Refugee Struggle for Freedom

"We, as the lowest strata of this society and believing that this struggle is a class struggle, started our strike at the headquarters of the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB). In light of our shared understanding of class struggle, we expect support from the DGB to ensure our safety so that we can continue our peaceful protest”

Homepage des Netzwerks Freiheit für alle politischen Gefangenen 2013

In 2012, refugee protests sparked one of the most important anti-racist movements of Germanys post-war period.

Political and economic context

The demands of this movement were set out in 10 points, two of which I would like to highlight in particular because of the political and economic conditions that underlie them and which they make visible. The first is the demand for refugees to be allowed to join trade unions during the asylum process. Since refugees do not have a work permit in Germany during the asylum process, many considered this demand absurd. What this reveals is that many refugees work anyway, but illegally, and are therefore at the mercy of their employers as they have no legal protection.
This made visible the specific constitution of the German Labor market as racially hierarchized through migration. German migration policy although taking difference forms as consecutive regimes, have always also been a means to organize labor. What they organize is not only the supply of human resources for German capital but also access to labor rights. The organization of German migration policy after World war II can be categorized into three regimes [^1] :

Guest worker regime (1955-1973)

The human casualties in World War ii, the subsequent economic boom and the development of the Bundeswehr led to a labor shortage in the Federal Republic, which could no longer be compensated for cheaply enough by the domestic population alone. From the 1950s onwards, recruitment agreements were signed with Italy (1955), Spain (1960), Greece (1960), Turkey (1961), Morocco (1963), Portugal (1964), Tunisia (1965) and Yugoslavia (1968) in order to compensate for the labor shortage with so-called Gastarbeiter (guest workers). The hiring of foreign labor was particularly suitable because, according to the Confederation of German Employers’ Associations, “labor market requirements could be adjusted upwards and downwards (Nikolinakos, 1973: 68)”. This means that there were “guest workers” who could be laid off depending on market conditions or used as a reserve.
After wildcat strikes from guestworkers and German workers demanding an end to the two class system and more money for all workers in 1973 these recruitment arrangements were stopped. State-organized recruitment of migrant workers is no longer necessary anyway. In many sectors, labor shortages can be compensated for by family reunification, refugees and other migrants without explicit state recruitment.

Humanitarian Asylum regime

This phase was followed by Humanitarian Asylum regime (1973-1993): In this period in migrants were mainly accepted as refugees fleeing a humanitarian crisis. This phase ended in 1993 with the de facto abolition of the right to asylum. This has to be understood in its political context since the right to asylum was also a political tool during the cold war period where it was a means to antagonize the socialist block by integrating its internal enemies into one’s own political system, making it superfluous after the fall of the socialist block.

Regime of Illegalized Migration

This was followed by today’s regime of Illegalized Migration (1993-today). Followed by years of far-right mobilization and a wave of right-wing violence against migrants, the German parliament ruled, through change of Article 16a of the basic law, that Asylum seekers arriving from countries designated as "safe third countries" can be sent back to those countries without their asylum claim being individually reviewed by German authorities. Germany being a defacto landlocked state and bordering "safe" european countries, this made it almost impossible to legally claim asylum. That means that the opportunity to come to Germany and stay legally are mostly abolished. The concept of the "Illegal Migrant" is mainly a discursive tool in the discourse on migration and does not refer to a legal status per se. That means it not only refer to sans papiers but also to migrants who may have a legal status in Germany but work jobs without a permit.
While only during the guest worker regime the connection between migrations policy and labor market needs are made explicit, the idea that migration policy should be informed by German labor market needs are a constant during all these regimes. Many of the complicated arrangements were informed by the idea that the German state needs to take lessons from the guest worker regime era and avoid its mistakes [^2] .
The German trade unions, historically institutions of the labor movement meant to represent and organize class struggle and internationalism, played a particularly difficult role in the context of postwar migration policy. The so called Inländerprimat (primacy of the domestic workforce) was enforced by the German trade unions as a condition for the recruitment of guest workers, fearing a deterioration in the working conditions of national workers. In subsequent regimes, the trade unions discussed migration mainly as a problem in the context of precarious labor.
Another demand of the Refugee struggle for Freedom was the abolition of the residence requirement, which tied refugees to the place where they were registered and prevented them from leaving the designated area without permission. This restriction on their freedom of movement was not only a violation of their human rights, but also prevented them from organizing politically. This law was used in many cases as a form of counter insurgency.

The Beginnings

The Refugee Struggle for Freedom movement was initiated by the suicide of Mohammed Rahspar in a refugee camp in Würzburg. This sparked not only protest and discourse on inhumane living conditions of refugees. The other refugees organized themselves, marched from Würzburg to Berlin, a distance of over 600 km, and occupied Oranienplatz in Berlin.
The refugees themselves, many of them already politicized in their home countries, were able to articulate themselves in a language that already implied the connection between global capitalism and migration management. They understood themselves as the lowest part of the working class and therefore their struggle as refuges as part of a larger Class struggle.

Struggle

300 war refugees from Libya, where the imperialist attack by NATO in 2011 has left many African migrants in a humanitarian crisis, were stranded on the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa. They were living in Hamburg since March 2013, and in July 2013, the Ver.di Hamburg regional branch took in 300 Lampedusa refugees. However, the procedure caused controversy. The responsible union secretary received a reprimand under labor law for the way the members were admitted. This decision was taken back out of court after long debates within ver.di and the refugees rights to stay in the union was accepted but the decision stayed controversial.
In March 2013, a Refugee Struggle Congress took place at the Munich Trade Union Building. The activists stayed at the Munich Trade Union Building for two weeks in September 2013. It was not a traditional occupation, as it was not enforced but rather occurred by mutual consent. However, political demands were made, which were linked to a series of political actions, such as a dry hunger strike at Munich’s Rindermarkt.
In 2014, asylum seekers again occupied a DGB building in Berlin. Here, too, they demanded, among other things, the possibility of membership for asylum seekers in the DGB unions. In 2015 the federal congress of the German trade unions accepted that refugees independent of their legal status could become members of ver.di.

Results

The protesters were able to achieve at least a few of their demands one being the possibility of membership in a DGB union.
The realization of this has improved the possibilities for political organization significantly, but the movement has not managed to make the leap to a permanent organization that can concretely address the connection between migration, imperialism, and exploitation.