Migration and informal work in the New Berlin: New forms of work or new sources of labour?

One of the central questions with respect to migration and the informal labour market is which comes first: the de‐regulation of working relations or the availability of new sources of cheap and docile labour. Today the notion is spreading that the growth of unemployment and low waged precarious jobs in an informal or shadow economy is a direct function of the ‘influx’ of new ‘illegal’ migrants. This article illustrates how policies to control foreign entry are ambivalent. Despite the avowed principle of not being a country of immigration, continuous exceptions have been made to permit the restricted access of temporary workers. The major patterns for the ‘new’ migration were set by foreign and guestworker policies adopted during post‐war reconstruction. New programmes were initiated in connection with the asylum compromise and the transformations in Germany and Eastern Europe. This article demonstrates that the main forces bringing about restructuring and deregulation were put into place in the mid‐1980s independently of a new source of undocumented foreigners. Transformations in the economy comprised a number of factors including technological change, growth of the service sector, increase of part time labour, an increase in temporary and precarious jobs and growing unemployment. These changes were already in process in 1991 when borders of Eastern Europe were beginning to open.