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| German-Vietnamese Friendship by Joana Breidenbach (in brief) |
| Contract Laborers, Boat People, and Their Children To understand the situation of Vietnamese immigrants in Germany, one must understand the various socio-economic starting points and forms of participations provided to them. According to their biographies, one can differentiate roughly between contract workers hired in the GDR, those who sought refuge in West Germany (the so-called boat people), and those who didn’t come until after the Fall of the Wall (known as the second generation). Like many of the Vietnamese small business owners living in the eastern half of Berlin, Ha and Huy Hong came to East Germany in the 1980s along with 70,000 other Vietnamese hired by the state to overcome production shortages. Despite the words of solidarity spoken by the East German regime, it did not seek the integration of its Vietnamese comrades: the stays of contract workers were limited to five years; after receiving brief language and work instruction, they began a life traveling from their apartments to their factories and back, with strict separation between the men and the women; contact with Germans was forbidden; if a Vietnamese woman became pregnant, she had to choose between abortion and deportation. Conditions in East Germany were indeed adverse. (In addition to everything else, workers had to surrender 12% of their wages to the Vietnamese government for the development of the fatherland.) For all that, many immigrants liked their lives in Germany. Qualified professionals—tax accountants, tailors, even physicists and doctors—were happy to leave the poverty of their home country, even if that meant taking on menial factory work. Upon arrival, the workers wondered at witnessing their first snow fall and at seeing the “many beautiful high-rise buildings.” For Vietnamese standards, the workers earned good money. Because they were not allowed to send currency back home—only a strictly regulated number of goods “made in GDR” like refrigerators, stereos, and mopeds—most accumulated virtual storehouses full of goods for their return. Gradually, they found their way into small pockets of society unmonitored by the government, starting love affairs, sneaking German friends past desk officers, and earning lucrative money on the side sewing jeans and jackets. .... more n the catalogue "Home:Sweet:City". To order at Vice Versa Verlag, Berlin Joana Breidenbach studied ethnology and art history in Munich, Berkeley, and London. She has worked as a writer and journalist in Berlin since 1992, producing numerous articles on the cultural consequences of globalization, migration, and tourism. She has been a columnist for the economic magazine brand eins for many years. Her pieces have appeared in GEO and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Her works include Tanz der Kulturen (Rowoht 2000, together with Ina Zukrigl). (Top) (Back) |
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