggerheads with the EU Commission for years and was recently ordered by an EU court to liberalize its asylum procedure and pay a fine of at least 200 million euros. So far it refuses to obey. With the targeted controls at Germany’s external borders that have now been announced, Germany also wants to get rid of its previous role as the most important destination country for refugees within Europe. And the new, reactionary government in the Netherlands wants to straight up force through the exit from the joint European refugee policy.

Since migration and the issue of refugees are obviously international appearances and phenomena, with this article we wish to, provide a basic analysis and categorization of german migration politics and its developmental tendencies in recent years.

The violent trafficking and enslavement of potential workers required by capital, which so decisively characterized early colonialism, has not vanished today: it continues to live on in various forms of human trafficking. It has however been supplemented by seemingly “voluntary” forms of migration.

For the international communist movement this necessitates exchanging positions and analyses on these issues in order to develop a stance that serves the objective needs of world revolution. This stances must not be allowed to either drift off into bourgeois humanism or unknowingly adopt utopian-reactionary views, which demand a full stop to imperialist migration.

Migration as a law of Imperialism

Under imperialism – as even before under capitalism of free competition – migration is a law-governed (as in regular, “law of nature”) manifestation. It has two essential foundations. First, the concentration and centralization of capital and the resulting constantly growing hunger for more workers in particular parts of the world. Secondly, the continuous destruction of the livelihoods of people in many regions of the world by imperialism: poverty, wars, economic dependence, political oppression and the destruction of the environment.

Lenin already pointed out this trend in 1913:

“Capitalism has given rise to a special form of migration of nations. The rapidly developing industrial countries, introducing machinery on a large scale and ousting the backward countries from the world market, raise wages at home above the average rate and thus attract workers from the backward countries.

[…]

There can be no doubt that dire poverty alone compels people to abandon their native land, and that the capitalists exploit the immigrant workers in the most shameless manner. But only reactionaries can shut their eyes to the progressive significance of this modern migration of nations. Emancipation from the yoke of capital is impossible without the further development of capitalism, and without the class struggle that is based on it. And it is into this struggle that capitalism is drawing the masses of the working people of the whole world, breaking down the musty, fusty habits of local life, breaking down national barriers and prejudices, uniting workers from all countries in huge factories and mines in America, Germany, and so forth”²

German imperialism’s hunger for workers is, as we will show in more detail below, especially veracious and is only made worse by the aging german population in comparison to the needs of capital.

For the imperialists, migration as a whole, be it legal or illegal, acts at the same time as a pressure-valve for those countries, in which the capitalist contradictions most blatantly come to a head. Where a lack of prospects is omnipresent, the promise of a stable and relatively well off life within an imperialist country can assume the role of those prospects and absorb the energy of parts of the exploited masses, which could otherwise be used for the organization of uprisings and revolutions.

Migration is however not a purely positive appearance for imperialism, as Lenin already stated in the aforementioned quote. For the working class, migration has a positive side as well, since it internationalizes the working class, leads to the exchange of experiences in the struggle and, in the long run, counteracts its chauvinistic prejudices and ultimately class division.

Societal contradictions are also sometimes carried from dependent countries into the imperialist centers. As we have seen, the migration of millions of people brings at the same time risks for imperialism. This is the reason we see the strong urge to control immigration in the politics of Germany and other imperialist countries. In most recent times, large protests against Israel’s war against the Palestinian people have for instance lead to an intensified debate over antisemitism, supposedly imported into Germany by millions of migrants from Muslim countries. While the claim that antisemitism is “imported” by migrants from Muslim countries is an obvious racist lie; there is no denying that migrants made up a large part of the participants of actions in solidarity with Palestine in Germany.

Beside additional political conflicts, migrants also bring experiences in class struggle with them from their countries of origin, which can contribute to the development of class consciousness. We see this in Germany as well. Communist and revolutionary organizations from Turkey and Northern Kurdistan make up a major part of the revolutionary movement of this country and they have managed to uphold a continuous activity over decades; a task which many “german” organizations have failed.

The Distinction between Refugee and Migrant

It is important to state that, from the point of view of the bourgeoisie, there is no fundamental qualitative difference between flight (I.e. to flee, to seek refuge) and other forms of migration. Just as other migrants, refugees leave their homes due to the sharp contradictions in their countries of origin in search of a place where they can live under better conditions. Just as with other forms of migration, this enlarges and internationalizes the working class in other countries.

The difference in terminology between flight and migration is thereby initially only a legal one. Flight is migration made illegal. It can only conditionally be controlled by the imperialist states and is continually created anew through the destruction of the foundations of livelihoods. A progressive spontaneous protest movement of refugees in Germany, which peaked between 2012 and 2015, fittingly acknowledged this connection in their central slogan: “We are here, because you are destroying our countries” (“Wir sind hier, weil ihr unsere Länder zerstört”).

