The following text analyses the emerging West German refugee movement of the early 1980s. The thesis is that the movement of that time successfully responded to an only recently established narrative – that refugees were a threat to the German social security system – with a strong counter-narrative. The text emphasises the role that events organised by civil society in Hamburg, Hanover, Berlin and southern Germany play in the production of certainty for this counter-narrative. Society’s approach to forced migration is understood in this text as one that is constantly being renegotiated and re-created. This paper therefore takes a cultural sociological perspective and gives specific consideration to social movements and local migration regimes. The main finding of the paper is that the establishment of the counter-narrative was successful because of the local nature of the protests. The paper is based on an empirical study of grey literature of social movements and relevant specialist literature.