Keywords

9.1 Introduction

2022 marks the thirtieth anniversary of a pogrom in Rostock-Lichtenhagen. In August of that year, neo-Nazis attacked the “Sunflower house” in the northeastern city of Rostock which was the home to former Vietnamese contract workers and other migrants, like Sinti and Roma. Cheered on by local German residents and without intervention by the police, the attackers not only threw stones but also broke in and set fire to a house. Thanks only to the skills and calm reaction of the 150 inhabitants, who were able to make an escape route to a neighboring house, no one was killed. This incident deeply shaped the experience of the years after reunification of non-white Germans and migrants. Until now, their perspective has been largely absent from the historiography of the period.

At the time of what would be called German reunification, around 59,000 Vietnamese contract workers lived in East Germany (Dennis 2007). Contract workers originated from “socialist brother states,” mostly from Angola, Mozambique and Vietnam. Sociologist Steffen Mau described the East German transformation of 1989/1990 as a societal “tsunami” and 1990 as a “year of anarchy” (Mau 2019). But like natural disasters, the “Wende” (turning point) affected different people in different ways and the positive sides of the anarchy turned into discriminatory and racist experiences for others. It comes as no surprise, then, that the experience of Vietnamese migrant workers in the East, the focus of this paper, differs from the ones of native-born Germans (Plamper 2019). Today, the latter tend to choose elegiac terms to describe the dreamlike atmosphere of the “peaceful revolution.” By contrast, migrant experiences were dominated by a specter of uncertainty and a collapsing social space while being devoid of any compensatory delight in a positive narrative of the German nation (Long 2017). 1990 was a turning point in world history and for “socialist cosmopolite workers” alike (Schwenkel 2014), and with this paper we seek to contribute to a more diverse re-telling of 1990.

This paper examines the meaning of the changes after the Peaceful Revolution of 1989 in Germany and beyond for the Vietnamese migrant workers in the East in their host as well as their sending country through archival work and media analysis. By analyzing East German (German Democratic Republic; GDR) print media, TV programming, and the radio show “Tiếng quê hương” (Voice of Home), which was broadcast in Vietnamese by GDR state radio in the year 1990, we show that the year of 1990 was a year of displacement, of the renegotiation of citizenship, and a chance for democratization for the Vietnamese migrant workers. By focusing on the reports in different media outlets, we show how the experiences of this year by Vietnamese migrant workers were portrayed, and we draw a conclusion regarding changes in reporting in a new media landscape. Print media from 1990 and TV reports from 1990 to 1992 illustrate that without the ruling party’s authoritarianism, GDR journalists contested grandiose claims of international solidarity. Instead, during the “short year of anarchy” they arrived, for the first time, at programs openly addressing the needs of Vietnamese migrant workers in the fading state. Ultimately, however, they were unable, or unwilling, to integrate the experiences and aspirations of Vietnamese living in Germany into the emerging narrative of the experience of 1990.

9.2 Labor Migration in the GDR and East Europe

Labor migrants played a crucial role in keeping the economy of socialist Europe running. Migrants came from socialist brother states both within Eastern European and overseas from places like Vietnam, Mozambique, Cuba, and Angola. In theory, contract workers were to be a triple win for the sending countries, which would offload responsibility for educating and qualifying their workers and have fewer people to feed in times of war and hardship. Further, while they were away, migrant workers would send much-needed industrial goods and financial aid to their home countries, and at the end of their contract they would return with newly acquired skills and expertise. For example, Cuba initially decided not to send workers abroad to not politically become dependent on the Soviet Union but in the 1970s, joined these programs in order to reduce unemployment (Bortlová-Vondráková and Szente-Varga 2021).

For the receiving countries, contract workers were a chance to address the lack of labor in their own countries and find laborers who would do the jobs their own citizens refused to do. For East Germany and Czechoslovakia, foreign contract workers were mainly a solution to the problem of labor shortages after they had already mobilized internal available groups for labor (students, soldiers, convicts, women) (Klipa 2022). The GDR suffered from labor shortages from the earliest years of its existence. The main reason for the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 was exactly to stem the outpouring of workers. Until 1961, young workers in particular left the GDR for the West when given a chance (Kohli 1994). In early 1990, this prior movement of East German laborers would be mirrored by Vietnamese moving to West Berlin, some 3500 in the spring of that year (Doc. 19).

