The Vietnamese Diaspora in a Transnational Context: Contested Spaces, Contested Narratives [7, 1 ed.] 9789004396821, 9789004513952, 9789004513969

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The Vietnamese Diaspora in a Transnational Context

Transnational Migration and Education Series Editors Shibao Guo (University of Calgary, Canada) Yan Guo (University of Calgary, Canada)

Editorial Board Ali Abdi (University of British Columbia, Canada) Mary V. Alfred (Texas A&M University, USA) Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti (University of British Columbia, Canada) Gulbahar H. Beckett (Iowa State University, USA) Yiping Chen ( Jinan University, China) Fred Dervin (University of Helsinki, Finland) Allan Luke (Queensland University of Technology, Australia) Linda Morrice (University of Sussex, UK) Susan L. Robertson (University of Cambridge, UK) Hongxia Shan (University of British Columbia, Canada) Annette Sprung (University of Graz, Austria)

volume 7

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/tmae

The Vietnamese Diaspora in a Transnational Context Contested Spaces, Contested Narratives

Edited by

Anna Vu and Vic Satzewich

leiden | boston

All chapters in this book have undergone peer review. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at https://catalog.loc.gov

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 2542-9779 isbn 978-90-04-39682-1 (paperback) isbn 978-90-04-51395-2 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-51396-9 (e-book) Copyright 2022 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau Verlag and V&R Unipress. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Acknowledgements vii List of Figures and Tables viii Notes on Contributors ix Introduction 1 Anna Vu and Vic Satzewich 1

Negotiating Identities: The 1964 Return of the Francophone Polynesian Vietnamese to Vietnam 14 Gisele Bousquet

2

Social Mobility and the Meaning of Freedom among Vietnamese Refugees and Immigrants 30 Tuan Hoang

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Belonging in the UK Vietnamese Community: Second-Generation Experiences 42 Tamsin Barber

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The Politics of Remembering: Intergenerational Tensions in the Vietnamese Diaspora 62 Anna Vu

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Transnational Vietnamese: Germany and Beyond 83 Gertrud Hüwelmeier

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Pro-Democracy Activism in the Vietnamese Diaspora: Transgressing Cold War Era Divisions in the Era of Social Media 101 Grażyna Szymańska-Matusiewicz

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Capitalist Lack: Vietnamese American Remittances as Cultural Supplement and Political Critique 123 Ivan V. Small

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Traditional Characteristics and New Dimensions: Vietnamese American Self-Employment in the Twenty-First Century 143 C. N. Le

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The Price of Nailing It: Emotional Labour in the Nail Salon Industry 161 Anna Vu

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Vietnamese Women in the Australian Defence Force: Minorities, Histories and Cultural Heritage 181 Nathalie Huynh Chau Nguyen Index 203

Acknowledgements The editors would like to acknowledge the contributions of all those who helped make this project a reality. It is always a challenge to complete a book, but during the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been an especially difficult journey. First, we would like to thank Brill, and series editors Shibao Guo and Yan Guo, for having faith in this project. We are extremely grateful to Evelien van der Veer and Alessandra Giliberto for their patience and understanding, and for helping steer this book through to completion. The reviewers also made an invaluable contribution, and we sincerely appreciate their efforts on our behalf. Our deepest gratitude also goes to our contributors, without whom this book could never have been written. COVID disrupted their lives and their ability to carry out research, but nevertheless, they persevered. This would have been a significant accomplishment under ordinary circumstances, but during the pandemic, it was nothing short of remarkable. We are truly grateful for their contributions. Special thanks also go to the respondents who gave so generously of their time and who provided ‘data’ for many of the chapters; they unselfishly shared their life experiences with the authors, and now with you. Thanks also to Jennifer Harris for her invaluable help in copy editing the manuscript. Funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada helped make this collection a reality.

Dedication This book is dedicated to the Vietnamese within the diasporas throughout the world who had the courage to leave behind their homeland in search of freedom and a better life. We also acknowledge the bravery of those who tried but never made it to the diaspora. We hope that this book will give them a voice and give meaning to their sacrifice.

Figures and Tables Figures 4.1 7.1

Artwork by Brian Doan. 64 Growth in remittances to Vietnam (in US$ billions), 2001–2019 (Source: World Bank, license CC BY-4.0, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ BX.TRF.PWKR.CD.DT?end=2020&locations=VN&start=2000&view= chart). 132

Tables 8.1 8.2

Descriptive characteristics of entrepreneurship of Vietnamese Americans. 150 Odds ratios of statistically significant factors affecting entrepreneurship of Vietnamese Americans. 153

Notes on Contributors Tamsin Barber is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Oxford Brookes University, UK. Her research areas are ‘race’, ethnicity, youth and migration with a focus on exclusion, inclusion among the UK Vietnamese and other East/Southeast Asian groups. Her 2015 monograph Oriental’ Identities in Super-Diverse Britain: Young Vietnamese in London (Palgrave Macmillan) analyses constructions of identity and belonging among the Vietnamese diaspora in London. Her more recent projects explore new Vietnamese Migration to the UK (with Phuc Nguyen, Trung Vuong University) GCRF, and the British Academy project ‘Becoming East/Southeast Asian: Youth Politics of Belonging in Britain’ (with Diana Yeh, City University). Gisele Bousquet works at the Department of Anthropology, San Jose State University. She is the author of Urbanization in Vietnam and Behind the Bamboo Hedge: The Impact of Homeland Politics in the Parisian Vietnamese Community (University of Michigan Press, 1991) and co-editor of Le Vietnam au Feminin. Vietnam: Women’s Realities (Indes savantes, 2005) and Viet Nam Expose: French Scholarship on Twentieth-Century Vietnamese Society (University of Michigan Press, 2002). Tuan Hoang is Associate Professor of Great Books at Pepperdine University and has taught in the following programs: American Studies, Great Books, History, and Humanities. His research has been on twentieth-century Vietnamese history and the history of Vietnamese refugees in the U.S. His publications have appeared in the Journal of Vietnamese Studies, American Catholic Studies and Rising Asia Journal, among others. Gertrud Hüwelmeier is an anthropologist and Senior Research Fellow at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. She published widely about transnationalism, religion, media and materiality. In her ethnographic fieldwork, she focusses on social, religious and economic ties among Vietnamese in post-socialist countries in Europe and in Vietnam. Publications include the co-edited book Traveling Spirits: Migrants, Markets and Mobilities (Routledge, 2010), and papers in the journals Material Religion, Journal of Material Culture and Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology.

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C.N. Le is a Senior Lecturer II in the Sociology Department and Director of the Asian & Asian American Studies Program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology at the State University of New York at Albany. His research focuses on racial/ethnic relations, immigration, and comparisons of socioeconomic integration among Asian American groups. He is the author of the book Asian American Assimilation: Ethnicity, Immigration, and Socioeconomic Attainment (LFB Scholarly, 2007) and has been quoted by media organizations such as the New York Times, the Associated Press, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, and the Washington Post. Nathalie Huynh Chau Nguyen is Professor of History at Monash University. An Oxford graduate, she is the author of four books including South Vietnamese Soldiers: Memories of the Vietnam War and After (Praeger, 2016); 2010 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Memory is Another Country: Women of the Vietnamese Diaspora (Praeger, 2009), and Voyage of Hope: Vietnamese Australian Women’s Narratives (Common Ground Publishing, 2005), which was shortlisted for the 2007 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. Her fellowships include two major Australian Research Council (ARC) Fellowships and a Visiting Fellowship at Oxford. She is editor of New Perceptions of the Vietnam War (McFarland and Company, 2015) and the Routledge Handbook of the Vietnamese Diaspora (forthcoming 2022). Vic Satzewich is Professor of Sociology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. He is past president of the Canadian Sociological Association. His most recent books include The Ukrainian Diaspora (Routledge, 2002); Points of Entry: How Canada’s Immigration Officers Decide Who Gets In (University of British Columbia Press, 2015) and ‘Race’ and Ethnicity in Canada: A Critical Introduction (5th ed., Oxford University Press, 2021). Ivan V. Small is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Central Connecticut State University in the United States. He is author of Currencies of Imagination: Channeling Money and Chasing Mobility in Vietnam (Cornell University Press, 2019) and co-editor of Money at the Margins: Global Perspectives on Technology, Financial Inclusion and Design (Berghahn Press, 2018). He has written numerous peer reviewed journal articles, book chapters, op-eds and other publications examining connections between financial, bodily and material mobilities in

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Vietnamese and global contexts. In 2021 he was a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Yusof Ishak Institute for Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. Grażyna Szymańska-Matusiewicz (Ph.D.) is a sociologist specializing in the research of Vietnamese diaspora, with particular focus on Polish-Vietnamese community. She gained her Ph.D. from Warsaw University, Poland, in the year 2011. In her book Vietnamese in Poland: From Socialist Fraternity to the Global Capitalism Era (Peter Lang, 2019) she analyzed the legacy of “socialist fraternity” between Poland and Vietnam and its impact on the transnational links maintained by the Vietnamese community. She published numerous papers in journals such as Journal of Vietnamese Studies, Space and Culture, Asian Pacific Migration Journal and Qualitative Research. Anna Vu is a sociologist from Montreal, Canada. She has published widely on the Vietnamese diaspora experience in both a national and global context. Her publications include papers in the journals Refuge and Diaspora Studies. Her future project includes ‘The Diaspora Intellectual Self-Concept (DISC): The Vietnamese Experience’ (forthcoming), and an expanded study of labour precarity in the Vietnamese nail salon industry.

Introduction Anna Vu and Vic Satzewich

At first glance, the appearance of the South Vietnamese flag seemed out of place in the sea of far-right, white supremacist and conspiracy theory iconography that was peppered throughout the crowd during the Capitol Hill riot in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021 (Rosenberg & Tienfenthaler, 2021). What did South Vietnam, a country that no longer exists as an independent political entity, have to do with the often-repeated claim by President Trump that the 2020 American presidential election was stolen, as well as the associated storming of Capitol Hill in order to ‘take the country back’? What would people who proclaim an attachment to South Vietnam, and who may themselves have experienced hate crimes targeting Asian Americans because of the former president’s COVID-19 rhetoric, have in common with the crowd that gathered on Capitol Hill? To answer these questions, we need to understand how the Vietnamese experiences of exit from their country, their patterns of settlement and their memories of loss, heartache and trauma continue to shape individual lives and community politics today. We will examine the Vietnamese experience of migration and settlement through the concept of diaspora, which captures the complex relationships, attachments and identities that the Vietnamese who have migrated experienced simultaneously with their country of origin, their new homeland and their co-ethnics in other locations. These intersections constitute the core of diaspora studies. In the run-up to the election in the summer and fall of 2020, several commentators noted the enthusiastic and vocal support that President Trump had within some segments of the Vietnamese American community (Satzewich & Vu, 2020). Though political party preferences and allegiances in the US do not split perfectly along ethnic and racial lines, within the broader BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of colour) or racialised community in the US, Vietnamese Americans seemed like outliers: they were pro-Republican, to be sure, but perhaps more significantly, they were visibly and vocally ‘proTrump’. Moreover, some segments within that community seemed reluctant to add their voices to the protests about racism and police brutality directed against African Americans in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in May 2020. Though racialised, segments of the Vietnamese community appear to view their lives in the United States, and their political choices, not primarily through the lens of an established immigrant group that experienced racism, © koninklijke brill nv, leideN, 2022 | DOI:10.1163/9789004513969_001

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discrimination and hardship in their new country. Rather, their focus has been on their memories of the aftermath of the Vietnam War (or the American War, as it is known in Vietnam and within segments of the Vietnamese diaspora) and the conditions which compelled them to leave their homeland. Additionally, their choices are a function of deep concerns regarding the current geopolitical context in Vietnam, particularly its relationship with China. The circumstances surrounding exit from Vietnam are complicated and will be discussed in more detail. However, in general, those who escaped the country after the war ended in 1975 did so because of their fear of the North Vietnamese Communist regime. Many had to choose between staying and suffering in their homeland or leaving. Some families were able to leave and settled abroad more or less intact, while others were torn asunder, often never to be reunited. In many cases, some stayed behind in order to help their children to escape (Molloy, Duschinsky, Jensen & Shakla, 2017). The fear of communism which motivated the post-1975 exit from Vietnam still exists, and it continues to shape the attitudes of many Vietnamese who settled in the West, particularly first-generation members of the community. Many within that cohort deeply resent the Democratic Party, especially segments of it that helped stoke anti-war sentiment in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They feel that the anti-war wing of the Democratic Party had essentially left them, and their country, to hang out to dry. This sense of having been abandoned by the Democrats reverberates within the first-generation Vietnamese community in the United States and, to a large extent, is felt in other Western countries as well. President Trump’s stoking of fears of socialism/communism was music to the ears of many within that generation; they were relatively easily convinced that the Democrats were peddling a political ideology and economic system that they had rejected in their homeland. President Trump’s tough rhetoric on China also resonated within the Vietnamese community. China’s race to become the next global superpower, and its growing economic, political and military might in South Asia in particular, is certainly no secret (Jacques, 2012). China’s efforts to exert control over the South China Sea, and within Southeast Asia more generally, is seen by many first-generation overseas Vietnamese as an existential threat to the Vietnamese people (if not its government). Though many refugees who escaped Vietnam from the late 1970s through the early 1990s continue to dislike and distrust the current Communist government, they still love their country, have relatives who live there and have complex social and political engagements with various segments of Vietnamese society. They long for it to be free of communist influence. The concern that another even more powerful (and external) Communist state is inserting

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itself into Vietnamese society, politics and economic relations raises real fears that the end of communist oppression in their country may be an ever-moredistant dream. Trump’s anti-Chinese rhetoric was interpreted by some within the Vietnamese community as a sign that his administration would support Vietnam in fending off Chinese aggression in their country and in the region in general. Thus, to return to the questions raised at the beginning of this introduction, the appearance of the South Vietnamese flag at the Capitol Hill riot is understandable in light of the Vietnamese community’s conditions of exit, its worries about the future of its ancestral homeland and its ever-evolving status as a diaspora. This collection aims to fill out, and complicate, our understanding of the Vietnamese diaspora community. It does this in two specific ways: First, it examines elements of the Vietnamese diaspora experience beyond the United States and extends the analysis into Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Vanuatu, and New Caledonia. Though not comparative as such (see Bloemraad, 2006), the chapters variously speak to Vietnamese community politics, identity and economic conditions in these different settings, but they also point to commonalities in the resettlement experience. Second, the book examines how different conditions of exit from Vietnam, at various points in its history, and the resulting generational differences have created fractures within the contemporary Vietnamese diaspora.

1

The Concept of Diaspora

The concept of diaspora is now part of the standard lexicon of both social science researchers who study migration, settlement and identity as well as the communities that they study (Brubaker, 2005). Before the 1980s, it tended to be confined narrowly to describe the experience of ‘collective banishment’ from an ancestral homeland and complex patterns of settlement across many parts of the globe, and it was used to refer to Jewish, and to a lesser extent Palestinian and Armenian, historical experiences of forced migration, dispersal and settlement (Cohen, 2008; Van Hear, 1998). The number of research articles and academic studies with ‘diaspora’ in the title has grown from a handful prior to the 1980s to the point where today, a cursory keyword search of ‘diaspora’ on Google Scholar now yields in excess of 1.1 million hits. The Wikipedia entry for ‘List of Diasporas’, which is described as a ‘dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy the standards for completeness’, contains entries for well over 250 groups of people. In some ways, the term has become a catch-all to describe any group of people with any history of movement or migration (whether

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across an international boundary or not), regardless of whether they are nominally tied together by common ethnicity or national origin. While use of the concept of diaspora has exploded in the social sciences, so too has it gained prevalence in the way that individuals and communities describe themselves (Brubaker, 2005). Again, in the 1970s and 1980s, the number of communities that self-consciously used the notion of diaspora to describe themselves could probably have been counted on the digits of one’s fingers (and perhaps a few toes). In some cases, groups like émigré Ukrainians explicitly distanced themselves from the concept because it was perceived to be a Soviet-inspired slur designed to delegitimise the overseas Ukrainian community’s continued interest and concern over the fate of co-ethnics in Ukraine (Satzewich, 2002). Today, though, many groups that have a history of migration abroad use the term as part of their self-definition and, in fact, embrace it in the description of who they are. Again, a cursory internet search turns up hundreds of references to organised, community-based entities and organisations that claim the diaspora mantle. Moreover, the governments of many countries, states or sub-national regions also claim the label and seek ways to mobilise their respective diasporas for the benefit of the ancestral homeland (Vertovec, 2005). Many have crafted diaspora development or engagement strategies that, in various combinations, seek to encourage tourism (or even permanent return) and support for charitable organisations, cultivate mutually beneficial economic relationships or encourage the diaspora to become involved in the political process back home (Agunias and Newland, 2015). At the same time, some states, including Vietnam (Nguyen, 2019), continue to be suspicious of and distrust their respective diasporas because of the circumstances under which they left as well as their opposition to the current government in power. In the face of this explosion in both the etic and emic uses of the term diaspora, some commentators worry that the concept has lost its meaning. In the mid-1990s, one commentator (Akensen, 1995) noted that notion is a ‘massive linguistic weed’ that threatens to take over the academic discourse of migration and settlement. Nearly thirty years later, the weed has arguably overtaken the garden, burying earlier concepts like assimilation, integration, ethnicity, ethnic community, émigré, and immigrant community. Further, since it seems to describe ‘everything’, or at least many different groups with different migration and settlement histories, some wonder whether it really describes anything (Brubaker, 2005). Does any group with a history of migration automatically mean that it is, by definition, a diaspora? If so, does it tell us anything new about these groups or help us understand how they might in fact be different from one another? We are not in a position to evaluate where, from a conceptual point of view, diasporas begin and end. However, even though some critics are sceptical

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about the utility of the concept, its increasing application to many groups with diverse histories of migration and settlement abroad is not simply a matter of intellectual fashion. It may be that thirty years from now, the term ‘diaspora’ will be buried in the underbrush by another, more appropriate concept. However, its continued usage in itself suggests that this concept is worthy of further investigation. Social scientists have defined the concept of diaspora in different ways (Safran, 1991; Esman, 2009). Robin Cohen’s (2008) approach to defining and analysing diasporas constitutes a useful starting point for considering the conceptual and methodological challenges associated with explaining what diasporas look like and how they function. Cohen’s analysis invites us to consider the complex ways in which individuals and groups that have settled outside of their ancestral homelands maintain ties, identities and relationships with that homeland and with each other, even when dispersed across the globe. In Global Diasporas, Cohen uses the cases of the Afro-Caribbean, British, Armenian, Chinese, Jewish, Lebanese and Sikh communities to construct both an ideal type of diaspora and a typology of different kinds of diasporas. He suggests that diasporas ‘normally’ exhibit several of the following features: – dispersal from an original homeland, often traumatic; – alternatively, expansion from a homeland in search of work, in pursuit of trade, or to further colonial ambitions; – a collective memory and myth about the homeland; – idealization of the supposed ancestral home; – a return movement; – strong ethnic group consciousness sustained over time; – a troubled relationship with host societies; – a sense of solidarity with co-ethnic members in other societies; – the possibility of a distinctive creative, enriching life in the tolerant host countries. (Cohen, 2008, pp. 161–162) The first two elements of this ideal type speak to issues related to the factors that shape dispersal and migration. Though an important element in Cohen’s (2008) definition is forcible and traumatic dispersal from an ancestral home, diasporas can also be made up of mass movements of people who move for economic reasons, such as a search for work or trading partners or as elements of colonial expansion. According to Cohen, the type of diaspora a group becomes depends largely on their initial reasons for leaving. Victim diasporas, such as the Jews and Armenians, as well as the more recent migration of Syrians who have fled the ongoing conflict in their country, are formed

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as a result of the traumatic political or military events that occurred in their homeland and resulted in large-scale and widespread dispersal. Imperial diasporas are formed out of the colonial or military ambitions of world powers. Despite the cultural differences between the Scots, English and Irish, Cohen argues that people from the United Kingdom who moved overseas to places like Canada formed a larger British imperial diaspora. Labour diasporas consist of groups who move mainly in search of wage labour. They include the Turks who, after the Second World War, emigrated to a variety of countries in Europe, North America and the Middle East. The thousands of people who have moved from Ukraine to European Union countries like Italy, Portugal Spain, as well as to North America, over the past two decades are also arguably starting to constitute themselves as a labour diaspora. Trade diasporas, like those formed by the Chinese merchants who emigrated to Southeast Asia in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, consist of people who left their homelands to pursue opportunities as movers of goods and services in the emerging system of international trade. Today, individuals from Otavalo, a small community in Ecuador, have been termed a trade diaspora for their role in marketing and organizing the availability of South American–style handicrafts (blankets, sweaters, tuques, mittens, music and jewellery) around the world (Kyle, 1999). Finally, Cohen develops the notion of a cultural diaspora to characterise the migration and settlement experiences of migrants of African descent from the Caribbean after the Second World War. Cohen (2008, p. 18) considers these migrants as a paradigmatic case of people who have developed a unique culture and identity out of the influences of Africa, the Caribbean and their new countries of settlement.

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About This Collection

Despite the growing application of the concept of diaspora to describe the experiences of both recent and more established immigrant communities around the globe, there is no single comprehensive and comparative analysis of the now global Vietnamese diaspora. This collection has more modest ambitions, but it does attempt to begin to fill this gap. To help provide the context for this collection, in the remainder of this introduction we will sketch in broad outlines the way in which this conceptual picture can be applied to the Vietnamese diaspora and how each of the chapters contribute to the understanding of the Vietnamese diaspora experience. Let us consider the first two elements of Cohen’s typology—the conditions of exit and how they contribute to diaspora formation. As with other global

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diasporas that migrated at different times and circumstances, and which are multigenerational (Gabaccia, 2000; Satzewich, 2002), it may in fact be a misnomer to speak of a single ‘Vietnamese diaspora’. Though a complete recounting of Vietnamese emigration patterns over the past one hundred years is not possible in this limited space, Chapter 1 by Gisele Bousquet reminds us that the migration of Vietnamese began well before the end of the Vietnam War. In the course of French colonial rule in Vietnam that began in the 1860s, French authorities orchestrated the movement of significant numbers of Vietnamese to several of their other colonial possessions, including New Caledonia and Vanuatu to work in mines. At the beginning of the Second World War, there were an estimated 10,000 Vietnamese living in these two colonies, and today, the descendants of those original labour migrants continue to have a presence on the two islands. As we noted, hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese left Vietnam in the aftermath of the war in 1975 and continued to emigrate for the next twenty years. When Saigon fell in April 1975, about 130,000 South Vietnamese were evacuated by American forces and were quickly relocated to the United States. Similarly, some countries like Canada allowed Vietnamese who were in their country temporarily, mainly as students, to become permanent residents (Molloy, Duschinsky, Jensen & Shakla, 2017). But the numbers of these emigrants paled in comparison to the exodus of ‘boat people’ between 1978 and the mid-1990s. They found initial refuge in neighbouring states like Malaysia and Thailand, but it is estimated that over one million Vietnamese were resettled farther abroad, with about 823,000 settling in the United States, 137,000 each in Canada and Australia, 96,000 in France and 19,000 in the United Kingdom and Germany (Migration News, 1996). These individuals constitute the initial core of the Vietnamese diaspora and have arguably set the tone for its status as what, in Cohen’s typology, would be called a victim diaspora. The journey from victimisation to aspiration and hope in the United States is elaborated in Chapter 2 by Tuan Hoang on ‘Social Mobility and the Meaning of Freedom among Vietnamese Refugees and Immigrants’. His research analyses his respondents’ experiences of resettlement and shares the economic, educational and personal challenges involved in this journey. In spite of the difficulties Hoang’s respondents faced, many also experienced a strong sense of gratitude and identification with their new country while still maintaining a transnational identity which preserves their attachment to Vietnam. It is especially powerful and compelling to learn about the experiences of these immigrants in their own words. Since large-scale resettlement had subsided by the mid-1990s, many Vietnamese who left their country after the Vietnam War now have children of their

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own, and so there is a second generation within that original victim diaspora. As the chapters by Tamsin Barber (Chapter 3) and Anna Vu (Chapter 4) note, the second generation does not necessarily share the same anti-communist attitudes expressed by their parents; nor do they attach the same meanings to symbols which traditionally have carried so much weight within the victim diaspora, such as positive sentiments toward the South Vietnamese flag and negative sentiments toward images of Ho Chi Minh. Barber’s respondents were young men and women of Vietnamese origins who spoke English as their dominant language and, for the most part, self-identified as British—yet Barber’s research is fascinating because she rejects a neat, overarching distinction between being either British or Vietnamese and instead is concerned with a nuanced experience, which her respondents choose to navigate in distinctive ways. The American and British experience has been and continues to be vital to the formation of the contemporary Vietnamese diaspora. However, the mass exodus of refugees between the late 1970s and early 1990s, and their resettlement in the West, was accompanied simultaneously by an arguably less well-known process of labour migration to former Communist states, including Czechoslovakia, Poland and the German Democratic Republic. Vietnam entered into various ‘brotherly’ labour agreements with Eastern Bloc states, or what Gertrude Hüwelmeier in Chapter 5 calls ‘socialist pathways to migration’. As she notes, most of these agreements were designed as temporary labour migration programs that allowed Vietnamese workers to fill particular labour shortages in those Eastern European economies, with the expectation that the Vietnamese workers would eventually return home when their contracts expired. When the Iron Curtain began to collapse in 1989, many of those workers ended up staying, choosing to try to make their futures, and fortunes, in the emergent capitalist democracies. As a result, today there are pockets of Vietnamese in Poland, Czechia and now a united Germany. Hüwelmeier’s research demonstrates that the original ‘boat people’ and the more recent contract workers have little in common, spend little time in each other’s company and do not take part in activities that would reflect or consolidate their shared sense of membership within the same actual or ‘imagined’ community. Chapter 6, by Grażyna Szymańska-Matusiewicz, focuses on pro-democracy activism and points to a sense of co-ethnic solidarity that exists between segments of Vietnamese diaspora scattered abroad and those who remain in Vietnam (see also Dorais, 1998). One of the ways in which this solidarity is evident is in the pro-democracy activism that supports Vietnamese dissidents in Vietnam. Her chapter focuses on the Vietnamese Overseas Initiative for Conscience Empowerment (VOICE), which began in California in 2007 and now has chapters that span the globe. Szymańska-Matusiewicz’s chapter considers

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the Polish wing of VOICE and the struggles it faces in uniting the diverse constituents that make up the Vietnamese community there. These include the ‘boat people’ who left Vietnam after 1975, elements of the North Vietnamese labour migrants in Eastern Europe who have little affinity with, or memories of, pre-war South Vietnam as well as the more recent arrival of wealthy Vietnamese entrepreneurs. As we have indicated, Cohen’s typology emphasises the notion of ‘return’, or a ‘return movement’ as a central component of the ideal-typical model. Gisele Bousquet’s Chapter 1 also documents the complicated process of return to North Vietnam on the part of the Vanuatu and New Caledonia labour migrants in the 1960s, and as she explains, those who returned ‘traded a comfortable life in New Caledonia for a life of poverty’. Their return coincided with the escalation of the war in Vietnam, and because they spoke French and were thought to be tainted by ‘the West’, these returnees were often treated with suspicion by North Vietnamese authorities. As was the case with the postwar Ukrainian victim diaspora whose physical return to Ukraine was hindered for decades by fears over what Soviet authorities would do to punish those who left (Satzewich, 2002), in the first years of the formation of the Vietnamese victim diaspora, Vietnamese refugees were reluctant to return to Vietnam—even if they were able to obtain visas—because of similar fear of punishment. Originally considered enemies of the Vietnamese state, a state-sponsored ‘traitor’ rhetoric seems to have disappeared, especially since the US announced the formal normalisation of diplomatic relations with Vietnam in 1995 (Nguyen, 2019). Vietnamese who left to escape communism have less fear of returning to Vietnam today with their Western-born children to reunite with family members or to pursue business opportunities. Yet as Bousquet’s chapter demonstrates, the process of return is still fraught with tensions and contradictions. Those who return to Vietnam after years of absence left a country which was much different than the one which now exists. And those who have spent much of their adult lives living abroad have developed new identities and attachments to their countries of settlement. But the notion of return can be more than physical, whether permanent or temporary. Many within the Vietnamese diaspora send remittances on a regular basis. The estimated value of these remittances in 2020 was $17.2 billion, placing Vietnam in the top ten of low- and middle-income countries receiving the most remittances on a yearly basis (Nguyen, 2021). In Chapter 7, Ivan Small highlights not only the economic significance of those transfers, but also their political significance. He argues that remittances from post–Vietnam War refugees resettled in the United States not only serve to materially and financially help family members in Vietnam, but they are also used politically to

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critique the failure of Vietnamese socialism and the Communist revolution. In the 1970s and 1980s, remittances from political refugees resettled abroad most often took material form because of the prohibition on financial transfers from the United States. Material remittances became signifiers of a social, cultural, economic and political world supposedly lost to communism and used as American propaganda to critique and undermine Vietnam’s socialist government, instead of drawing attention to the humanitarian crisis caused by the US embargo and American refusal to pay reparations for wartime destruction. As refugees, the early members of the Vietnamese diaspora faced their share of obstacles; many of them had what Cohen would call a ‘troubled relationship with their host societies’. Though many states welcomed Vietnamese boat people, the early years in their countries of settlement were difficult, economically and socially. They often experienced racism from less than sympathetic members of the public in the US and elsewhere. Yet their resettlement stories are often ones of hope and success. C. N. Le and Anna Vu’s chapters in this collection elaborate on the economic trajectories of Vietnamese immigrants in North America. Le’s Chapter 8 focuses on entrepreneurship in the United States and he argues that despite the obstacles faced by Vietnamese immigrants in their early years of settlement, they now have one of the highest rates of small business ownership in the country. Notably, he argues that labour market discrimination, which is often cited as a reason for immigrant groups to enter into self-employment, is less of a factor in the Vietnamese case; instead, he emphasises that structural opportunities are one of the main drivers of Vietnamese entrepreneurship. Similarly, in Chapter 9, Anna Vu examines what has become an iconic Vietnamese small business: nail salons. The ubiquitous Vietnamese nail salon is often a mechanism of upward mobility for owners, but for the Vietnamese women who work in them, the story is more nuanced. Working conditions in nail salons are sometimes less than ideal, but Vu’s research unpacks both the positive and the negative aspects of this ethnic niche economy from the point of view of the workers. She concludes that, overall, although the women who work at these salons have mixed experiences, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. In Chapter 10, Nathalie Huynh Chau Nguyen makes use of oral history interviews with three Vietnamese-origin women who have joined the Australian Defence Force (ADF). Tracing their pathways into, and experiences in, the Australian armed forces, Nguyen analyses how their family histories of war and forced migration, combined with their upbringing in Australia, have combined to create unique bicultural identities. Though racialised in Australian society, their minority status appears to have a negligible impact on their career

Introduction

11

trajectories. Nguyen’s chapter points to certain patterns of upward mobility for the second generation within Australian society, highlighting how the diaspora can be a site of creativity, change and upward mobility. The number of university professors of Vietnamese origin is growing (Vietcetera, 2021), and they make their presence known in a variety of disciplines. Nguyen’s chapter also complements Anna Vu’s (2016) earlier research on the politics of memory and commemoration, illustrating the complex relationships which Vietnamese diaspora intellectuals experience with both their ancestral homeland and the broader Vietnamese community. Generational differences are also evident, and the children of immigrants are increasingly likely to be university educated and are not as caught up as their elders in nostalgia for the former South Vietnam (Hou, 2020). They are also less conservative, politically and socially, than their parents’ generation. The chapters in this collection shed considerable light on a diaspora that is both global and relatively ‘young’ from a historical point of view. As we have noted, even though Vietnamese workers began migrating in the late nineteenth century as part of France’s colonial system, more recent events surrounding the exodus after the end of the Vietnam War mark the beginnings of the contemporary Vietnamese diaspora. Like most good research, the chapters in this volume collectively address many of the ongoing challenges in diaspora studies but also raise more questions that require further study: Where do diasporas end? They may begin as a result of traumatic dispersal, but how long do memories of that traumatic dispersal last, both from an individual and collective/generational point of view? At what point does the concept of diaspora become irrelevant to the description and analysis of community and individual lives? Certainly, as this collection shows, the second generation within the Vietnamese diaspora does not simply reproduce the same identities, memories and attachments to Vietnam as the first generation. More comparative work is needed on what the notion of a diaspora means within different generations of the Vietnamese community, including a nascent third generation that will soon come of age. Similarly, more explicitly comparative work is needed on how the socio-political and settlement contexts of different countries in which the diaspora is located shape and affect the broader Vietnamese diaspora experience. To this end, Bloemraad (2006) makes a strong start by examining how the settlement and integration contexts of Canada and the United States shape the Vietnamese community in the two countries, but those comparisons ought to be broadened to other locations where Vietnamese have settled abroad. In a nod to intersectional theory, more research is needed on how gender and class differences shape dynamics within the diaspora. Do men and women have the same memories of loss and trauma? Do working-class Vietnamese

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in Montreal display the same patterns of ‘return’ to Vietnam as a nail salon owner in Paris? Finally, what about those who never made it into the diaspora? What does ‘diaspora’ mean to the family members who, for various reasons, stayed behind in Vietnam as their daughters, sons, brothers and sisters undertook the perilous journey to escape from the country? We must also remember that many did not survive the journey and tragically perished at sea—an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 (World Vision, n.d.). Even those who survived did not always escape unscathed psychologically. We hope that this collection will not only spark interest regarding what today’s Vietnamese global diaspora ‘looks like’, but that it will also inspire more research on what that diaspora is becoming.

