“They get their vegetables from the garden behind the house, their fish from a can, and the money for bread from their work in the factory. It was the lure of that money that brought them here. Women from Turkey and women from Mecklenburg – they work side by side on the conveyer belt of a Lübeck fish factory. Their hands are stained brown, the pungent smell of fish clings to everything, their arms and backs ache. If this work were done by men, it would have long since been automated. But female labour is cheap, and the women don’t complain. They have learned to work, and they are proud of it.” (from the 1994 NFL catalog) It’s not that they love their work, but it’s what they have to do. They admit – sometimes with great poetry and downright cheerful smiles – that the lives they are living are not what they had once hoped for. And yet for all that, they do not give the impression of feeling aggrieved.