“In Germany's Interest”: State Responses to Transnational Nurse Recruitment

Abstract

West Germany experienced a considerable shortage of nursing staff in the 1960s. One way of countering this was to recruit nurses from abroad, mainly from South Korea, the Philippines and Kerala in Southern India. Recruitment from India was organised primarily by individual clergy, hospital directors and former migrants. Based on archival research, this article reconstructs how the West German state authorities responded to this transnational recruitment. In particular, it analyses the arguments used by the state authorities to justify why they had to respond in a particular way. It shows how they referred – either explicitly or implicitly – to the interests of West Germany, and how the definition of West Germany’s interests differed between the various authorities. It illustrates how development aid entered as an argument, and the impact of the sociopolitical context.