People leave their home, voluntarily or involuntarily, and reorient themselves in a foreign place for very different reasons: job seekers, recruits, trainees, refugees, people passing through, business people, pilgrims, forced labourers, newcomers - they all have something to do with migration and therefore all bring foreign influences and new ideas with them. Cities have been a destination for immigrants for a long time. Trade and handicrafts required intensive travel and migratory movement. From before the 19th century, particularly in the trading cities of Dortmund and Duisburg, foreigners - merchants, people passing through, craftsmen – arrived. The years between 1880 and 1914 can be identified as the height of immigration into the Ruhr Region. Labour forces recruited for the mining and heavy industries consistently lived in poorer circumstances, home ownership before circa 1945 was a goal rarely achieved. This segment of the population therefore left little in the way of its own architectural monuments and rich material culture. An exemplary reconstruction of how these people lived, and how they integrated themselves initially as foreigners, over time in their new living conditions, can be drawn from a variety of residential dwellings, settlements, and the overall appearance of the locality and based on documents and exhibits in museums. During both world wars, thousands of women and men from occupied countries were forced into labour. The remains of camps, graves, and memorial stones bear witness to this. The border changes following the Second World War, the division of Germany, and the Cold War triggered several population movements. Refugees, migrants, and ethnic German immigrants had to be integrated into the Ruhr Region. After 1955, labour migrants from South East Europe, North Africa, and Asia were indispensable to economic development in Germany. Above all, political refugees have found acceptance in the Ruhr Region since the 1980s.