This article explores voicing processes of identity construction among labor immigrants both inside China and in the Dutch Chinese Diaspora. We provide ethnographically grounded data oriented toward a theoretical point: voicing is an essential problem in communication. Whether one is able to achieve his voice--an outcome of a communicative process--is often conditioned by pretextual factors that exist before and beyond communication, and has to be negotiated in the communicative process. (Contains 1 table and 1 note.)