CANHAM, Stefan - Die Deutschen Vietnamesen

"A lot has been written about Vietnamese who came to Germany. There are academic studies of contract workers in the GDR, 'Boat People,' who came to West Germany on the run from war and poverty, and Vietnamese children who came to the GDR a new socialist elite should be brought up.

We know the figure of the cigarette smuggler and the model immigrants from the press. But who are the 'German Vietnamese' really?

Nguyen Phuong-Dan, himself the son of Vietnamese immigrants, did not leave this question alone. Together with Stefan CANHAM, he made his way to Vietnam to visit Vietnamese who lived in Germany at different times and for very different reasons and later returned to Vietnam.

On their trip through Vietnam, Nguyen and Stefan CANHAM meet people who gratefully take the opportunity to tell their adventurous, moving, sometimes crazy stories of migration and return.

One is surprised to discover how familiar the foreign and how unknown the familiar can be. The very personal descriptions are also captivating because they show how international political and social developments can completely change individual life paths.

In their book, Nguyen and Stefan CANHAM trace the intensive encounters with thirteen returnees. Portraits and pictures of the home environment, sensitively photographed, illustrate the current life situation. The recordings from the long conversations as well as souvenir photos and family albums bring the routes, detours and erroneous routes of the Vietnamese abroad and the time they spent in Germany to life.

In a detailed essay, Kristin Mundt at the end of the book deals with the causes and consequences of the various waves of migration and remigration and the contradictory figure of the migrant." (publisher's note, © Hannes WANDERER, Peperoni Books, 2010)