Already in the 1960s, the labor shortage in the GDR was compensated for by contract workers, but their numbers would grow massively in the 1980s after a policy shift that prioritized quantity over quality of work due to the changing dynamics of the Cold War and Poland raising the price for their workers abroad significantly (Klipa 2022; Weiss 2012). At the same time, economic development had led to an increase in the qualification of the East German workforce. An adverse effect was their rejection of low skilled jobs. Thus, an ever-growing shortage of lower-skilled labor constituted one of the driving forces behind the treaties with Mozambique and Vietnam. Both debt-ridden countries had labor surpluses which they exported to East Germany in exchange for state-sponsored education and loans (Paul 1999). East Germans started moving on from physically demanding jobs, which they left for the newly arrived migrant workers (Poutrus 2020a). In total, the GDR recruited about 70,000 Vietnamese workers (Schaland and Schmiz 2015).

The motivation for individuals to become contract workers was emotionally and economically driven. The Vietnamese contract workers themselves described their stay abroad as an opportunity to make money and to see the world. Looking back, and in comparison to the 1990s, many describe their time in the GDR before reunification as “happy” (Schwenkel 2014). For Mozambiquan workers, long-distance migration for work became a rite of passage toward adulthood after which they would be able to contribute in meaningful ways to their home country (Allina 2018; Alamgir 2018). Alamgir (2018) points out that these motivations but also the commodified flexible treatment of the workers is similar to the realities of labor migrants in capitalist countries until today. In both cases precarity and limited welfare provisions are acceptable risks.

Based on their interests, the sending and receiving states negotiated the employment conditions of the contract workers, which turned out differently from country to country, in some cases under the influence of workers’ actions and demands. The treaty between the GDR and Vietnam was an agreement between the Marxist-Leninist ruling party, the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands; SED), in East Germany and the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) in which the German side dictated many of the rules. By contrast, with Czechoslovakia Vietnam had more bargaining power and was therefore able to negotiate better working conditions: higher wages, safer jobs, maternity benefits equal to the ones of Czechoslovakian women, all with the help of the pressure that potential strikes of their workers posed on the ground (Alamgir 2017a). Strikingly, there are indications that collective actions by the migrant workers were more frequent than previously thought. When, for example, in early 1989 authorities threatened to tighten export regulations, Vietnamese workers threatened to strike until the party abandoned these plans. In Czechoslovakia, Alamgir (2017a) further describes how Vietnamese used the tactic of unexcused absenteeism to win different work placements. For the future, it would be rewarding to track down those examples of collective actions in the scattered sources and place them in the broader context of the last decade of state socialism in Europe.

In the case of the GDR, although the party’s influence on the ground was waning (Alamgir 2017a), a number of drastic measures were kept in place. Women were not allowed to become pregnant, and if they did, they had to choose between deportation or abortion. Prior to 1989, Vietnamese workers were obliged to live in crowded workers homes in which they shared rooms with compatriots, only 5 m2 were assigned per person. The state directly subsidized these homes, which the employers provided (Arndt 2012). Neither residents nor visitors could enter them without regulation and record keeping. The same applies to other institutions like state-owned youth clubs. Many of these pubs and nightclubs refused entry to Vietnamese, who responded by spending their leisure time in public places like parks, streets, and train stations. Despite these conditions, around 70,000 workers arrived in the GDR, most of them in the second half of the 1980s (Dennis 2017).

Before 1990, “international solidarity” was an important discursive element which not only helped to explain the “comrade of color” to East Germans but also the existence of the GDR itself and its dependence on the Soviet Union (Schüle 2002). But this claim of solidarity was over-shadowed by the self-portrayal of the GDR that saw itself as benevolent and superior to other states by providing a place for labor instead of sending their people away themselves (Saunders 2003). The GDR citizens echoed this notion and it would live on, at least in the media-discourse, after 1990.

Furthermore, despite these claims of solidarity, workers suffered from policies of social segregation and differences in benefits. In the GDR, there was a “Kontaktverbot” (contact ban). Private contacts between Vietnamese and Germans were severely restricted for the interest of both countries, because the GDR authorities focused on productivity and a successful return to the home country (Zatlin 2007). No German courses were offered consequently except for designated translators. In contrast, Hungary and Czechoslovakia provided for compulsory language classes and Hungary set the same standards and obligations to their own citizens and foreign workers in wages and benefits (Bortlová-Vondráková and Szente-Varga 2021). However, in the GDR, limited opportunities for personal exchange, along with different pay scales, compensation, and benefits all contributed to the othering of migrant workers (Zatlin 2007). Although the political framework for segregation varied, social segregation and a lack of personal ties was both a reason and a consequence of racism across all countries. On top of that, racism with its roots in Germany’s colonial past kept stereotypes about black people and other people of color alive and fueled racism in the growing skinhead-subculture (Botsch 2012).

