From Contract Workers to Entrepreneurs: Gender and Work Among Transnational Vietnamese in East and Reunited Germany

Abstract

Thousands of Vietnamese arrived in East Germany throughout the 1980s to work in state-owned enterprises. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the breakdown of the East German Socialist government, many of them stayed in the then reunified Germany and turned to small business and petty trade to make a living. Based on multisited ethnographic fieldwork in Berlin and Hanoi, this chapter explores the everyday lives and transnational ties of Vietnamese women in the socialist diaspora. Further, it highlights new economic opportunities, changing gender roles, and intensifying cross-border connections in the postsocialist migration context.