Background: Our group’s theme is the minority experience in Germany where we will focus on the Vietnamese, Turkish, and Berlin community. Our group was able to settle on the main theme of our project after discussing our interest in different German immigration policies, minorities and their interactions with the German people, and the impact of nationalism. This topic will help others to further understand the social structure of Germany as well as investigating the impact of Germany’s immigration policies on minority communities.
Trang Le
The Vietnamese Community:
I became interested in this topic while researching about the different minority groups living in Berlin. At first, it was a struggle to narrow down the topic since I was curious about all types of minorities. I was researching based on the question “what it means to be a Berliner”? I was also thinking about the media’s depictions of minorities. These ideas did not connect well with the ideas from the other members of my group. However, I was able to discover information about the Vietnamese community living in Berlin during my search. I gathered a lot of interesting stories and news about the challenges that the Vietnamese went through while living in East and West Berlin. I became curious about the Vietnamese people’s experience in Berlin after the fall of the wall and most importantly their current lifestyle. Their assimilation into the German culture is the most intriguing. I believe that it is relevant to learn about the different cultures that exist in Germany and how they were affected by Cold War ideologies as well as different government policies.
Anna Lee
Berlin:
I am interested in how Berliner’s view immigrants living within their city’s boundaries. By investigating immigration policies and Berlin attitudes towards immigrants, I hope to learn something about German nationalism. I became interested in German nationalism when Misha talked of how Germany might be the first country to successfully accept a supranational identity. In this day and age, where the term “global citizen” is bandied about more frequently due to rapid globalization, can we really shed our national identities as easily as it is implied when one states that he or she is a “global citizen?”
Trang Le
Question: "What are the different challenges that the Vietnamese people (East and West) face living in Germany (from the fall of the wall to now) and how has their identity changed as they try to assimilate and whether the German culture is flexible to assimilation?
Background that helped me formed my question:
Due to the Cold War and Vietnam War, many Vietnamese either fled to West Germany or a lot were offered a work contract with the East Germans before the fall of the wall. After reunification, many of these immigrants in the East were being deported because their contract was over. Although some left, many had to stay behind because they have already built their new lives in Germany and some feared persecution from the new Vietnamese government. The West Vietnamese assimilated to the German culture well. However, the East German Vietnamese were still struggling with the aftermath of the fall of the wall. In the mid 90’s “new legislation narrowed guarantees of asylum and many East German Vietnamese were being hunted down and deported. After learning about all of this, I wanted to do more research about the experience that Vietnamese people have today in Germany and is there still a big difference between those in the east and those in the west. I want to explore different places in Berlin and observe the differences in lifestyle, beliefs, and cultural practices between the two Vietnamese groups. In the New York Times article called The Vietnamese in Germany: No Jobs, No Country, Alan Cowell discussed the experience the Vietnamese people had living illegally in East Germany and their deportation by the German government. He said “some of them gave up everything in Vietnam to come here. Here, they have jobs, houses, children at school. They will do everything they can to stay in Germany. In their own land, they are strangers." This quote made me curious about the psychological experience of living in Germany, with all of its history with Nazism and Communism. I wonder how the Vietnamese people in East who came from North Vietnam feel about the fall of the Berlin wall and ultimately communism. I want to learn more about their perspective as well as those in West Germany.
As I dive into my research I will keep the following quote by Michael Smith and John Eade in mind,
“citizenship is not only formal legal status, but also a form of belonging that requires immediate aural and visual recognition. Even if becoming German is not possible, being in Germany generates certain types of performances that become visible through the body, language, and bodily practices. It is through these performances, through the body, that one begins to see links between citizenship as an official legal status and as everyday practice.”
Cultural sensitivity: I will try to avoid biases when I interview people and ask them questions about their beliefs and values. I will be subjective when speaking with the different Vietnamese and German people. Although I have grown up in Vietnam and have had the minority experience in America, I understand that the Vietnamese people in Germany will have a much different experience than my own. I will be sensitive to their perspective. In addition, also as foreigner in Germany, I will learn about the different cultural differences in order to make be comfortable when interviewing people in Germany.
Daily Schedule:
I plan to go to the different Vietnamese Restaurants and shops in Berlin and talk to the restaurant owners as well as the customers. I will also explore small towns outside of Berlin where there might a large community of Vietnamese people. I will take a lot of pictures of the places I visit and compare the differences both between East and West as well as Berlin and the rest of Germany. I would also like to visit the Vietnamese Embassy in Berlin and perhaps gain some knowledge about the different immigration policies and governmental programs for minorities. I will compile a set of questions I want to ask the people I interview and keep log of the answers in a notebook.
