Brittany Lehman

M.A. Student

brlehman@email.unc.edu

Major Field: European History

Other Fields: Women's and Gender History

Advisor: Karen Hagemann

Research Interests: 

Preparation of a project with the draft title:

"Education and Immigration:  Debates, Policies, and Practices in West Germany, 1960-1990"
Shortly after West Germany stopped their 'guest worker program' in 1973, federal reports began to remark on the increasing numbers of children of "foreign descent" (predominately the children of guest workers) and to discuss their care and education. The situation had, in fact, been developing for some time. In 1965 there were already a reported 23,907 children and by 1976 that number had grown to 836,000. With the eventual acknowledgment that the majority of these students would be remaining in Germany, the federal government began to slowly discuss the issue of their education with special attention to language, culture, family, and rights. They began to put forward minimal requirements and recommendations for the states to follow at their discretion. Despite efforts, however, academics were already writing about "lost generations" of foreign students in the late 1970s. Given that apparent failure, the planned project will examine the development of the public discussions surrounding the education of migrant children of guest workers, the  political attempts made to reconcile the issues,  their implementation and the responses by the representatives of the different migrant groups. Because of the federal structure of the Federal Republic of Germany, in which education policy was 'Ländersache' , a  task of the the German federal Länder,  the  focus of the analysis of politics and practices will be two Länder: Berlin, a social-democratic governed city state with a protestant majority,  and  Baden Würtemberg,  a christian-democratic  ruled territorial state with the capital Stuttgart, whose population was partly catholic and  partly  protestant.