A final factor contributing to racism was economic competition. Recent research has revealed the existence of a transnational Vietnamese migrant economy well before 1990 (Hüwelmeier 2017; Alamgir 2017a). As part of these transnational networks, Vietnamese in East Germany spent large sums on consumer goods that they then sent to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. They bought certain consumer goods in Germany, for example, like sewing machines and mopeds, scarcely available at home, and sent them in bulk to their families. Changing the rules of this part of the migrant economy threatened the implicit societal contract between foreign workers and the East German authorities (Dennis 2017; Poutrus 2020a). At the same time, ordinary Germans often observed foreign workers buying consumer goods like bikes or hi-fi-equipment, which further strengthened the image of the over-privileged and undeserving migrant worker (Poutrus 2020a). Similar dynamics were at play with white East European citizens, above all Polish workers and even tourists, who had the same access to consumer goods that GDR citizens lacked (Zatlin 2007). Given that the ability to purchase these products was an important factor in the workers’ decision to work in Europe, policies intended to limit the practice were an object of contention, both at the level of the sending and receiving states and at the level of the workers themselves. This would be an ongoing issue in the GDR and to a larger extent in neighboring Czechoslovakia (Alamgir 2017b).

Contracts for sending workers between European and African and Asian countries differed from case to case. They were, however, all connected by the goals to create a win–win-win situation for the sending and receiving countries as well as for the workers themselves. Overall, the negotiation power of all those three actors was strong enough to indeed reach a positive outcome for all sides, even if the workers had to suffer from hardship. Drawing from the living conditions of Vietnamese in the GDR, it becomes apparent that the claim of solidarity for the contract worker program was mainly that, a claim, that covered the reality of economic goals that were at the forefront. This motive rose to the surface during German reunification, too, when economic concerns from the German side and racism characterized the experience of Vietnamese contract workers. They in return showed their own agency and will to negotiate the new political realities both in Germany and in Vietnam as we will show in this chapter.

9.3 Vietnamese Contract Workers, German Media, and Tiếng Quê Hương

For most of the GRD’s existence, a public sphere in the narrow sense did not exist. The state-socialist understanding of journalism muted most voices, including those of migrant workers. Therefore, Vietnamese voices appear only rarely in official discourse. However, the GDRs media landscape changed rapidly during the autumn of 1989, establishing new modes of public discourse which now included marginalized groups. It is this expanded public sphere that we set out to explore.

For this chapter, we analyzed sources that together cover television, print media, and radio. One source was German Television Broadcasting (Deutscher Fernsehfunk, or DFF) accessed through the television database of the German Broadcasting Service (ARD or FESAD). The DFF is an artifact of the GDR media system and its transition to the system of the Federal Republic. During its short existence from 1990 to 1992, the DFF mainly reported on issues concerning people in East Germany, including the tens of thousands of migrant workers. In addition to the DDF, we analyzed East German print media from the same period. Using the ZEFYS portal of the Berlin State Library we searched the four main GDR newspapers in the years 1989–1992 and found sixty-nine articles covering legal and social issues directly connected to Vietnamese migrant workers. We analyze those articles qualitatively and cite twenty-six of them in this paper. We chose lengthy articles that report in depth on the transformation of the Vietnamese working environment during 1989–1990 and did not include pieces that refer to or are extractions of the in-depth articles.

Our richest source for the portrayal of Vietnamese contract workers’ experiences of German reunification, however, was the radio program Tiếng quê hương. The program was a Vietnamese-language variety program aimed at contract workers living in East Germany broadcast by the GDR state radio for a short span in 1990. The show is stored in the GDR broadcast archives in Potsdam-Babelsberg (DRA) and was found by accident when researching the history of metal music in the GDR. No written sources on Tiếng quê hương seem to have survived in the DRA. Not being able to understand the show, even the archivist did not know what it was about. Thus, we want to express our gratitude to Petra Pham, one of the show’s hosts, for helping us recreate the history of the program.

Tiếng quê hương aired once a week and each episode lasted about one hour. A man who introduced himself as Hòa and a woman named Petra were the hosts. This Vietnamese-German duo symbolized the transnational character of the program, which covered news and commentary from both the GDR and Vietnam. After surveying the recordings, we selected five exemplary episodes for transcription and translation. These episodes deal with issues central to the program and the reporting on Vietnamese migrant workers in East Germany during 1990–1992.