References Akensen, D. H. (1995). The historiography of English-speaking Canada and the concept of diaspora: A sceptical appreciation. Canadian Historical Review, 76(3), 377–409. Angunias, D. R., & Newland, K. (2015). Developing a road map for engaging diasporas in development: A handbook for policymakers and practitioners in home and host countries. International Organization for Migration and the Migration Policy Institute. Bloemraad, I. (2006). Becoming a citizen: Incorporating immigrants and refugees in the United States and Canada. University of California Press. Brubaker, R. (2005). The ‘diaspora’ diaspora. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 28(1), 1–19. Cohen, R. (2008). Global diasporas (2nd ed.). Routledge. Dorais, L.-J. (1998). Vietnamese communities in Canada, France and Denmark. Journal of Refugee Studies, 11(2), 107–125. Esman, M. (2009). Diasporas in the contemporary world. Polity Press. Gabaccia, D. (2000). Italy’s many diasporas. University College London Press. Hou, F. (2020). The resettlement of Vietnamese refugees across three generations. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. doi:10.1080/1369183X.2020.1724412 Jacques, M. (2012). When China rules the world (2nd ed.). Penguin Books. Kyle, D. (1999). The Otavalo trade diaspora: Social capital and transnational entrepreneurship. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 22(2), 422–446. Migration News. (1996, May). Vietnamese boat people. Migration News, 3(5). https://migration.ucdavis.edu/mn/more.php?id=952_0_3_0 Molloy, M., Duschinsky, P., Jensen, K., & Shakla, R. (2017). Running on empty: Canada and the Indochinese refugees, 1975–1980. McGill-Queen’s University Press. Nguyen, L. H. N. (2019). The process to rapprochement between Vietnam and its diaspora in the United States. Diaspora Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 09739572.2020.1689694

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Nguyen, N. (2021, May 20). Overseas remittances to Vietnam in 2020 reach US $17.2 billion. VietReader: Business. https://vietreader.com/business/42975-overseasremittances-to-vietnam-in-2020-reach-us172-billion.html Rosenberg, M., & Tienfenthaler, A. (2021, January 13). Decoding the far-right symbols at the Capitol riot. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/video/ extremist-signs-symbols-capitol-riot.html Safran, W. (1991). Diasporas in modern societies: Myths of homeland and return. Diaspora, 1(1), 83–99. Satzewich, V. (2002). The Ukrainian diaspora. Routledge. Satzewich, V., & Vu, A. (2020, August 19). Why some Vietnamese Americans support Donald Trump. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/why-somevietnamese-americans-support-donald-trump-143978 Van Hear, N. (1998). New diasporas. Routledge. Vertovec, S. (2005). The political significance of diasporas. Migration Policy Institute. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/political-importance-diasporas Vietcetera. (2021). Notable Vietnamese Academics. Vietcetera. https://vietcetera.com/ en/the-rise-of-vietnamese-academics Vu, A. (2016). The politics of memory and commemoration: The flag debate and perspectives of Vietnamese diaspora intellectuals in North America. Diaspora Studies, 101(1), 25–44. World Vision. (n.d.). Operation: Seasweep. https://www.wvi.org/our-history/operationseasweep

CHAPTER 1

Negotiating Identities The 1964 Return of the Francophone Polynesian Vietnamese to Vietnam Gisele Bousquet

1

Introduction

In the 1990s, while visiting Hanoi, I met Thuy, a francophone Vietnamese in her forties and the manager at a popular café. She was not fluent in French, but her basic language skills allowed her to communicate with foreign customers. At the time, there were other francophone Vietnamese in the city and for the most part, they were seniors who had been educated in French during colonisation, which had ended in 1954. But Thuy’s experience was different. Born and raised in New Caledonia, as a teenager, she went to Vietnam with her parents in the 1960s. Like many former expatriates from the French Pacific colonies, Thuy felt herself a stranger in her ancestral country. Discouraged from speaking French, her once-francophone community was expected to integrate into Vietnamese society. Moreover, they had had little contact with relatives in New Caledonia during the decades of the American War. The introduction of economic reforms, Đổi Mới, in the late 1980s, the lifting of the American economic embargo in 1995 and Vietnam’s reengagement with the West allowed the former Vietnamese, the Việt Kiều community, to renew contact with relatives in New Caledonia and join Vietnamese transnational networks. In the 1980s and 1990s, studies on the Vietnamese diaspora and the formation of Vietnamese transnational communities focused on the post-1975 mass exodus of Vietnamese refugees after the fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War (Hung, 2014), addressing issues related to refugees’ resettlement and integration into host countries (Freeman, 1989; Bousquet, 1991; Rutledge, 1992; Kibria, 1993). However, using binary frameworks of analysis such as home/host or displacement/homeland, they did not examine the complex dynamics of the diaspora (Campt & Thomas, 2008). Decades later, three million Vietnamese living outside of Vietnam have not only established permanent residency and citizenship in their countries of adoption but have also contributed to the Vietnamese economy through remittances (Dang Phong, 2000; Hung, 2014; Gribble & Ly, 2016). The use of © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004513969_002

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transnational communications technology has facilitated connections among Vietnamese communities both in Vietnam and in the diaspora and helped redefine identities (Valverde, 2012; Gribble & Ly, 2016). This chapter addresses the dynamic of trans-local identity formation in transnational communities, focusing on the former Vietnamese New Caledonian expatriates in Vietnam who have a unique diasporic identity of colonial and postcolonial experiences. The first part of the chapter examines labour migration and exploitation in the French colonial empire at the turn of the twentieth century, as well as the participation of Vietnamese migrant workers in the anti-colonial movement in New Caledonia. The second part focuses on the return of those Vietnamese migrants and their families in the early 1960s, during the American War. Finally, the last part of the chapter explores how members of the New Caledonian–born Vietnamese generation negotiate their identity in Vietnam as they engage with networks of Vietnamese transnational communities. I have conducted fieldwork in Hanoi for over twenty years. From 1998 to early 2000, I lived in a village on the outskirts of the city and have since returned to the city every two years (Bousquet, 2016). My first encounter with members of the francophone Việt Kiều community was in 1994, when I first visited the city. I was back in 1996 for six months and developed a friendship with francophone Việt Kiều families. Over the years, I have maintained a close relationship with a couple of families, participating in social gatherings and carrying out informal interviews.

2

Vietnamese Migrant Workers in New Caledonia and Vanuatu (Chan Dang)

The migration of the Vietnamese workers to New Caledonia and Vanuatu in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was part of the historical transnational migration of colonial subjects within the French colonial empire (Guerassimoff & Mandé, 2016). Under the Code de l’indigénat—which was introduced at the end of the nineteenth century and defined the status and rules of conduct for all French colonies—all colonised people, even if they had migrated for work to other French colonies, were still colonial subjects. New Caledonia, was no exception: The Vietnamese workers had the same colonial status as the local population, the Kanak (Chene, 2016). From 1864 to 1897, before the arrival of contract Vietnamese workers, New Caledonia was a penal colony for criminal and political prisoners from France and its possessions (Merle, 1995). Vietnamese prisoners who arrived in 1891 had been given the choice of exile to La Reunion or New Caledonia or forced

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Bousquet

labour at the Poulo Condore in a Côn Đảo prison on a South Vietnamese island (Brocheux, 2016; Zinoman, 2001; Bougerole, 2000). The industrializing economies of the European imperial powers relied heavily on the natural resources of their colonies, especially copper, nickel and iron ore (Brocheux, 2016). New Caledonia had 30% of the world reserve of nickel, and around 1891, the price of nickel rose, making its exploitation profitable. After the closure of the prison in 1897, mining companies wanted cheap labour (Merle, 1995). Because the indigenous Kanak refused to work in the mining industry, Vietnamese workers were recruited for the nickel mines (Brocheux, 2016). By 1929, there were 6,230 Vietnamese workers in New Caledonia (Bougerole, 2000, p. 86); the second migration, occurring between 1932 and 1939, totalled 3,940 (Le, 2016). Most Vietnamese contract workers who went to New Caledonia and Vanuatu were recruited from northern Vietnam, also called Tonkin, which was a protectorate under French Indochinese colonial rule (Brocheux & Hemery, 2001). Although the majority of the workers were men, young women also signed up to work in the New Caledonian mines. The provinces of Ninh Binh, Nam Dinh, Thai Binh and Thanh Hoa were the most populated regions from which the Catholic missions helped recruit poor peasants (Chene, 2016; Le, 2016). Fleeing poverty and famine, these illiterate peasants signed five-year contracts to work in New Caledonia (Do, 2005) without understanding what they were binding themselves to. According to the terms of the contract, the employer had to provide salary, accommodations, food, clothing, medical care and one-way travel from Vietnam to New Caledonia, leaving the workers to pay for their return ticket (Brocheux, 2016; Chene, 2016). Once in New Caledonia, they were assigned numbers as forms of identification (Bougerole, 2000; Do, 2005). Those numbers were then used as substitutes for their personal names under the pretence that Vietnamese names were difficult to pronounce for French speakers (Le, 2016). Some left wives and families in Vietnam, hoping that after five years of hard labour, they could save enough money to move their families out of poverty (Vanmai, 1980; Do, 2005). Others migrated, hoping to earn enough money to repay family debts accumulated over generations (Johnson, 2005). In 1930, the salary of a Vietnamese worker in New Caledonia was three times that of a worker in Vietnam (Chene, 2016). The workers called themselves the Chan Dang, which literally meant ‘chained feet’ or ‘indentured workers’. The majority worked in the nickel mines or on plantations, and a few were hired as servants. Their working and living conditions were similar to those of the prisoners (Merle, 1995). They lived in isolated camps in the mountains, sleeping in crowded and segregated wooden barracks.

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Many suffered from malnutrition (Do, 2005; Vanmai, 1980). Most were single men, but a few young women worked alongside the men. The women laboured underground in the closed chrome mines, pulling trolley loads of extracted minerals, and were paid less than the men who worked in the open mines (Johnson, 2005). Working conditions were extremely harsh. Workers were subjected to physical abuse, such as flogging and humiliation, and having their meagre meals served on their shovels instead of dishes (Bougerole, 2000). They laboured twelve hours a day with only a two-hour break and no days off (Merle, 1995). Ly, a seventy-year-old woman living in Hanoi, recalled the hardships that her parents endured as contract workers in the mines. Vietnamese workers were not considered foreign migrant workers. As colonial subjects, under the Code de l’indigénat, the Vietnamese workers were not allowed to leave the camps or enter any European centre in the evening (Do, 2005). Once their contracts expired, some Vietnamese workers left the mines to settle near the island’s main city, Noumea. They set up small shops, became artisans or even worked small farms and established an expatriate community separate from that of the local ethnic Kanak or the Europeans (Do, 2005). This community had no formal education in French and many members spoke only Vietnamese, which reinforced their isolation and marginalisation. In the early 1930s, other Vietnamese arrived in New Caledonia to join families who had established businesses. The son of one of these, Ngoc, explained that his father had not gone to New Caledonia on a work contract but had, at age thirty, gone to New Caledonia to join his uncle who had set up a photography studio. Once there, the young man married a young woman who had worked in the mines. Similarly, sixty-seven-year-old Hoa explained that her father went to New Caledonia to work as a carpenter when he was thirty-four years of age. He met and married Hoa’s mother, who had arrived from Vietnam with her first husband years earlier. During and after World War II, if Vietnamese workers wanted to return to Vietnam once their five-year contract had ended, they were told that there were no ships available for them. In 1944, the Vietnamese miners launched their first unsuccessful strike to demand their right of return (Le, 2016). When the Indochina War started in 1946, the Vietnamese in New Caledonia continued to press for permission to return home, but the French colonial authority in New Caledonia was in no rush to send them, fearing that they would join the anti-colonial fight led by the Vietnamese Communist Party, the Việt Minh. That party, well established since 1930, had influenced many workers even before they migrated to New Caledonia (Chene, 2016). Moreover, many mining companies did not want to lose their workforce and pressured the local authorities to delay the workers’ return (Chene, 2016; Le, 2016).

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In 1946, New Caledonia lost its colonial status and became part of the French overseas territories. Additionally, that year marked the end of the Code de l’indigénat, which meant that Vietnamese workers were then allowed to move freely, leave the mines to work in other industries, set up their own businesses and even create their own cultural and political organisations (Brocheux, 2016). They were also entitled to French citizenship, although most Vietnamese, loyal to their homeland, did not accept the offer. Furthermore, the attitude of the French people of New Caledonia did not change toward the Vietnamese community. As Ngoc’s father commented, they were still very racist toward the Vietnamese. As the war of independence intensified in Vietnam, there was unrest in New Caledonia’s Vietnamese community. Vietnamese miners went on strike when they were denied the right to celebrate Ho Chi Minh’s declaration of independence and the creation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in September 1945. Fundraisers were organised to support the newly established Vietnamese government (Le, 2016). The authorities’ response was swift, and organisers were expelled from New Caledonia and sent back to Vietnam. By 1955, after the 1954 Geneva agreement to end the war, the Vietnamese community was polarised into two political camps, one supporting the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the other supporting the South Vietnamese Republic of Vietnam (Brocheux, 2016). The former, the Việt Minh sympathisers, wanted the French government to let them return to North Vietnam, while Vietnamese Catholics, pressed by priests from South Vietnam, opposed their repatriation to North Vietnam, demanding that they be repatriated to South Vietnam instead (Bougerole, 2000; Brocheux, 2016). As the Vietnamese living in New Caledonia celebrated the independence of Vietnam, many raised the Việt Minh flag to show their loyalty to Vietnam and their opposition to French colonial rule. In the mines, Vietnamese workers who were no longer bound by contracts went on strike; some workers, however, were still contract bound. The contract-free workers occupied the mines, demanding better working conditions and better wages. Supported by various local Vietnamese communist organisations, they raised a North Vietnamese flag at the entrance of one mine. Although the French colonial authority arrested the strike organisers, sending them into exile on a deserted Pacific island, the workers obtained better working and living conditions. From 1947 to 1950, the French authority forcefully expelled all Vietnamese communist sympathisers and activists to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (Brocheux, 2016), giving them forty-eight hours to pack. Ngoc’s father was one of them. Ngoc explained that there was very little time to prepare, and only part of the family was able to leave with him. He left behind his mother and one of his sons, who returned to Vietnam decades later.

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After the end of the Indochina War in 1954, some former French colonisers from Vietnam resettled in New Caledonia. Their presence only exacerbated the climate of xenophobia and racism toward the Vietnamese community. The miners and their families in the mountain chain mining sites on the main island of New Caledonia were isolated from other communities; they spoke only Vietnamese and wished to return to their homeland (Johnson, 2005). This was particularly true for the elders, who were nostalgic for their families and villages in Vietnam. The French in New Caledonia feared that socialist revolutionary ideas would challenge the status quo of the island, and there were demonstrations against the Vietnamese community, demanding that the government send them home. The Vietnamese community, subjected to harassment and racism, intensified their demand to return. Children experienced verbal and physical abuse from their teachers, and Ngoc remembered that as a teenager, his situation was unbearable at school. The French kept telling them that they were no longer welcome and should return to Vietnam. In Noumea, there was hostile graffiti toward the Vietnamese community, with slogans such as Viets dehors—‘Viets go home’ (Johnson, 2005). In 1957, representatives of the French New Caledonian government went to Hanoi to negotiate the return of the 6,000 Vietnamese, in particular those who were either Communist Party members or sympathisers. A North Vietnamese delegation from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs went to New Caledonia to convince Vietnamese migrants to return. Lam, a seventy-year-old man born in New Caledonia, rejected the idea that Ho Chi Minh initiated the departure of the New Caledonian Vietnamese to Vietnam. He maintained that Ho Chi Minh knew that it would have been hard for the Việt Kiều, the overseas Vietnamese, to adjust to life in Vietnam, which then was both impoverished and at war. His view was that it was a better option for the overseas Vietnamese community to remain in their host countries and to contribute to the rebuilding of Vietnam with their remittances. The first two convoys repatriating people to Vietnam left in 1960 and 1961. The majority of returnees went to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, some went to South Vietnam, and a smaller group decided to stay in New Caledonia (Brocheux, 2016). From July 1963 to February 1964, the ship Eastern Queen made six trips, taking 6,000 expatriates from New Caledonia and Vanuatu to the port of Hai Phong in North Vietnam (Le, 2016). News from the earlier convoys of the dire living conditions and abject poverty resulted in 972 people refusing to return. With the departure of the last ships, family tragedies unfolded as some families were separated (Vanmai, 1980). Some individuals, especially young people born and raised in New Caledonia, refused to leave. They were considered cowards lacking in filial respect who preferred a comfortable life to one that contributed to the building of the nation.

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There were stories of women leaving their husbands to follow their families back to Vietnam, men leaving their families behind and women leaving their families behind to follow their husbands. At that time, Vietnamese women had little choice but to follow their husband or their father (Johnson, 2005). None of the separated families anticipated that it would be decades before they could reunite. And some who were already old when they returned to Vietnam died before they were able to reconnect with relatives left behind in New Caledonia.

3

Return to the Homeland

It took two weeks for returning ships to reach the port of Hai Phong. Migrants who went back to Vietnam during the Indochina War were those who had been expelled from New Caledonia as political agitators. Once in Vietnam, which was still under French colonial rule, they were closely watched by the French authorities. Some eventually joined the anti-colonial resistance movement while others, fearing retribution, stopped their political activities. Dong Sy Hua was an early returnee, one of a few educated Vietnamese migrants who went to Vanuatu as a translator for the colonial administration. After the declaration of Vietnamese independence, he, with the help of a French labour union and the French Communist Party, was one of the organisers of the strikes on the plantations of Vanuatu and in the New Caledonia mines. He was expelled in 1947 and joined the Việt Minh in 1949 (Dong, 1993). Ngoc’s father, who was expelled from New Caledonia in 1938, was asked by his family to end his political activities against the French once he was back in Vietnam. This was because the family had businesses in Hanoi and thus they feared reprisals by the French authorities. Between 1963 and 1964, the last of the New Caledonian expatriates finally returned to Vietnam. Even though they knew of the harsh living conditions, they were proud to become Vietnamese citizens (Le, 2016). Some were patriotic and wanted to participate in nation building, while others were happy to return to their families after years in exile. However, they were unprepared for the reality of living in a centralised socialist state. Socialist reforms were then fully implemented, including land reform and collectivisation (Kerkvliet & Tria, 1998). The 1960s was also a time of war against the Republic of South Vietnam and the United States. The returnees arrived with their savings and even goods such as cars, and most were hoping to set up small businesses. However, they quickly realised that they had traded a comfortable life in New Caledonia for a life of poverty. According to Ngoc, those who brought their cars were forced to relinquish them to the

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government, as there was no gas for personal use. Returnees had also brought twenty-one Peugeot 404 automobiles as remittances to the Vietnamese government, and while Prime Minister Pham Van Dong welcomed them (Le, 2016), according to Ngoc, there were no government assistance programs to help the returnees resettle. Only in 1985 did the government recognise the contribution of Việt Kiều communities that had settled in various Western countries (Dang Phong, 2000). For instance, Resolution 127-CP (9/5/1977), which specifically addressed policy guidelines toward the Việt Kiều, was not in effect for the New Caledonian returnees. Government policy was to disperse all the New Caledonian Việt Kiều, supposedly to facilitate their assimilation into society. But in fact, the Vietnamese authorities mistrusted returnees who had lived abroad for long periods and also wanted to avoid facilitating a tight-knit community that might make demands and stir up trouble. Ngoc’s understanding was that Việt Kiều families simply wanted to settle together as a community because of their common experiences as exiles. A few returned to their native villages in Ninh Binh, Thai Binh, and Hai Dong. However, the government encouraged them to resettle in the mountainous region of Tuyen Quang to work in the mines, and in the end, a total of 1,200 agreed to settle in that area. In 1961, two months after their arrival, Ho Chi Minh visited the community and made a speech recognizing their sacrifices overseas and appreciating their support in building the nation (Le, 2016). The Việt Kiều in Tuyen Quang encountered the same harsh living conditions they had experienced decades earlier in New Caledonia. As settlers, they had to build their own thatched houses and clear the land. It was wartime and everyone, including the returnees, was subject to strict government-controlled regulations regarding food rationing. Living in the countryside, they were able to supplement their diet by raising chickens and growing manioc and sweet potatoes. The government also allowed them to raise pigs and grow rice. The families’ living quarters were minimal and provided little protection from the winter cold and summer heat. Le Thi Xuyen recalled families losing their houses due to flooding. For the first time in their lives, the teenagers experienced hunger because of food shortages and life in a war zone. During the 1964 American bombing of Quang Ninh, schooling took place in underground shelters (Le, 2016). Việt Kiều who had more savings went to live in Hanoi as it was easier to find work in the city. Other families settled in Hai Phong, the port where the returning ships had arrived. Many were already elderly and were looking for a place to retire. Hue, a sixty-five-year-old woman, and Thuy’s father had already retired in New Caledonia and—with their retirement money—managed to support

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Bousquet

their respective large families in Hai Phong. Once in Hai Phong, the teenagers born and raised in New Caledonia experienced culture shock. For them, Vietnam was a foreign country. They faced the same alienation in Hai Phong as their parents had decades earlier in New Caledonia. Although the teenagers encountered racism while growing up in New Caledonia, they considered themselves French Vietnamese. They went to French schools and had French friends. They seldom spoke Vietnamese. Ly remembered arriving in Hai Phong when she was sixteen years old: ‘In New Caledonia, I always spoke French. At home, I understood Vietnamese because both of my parents spoke it … but I did not really speak it’. Thuy remembered first arriving in Hai Phong: ‘We landed in a foreign country. Everyone dressed in black pajamas. It was depressing. In New Caledonia, we had colorful dresses. Noumea was a busy city, but Hai Phong seemed dead with a few cars and no stores’. Fifteen Việt Kiều families settled in Hai Phong. Despite the dispersal policies, they were able to regroup and live together in the same neighbourhood. Hue’s and Thuy’s families lived on the same street but were not allowed to gather or associate. They were no longer allowed to speak French or any foreign language in public; Ho Chi Minh had adopted Vietnamese as the national language after the declaration of independence in 1945 (Brocheux, 2000). For the teenagers, speaking French had been a way of claiming their dual cultural identity, but they quickly abandoned speaking it. Ngoc said: ‘Anyone speaking a foreign language was considered a spy and could be sent to jail. We were all scared, and none of us dared to defy the ban. All of us stopped speaking French entirely’. He noted that children and teenagers in the families who settled in Tuyen Quang were able to continue speaking French freely among themselves; that was the largest Việt Kiều community in North Vietnam and the local authority also had little incentive to enforce the language policy. Ngoc pointed out that ‘in the city, there was a lot more surveillance’. Only after 1975 were people again allowed to speak French in public. But after so many years, most had lost the ability. Thuy remembered some words but was unable to carry on a conversation. She said, ‘I was too young when I left New Caledonia to remember how to speak [French], but my older sister can still speak French very well’. Among themselves as adults, these former teenagers spoke Vietnamese with some French words as a way to reconnect with the past. Ly was able to pick up the language again decades later. She said that she did not speak a word of French for thirty-five years and added, ‘I was surprised that after all of those years, I still remembered how when we were finally allowed to speak it’. The children were all schooled in the Vietnamese language. In Hai Phong, many Việt Kiều teenagers went to the same school because the families lived in

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the same neighbourhood. Thuy recalled that ‘even in school, we never dared to speak French’. After high school, many went to work in the same factory. According to Ngoc, this ‘was not because the Việt Kiều wanted to work in the same place but because it was the only place in the area with available jobs’. The factory was where young people from the community socialised, and some even married each other. Although Thuy and Ngoc married, they never spoke French at home. Neither one of their sons spoke French. Thuy said, ‘our experience as children raised in New Caledonia was part of our past, but it did not concern the future of our children in Vietnam’. She added, ‘we were Việt Kiều, but now we are all Vietnamese’.

4

Connecting and Engaging in the Transnational Communities

In Vietnam, the major economic changes—the economic reforms of Đổi Mới in the late 1980s and the lifting of the US embargo in 1995—allowed the former New Caledonian Việt Kiều to engage in Vietnam’s diasporic communities. For decades, these communities had little contact with the overseas Vietnamese community in New Caledonia, but now they were finally able to renew their relationships with relatives. France was one of the major economic investment partners of Vietnam’s commercial and cultural projects in the early 1990s. The 1997 Francophone Summit in Hanoi consolidated the Franco-Vietnamese relationship. When French businesses, research organisations, academic institutions and offices of tourism settled in Vietnam, they offered jobs to the francophone Vietnamese community (Bousquet, 2002). The 1992 French movie Indochine, which took place in Vietnam and presented two sides of the Indochinese conflict, created a renewed interest in Vietnam. In the 1990s, the majority of tourist groups travelling in Vietnam were French. Former Việt Kiều who grew up in Tuyen Quang and had maintained some of their language skills took advantage of the job opportunities: Some became tourist guides for French tourist companies, while those with no special skills found work in the service industry as nannies, maids, gardeners and even drivers for French expatriate households. Yvette, a seventy-one-year-old woman fluent in French, had worked as a nanny for various French families and kept in contact with some of them for many years. Others, such as Thuy, who had lost her French because of lack of practise, had to take French classes at the Alliance Française. While establishing themselves as the new cultural brokers, they also reclaimed their French middle names, which they had used in New Caledonia but had been forbidden to use in Vietnam.

