In western Germany, many Vietnamese people arrived in the 1960s or 1970s as refugees from the Vietnam War. The comparatively larger Vietnamese community in eastern Germany traces its origins to assistance agreements between the GDR and the North Vietnamese government. Under these agreements, guest workers from Vietnam were brought to East Germany, where they soon made up the largest immigrant group and were provided with technical training. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, many stayed in Germany. Since the early 1990s there has been an influx of Thai people, South Koreans, Indonesians and Filipinos coming to Germany as nurses, au pairs or employees. In addition, illegal immigration from Vietnam via Eastern Europe is increasing significantly in the East German states.[5] Furthermore, there are far more Thai and Filipino women than men in Germany, while the reverse holds true for Chinese and Indians. The Vietnamese community which now forms the largest group of Asians in Germany has a more equal male-female ratio.
Demographic distribution
According to the German "Mikrozensus 2011" there were about 1.8 million people with an Asian migrant background living in Germany. Of those about 600,000 were of Southeast Asian descent (primarily from Vietnam or Thailand).[6]
The distribution of German Asians by federal state is as follows:
Gütinger, Erich (2004), Die Geschichte Der Chinesen in Deutschland: Ein Überblick über die ersten 100 Jahre ab 1822, Waxmann Verlag, ISBN978-3-8309-1457-0
Further reading
Hillmann, Felicitas, "Riders on the storm: Vietnamese in Germany's two migration systems", in Spaan, Ernst; Hillmann, Felicitas; van Naerssen, Ton (eds.), Asian Migrants and European Labour Markets, pp. 80–100, ISBN978-0-415-36502-4