This open access book is about Mozambicans and Angolans who migrated in state-sponsored schemes to East Germany in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. They went to work and to be trained as a vanguard labor force for the intended African industrial revolutions. While they were there, they contributed their labor power to the East German economy.
This book draws on more than 260 life history interviews and uncovers complex and contradictory experiences and transnational encounters. What emerges is a series of dualities that exist side by side in the memories of the former migrants: the state and the individual, work and consumption, integration and exclusion, loss and gain, and the past in the past and the past in the present and future. By uncovering these dualities, the book explores the lives of African migrants moving between the Third and Second worlds.
Devoted to the memories of worker-trainees, this transnational study comes at a time when historians are uncovering the many varied, complicated, and important connections within the global socialist world.
Author(s): Marcia C. Schenck
Series: Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 397
City: Cham
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Contents
About the Author
Abbreviations
List of Figures
List of Tables
Chapter 1: Prologue: Juma Madeira—From Socialist New Man to Madjerman Activist
Chapter 2: Introduction
Transnational Socialist Labor Migration Schemes
Structure and Contributions
Socialist Mobilities Between Angola, Mozambique, and East Germany
Oral History and Memory
Chapter 3: Between the Hammer, Machete, and Kalashnikov: Labor Migration from Angola and Mozambique to East Germany 1979–1990
Introduction
Part I: Starting Points—The Labor Migration Programs
Historical Continuities: African Labor Exports
Angolan and Mozambican Labor and Training Migration in the Cold War
From Luanda and Maputo to Berlin: Transcontinental Labor and Training Migration
Part II: The Migrants’ Motives to Move
Reasons to Migrate
The Political Context: “The Principles of Marxism-Leninism and of Proletarian Internationalism”69
Labor Migration: “German Businesses Asked for a Mozambican Workforce, But they Got People Instead”72
Educational Migration: “I felt Selected for the Days to Come and Everything Was a Project of the Future”83
War Migration: “The Military Was an Awful Place to Be. They Scraped your Head and Collected Baskets of Fresh Blood”94
Personal Migration: “…this Was My Chance to See Europe”109
Conclusion
Chapter 4: Socialist Workers and Socialist Consumers
Introduction
Part I: Doing Work, Making Meaning—The Working Life of Socialism
Creating Socialist Workers: Language Classes, Vocational School, and the Factory Floor
Disciplining the Socialist Worker
Becoming New Men and Women
Part II: Consumption: The Material Life of Socialism
Going East to Shop
Consumption and Becoming: Seeking Personhood Abroad and Staying in Contact with Home
Conclusion
Chapter 5: The Social Life of Socialism: Intimacy and Racism
Introduction
Part I: Integration—Intimate Strangers
Alternative Intimate Attachments: German Families, Mozambican Families, Angolan Families
Inclusion and Exclusion: Dormitories and Discos
Part II: Exclusion: Intimate Strangers
Gender Exclusion: Preventing Afro-German and African Families
Becoming Black in East Germany
Real Racism in Real Socialism100
The Fall of the Wall, the Rise of Violent Racism
Conclusion
Chapter 6: Return, Fall, and Rise of the Madjerman: The Afterlives of Socialist Migration
Introduction
Part I: Loss
The End of Socialism: Returning from East Germany
Homecoming: From Big Men and Women to Lost Men and Women
The Loss of Transnational Ties
Part II: Gain
East German Legacies: “When We Came Back, We Had Another Way of Being in the World”107
A Luta Continua! Activism for Redress and Acknowledgment128
Conclusion
Chapter 7: Temporality, Memory, and Meaning: Eastalgia in Angola and Mozambique
Introduction
Part I: Eastalgia—The Past in the Present for the Future
Longing in Mozambique and Angola: Post-Socialist Nostalgia, Ostalgie, and Eastalgia
The East German Past Through Mozambican and Angolan Eyes: “A World Full of Roses”16
Back to the Future: Mozambican Post-Socialist Nostalgic Critiques of the Government
Eastalgic Memoryscapes in Angola and Mozambique
Part II: Closing Points—The Labor Migration Programs
Modernity and Temporality
Looking Back and Looking Out: The Workers’ Life Course in Global Perspective
Conclusion
Chapter 8: Epilogue: Transnational Sojourners, Intimate Strangers, and Workers of the World
The Spaces Between Second and Third Worlds
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Consulted Archives and Libraries
Angola
Germany
Mozambique
Portugal
South Africa
Cited Tin Trunk Archives/Personal Archives
Cited Newspapers and Online News Sources
Angola
Mozambique
Germany
International
Cited Interviews
Cited Field Notes
Cited Online Sources
Movies/Exhibitions/Plays
Published Primary Sources
Published Secondary Sources
Books
Journal Articles
Theses
Index