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Bousquet

Among the French tourists to Vietnam were New Caledonian Việt Kiều relatives who were visiting the homeland of their parents and grandparents. Such face-to-face interactions with relatives, often distant cousins, recreated social bonds among second-generation Vietnamese born in New Caledonia. Since their return to Vietnam in the 1960s, the returnees had maintained some contact with their families abroad, but communication was often difficult because of unreliable mail service during the war. The relatives brought with them pictures and news from the Vietnamese community in New Caledonia. Once contact was established, relatives maintained connections and communicated by calling each other during the holidays. In the 1990s, these international telephone communications were quite expensive. Moreover, while New Caledonians could visit Vietnam, Vietnamese who wanted to travel were simply not allowed to leave the country unless they were going abroad for business or work. Nonetheless, after those initial visits, former Việt Kiềus were eager to engage in the overseas Vietnamese community networks, and the introduction of the internet facilitated communication with family members throughout the diasporic community. This community, moreover, was not confined to members in New Caledonia. Like many Vietnamese at the time, their relatives had left Vietnam in the 1980s as boat people and were now living in Australia, Europe, Canada or the United States. Thuy’s brother grew up in New Caledonia but left as a young adult and was among those refugees who had resettled in Canada. The family had maintained contact with him through emails. However, over the last decade, social media has become the main means of communication among members of the Vietnamese diaspora. The use of smartphones and the introduction of media platforms such as Facebook increased and facilitated communication between those in Vietnam and Vietnamese abroad. Facebook was an instant success in Vietnam (Woollacoot, 2019). While the development of information communication technologies has helped countries to engage with the diaspora and facilitate their involvement in their home country (Gribble & Ly, 2016), most of the communications have been personal. With Facebook, New Caledonian Việt Kiều and their relatives in Vietnam relied less on written and more on visual communications such as pictures and videos, which increased the flow of information without so much reliance on language. In New Caledonia, because of the small size of the community, many Vietnamese had married French people, and only a few, most of them elderly, now spoke Vietnamese (Johnson, 2005). And in Vietnam, only a few former Việt Kiều maintained their fluency in French. In 2017, Thuy was showing me pictures of her distant cousins in New Caledonia, many of them French-speaking Eurasians. Because of the language barrier, videos are an important tool for sharing important life events. When Thuy’s father-in-law was hospitalised,

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she sent videos to distant cousins in New Caledonia. Likewise, when an older cousin, part of the generation of the Chan Dang that had gone to New Caledonia to work in the mines, passed away, the New Caledonian family similarly shared his last days in the hospital with the relatives in Vietnam. While instant communications bring distant families together, exchange is hampered by cultural distance and the years of separation. Video and pictures posted on Facebook provided Thuy with a gateway into the daily lives of people in New Caledonia, although as a spectator rather than a participant. As French citizens, Vietnamese from New Caledonia are allowed to visit Vietnam without a visa, but this is not true for those visiting New Caledonia from Vietnam, who must obtain both special permission from the Vietnamese government to leave and a visa for New Caledonia. Because of his political activism sixty years ago, Ngoc’s father was denied a visa by the local French authority. After numerous attempts, the French embassy in Hanoi finally intervened on his behalf to guarantee that the eighty-three-year-old was no longer a threat to French sovereignty in New Caledonia. After spending three months visiting relatives and the places he had lived, he was happy to return to Vietnam. Ten years later, Ngoc and Thuy returned separately to New Caledonia, Ngoc spending two months while Thuy stayed only one month. For each of them, it was the trip of their dreams. For many years, they had cherished the memory of growing up on the island. However, Thuy was disappointed that she did not recognise the place of her childhood. The family’s house was no longer there, but she did visit the elementary school she had attended. Thuy had no family left in New Caledonia and visited her husband’s distant cousins. When asked if she had any regrets for leaving New Caledonia, she replied, ‘It was nice to see the country where I was born and grew up, but it is not the place I remembered. Everything is different’. She added, ‘I prefer living in Vietnam’. The trip brought closure to Thuy, and she has no plans to return. She has since travelled to other countries during vacations and in 2019 went on a two-week tour of Europe and visited France—also one of her dreams.

5

Negotiating Identities

The Chan Dang—Vietnamese migrant workers of the French colonial empire—were eager to return to Vietnam after many years living in exile. They always considered themselves Vietnamese expatriates. Like many contemporary migrants returning to their homeland (Sandoval-Cervantes, 2017), they had wanted to build a better life for themselves and their family with their remittances. Although their lives upon their return did not meet their

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Bousquet

expectations, they were home at last. In New Caledonia, they had yearned to return to participate in the reconstruction of their country. As Dong Sy Hua, a former Chan Dang, claimed, he was born anti-French and ‘anti-coloniser’ and fought for the independence of Vietnam upon his return to Vietnam. However, later in life, he became a francophile (Dong, 1993). The experiences of the children of the Chan Dang were different from those of their parents. Most of them were only teens and young adults when they left New Caledonia. They did not choose to return; they followed their parents. Like many children of the diaspora, they experienced a sense of loss and alienation in their ancestral homeland. Upon arrival, they had to renegotiate their identities as they were forced to integrate into Vietnamese society. Born and raised in New Caledonia, they were suspected of not having allegiance to the Socialist Republic. For years, particularly during the American War, they had to conceal their past, not speaking French for fear of being accused of being foreign agents and avoiding formal associations with other Việt Kiều. Even forty years later, some of them still needed to affirm their loyalty to the nation. In her testimony of her life in Vietnam as a New Caledonian Việt Kiều, Le Thi Xuyen attested that the Việt Kiều were loyal to the motherland and many of them had even sacrificed themselves to defend it. She wrote, ‘The children of the Chan Dang were the first to join the army to defend the country. From 1966 to 1975, hundreds of youths of the second generation fought the enemy with courage and many died in the war theater’ (Le, 2016, 531–532). Over the years, they have integrated into Vietnamese society, embracing their identity as Vietnamese citizens despite earlier discrimination. Some married other Việt Kiều, but the majority have married people born in Vietnam who did not have the shared experience of living in the diaspora. After the Đổi Mới reforms, as Vietnam engaged with Western countries, the Việt Kiều took advantage of foreign policy changes to become an active transnational Vietnamese community. At the same time, they openly claimed themselves as francophile Vietnamese living in Vietnam, an identity they had had to hide for decades. In the 1990s, being francophile was cultural capital that they were able to use to their advantage as French companies settled in Vietnam. They found work in the tourist industry and businesses. No longer feeling ostracised, they also created their own social association. Most of them are in their late fifties and sixties. Once a month, they meet for lunch at a restaurant in Hanoi. They share memories of growing up in New Caledonia and exchange news of distant relatives living there and in other overseas communities. They speak both French and Vietnamese, sing French songs they sung as teenagers and even dance to French music.

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Their own children, born and raised in Vietnam, do not share their parents’ diasporic experiences. Although they were stigmatised and called the bamboo generation, meaning children of Việt Kiều born in Vietnam, they have been totally integrated into Vietnamese society (Le, 2016). Thuy’s twenty-five-yearold son was amused when his mother showed videos of her distant New Caledonian relatives. He has no personal connection to those distant relatives, nor did he feel that he belonged to the diasporic Vietnamese community.

6

Conclusion

The engagement of former New Caledonian Việt Kiều in the transnational community challenges the binary framework of home/host and displacement/homeland (Halilovich, 2013). Transnational communities are not clearcut; they exist within and between localities in transnational networks. Thuy’s generation did not join the transnational Vietnamese community out of a desire for financial gain. They did not renew contacts with their New Caledonian relatives or expect support from them in money or gifts. The post-1975 overseas Vietnamese refugees and migrants who settled in Western countries might have been pressured to support relatives left behind in Vietnam, but as Hung Cam Thai argues, monetary circulation in transnational families is much more than a financial matter: it is embedded in complex systems of cultural expectation, self-worth and emotional economies. Thus, remittances are used to maintain strong emotional bonds between Vietnamese transnational families and their relatives in Vietnam (Hung, 2014), built on shared experiences. Through the use of social media, the former Việt Kiều in Vietnam and the New Caledonian Việt Kiều have created an imagined community that originated in the experiences of the Chan Dang generation. In this imagined community (Anderson, 1991), the participants do not share their lives in person but exchange fractions of their life experiences through texts, videos and pictures. The only purpose of such a community is to create a cultural space where identities are negotiated. Through their networks, the former Việt Kiều claim their francophone identity while maintaining their Vietnamese identity. In turn, the New Caledonian Việt Kiều assert their Vietnamese identity by participating in these networks. Although the experience of the former New Caledonian Việt Kiều is unique, such transnational networks, constructed through the use of social media, are both increasing communication among transnational communities and, more importantly, constructing virtual cultural spaces that are in fact imagined communities.

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References Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. Verso. Bougerole, C. (2000). Chronique d’une crise coloniale et son contexte: Les Vietnamiens de Nouvelle-Caledonie (1945–1964). Journal de la Societe des Oceanistes, 110(1). Bousquet, G. (1991). Behind the bamboo hedge: The impact of homeland politics in the Parisian Vietnamese community. University of Michigan Press. Bousquet, G. (2002). Facing globalization: Vietnam and the francophone community. In G. Bousquet & P. Brocheux (Eds.), Viet Nam expose: French scholarship on twentieth-century Vietnamese society. University of Michigan. Bousquet, G. (2016). Urbanization in Vietnam. Taylor & Francis Group. Brocheux, P. (2000). Ho Chi Minh. Presse de Sciences Po. Brocheux, P. (2016). Les migrations des travailleurs Vietnamiens dans l’espace imperial Francais du Pacifique (Indochine, Nouvelle Caledonie, Nouvelles Hebrides) aux XIX et XX siecles. In E. Guerassimoff & I. Mandé (Eds.), Le travail colonial: engagés et autres mains-d’oeuvre migrantes dans les empires, 1850–1950 (p. 283). Riveneuve Editions. Brocheux, P., & Hemery, D. (2001). Indochine, la Colonisation Ambiguë: 1858–1954. La Decouverte. Campt, T., & Thomas, D. A. (2008). Gendering diaspora: Transnational feminism, diaspora and its hegemonies. Feminist Review, 90(1), 1–8. Chene, C. (2016). Les engages Tonkinois sous contrat en Nouvelle Caledonie, des migrants coloniaux: Exister et resister. In E. Guerassimoff & I. Mandé (Eds.), Le travail colonial: engagés et autres mains-d’oeuvre migrantes dans les empires, 1850–1950 (p. 301). Riveneuve Editions. Dang P. (2000). La diaspora vietnamienne: retour et intégration au Vietnam. Revue Europeene des Migrations Internationales, 16(1), 183–205. Do, T. (2005). Exile: Rupture and continuity in Jean Vanmai’s Chan Dang and Fils de Chan Dang. Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies, 2(2), 1–20. Dong, S. H. (1993). De la Melanesie au Vietnam: Itineraire d’un colonise devenu francophile. l’Harmattan. Freeman, J. (1989). Hearts of sorrow: Vietnamese-American lives. Stanford University Press. Gribble, C., & Ly, T. T. (2016). Connecting and reconnecting with Vietnam: Migration, Vietnamese overseas communities and social media. In C. Gomes (Ed.), The AsiaPacific in the age of transnational mobility: The search for community and identity through social media. Anthem Press. Guerassimoff, E., & Mandé, I. (2016). Introduction Generale. In E. Guerassimoff & I. Mandé (Eds.), Le travail colonial: engagés et autres mains-d’oeuvre migrantes dans les empires, 1850–1950 (p. 11). Riveneuve Editions.

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Halilovich, H. (2013). Places of pain: Forced displacement, popular memory and translocal identities in Bosnian war-torn communities. Berghahn Books. Hung, C. T. (2014). Insufficient funds: The culture of money in low-wage transnational families. Stanford University Press. Johnson, H. (2005). A fugitive moment of grace: Migrant social identities and the power of life story. Hecate: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Women’s Liberation, 31(1), 85–103. Kerkvliet, B., & Tria, J. (1998). ‘Wobbly foundations’: building co-operatives in rural Vietnam, 1955–61. South East Asia Research, 6(3), 193–251. Kibria, N. (1993). Family tightrope: The changing lives of Vietnamese Americans. Princeton University Press. Le, T. X. (2016). Les engages sous contrat et la generation de leur enfants. In E. Guerassimoff & I. Mandé (Eds.), Le travail colonial: engagés et autres mains-d’oeuvre migrantes dans les empires, 1850–1950 (p. 521). Riveneuve Editions. Merle, I. (1995). Expériences coloniales: la Nouvelle-Calédonie (1853–1920). Edition Belin. Rutledge, P. J. (1992). The Vietnamese experience in America. Indiana University Press. Sandoval-Cervantes, I. (2017). Uncertain futures: The unfinished houses of undocumented migrants in Oaxaca, Mexico. American Anthropologist, 119(2), 209–222. Valverde, K.-L. (2012). Transnationalizing Viet Nam: Community, culture, and politics in the diaspora. Temple University Press. Vanmai, J. (1980). Chan Dang: Les Tonkinois de Caledonie au temps colonial. Publications de la societe d’etudes historiques de la nouvelle Caledoniem Noumea. Woollacott, E. (2019, January 9). Days after introduction of ‘cybersecurity’ law, Vietnam has Facebook in its sights. Forbes, 190. Zinoman, P. (2001). The colonial bastille: A history of imprisonment in Vietnam, 1862– 1940. University of California Press.

CHAPTER 2

Social Mobility and the Meaning of Freedom among Vietnamese Refugees and Immigrants Tuan Hoang

In May 2000, the ethnic periodical Việt Báo [Vietnamese Daily], also known as Việt Báo Daily News, announced that it was beginning an essay contest called Viết Về Nước Mỹ: Writing on America. Founded in the early 1990s and based in Westminster, California, the site of the largest Little Saigon in the US, the daily announced that this contest would carry prizes totalling $10,000 in cash plus items worth another $10,000.1 The requirement for entering the contest was two to five pages of recollection or reflection, which could be typewritten or ‘handwritten on single-side’ pieces of paper.2 The announcement stated that ‘writing on America’ was ‘simply a general theme’ and that writers were free to choose what they’d include in their essay, ‘as long as [the topic] is related to the United States’. Writers were asked to submit five lines of biographical details. Finally, selected entries were to be published in the print or online edition of the daily, or both. Some of the published essays would be further chosen for a special collection in book form. Any profit from the book sale would be used as part of the award money for the next contest.3 Two days after the announcement, Việt Báo received its first entry from an eighty-nine-year-old man who had migrated to the US in 1988 through the Orderly Departure Program (VVNM, 2000, 28). Another 323 entries followed during the first three months; that number had risen to over 800 three months later. The submissions vary in topic and emphasis. Some are descriptive, about one or two episodes, while others articulate more general thoughts and feelings about the immigrant experience. Many are short and amount to vignettes or sketches, but some are longer and more detailed. About a quarter of these essays were selected for publication in the paper’s new column also called ‘Writing on America’. For inclusion in the first volume, ninety-seven pieces from ninety different writers were chosen from the initial 324 entries (VVNM, 2000, p. 6). Reflecting eager reception to the contest, the collection was published in November 2000 rather than in 2001, as originally planned. Hard copies quickly sold out and the collection was reprinted three times in the next five years, while new volumes were also published. In addition to these annual paperback collections, Việt Báo published a hardcover volume of the ‘best of © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004513969_003

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the best’ in 2008 and, two years later, a collection of essays that had been translated into English.4 By any indication, the series has been a resounding success. New essays are published each month and the daily’s webpage on the series has continued to draw readers from all over the globe. Since November 2000, it has also held an annual ceremony in Orange County, at the Nixon Library and Little Saigon restaurants, to celebrate the prize winners. Reflecting national appeal, since 2005 the event has taken place during the summer so that more people from afar could travel to Orange County and attend the ceremony and the banquet. The remainder of this chapter examines social mobility among the immigrants and refugees as described in the first ten volumes of selected essays. Economic survival is the most dominant theme in these volumes, which are replete of memories and accounts of learning English, studying in college, gaining employable skills, working long hours and, more broadly, climbing the social ladder for long-term stability. More importantly, I argue that much of the motivation for social mobility came from very difficult postwar experiences in Vietnam. The majority of contributors to these volumes came to the US during the 1980s and 1990s. Having lived in postwar Vietnam under oppressive economic and political conditions, they could not arrive on American shores as the post-1965 immigrants who came with ready-made skills from Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, India and the Philippines. Rather, they pushed themselves to engage in a post-industrial economy that was very different from the wartime and postwar societies in which they had lived. To the extent that the refugees and immigrants deemed their lives to be ‘successful’ in the end, they deemed their backgrounds of postwar impoverishment and oppression a significant motivator. They further expressed an abiding gratitude to American society for the opportunities that they could not have had in postwar Vietnam. This combination of motivation and gratitude contributed to a universalist conceptualisation of freedom among the refugees and immigrants. They saw America as a land of opportunities that were available to all residents. It is a perspective that reflects their contrasting experience between postwar Vietnam and the United States, but it has also obscured structural issues related to racial relations among whites on the one hand and, on the other hand, Black and Brown Americans.

1

The Postwar Experience as Motivation for Social Mobility

Scholars of post-1965 immigration from Asia have pointed to the push and pull factors relevant to the betterment of education and employment opportunities

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that favoured skills in technology, medicine, engineering and, more generally, the natural sciences. They have also pointed out the history of the concept ‘model minority’, whose roots came out of a complex interaction of different factors during and after World War II (Lee, 2016; Hsu, 2015; Wu, 2014; Hsu & Wu, 2015). In the case of the Vietnamese, however, the aftermath of the Vietnam War led to tens of thousands of refugees who came mostly without specialised employable skills. As a result, most took less desirable, blue-collar jobs or underwent further education and training to attain technical or other low-level white-collar positions. A similar pattern followed subsequent waves of ‘boat people’, refugees and immigrants who had experienced considerable political discrimination and economic deprivation after the Communist victory in 1975. The majority of the essays in the first ten published volumes focus on America rather than Vietnam. Yet a not inconsiderable number of memoirs and accounts note, either in passing or detail, the horrible life after national unification that pushed them out of their homeland. In this telling, the fall of Saigon in 1975 marked the beginning of a nightmare for the Vietnamese nation on the whole and for southern Vietnamese specifically. Writing from San Jose, for example, Lưu Nguyễn called the fall of Saigon a ‘day of disastrous suffering’ (ngày khổ nạn). Focusing on the effects of the collectivised economy, his essay depicts ‘socialism’ through the image of long lines of people, including himself as a teenager, waiting to purchase a very limited amount of basic household items. The piece contrasts this with the boxes of items received from an uncle then living in the United States. It further points out the contradiction and hypocrisy between the government’s anti-American and anti-Republic rhetoric on the one hand and, on the other, its postwar practice of taking over properties and assets from many families in the south. Having failed to escape an unspecified number of times, his family eventually sent him successfully by boat to Thailand in early 1987 (VVNM, 2005, pp. 363–369). Another example comes from Anthony Hung Cao, a physician from Orange County in southern California. Born in 1969, Cao grew up with a father who worked in some medical capacity in the South Vietnamese military. During the fall of Saigon, the family moved from Saigon to the countryside, close to one of Cao’s grandfathers. One of the longest in the anthologies, his essay vividly recalls the trip, including scary details, then describes the entire family’s hard labour of growing crops in order to survive. Cao did well in school, especially in math and, later, English. However, he did not receive due recognition because his father had worked for the ‘puppet’ South Vietnamese regime and his was viewed as an ‘old regime family’. Knowing that he had little chance to apply to the colleges of medicine, law, or arts and letters in Saigon, he sought

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entrance to the less prestigious college of education. His application, however, was denied on the basis that his family was waiting for a relative’s sponsorship to migrate to the United States. Only bribery by his mother got him into to a smaller regional college of education, where he attended classes until leaving for the US in 1988 (VVNM, 2010, pp. 123–139). Since some contributors had been refugees, their essays sometimes describe the experience of escaping from Vietnam, including by boat or on foot, in 1975 or at other times during the 1970s and the 1980s. A few essays describe escape at length, including one of the longest in the ten volumes. Written by a resident of San Gabriel in Los Angeles County, this essay in fact does not say anything of note about life in the US. Instead, it begins with a poem about the complete loss of status and material poverty among former South Vietnamese government officials and military officers. An Huỳnh then recalls his successful escape in 1987, his fifth attempt, which led to temporary settlement in three refugee camps in Malaysia and the Philippines before moving to the US the following year. One significant experience in the narrative was the recovery of his former political identity as a citizen of the Republic of Vietnam (RVN), especially on the anniversary of the fall of Saigon when, for the first time in a dozen years, he saw the South Vietnamese flag flying in a legal public event. ‘When would I ever return to Vietnam’, he wrote, ‘to Vietnam and participate in an event with this yellow flag and watch it fly again in our beloved country?’ (VVNM, 2006, p. 83). For much of the fifteen years following national reunification, the postwar government vigorously sought to eliminate all signs and legacies of the South Vietnamese state. This context accounts for the politicised and highly charged experience of regaining the non-Communist nationalist identity in refugee camps and countries of resettlement. For many refugees and immigrants, the most searing postwar experience, and also the most politicised, was the incarceration of tens of thousands of former RVN government officials and military officers. In the months following national unification, the new government rounded them up and sent them to dozens of re-education camps across the country. While the families of Lưu Nguyễn and Anthony Hung Cao faced enormous economic and political difficulties, they did not have to endure the ordeal of incarceration in the re-education camps.5 Less lucky were tens of thousands of families that witnessed a father, a son or a brother go through the camps. The harshness of this experience has been recounted in hundreds of re-education camp memoirs published in the diaspora since the 1980s and especially during the 1990s (Hoang, 2016). Indeed, several years before Việt Báo began the Writing on America competition, another daily in Little Saigon, Viễn Đông [The Far East], held a writing competition on the experiences of wives of the incarcerated men in the

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re-education camps. It was followed by another competition about and written by former prisoners themselves. Although the competitions were shortlived, they drew hundreds of entries each year; some of these later reappeared in one of the five volumes also published by Viễn Đông.6 Although the contributors to Writing on America do not focus on incarceration, many named incarceration as central to their background and even offered personal details. A system engineer from Orange County, for instance, wrote an essay about his mother that includes a summary-like paragraph about the impact of the fall of Saigon. The paragraph names two outcomes that most affected his mother: first, anti-bourgeois campaigns that put an end to her entrepreneurial activities at the market and, second, familial separation that saw her oldest daughter’s family in the US, on the one hand and, on the other, two sons and one son-in-law in re-education camps (VVNM 2003–2004, pp. 39–43). Another contributor from Orange County who immigrated in 1995 began her essay with a short description of postwar life before devoting the rest on adaptation in California. ‘I still remember like yesterday’, she wrote, ‘the date when Saigon was full of [North Vietnamese soldiers] even though I was only seven years old’. The next sentences read: ‘Then we bid farewell to our father who went to “re-education”. Ten years meant ten years of imprisonment’ (VVNM, 2000, 433–438). Though merely mentioned or briefly described, memories of incarceration and related experiences seep through the pages and inform the largely positive perspectives about adaptation in America. Taken as a whole, the postwar experience is conceptualised among the Vietnamese as politicised deprivation of opportunities. This context of impoverishment contributed to their initially nervous but quickly favourable attitudes toward America. An example comes from Thúy Hà, a middle-aged woman who submitted her essay only a few months after resettling in Orange County. The author spoke at length about her impressions and observations of material abundance in Little Saigon. In contrast, she shares her ‘memory of poverty in the period after 1975 [when her diet was] rice mixed with sweet potato or peppered salt or fish sauce’: that is, meals devoid of vegetables, meat, fish, and other desirable foodstuffs (VVNM, 2000, p. 210). This memory stuck with Thúy Hà for nearly a quarter-century after the fall of Saigon and became an explanatory device for her initial reception of life in America. A similar point came from Nguyễn Thượng Văn Trung, whose essay about his lengthy struggle for migration refers to the period following the fall of Saigon as one involving a reeducation camp for his father, unemployment for his mother and hard labour for him and his siblings. They did many types of manual labour, ‘from downing trees in forests to driving manual cyclos’ in order to feed their family. Because he was married at the time of his father’s application for the Humanitarian

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Operation (HO) program, Trung could not migrate with his parents and unmarried siblings during the early 1990s. It took another fourteen years before he and his family could leave Vietnam. Already middle-aged, he decided to channel his earlier hopes for himself into his children’s education so that they could have a future brighter than his own postwar past VVNM, 2007, pp. 513–522). References to poverty, incarceration and other postwar developments function as an identifier of both individual and collective experiences. They also serve as rationales for the necessity of leaving the beloved country of their birth in that they would have not left were it not for the aftermath from the fall of Saigon. When a short description is placed at the beginning of an essay, it serves as chronological prelude to experiences in the US. When it is in the middle of an essay, the placement provides a retrospective moment when writers evaluate and contextualise their immigrant background in light of the extremities of the Vietnamese past. The writers often couched their experience in material terms that illustrate the economic impulse for migration. Simultaneously, their references to postwar life reveal the political nature of their immigration. In their experience, political oppression and economic impoverishment were two sides of a coin. As a result of this violent political-economic nexus, the immigrants were nervous about coming to a completely foreign land yet also happy to have left Vietnam, even as they retained familial and other intimate ties in the country and even as they continued to attach a part of their identity to the Vietnamese nation (albeit one without communism). As described by a pharmacist who had migrated in the early 1990s, her family was initially suspicious of the notification about the HO program sent by the Ministry of Security in Vietnam. They thought it might be another trick played against re-educated prisoners like her father and were not completely assured during the process of application. Even on the day of departure, they remained ‘very worried [and] prayed to the Lady Bodhisattva for protection’. It was only when the plane flew over Cambodia that they ‘let out a breath of relief’, and only when it landed in Thailand did they ‘[believe] that we had escaped the Communist yoke and arrived to the shores of freedom’ (VVNM, 2000, p. 50). Such relief reflected a psychological toll taken over years of oppression and deprivation. This toll, in turn, informed their engagement in a dramatically different society, one that allowed an enormous space for social mobility. The prior example of the pharmacist illustrates a conceptualisation of freedom among the immigrants. Whatever else ‘freedom’ might be, it would be opposite of the ‘Communist yoke’ that they had experienced in the years following national unification. Deprivation and oppression, again, formed the basis for striving toward social mobility among the immigrants and refugees.

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Gratitude for America—and the Meaning of Freedom

Their backgrounds of political oppression and economic impoverishment also explain the overwhelmingly positive view of the US among the contributors to Writing on America. It is true that the majority of their essays describe the challenges regarding learning English, attending community colleges and universities, working in a blue- or white-collar profession, driving and commuting, making new friends, finding marital partners, caring for children and aging parents and, especially, learning about legal requirements or societal customs. Yet the authors couched such challenges and difficulties as outcomes of a lack of familiarity rather than structural barriers. If anything, they saw an absence of major barriers in the US, at least in terms of abundance and social mobility. Economic and political privations in postwar Vietnam became the lens for the refugees and immigrants to interpret the US as a land of abundance not merely in terms of food and health but also and especially in terms of educational and occupational opportunities. They might not have realised that many immigrants from China, India, South Korea, the Philippines and other Asian countries had come with expertise and employable skills and, therefore, had a greater advantage. Nonetheless, they believed that they could participate successfully in the capitalist labour market that allowed them a chance to obtain certain employable skills through education or hard work. As described by a contributor from Santa Clara, some of the immigrants who came in the 1990s felt that they had a lot to catch up on because they were ‘late’, at least in comparison to co-ethnics who had left Vietnam earlier. As soon as her family arrived to America, she recalled, ‘We jumped into schooling, not daring to lose any more time’. The motivation to catch up was further reinforced by the pain and anguish about the fall of Saigon. Fifteen years after the event, the writer was still haunted by the ‘image of my father whose hair is allwhite at fifty after years in re-education camp and having endured humiliation of being on the losing side’. Then there was the ‘image of my mother with her widely sorrowful eyes and tears during days of planning for our [unsuccessful] escapes’ (VVNM, 2001, p. 229). After entire families had endured profound suffering, the postwar experience was also distinguished as motivator to attain social mobility availed by American opportunities that the Vietnamese took to be new, many and wide open for the taking. In their minds, Americans might have come from different places and under different circumstances, yet the society was wealthy and economic opportunities were so abundant that only people with moral failings would not have seized them. Out of such an experience of abundance that led to mobility, first-generation Vietnamese Americans have articulated their own notions of appreciation and

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thanksgiving for the US. In their measure, America is the land of opportunities because postwar Vietnam not only failed to provide them with any meaningful opportunities, but it took away all potential opportunities through the socialist system and political discrimination against them. The lack of opportunities was not merely an economic issue; it was also deeply political to Vietnamese refugees and immigrants and their interpretation of the US reflects their gratitude for opportunities that the postwar Vietnamese government could not provide. ‘An’s family sincerely thanks the Government and people of the United States’, wrote a contributor in the third person, ‘to have recovered An’s life from the hands of Death’. Having spent years in re-education camps, this contributor added that ‘were it not for the HO program, An’s corpse might have been underground due to tuberculosis contracted during Communist imprisonment’ (VVNM, 2009, pp. 504–505). From the tone and the context of many essays such as this one, the gratitude is both sincere and deep. Most crucially, essayists related gratitude to a particular notion of freedom that was completely missing in postwar Vietnam. The word ‘freedom’, tự do, indeed appears in many essays and is sometimes capitalised as Tự Do. The essayists sometimes used it to illustrate their agency in actively seeking a solution to the extreme difficulties in postwar Vietnam. ‘Whoever want to be free’, thus declared a contributor in the middle of his essay, ‘they must search it for themselves’ (VVNM, 2005, p. 364). Another began hers by generalizing that there is ‘no need to discuss that Vietnamese in the diaspora like us had left our birth place, bid farewell to many loved ones, crossed over half of the globe to a foreign shore to find the two words Tự Do’ (VVNM, 2000, p. 187). This same author wrote another essay in the form of letters to her mother, who was still living in Vietnam. This mother had endured the death of her husband in re-education camps, among other things, and she had encouraged the author to leave the country along with her family. ‘I still remember clearly’, wrote this author, ‘your words to Uncle Ba, that ‘if my grandchildren could receive a proper education, if my child could be a teacher with a proper wage, if her husband could live free … then I’d never let them leave’ (VVNM, 2001, p. 325). In this juxtaposition, freedom was linked directly to material well-being and social mobility. The immigrants and refugees were further predisposed to this notion of freedom well before they came to the US. If their experience in America proved successful, it was due partially to definitions of success that they had envisioned and conceptualised during the years spent living under deprivation and oppression. In some respects, tự do has become a trope in the immigrant community: a handy term of justification for departure from Vietnam. In other respects, however, it has conveyed a multitude of meanings to the immigrants and refugees

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precisely because some of the meanings derived from their postwar experience. At one level, they have associated freedom with material abundance or, at least, the absence of material deprivation. In one of the shortest entries, Nguyễn C. Vinh spent four paragraphs on his memory of leaving Vietnam shortly before Saigon fell to the Communists. He then shifted to resettlement in Wichita, Kansas, and wrote mostly about his employment as an assembly worker in a beef-cutting factory. The brevity and selectivity of his memoir is notable for the juxtaposition of loss on the one hand and labour in the US on the other hand. For Vinh, freedom meant material abundance and children graduating from college (VVNM, 2000, pp. 251–253). Moreover, Vietnamese immigrants and refugees have viewed freedom as the ability to speak without constraints: more specifically, the opposite of the political prohibition of expression that they had experienced in postwar Vietnam. They have also associated freedom with meritocracy in America. ‘Someone with talent and skill [tài]’, wrote a lab manager in her forties from Houston, ‘would have an opportunity to become a leader’ (VVNM, 2001, p. 41). This point is an indirect denunciation of the pre-Renovation era of postwar Vietnam, where survival and mobility depended on having the approved political background or identity rather than a meritocracy based on skills and abilities. In comparison, this perspective allows for Vietnamese to be free in the US because political identity does not count but hard work does. A contributor from San Diego, for example, came to the US after having spent time in a reeducation camp. Having been hired as an assembler at a factory making golf equipment, he stressed the value of hard work by noting that the employees worked overtime ‘an hour each day’ for six days a week. His team of four assemblers consisted of immigrants, all in their late middle age, from Sudan, Somalia and the Philippines in addition to Vietnam. He described them to be ‘different in race and origin [and] language [and different] personalities that sometimes led to conflict’. He even admitted that ‘we occasionally felt “discriminating” against one another due to national pride, but the discrimination was brief’. More centrally, ‘we cared for one another, helped one another, and cooperated fully to complete the work very well’ (VVNM, 2001, p. 201). The meaning of freedom, then, moves beyond a particularism about one’s background and origin to encompass a universalist belief about America: that the US is good to all people regardless of where they began; that it avails opportunities for freedom to all of its legal residents; and that hard work would overcome all barriers in the end. It should be added that Vietnamese immigrants and refugees have allowed that there is a cost to this freedom: the potential excess of placing oneself above society. As explained by an aforementioned essayist, ‘There are many

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good and beautiful qualities here and only in America’, but also some ‘terrible things such as violence have happened because there is too much freedom and people become extreme and commit certain things that are not seen in other societies’ (VVNM, 2001, p. 41). In the estimation of the Vietnamese, however, it is a price worth paying because such extremity is not common, while this type of freedom would keep them from the impoverishment and deprivation they had experienced. The immigrants and refugees might have derived some of the rhetoric from American tropes on freedom—yet it is the particularism of their postwar experience that shaped and conceptualised the meanings of freedom in their minds.

