The word gastarbeiter has its roots in the 1960s and 70s, when hundreds of thousands of Yugoslavs became temporary ‘guest-workers’ in Western Europe, most of them in Germany.
The phenomenon became synonymous with the influx of Western-made goods, from cars to chocolate bars; but there was also the cash that poured into the Yugoslav economy and, in some places, financed the rise of so-called ‘remittance factories’.
Six decades since the first such factory opened its doors, paid for with remittances from Yugoslav Gastarbeiters, Sara Zeric, a research associate at the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Research in Regensburg, Germany, is researching their contribution to local development.
Source : Balkan Insight
