Working under Hammer and Sickle
Vietnamese Workers in the German Democratic Republic, 1980–89
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6262807 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Mike Dennis (0009-0001-5810-561X, University of Wolverhampton, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2007 |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 339-357 |
| Publication date | 2007-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | German Politics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0964-4008 • E-ISSN: 1743-8993 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/09644000701532700 |
| OpenAlex | W2002576756 |
| Language | DE |
| Citations received | 4 |
When the Iron Curtain finally lifted, one of the many surprises was the revelation that over 59,000 Vietnamese were employed in GDR factories, by far the largest contingent of foreign workers in the country. Why their number had escalated from a mere 1,500 at the beginning of the 1980s and the kind of lives they had led in the niches of their hostels was terra incognita for most East Germans. Drawing on pioneer research by Eva Kolinsky and on a series of interviews that she conducted with Vietnamese living in Berlin and Eastern Germany as well as on numerous archival sources, this article will try to fill in some of the gaps. One key finding is that economic necessity and inefficiencies inherent in the command economy, rather than proletarian internationalism and solidarity with opponents of imperialism, drove the GDR into the large-scale mobilisation of foreign labour. An examination of Vietnamese behavioural patterns further reveals that traditional interpretations of Vietnamese passivity and vulnerability to officialdom need to be qualified. Despite the elaborate framework of state controls and surveillance so typical of the authoritarian GDR, the Vietnamese circumvented many restrictions on their mobility and private entrepreneurial activities, asserted their demands at work in the face of opposition from factory managers, and fostered their own social and ethnic links in the hostels and other social niches. As Eva Kolinsky has shown in her many studies of foreigners in Germany, such embryonic networks were crucial in helping them to cope with the dramatic social and economic changes and xenophobic outbursts after the collapse of state socialism
Authoritarianism · Communism · Democracy · Political economy · Political science · Proletariat · Sociology · Solidarity · Vietnamese · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · European history and politics · Japanese History and Culture · Law
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0.5 |
| Citation span | 2018 - 2024 (7) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |