Wir Bleiben Hier! Vietnamese Women and German Unity

Paige Newhouse, University of Michigan

In May 1991, Nga wrote to the company leadership of Greiber Classic GmbH, formerly known as VEB Treffmodelle Berlin. Nga arrived in East Germany four years earlier in May 1987, under the bilateral labor agreement between the GDR and the SRV. She gave birth to a child in September 1990, one month before German unity. Notably, the GDR had forced pregnant Vietnamese women to have abortions or return home until February 1989. East German leaders changed the policy, hoping to save face considering increasingly loud criticisms about the inhumane treatment towards Vietnamese women, who totaled 20,000. In her letter, Nga described how she and her Vietnamese colleagues had been fired from Greiber Classic GmbH and were scheduled to return to Vietnam in January 1991. She did not leave; her doctor did not clear her to fly until May. Moreover, Nga challenged her termination, noting that she did not know she could reside in the recently unified Federal Republic. Vietnamese women did not have bodily autonomy in the GDR, but they lost their jobs, social welfare, and status in the unifying Germany. Whereas East German functionaries needed and celebrated their labor, post-unity leaders viewed them as unwanted migrants in their country. Historians have thoroughly examined Vietnamese women and body politics in the GDR, but they have only started exploring how the post-unity state treated Vietnamese laborers hoping to stay. This paper investigates how Vietnamese women organized, strategized, and fought to stay in the unified country, thinking through how the newfound rights that they gained (i.e. control over their bodies) and the rights that they lost (i.e. to social services and welfare) shaped their experiences. It will shed new light on the post-1990 memory of womanhood in the GDR, reframing it through a migrant lens.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 118. Migrant Agencies and Countering State Mandates