3

Conclusion

The scholarship on freedom regarding Vietnamese has tended to come from cultural studies and critical refugee studies (Nguyen, 2012; Espiritu, 2014). This scholarship analyses militarised aspects of US imperialism, including its involvement in the Vietnam War, and focuses on American perspectives of freedom vis-à-vis Vietnamese refugees. By focusing on rescuing Vietnamese who fled communism, the US has successfully shifted the focus from its own roles in war-making and creating problems of refugees in the first place. There are valuable insights from this scholarship, including new layers of critique against the American tendency for unilateralism. Scholars have also paid more attention to the place of memories among the refugee generation (Aguilar-San Juan, 2009, pp. 61–90; Bui, 2018, pp. 122–168; Tran, 2012). When it comes to the resettlement of the refugees and immigrants themselves, however, it is crucial to examine Vietnamese voices spoken among themselves because they reveal other layers about their thoughts, ideas, concepts and, of course, experiences. In this case, Vietnamese-language sources such as the Writing On America series offer a different vista about the meanings of freedom. Vietnamese immigrants and refugees did not rely on external sources to conceptualise gratitude and freedom. Rather, they came to define those meanings on the basis of their postwar deprivation. They could be faulted for having left out American involvement in the war that contributed to problems then and later. Yet the effects of postwar policies, especially those before Renovation, were too searing and shocking that they became the neartotal centre of their conceptualisation of freedom. Unwittingly, however, the universalist conceptualisation of freedom among the Vietnamese has lent support to the prevailing notion of ‘model minority’ based on superior moral qualities in affinity with the mainstream white culture.

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Having seized upon economic and educational opportunities in America, Vietnamese immigrants and refugees viewed such opportunities as equal. Believing in American exceptionalism, they have at times failed to see long-standing structural barriers to Black and Brown people. Near the end of an essay, one of the aforementioned contributors, for example, affirms gratitude to the US for its value and nourishment of talents and education ‘without racial and ethnic discrimination’ but, instead, having policies that allow for ‘all to have the right of education’ (VVNM, 2000, p. 52). This perspective focuses on the universalist rhetoric of rights without seeing the much more complex historical particularism regarding Black and Brown people. Their view of freedom is inclusionist in concept, but it becomes exclusionist when Blacks and Latinx are held in comparison to Asian immigrants and their descendants. This subject, however, lies outside the scope of this chapter and it needs research beyond the contents found in the first ten volumes of selected essays.7 For our present purposes, the evidence from Writing On America indicates multiple highly charged and potent effects of postwar experiences among Vietnamese refugees and immigrants regarding their perception of American life. In the studies of their diasporic history, it behooves scholars to be attentive to the transnational linkages, implications and complications between postwar Vietnamese and their first years in America.

Notes 1 The daily was founded by two former South Vietnamese writers, novelist Nhã Ca (b. 1939) and her husband, poet Trần Dạ Từ (b. 1940), who were imprisoned by the Communist government after the war and later migrated to Norway and then the US. Like the largest ethnic Vietnamese newspaper Người Việt [Vietnamese People], it has been based in Westminster, California. 2 Việt Báo subsequently allowed submissions of short stories and quasi-fictionalised compositions. The vast majority of the published entries, however, continued to be essays written in the first person or, sometimes, the third person, typically about a family member, a relative, a friend or an acquaintance. 3 ‘Thông báo Viết về Nước Mỹ’ [‘Announcement: Writing on America’], Việt Báo [Viet Daily], 1 May 2000. The first volume was published in 2001 and, with one exception, there has been one each year: Viết Về Nước Mỹ [Writing on America], ongoing series (Việt Báo Daily News, 2001–2019). Except for 2003–2004, each of the volumes published is listed by a single year. This chapter uses only the first ten volumes, published between 2000 and 2010. They appear in the text as VVNM, followed by the year(s) in the titles. 4 Viết Về Nước Mỹ: Cay Đắng Ngọt Bùi [Writing on America: Bittersweet Stories] (Viet Bao Daily News, 2008); and Writing on America (Việt Báo Daily News, 2010). The daily has continued to publish annual volumes of English translations.

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5 Cao’s essay does not name his father’s exact position in the South Vietnamese military, but it is most likely that he was neither a physician nor an officer and, therefore, was not deemed dangerous enough to merit arrest and incarceration. 6 Chuyện Người Vợ Tù Cải Tạo [Tales of Wives of Reeducation Camp Prisoners], 3 vols. (Viễn Đông, 2004–2005); and Chuyện Người Tù Cải Tạo [Tales of Re-education Camp Prisoners], 2 vols. (Viễn Đông, 2007). 7 The scholarship on racial relations between Vietnamese and non-Asian minorities is very small at this time, and it tends to come from social scientists. Two examples are Hoang (2015) and Tang (2011).

References Aguilar-San Juan, K. (2009). Little Saigons: Staying Vietnamese in America. University of Minnesota Press. Bui, L. T. (2018). Returns of war: South Vietnam and the price of refugee memory. New York University Press. Espiritu, Y. L. (2014). Body counts: The Vietnam War and militarized refuge(es). University of California Press. Hoang, T. (2016). From reeducation camps to little Saigons: Historicizing Vietnamese diasporic anticommunism. Journal of Vietnamese Studies, 11(2), 43–95. Hsu, M. Y. (2015). The good immigrants: How the yellow peril became the model minority. Princeton University Press. Hsu, M. Y., & Wu, E. D. (2015). ‘Smoke and mirrors’: Conditional inclusion, model minorities, and the pre-1965 dismantling of Asian exclusion. Journal of American Ethnic History, 34(4), 43–65. Lee, E. (2016). The making of Asian America: A history. Simon & Schuster. Nguyen, M. T. (2012). The gift of freedom: War, debt, and other refugee passages. Duke University Press. Tran, Q. T. (2012). Remembering the boat people exodus: A tale of two memorials. Journal of Vietnamese Studies, 7(3), 80–121. Viễn Đông. (2004–2005). Chuyện Người Vợ Tù Cải Tạo [Tales of wives of re-education camp prisoners], 3 vols. Viễn Đông. (2007). Chuyện Người Tù Cải Tạo [Tales of re-education camp prisoners], 2 vols. Việt Báo Daily News. (2001–2010). Viết Về Nước Mỹ [Writing on America], 10 vols. Wu, E. D. (2014). The color of success: Asian Americans and the origins of the model minority. Princeton University Press.

CHAPTER 3

Belonging in the UK Vietnamese Community Second-Generation Experiences Tamsin Barber

The UK Vietnamese community has been an under-researched area in the international Vietnamese diaspora. The distinctive experiences and composition of Vietnamese refugees to the UK, and their subsequent reception, dispersal and incorporation, have generally led to a more fragmented and weaker sense of community. Attention to how the community has developed in the UK regarding the subsequent second generation is of particular interest as scholars have identified that this generation often comes under scrutiny regarding questions of identity, belonging and concerns over the ‘nation’ (Anthias, 2002; Hussain & Bagguley, 2005). The notion of second generation is not neutral and tends to be accompanied by assumptions or anxieties over where this group ‘belongs’. King and Christou (2008) argue that ‘the second generation’ is used to refer to an expected trajectory of assimilation into a host society, given the distance of their connections to the ‘homeland’. Others have noted that the notion of generation overlooks the ongoing and often important role of transnational relations and connections between both categories: those who migrated originally and their children (Brah, 1992; Bradley, 1996; Anthias, 2009). This chapter responds to such debates by showing how notions of belonging in the ethnic community are never neat or straightforward. As I have shown elsewhere, belonging in Britain and Vietnam are both equally fraught with complexities (Barber, 2015, 2017). This chapter sheds light on how identity and belonging are shaped and negotiated through co-ethnic relations and experiences within ‘the Vietnamese community’. I explore here how themes of generation, homeland origins, ethnic ties, and networks within the Vietnamese community shape the experience of those born in Britain, and I argue that second-generation participants keenly navigate the differences and divisions within the Vietnamese community in London and actively seek alternative communities within which to construct a sense of ethnic belonging. After a brief discussion of the methodology, the chapter will explore young people’s experiences of ‘the Vietnamese community’ in London to reveal the contested nature of the community and how this is experienced by the second generation. The second part of the chapter explores participants’ alternative © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004513969_004

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communities of belonging through their development of transnational networks and local pan-ethnic belonging. The chapter argues that the notion of ‘personal communities’ of belonging (Wetherell et al., 2007) provides a more useful way to understand young people’s participation in and development of ethnic networks. Such bespoken networks and constructions of community challenge mainstream constructions of homogenous and bounded ethnic communities. This chapter draws upon a broader study of experiences of identity and belonging among young second-generation Vietnamese men and women in London. The research, conducted between July 2005 and February 2009, involved participant observation and in-depth qualitative interviews, focusing upon the participants’ biographical experiences of being Vietnamese in Britain. There were twenty-eight participants between the ages of seventeen and thirty-four, and they came from a range of social contexts—their families originated from both the former North and South Vietnam and from a range of socioeconomic and occupational backgrounds. Most participants identified as Vietnamese, and some identified as Chinese Vietnamese. Their parents had migrated to the UK as refugees after the end of the American War in Vietnam, between the late 1970s and mid-1980s. Their families were dispersed across the UK but eventually gravitated to London, where the majority of the UK Vietnamese population is based. All participants were born or raised in the UK and used English as their primary language. As a white British female researcher, I took on the role of an informed outsider. Notwithstanding the important racialised power imbalances in this research relationship, my outsider status arguably facilitated discussions about community dynamics due to my ethnic distance from the community itself, and participants often reported feeling freer from scrutiny. The findings presented in this chapter do not claim to represent the experience of all second-generation Vietnamese people, but rather they provide a flavour and insight into how some of the young Vietnamese have engaged with notions of ‘community’ as part of their broader narratives and construction of their Vietnamese identity and belonging.

1

Navigating a Fragmented Community: ‘Generation’, Language and Ethnic Networks

The majority of the participants in my study reported having little connection to the broader Vietnamese community in London, and this was accompanied by a sense that they did not belong to the community and/or were not perceived by others as belonging. The differences relating to parents’ social

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origins, such as ethnic origin, the context of migration, ideological position, and social class, were felt to provide the basis for filtering out some parts of the community from others. Earlier studies such as Sims’s (2007) found that a lack of Vietnamese language skills and a lack of access to ethnic networks presented barriers to the second generation in developing a sense of Vietnamese identity. In my data, specific generational issues—including being born and brought up in Britain, parents’ origins and the aforementioned lack of Vietnamese language acquisition and diminished ethnic networks—were factors preventing participants’ acceptance as ‘authentic Vietnamese’ in the London Vietnamese community.

2

Problematising a Cohesive, Homogenous ‘Vietnamese Community’

Access to, and inclusion in, the ‘local Vietnamese community’ was fraught with problems for second-generation Vietnamese. The imagined local community (often described in terms of broader networks or community activities taking place in London) was experienced in marginal ways by participants from both South and North Vietnamese backgrounds. Rachel, a northern Vietnamese participant, explained how her distance from the local Vietnamese community was shaped through negative perceptions and suspicion of the northern Vietnamese population, which led to a questioning of her belonging: I don’t feel associated to it that much. I wouldn’t mind being part of it more and having a role in like the Vietnamese community but then you do feel a lot of the time that like people don’t like … they disregard some things you do. Like, if you do something for the Vietnamese community, a lot of people thought ‘Oh it is just a scam’ or something like that, or ‘It is just people trying to make money’ sort of thing. (Rachel, age twenty-four, northern Vietnamese, East London) Although Rachel expressed a desire to have a ‘role in the Vietnamese community’, she found it difficult to participate as she did not feel fully accepted by other members, here notably members of the first generation. The younger generation (and more recent migrants from Vietnam) were often viewed with suspicion, and participants often perceived this as being a result of new waves of economic migration from Vietnam that have been linked to criminality (Silverstone & Savage, 2010). For Rachel, a key aspect of this was related to not being embedded in the community due to her parents’ limited connections, an aspect she felt was central to being accepted into Vietnamese community

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networks. The role of generational consent or approval featured strongly in accounts of acceptance into the London community by the younger generation. By contrast, other participants whose parents had strong networks within the Vietnamese community and who were more embedded within their parents’ networks (e.g., Claire, Hanh, Quoc, Anh) did not automatically have a more positive sense of belonging. Instead, the close community ties were often experienced as oppressive due to the small and tight-knit configurations these entailed. The issue of internal community policing was a particular concern and participants often described carefully monitoring their social conduct and behaviour (Paul, Khanh, Matthew, Jenny, Mary). This aspect was described by both Jenny and Paul, northern Vietnamese participants brought up in a densely populated Vietnamese neighbourhood in South East London: Because it is a really small community, even in the UK you will know someone in Manchester, who will know someone else in Newcastle, and you all seem to congregate in the same sorts of places. One day there was a tipping point and I thought I can’t do this anymore you know … I’d rather not go to these places and have to deal with these types of people anymore. So in a way I wanted to distance myself from the Vietnamese and Chinese community because there was too much drugs going on, there was too much destruction. (Jenny, age twenty-nine, magazine editor, northern Vietnamese, North London) [T]he thing about the community is that they have a really strong effect on your lives, through rumours and that … that is why me and my friends, when we go out, we use false names. So let’s just say whatever you do, whatever you say, whatever they see you do, it goes around. For example, me smoking weed down by the river, me hanging around with people that don’t look good … and it all comes around, and then you have got your mum and your sister coming down on you like a ton of bricks, so if you ask who I am—‘my name is Paul’, you don’t need to know who I am. (Paul, age twenty-eight, IT executive, northern Vietnamese, North London) These two extracts illustrate how being too embedded within a community can lead to a negative sense of belonging. Jenny described how her engagement with the Vietnamese community had a detrimental impact on her life, with close-knit community networks leading to various forms of social pressure to conform in order to belong. This eventually led Jenny to move away from that area of London altogether, and she now lives in an area where she has little contact with Vietnamese people.

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Likewise, Paul, who was also brought up in a densely populated Vietnamese neighbourhood in East London, described feeling under surveillance by the community, forcing him to monitor his social interactions with other Vietnamese. Paul’s comment is usefully understood within the broader context of his narrative, in which he and his mother had moved from East to West London to avoid negative social attention from the community. Paul’s mother has depression, so, fearful of negative social perceptions due to the stigma attached to mental illness in the Vietnamese community, they moved out of the area. Both experiences illustrate how, for the second generation, community cannot be understood as consensual, homogenous, necessary or positive. Depending on their position within the community axis, the area they lived in, and their encounters, participants often experienced these networks in negative ways, leading them to actively choose to opt out of engaging with the community altogether. The socioeconomic and neighbourhood dimensions of the community in East London were key to these perceptions and were based on a fear of youth delinquency.

3

‘North/South’ Vietnamese Divisions

‘North/South’ differences are a key axis of division across the broader Vietnamese community (Barber, 2020). Participants from southern Vietnamese families often described a greater sense of social distance from North Vietnamese community members, who make up the majority of the British Vietnamese population. This social distance was understood by participants as based upon ideological and cultural differences which shaped personal ties and social networks. Hai, a southern Vietnamese male participant, compared North/South divisions in his experience of Vietnamese communities in London and Little Saigon in Orange County, California: I went to America recently with my father and that was a big reunion [of South Vietnamese from Vietnam] they were asking, ‘So how is life like in London?’ and I would say ‘It is really good, I love London’, but I would say ‘The Vietnamese community in London is not the same as it is in America’ … the Vietnamese community generally in Orange County is mostly made up of people from the South [of Vietnam], it just happens to be that way. I think it is a different mentality as well, I find people in London … not everyone, but generally, I think it is a different taste, different habits, different mentality and they are not as nice to people [as] I found in Orange County. Yes, because most of them from the North [of

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Vietnam] were influenced by the government more, and this is what my dad as well believes, that the government has in a way brainwashed people and affected their mentality. So it is just like China, it has created a certain type of people that have learnt to be protective, that have learnt to be a bit distrustful, you know? (Hai, male, age twenty-eight, law student, southern Vietnamese) Children of the South Vietnamese in Britain, like Hai, generally had a more acute awareness of North/South differences in comparison to northern Vietnamese participants. This can be explained in part due to the smaller numbers of refugees from the southern Vietnamese population and different forms of political participation. Hai’s narrative is particularly noteworthy as his father had been an active political dissident of the Vietnamese Communist regime for many years and, as a result, the family was ostracised by the British northern Vietnamese community. North/South divisions also presented a further challenge to a sense of ethnic identity and belonging among participants from southern Vietnamese families based on their numerically more marginal presence in the British Vietnamese community. This can be seen in Binh’s case: [O]ne issue I slightly had with some North Vietnamese people was they didn’t sort of treat me as being Vietnamese at all, they just treated me as being British and just there, so … it was not as if there was anything really rude in the way that they were doing it, but I was slightly annoyed about the way they were doing it. The guys from North Vietnam, they didn’t have any understanding about how the South Vietnamese people came here … like they had to leave Vietnam, and for me to get this level of education we had to move and so therefore I’d lost touch with my Vietnamese culture. South Vietnamese people tend to be much more sympathetic about that, whereas the North Vietnamese, they have access to, like, money, they have, I guess, power as well to be able to send their kids to other countries. So, it is nothing explicit, it is more like saying ‘Oh you’re British’ and sort of comments like that and ‘Oh you are not Vietnamese at all’. (Binh, female, age nineteen, medical student, southern Vietnamese, South London) Markers of ethnic authenticities, such as being able to demonstrate firsthand connections with Vietnam and demonstrating particular forms of cultural knowledge, were often taken as indicators of belonging. For Binh, a loss of ‘cultural roots’ and relations with Vietnam excluded her from being seen as Vietnamese within these contexts. This is related to wider perceptions by

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northern Vietnamese people about southern Vietnamese as political exiles from the homeland. Having not developed a strong sense of identity as a Vietnamese person and having had few Vietnamese friends when she was younger, the comments from northern Vietnamese people were experienced by Binh as particularly exclusionary because they came from the majority group of the British Vietnamese population who act as ‘cultural arbiters’ of Vietnamese authenticity. Exclusion from the local (majority northern) Vietnamese community was also experienced by southern Vietnamese participants—the role and prevalence of northern Vietnamese more vibrant social and business networks felt more difficult to penetrate for southern outsiders. Hoa, a young second-generation Vietnamese woman who worked for a Vietnamese community organisation, emphasised the differential access to Vietnamese business and social networks among northern and southern Vietnamese: They [northern Vietnamese] have friends, relatives, it is their business they have a lot of friends, relatives and, um, a lot of friends helping around. But in the South [Vietnamese community], hardly any. They [northern Vietnamese] know people through people and they have a lot of relatives here, a lot of cousins and the cousin knows friends of friends, of friends and more friends so they are very good in communication. Yes, very good! That is why they will have a good network! You know, [they] are helping around each other, and they will stand up for each other. But we don’t have that. (Hoa, age twenty-five, community worker, southern Vietnamese, South East London) Extended family and non-kin networks, including developing close friendships with other Vietnamese, were deemed an important feature of ‘getting by’ and for support. Here, the majority of southern Vietnamese participants had limited contact with other Vietnamese people in their younger years, and they characterised this as the source of their current cultural isolation. A further dimension of Vietnamese community fragmentation was experienced in relation to ethnic background. The same participant, Hoa, described feeling excluded in social interactions and friendships in the community due to her ethnic Chinese Vietnamese heritage. Hoa’s narrative illustrates how multiple intersections of difference can render inclusion in the Vietnamese community problematic: [B]ecause I wasn’t born in Vietnam but because my great-grandparents are Chinese, they are Chinese, so they took me as Chinese Vietnamese,

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so, you know, ‘Okay, so you are different’, so there is no long relationship or like communication there … you just have that natural instinct, you just have this view and you can sense it. Here, being ethnic Chinese Vietnamese and from South Vietnam seemed to affect Hoa’s ability to be accepted by either group or to find a place where she could belong. She was seemingly caught in a situation where she could not fit in as Vietnamese both ethnically and culturally. These ethnic differences were further perpetuated by her experience of not feeling accepted within the proximate British Chinese community: [T]here is a barrier between me and them and Vietnamese, like me, Hong Kong people and Vietnamese people, even though we talk, really friendly, and we smile and we have a laugh and some … but a different side of me feels like I just can’t blend in with them, there is always a barrier because they see that even though you are Oriental, but you are still not from my original country, you see? So, you know, there is a stop there. The incompatibility in cultural and homeland origins across the British Hong Kong Chinese and the northern Vietnamese communities demonstrates the complexity of belonging based upon networks and cultural, nationalregional and ethnic difference. The notion of ‘pure’ origins for full membership is important, as while these cultures might be considered similar in a British context due to regional proximity, a clear distinction can be drawn between subjective ethnic identifications and external identification and inclusion within ‘the community’.

4

Intergenerational Issues

Generational differences were another important dimension for young people to navigate in the local Vietnamese community. Intergenerational issues were particularly prevalent among the children of northern Vietnamese parents, who had more contact with the community and first-generation Vietnamese. These young people often recounted a sense of exclusion because they were born in Britain and had little connection to Vietnam, such as limited access to the cultural heritage and language. The first generation was often seen as defining the cultural boundaries of community, and knowledge of the Vietnamese language was part of this. Claims of belonging and Vietnameseness were challenged based on markers of authenticity, such as their knowledge of

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the language, but also on their appearance as young ‘Westernised’ Vietnamese people. This aspect was illustrated by participants in their involvement in official community events and specifically Vietnamese arenas, such as Karen’s experience as a contestant in the Miss Vietnam UK beauty pageant: [I]n the morning the judges had to speak to us one by one and they kept asking me, ‘Do you speak Vietnamese?’ and I was like, ‘No!’ and it was like they were saying like ‘You haven’t got a chance if you don’t speak Vietnamese!’ It was like they had decided it already, before the show. (Karen, age nineteen, beauty therapist, northern Vietnamese, South London) Notions of language, beauty and gender are often central in processes of ethnic community-making. For example, Fortier’s (1998) work showed how the role of beauty pageants was central in the Italian diaspora, where gendered representations of culture and ethnic community are emphasised. The Miss Vietnam UK beauty pageant event, organised by first-generation members and funded by successful British Vietnamese businesses, clearly foregrounded specific versions of Vietnameseness, where certain attributes, such as the ability to speak and understand the language, were prioritised as criteria of Vietnamese authenticity, purity and beauty. Karen’s experiences positioned her as inauthentic because she did not speak Vietnamese. Although this was something Karen participated in to ‘find out more’ about the community, her experience made her realise that she could not be perceived as ‘truly’ Vietnamese due to her lack of Vietnamese language knowledge. A similar form of exclusion was experienced concerning actual and perceived ethnic differences. Jason, who has a mixed heritage—an English mother and Vietnamese father (from North Vietnam)—recounted a time when he was actively excluded from the Vietnamese community due to his mixed background. He described attending a large Tết party (celebrating the Vietnamese lunar new year), organised by the local Vietnamese community, where all the children had to queue up to receive their presents (as it is traditional to give out money and presents during Tết), but when he arrived at the front of the queue, they refused to give him and his sister a present because they were not considered Vietnamese. He reflected: [W]e were only little children, and they wouldn’t give us the present because we were only half Vietnamese. Thinking about it now, that is a really nasty thing to do to little children and that is why I don’t mix with them now. It is like we are not proper Vietnamese young people. (Jason, age nineteen, student, South Vietnamese)

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Jason’s experience at this event decisively impacted the way he understood himself as a mixed-heritage Vietnamese person and has affected his relationship with the Vietnamese community ever since. He now tends to avoid Vietnamese gatherings and events for fear of his ethnic authenticity being challenged and, as a result, Jason feels he cannot properly belong as Vietnamese. Perceptions of ethnic authenticity have also led to experiences of exclusion from the community based upon expectations around performances of ‘authenticity’ articulated by the first generation. Here, self-presentation and appearance were often linked to presumed knowledge of the Vietnamese language. Kieu, an ethnic Vietnamese participant, explained how her ethnic identity was often questioned by other Vietnamese (often first generation or new migrants) due to her Western sense of style and appearance: The other day when I was in a Vietnamese supermarket, there were two men talking in Vietnamese about me, not realising that I was Vietnamese. They were saying, ‘Oh look at that girl, she looks really British’ and then I just turned around and said, ‘Do you know I speak Vietnamese?’ and they said ‘Ah, I am really sorry!’ But they would always think I am half Vietnamese, half English … I don’t know why! It makes me feel a little bit isolated, like I don’t really fit in. (Kieu, South Vietnamese, East London) Kieu understood her experiences of being misread as being due to her Westernised clothes and fashion sense, which was strongly influenced by her main group of friends, who are English. The above encounter took place in a significant East London Vietnamese trading area, where Kieu had expected her Vietnamese identity to be recognisable. These experiences often led her to feel that she did not belong as Vietnamese and to avoid Vietnamese areas for fear of further judgment. However, in comparison to Karen and Jason, who felt doubly excluded due to their lack of a fluent command of the Vietnamese language, Kieu’s Vietnamese language skills allowed her to gain more power in these encounters, as registered by the apologies of the Vietnamese men in question. The connection between language command, ethnic authenticity and the ability to belong to the Vietnamese community was further highlighted by Jenny as both a barrier and an opportunity to earn acceptance: Language is a big thing to me because I probably feel that my language is not good enough to converse with a lot of people and that is probably one of the reasons why I am not so integrated into the community, because I can’t converse with them enough. So, once that is sorted, I will probably be a lot more confident and that will change, I am sure it will change. You

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know, I do want to do a lot and if I do go to Vietnam then my language will pick up and I hope to do something positive for the community. The language barrier was felt keenly by Jenny as a key reason for her lack of engagement and participation in ‘the Vietnamese community’; this was evidenced by the fact that she planned to return to Vietnam to learn Vietnamese, so she could re-engage with her background and contribute to the community. This aspiration to return was a common thread among the second-generation Vietnamese in London and was often used as a way to solidify a sense of ethnic belonging and ethnic authenticity (see Barber, 2017). Return migration to Vietnam from the broader international diaspora has increased in recent years (Chan & Tran, 2011; Chan, 2013; Thai, 2014; Hoang, 2015).

5

Imagining Alternative Communities: New Spaces of Belonging in the Vietnamese Diaspora

Due to the barriers to community engagement experienced at the local level, as illustrated so far in this chapter, Vietnamese participants often pursued a desire to build a sense of ethnic belonging and explore their cultural heritage through other channels. This was achieved in different ways by participants— for example, among southern Vietnamese participants, this often meant making links with co-ethnics from other countries in the international Vietnamese diaspora. Among northern Vietnamese participants, activities such as sending remittances, participating in ethnic niche economy networks in the international diaspora and forming trans-ethnic spaces of belonging in London were common. Women from both southern and northern Vietnamese families seemed to engage more actively in transnational activities, while it was more common for male participants to develop more local and pan-ethnic belongings and orientations as an alternative to the imagined ‘local Vietnamese community’ discussed above.