References:
Cowell, Alan. "The Vietnamese in Germany: No Jobs, No Country." The New York Times 13 Oct. 1995. 10 June 2009 <http://www.nytimes.com/1995/10/13/world/the-vietnamese-in-germany-no-jobs-no-country.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all>.
Smith, Michael P., and John Eade. "Cities, Migrations, and Identities, Transnational Ties." Google Books. 10 June 2009 <http://books.google.com/books?id=Djgu9hWumXwC&pg=PA135&lpg=PA135&dq=vietnamese+people+in+Berlin+Germany&source=bl&ots=SezF1Pnxho&sig=m90ehcJGcZyVPI8NCifXWrlEkEQ&hl=en&ei=z58kSp79G5C-NI7NqbUF&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5#PPA137,M1>.
"Vietnamese people in Germany." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 30 Mar 2009, 19:36 UTC. 30 Mar 2009 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vietnamese_people_in_Germany&oldid=280710407>.
Anna Lee
Question:
Why is Germany against immigration, indicative in their immigration policies of “tolerance” which acknowledges their presence but nothing more, yet Germans pride in their sensitivity towards nationalism, almost to the point where it is implied that Germans embrace their supranational identity (EU) more so than their German national identity?
Germany has been called the “reluctant land of immigration,” unable to form integrative policies for their immigrants as well as continuously rejecting EU proposal’s for a common immigration policy (Dettke, 2001). Furthermore, their current immigration policies are called policies of “tolerance” where immigrant minority communities are recognized but no integrative policies are implemented. Therefore, immigrant communities grow as little enclaves within Germany, separate little worlds of their own, as German policies make it harder for immigrants to find jobs. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants are documented in Germany but no legal status is given to them, thus they are in a state of limbo even as they have been living in Germany for years. The policies of tolerance, as they make it harder for immigrants to find jobs, force them to rely on welfare. This has helped spur the mentality within German society that immigrants are lazy and are only taking German taxpayer money when in fact, many of these immigrants have no choice but to rely on welfare due to the restrictions that bar immigrants entrance to the German job market (Henninger, 2007). With the world becoming an increasingly globalized place, states must face the massive influx of foreign bodies as it becomes easier and easier to cross boundaries. The confrontation between state citizens and foreign bodies such as immigrants within Germany, say something significant about German nationalism and whether or not a German national identity is still strong and kicking.
Due to Germany’s history of terror and devastation (WWI, WWII, the Cold War, and the Berlin Wall), there is a notion that Germans are extremely sensitive to nationalism. Supposedly, Germans do not favor flashes of patriotic colors or waving of the German flag as Americans do, unless it is at soccer games (Misha’s guest lecture). If Germany is leaning towards embracing a supranational identity while shedding their national identity behind, then what accounts for the reluctance to accept immigrants and embrace them if German nationalism only shows its face at soccer games? Other traces of German nationalism that have come to my attention is with the recent economic crisis, Germany has been having difficulty accepting economic policies that will help out their fellow EU countries. Unwilling to spend German money on “other” country’s problems, is this kind of attitude representative of a country who supposedly embraces their supranational identity than their national identity?
Hopefully during my stay in Berlin, I will be able to investigate this question within Berlin and see if Berlin has a more accepting attitude of foreigners especially with such a large Turkish population within their city’s borders.
Cultural Sensitivity: As I do interviews I will be sensitive towards my interviewees and be aware of where they come from and their background. I will be courteous at all times and try my best to not let my intellectual curiosity overstep my bounds. With the help of Trang and Joe, hopefully I can interview both the Turkish and the Vietnamese without being insensitive towards cultural norms.
Daily Schedule:
I plan to visit immigrant communities within Berlin, tagalong with Joe and Trang, as they visit their places, in order to ask questions of my own. I also want to go to museums that showcase German history and ask questions about German nationalism among the people there. I will also be going to soccer games or other sporting events if I can in order to see how much Germans love their soccer! This is a tentative schedule, more like a summary of where I want to go. Hopefully I can solidify my plans in order to carry out my research project soon.
References:
Strizky, Johannes Von, (2009). Germany’s Immigration Policy: From Refusal to Reluctance. 10 June 2009 http://www.realinstitutoelcano.org/wps/portal/rielcano_eng/Content?WCM_GLOBAL_CONTEXT=/Elcano_in/Zonas_in/ARI93-2009
Henninger Max, (2007). Germany Takes a New Look at Immigrants. 10 June 2009< http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,471662,00.html>
Dettke, Dieter (2001). Germany’s New Immigration Policy. 10 June 2009, Retrieved from Google Documents.< www.fesdc.org>
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