From the legal status of refugees, or “asylum seekers” to be more official, results a especially pronounced lack of rights, meaning that refugees belong to the most oppressed and rejected part of the population in Germany as also in other imperialist countries. Upon arriving in Germany, refugees are held in detention camps. Kept in tight spaces without access to societal activities and without the possibility of employment, they must await their processing by German authorities.

On the other hand, refugees from countries who’s populations are deemed in need of protection by the German state find themselves in a more “fortunate position”, relatively speaking. In recent years these countries have been for the most part Syria, Iraq and Ukraine. Ukrainian refugees were given special treatment by the EU through the Temporary Protection Directive of March 2022, granting them a minimum one year right to stay without bureaucratic procedure.

On the other hand, refugees from other countries are subjected to examination procedures, questionings and similar humiliations, taking months or even years. This often results in a rejection of their right to stay, which either means being deported back to their countries of origin or to other countries, through which they crossed on their way to Germany.

In some cases migrants receive a tolerance permit, a temporary suspension of their deportation order. This however occurs in conjunction with a work ban or in some cases an exceptionally granted work permit. It is also legally established that these migrants may only be hired, if no Germans or non-Germans with secured residency status have applied to the positions in question.

The legal status of and discrimination against this section of Refugees pushes them directly into the worst off parts of the working class and especially into illegal parts of the economy, such as prostitution, drug- and human-trafficking.

Despite – or rather precisely because of – their illegalized and precarious status, refugees fulfill a very specific function for the bourgeoisie. They enlarge the ranks of the reserve army and can be called upon to do work, which better off workers would not accept under normal circumstances. Prominent examples for this are the seasonal demand for harvest workers or the demand for workers in the very large German meat industry.

Immediately after February 24. 2022 the meat manufacturer Clemens Tönnies tellingly sent teams of workers to the polish-ukrainian border in order to directly recruit Ukrainian refugees for his factories, which are notorious for terrible working conditions.³

This shows that the metaphor of the “fortress Europe”, used in the anti-racist movement in solidarity with refugees, is still quite appropriate, however not in the sense that the main goal is to completely undermine the movement of refugees to Europe. It is also not the goal of European migration-politics to deport all migrants. Its intention is much more to selectively control migration and flight to Europe. This is on the one hand in order to increase the pressure on migrants and their lawless status to a maximum and on the other to steer the political risks for the bourgeoisie that accompany mass exodus to Western Europe.

Demographic Problems and Brain Drain

Germany is certainly similar to many other European countries in its fundamental demographic structure. The especially high concentration of capital and the national industry which continues to be important are however factors which tend to increase the demands of the bourgeoisie for workers. Germany is also not the only country with an aging population. However there are only three countries within Europe that boast an older median age, those being Italy, Spain and Greece.⁴

Bourgeois sociological studies for instance forecast that the German economy will require around 7,5 Million skilled workers by 2035, around the time that the last generation to experience a high birthrate will go into retirement. The study goes on to claim that the German GDP for 2022 fell 100 Bil. Euros short of its theoretical possibilities due alone to a shortage of skilled labor.⁵

So from the perspective of the bourgeoisie, the tightening of migration laws finds its logical compliment in very targeted efforts to directly recruit foreign workers from for the German economy.

Just last year, in 2023, the Federal Ministry of Labor, headed by Hubertus Heil (SPD) drafted a so called Skilled Immigration Act (Fachkräfteeinwanderungsgesetz), which was adopted by parliament. In it, certain prior existing requirements were lowered. Workers are for instance now only required to have two years of work experience in their home countries in order to immigrate to Germany. The legally required minimum annual wage for foreign workers was likewise lowered, a fact that should please the capitalists. ⁶

In the last few years we have also seen a greater effort on the side of the German state to settle deals on migration with dependent countries. The contents of these settlements can be summarized as follows: Migrants which Germany wishes to deport must be accepted by these countries. In “exchange” the German state will grant skilled workers from said countries easier access to the german labor market.

There is surely no further need to explained why such “deals” in reality only have one true winner, namely German capital. For the dependent countries, the imperialist plunder of their resources is further supplemented by the poaching of the skilled sections of their population. No wonder then that german diplomatic efforts in this respect have produced little success so far. ⁷

The History of Migration in Germany

The constant hunger for additional workforce has not only in recent years been reflected in the German working class’s composition. Germany is one of the most important migration destinations in the World and the most important in Europe at all.

Already in the 1950s and 60s, one of the ways german imperialism satisfied its hunger for labor was through the targeted recruiting of so called “guest workers”, especially from Italy, Turkey and Yugoslavia. These workers played an important role in the class struggles of the 70s and were among other things able to fight for a standard of living for themselves and their families, comparable to that of german workers, instead of living in container-villages. In the 1980s and 90s they were joined by hundreds of thousand of Migrants from Russia and other Warsaw-Pact countries. The hundreds of thousands of refugees from countries such as Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and Ukraine, towards which the focus has shifted in the past decades, are, as we stated above, seen as vitally needed (potential) workers by bourgeois experts and the likes.

Out of the around 84 Million people living in Germany, around one in every four has a background of migration. These include people, who’s parents migrated to Germany. It is thereby a clear and undeniable fact that the German working class has for decades been multinational.

So while the share of non-german workers in the working class has grown, simultaneously the legal situation, especially for for refugees, has bit by bit become more devastating.

The “fundamental right to asylum” enshrined in the constitution following the period of german fascism has been deconstructed bit by bit since 1991.This process began in 1993 with the introduction of so called “safe third countries” (“sichere Drittstaaten”). This means that Germany dismisses its responsibility for the accommodating refugees, if these passed through a country deemed “safe” by the german state prior to entering Germany. It is hardly surprising then that Germany is mainly surrounded by countries it defines as “safe”. This step factually hollowed out the right to asylum as it stood.

In 2015, due in part to the Syrian civil war, a large amount of refugees entered into the EU and the poorest Regions of the EU – mainly in eastern Europe – became the most important countries of arrival for these migrants. Under these circumstances, German imperialism bit the bullet, practically lifted these regulations for a limited time and enabled the passage for a significant Part of these migrants to western Europe and especially to Germany.

It must however be said that this was at this time by no means a gesture of true and honest humanism. It was far more a measure to on the one hand counter the fundamental Labor deficit and on the other hand significantly defuse the political and social tensions on the eastern flank of the EU, thereby stabilizing the EU as Germany’s most important foreign and economic policy tool.

Also starting in 2015 however, Germany at the same time massively tightened migration policies, partially alone and partially through the EU. Prison-like camps were erected, measures were taken to build up the Libyan coast guard – infamous for human trafficking and torture – and countless Agreements were met with countries outside of the EU so that these could keep refugees from passing through to Europe, if need be through the use of violence. Turkey, Sudan and Libya are just three especially important current examples.

Entry into the EU by means of smugglers also became a criminal offense, thereby effectively initially criminalizing every refugee.

The reforms of the current EU-asylum legislation which have been in the public discourse since the summer of 2023 fit logically into the outlined developments. The number of refugees coming to the EU at all is to be further reduced. Those that do make it, face months if not years in detention-camps on the EU-borders and the maritime search and rescue efforts (Seenotrettung) which have played a profound role in the rescue of refugees in the Mediterranean, are further criminalized and equated to commercial smuggling.

In bourgeois media outlets the German foreign minister Anna-Lena Baerbock (Green Party) made an effort to create the impression that Germany was a “voice of reason” in the negotiations, by for instance claiming to oppose the internment of underage refugees at the border. The fact that at the same time, however, she had her own party’s conference assure her that, in case of doubt, the European asylum policy would be supported even if she could not get her way, undermines her own negotiating position in public to such an extent that it becomes obvious, how serious the German “feminist” foreign minister was about this issue: not at all.

Germany too has at the end of 2023 decided on additional restrictions, including for instance an extension of deportation custody. Another example of this is the introduction of prepaid cards which are to be handed out to refugees instead of Money. With this, refugees will only be able to make modest purchases at select stores which are part of the program, further isolating and cutting them off from social life.

At the same time, however, laws have been passed in recent years – similar to those currently in force in neighboring France – meant to ease the legalization of stay for migrants who serve the needs of german capital as full time workers.

The bottom line is that the entirety of German asylum legislation corresponds with the basic principles of German migration strategy outlined above: controlling and repressing migrants while at the same time exploiting their labor to the maximum where and whenever possible.

German Neo-Fascists as the driving Force behind reactionary Migration Politics

The reactionary and racist politics of all German government of the past decades has always been supplemented by the activities of German fascists. Both after the annexation of the GDR by West-Germany in 1990, as well as in 2015 and to a so far lesser extent again now, we have been able to observe a heightened activity of fascists attempting to exploit the issue politically.

In this effort, fascists are not simply hitchhiking a societal atmosphere created by the bourgeois-democratic parties of monopoly-capital. Rather, they themselves are contributing to said mood atmosphere.

Through diverse activities ranging from mobilizing a few hundred to thousands of people at different locations against planned refugee accommodations, to their parliamentary demagogy, to out right arson attacks against houses inhabited by migrants and murder, German fascists are on the one hand a driving force for reactionary legislation, and on the other used by bourgeois-democratic parties to legitimize their politics as “in accordance with the will of the people”.