6

Ethnic Belonging in the Transnational Diaspora

Transnational southern Vietnamese networks are developed through a myriad of international community organisations (Carruthers, 2008). In the UK, these networks were often linked to the more professional and highly educated southern Vietnamese diasporic networks and offered a place for exchanges of ideas and a sharing of social and professional networks and personal interests in addition

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to a sense of belonging to a broader community beyond national boundaries. Hanh explained her reasons for participating in these networks as follows: [W]hen you go to these things you meet friends and you keep in constant touch with them, it is great because it is, um, it is a good way to go on holiday as well because I’ve got contacts now in Australia, America, France … it is really nice to know that when you travel all over the world there is always someone you can call on and you know that. … And although we don’t see each other often, maybe once a year or every two years, when we meet up it is always instantaneous, the bonding is really nice … because you know that you have got a little amount of time to spend together and it is quality time, so it is really good! (Hanh, female, age thirty-four, banker, southern Vietnamese) The specificities of the Vietnamese Overseas Student Association and Hanh’s background were important for a sense of belonging with ‘like-minded’ Vietnamese. As Hanh explained, some of the similarities and commonalities she felt that she shared with other members were that they came from ‘similar backgrounds’, they were more ‘family-oriented, education-oriented’, and that their ‘goals and … aims in life [are] very similar’. These were characteristics she felt she did not share with other Vietnamese in Britain. Although Hanh lived in an area highly populated by Vietnamese people, she did not mix with the Vietnamese in her area as they were largely northern Vietnamese and her parents were from the South. This demonstrates the way that transnational networks are still largely based on North/South origins but offer a larger and more supportive community than local ones. Hanh explained that while the majority of people are from South or Central Vietnam, she didn’t feel it is a ‘deliberate attempt’ to exclude the northerners, but the creation of separate networks for northern and southern Vietnamese ‘just happens that way’. For Hanh, participation in this organisation provided a strong channel to connect with others and explore her Vietnamese heritage, through attending conferences and keeping up to date with the events and news in other communities abroad. For participants like Hanh, relations with the international diaspora seemed to be an integral part of maintaining a meaningful sense of Vietnamese-ness understood as membership to a community of ‘like-minded’ others, and these events and networks provided a strong sense of connection with other Vietnamese and a Vietnamese identity. Outside of the ‘local’ Vietnamese community, second-generation southern Vietnamese sometimes participated in international Vietnamese student organisations at British universities. This was illustrated by Binh’s finding new

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friends at her university who consisted of Vietnamese students from the overseas diaspora, including the US, France, Germany, Poland and Vietnam. For Binh, this sense of trans-local enculturation provided her with a new opportunity to explore Vietnamese culture. For the first time, she was able to learn more about Vietnam, Vietnamese culture and language1 without experiencing exclusion based on British community differences. Such examples provide evidence of the increasingly fluid links between the diaspora and the ethnic community as argued by Carruthers (2013). What is notable here is Binh’s greater sense of acceptance among the overseas Vietnamese community regardless of national host-country differences. This could be explained by the greater social class proximity shared by university students. A similar engagement in the transnational diaspora was illustrated by Claire, who had used her family networks to visit an uncle in the US with the aim of finding work and experiencing life in the larger Vietnamese community in Orange County, California. Her trip represented a kind of ‘rite of passage’ to develop her awareness and sense of Vietnamese heritage. Claire explained the role of her trips to the US in terms of developing a stronger ethnic network and a sense of belonging, but they were also for strategic reasons—to develop her employment opportunities: It is much easier to find a job over there because not only does the family know the lawyer or something personally, or something, it is much easier because, okay, there is a big Vietnamese community … you can help out there—over here, um, the people do tend to look a lot for Vietnamese lawyers and doctors, you know, for certain issues and things or paperwork and certain family stuff, you know, going on they would prefer telling a Vietnamese than an English person or someone, um, English, wouldn’t really understand where they were coming from. (Claire, age twenty-one, law student, southern Vietnamese) Patterns of transnational engagement also revealed the distinctiveness of North/South Vietnamese relations. While northern Vietnamese participants drew upon social and business networks, those from the south drew upon intellectual and ideological networks in the diaspora. Among southern Vietnamese participants, it was notable that their engagement in transnational Vietnamese networks enabled them to develop a stronger sense of Vietnamese diasporic consciousness and belonging, which they described as missing in the UK. However, there was some evidence that local UK North Vietnamese business networks were themselves also enabling transnational networks in the diaspora. For example, Mary (northern Vietnamese) drew upon transatlantic

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networks through the Vietnamese nail industry to forward her own professional development in Britain: That is why I visited my friends in America, because nails are big in America, it’s everywhere, and that is why nails came over here because everyone [Vietnamese is] very good. It’s just for a short time, I’ve been doing it … and that is why people say ‘Oh Tina Nails … is such a good place to work’ … so I wanted to do it and work with the public and so on. Both Claire (southern Vietnamese) and Mary (northern Vietnamese) talked about their experiences of visiting the Vietnamese communities in California and New Orleans. Both participants took trips for work-related reasons, but while Mary visited her cousins who work in the US nail industry, Claire aimed to gain legal training to assist Vietnamese migrants in dealing with mainstream institutions and to experience another community. Participants of southern Vietnamese origin tended to build stronger diasporic networks with the US community due to their access to the long active political community and preexisting South Vietnamese diaspora in America which had formed the first refugee community of well-educated elites and scholars (Vo, 2000; Pham, 2003).

7

Remittances and the Transnational Community

Transnational practices such as raising money for charities in Vietnam and sending remittances were also practices undertaken by second-generation participants and were seen as an important way to participate in ‘the community’ both locally and in Vietnam. Such activities were engaged in by young people to make sense of, and render more meaningful, their participation in the community in both Vietnam and Britain: A group of friends like myself and some other friends, we try to hold charity events once a year to try to raise money … half would go to Vietnamese orphanages in Vietnam to kids who don’t have any parents, and the other half would go to an English charity, so, for instance, we have supported multiple sclerosis and NSPCC, and we have supported cancer research … they tend to be very successful events because you know it is once a year, it is a disco, we also bring in entertainment in terms of, like, salsa dancers or something like that as a performance, and we’d charge people something like £10–£15 for entry and we’d sometimes have like 250, sometimes 300, sometimes 400 people. So that is how I kind of mix with other

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Vietnamese people as well, um, so I’d say in terms of the community, it is not that strong but a group of us do hang around together and sometimes have events and things like that. (Hanh) Sometimes for charities we have like in the Vietnamese churches and stuff, we put money in, you know, knowing that it is going to go back to Vietnam. So even though we know that it is not going to go back to our families in particular, we know that we are still helping our kind of people back in Vietnam. Like, have you heard about the typhoon that they have just had? [One of the] places that was most strongly hit was actually the place my parents were from, which was called Ben Tre. That was hit the most and quite a lot of buildings collapsed and quite a lot of people [died] as well, so … so that is the thing, so we still help out for the community because it is still our parents’ homeland, our parents’ village, basically. (Claire) Hanh and Claire explained how engaging in these activities enabled them to relate to the community in Vietnam and feel much more part of things at a local level. For Hanh, this provided a way of relating to and meeting local Vietnamese people, while for Claire, remitting helped her connect to the homeland and strengthen parental links. Claire’s use of the terms ‘our people’ and ‘our homeland’ indicates a claim to belong in the British Vietnamese community through articulating this sense of connection. Sending remittances as well as ‘helping family out’ has been an important transnational practice among the Vietnamese in the US, providing both a source of pride as well as, more broadly, an indicator of personal success and status, particularly among men (Thai, 2014). A similar trend was also observed among second-generation Vietnamese, as exemplified in Paul’s narrative: I bought them a house, it is like a four-bedroom house, it is near the city centre not too far, yeah, it is quite cheap over there actually. Four thousand US, that is £2,000 UK pounds—it goes a long way over there. That is what everyone does now, all the Chinese and Vietnamese people over here, they send their money back home so that is what we all do … it is normal … everyone does it. If you have got relatives living in foreign countries, yeah, that kind of helps. Here, being able to ‘buy his relatives a house’ strengthened Paul’s sense of being part of a transnational personal community. However, while this practice was seen here as ‘normal’, not all participants enjoyed this sense of connection and some perceived this sort of obligation to remit as a form of exploitation, particularly as the cost of living in Britain is so high. They complained that relatives

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in Vietnam tended to view them as overly privileged and having an easier life without fully understanding their situation in Britain. These were largely people who had less connection with Vietnam and who visited it less often.

8

Pan-Ethnic ‘Oriental’ Belonging in the Local Community

In contrast to the participants discussed so far in this chapter, other participants (predominantly men from northern Vietnamese families), instead mix socially with other young Vietnamese and neighbouring East and Southeast Asian ethnic peers in their local areas. These networks and social groups were referred to as an ‘Oriental scene’, as a place or community where they felt a sense of belonging and inclusion. The emergence of a local pan-ethnic Oriental1 community offered a space in which they regularly engaged socially, one in which they could belong and feel at home. The ‘Oriental scene’ encompassed a range of gatherings, from organised social events involving mainly Vietnamese and Chinese, but also other East Asian young people, to the emergence of an ‘Oriental’ club scene (see Yeh, 2014). Participants who attended these events described a sense of community and shared collective identity or common bond: [I]f you are in London and you are Oriental, I think the majority of people do know places to go for Chinese nights, so everyone gathers around [laughs], everybody knows everybody, so it is a more sociable gathering than going to a club or … where there is mixed people … because in those nights you have something in common, you have a common bond. (Xuan, age twenty-two, male, graphic designer, northern Vietnamese) It is just, like, when I see another Oriental person, I just feel like at home. It is not like I will get on better with them than anyone else, but it’s just, like, we will come from the same background. Like, for example, if I am out and I walk past a place with Oriental people in there, I will just be really excited by it and want to go there. (Thi, age twenty-five, designer, Chinese Vietnamese, southern Vietnamese) These narratives describe a relatively open sense of identification, where one’s background is more loosely understood as a mixture of origins from ‘Oriental’ backgrounds deriving from East Asia, rather than relating specifically to Vietnam. A sense of social inclusion seems to be prioritised over more narrow constructions of ethnic identification or sameness. In explaining a sense of belonging and identification with the ‘Oriental community’, Thi distinguished between a form of place-based belonging and personal identification. While

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he did not necessarily identify personally with all other Orientals, being in an ‘Oriental place’ provided him with a sense of belonging as being part of the same group where he is accepted and feels at ease. The same sense of belonging, safety, home and acceptance was also drawn in relation to familial analogies in the following narratives: Oriental, it is like a family, isn’t it! It is like a family. I’ve got a good group of friends, I’ve known a few of them for years but the rest of them, I have known for 8 or 9 years. You know, it’s the way that we treat each other … as if we are family. We treat each other with so much respect but with English people right it is a bit weird, that sense of family is not there. They need to get over that barrier where, you know, skin colour doesn’t matter anymore, it’s who you are. (Luke, age twenty-four, finance executive, southern Vietnamese) [W]hen we go, like, to Oriental clubs, it feels [like] home, it feels more at home, like if I compare that to raves with Black people, I feel more at home, I feel more relaxed, like … I don’t have to look around and see who is looking—I am just myself. I’m here to have a good time. Whereas when I am there [Black raves] I am like, ‘I want a good time’, but I am wary so, like, yeah! So it feels more at home, so I am happy. (David, age nineteen, drama student, northern Vietnamese, East London) The broader, pan-ethnic ‘Oriental’ identity represented a place to feel comfortable and safe from the threat of racism. While ‘Oriental’ friendship groups are portrayed as family and inclusively structured around respectful treatment, English friendships are, in sharp contrast, structured around racist exclusion. A similar finding was also observed among Vietnamese youth in California (Vigil et al., 2004). In addition to constructions of the ‘Oriental scene’ as ‘home’, ‘belonging’, and ‘family’, young people also engaged with the notion of Oriental as an identity category into which they invested their own meaning and cultivated a sense of belonging.

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Conclusion

This chapter has problematised the notion of a ‘cohesive’ or homogenous community among the UK Vietnamese in London. For this group, the local Vietnamese community is experienced as internally divided and at times exclusionary, according to predominant perceptions of belonging and authenticity.

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Community configurations are still strongly shaped by parents’ migratory origins. Participants from North and South Vietnamese backgrounds still draw upon these respective networks rather than local ones, which do not always best represent their values, experiences and identities. Participants’ constructions of the community also differ significantly according to these networks, with southerners being more oriented towards the international diaspora and northerners toward Vietnam and the UK. Neighbourhood was also another important factor shaping the community, as those living in more concentrated Vietnamese areas were more able to construct a sense of pan-ethnic local community compared to those from more sparsely populated Vietnamese areas who look to the diaspora to provide a sense of community and ethnic belonging. Generational relations were central to second-generation members’ sense of inclusion and exclusion from the Vietnamese community, as they sometimes enabled access to ethnic networks and at other times precluded it due to divergent perceptions of Vietnamese authenticity. In contesting first-generation versions of Vietnamese-ness and community, second-generation participants have arguably created their own personal communities of belonging via cultivating ethnic ties through bespoken networks. The notion of the ‘imagined community’ is deemed important for individuals as a symbolic marker of their recognition in wider society and in terms of personal identity. A sense of ethnic and personal belonging captures the notion of ‘community’ experienced by second-generation Vietnamese in London. Ethnic identification and ethnic belonging are constructed in the transnational diaspora, the homeland, and within locally specific pan-ethnic second-generation groups. These imagined communities enable more fluid and complex negotiations of identity, belonging and authenticity among second-generation Vietnamese which bypass narrowly designated notions of Vietnamese-ness.

Acknowledgements Elements of this argument were first explored in Oriental Identities in SuperDiverse Britain: Young Vietnamese in London (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). Reproduced with thanks. I would also like to thank the editors of this volume, Anna Vu and Vic Satzewich, for their support and enthusiasm for this project.

Note 1 While the term ‘Oriental’ has strongly colonial and racist connotations, by comparison to the US, where there has been a more politicised rejection of the term by the American Asian

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References Anthias, F. (2002). Where do I belong? Narrating collective identity and translocational positionality. Ethnicities, 2(4), 491–514. Anthias, F. (2009). Translocational belonging, identity and generation: Questions and problems in migration and ethnic studies. Finnish Journal of Ethnicity and Migration, 4(1), 6–16. Barber, T. (2015). Oriental identities in super-diverse Britain: Young Vietnamese in London. Palgrave Macmillan. Barber, T. (2017). Achieving ethnic authenticity through ‘return’ visits to Vietnam: Paradoxes of class and gender among the British-born Vietnamese. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 43(6), 1–18. Barber, T. (2020). Differentiated embedding among the Vietnamese refugees in London and the UK: Fragmentation, complexity, and ‘in/visibility’. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2020.1724414 Bradley, H. (1996). Fractured identities: Changing patterns of inequality. Polity Press. Brah, A. (1992). Difference, diversity, differentiation. In J. Donald & A. Rattansi (Eds.), Race culture and difference (pp. 126–145). Sage. Carruthers, A. (2008). Saigon from the diaspora. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 29, 68–86. Carruthers, A. (2013). National multiculturalism, transnational identities. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 34(2), 214–228. Chan, Y. W. (2013). Hybrid diaspora and identity-laundering: A study of the return overseas Chinese Vietnamese in Vietnam. Asian Ethnicity, 14(4), 525–541. Chan, Y. W., & Tran, T. L. T. (2011). Recycling migration and changing nationalisms: Vietnamese return diaspora and reconstruction of the Vietnamese nationhood. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 37(7), 1101–1117. Fortier, A. M. (1998). Calling on Giovanni: Interrogating the nation through diasporic imaginations. International Journal of Canadian Studies, 18. Reprinted in P. Kennedy & V. Roudometrof (Eds.), Communities across borders. New immigrants and transnational cultures (pp. 103–115). Routledge. Hoang, K. K. (2015). Dealing in desire: Asian ascendancy, western decline, and the hidden currencies of global sex work. University of California Press. Hussain, Y., & Bagguley, P. (2005). Citizenship, ethnicity and identity: British Pakistanis after the 2001 ‘riots’. Sociology, 39(3), 407–425.

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King, R., & Christou, A. (2008). Cultural geographies of diaspora, migration and transnationalism: Perspectives from the study of second generation ‘returnees’. Diasporas, Migration, Identities Programme, Working Paper No. 6. Pham, V. (2003). Antedating and anchoring Vietnamese America: Toward a Vietnamese American historiography. Amerasia Journal, 29, 1. Silverstone, D., & Savage, S. (2010). Farmers, factories and funds: Organised crime and illicit drugs cultivation within the British Vietnamese community. Global Crime, 11(1), 16–33. Sims, J. (2007). The Vietnamese community in Great Britain: Thirty years on a Runnymede community study. Runnymede. Thai, H. C. (2014). Insufficient funds: The culture of money in low-wage transnational families. Stanford University Press. Vigil, J. D., Yun, S. C., & Cheng, J. (2004). A shortcut to the American dream? Vietnamese youth gangs in Little Saigon. In J. Lee & M. Zhou (Eds.), Asian American youth: Culture, identity and ethnicity (pp. 207–220). Routledge. Vo, L. T. (2000). The Vietnamese American experience: From dispersion to the development of post-refugee communities. In J. Y. W. S Wu & M. Song (Eds.), Asian American studies: A reader (pp. 290–305). Rutgers University Press. Wetherell, M., Lafleche, M., & Berkley, R. (Eds.). (2007). Identity, ethnic diversity and community cohesion. Sage. Yeh, D. (2014). Contesting the ‘model minority’: Racialization, youth culture and ‘British Chinese/oriental’ nights. Journal of Ethnic and Racial Studies. doi:10.1080/ 01419870.2014.859288

CHAPTER 4

The Politics of Remembering Intergenerational Tensions in the Vietnamese Diaspora Anna Vu

1

Introduction

In the 2020 American Voter Survey conducted by APIA (the Association of Asian and Pacific Islanders)—an organisation that aims to promote the electoral and civic participation of Asian and Pacific Islander Americans—it was found that Joe Biden was strongly favoured among all groups being surveyed, except for Vietnamese Americans, whose support for Donald Trump was substantially higher than for Biden (48% versus 36%) (APIA Vote, 2020). In order for us to understand this support for Trump, which was largely based on his anti-China/anti-communist stance, it is necessary to look back at some controversies within the Vietnamese diaspora community. These include conflict around the South Vietnamese flag, which is a cherished symbol for many Vietnamese in the diaspora. At the same time, some members do not have the same attachment to such collective representation and even try to display the current government’s red flag. As we shall see, this has triggered first amendment legal issues as well as disagreements with respect to the ‘proper’ form of artistic expression. These controversies will be detailed throughout the chapter. My aim in this chapter is to examine the understandable need to commemorate alongside the equally necessary need for adaptation, action and a kind of forgetting, which is vital to one’s life in a new country. The dichotomy involved in both commemorating and forgetting one’s past creates ambiguity and discomfort. I have chosen to focus on American and Canadian intellectuals of Vietnamese descent because the role of intellectuals is, by definition, shot through with ambiguity. Intellectuals, whether they are writers of fiction, journalists or academics, inevitably are in a dual position—they are part of their community and at the same time, they are outside of it. They are eternal observers. In other words, intellectuals continually live their lives in a state of self-critique and self-consciousness, which extends to a critique of their own society. Karl Mannheim observed this in European intellectuals in Ideology and Utopia (Mannheim, 1936), but I would argue that the same can be said of Vietnamese intellectuals in the diaspora. This means they are often at odds © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004513969_005

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with the overarching narrative which emphasises that commemoration is necessary and morally right, that the old flag is to be cherished and there should be no conversation around any of this, much less a heated argument. However, as we shall see, real life does not always play out that way. Data for this study came from the research carried out for my doctoral work (Vu, 2015). Between 2012 and 2013, I conducted narrative interviewing of thirty-two Vietnamese American and Vietnamese Canadian intellectuals; they include academics, journalists and writers, and community leaders and activists. Some of my respondents were born in North America, but many of them came over as children, the so-called 1.5 generation, and received their education in the West. This is important to note because it creates a dual perspective for the interviewees. They are North Americans who represent the younger, 1.5- and second-generation Vietnamese, but they are also very aware of Vietnamese elders’ experiences and are deeply affected by their family histories. To understand the present, we must consider the past.

2

First Amendment Versus Memory of War

In 1999, the Vietnamese diaspora community in Southern California staged what is considered to be the largest protest in Little Saigon’s history. For fiftyfour days and nights, the community demonstrated, held candlelight vigils, prayed and delivered speeches and cultural performances. This protest was triggered when the owner of Hi-Tek Video, Tran Van Truong, put up a poster of Ho Chi Minh and the Communist red flag on the wall of his shop. For many Vietnamese in the diaspora, these images evoked the strongest and most raw emotions which they feel toward the current regime. This part of the US, specifically Orange County, is an anti-communist stronghold. Therefore, Ho Chi Minh is not regarded as a hero (as he is in Vietnam) but is seen as ‘more an amalgam of Genghis Khan, Chairman Mao, and Pol Pot’. Protesters held up placards that read ‘Ho Chi Minh = Hitler’ (Economist, 1999). Mr. Tran was initially ordered to take down this display by an Orange County judge but later won his case in a higher court—arguing that his actions were protected under the First Amendment and that he was merely exercising his rights to free speech and expression. More protests ensued and violence broke out when protesters threw burning cigarettes at Mr. Tran and slapped him. One protester explained: ‘We forgot about the communists, then he put up his flag and I remember my nightmare, I remember how my father died’ (Terry, 1999). For Stuart Parker, a lawyer representing the protesters, Mr. Tran’s display ‘was not protected because the flag and the poster were “fighting words” for a

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people still haunted by the memories of a country many of them fled when the war ended in 1975’. In the end, even though Mr. Tran won the court battle, it was not seen as ‘a victory of free speech’ but ‘a victory of inflaming free speech’ (Terry, 1999), according to the lawyer.

3

Red Versus Yellow

In 2009, VAALA (the Vietnamese American Arts & Letter Association) in Southern California organised an art exhibit called F.O.B. II: Art Speaks. This exhibit was meant to showcase the work of Vietnamese visual and performance artists. Many of the artworks were controversial, but one in particular evoked an especially strong reaction. This was a photo by Brian Doan (Figure 4.1) depicting a young Vietnamese woman standing next to a small head and shoulders statue of Ho Chi Minh, the iconic North Vietnamese Communist leader. The woman’s attire was especially inflammatory from the point of view of many in the community. She was shown wearing a red tank top with a yellow star in the middle, which was meant to represent the flag of the Communist Party. She had a dreamy expression on her face, and her posture indicated a kind of longing for something far away. Reaction against this piece of art was so strong that Santa Ana city officials closed the exhibit, citing ‘the space wasn’t permitted for gallery use’ (Bharath, 2009). Even so, a protester named Ly Tong still managed to smear red paint over the photo.

Figure 4.1 Artwork by Brian Doan

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In his account of the deep divisions within the community that were laid bare by this exhibit, Montague Hung (2009) points out that the intensity of this reaction may appear incomprehensible to most outsiders. However, he asks the reader to imagine how members of the Jewish community in America would react to a photo of a young Jewish woman standing next to a statue of Hitler and wearing a shirt emblazoned with a swastika. For certain segments of the Vietnamese diaspora, the red flag may be understood as their swastika. As Charles Nguyen, a protester who fled communist Vietnam, explained: ‘They want to (provide) propaganda for the cruel regime, so we want to stop them. They want to stick a knife in my heart’ (Bharath, 2009). Thus, because the identities of some Vietnamese in the diaspora are so closely bound up with the flag, it becomes impossible for them to view this piece as a social commentary, satire or simply an attempt to begin a conversation. Any cultural product may be viewed from a multiplicity of perspectives. In this case, one might ask: Is this photo meant to represent oppression and human rights abuses on the part of the Communist regime? Is it meant to symbolise the death of one’s country, the death of identity? Has this young woman perhaps internalised the identity bestowed on her by her oppressor? Is she expressing her admiration for the Communist flag? Or in wearing the symbol, has she somehow demonstrated her ability to transcend it, to say, for example: I am not what you make of me; I am not what you think of me? Again, such questions are provocative and troubling, but as I have indicated, to the extent that one’s identity is immersed in a particular cultural symbol, it becomes more and more difficult to see such an exhibit as anything but an insult. Montague Hung points out that although such an extreme position, especially on the part of older Vietnamese community members, is understandable, it actually results in the stifling of diverse voices. Ironically, this undermines the goal of freedom, which has been sacred to many Vietnamese who fled their homeland. Tram Le, one of the curators of the exhibit, remarked in a Los Angeles Times article: ‘I felt the community was on this slippery slope, that we were not progressing toward having open dialogue and being more tolerant of different political viewpoints’ (Tran, 2009). Lan Duong, another curator, added: ‘This piece uses the communist flag but isn’t celebratory of communism. The communist flag isn’t used just as a political symbol, but of what is going on in Vietnam and the kinds of modes of consumption that mark youth culture’ (Tran, 2009). The photographer himself, Brian Doan, has been forced to repeatedly deny accusations of being a communist. He offers the following interpretation of his own photo: ‘She lives in a communist country, but look at her. She’s looking away dreaming. She wants to escape Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh is next to her, but

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communism is not [sic] in her. She wants to dream of other things’. Like Tram Le, who pointed out that the attempt to silence other voices is by definition oppressive, Doan asserts that he is also entitled to express himself, even if certain members of the community find this offensive. This leads us to the other side of the issue. Freedom of speech must indeed be respected, but according to Hung, it is necessary to approach this with sensitivity and empathy as well: The Vietnamese American’s intense opposition to the photo is justified. The artwork, whether intentionally or not, is insensitive to the traumatic historical experiences of the community. Most Vietnamese Americans fled Vietnam to escape the iron fist of the VCP [Vietnamese Communist Party]. The party was violently oppressive and ruthlessly eliminated individual freedoms such as the right to free expression. During the war, in addition to the deaths of more than 400,000 South Vietnamese military personnel, the VCP executed as many as 3 million civilians on their way to Saigon, according to the Centre for Vietnam Studies. After the fall of Saigon, many first-generation Vietnamese Americans became prisoners of war who were tortured and witnesses to the deaths of fellow comrades in the VCP’s reeducation camp. (Hung, 2009, p. 3) It is evident that for many Vietnamese in the diaspora, the flag debate is no trivial matter because it evokes memories of life and death. This is particularly so for those belonging to the first wave of refugees and those who experienced first-hand the brutality of Communist rule. Due to their traumatic conditions of exit and the mixed contexts of reception,1 first-wave refugees were mostly concerned with how to survive and negotiate life in places that must have seemed incomprehensible to them. They were forced to do this for the most part alone, with almost no community support, because there had been no pre-existing community structure in their countries of resettlement. In addition, they had few language skills and no other necessary tools with which to begin their new lives. This shock to the psyche on both the collective and the individual level perhaps can only be dealt with by perceiving one’s situation as temporary. Of course, eventually one realises that this is not possible—that the hope of a return to the motherland is no more than a comforting illusion. One’s grief can only be assuaged through cherishing the past, continually conjuring it up, even if doing so involves perpetuating negativity and conflict. It is the grief caused by this loss of situation which makes memory and commemoration so important for the Vietnamese diaspora community. At the same time, this also creates conflicts within a community that does not always remember or speak with one voice.

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Vietnamese in the Diaspora: How Should We Remember?

The flag of former South Vietnam (the yellow flag) is, for many in the diaspora community, a resonant symbol of the collectivity that connects the group with its shared past—but there are different ways to commune with the past and different types of collective representations, as Durkheim (1972) would say. Memorial sites can be found in places in the US and Canada with large Vietnamese populations. One example is the Vietnam War Memorial in Westminster, California. It is a bronze, twelve-foot-high sculpture of two soldiers, one American and one Vietnamese, standing next to the flags of their respective countries. The memorial is in a quiet place that allows for reflection and examination of the past. Its history is controversial, though, because it took six years of fundraising and political infighting—specifically regarding the cost and some early designs that included only a US flag and soldiers shaking hands on a battlefield (Le-Tran, 2002)—before the memorial could be unveiled. Funding for this project came from private donations from the Vietnamese community, but as has been mentioned, the memorial was not completed without some difficulty. Its original estimated cost was $500,000, but the final cost was three times that figure, and as might be expected, the decision to depict soldiers from both sides did not necessarily meet with the approval of all members of the community. The artist’s intention, however, was to illustrate that all those who fought in the war were doing so to uphold their idea of freedom, whatever it might be. When the memorial was unveiled on 27 April 2003, community members seemed to be unified in their appreciation of it. It brought together many of those who had experienced displacement and the loss of family members. There are similar memorials in other cities in the US (e.g., Houston and Wichita) as well as in other countries such as Australia. Another, very different type of memorial can be found in Canada’s capital city of Ottawa. It is the refugee mother and child monument, erected on 30 April 1995. It depicts a barefoot mother fleeing with a child in her arms, and it is the first monument in the world dedicated to the Vietnamese boat people. This memorial, like so many others, has a controversial history. When the Vietnamese Embassy heard about it, they were dismayed and in fact tried to halt the unveiling. The Hanoi regime was offended at the suggestion that refugees would want to flee Vietnam for Canada, or any other country, for that matter, when reunification had supposedly been so successful. In their view, this would indicate that the Communist regime had failed in its efforts to bring about the collectivist goals of reunification and equality. The embassy attempted to exert pressure on Canadian government officials to prevent the unveiling of this memorial, but because it was subsidised in part by

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the Vietnamese community and in part by the City of Ottawa, their efforts were unsuccessful. Vietnamese diplomats were told by Canadian government officials that in Canada, citizens have the right to pay for and erect any kind of statues they choose (Sallot, 1995). The controversy surrounding this incident resulted in the secretary of state for Asian affairs postponing a scheduled trip to Vietnam. As we can see, there are many ways in which the Vietnamese memorialise and commemorate their history—nevertheless, it is the flag that is central to their experience, and therefore the importance of the flag debate and the controversies which surround it cannot be underestimated. The yellow flag, officially known as the ‘Vietnamese American Freedom and Heritage Flag’, is seen as a ‘potent symbol of struggle and pride for Vietnamese Americans (Irving, 2009). In Canada it is also recognised as the Vietnamese Heritage and Freedom Flag. It was raised on Parliament Hill in Ottawa for the first time on 1 May 2017 in a ceremony to honour Journey to Freedom Day (Ngo, 2017). Since the war ended in 1975, Vietnam’s official flag has been the red flag with a yellow star, commonly referred to by the Vietnamese diaspora as the ‘Communist flag’. The old flag was yellow with three red stripes. Every year on the anniversary of the fall of Saigon (30 April or Black April),2 members of the Vietnamese diaspora in major cities across the US, Canada, Australia and places in Europe gather to commemorate this historical event which has given the community its beginning. Some common features these events include the singing of national anthems (of former South Vietnam and that of the host country), former military men in full uniform engaging in the ceremony, the hoisting of, saluting to and reverence paid toward the now-defunct yellow flag of South Vietnam, and moments of silence to remember the lost country and honour the fallen and refugees. Distinguished guests give speeches expressing love and longing for the motherland along with unbridled hatred for the Communist government. The waving of the yellow flag on this anniversary, for certain members of the community, has been and still is a badge of identity. Those who do not share these sentiments can find themselves estranged from the group, and this may even occur within one’s family. As one interviewee observes: I see students go back to Vietnam, volunteer and do humanitarian work— they get kicked out of the house because family says, oh, you go back to Vietnam, you’re a communist now; I don’t want you in the house—and students want to go back to understand their parents or their culture better. It is so sad to see that. Once in a while, we have protests, death threats, insults, brutal attacks, including on intellectuals … but we have to deal

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with the history, and history cannot be changed, it has to be respected. (T. P, interviewee) On 25 July 2013, VOA News (Tra, 2013) reported on the meeting between Vietnamese president Truong Tan Sang and President Obama in Washington, which was met with strong protests from the Vietnamese community: I am here in solidarity with democracy activists who are imprisoned right now in Vietnam. Six years ago, I was here, at the protest against then-Vietnamese president Nguyen Minh Triet. We, in the Vietnamese community here in the States, and elsewhere, we do not accept the Vietnamese Communist regime, and anywhere there is a Vietnamese communist leader, we will be present to protest. (H. T. Duy, protester) Human rights are a human basic need. We Vietnamese are human beings and demand that human rights be respected. Our Vietnam today, especially the communist leaders in Vietnam do not respect [the] freedom and democratic rights of the people, that is why we are here to protest by joining the gathering today, to voice our concerns. We are standing in front of the White House right now, with about a thousand of our compatriots from everywhere. We come here not to have fun, but to voice our unity. We are all looking in the same direction. (D. V. Pham, protester)

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The Ambiguous Position of Vietnamese Intellectuals

The accounts above illustrate how there is still a strong assumption that the Vietnamese community is one homogenous body, united in one voice, heading in one direction and having one shared goal. This way of thinking is in tune with much of the literature on diaspora—for example, the work of Robin Cohen (1997), which tends to imply that all members of a diaspora (particularly those who identify as ‘victims’) share the same perception of events and are bound together by their shared history. But can this be a true reflection of reality and does everyone truly share in this so-called ‘community politics’? In raising these questions, my research complicates the notion of diaspora by showing that not all members of the group speak with one voice and that intellectuals might articulate somewhat different views of these matters because of their status as intellectuals, as in between the world of the diaspora and the world of the Western intellectual tradition.

