15. Globalising Rural Areas: International Migrants in Rural Germany

International migrants sometimes decide to live in rural instead of in urban areas. These migrants can be clustered into different groups, e.g. amenity migrants, cross-border migrants, asylum seekers, training migrants and working migrants (seasonal and permanent). In rural areas in Germany, for example, in 2010 11.1 % of the population had a migratory background. In the German census for 2011, people with a migratory background include “all immigrant and nonimmigrant foreigners, all German citizens who immigrated after 1955 into the current territory of the Federal Republic of Germany and those Germans with at least one parent who immigrated into the current territory of the Federal Republic of Germany after 1955” (translated from the text from the Statistisches Bundesamt, Zensus 2011: Ausgewählte Ergebnisse. Wiesbaden, 2013b, p. 26) (Statistisches Bundesamt, Bevölkerung und Erwerbstätigkeit. Bevökerung mit Migrationshintergrund – Ergebnisse des Mikrozensus 2010. Fachserie 1 Reihe 2.2. Wiesbaden, 2011). Even though this phenomenon of international migrants moving into rural instead of urban areas exists, it has long been neglected by researchers.