The following reconstruction of its origins is based on an email exchange with Petra Pham, the former host of the show. During the summer of 1989, the Vietnamese embassy approached scholars in the GDR expressing the wish to communicate to migrant workers in their own language. Through Humboldt University, the officials found Petra Pham who had graduated in regional studies in 1985 after studying Laotian. After marrying a Vietnamese resident in Germany, Pham exclusively worked in fields demanding her to be fluent in Vietnamese, a language that she had not studied but in which she still became proficient after some time and with the help of her husband and other Vietnamese friends. Pham recalls how in 1989, the Vietnamese government wanted to take care of its citizens in the GDR by providing a radio show. Because GDR planners had already placed all graduates in Vietnam Studies in the small number of jobs destined for them, this made Pham one of the few people with the requisite language skills available for the position.

The show was an innovation in the East German media landscape. While it may not have given full agency to its target group, through its choice of language alone, the broadcast made space for Vietnamese perspectives on the historic time. The program was created for a long-neglected target audience and explicitly tried to address its needs and concerns. Yet the show never took the last step to hand over authority to Vietnamese let alone contract workers. Early on, East German publication standards still applied to Tiếng quê hương and so the chief editor had the last word on the German written script. Put bluntly, remnants of the state media apparatus were still in charge.

In early episodes, Pham copied reports from the official Vietnamese news agency mixed in with Vietnamese music from her private tape collection. Additionally, she conducted interviews with Vietnamese workers like those producing clothes for Westerns companies like C&A. During the last year of the GDR, censorship loosened, and Pham introduced a Vietnamese friend in Germany, named Đinh Quang Hòa as co-host. Further expanding the number of Vietnamese voices, in 1990 they collaborated with official Vietnamese broadcasters to produce several smaller reports from Vietnam that were sent to Berlin via phone.

Reflecting the almost DIY-approach to the show, the episodes have a rough structure and vary considerably in terms of content. Usually, an episode would start with a theme, such as an in-depth report of an event or a current discussion, which would then be followed by news from both Germany and Vietnam. Pham structured the episodes with intermittent Vietnamese songs, which ranged from patriotic war music to traditional music to the newest pop songs. The end of an episode was devoted to “logistics”: important contacts for people seeking help in East Germany’s transforming society, suggestions for events, asking people to take part in the radio show by writing letters, etc. Broadly speaking, Tiếng quê hương resembled the majority of programs broadcast in the GDR during the late 1980s and early 1990s (Stahl 2013). Yet not every episode would follow this structure. For example, one might only feature music, or another might consist of reading poems written and sent in by listeners. The hosts justified this break from the usual pattern by citing letters from the audience demanding a change or by stating that the people also deserved a change and something happy in times of hardship. In fact, by this time such strategies were well established in socialist state media which, to compete with Western stations, sought to create the impression that the audience had an influence on the program (Arnold and Classen 2004). Tiếng quê hương therefore was a German media tool with Vietnamese influence.

From our analysis of GDR media, two key themes emerge. First, Vietnamese contract workers in East Germany had their own experiences of German reunification, which were characterized by displacement and by questions of citizenship and democracy. While these would also have shaped the experiences of East Germans at the time, for Vietnamese they took on added salience and new meanings because of their position within and between the home and host country. Second, the period saw East German media reporting on issues of discrimination and racism that had previously been taboo. For the first time, Vietnamese were able to speak publicly about issues that had long structured their existence in the GDR, and which, in the “year of anarchy” were becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. In what follows, we discuss these two key topics in detail.

9.4 Displacement

As reunification became a new German reality, two things rapidly became apparent. First, that reunification would happen on the legal terms of the Federal Republic of Germany; and second, that concerns of the migrant population in East Germany were not high on the agenda of political decision-makers (Schmidt 1992; Poutrus 2020b). Since the vast majority of Vietnamese contract workers did not gain GDR citizenship during their stay, they were thrown into a legal gray-zone: would West Germany honor the treaties between the GDR and the brother states that brought Vietnamese and other workers into the country? Not knowing if the government of the reunified Germany would allow them to stay, and if so under what conditions, Vietnamese workers found themselves in a legal limbo. “Fear,” as one TV report from the fall of 1990 put it “had become a constant companion” (Doc. 27).