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Scholars within the poststructuralist lens point out that the significance of a symbol and what it means ‘is fashioned through language and dialogue and may change depending on the context’ (Eyerman, 2004, p. 68). The narrative is the power of telling, which is intimately linked to the language used, but this raises the question of who can speak and to which audience. The challenge for Vietnamese intellectuals, especially those from the 1.5 and second generations, is to find ways to communicate such an understanding to the public. This challenge involves not only the practice of doing ‘public sociology’, as Burawoy (2005) has called it, but also what Xiaoying Qi refers to as intellectual entrepreneurship—that is, selecting and combining ‘foreign knowledge with the local stock of knowledge’ and transforming it ‘into effectively new patterns of thought and culture’ (2013, p. 7)—ones that might be specific to members of their group and their situations. As we have seen, homeland politics still generate intense passion within the Vietnamese diaspora, both in a positive sense as well as negatively. Demonstrations and protests have become less about ridding the homeland of communism but more to do with pointing out who is not anti-communist enough among its members. As Andrew Lam puts it: Over time, the business of regime change has turned into the business of keeping Little Saigon from changing, and the bulk of these efforts is in the realm of the symbolic: flying the flags of South Vietnam in shopping malls, erecting war memorials for fallen soldiers, and lately, fighting over the names of business districts—actions that have no apparent effect on Vietnam itself. (Lam, 2010, p. 66) Of course, some of this may be connected to generational issues. The whole question of whether one is pro-communist or anti-communist has lost some of its resonance, especially among younger Vietnamese. Understandably, older Vietnamese would want to hold on to the past, particularly those who were socially well placed back in the homeland and who, as a result of migration, experienced downward mobility. Andrew Lam’s (2005) account of one such tragedy in his memoir Perfume Dreams illustrates both the schisms in the Vietnamese community and the hypocrisy of supporting freedom of speech, but only when it serves one’s interests. Lam explains that during the Cold War, several Vietnamese in America who supported normalisation with Vietnam were assassinated. He was particularly moved by the case of Doan Van Toai who, like Lam, was beginning a career as a writer in San Francisco. Thus, he was in a position to voice his opinion publicly, and in his writing, he expressed his support for lifting the US

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trade embargo against Vietnam.3 Toai was shot in San Francisco, not too far from where Lam was living, and Lam points out when Toai was killed, not one person in the community condemned this act, and some of them—including a few of Lam’s relatives—quietly supported it. Lam’s analysis of this situation is lucid and insightful. Vietnamese who supported this killing were, in his view, extremely angry at the Communist regime but were unable to do anything about this. They expressed this anger indirectly by turning on one of their own. Lam admits that at the time that he did not agree with Toai’s position; however, he recognised the hypocrisy and inconsistency embedded in the mindset of those who would oppose him so violently. The Vietnamese in his community were very willing to praise the virtues of free speech, but again, it is easy to do that when free speech serves you well. It is much more difficult to see the virtue in it when the speaker’s ideas are at variance with your own. The failure to recognise that this is a right that applies to all does violence to the idea itself and undermines the goals for which many Vietnamese risked their lives. As Lam expresses it: I was enraged. I did not agree with Toai. But I also couldn’t help but see the obvious hypocrisy. A community that regularly waved its flags and banners in front of city halls across the United States to protest the Vietnamese communist regime for its atrocious human rights violations failed to be appalled at a murder of a Vietnamese American writer who was exercising a right that all of us had fled our homeland supposedly to safeguard. (2005, p. 40) The majority of first-generation Vietnamese thus adopted the dominant anti-communist view, but as is so often the case, it is the intellectuals who offer the ‘minority report’ and warn members of their community of the dangers of extremism. Lam elaborates further on this when he writes, ‘this blind expectation of obedience without serious dialogue—this assumption of basic shared values and shared political aspirations without serious and honest selfexamination … was, at best, politically and intellectually immature and, at worst, fertile ground for tyranny’ (Lam, 2005, p. 40). Yen Le Espiritu explains that ‘[the] anti-communist stance is … a narrative, adopted in part because it is the primary political language with which the Vietnamese refugees, as objects of US rescue fantasies, could tell their history and be understood from within the US social and political landscape’ (2006, p. 340). Espiritu elaborates on the problems inherent in the use of a reductionist narrative by referring to the work of Nguyen-Vo Thu Huong (2005), who observes that by ‘reducing the multifaceted histories of the Vietnam War and of their

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lives into a single story about persecution, Vietnamese Americans unwittingly allow themselves “to be used in justification of empire by those who claim to have fought for [their] freedom”’ (as cited in Espiritu, 2006, p. 340). Thuy Vo Dang (2008) also argues that more than a political ideology, anticommunism is a ‘cultural praxis’ in which the community engages to legitimise its presence and to make known that its members are the ‘deserving refugees’ whose stories have generally been left out of the dominant US and Vietnamese historical discourse. For Vo Dang, these cultural practices extend far beyond the yearly commemoration of ‘Black April’. Her research reveals that for firstgeneration Vietnamese, the need to articulate their ‘absented South Vietnamese stories’, as embedded in anti-communist discourse, infiltrates almost every aspect of their lives, including everyday micro-level interactions in both the public and private realms. Anti-communism, for first-generation Vietnamese, is more than just a form of reactionary or conservative politics; it is a way for them to make sense of their losses in the present, to claim their place and to connect with others through ‘imagined’ ties to a South Vietnam that is no longer there. For the first generation, it seems that there can never be enough. Their identity as refugees discarded by history continually cries out for justice which has been denied them. Inevitably, then, this striving for justice and recognition becomes their master status. Yet it is an issue with no resolution in sight. Scepticism is an understandable reaction to the realisation that there are no easy answers to the flag debate and its accompanying issues. Many of my interviewees did not feel comfortable completely distancing themselves from the community, but at the same time, an uncritical identification with its understanding of the past was not a realistic choice, either. Yet for them, an acceptance of ambiguity meant that they would be severing their ties with the larger community, as the price of membership often means agreement with the dominant narrative. Those who deviated from this would risk being erased— excommunicated in a sense. The following remarks from an interviewee reveal this internal conflict: I understand the passion behind it, but when it gets to a certain point, we have to realize that the flag alone can’t make a difference. We can’t pour all our energy, time, and effort fighting on this issue. A sea of yellow flags with 3 stripes makes a statement, but it’s not going to change anything. Fly the flag if it means something to you, but to make a difference, you have to actually do something. I think it is wrong when people in our community with extremist views go out and point at others, accusing them of being Communists. To me that doesn’t make sense. The Vietnamese

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are so smart individually. We are one of the recent immigrant groups and look at what we’ve done. If we put all those smart brains together, I think we could contribute something great for society. There’s so much infighting. That’s one thing that bothers me a lot about the Vietnamese community. We’re not good at supporting each other. I don’t know if it’s when we see someone who’s better than us, it becomes a reflection of ourselves and we start pulling the other person down or what—I don’t know. But until we stop fighting and start supporting each other, we’re not going to be able to do anything big. In that sense, we’re still a very immature community. (L. N., interviewee) This interviewee raises a fascinating point. She refers to ‘pulling the other person down’ which indicates that labelling one’s neighbours as communists may have less to do with ideology and more to do with jealousy. As W. I. Thomas (1931) pointed out, ‘once a situation is defined as real, it is real in its consequences’. Furthermore, this respondent demonstrated the salience of another aspect of Thomas’ argument: community members are controlled through fear, in particular the fear of becoming social outcasts. This respondent thus focused on the fear of negative outcomes, rather than the expectation of support from one’s community. Again, Thomas made much the same observation. It may at times be difficult to disentangle the personal from the political. Nevertheless, as this respondent emphasised, infighting interferes with the realisation of practical goals that concern all members of the community. Furthermore, as she pointed out, such pettiness is a sign of immaturity. Like many in the 1.5 and second generations, she called for a move beyond anger and revenge so that space can be created for not only the exchange of ideas but also for action: ‘a sea of yellow flags … makes a statement, but to make a difference, you have to do something’. Action refers not only to the striving for political change, but also attention to practical issues which affect the day-today lives of all members in the community—jobs, education, housing and so on. Along similar lines, another interviewee observed: I completely understand the emotional attachment to the former regime’s flag. I would never ever interfere with a person’s right to display that flag. At the same time, I would never interfere with an individual’s right to display the flag of the current regime. To me that is what a democracy is about … people are very vocal about people who might want to display Ho Chi Minh’s face, image or Communist flag—to respond to it by advocating for a hands-down prohibition is ridiculous—[it] is to not understand the society that we live in. (M. T., interviewee)

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This respondent’s recognition of the symbolic significance of the flag is counterbalanced by her assertion that the rigid imposition of any value system is counterproductive. The freedom to express one’s point of view is, in fact, an ideal that motivated members of the Vietnamese diaspora to come to America in the first place. It is tragic and ironic if this freedom is restricted by members of one’s community. This raises an important question: can the fight for democracy in the homeland even be possible when those living in it fail to understand and practise it? As has been indicated, many of my respondents may not be in an agreement with the prevailing view of their community on specific political issues—the flag debate being one such example. At the same time, they also realise that they are not free to act or speak autonomously under certain circumstances. They are still compelled to be mindful of the hegemonic values of their ‘generalised Other’—in this case, whether one espouses communism or anti-communism. Thus, there may be a disconnect between the degree to which they, as individuals, care about this issue—but they also recognise that others may feel very strongly about it. To continue to be part of the group often means engaging in a discourse which is apologetic or vacillating rather than straightforward. This points to the multifaceted nature of the role of the intellectual in the preservation of group identity. The use of the term intellectual in this context refers more to what individuals do rather than who they are. They do not give voice to their own specific, idiosyncratic ideas and opinions, but rather they articulate the meanings of events in a way that makes them comprehensible to members of their group and those outside of it. They explain the group to itself and act as repositories of the collective memory. These intellectuals may be academics, to be sure, but as Eyerman (2004) points out, they may also be artists, film directors, ‘singers of songs’ or ‘movement intellectuals’, people who may lack formal credentials but who have particular expertise which allows them to analyse a specific situation which is relevant for the group. Thus, it is not the day-to-day memories of an individual’s life that are of concern here but, rather, the memories which, as Maurice Halbwachs (1992) has emphasised, derive from one’s group membership and are thus essential to the group’s perception of itself. These collective memories may have to be reconfigured to suit shifting needs, and they may be more properly designated as myths or narratives. They cannot, as Eyerman (2004) argues (following Halbwachs), be accorded the same objectivity as ‘history’. History may of course be perspectival as well, but as an academic discipline, it is constrained by the need for certain rules of evidence. The ‘myth’ or narrative of collective experiences, on the other hand, can be based on a much looser interpretation of the ‘facts’ at hand. The intellectual then functions as the ‘keeper of the

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flame’ (Eyerman, 2004, p. 67). Yet if it is one’s responsibility to uphold the narrative of the group, this inevitably conflicts with the understandable desire to strive for agency and creativity. This conflict was illustrated in the experiences of my next respondents. M. P. is a young sociologist who came to Canada as a boat person in 1980, after having spent several months in the refugee camp in Malaysia. She shared with me a story about her long trip back to Vietnam which she spent in the northern part of the country to learn art. Upon returning from her trip, she was invited, along with a group of colleagues, to participate in an art exhibit organised by the Vietnamese Association, Toronto (VAT). It was at this venue that M. P. got to know ‘first-hand, the politics in Canada within the Vietnamese community’. Her story needs to be presented here at length in order for us to get the full context and a real sense of the situation: [B]y default, most of us happened to be from the North, but most of us grew up here in Canada. We were not aware of the politics. We were completely naïve about that. Our issue was to address this issue about Vietnamese Canadian identity and how we express that and how we interpret our history through art. We had no idea how politicized that question was. So, in our effort to host, to recruit artists, to get funding, to get the community support and advertise our activities, we faced a very steep uphill battle with the Vietnamese community. We were all accused of being communist spies, and especially my experiences in Vietnam prior to that—because I spent most of that time in the North, they thought I was in an ideological boot camp. My past activities made me a suspect and it also made the group a suspect. The rest of the group also had family background from the North, even though they were not part of the Communist Party. We were all boat people. The Vietnamese community in Toronto boycotted all of our activities. They made it very hard for us to advertise through Vietnamese newspapers. Everybody was afraid to advocate for us or advertise for us. We had Ta Duc, a Vietnamese composer who’s currently living in Toronto, [who] wrote and produced a Việt Kiều play for us, and we actually hired actors like Ai Van from California to be the Việt Kiều, and she cancelled it last minute because of pressure from the Vietnamese community. So, it was very serious, and then because we were a young group full of young people … we were doing a lot of interesting things that the Toronto Film Festival hired us to be the community liaison [for] their national film program that year—I think it was ’95–96. That year the national film program was featuring Vietnamese films, so we were in competition with the

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Vietnamese Association, Toronto (VAT) to co-operate with the Toronto Film Festival to be on this program. They talked to both of us, our group and the VAT, and they decided to go for us and not the VAT, and that was when opposition really ramped up, because I think they felt like we were competing with them to forward the narratives about Vietnamese Canadian experience with a major mainstream cultural group—the Toronto Film Festival. So I think there were community politics—community power struggle involved. They insisted that we fly the South Vietnamese flag, but we felt like that South Vietnamese flag doesn’t have any symbolic significance for us—our experiences in Canada as Vietnamese, that flag doesn’t really mean anything to us, so why would we fly it. … Our group was about art and culture. We didn’t want to fly any flags … that was a huge, huge learning experience for all of us … I think that if they still insist on the flag issue, they are really holding on to conflicts that are long buried [and have] no relevance anymore to our real lives today and our real concerns today. It needs to be dropped if the Vietnamese community wants to be relevant to the new generation. (M. P., interviewee) The participants in my study were often uncomfortable with Vietnamesebased political allegiances of any kind, and they expressed their desire to escape from the yolk of the past. However, it is necessary to ask if this is truly possible, at least for the foreseeable future. Dina Wardi (1992) examines the experiences of Holocaust survivors’ children, who have also been profoundly affected by a history that they did not personally experience but from which they cannot truly escape. Wardi speaks of their anger and frustration, which emanates from their realisation that because their parents were victims, they were too weak to protect their children. At the same time, Wardi’s subjects grappled with the constant sense that they must somehow compensate for the past by protecting their parents and living for them and their persecuted people as ‘memorial candles’. But to be a memorial candle, by definition, it means that one has ceased to be a person, and that is an impossibly heavy burden to impose on anyone. The situation of the Vietnamese is not exactly comparable to that of those who have experienced slavery or genocide, but they have suffered from a long history of oppression and exploitation. It is not surprising, then, that an awareness of the past, even if one has not lived through it, will affect how one perceives one’s situation and the nature of one’s interaction with family members. This was evident in the account of my next respondent, a secondgeneration Vietnamese American whose relatives were profoundly affected

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by their experiences—and, by extension, she was as well. This respondent showed great sensitivity to the emotional distress suffered by those who had lost their accustomed way of life as a result of the war. Nevertheless, she did not fully feel herself to be part of it, nor was she comfortable with adopting the rigid anti-communist position of her family members, despite her awareness of their suffering: My position is of empathy and I really try to educate how the trauma, the difficulties, and how hard it is to immigrate here as refugees and being child refugees, but not accepting excessive use of power. But in terms of the function of that politics—to be unified along the line of anti-communism—I totally understand and I think actually if you compare to all the communities, those that are most vulnerable and suffer the most are the ones that really hold on to the past the most and even more so when there are stories that are not understood and invisible, and in addition, if you have undergone trauma—even more so. So, for sure those politics serve a function of group identity, and it’s very real. My uncle was in re-education camp for many years before they let him out—made him crazy, basically. I’ve seen how my aunt lived, all their kids had to be around to help him; they lost the house; they lost everything; people fled. I would be very angry myself. I don’t think you can forget and forgive in a lifetime and process some of the stuff that people have lived through. So, I totally understand that. (T. P., interviewee) This interviewee recognised that events in the past resonate more strongly with those who have direct experience, but at the same time she was empathetic regarding the suffering experienced by her uncle and his family. Yet her position contains elements of pragmatism and even emotional distancing. This attitude is consistent with Wardi’s argument about the complicated nature of the relationship between Holocaust survivors and their offspring. While they identify with their parents and thus experience their suffering, even if from a distance, they also need to survive emotionally, and therefore they cannot allow themselves to be completely subsumed by the past and by their role as memorial candles. Of course, guilt is the price we pay for survival. As first-wave refugees become well settled and more established in the host country, they tend to shift their focus from the concern with mere survival to the more fundamental issue of their roots and identity. In their work on collective remembrance, scholars Igartua and Paez (1997) identified several key factors that facilitate people’s ‘return’ to the past, including an ‘accumulation of social resources in order to undergo commemoration activities. These resources can

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usually be obtained during one’s middle age. The events are commemorated when the generation which suffered them has the money and power to commemorate them’ (Igartua & Paez, 1997, pp. 83–84, as cited in Eyerman, 2004, p. 72). This shift of attention to the past and concern about one’s origins among Vietnamese refugees in the first wave are, to be sure, linked with community politics regarding the war, anti-communist sentiments and opposition to the current regime in the homeland. These issues are central to the Vietnamese diaspora and are constantly promoted at cultural celebrations and community gatherings4—thus, members are always being reminded of the traumas of their past. As Igartua and Paez (1997) have pointed out, in some ways the ability to commemorate is a manifestation of success. However, its negative side cannot be overlooked. Andrew Lam describes the situation poignantly: But no matter how articulate a Vietnamese becomes, dear Brother, when we set foot on the American shore, history is already against us. Vietnam goes on without us; America goes on without acknowledging us. We, like our defeated fathers, have become beside the point, a footnote in a small chapter of the history book. Our mythology is merely a private dream in America: there is no war to fight, no heroic quest, no territory to defend, no visible enemies. (2005, p. 60) According to Lam, this sense of invisibility, of irrelevance, is manifested in the demeanour of the Vietnamese. The first self-assessment of the Vietnamese refugees in America largely speaks to their helplessness. As Lam observes: ‘it is characterized by blushing, by looking down at one’s feet, by avoiding contact, and by waiting: for welfare and food stamps, for the free clinic exams, for jackets donated by charity, for green cards’ (Lam, 2005, p. 61). Even a person from the younger generation cannot escape this history, because at some point in life, she or he ‘comes to the brutal realization that “his” side had lost and “his” nation is gone; that his parents are inarticulate fools in a new country called America, and he must face the outside world alone’ (Lam, 2005, p. 61). The endless need to commemorate speaks not so much to the success of one’s group but rather to its irrelevance and invisibility in the new world. What is to be done then, with this experience of rupture from one’s past and, at the same time, the futility (at least for first-generation Vietnamese) of attempting to take root in the new world? Involvement in the flag debate is a way of imposing meaning on one’s experiences and transforming one’s sense of loss into a sense of purpose. It is impossible to remain in the old world, but many Vietnamese in the diaspora take a piece of it with them—they carry with them the weight of their own history.

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What’s Past Is Prologue5

At the beginning of this chapter, I cited the research conducted by APIA which noted that voters of Vietnamese descent were much more likely to favour Donald Trump than Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. As the APIA survey indicated, the Vietnamese were unique in this, and their preference for Donald Trump can be traced back to their political conservatism and their enthusiasm towards Trump’s anti-China rhetoric. In this chapter, I have sought to uncover the reasons for this conservatism and the emphasis on commemoration, particularly among older, first-generation Vietnamese. As my research demonstrates, the need to commemorate is strongly linked to the pervasive sense of injustice which is an understandable legacy of the history of Vietnamese in the diaspora. While a concern with the injustices of the past and the effort to be heard and to be visible are tremendously important for first-generation Vietnamese, these issues may not resonate as strongly with the 1.5 and second generations. Yet as my respondents have observed, they are still burdened by the weight of their own history. Vietnamese intellectuals in particular understand the attitude of their elders, but they are also concerned with the larger issues of social injustice and racism. In a recent interview with DW media outlet, Viet Thanh Nguyen, a professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, explained the generational differences of the Vietnamese support for Trump: The Vietnamese American culture is traditional. It is hierarchical. We are supposed to listen to an older generation and to our elders. We are supposed to obey. I think that Vietnamese Americans are already sort of culturally tending towards this kind of top-down personality and political structure and set of feelings. And Donald Trump just exacerbated all of that. It was further noted that the experience of younger Vietnamese in America is more diverse in that they are ‘much more likely to be exposed to people who are not Vietnamese, Asian or White. They have friends across the spectrum. And they are much more sensitive to the issues of racism than a first-generation Vietnamese immigrant or refugee’. Thus, when Donald Trump makes statements about ‘crime, black people, immigration or Mexicans, the younger Vietnamese American generation will hear these things and say: That’s racist’ (Carthaus, 2020). Just as younger Vietnamese will likely no longer be one-issue voters as their elders were, it is also likely that the flag will no longer remain the focus of

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Vietnamese identity construction. Andrew Lam (2010) sums this up eloquently when he reflects on the position of his father—a high-ranking South Vietnamese officer who had lost his situation: My father considers himself an exile living in America, part of an increasingly small population; I see myself as an American journalist who happens to make my journeys to Vietnam without much emotional fanfare. For me, Vietnam, my country of birth, and its tumultuous history have become a point of departure, a concern, but no longer home. History, for my father and for those men who still wear their army uniforms at every communal event, has a tendency to run backward, to memories of the war, to a bitter and bloody struggle whose end spelled their defeat and exile. And it holds them static in a lonely nationalist stance. They live in America but their souls are still fighting an unfinished war in Vietnam. (Lam, 2010, p. 65) It is impossible, then, to endlessly memorialise and commemorate what can never be restored. But if the past inevitably loses its power to keep the community together, what collective representations will take its place? This is an open-ended question, but it is one that preoccupied Emile Durkheim, perhaps the greatest analyst of the collective conscience and its representations. Durkheim recognised that we no longer are moved by the ceremonies which used to fill our ancestors with awe, either because they have grown stale with repetition (although repetition should be part of their charm) or because they no longer meet our needs. In other words, ‘the former gods are growing old or are already dead, and others are not yet born’ (Durkheim, 1972, p. 244). Durkheim believed in our ability to be resilient and to continually invent new collective representations. The process of revitalizing society will continue. However, as Durkheim recognised, the form that such ‘gods’ will take in the future has yet to be determined. This is certainly true in the case of the Vietnamese diaspora community, and as both a sociologist and a member of that community, I await the outcome with deep anticipation and profound intellectual curiosity.

Notes 1 The Vietnam War was very unpopular in the US at the time, which understandably led to a hostile environment for newly arrived refugees. In a nationwide poll conducted in May 1975 by the New York Times, 54% of Americans opposed admitting Vietnamese refugees versus 36% in favour and 10% had no opinion.

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2 Yen Le Espiritu (2006, p. 348) notes in her work: ‘The “Fall of Saigon” is a US specific term that denotes a contained singular event and that refuses to acknowledge either the before or after of that day’. In Vietnam, it is referred to as “ngày giải phóng” (Liberation Day). Vietnamese in the diaspora call this day ‘ngày quốc hận” (Day of National Resentment) and “ngày tưởng niệm” (Day of Commemoration)’. 3 In early 1994, former president Bill Clinton formally announced the lifting of the US trade embargo against Vietnam, nineteen years after the war ended. This was largely due to the co-operation of the Vietnamese government in finding the remains of missing Americans as well as pressure from the US business sector. 4 Examples include the display of symbols such as the yellow flag, artefacts and monuments that represent the plight of boat people and the heroic soldiers of the former South Vietnamese military, as well as the re-enactments of military ceremonies. 5 From William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Act 2, Scene 1.

References APIA Vote. (2020, September 15). Asian American voter survey. https://www.apiavote.org/ research/2020-asian-american-voter-survey Bharath, D. (2009, January 17). Hundreds protest Vietnamese art show. Orange County Register. Burawoy, M. (2005). For public sociology. American Sociological Review, 70(1), 4–28. Carthaus, A. (2020, November 23). Why do Vietnamese Americans support Donald Trump? DW News. https://www.dw.com/en/trump-popular-among-vietnameseamericans/a-55702032 Cohen, R. (1997). Global diasporas: An introduction. University of Washington Press. Durkheim, E. (1972). Emile Durkheim selected writings (A. Giddens, Ed.). Cambridge University Press. Economist. (1999, February 18). America’s Vietnamese tet offensive. https://www.economist.com/united-states/1999/02/18/tet-offensive Espiritu, Y. L. (2006). The ‘we-win-even-when-we-lose’ syndrome: US press coverage of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the ‘Fall of Saigon’. American Studies Association, 329–352. Eyerman, R. (2004). Cultural trauma. In J. C. Alexander, R. Eyerman, B. Giesen, N. J. Smelser, & P. Sztompka (Eds.), Cultural trauma and collective identity (pp. 60–111). University of California Press. Halbwachs, M. (1992). On collective memory (L. A. Coser, Trans.) University of Chicago Press. Hung, M. (2009). The chilling ghost of April’s past. Hardboiled. Igartua, J., & Paez, D. (1997). Art and remembering traumatic collective events: The case of the Spanish Civil War. In J. W. Pennebaker, D. Paez, & B. Rimé (Eds.), Collective

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memory of political events: Social psychological perspectives (pp. 79–101). Taylor and Francis. Irving, D. (2009, February 3). Vietnamese American ‘freedom flag’ endorsed. Orange County Register. Lam, A. (2005). Perfume dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese diaspora. Heyday. Lam, A. (2010). East eats west: Writing in two hemispheres. Heyday. Le-Tran, V. (2002, September 21). Vietnam War memorial gives alliance its due. Los Angeles Times. Mannheim, K. (1936). Ideology and utopia. Routledge. Ngo, T. H. (2017, May 1). A historic milestone: Vietnamese freedom and heritage flag raised on Parliament Hill for the first time. https://senatorngo.ca/media-item/flagraising-on-the-hill/ Nguyen-Vo, T.-H. (2005). Forking paths: How shall we mourn the dead? Amerasia, 31(2), 157–175. Qi, X. (2013). Intellectual entrepreneurs and the diffusion of ideas: Two historical cases of knowledge flow. American Journal of Cultural Sociology, 1(3), 346–372. Sallot, J. (1995, May 19). Rebuffing Hanoi over statue. Globe and Mail. Terry, D. (1999, February 16). Protesters bloc store where Vietnamese man wants poster hung. New York Times, p. 12. Thomas, W. I. (1931). Definition of the situation. In W. I. Thomas (Ed.), The unadjusted girl (pp. 41–50). Little, Brown and Company. Tra, M. (2013). Protesters greet Vietnamese president at White House. VOA News. Tran, M. T. (2009, January 10). Vietnamese art exhibit puts politics on display. Los Angeles Times. Vo Dang, T. T. (2008, January 1). Anticommunism as cultural praxis: South Vietnam, war, and refugee memories in the Vietnamese American community. E-scholarship. http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/1qf3h134 Vu, A. (2015). From victimization to transnationalism: A study of Vietnamese intellectuals in North America [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. McMaster University. Wardi, D. (1992). Memorial candles. Routledge.

CHAPTER 5

Transnational Vietnamese Germany and Beyond Gertrud Hüwelmeier

In the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, the majority of migrants entering Germany from southern European countries and Turkey came as guest workers. However, after the end of the Cold War and German reunification in 1990, Germany increasingly became a country of destination for migrants from Africa, Latin America and Asia. Focusing on Vietnamese migrants, particularly on former contract workers, this chapter argues that the arrival of new migrants not only changed the formerly divided Germany in terms of it becoming a multi-ethnic society, but also in terms of its economic and religious landscape.1 Vietnamese form one of the largest Asian communities in Germany, close to Iraqis, Iranians and Chinese.2 For political and economic reasons, Vietnamese arrived in Germany in different waves. Boat people left their country of origin after the end of the American War in Vietnam (1975) and came mainly from southern Vietnam, while contract workers came to East Germany in the 1980s, mainly from northern Vietnam. This latter group of migrants arrived in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the ‘socialist fraternal country’ (sozialistisches Bruderland) of Vietnam, and many of them stayed in reunified Germany after 1990. Other groups of Vietnamese, former contract workers from Central and Eastern European countries, entered Germany via the Czech Republic or Poland as asylum seekers in the early 1990s (Hüwelmeier, 2017b). As travel and mobility are characteristic features of these workers, they may be labelled ‘socialist cosmopolitans’ (Hüwelmeier, 2011, p. 439), and those who arrived in the GDR, in Poland or other former socialist countries have thus used ‘socialist pathways of migration’ (Hüwelmeier, 2015a, p. 29) to forge and maintain social, economic and political ties with their home country and with people in many other places, both before and after the collapse of communism. The circulation of people, goods and ideas across socialist countries has also been described as ‘socialist mobilities’ (Schwenkel, 2015). Over the years, the number of undocumented migrants has increased and the sad story of thirty-nine dead Vietnamese migrants in a truck in England in 2019 is but one example of the inhumane practices of traffickers (Gentleman, 2020).

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Even more than thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, boat people and former contract workers do not feel comfortable creating friendships or spending leisure time with each other (Su, 2017). Over the years, according to my Vietnamese interlocutors in Berlin, there have been few marriage relationships between the two groups. In order to better understand the sensitivities between boat people and contract workers, the first section of this chapter examines the circumstances surrounding the two groups’ departures from their country of origin, their arrivals in Germany and their legal statuses after the reunification of Germany. The chapter then focuses on transnational connections of Vietnamese in Germany and explores the economic, familial and religious ties across borders. Over the past fifteen years, I have carried out ethnographic fieldwork with Vietnamese in various places in the eastern and western part of Germany, in Poland, in the Czech Republic and in Vietnam. I recorded life history interviews with Vietnamese in all of these countries, including Vietnamese former students, business people, boat people, contract workers, religious practitioners, second-generation migrants and undocumented people, in most cases with the help of Vietnamese research assistants. I visited my interlocutors in their workplaces, at home and in their religious communities, in temples, pagodas and churches, and participated in weddings, funerals, in New Year festivals, and many other public and private events. In this paper, however, I will present only a small sample of my research, reflecting on what I think are the most important experiences of Vietnamese migrants in Germany.

