Talk:Vietnamese people in Germany

Bias

I think this article is slightly biased because it makes it look as if gang membership was especially common among vietnamse people in Germany. While the vietnamese Mafia exists vietnamese crime rates are lower than that of ethnic Germans. Sorry I cannot provide the source now (was some article of Christian Pfeiffer), but I will search for it.-- Greatgreenwhale (talk) 19:06, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Education

"2008 studies by German education experts show that the children of former guest-workers are also among the highest performing pupils in German schools, especially those in East Germany."

Writing this part of the article the author mixed something up, I guess. Most children of former guest-workers are performing rather poor within the German educational system (which indeed needs a lot of reformation (off-topic, sorry)), especially those of Turkish and Italian ancestry. The children of Vietnamese ancestry indeed perform quite above average, even better than the average "natural" German pupil. See also the Wikipedia article Academic_achievement_among_different_groups_in_Germany

Also, I think that the word "guest-workers" should be replaced by refugees or "people from abroad", as, at least in the case of Western Germany, the Vietnamese didn't come to Germany for any economical reason. --LOS163 (talk) 00:01, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

That sentence is specifically referring to Vietnamese guest-workers in Eastern Germany. Since throughout the article we've already been referring to them as "former guest workers" to avoid having to explicitly spell it out every time: "the Vietnamese guest workers who went to East Germany in the 1980s". If you can make that clearer, please feel free to copy-edit the sentence; but I don't see any reason to doubt the author's conclusions. cab (talk) 00:21, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

The reference to East German performance is rather misleading. The article does not say that East German Vietnamese are high performers compared to other Viets. The article cited does not say that Vietnamese of the East outperform those of the West, which is what the wording here is implying (this is false). The article says they do well compared to other students in the area, compared to Italians and Turks for example, despite their poverty, which is quite admirable, provided they typically beat even German students. The stats mentioned actually include everyone in Germany (East and West combined), not just the East, but the article brings example of the East because the poverty is worse, so it's a better illustration, not because they do better than every other group of Viets in the nation (only if you can prove that the students of the East outperform those of the West can you justify saying "Viets do well, especially those of the East"). I find th wording particularly troubling provided that I've read articles saying that Vietnamese in East Germans fall behind those from the West. There needs to be better citation for these claims. Therefore I feel a need to weaken the wording a bit. (John.parcely (talk) 07:45, 10 January 2012 (UTC)).

The point of the sentence quoted above is that children of former guest workers in East Germany (especially those of Vietnamese descent) perform better at school than children of former guest workers in West Germany (especially those of Turk or Italian descent), and even better than German children.

In the debates about the German education system it has often been claimed that children of migrants perform less-than-average. At some point it turned out that this is true for most of Germany, but that the reverse holds for the former GDR. The relevant parts from the Welt article cited as source are "Die Leistungen vietnamesischer Schüler stehen in einem eklatanten Gegensatz zum Bild, das wir sonst von Kindern mit Migrationshintergrund haben" (a quote) and the paragraph beginning with "Zugleich stellt der Schulerfolg der Vietnamesen eine ganze Reihe vermeintlicher Wahrheiten der Integrationsdebatte infrage.".

Similar points are made here and here. Yaan (talk) 19:23, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Vietnamese in East Germany

I think the article currently makes two somewhat problematic claims.

No 1: Vietnamese guest workers received salaries of roughly M400/month, of which 12% went to the government of Vietnam, and another portion was paid in consumer goods—mainly sewing machines, bicycles, clothes, sugar, and soap—instead of cash, due to inflation. (emphasis mine)

East Germany in the 1980s did not have inflation. Prices were fixed by the authorities at one point and never changed (see de:Einzelhandelsverkaufspreis). That prices could actually change was a concept that emerged only after the end of socialism. I have no serious doubts about companies paying their Vietnamese staff in consumer goods - but I doubt the reason for doing so was inflation.

No 2: pregnancies among female Vietnamese workers were punished by forced abortions

Further down the article states that Vietnamese Vertragsarbeiter, who fell pregnant during their stay in the GDR, were subjected to forced abortions or forced deportions, which suggests that there was a choice between abortion or deportation, i.e. that the sentence about punishment is incomplete.

See also here or, with additional context, here (p.16)

Yaan (talk) 19:48, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

German

German articles always say Vietnamese people belong to one of the smallest migration groups. They may be the largest from Asia. However, the German introduction describes them as unimportant minorities.--77.0.111.59 (talk) 01:41, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't think this article asserted that they're a large group in Germany either. DHN (talk) 02:35, 8 September 2013 (UTC)