In short, the legal and social situation of Vietnamese migrant workers in 1990 was dire, complex, and highly volatile. The uncertainty at the level of the state and the overall legal status of Vietnamese workers was mirrored at the level of the firm and the individual. With the rapid collapse of the GDR during and after the autumn of 1989, any oversight of state-owned businesses disappeared. Often for the first time in their lives managers of these firms had initiative and responsibility. With the status of Vietnamese workers in theory protected by intergovernmental treaties, GDR businesses had only limited authority to dissolve working contracts with Vietnamese, the last of which were valid until 1994. Nevertheless, with German workers threatening to go on strike or “spill blood” if one German lost their job before the last foreigner was fired (Doc. 10; Doc. 11), it was inevitable that Vietnamese would be among the first victims of managers’ desperate efforts to keep their enterprises afloat in a collapsing economy. One estimate holds that by the end of 1990, sixty percent of all foreign workers lost their jobs (Sextro 1996). Thus, many of the firings in 1990 were unlawful (Doc. 8; Doc. 18; Doc. 21).

Additionally, the state stopped subsidizing migrant homes, which caused the businesses owning these homes to sometimes quadruple the rents asked from migrant workers (Doc. 17; Doc. 23; Doc. 24). As a result, many workers lost both their jobs and their homes in a matter of weeks. A considerable number of them began working at street markets selling falsified consumer goods (see Photo 9.1), many of which were provided by Vietnamese working in Eastern Europe and arriving in Germany via pre-existing migrant networks (Doc. 5; Doc. 6; Doc. 15).

Photo 9.1
A photograph exhibits women interacting at a clothing stall in the market, with clothes displayed on the stall and hanging on the wall with hangers.

Source Doc. 27; TC 17:12:25

Facing unemployment but relying on transnational networks some Vietnamese opened illegal street markets. A new phenomenon in East Berlin.

Full size image

In the spring of 1990, it became apparent that West German laws would become the laws of the land in the former GDR. Yet it was unclear how existing asylum laws would be applied to the radically new context. West German asylum laws after 1949 originally followed a very liberal approach intended to provide security from political persecution to refugees. During the Cold War, Western politicians imagined those refugees as East Germans escaping the oppressive communist dictatorship. The asylum laws consequently were not drafted to accommodate refugees fleeing from crises in the global south but to help East Germans fleeing from communism (Su 2017). By the 1980s, when foreign crises seemed to move closer and closer to the Federal Republic of Germany, the asylum laws became an intensely discussed subject in the public sphere. The end of the GDR and the arrival of East European refugees and former Vietnamese migrant workers alike reignited the debate on the nation’s asylum laws. Those sympathetic to the situation of migrant workers in the GDR sought to align their legal status with that of Western Germany (Doc. 13). In the end, the so-called Asylkompromiss, or asylum compromise, of 1993 took the formerly basic but clear German asylum law and extended it with four full paragraphs of new restrictions that effectively excluded Vietnamese from claiming asylum status (Poutrus 2014).

Meanwhile, the collapse of the hegemonic socialist discourse in late 1989 saw an outburst in racist petitions to the new government. These petitions called on the state to expel non-Germans such as Cubans, Vietnamese, and Poles, among others (Rabenschlag 2014). To some East Germans trying to correct forty years of socialist rule, those workers from former socialist brother states were seen as remnants of dictatorship to be purged. Mixed with older racist sentiments, these notions fueled right-wing violence that exploded in early 1990. The timeline of these attacks contradicts the familiar notion that right-wing violence in East Germany was the result of years of mass unemployment and other side effects of transformation (Doc. 8; Doc. 9; Doc. 25). In connection with these attacks, the newly elected GDR government introduced financial incentives for migrant workers willing to return to their home countries (Doc. 14). The violence and this policy had the desired effect of its perpetrators and was a factor for some Vietnamese in their decision to return to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (Berger 2005).

Discussion groups connected to protestant churches, especially in East Berlin, were among the very few that raised awareness of the precarious situation of Vietnamese migrant workers during early 1990. These discussion groups had played a decisive role during the early and middle phases of political opposition in the second half of the 1980s. Already before the “Wende,” many groups were providing counseling for migrant workers and using their moral authority to bring the situation of Vietnamese workers into the public sphere (Doc. 1; Doc. 10; Doc. 26). During 1990, pastor and newly appointed GDR commissioner for foreigners Almuth Berger played a key role in raising public awareness of the difficult situation of Vietnamese and mounting a response to right-wing violence (Doc. 19). She also sought to establish contacts between Germans and migrant workers on a personal level since she identified the lack of contact as one of the main causes for racism and misunderstandings (Doc. 29; Doc. 30). It was in this context that formerly secret binational treaties were openly discussed for the first time (Berger 2005), and in May of 1990 the GDR government and East German Protestant pastor Almuth Berger deliberated for the first time modifying the existing treaties with Vietnam. In exchange for a temporary “right to stay,” the SRV was to allow GDR businesses to fire Vietnamese workers.Footnote 1 Given the rapid changes, the best outcome Berger could hope for was “damage control” (Doc. 16).

