Identity Construction Of Overseas Chinese Under A German Employer

Since the economic recovery of Germany in the 1950s and 1960s of last century,lots of foreign workers have been employed.Germany has gradually become a country of immigrants.Currently,about 1/5 of the population in Germany have immigration background.According to statistics released by the German Federal Statistics Office at the end of 2011,there are 81331 Chinese people in Germany,accounting for 1.2%of foreigners there who study or work in Germany.Compared to Turkey,Poland and other ethnic groups,the number of Chinese in Germany is not big at all,let alone compared with that of Overseas Chinese in the United States and Australia.Therefore,the intercultural experiences of these people(including their Germany-born children)have not attracted widespread attention in academic circles.At present,there are only limited researches on how they have constructed the image of the diaspora "self 'in the host societies.This thesis attempts to analyze the situation of identity construction of Overseas Chinese under a German employer.On the basis of empirical research,it took four employees in a German-Chinese Kindergarten in Hamburg as an example to research the construction process and result of the identity of Chinese employees in the Germany workplace.The identity theory of Jurgen Straub(2006)and Harmut Rosa(2007)complemented with the migration theory of Konrad Ehlich(1996)and Paul Mecheril(2007)serve as the theoretical framework of this thesis.The concepts of personal identity and collective identity and the relationship between identity and language and between identity and immigration were explored in the thesis.The research method of this thesis is qualitative research,which is decided by the research object and purpose of this thesis.Different from quantitative research,qualitative research adopts the inductive method from concrete to abstract,in order to understand the society through the interaction with the participants,and to represent their real living circumstances.Human social life is different from nature,which is the process and result of human interaction.Since interacting with different people could produce different results,the method of quantitative research is not suitable for this study,so this thesis adopted the qualitative research method to explore the action and meaning from the perspective of the participants.The whole research process is as follows:four Chinese employees at the German-Chinese Kindergarten in Hamburg(DCK)were investigated by means of the narrative interviews by Gabriele Rosenthal respectively designed from the perspective of biographical-oriented qualitative social research.Afterwards,the data obtained through the interviews were translated by means of the skopos theory of Katharina ReiB and Hans Josef Vermeer and then analyzed in combination of the method of the qualitative content analysis by Philipp Mayring and were evaluated according to the four innovative categories,namely "language usage in DCK","relationship with different groups of people in DCK","self-perception and perception of others" and "recognition gained from work".The results of the empirical investigation greatly confirm the assumptions of Rosa and Straub.Furthermore,in addition to the confirmation of relevant theoretical assumptions,the analysis also proposes deeper interpretation of the interviews from the following aspects.Firstly,language plays an important role in the process of identity construction of the Chinese employees in the workplace.Without language,there is no common basis for communication.Only with the help of language can they express their identity,while at the same time language could help them to achieve their identity.Secondly,it is well acknowledged that the intercultural competence of Chinese employees plays an essential role in the process of their identity construction in the workplace.In other words,it is the ability of perceiving the cultural difference,achieving the acculturation and finally reaching the integration of two cultural systems that have an impressive impact on their identity construction.Furthermore,the identity construction of Chinese employees is closely related to their sense of recognition in the workplace,which varies greatly given their specific responsibilities,diverse contributions and the like.Finally,it can be observed that most Chinese employees in the workplace have a dual or hybrid identity with Chinese and German features simultaneously and harmoniously.In addition,it could also be noted that the majority of Overseas Chinese tend to establish social relationship with their compatriots rather than the locals,which probably is out of the fact that the common collective and cultural memory based on the same language and similar appearance bring them about a sense of natural closeness.In general,the findings of this thesis lead to in-depth understandings of identity construction in multicultural contexts.It contributes to mutual understandings and peaceful coexistence between various cultural and ethnic groups in the globalized world.This thesis could be beneficial for researchers on intercultural German studies as well as for those interested in this field.