Legality first Vietnamese immigrants in Germany, legalization practices, and the intimate experience of legality

This dissertation examines the migration flow from Vietnam to Germany after the German unification. Despite the stringent immigration laws and policies, this flow is growing steadily, creating a new migrant group bigger than that composed of boat people and contract workers who came to Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall. By focusing on the particular moment when a migrant expects a transition from one legal status to another, for example, from undocumented to lawful resident, from temporary to permanent resident, and also from lawful resident to undocumented migrant, I explore some of the immigration and citizenship practices that were used to cause this transition (not)to happen. Situating these legal strategies in the context of legal hierarchy and transferable citizenship, Legality First reveals how family and intimacy get involved in the battle for legal residence. Specifically, the dissertation shows how the legal transition creates a liminal state in which migrants themselves and their family relationships have undergone a tremendous transformation under the pressure of migration legality. Ultimately, based on ethnographic fieldwork in Berlin and Brandenburg between 2016 and 2017, the research puts intimacy and family relations in the center of battles over legal status, bureaucratic maze, and unpredictable immigration politics to understand the intimate and affective dimension of migration legality.