Archival Notes

This song offers an autobiographical account of Eko Fresh’s family history, recounting his parents’ experience as Turkish gastarbeiter (guest workers) in Germany. Situating Turkish labour migration to Germany as a multi-generational process, he describes the experience of the first generation being shaped by entry into industrial labour, language struggles and limited institutional support. Although Eko focuses on the broader experiences of the gastarbeiter, he also specifically traces his grandfather’s movement from central Anatolia to Germany – Sivas to Lemgo – with seven children and no financial security. Once in Germany, Eko Fresh’s mother started working in a paper factory at fifteen years old – reflecting the early insertion of migrant girls into industrial labour. The narrative then shifts to his parents meeting within this labour-migration context, with their “love in a foreign culture and in a foreign land” emerging under constrained circumstances marked by cultural tension and family opposition. Eko Fresh’s own childhood is recalled as materially limited and emotionally challenging, particularly given long periods of parental absence due to work – “we, sons of guest workers, were home alone”.

The song makes clear how deeply gastarbeiter identity has shaped Eko Fresh’s sense of self. Although this identity is initially framed as something inherited and heavy – tied to hard labour, sacrifice and struggle – it is ultimately rearticulated as a source of dignity and pride. By naming himself explicitly as “Ekrem, the son of a worker”, he positions his public persona within a lineage of labour migration, signalling generational endurance and moral strength. This collective framing is reinforced through the repeated use of the pronoun ‘we’, with Eko Fresh rapping: “We are a certain kind of people” and “we’ve fought hard our entire lives”.

At the same time, the song draws attention to the difficulties of life in Germany for those with immigrant backgrounds. The repeated line, “we passionately love Germany from the bottom of our hearts, but unfortunately it doesn’t always love us back” foregrounds experiences of racism and exclusion. Failure is implied to be more socially acceptable when it happens to gastarbeiter, suggesting how migrant communities are often positioned as disposable or undeserving.

Crucially, the song extends this gastarbeiter identity beyond the first generation – it is not only confined to those who physically migrated, but continues to shape the lives of their children who inherit both the benefits and the burdens of that history. In this way, gastarbeiter becomes an intergenerational identity rather than a closed chapter in Germany’s post-war past. Through this song, hip-hop functions as a vehicle of historical transmission, allowing a parental labour history to be documented, acknowledged and carried forward as collective memory.