The state-socialist GDR had fixed wages, subsidized accommodations, and, not least, defined a discursive place for migrant workers. When the regime ended, migrant workers from Vietnam and elsewhere lost various forms of security (see Photo 9.2), and as a result, were displaced not only geographically but also legally, politically, and emotionally (Doc. 2; Doc. 3). East German journalists, still committed to the idea of internationalism, raised concerns about the fate of Vietnamese migrant workers in the East and their displacement (Doc. 4; Doc. 7). They asked for a way of providing help and information (Doc. 18; Doc. 20; Doc. 22). In the spring of 1990, only a few weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the DFF implored that Vietnamese should be given “daily practical help in life.” Internationalism and solidarity, it argued should continue to exist as “basic values in our country” (Doc. 28). Contemporaneously, issues of discrimination began to be raised for the first time. The Berlin district of Lichtenberg was an area of industry and of residential homes for workers. It had, and still does feature, both a large Vietnamese community and an active Neo-Nazi presence. In the 1990s, right-wing skinhead groups dominated its public spaces. Beginning at this time, media began to report right-wing violence against foreign workers in the district (Doc. 32).

Photo 9.2
A photograph captures a woman being arrested by police while attempting to cross the border and being taken to the police station, with other people walking on the street in the background.

Source Doc. 31; TC 11:08:15

Women arrested trying to cross the border at the Brandenburg Gate while Germans passed back and forth.

Full size image

Tiếng quê hương was designed to mitigate the impact of these dramatic developments for Vietnamese living in the GDR. It also marked a break from a socialist discourse that represented the presence of migrant workers in Germany as a story of international solidarity and success. In certain respects, Tiếng quê hương was the product of a state-socialist propaganda machine that had to reinvent itself after 1989. On the one hand, it found its new role in conveying certain ideals originating in the GDR, such as anti-fascism and international solidarity. On the other, and sometimes in tension with these values, the evolving media system was strongly oriented toward the everyday problems of the population. Programs were no longer solely shaped by Marxist-Leninist ideology, but rather were intended to help East Germans find their way in a rapidly changing environment.

Reflecting this evolution of GDR media, Tiếng quê hương sought to help Vietnamese make sense of and find their way in this changing world. But it became clear that Vietnamese would follow a very different path than their German counterparts. One episode features interviews of representatives of the ruling parties of the two German states concerning the fate of contract workers:

[CDU (Christian Democratic Union, West Germany) Representative]: Concerning the question of the further development of relations with Vietnam, we have to say that we as the party of government of course must stick to signed agreements. We do not have any decision to change the foreign relations with Vietnam. Looking at the current relationship, I am not able to say anything as of today. Reality will show how Vietnam will develop. It will depend a lot on how Vietnam builds its relations with neighboring states. For us it is a priority to solve international conflicts in a peaceful way. This is how we measure the cooperation between us and other countries. Concerning the agreements on labor cooperation that exist with Vietnam right now, I want to say that we will implement fundamental changes, from a planned economy to a market economy. This means that we will not receive any more laborers for businesses. The government of the SED [Socialist Unity Party of Germany] has brought 60,000 people from Vietnam and 30,000 people from Mozambique to the GDR. The current problem is to find a suitable solution that works for the laborers as well as for the enterprises. According to my view, we must discuss this together with the Vietnamese side to see if the laborers can return to Vietnam after their contracts have finished or if it is up to the workers to decide if they want to stay.

[PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism) Representative]: I believe there is a difference between asylum for mostly political and partly economic reasons, we currently know that a few tens of thousands of Vietnamese are working here but have not applied for residence. I think we must open the door for those people who are here for political reasons. In the past, we have rarely done so. At the moment, I see that we have to admit mistakes concerning asylum and we have to follow the law of the federal republic in the future. The limitation for the Vietnamese, it is a difficult issue. Both governments have to talk to each other. Vietnam urgently needs a well-educated labor force that can build the country. I wish that they become well-educated workers who return and contribute to rebuilding the country (Episode ZI110088-2).

These quotes show that there was broad political consensus for the return of contract workers and changes to the duration of actual contracts. Instead of championing international socialist unity and solidarity, the political discourse in the interviews effectively others Vietnamese workers. Despite being affected by the same changes, workers from East Germany and Vietnam were described differently, setting up radically different experiences of reunification. The news section of the episode goes on to place the fate of Vietnamese contract workers in Germany alongside that of migrant workers in the Soviet Union, thereby expanding the space of events beyond Germany to a global socialist sphere. Approximately 100,000 Vietnamese were resident in the Soviet Union at the time of its collapse (Hoang 2020: 25). On one hand, this served to normalize ongoing events in East Germany. On the other, by highlighting the global nature of events, it raised practical concerns for workers who worried about their families and social networks in Vietnam and their ability to continue sending back goods and financial remittances.