1

Vietnamese in Germany

During the second half of the 1990s, an estimated 2.3 million Vietnamese were living outside of their home country: around one million in the US; 300,000 in France; 200,000 in Australia; 150,000 in Canada; and 115,000 in Germany. By 2008, these numbers had climbed to three million in total (Overseas Vietnamese, n.d.). Much like in the US, there were different groups of Vietnamese entering the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) (Baumann, 2000, p. 38). As early as the 1960s, young, unmarried students had started arriving, mostly from Saigon and Hué, as part of an agreement on scientific and cultural collaboration at the university level between the Federal Republic of Germany and the Republic of Vietnam. Many of these ‘former students’, as they are referred to today, came from the former upper classes of the Republic of Vietnam (Beuchling, 2003, p. 20). By 1975, there were 2,055 Vietnamese living in the Federal Republic of Germany. Considering the political situation in their

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homeland, many of them chose not to return to Vietnam. Instead, they entered highly skilled professions—especially as engineers, scientists and doctors— married Germans and became naturalised citizens (Horr, 1991, p. 48, quoted in Beuchling, 2003, p. 20). In the first few years after the end of the American War in Vietnam, about 700 Vietnamese refugees reached West Germany. For the most part, they were members of the former middle and upper classes of southern Vietnam. Their high positions in the government and bureaucracy, or as business executives and intellectuals, gave them access to financial resources and connections that made it possible for them to organise their escape to the West (Horr, 1991, p. 49). In contrast to the US and other Western countries, tens of thousands of Vietnamese contract workers, many of them from northern Vietnam, also arrived in ‘socialist fraternal countries’ in the eastern part of Europe during the 1980s. Students from northern Vietnam began coming to live in the German Democratic Republic, GDR (socialist East Germany) in the 1950s. In 1955, after the end of the French colonial regime, about 300 young children arrived in the GDR. They were called ‘the Moritzburger’, as they lived in Moritzburg, near Dresden, in East Germany. They attended East German primary and secondary schools. Mr. Nguyen, who had been thirteen years old at the time, revealed to me during my fieldwork in Hanoi: ‘The program’s objective was to provide an excellent education to a select group of children in the hope that they would later return to Vietnam to help rebuild the country. Children whose parents actively participated in the anti-colonial resistance during the First Indochina War [1946–1954] were chosen’. Mr. Nguyen lived in Moritzburg for several years and visited a German school. His German language competence was excellent and after returning home, he was later ‘delegated’ back to an East German city to complete an apprenticeship. After his return to Vietnam, he was one of the most sought-after interpreters for maintaining East German–Vietnamese diplomatic relationships. As a result of the aforementioned programs, 13,000 Vietnamese students and experts were educated in the GDR between 1966 and 1986 (Baumann, 2000, p. 32).

2

‘Boat People’ in the West, ‘Contract Workers’ in the East

From 1978 onwards, particularly after the end of the American War in Vietnam, many Vietnamese arrived in the Federal Republic of Germany. Most of them came from southern Vietnam and left their homeland for political and economic reasons. At the end of the 1970s, West Germany declared that it would adopt a contingent of 10,000 refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos

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(Baumann, 2000, p. 31). This number was expanded to 20,000 in 1979, and up to 1984, as many as 38,000 people from Indochina had moved to the Federal Republic of Germany, the majority of the refugees coming from southern Vietnam. These so-called boat people—who often fled their home country in small and leaky boats—were treated as refugees according to Articles 2–34 of the Geneva Convention. In practice, this meant they received temporary residency status, which eventually became permanent. Boat people participated in language courses and were supported by the government in finding jobs. Some scholars labelled them privileged refugees (Blume, 1988; Jensen, 1983, quoted in Baumann, 2000, p. 34) because they received preferential treatment compared to other refugees, who, for example, were not provided with language programs. After the number of boat people climbed to over 22,000 in 1982, the government of West Germany no longer guaranteed the acceptance of Vietnamese refugees. However, due to family reunification policies, the number of Vietnamese living in West Germany had increased to 45,779 by 1990 (Beuchling, 2003, p. 21). Compared to the boat people in West Germany, the Vietnamese contract workers’ living and working conditions in East Germany were quite different. Working conditions in the companies were characterised by separation from other migrant groups, and life in the worker’s dormitories was strictly supervised (Hüwelmeier, 2017a). In April 1980, the GDR and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam signed a bilateral ‘Agreement on the Temporary Employment and Qualification of Vietnamese Workers in Companies of the German Democratic Republic’, and as a result, tens of thousands of Vietnamese migrants—mainly from northern Vietnam—came to live and work in East Germany. They stayed for four or five years and returned to their home country once their contracts ended. Incorporation into the host society was neither expected nor desired, and aside from a German language course of only two months, the contract workers were not integrated. Living in specially designated housing, many were ghettoised and watched over by the government and the secret service. After the reunification of the two Germanys in 1990, documents uncovered in the archives of the former GDR secret service made it clear that East Germany’s government had monitored the activities of Vietnamese contract workers closely before 1989, looking for smuggling and other ‘illegal’ activities. However, the contract workers were not passive victims of the intelligence service. They proactively participated in manifold economic activities to improve their living and working conditions (Dennis, 2005). For example, besides their GDR company jobs, a number of them bought sewing machines in the GDR and sewed blue jeans and other clothes for East Germans. With their earnings, they supported their spouses, children and parents, who were not allowed to join

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them in the GDR. This kind of economic exchange is an example of at least some positive relationship between former Vietnamese contract workers and Germans in the GDR during the 1980s. As in other countries of the world, racism was widespread in the GDR, but due to the idea of ‘international socialist solidarity’ or ‘fraternal solidarity’, it was purported to not exist. Contrary to the boat people’s experience, for whom family reunion was rather easy according to West German laws, contract workers—both men and women—migrated alone, without their spouses or children. Sexual relations between male and female contract workers were not allowed, and even contacts with local people were restricted. Despite these stringent regulations, contact among Vietnamese contract workers still occurred, and these personal interactions inevitably resulted in difficult, sometimes heartbreaking, situations. The temporary employment agreements remained valid until May 1990. Before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, about 60,000 Vietnamese lived in the GDR. By 1993, however, this number had significantly decreased to 16,635, while all other contract workers had already, ‘at least officially’, returned to Vietnam (Weiss, 2005, p. 79). The German federal government had no interest in the continued presence of the contract workers, and in fact, authorities even attempted to limit their stay in the reunified Germany. However, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam initially refused to take back the former contract workers unless they agreed to return on their own accord. After Germany threatened to impose massive economic sanctions if Vietnam was unwilling to take back its citizens, the countries settled on the so-called Repatriation Agreement in 1995. Many Vietnamese did not like the prospect of returning to Vietnam, and a large number of them tried to stay in Germany by applying for asylum. Between 1987 and 2002, 62,854 Vietnamese lodged asylum applications (Weiss, 2005, p. 80), and the majority of them were former contract workers. They did not fall into the category of political refugees, as they had left their country of origin legally, and therefore the rate of acceptance was less than 1%. According to many applicants, though, they were in danger of receiving harsh punishments upon their return to Vietnam, and for this reason, many of the rejected claimants received exceptional leave to remain. However, this did not include an official residence status, a work permit or support for integrating into German society. Along with this legal insecurity, workers faced the economic crisis. Former contract workers who had received an exceptional two-year residence permit based on the right of residence regulations from 1993 had to prove that their income lay above that of people receiving social welfare payments. Those who wanted to apply for welfare were not eligible for a residence permit. As this makes clear, the legal and economic situation of former contract workers was quite unstable after the fall of the wall. Compared to the boat

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people, who received political support upon their arrival at the end of the 1970s and were intended to be integrated into West German society, contract workers’ futures were up in the air after 1990. Since the arrival of the original boat people and contract workers, though, Germany’s Vietnamese population has greatly increased. It is often difficult to determine the exact number of Vietnamese in Germany, because official statistics did not include former contract workers who settled in the western part of Germany after 1990 to look for work and later returned to the eastern part of Germany. Additionally, those who applied for asylum, and those who returned to Vietnam but later came back to Germany—a number of them as undocumented migrants—were also unaccounted for (Weiss, 2005, p. 81). Finally, there are no statistics on those who became German citizens. Before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Vietnamese contract workers—including former contract workers from ex-Comecon countries who arrived in Germany after 1990 as asylum seekers—on whom I will focus in the following paragraphs, maintained and created transnational networks. These networks’ intensity and density shifted in key ways after Germany’s reunification, yet the creation of these economic ties and the maintenance of Vietnamese family relations in the eastern Germany with Vietnam before 1989 seemed to be quite important in establishing post-reunification social networks.

3

Cross-Border Networks: Economic Ties

During GDR times, contract workers forged and actively maintained their personal and economic networks to build up transnational connections with friends and relatives in Vietnam, as well as with co-ethnics in other Comecon countries. These global socialist networks, as I call them, were established in particular by sending consumer goods to the country of origin. Under the terms of the April 11, 1980, agreement between the GDR and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam as well as the new agreement of July 1, 1987, Vietnamese in the GDR were allowed to transfer consumer goods, such as household items, textiles, bicycles, motorbikes and electronics, to Vietnam. Sending money was less advantageous because of the exchange rates. A former Vietnamese student in the GDR told me in Berlin: ‘I sent huge boxes with Kodak-brand films to my relatives in Vietnam. Siblings and parents were happy to receive these goods, as they could sell them on the black market in order to buy food and medicine that was still scarce after the end of the war and even into the 1980s’. Informants in Hanoi further confirmed that similar kinds of exchange happened between Vietnamese contract workers in Russia and their relatives in Vietnam in the 1980s.

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A Vietnamese friend in Hanoi who had lived and worked as a contract worker in Russia in the 1980s reported that whenever he and his compatriots heard about the possibility of buying household items, such as irons, they bought a huge amount and sent the goods to their wives in Hanoi. The wives then sold these household goods on the black market. In this way, they earned money to buy food and medicine for their children. Migrant workers in Russia even sent refrigerators, TV s, and radios to their country of origin. Each contract worker in the GDR was permitted to send a package worth one hundred East German marks to Vietnam twelve times a year, one duty-free postal shipment without value limit six times a year and a wooden box of at most two cubic metres and weighing one ton at the end of his or her stay in Germany (Dennis, 2005, p. 21). Contract workers who spent their holidays in Vietnam were allowed to take along one crate with a volume of one cubic metre and a weight of half a ton. There were no limits on duty-free shipments sent home until 1989. According to the new rules, however, each person was only allowed to send two mopeds, five bicycles, two sewing machines, one hundred fifty metres of cloth and a hundred kilograms of sugar. It was not only the parents in Vietnam who profited from their children’s economic relationships while living in the GDR as contract workers. The Vietnamese government also gained from sending contract workers to East Germany because the GDR paid a total of 180 East German marks per contract worker to Vietnam for pension insurance, accident insurance and funds for supporting the children of contract workers. Additionally, a sum of 12% of a contract worker’s monthly pre-tax income was paid directly to the Vietnamese state, as a contribution ‘to the development and defense of the Vietnamese fatherland’ (Dennis, 2005, p. 21). According to Huong (1999, p. 1329), in this manner, Vietnam received more than 200 million GDR marks each year from its citizens in the late 1980s. Hence, socialist enterprise played a crucial role with regard to financial transfers with Vietnam as well as for medical care and housing. In the years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Vietnamese transnational relations in Germany intensified with new possibilities of travel and mobility. While an estimated 40,000 contract workers, about two thirds of the Vietnamese population in the GDR, were sent home in the early 1990s, many of them returned, legally or illegally, in the late 1990s after realizing that living and working in Germany was much easier than in Hanoi or other places in Vietnam (Hillmann, 2005). They forged new transnational relations based on their former networks from GDR times and maintained political, familial, economic and religious ties between their home and host countries. The legal status of many of the former contract workers who decided to stay in the reunified Germany were quite unclear, as the socialist GDR no longer

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existed. Most of the East German companies had closed, leading the contract workers to lose their economic foundation. Due to their uncertain status, many of the workers did not know whether they would even be able to remain in Germany. In order to earn some money, a number of them worked as street vendors and sold textiles in the small towns and villages of the former GDR. In many areas the infrastructure was still underdeveloped, and some Vietnamese were able to sell their goods in small markets in rural areas and do excellent business. Those without cars could travel by train. A former contract worker, who had previously worked in the GDR clothing industry, told me: ‘I travelled regularly with two suitcases of textiles on the train from Berlin to towns in areas of the former GDR and sold my wares near the train station. In the first years after the fall of the wall, business went very well, but later most of my clients owned cars and preferred to shop in the new department stores that have sprung up in the eastern part of Germany’. Only when the Vietnamese legal situation had improved and they were granted permission to stay (Berger, 2005, p. 69) did some decide to start formal businesses. Over the past twenty years, many Vietnamese grocery stores, restaurants, nail studios and tailoring shops have opened up, mainly in the eastern part of Berlin. The first stores were founded in some eastern parts of Berlin populated by a high number of former Vietnamese contract workers, such as the Berlin-Marzahn and Berlin-Hohenschönhausen areas, characterised by ten-story concrete slab buildings known as block settlements (Plattenbauten). Nowadays some of these buildings are empty and in the process of being torn down. In the past ten to fifteen years, numerous Vietnamese restaurants and grocery stores have opened in other regions of the eastern part of Berlin—in gentrified areas rather than the block settlements. Business was booming at Onkel Ho and other Vietnamese restaurants in Prenzlauer Berg, an area in the eastern part of the city preferred by students and young intellectuals. A portion of the revenue from flower shops, grocery stores and nail studios was transferred to Vietnam after the reunification of the country and the introduction of the deutschemark (West German currency) in the eastern part of Germany. Parts of these remittances were used to purchase land and houses in the home country. Mrs. Ha, a former contract worker who lived in Germany for several years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, returned to Vietnam at the end of the 1990s. When I met her in Hanoi, she told me: ‘I am living in my own house now with my husband and children. My siblings bought the house with the money I sent from Germany’. Other remittances from former contract workers living in Germany were used to finance medical treatment for relatives in Vietnam. One such example was a fifty-year-old former contract worker who ran a grocery store in the eastern part of Berlin and was financing cancer treatment

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for his mother in Vietnam. His daughter told me: ‘As medical care in Vietnam is not the best, my father paid for her surgery and subsequent chemotherapy in Thailand. My grandmother flew regularly to Bangkok for this purpose, accompanied by other relatives. Both the consultations with doctors as well as the follow-up care took place in Thailand’. This example demonstrates the significance of transnational family relations as social security networks amid today’s increasing global connectedness.

4

Transnational Families

Social security networks were also quite important for those who left Vietnam as contract workers, as they were supposed to return to their home country after some years. When the contract workers came to the GDR, they had to leave their parents, spouses and children in Vietnam, so grandparents, siblings and spouses took over childcare. As in many other societies, transnational care chains were established between migrants and those who stayed behind (Bryceson & Vuorella, 2002). In the 1980s, Vietnamese contract workers only had letters to maintain contact with their families, and they were allowed just one trip home during their four or five years’ stay in the GDR. Some workers got married during this trip but then had to leave their spouses in Vietnam to return to their contractual work. Based on the accounts of Vietnamese men and women in Germany and return migrants in Hanoi, it seems that the divorce rate for these marriages was quite high. A significant number of the men and women who were prohibited from joining their spouses in the GDR and spent years apart found new partners in Vietnam while remaining legally married to their original spouses. Vietnamese interlocutors in Germany are aware of men and women who are officially married in Hanoi but who simultaneously live with another Vietnamese partner in Germany and have children with their new partner. It must be noted, though, that the existence of a ‘second wife’ or a ‘second husband’ is not unusual even for non-migrants who live in Hanoi, despite polygamy having been considered illegal in northern Vietnam since 1959 (Bélanger & Barbieri, 2009, p. 14). However, compared to the boat people, who brought their spouses and children with them or brought over their relatives under special regulations some years later, most Vietnamese contract workers were young and unmarried when they arrived in the GDR. Marriages between Vietnamese contract workers were not allowed before 1990, and as the authorities controlled the relationships between East German citizens and Vietnamese workers, these marriages were also quite rare. In cases where love affairs developed between

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East German women and male contract workers, Vietnamese authorities in the GDR could send the contract workers back to Vietnam. Female contract workers were not allowed to give birth in the GDR or raise a child in the ‘socialist fraternal country’, so those who became pregnant had to either have an abortion or leave the country (Dennis, 2005, 37). Returning to Vietnam with an illegitimate child meant disgracing one’s family, and single mothers faced difficulties in finding a new partner in Vietnam. Moreover, as these mothers would have to pay back the costs of their stay in the GDR, they and their families were faced with financial ruin. The restrictive politics concerning pregnant Vietnamese women in the GDR changed after a huge number of new contract workers arrived in the GDR— 20,448 in 1987, followed by 30,567 in 1988 (Dennis, 2005, p. 16). In March 1989, a few months before the Berlin Wall came down, new regulations were passed. Pregnant women were no longer to be sent back to Vietnam against their will and they were allowed to continue to work in the GDR. The company and the state had to pay for daycare costs and various other kinds of social support, such as financial funding for pregnancy and childcare. These improvements notwithstanding, male and female contract workers continued to rely on relatives who stayed behind when it came to raising children. Simultaneously, aging parents and contract workers’ children and spouses in Vietnam were dependent on remittances from their relatives abroad. New communication technologies and relatively inexpensive air travel have intensified transnational family relations over the past years. Communicating via email, Skype and phone calls keep many of them well informed about family affairs—for example, about parents’ illnesses, hospital stays and doctors’ visits. Vietnamese mothers can communicate with their children at home and parents from Germany can participate in wedding preparations of their children taking place in Vietnam. Before 1990, Vietnamese contract workers in East Germany could not afford a flight ticket to their home country in the case of a death in the family and hence could not participate in their parents’ funerals. Most Vietnamese share the view that spirits, including ancestor spirits, exist alongside the living. As such, they believe that ‘the wealth and security of the living depend on maintaining with them relations of mutual care and assistance’ (Taylor, 2007, p. 15). Today, a number of Vietnamese fly back home if their aging parents need care. Others prefer to send money to hire a home aide. Many spend their savings on a flight ticket to participate in the funeral if a family member dies. Recognizing the demand for travel between Germany and Vietnam as well as the newly acquired purchasing power of potential clients, Vietnam Airlines started direct flights from Frankfurt am Main to Hanoi in 2008.

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Travelling Religion

Not only do people, goods and money travel between Germany and Vietnam, but so do religious objects and practices (Hüwelmeier & Krause, 2008; Hüwelmeier, 2010a). For many migrants, religion plays an important role in the process of incorporation into the host country and in the creation of cross-border connections. Some Vietnamese in Germany have created various networks to help them perform religious practices (Hüwelmeier, 2010b) while simultaneously forging religious ties to their home country, like many other migrants do (see Levitt, 2007; Glick Schiller et al., 2006; Vertovec, 2007). As a result, for example, small altars were brought from Vietnam to Germany. Vietnamese vendors install shrines in shops and wholesale markets to protect themselves from thieves and disease (Hüwelmeier, 2016b). Food offerings are presented to gods and spirits to improve the business and shopkeepers’ well-being (Hüwelmeier, 2008) and votive paper offerings, imported from Vietnam, are burned for the ancestors who are believed to dwell in the otherworld (Hüwelmeier, 2016a). Popular religious practices are performed not only in Vietnam, but also in Germany. In 2008, I met a Vietnamese female spirit medium in Erfurt, an eastern German city, who established a spirit shrine in a garage behind her house. However, as she assured me, she could not perform len dong spirit séances, as there are no chau van musicians in Germany, necessary for the spirits to appear. She tried to use ritual music from the tape recorder, but spirits did not come into presence. The spirit medium was also in great demand as a fortune teller. When I was visiting her, some of her clients, travelling from Berlin to Erfurt by train or by car, were already waiting for consultation. Later, in a suburb in Hanoi, I met her mother, who was a fortune teller herself and caretaker of a temple but not a spirit medium, as she assured me. She told me that she had travelled to Erfurt several times to visit her children.3 Religious activities also occur in Vietnamese Buddhist temples and pagodas in many places in Germany. At the same time, some Buddhist monks and nuns travel between congregations in Paris, Berlin and Ho Chi Minh City. I participated in the inauguration ceremony of a Vietnamese Buddhist pagoda located on the territory of a Vietnamese wholesale market in the eastern part of Berlin, which I called the bazaar pagoda (Hüwelmeier, 2013). Shopkeepers and shoppers prayed for good business, luck, wealth and health. Both clients and vendors donated money to the pagoda, and I was told that part of the money is used to buy Buddha statues in Ho Chi Minh City and to pay for the shipping costs. During the inauguration ceremony, all visitors were dressed in brown gowns, sewn in Vietnam. One member of the organizing committee was a woman who frequently travels between Berlin and Ho Chi Minh City for

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business reasons. She brought the gowns from Vietnam and created contacts between pagodas in Germany, France and Vietnam. While I took part in the inauguration ceremony, believers were getting ready to welcome a monk who had just arrived from Paris (Hüwelmeier & Krause, 2008).4 In the western part of Berlin, I talked to a Buddhist nun from southern Vietnam, the head of the Linh Thuu pagoda, which was connected to the Vietnamese Buddhist pagoda in Hannover, a city in the western part of Germany. The nun told me, in 2008, that it was very difficult to unite Vietnamese from northern and southern Vietnam in this Berlin pagoda.5 Vietnamese Catholic congregations in Germany are frequented mostly by boat people and situated in the country’s western part. In the western part of Berlin, the Vietnamese Catholic community consisted of about a thousand members and a priest, who had arrived in Germany as a boat refugee. Sunday services are performed in Vietnamese. In the eastern part of Berlin, there is a comparatively small group of former contract workers and asylum seekers who converted to Catholicism after 1990. Still, according to both its members and their priest—a German Jesuit with excellent knowledge of Vietnamese— it is quite difficult to unite boat people in the west and former contract workers in the east under the mantle of the Catholic church. Due to anti-communist sentiments, boat people are reluctant to establish religious and social ties with former contract workers. Moreover, as former contract workers and undocumented Vietnamese Catholics in the eastern part of Berlin told me, because they were poor, they did not feel accepted by Vietnamese Catholic boat people in the western part of the city. Instead, Catholic Vietnamese in the east felt that the others looked down on them.6 Aside from Catholicism, a number of Vietnamese have become followers of Vietnamese evangelical and charismatic Pentecostal churches in Germany. At the end of the 1980s, these churches were located in the western part of Germany, but since then they have expanded to other locations in the eastern parts of Berlin and Germany. At the time I did ethnographic fieldwork with Pentecostal Vietnamese, pastors and evangelists travelled between various cities and small villages in both parts of reunited Germany. Different from Catholicism, where Vietnamese Catholics are still separated into boat people and contract workers, Pentecostal churches try to unite Vietnamese of all migration backgrounds, including boat people, former contract workers, asylum seekers and undocumented migrants (Hüwelmeier, 2011). Pentecostalism is a growing global religious movement in the US, Africa, Latin America, Asia and Europe. Not least due to ‘health and wealth gospel’ (or the gospel of prosperity), global charismatic Christianity has played an important role in attracting millions of people on all continents. In Vietnamese

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Pentecostal churches in Germany, for example, believers pray for visa and marriage documents. While I participated in a number of healing services in Germany as well as in Vietnam, I noticed that church visitors ask God to cure their diseases and deliver them from evil spirits. Religious practitioners donated large amounts of money and had to give one tenth of their income to the church. Converts with whom I talked assured me that Jesus helped them to find a new life in the migration context. A Vietnamese woman in her forties, born in Hanoi, became a church leader in Berlin. She told me: ‘In my former life in Vietnam, I was a member of the Communist Party and did some bad things to others. In Germany, I came to know Jesus and since then, all my diseases [have] disappeared and I have a happy family life’. Pentecostal churches are particularly attractive to women, as they are welcomed to assume offices and responsibilities in the church (Hüwelmeier, 2010b). A number of Vietnamese converts, former contract workers from ex-Comecon countries and asylum seekers who returned home after their applications had been rejected have founded underground churches in Hanoi and other places in Vietnam and Southeast Asia (Hüwelmeier, 2010a, 2011). More recently, media technologies have played a crucial role in performing ‘crusades’ and conversion sessions among diasporic Vietnamese (Hüwelmeier, 2015c). On the one hand, religious practices have helped migrants in coping with their sometimes hopeless situations in the host society. By joining religious congregations in the diaspora, people receive assistance in finding jobs and a place to live. Pentecostal churches connect them with other migrants, help them find lawyers and provide spiritual support to migrants faced with marital problems or sickness. On the other hand, migrants rely on religion to become global actors and mobile people, creating and maintaining transnational ties. This is especially the case in Pentecostal Christianity (Hüwelmeier & Krause, 2010). As proselytizing is a crucial concern and a moral duty of all adherents, believers circulate between home and host societies as well as other countries, trying to convert relatives, friends and neighbours.

6

Conclusion

Forging and maintaining economic, familial and religious networks across borders have long been typical parts of migrants’ activities. However, as a result of new communication technologies and reduced costs of transportation, transnational social practices have, in recent years, witnessed an enormous intensification. Migrants are more closely linked to people back home and in other destinations than ever before. According to well-known statements regarding

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methodological nationalism (Wimmer & Glick Schiller, 2003), the study of social and historical processes cannot be contained within the borders of individual nation-states. The transnational lens indicates that migrants’ activities are linked in manifold ways to family members, business partners and fellow members of religious congregations who live in the country of origin as well as other places. Social, economic and religious ties among Vietnamese in Germany and political sensitivities between boat people and contract workers continue to be a dividing force that characterises the Vietnamese diasporas in Germany. Today Vietnam is one of the four remaining communist countries, and even though it has been reunited since 1976, Vietnamese remain separated over the geographical line of north and south. Historical and political frictions have impacted Vietnamese in reunited Germany, a country that was also divided into a capitalist West and a communist East before 1990. As this contribution has illustrated, experiences of Vietnamese in Germany are not homogeneous at all, but highly diverse. Aside from divergent political attitudes, they are internally divided by legal status, class, education, gender, family background, region of origin and religion.

Notes 1 This contribution is a revised version of a chapter that was published in 2014, in a volume edited by Sylvia Hahn and Stan Nadel entitled Asian Migrants in Europe. Transcultural Connections (pp. 81–94), V & R Unipress. It is a result of my research project ‘Transnational networks, religion and new migration’, funded by the German Research Foundation (grant number HU 1019/2-2) and is based on ethnographic fieldwork in Berlin and Hanoi which I carried out from 2006–2008. I have changed all personal names to protect the privacy of my informants. From that time onward, I visited Vietnam many times, carrying out ethnographic research through a project entitled ‘The Global Bazaar’ (including fieldwork in Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic and Vietnam), followed by a project called ‘Media, Religion, and Materiality: Spiritual economies in Southeast Asia’. At present, I am conducting research for a project entitled ‘Urban Ecologies in Southeast Asia: Humans, Environment and Ghosts in the City’. All research projects have been funded by the German Research Foundation. 2 For example, in 2009, there were 155,000 Vietnamese living in Germany, including 51,000 living in the former eastern part of Germany excluding Berlin and 26,000 living in Berlin (https://www.statistischebibliothek.de/mir/receive/DEHeft_mods_00028169, p. 131). Ten years later, in 2019, there were 188,000 Vietnamese living in Germany, including 33,000 living in the former eastern part of Germany excluding Berlin and 25,000 living in Berlin (https://www.statistischebibliothek.de/mir/receive/DEHeft_mods_00132458, p. 137). ‘A person has a migration background if he or she or at least one parent does not have German nationality by birth’ (https://www.statistischebibliothek.de/mir/receive/DEHeft_ mods_00132458, p. 4). 3 Janet Hoskins also mentioned the spirit shrine in Erfurt, which she visited in 2018 (Hoskins, 2021, p. 103). In Vietnam, len dong spirit mediumship is considered to be the oldest religious

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practice in Vietnam (Fjelstad and Nguyễn, 2006; Endres, 2011; Norton, 2006) and had been practised in temples and private homes, although for decades the government condemned these and other popular religious practices as superstition. Only in December 2016 were these practices inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (Hüwelmeier, 2018; Salemink, 2016, p. 314). 4 Bazaar pagodas were also established by diasporic Vietnamese amid wholesale markets in Poland (Hüwelmeier, 2015a) and the Czech Republic (Hüwelmeier, 2015b). 5 For a recent study of two Vietnamese Buddhist pagodas in Berlin, one in the western part and the other in the eastern part of the city, see Ngo and Mai, 2021. 6 Recent research on Catholicism among diasporic Vietnamese mentioned an annual congress of about 6,000 Vietnamese Catholics in the western part of Germany (Ninh, 2021, p. 76). According to a Vietnamese priest with whom I talked in 2008, this congress contributed to the maintenance of tensions between Catholic Vietnamese boat people in the western part of Germany and the small group of Vietnamese Catholics from the eastern part of the country, as the flag of South Vietnam was hoisted at this particular event.

References Baumann, M. (2000). Migration, religion, integration. Buddhistische Vietnamesen und hinduistische Tamilen in Deutschland. Diagonal-Verlag. Bélanger, D., & Barbieri, M. (2009). Introduction: State, families, and the making of transitions in Vietnam. In D. Bélanger & M. Barbieri (Eds.), Reconfiguring families in contemporary Vietnam (pp. 1–44). Stanford University Press. Berger, A. (2005). Nach der Wende. Die Bleiberechtsregelung der Übergang in das vereinte Deutschland. In K. Weiss & M. Dennis (Eds.), Erfolg in der Nische? Die Vietnamesen in der DDR und in Ostdeutschland (pp. 29–76). LIT Verlag. Beuchling, O. (2003). Vom Bootsflüchtling zum Bundesbürger. Migration, integration und schulischer Erfolg in einer vietnamesischen Exilgemeinschaft. Waxmann. Bryceson, D., & Vuorela, U. (Eds.). (2002). The transnational family: New European frontiers and global networks. Berg. Dennis, M. (2005). Die vietnamesischen Vertragsarbeiter und Vertragsarbeiterinnen in der DDR, 1980–1989. In K. Weiss & M. Dennis (Eds.), Erfolg in der Nische? Die Vietnamesen in der DDR und in Ostdeutschland (pp. 15–49). LIT Verlag. Endres, K. W. (2011). Performing the divine: Mediums, market and modernity in urban Vietnam. NIAS Press. Fjelstad, K., & Nguyễn, T. H. (Eds.). (2006). Possessed by the spirits: Mediumship in contemporary Vietnamese communities. Cornell University Press. Gentleman, A. (2020, October 7). Essex lorry deaths: 39 Vietnamese migrants suffocated in container, court hears. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/ uk-news/2020/oct/07/essex-lorry-deaths-39-vietnamese-migrants-suffocated-incontainer-court-hears Glick Schiller, N., Caglar, A., & Gulbrandsen, T. C. (2006). Beyond the ethnic lens: Locality, globality, and born-again incorporation. American Ethnologist, 33(4), 612–633.

