New Voices in a New World—Media Portrayal of the Experiences of German Reunification in 1990 by Vietnamese Contract Workers in East Germany

This paper uses media reports to explore how Vietnamese migrant workers in East Germany experienced German reunification. The article shines a spotlight on the kaleidoscopic meaning of this year, integrating the experiences of a neglected community into the historiography of 1990. By analyzing the radio program “Tiếng quê hương” (Voice of Home), a Vietnamese-language radio program, along with East German print media and TV reports, we show that displacement, citizenship, and democracy were topics of concern for Vietnamese labor migrants. For these workers, 1990 became a year of deep-rooted transformation characterized by insecurity and fear but also by agency. We furthermore show how reporting changed in 1990 as programs like Tiếng quê hương for the first time addressed issues of racial discrimination in East Germany.