The Border Within: Vietnamese Migrants Transforming Ethnic Nationalism in Berlin PDF
Preview The Border Within: Vietnamese Migrants Transforming Ethnic Nationalism in Berlin
THE BORDER WITHIN THE BORDER WITHIN Vietnamese Migrants Transforming Ethnic Nationalism in Berlin PHI HONG SU STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Stanford, California Stanford University Press Stanford, California ©2022 by Phi Hong Su. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid- free, archival- quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data available upon request. ISBN 9781503630062 (cloth) ISBN 9781503630147 (paperback) ISBN 9781503630154 (electronic) Cover photo: Berlin Raoul-Wallenberg-Straße. Claire Greenstein. Cover design: Rob Ehle Typeset by Kevin Barrett Kane in 10/14 Minion Pro Cho ba mẹ Contents Preface ix 1 Border Crossings 1 2 Making Northerners and Southerners 27 3 Making Refugees and Contract Workers 49 4 Ranking the Ethnic Nation 74 5 Choosing Friends and Picking Sides 93 6 Buddhist Meditations in Northern and Southern Accents 117 7 After Border Crossings 141 Acknowledgments 147 Appendix: Research Notes 159 Notes 163 References 175 Index 189 Preface The Vietnamese language was the last thing my sister, Phung, and I expected to miss during our high school study abroad in Germany. Like other children of working- class immigrants and refugees in our Southern California suburb, my sister and I spoke elementary Viet- namese at home. We translated as best we could for our monolingual parents at medical and welfare offices. In fact, we associated our heri- tage language with this burden of cultural brokering. But the German language and our brief study abroad offered something entirely dif- ferent. Our stay with our host families in the town of Gummersbach allowed us to peer into an alternative upbringing, where members of a household and community communicated fluently in the same tongue. Parents could navigate the society in which they lived and therefore trusted their children to attend parties and walk around at night without fear of an unknown milieu. At fifteen, I saw the German and Vietnamese languages as representing forking paths: expanding versus constricting horizons, freedom versus captivity. But after two weeks of speaking only English or faltering German with our host families, something odd happened. Strolling down the street on a day trip to Bonn, my sister and I paused at the sound of that familiar yet unexpected language, dancing with its six tones. Our eyes hunted for the source: an Asian woman clad in a thick autumn jacket, calling after a child who was scuttling about on the cobble- stone streets. Phung eagerly accosted the woman to ask, “Auntie, are ix
The list of books you might like
