Germany's guest workers mark 20 years - 08 Nov 09

The fall of the Berlin Wall was a time of celebration, but also one of fear and uncertainty in the old East Germany.

A country, and an ideology, collapsed. Factories closed, jobs disappeared and old values were turned upside down.

All of East German society felt the impact of those dramatic events, but perhaps none were as vulnerable as the country's foreign contract workers, or Vertragsarbeiter.

Over the years, tens of thousands of people had travelled to East Germany from fellow Socialist countries in the developing world; places like Angola, Cuba, Mozambique and Vietnam.

In theory, migrant workers enjoyed the same rights and responsibilities as other workers in East Germany. In practice they were socially isolated, living in special barracks, and personal contacts with German co-workers were firmly discouraged.

When the wall fell in 1989, there were still some 90,000 Vetragsarbeiter in East Germany. Suddenly, the country and the ideology that had brought them to Europe had collapsed, and the majority were sent home.

This was often a traumatic experience. Returnees to Mozambique, for example, struggled to adapt to their war-ravaged homeland.

Today, many years later, they are still in an angry dispute with the Mozambican government about money owed from their time in East Germany.

But a minority - perhaps as many as 20,000 Vetragsarbeiter - managed to stay in the new, unified Germany.

Al Jazeera's Barnaby Phillips reports on how they have fared.

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