Racism and other forms of mistreatment in Germany and in the Soviet Bloc were also discussed in Tiếng quê hương. This included emotional displacement (see Photo 9.3) and the violent exclusion from the place of current residence:

[Interviewer]: A number of newspapers in the West bemoan the difficult situation of Vietnamese workers who are currently in Eastern Europe. We kindly ask the comrade to tell us the reality of the situation.

[Answer by a Vietnamese government representative]: There are not only fluctuations in politics but also on the side of economy and society which create difficulties for the foreign workers. I can, for example, tell you about the following: firstly, old governments are dissolved in a number of countries and new ones have been founded. The state institutions and responsible people for the agreements are changing as well. That is why there is no sufficient basis to protect and enforce the rights of the workers. Even the factories are looking for ways to lay off workers. Secondly, many have a low income and that is why it is difficult to buy goods and send them home. Thirdly, because of the change in politics, many organizations and parties have many different opinions about the foreign workers; besides many right opinions, there are also opinions that are not right at all. There are even awful words and bad actions which influence the emotional state of our Vietnamese brothers and sisters (ZI110088-2).

Photo 9.3
Two photos exhibit groups of people having lunch at a table.

Source Doc. 31; TC: 10:21:43 and 10:32:369

A recurring theme in memory and reporting is the separation between Germans and Vietnamese in everyday work, such as during the lunch break.

Full size image

In another episode, the program hosts invited listeners to attend an upcoming protest, explaining, “On April 24 there will be a protest against racism and xenophobia, at 5 pm at Alexanderplatz. There will also be a Vietnamese speaker who will talk about the problems of Vietnamese workers in the GDR” (ZI110088-2).

For the most part, the events of the period and their emotional dimension were filtered through the words of the hosts or of the state officials they interviewed. Listeners’ poems, however, allowed workers to express their emotions and sense of connection to the place. In a poem from early 1990, a worker wrote:

When I think about you,

I will surely still go very far.

In the afternoon I hear the wind blowing from afar.

How many directives there have been from the country.

Dearest friend,

The next day is coming, I am returning.

I will forever remember our affection.

For sure we will meet again. (15 February 1990)

(ZI110088-5)

The threat of geographic and emotional displacement put Vietnamese in East Germany in a state of “in-betweenness.” While this “year of anarchy” was often difficult, potentially involving unemployment, loss of accommodation, uncertain legal status, and exposure to discrimination and racially motivated violence, nevertheless in the coming years, Vietnamese workers would respond by taking matters into their own hands to secure a living for themselves and their families. While the majority eventually returned to Vietnam (exact statistics are not available), many of those who decided to stay in Germany used their entrepreneurial skills to open small businesses such as Asian bistros, flower shops, and cigarette vending. Their presence shapes the face of many German cities today and is an important part of the contemporary cosmopolitan society.

9.5 Citizenship and Democracy

Another central theme in media coverage is the one of citizenship and democracy. The socialist international movement experienced its gravest defeat during the breakdown of East Germany and the Soviet Union, a decisive moment in global history. Nonetheless, in the media there remained a commitment to socialist ideals within the frame of the nation-state that reassured contract workers of their citizenship in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam even as their right to remain in the GDR was under threat. Crucially, however, the historical juncture created opportunities to conceive this citizenship in newly critical and participatory ways. Take, for example, the host’s comments as part of an episode commemorating the fifteenth anniversary of the liberation of Saigon.

Fifteen years ago, Hồ Chí Minh with the force of the revolution achieved victory in the South and the unconditional surrender of the American troops. You all know the historic events of those days; we do not want to repeat them today…

In the development of the past fifteen years in Vietnam, we had a lot of highs and lows, mistakes and correction in the areas of politics and the economy (ZI110088-3).

In the present atmosphere, rather than dwell on the past successes of the Party, the host instead admits its failings since 1975 and identifies the people as the foundation of future reform. The host goes on to summarize the resolutions of the recent Party Central Committee meeting.

