Guaranteeing Human Rights? Italian ‘Gastarbeiter:innen’ and Housing Activism in 1960s and 1970s West Germany

Abstract

This article examines migrant grassroots movements that invoked universalising rights’ languages to assert claims to decent and affordable housing in West Germany in the 1960s and 1970s. It focuses on Southern Italian migrant ‘guest workers’ who utilized rights’ claims to highlight dismal living conditions and the lack of access to affordable housing for migrant families in their new communities. Migrants’ claims then ‘scaled up’ to the level of international relations and the European Parliament as state actors and advocacy groups couched migrant housing conditions in terms of human rights. No matter the forum, ideas surrounding human rights created frameworks of debate over the West German welfare state, the free movement of labour within the European Economic Community, and even visions of European citizenship and integration. As such, this article illustrates the disparities between canonising human rights on paper and the challenges of guaranteeing said rights on the ground, particularly for populations not confined to the boundaries of their own nation-state.