Especially in some large cities and in many rural regions, verbal racism, but also physical violence against migrants are such common appearances that they play an important role in the daily reality of migrants and refugees in these places. This objectively reinforces their isolation from the rest of the working class.

But in the past decades, fascist violence in Germany has taken on more extreme forms. Since the 1990s, 219 (status 2021)⁸ people have been killed by fascist violence. In most cases those murdered have been migrants. Likewise, several leftists activists and homeless have fallen victim to fascist violence.

Of particular note is the series of murders by the so called “National Socialist Underground “ (NSU). Between 2001 and 2011, a total of 9 migrants were shot according to a uniform pattern. All crimes were supposedly organized and committed more or less single-handedly by three Nazis, so without outside influence, so goes the official version of the story.

It is however also clear that the Nazi-trio had multiple direct and indirect ties to different intelligence agencies in Germany. Following the uncovering of the trio, these acted in a state of panic and destroyed multiple documents connected to people involved with the accused Nazis. Different witnesses which could possibly have disclosed valuable information about the involvement of state agencies, have died under questionable circumstances.

One former informant of an intelligence agency supposedly died due to diabetic shock at the age of 39; a medical condition that had not been diagnosed prior to this.⁹ A former neo-Nazi went up in flames in his car, on his way to a planned witness testimony at the state criminal police (LKA) in Baden-Württemberg¹⁰ – supposedly out of lovesickness for a relationship that had only existed for two weeks at that point. Two years later his 20-year old ex-girlfriend died, officially due to a pulmonary embolism, and one year after that her fiance (from the time of her death) was dead as well. A cause of death was never officially established and here too the authorities concluded suicide.¹¹

While some of these processes may have to be interpreted as coincidences, in our view, this piling up of evidence allows no other conclusion to be drawn: it is not without reason that the deep state panicked at the possibility of being revealed in connection to this case.

Today we must assume that fascist mass violence as well as fascist terror play a certain role in the function of the ruling class. They contribute to spreading of a climate of fear among migrants and at the same time offer the state further occasion to justify the expansion of the security authorities. For these reasons they are seemingly tolerated and evidently sometimes organized directly by intelligence agencies.

The Task of Communists in Germany in the face of the Migration Politics of the Ruling Class

Which tasks must communists in Germany today derive from the analyses presented? Both the communist movement and the workers movement find themselves in a moment of historical weakness .

This division is continuously deepened by racist demagogy and the reactionary migration policies of the government. As communists, it is therefore our task to oppose this division propagated by the ruling class based on the nationalities of different parts of the working class and to develop methods to forge the unity of our multinational class in struggle.

We emphasize the importance of shared experiences in the struggle and a progressive counterculture of resistance against the prevailing conditions, which must today already be established in our organizational structures and medium-term at our workplaces and neighborhoods as well.

While we must strictly oppose all discrimination based on the basis of origin under capitalism and must, together with our comrades, take up the fight against reactionary asylum politics, as well as the reactionary imperialist structures of the EU as a whole; this does not mean that we support and promote imperialist migration per se.

Rather, it is important to show that imperialism, through the exaggeration of all its internal contradictions, takes the permanent uprooting of millions of people to the extreme and will in all likelihood continue to do so in years to come.

While we can oppose the racist division by german civil and asylum legislation with nothing but the demand for the complete legal equality of all people, we fight at the same time fo a socialist world beyond imperialism, in which having to flee your home is a thing of the past, because its causes have been eliminated and migration can truly be voluntary.

1This term picks up the ‘turnaround’ in external affairs and military politics that German chancellor Scholz famously proclaimed on February 27th, 2022 after the Russian invasion in Ukraine (Zeitenwende).

2Lenin: Capitalism and Workers’ Immigration. Collected Works Volume 19 page 454.

3Tagesschau 30.3.2022: Nutzt Tönnies die Not der Flüchtligne aus? https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/ndr/toennies-fluechtlinge-ukraine-101.html

4https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/248994/umfrage/durchschnittsalter-der-bevoelkerung-in-den-eu-laendern/

5https://vorwaerts.de/index.php/inland/wo-es-im-einwanderungsland-deutschland-noch-hakt

6https://www.make-it-in-germany.com/de/visum-aufenthalt/fachkraefteeinwanderungsgesetz

7 Tagesschau 1.11.2023: Maximal unkonkret https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/scholz-1216.html

8https://www.amadeu-antonio-stiftung.de/todesopfer-rechter-gewalt/

9 https://www.bundestag.de/webarchiv/textarchiv/2016/kw38-pa-3ua-nsu-459276

10 https://taz.de/Tod-des-NSU-Zeugen-Florian-H/!5033278/

11 https://taz.de/Erneut-moeglicher-NSU-Zeuge-gestorben/!5275907/