ABSTRACT
Irregular immigrants in Germany mainly come from the county-level regions of Wencheng, Qingtian or Lishui in Zhejiang province. This chapter discusses the patterns of regular and irregular immigration from these regions in Zhejiang, drawing on a great variety of informal information provided by either immigrants themselves or German prosecuting organs. Analyzing documents from investigating authorities in Germany, one gets the impression that immigration and employment only involve triad-like criminal organizations. The boundaries between benevolence and profiteering, mutual assistance and exploitation, and chain migration and human trafficking are fluid and often indistinct. There are many parallels between contemporary Zhejiang migrant life in Germany and Paul Siu's Chinese laundrymen in the USA and Ellen Oxfeld's overseas Chinese communities in India. This suggests that the strong cultural and structural connections between migration, life in the home communities and life abroad found for the German Zhejiang migrants are part of a pattern that is much larger than just this case.