The eighth meeting of the Party Central Committee decided on a renewal of cooperation between politics and the people and would like to improve the relationship between the Party and the population. The meeting acknowledged mistakes and gaps of the Party and the state in the societal area. The active fight against corruption, against powerful people, who can block doors, has not yet shown any results. The members of state organizations and the government have lost the trust of the people and must take responsibility for it. On top of that, the meeting noted that only the people can implement this renovation (ZI110088-3).

A later episode went still further, reporting on a recent debate held in Berlin among Vietnamese citizens on the idea of democracy and reform in Vietnam:

In the beginning, all participants of the conference agreed on a simple definition of democracy. Democracy is power for the people. Afterwards, the participants explained their opinions as follows. According to Mr. Khong Doan Hoi, democracy is a long-term project, which is kept alive by the experiences of many generations. It is not a product of a system; it is human. Many opinions hold that democracy is the goal, to find solutions for human problems regarding the many requirements which get worse every day. In philosophy, there is a saying that democracy is lent to the people of a society to free the people, so that only then people can be free and equal. There have been a few opinions about the relation between democracy and a multi-party system. Mr. Phan Dinh Dieu reminds us that you must respect diverse opinions and political ideas in a democracy, and that it is a necessary requirement for social organizations to protect this diversity. Democratic parties and diversity must be protected by law. According to Mr. Nguyen Chinh, we should not be too quick to criticize capitalist democracy and dismiss it. If we dismiss it, then people will still feel attracted to it and when we look at reality, then socialist countries will miss a point in the race. Democratic socialism cannot compete with capitalist democracy (ZI110088-6).

Although some of the discussions and ideas brought up in the radio segment might not be consistent and easy to follow anymore, the fact that a public debate was held and then its contents broadcast on Tiếng quê hương shows how an important part of the “year of anarchy” involved the opening of new spaces for debate, criticism, and political engagement, not only outside but also inside Vietnam as well. The program’s episodes reveal the complex circulation of experiences, ideas, and aspirations across borders of all sorts: cultural, ideological, spatial, and temporal, from the capitalist West to the Socialist East, from Germany to Vietnam, and back again. They show that Vietnamese contract workers understood the events of 1990 as truly global developments, and that despite their differences, Vietnamese and Germans were participating in the same flow of ideas and engaging in similar discussions about identity, politics, and democracy. In this way, the experiences of Vietnamese living in Germany in the 1990s were global as much as local, reflecting developments in Vietnam as much as in Germany itself.

9.6 Conclusion

This is just a brief glimpse into the important developments of 1990, the different ways Vietnamese contract workers in East Germany experienced them, and how they were portrayed in the East German media. By analyzing the contents of the radio show Tiếng quê hương and considering German print media and TV reports, we show that 1990 was a “year of anarchy” not just for Germans, but for Vietnamese contract workers as well, characterized by insecurity and fear because of the strong economic motivation to drive contract workers out of the country and a clear lack of solidarity, and also by new forms of agency as people created new livelihoods under the most difficult of circumstances. Vietnamese contract workers experienced 1990 as year of displacement, both from the German state which saw Vietnamese migrants as an additional economic burden during the reunification process and from German citizens who showed blatant racism toward the migrant communities, thereby contributing to emotional displacement. Thirty years after the racist attacks on the Sunflower House in Rostock Lichtenhagen, the issue of racism remains and although the East German media landscape changed in 1990 by allowing critical reports and by publicizing the growing problem of racism, the development in the reunified media landscape since then still lacks a truly representative reporting about realities of people of color and other migrant communities to this day.

At the same time, 1990 and its political earthquake was an opportunity for Vietnamese in Germany to participate in important debates about citizenship and democracy in a changing Vietnam and shape their new livelihoods in the new Federal Republic of Germany. In the long-run, these new possibilities paved the way for moving families from Vietnam to Germany or founding new families.

Similar processes happened across Eastern Europe in the former Soviet Bloc where Vietnamese workers returned in great numbers to Vietnam, but the ones who decided to stay started independent lives by setting up their own business, having children, etc., while at the same time maintaining a strong connection to their homelands. The coherence and the level or connection within the communities as well as to the mainstream society would differ in each country. Meanwhile, the experiences in the socialist Eastern European countries and after their fall were similar, but as we can see from the different contract conditions, not the same.

The material presented in this paper is limited because we focus on media reports and not, for example, accounts of oral history. In addition, it is limited because we focus on only one group of Vietnamese in Germany. How the refugees residing in West Germany experienced 1990, for example, would be another interesting topic for further research. It is our hope that in the future, researchers will explore other new sources and adopt new perspectives, and, together with the present chapter, contribute to the literature of (post-)migrant experiences of the twentieth century and the writing of a more diverse and inclusive account of German history.