Teaching National Identity to “Guest Worker Children” (1962–1971)

Abstract

Highlighting diversity between groups of migrant workers and their families, Chap. 4 turns to individuals with Greek citizenship in the mid-1960s. In contrast with the Italian government, the Greek government expected its citizens’ eventual return to Greece, which led Greece to downplay integration into West Germany in favor of ethnonational identification. As schools served as a primary site for learning ethnonational identification, Greek children need a Greek education to be Greek. That very emphasis, however, pushed the West German states to stress integration and education as a human right as the Länder considered what it meant to teach foreign citizenship and associated ideologies in West Germany.