From North-South to East-West: The Demarcation and Reunification of the Vietnamese Migrant Community in Berlin

Abstract

Abstract In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, marking the breakdown of the East-West demarcation and the reunification of the German Democratic Republic (gdr) and Federal Republic of Germany (frg). Consequently, thousands of predominantly Northern Vietnamese contract workers, who came to East Berlin under the bilateral agreement between the gdr and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (srv), stayed in the reunified Germany alongside thousands of Vietnamese thuyền nhân from South Vietnam, who were settled in West Berlin by the frg. Therefore, Berlin became the host of two Vietnamese communities. To this day, significant tension exists between the two Vietnamese communities in Berlin due to the geographical and ideological divisions linked to the deterritorialisation and consequently reterritorialisation of the imagined homeland and host-land within the diaspora. This tension is further exacerbated by the socioeconomic segregation in the Vietnamese diaspora due to the differences in settlement policies and reception by the host land. This article focuses on the migration paths, policies, and subsequent development of the Vietnamese diaspora in Berlin. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Berlin from 2016 to 2018, I argue that the differences in policies before and after reunification regarding two different groups of Vietnamese migrants ultimately shape the experiences and reinforce the pre-existing cleavages between them.