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Hillmann, F. (2005). Riders on the storm: Vietnamese in Germany’s two migration systems. In E. Spaan, F. Hillmann, & T. Van Naersen (Eds.), Asian migrants and European labour markets: Patterns and processes of immigrant labour market insertion in Europe (pp. 80–100). Routledge. Hoskins, J. A. (2021). Refugees in the land of awes: Vietnamese arrivals and departures. In B. Meyer & P. van der Veer (Eds.), Refugees and religion: Ethnographic studies of global trajectories (pp. 87–104). Bloomsbury Academic. Huong, N. V. (1999). Die Politik der DDR gegenüber Vietnam und den Vertragsarbeitern aus Vietnam sowie die Situation der Vietnamesen in Deutschland heute. In Deutschen Bundestag (Ed.), Materialien der Enquete-Kommission ‘Überwindung der Folgen der SED-Diktatur im Prozess der deutschen Einheit’, Band VII/2 (pp. 1301–1363). Nomos Verlag und Suhrkamp Verlag. Hüwelmeier, G. (2008). Spirits in the market place: Transnational networks of Vietnamese migrants in Berlin. In M. P. Smith & J. Eade (Eds.), Transnational ties: Cities, identities, and migrations (pp. 131–144). Transaction Publishers. Hüwelmeier, G. (2010a). Moving east: Transnational ties of Vietnamese Pentecostals. In G. Hüwelmeier & K. Krause (Eds.), Traveling spirits: Migrants, markets, and mobilities (pp. 133–144). Routledge. Hüwelmeier, G. (2010b). Female believers on the move: Gender and religion in Vietnamese Pentecostal networks in Germany. In G. Bonifacio, L. A. Tibe, & V. Angeles (Eds.), Gender, religion and migration: Pathways of integration (pp. 115–131). Lexington Books. Hüwelmeier, G. (2011). Socialist cosmopolitanism meets global Pentecostalism: Charismatic Christianity among Vietnamese migrants after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 34(3), 436–453. Hüwelmeier, G. (2013). Bazaar pagodas: Transnational religion, postsocialist marketplaces and Vietnamese migrant women in Berlin. Religion and Gender, 3(1), 75–88. Hüwelmeier, G. (2015a). From ‘Jarmark Europa’ to ‘commodity city’: New marketplaces, post-socialist migrations, and cultural diversity in Central and Eastern Europe. Central and Eastern European Migration Review, 4(1), 27–39. Hüwelmeier, G. (2015b). Mobile entrepreneurs: Transnational Vietnamese in the Czech Republic. In H. Cervinkova, M. Buchowski, & Z. Uherek (Eds.), Rethinking ethnography in Central Europe (pp. 59–73). Palgrave Macmillan. Hüwelmeier, G. (2015c). New media and traveling spirits: Pentecostals in the Vietnamese diaspora and the disaster of the Titanic. In H. Behrend, A. Dreschke, & M. Zillinger (Eds.), Trance-mediums and new media (pp. 100–115). Fordham University Press. Hüwelmeier, G. (2016a). Cell phones for the spirits: Ancestor worship and ritual economy in Vietnam and its diasporas. Material Religion, 12(3), 294–321. Hüwelmeier, G. (2016b). Enhancing spiritual security in Berlin’s Asian bazaars. New Diversities, 18(1), 10–21.

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Weiss, K. (2005). Nach der Wende: Vietnamesische Vertragsarbeiter und Vertragsarbeiterinnen in Ostdeutschland heute. In K. Weiss & M. Dennis (Eds.), Erfolg in der Nische? Die Vietnamesen in der DDR und in Ostdeutschland (pp. 77–96). LIT Verlag. Wimmer, A., & Glick Schiller, N. (2003). Methodological nationalism, the social sciences, and the study of migration: An essay in historical epistemology. International Migration Review, 37(3), 576–610.

CHAPTER 6

Pro-Democracy Activism in the Vietnamese Diaspora Transgressing Cold War Era Divisions in the Era of Social Media Grażyna Szymańska-Matusiewicz

1

Introduction

This chapter critically analyses twenty-first-century initiatives undertaken in the Vietnamese diaspora aimed at fostering political change in Vietnam. I posit that the political activism of overseas Vietnamese is currently undergoing profound changes. The ruptures resulting from the politics of the Cold War era—which can roughly be described as a division between ‘southerners’ (represented after the fall of Saigon by the refugee-based community in the US and other Western countries) and ‘northerners’ (including diasporic communities in Eastern Europe but also Vietnam-based residents connected in some way to the Communist government)—still exist and impact the pro-democracy movement. However, initiatives that cross this long-impassable border have emerged, as exemplified by the case of the Vietnamese Overseas Initiative for Conscience Empowerment (VOICE), the focus of my analysis in this chapter. The activism aimed at fostering democratisation in Vietnam is currently enacted by a complex network of activists that includes people spatially dispersed around the globe but intricately connected, with social media serving as the pivotal channels of communication. While the network has a global range, involving actors residing in the US, Australia and Eastern Europe, the most important nodes are localised in Vietnam and comprise journalists, organisers of protests and demonstrations, dissident intellectuals, social media bloggers and lawyers defending the rights of the outspoken; all of the above can be labelled as activists. While the pro-democratic advocacy of the diaspora and Vietnam-based dissidents is a phenomenon not gaining a large-scale resonance in contemporary Vietnam, its evolution in recent years remains an interesting illustration of strategies aimed at overcoming the historic division in the era of social media. For decades, dissident activism has been associated most often with the anti-communist ideological stance of post-refugee overseas communities in relation to the former state of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) (Dang, © koninklijke brill nv, leideN, 2022 | DOI:10.1163/9789004513969_007

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2005; Le, 2011b). However, in recent years, the mobilisation of Eastern European Vietnamese communities—which for decades have been described as a state-linked diaspora (Sheffer, 2006) related to the Vietnamese party-state— around the ideas of democratisation and civil society can be observed. Overseas Vietnamese have also faced the challenge of addressing and relating to the dissident activism emerging in Vietnam since the ‘normalization era’ of the 1990s (Kerkvliet, 2015, 2019). In this discussion, I pose the following questions: What are the obstacles facing bridging initiatives aimed at connecting Vietnam-based activists and diverse diasporic communities? What are the consequences of bringing into the fold a particular segment of the Vietnamese diaspora that has long been associated with the Vietnamese government: Vietnamese from Central and Eastern Europe? To address these questions, I focus on the network of activists related to one of the most prominent initiatives involving various circles of activists— VOICE. The global network of activists related to VOICE involves people of profoundly diverse backgrounds. It includes the ‘boat people’, deeply attached to the legacy of the Republic of Vietnam; young people born in northern regions of Vietnam after 1975, for whom the legacy of South Vietnam is completely alien; and wealthy Vietnamese entrepreneurs in Eastern Europe, originating from party-cadre families. I argue that VOICE provides a valuable case study that affords an analysis of challenges confronting activists seeking to unite the dissident movement.

2

VOICE as Organisation, VOICE as Network: History and Profile

VOICE was formally registered as an organisation in California in 2007. However, its history goes back ten years earlier, when Trịnh Hội, a Vietnamese-Australian lawyer, was providing legal services to Vietnamese refugees residing in camps in the Philippines. The first important area in which VOICE is active is advocacy for Vietnamese activists repressed by the Vietnamese government. The most prominent example of action in this field has been VOICE’s contribution to the release of a famous blogger, Nguyễn Ngọc Như Quỳnh (Mẹ Nấm), from prison. Như Quỳnh has been one of the most vocal Vietnamese activists speaking out against the policy of the government of Vietnam regarding a bauxite mining project in 2009, land confiscation and the Formosa issue in 2016. She was arrested in October 2016 and in July 2017 she was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment (BBC, 2017). The organisation produced and released a documentary movie, Mẹ Vắng Nhà (When Mother is Away), about the

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struggles that the children of Mẹ Nấm, a single mother, had to bear as a result of her imprisonment (Pham, 2018). VOICE also supported Nguyễn Văn Đài, a human rights lawyer and founder of Brotherhood for Democracy, after his arrest in 2015, arranging his wife’s advocacy tour and appealing before government institutions in the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe (Senate of Canada, 2016). The second area of VOICE’s activities is supporting civil society initiatives— helping organisations based in Vietnam through financial and organisational support, as well as sharing ‘know-how’. In that respect, VOICE’s strategy in that area is consistent with the agenda of democracy promotion as practised for decades by both Western-based NGO s and Western governments among the non-Western world.1 Interestingly, the idea that grassroots undertakings— such as meeting the daily needs of people living in Vietnam—are pivotal to the democratisation of that country clashes with the agenda of actors who have for decades been engaged in fostering political change in Vietnam: the postrefugee Vietnamese diaspora. The third area of VOICE’s activity is the training of future civil society and possibly also political leaders that is described on the website as capacity building. The essential part of this enterprise is VOICE’s internship program. Since 2011, the program has involved over 130 individuals (VOICE, 2018), who have participated in either long-term (six-month) or short-term (ten days’) training organised in the Philippines and other places in Southeast Asia. According to VOICE’s website, these internships are designed to prepare individuals to become civil society activists, advocating for a ‘strong, independent and vibrant civil society in Vietnam’ (VOICE, n.d.). The impact that VOICE has and intends to have on Vietnamese politics is strictly the consequence of its networked modus operandi. VOICE is only one of the multiple actors operating within a much broader network, including individuals but also initiatives and organisations located in Vietnam, the United States, Australia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Eastern European countries. According to the VOICE leaders with whom I interacted in the course of my research, the organisation’s agenda, aimed at fostering democratic change in Vietnam, requires the involvement of the global Vietnamese community in all its diverse segments. A quick look at the network of activists connected to VOICE reveals its transnational character. While the most central roles are supposed to be played by Vietnam-based individuals, the diaspora is necessary as a supplier of vital resources, including monetary support, advocacy capacity and expertise in the area of civil society activism. However, certain segments of the network—the Vietnam-based actors and representatives of the post-refugee Vietnamese diaspora—are not just

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spatially remote from one another. As will be discussed, politics from the Cold War era to a large extent still affect the agenda of Vietnamese diasporic activists. While one might assume that activists in Vietnam and representatives of the US-based Vietnamese community would be united in the fight against a common enemy—the Communist Party of Vietnam—the actual picture turns out to be far more complex.

3

Political Activism in Vietnam and the Role of Diasporic Communities

Among diverse initiatives challenging the monopolistic rule of the Communist Party of Vietnam which has appeared since the normalisation era of the 1990s (Kerkvliet, 2015, 2019), in the second decade of the twenty-first century, the approach that considers the development of civil society as a crucial factor enabling socio-political change is apparently gaining in importance. The 2010s were marked by an intensification in the engagement of public opinion on various issues—some of which have directly affected the daily lives of individuals, while others have related to nationalistic sentiments. The first category—issues relating to daily life—includes primarily various environmental protests, because the environment is seen by some analysts as the new frontier of civil society activism (Nguyễn, 2017; Nguyễn & Datzberger, 2018). It also includes the 2018 protests against the introduction of a cybersecurity law aimed at the protection of liberal values, primarily freedom of speech. The second kind of protest concerns the question of China. The ‘big brother’ of Vietnam, China, as well as key supporters of communist rule there, have posed a major threat to Vietnamese sovereignty since the beginnings of Vietnamese statehood. China is currently viewed as endangering Vietnam in terms of its territorial integrity, economy, and political sovereignty; public opinion seems to express a lack of trust in the party-state authorities when it comes to coping with these challenges. Anti-Chinese sentiments were expressed particularly vividly in 2014, when the construction of an oil rig platform sparked large-scale popular unrest in Vietnam. The protests, initially quietly supported by the Vietnamese authorities, have subsequently evolved into more radical expressions of distrust toward the party-state; as a result, a number of activists have been arrested, put on trial and persecuted (Nguyễn & Datzberger, 2018; Kerkvliet, 2019). The year 2018 brought another outbreak of protests against China in response to the legislative project of creating special economic zones, which was perceived as a concession of the Vietnamese authorities toward Chinese expansionist policy.

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The engagement of the Vietnamese people in the above areas has shaped public political activism in the second decade of the twenty-first century. While it has been claimed that the agenda is different in each of these cases— a populist outburst of nationalism shaping the anti-Chinese protests, middleclass aspirations toward a better quality of life underlying the environmental movement and a liberal agenda accounting for engagement on the issue of the cyber-security law—it is also clear that the actors playing pivotal roles in each of them overlap to a large extent, with popular activists expressing their dissent in all of the issues. Overseas Vietnamese communities have been facing the challenge of relating to the acts of civil activism happening in Vietnam; this became especially acute with the development of social media, which enabled instant communication, such as reporting the protests and persecutions of activists. Certain segments of the diaspora situated in countries located on both sides of the Iron Curtain have responded to and engaged in the protests cited above. The overseas communities, however, have had their own diverse history of political dissent against the authorities of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, which influenced the ways in which they related to the Vietnamese civil society activism. In the years preceding the normalisation policy in Vietnam, the political activism of the Vietnamese was almost exclusively the prerogative of the post-refugee diaspora, particularly the largest community located in the United States. The actions were undertaken by refugees from South Vietnam and started as early as June 1975 in Asia-based camps hosting refugees (Nguyễn, 2017); these culminated in the Reagan era, when in 1982 the National United Front for the Liberation of Vietnam (NUFLV), an organisation aimed at overthrowing the Vietnamese Communist government through military action, was established, with the Việt Tân (Reform Revolutionary Party of Vietnam) acting as its political arm (Le, 2011a). The activism of Vietnamese Americans has commonly taken an uncompromising form, described by Nguyễn as a ‘private grassroots version of McCarthyism’ (Nguyễn, 2017, p. 93). For instance, in the 1980s, five Vietnamese journalists and one American scholar were murdered, allegedly because they were accused of ‘collaborating with the communist regime’ (Le, 2011b; Carney, 1993; Kolker, 1995). The anti-communist stance of Vietnamese Americans has thus been a factor profoundly shaping the community, leading scholars to explore the functions of this ideology in the identity formation (Le, 2011b) or assimilation strategies (Nguyễn, 2017) of the community. However, the failure of the NUFLV movement and particularly the mode of action of its leaders, who lured the Vietnamese community with false statements, contributed to creating a cautious and reserved attitude toward the far-reaching initiatives requiring their engagement (particularly financial engagement) among representatives

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of the Vietnamese diaspora—something which still plays an important role today. The younger generation of Vietnamese American scholars and intellectuals has voiced the need to reformulate the dominant ideological paradigm within the community, which they claim is not only incompatible with basic values of human rights such as freedom of speech but also ineffective in terms of contributing to the democratisation of Vietnamese society (Lam, 2005; Le, 2009). While the Vietnamese American community and its political engagement have for decades received the most attention in academic discourse, it should be remembered that the diasporic network of Vietnamese activists also extends to Vietnamese communities residing in former socialist countries. The Eastern European communities, due to their state-bound genesis, have been commonly presumed to remain generally loyal toward the government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) (Szymańska-Matusiewicz, 2015, 2017, 2019) as supporters of the government or a politically inactive group. However, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union, some members of communities based in Eastern Europe have also begun to express their opposition to the Vietnamese government. This has been exemplified by the case of the Đàn Chim Việt (ĐCV) newspaper, published in Warsaw since 1999, whose editors were punished with a ban on return travel to Vietnam by SRV authorities (Szymańska-Matusiewicz, 2019). The journal, established by a group of Polish Vietnamese, some of whom had arrived in Poland as international students in the Cold War era and others as immigrants after the democratic transition, aimed to ‘raise the value of democracy and human rights’ (Lê Dân, 2007) and included articles criticizing the Communist Party of Vietnam and calling for a transition to liberal democracy. Another important dissident in the Polish Vietnamese community was Tôn Vân Anh, who arrived in Poland as a teenager in the 1990s. She developed co-operation with the Polish NGO Stowarzyszenie Wolnego Słowa (Society for the Freedom of Speech), an organisation of former Polish anti-communist activists from the 1980s. While the reception of her actions among the Vietnamese Polish community was tepid, she managed to gain prominence as a human rights advocate among the Polish public (Szymańska-Matusiewicz, 2015). Similar initiatives have also emerged in the Czech Republic. The Diễn Đàn newspaper, advocating for the democratisation of Vietnam and established by former students from the Cold War era, has claimed the Czech Charter 77 movement (Manifesto of Charter 77, 1997) as its major source of inspiration. According to Nguyễn Quốc Vũ, former journalist of Diễn Đàn, Vaclav Havel and other former Charter 77 activists—who supported persecuted activists in Vietnam, signing letters of support for arrested Bloc 8406 members organising for

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democratic reforms (RSF, 2016)—offered modest financial help to the initiative (BBC, 2011). The Văn Lang Centre, an initiative related to Diễn Đàn, was officially registered in 2011 but has been active as an informal ‘brand’ for almost two decades. It supports Vietnamese dissidents through letters and petitions, but it also bridges them with Czech human rights associations such as People in Need. The organisation also stands for the Vietnamese Czech community in the broader society; Phạm Hữu Uyển, a member of the Văn Lang Centre, was elected by Czech authorities to represent the Vietnamese in the Council of Ethnic Minorities (Vietinfo, 2013). With the emergence of the pro-democratic movement in Vietnam and among the Eastern European Vietnamese, the issue of co-operation between political initiatives has gained attention. Members of the ĐCV established contact in the early 2000s with the oldest Vietnamese newspaper published in the US, Người Việt, in search of support. While the reception of the Warsaw-based initiative by members of the Orange County-based magazine was positive (the editors of ĐCV visited California at the invitation of Người Việt), co-operation did not reach a significant scale and, due to a lack of financial resources, ĐCV has only been published as an online magazine since 2005. Eastern European Vietnamese dissident journalists have been given the opportunity to publish in important diasporic media, such as BBC Vietnamese and Radio Free Asia, with one of the Polandeducated Vietnamese, Nguyễn Giang, becoming an editor of BBC Vietnamese in London. In some cases, co-operation between Vietnamese of Eastern European background did not go smoothly. One of the founders of ĐCV, Lê Diễn Đức, became a journalist for Radio Free Asia after moving to the United States. After he published on his Facebook page a statement that ridiculed the NUFLV movement and its leader, Hoàng Cơ Minh, causing outrage among a large part of the Vietnamese American community, he was fired from the post and has since remained active only on Facebook (BBC, 2015). Criticism of NUFLV actions has not been received smoothly by a large part of the Vietnamese American community, especially if it has come from someone who, despite his involvement in pro-democratic dissident journalism, originated from North Vietnam and, as a former student from Eastern Europe, supposedly came from a family maintaining good relations with the Vietnamese government. In recent years, some members of diasporic Vietnamese communities on both sides of the Iron Curtain have engaged in actions supporting Vietnambased activism, becoming a part of a network in which the VOICE organisation is one of the major nodes. Their work has involved advocacy and financial support for persecuted Vietnamese dissidents, dissemination of information about their actions, organizing protests and demonstrations abroad and direct participation in protests in Vietnam.

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In the next section, I focus on the network constituted by actors residing both in Vietnam and abroad who have actively engaged in at least one of the three issues described previously and who have had links with the VOICE initiative. Links are defined as maintaining co-operation, such as receiving support, undergoing training and participating in various events related to activism. The fact that the actors connected to VOICE seem to play important roles in dissident actions backs up claims of the importance of external support for the Vietnam-based activist movement. However, as I will argue, such assistance is also problematic. The first issue relates to divisions from the Cold War era, both within the diaspora and between major overseas communities and residents of Vietnam. The second concern is the vulnerability of the actors receiving external support to charges posed by the Vietnamese authorities of being bolstered by Việt Tân, which was designated a ‘terrorist organization’ by Vietnamese authorities. The strategies applied by individual activists and VOICE concerning these challenges will be elaborated further in the next section. During my research, I analysed the efforts that VOICE makes to bridge particular communities in order to work toward the democratisation of Vietnam. I participated in a meeting organised in summer 2019, conducted interviews with members and supporters of the organisation and analysed the content of websites and social media profiles of VOICE and other initiatives connected with its network. In the next section, I describe emerging platforms of cooperation as well as obstacles facing coordinated efforts and focus my analysis around the two dimensions that are essential in networked social movements to perform a common action to foster political change: trust and hope.

4

Trust: Taking the Challenge

Building trust between members of political activist networks is a particularly acute challenge in the case of initiatives opposing authoritarian regimes, which are known for not hesitating to apply a broad range of strategies to infiltrate and disrupt activist networks. Party-state systems, with their institutions reaching multiple spheres of life, have been particularly effective in surveilling and disrupting dissident activity—for example, through the infiltration of dissident communities by covert agents, who are supposed to change the dynamics of the movement and cause mistrust among members. In the case of Communist-ruled Vietnam, the system of surveillance was launched soon after the Việt Minh took power in 1945. From the late 1950s to the 1960s, the Communists started the process of infiltration of the South through the creation and expansion of Việt Công guerrilla forces, which proved to be a highly effective strategy. With the enemy forces operating secretly, an

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atmosphere of suspicion and distrust prevailed among the South Vietnamese at the time of the American War. Those South Vietnamese who left Vietnam after 1975 and settled in countries of the democratic West, along with their compatriots whose side they had been on during the war, did not abandon their suspicions that communist agents were still operating in their environment. Within the Vietnamese American diaspora, it was widely believed that the authorities of Vietnam had managed to infiltrate the refugee community. Moreover, the majority of Vietnamese Americans held an unfavourable attitude toward the contemporary Vietnamese state, ruled by the Communist Party. Such aversion is commonly extended from the party itself to many aspects of contemporary Vietnamese society and culture, from phenomena directly associated with communism, such as state symbols to less tangible aspects. Therefore, encounters between members of the post-refugee diaspora and Vietnamese based in Vietnam have commonly led to clashes. Practices such as the usage of the northern dialect, particularly in connection with verbal expressions associated with the language used by the Communist authorities, or association with state-bound organisations, cause distrust on the part of people who often have had traumatic experiences resulting from oppression by the Vietnamese Communists. Moreover, people in post-refugee communities have also experienced disappointment with initiatives undertaken by their peers. The history of the National United Front for Liberation of Vietnam, which used false statements and abused community members (Nguyễn, 2017), contributed to the growth of distrust among many overseas communities. It therefore comes as no surprise that for members of the Vietnamese American diaspora, putting trust in both the emerging VOICE organisation itself and the representatives of other segments of the network has at times been problematic. The atmosphere of the constant suspicion of being surrounded by secret agents of hostile forces was characteristic not only of Communist-surveilled South Vietnam; the Vietnamese have been subjected to the apparatus of state control and surveillance since the time of colonial French rule. The propaganda actions of the French continued during the first Indochina War. These were followed by the involvement of the United States, resulting in the formation of a South Vietnamese state where infiltration and propaganda have been ubiquitous. CIA activity aimed at disrupting the consolidation of Communist Party rule has furthermore continued after the end of the second Indochina War (Prados, 2009). It comes as no surprise that in Communist-ruled Vietnam, the atmosphere of suspicion over the alleged activity of foreign imperialist forces has been a constant motif present in state propaganda since the moment of the seizing power by the Việt Minh. While geopolitical circumstances have dramatically evolved since the time of the Indochina Wars, with

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the normalisation of relations between Vietnam and the United States taking place over twenty years ago, in the government-controlled media, political dissent is still presented as linked to hostile external influences. The role of a major villain in this discourse is played by the Việt Tân. Accusations of Việt Tân influence have been regularly made by the state-controlled media reporting on the anti-government protests taking place in the last couple of years, including anti-Chinese demonstrations in 2014, environmental protests connected with the Formosa issue in 2016 (Huy, 2016), and protests against the cyber-security law and special economic zones in 2018 (Nguyễn, 2018). Analogously, the VOICE is presented as an organisation bearing immediate connections to the Việt Tân. In the narrative of the Nhân Dân newspaper, it is simply a branch of the Việt Tân, created to collect funds for the organisation, which refrains from operating openly due to its reputation of being linked to violent actions in the 1980s (Võ, 2015). While northern Vietnamese have been instructed by the authorities to be alert to the hostile actions of foreign agents, they have also developed an awareness of being under surveillance by the state apparatus. Repressive security structures were developed by the Vietnamese government immediately after the Việt Minh seized power and have played an important role in the consolidation and securing of authoritarian rule in times of both war and peace. A major role in the state security apparatus is played by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which is supported in its efforts by the Ministry of Culture and Information, which also plays a major role in the control of a crucial area for expressing dissent: the internet (Thayer, 2009). The classic strategies of surveillance and repression have been complemented by actions in the realm of the internet, which have included not only monitoring of social media, emails, and instant communication, but also proactive strategies such as hacking websites and individual social media accounts, trolling and spreading fake news. In the following section, I present the dilemmas facing Vietnamese activists originating from three locations: Vietnam, Western countries, and Eastern Europe, pointing to the areas of mistrust and hesitation disrupting their willingness to engage in VOICE-inspired activity, as well as describing the strategies undertaken to overcome these difficulties.

5

Vietnam-Based Activists: Am I Ready to Become a Phản Động?

The VOICE is described in state-controlled Vietnamese media as a unanimously anti-state organisation aiming to overthrow the government in a possibly violent manner. One of the Vietnamese websites distributing information

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about youth scholarships, ybox.com, removed an announcement about VOICE internships, stating that the organisation is essentially ‘a reactionary Việt Tân organisation hiding under the form of an NGO to recruit young people to join the anti-state forces’ (Ybox, 2019). In response, the official VOICE website published a post titled, ‘Is the VOICE scholarship on civil society reactionary?’ (VOICE, 2019). In this statement, the organisation denies possessing any links to the Việt Tân and makes clear that the goal of the scholarship is primarily to foster the development of civil society activism, which includes diverse activities, many of which could be engaged in without clashing with the authorities. However, the VOICE website also notes that ‘the environment of civil society activities in Vietnam still faces many difficulties’ and warns of the possible repression that could be experienced by interns after coming back to Vietnam—thereby implicitly suggesting that the answer to the title question is affirmative. As they are aware that participation in VOICE scholarship programs renders them likely to acquire the label of phản động [reactionary], engagement with VOICE requires a great deal of trust on the side of various categories of Vietnambased participants. At the most basic level, these Vietnam-born and -raised people need to put their trust in an organisation that is classified as an enemy of the state and run primarily by Western-based Vietnamese of South Vietnamese origin. It can be particularly difficult for the first category of interns—those who do not express willingness to engage in explicitly political activities, perceiving participation in the program primarily as an opportunity to learn useful skills such as public presentation and the English language and to enrich their curriculum with a foreign internship. However, the most obvious dimension of trust is connected to the issue of providing confidentiality. The interns remain very vulnerable to surveillance from the Vietnamese state apparatus; some of them have been recognised as VOICE interns on their return to Vietnam and their passports have been confiscated, effectively banning them from leaving Vietnam again. As a large proportion of the participants, therefore, intend to keep their involvement in the program undisclosed, they adopt such measures as using aliases, avoiding being photographed, and refraining from posting content related to VOICE scholarships on social media. Providing confidentiality for interns remains a challenge, especially in light of VOICE’s bridging initiatives aimed at connecting Vietnam-based activists with members of Vietnamese post-refugee overseas communities. While it seems vital to provide a platform for direct contact between people acting for change in Vietnam on the ground and resourceful Vietnamese in America, Australia or Canada who might be willing to support their actions, such initiatives are connected with substantial

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risk for the former. By participating in meetings organised by VOICE, grouping various segments of the activist network, I have heard the opinion expressed that the initiative in its current form is extremely vulnerable to surveillance by the Vietnamese state apparatus and—despite efforts by VOICE that aim to check the background of interns and other participants—the infiltration of the scholarship system is only a matter of time. While such opinions disrupt the creation of an environment of trust, they are well-grounded in reality: the security forces of Vietnam do indeed monitor VOICE activity in scrupulous detail, reaching some interns and communicating findings to the public in order to boost an atmosphere of suspicion. A decision to engage in social activism, therefore, requires a substantial degree of hope enabling individuals to overcome the fear of possible repression.

6

Post-Refugee Diasporic Communities: Can We Trust Those Who Come from the Other Side?

Trust remains a challenge for Western-based diasporic Vietnamese for reasons that differ from those of activists in Vietnam. As has been explained to me by some of the Vietnamese Americans, for members of this community, experiences of disappointment and betrayal during their former political involvement have led them to be extremely cautious and reluctant to engage in any newly emerged movements. The uncertainty around the trustworthiness of particular activists and movements which exist in the arena of anti-communist activism remains a recurrent motif in discussions and considerations taking place among diasporic communities. Since the normalisation of United States–Vietnamese relations and the shift in Vietnamese state policy toward overseas Vietnamese (Việt Kiều), the issue of loyalty to anti-communist ideas became a hot and painful topic among Vietnamese American communities. Given that possibilities to operate on the ground in Vietnam have opened for the Việt Kiều since the second half of the 1990s, the issue of how far co-operation with Vietnamese authorities can go without being labelled as betraying the pro-democratic agenda has become a matter of debate. While some wellknown figures related to the legacy of the Republic of Vietnam—among them, the former prime minister of South Vietnam, Nguyễn Cao Kỳ, and singer Phạm Duy—have decided to come to terms with the Communist authorities, many diaspora members perceive such decisions as a betrayal. For representatives of the Vietnamese diaspora to engage in activism connected to VOICE, they need to put trust in two categories of actors: the VOICE organisation itself and Vietnam-based activists. While VOICE has been established as an organisation led by an Australian Vietnamese and aimed at

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helping a group of people undoubtedly close to the hearts of the post-refugee diaspora, the boat people, some aspects connected with the biography of its founder make Western-based Vietnamese hesitant to express their unanimous support. Trịnh Hội, VOICE’s founder, has acquired popularity among the global Vietnamese diaspora as a son-in-law of the former prime minister of the Republic of Vietnam, Nguyễn Cao Kỳ; Trinh Hoi is the husband of the latter’s daughter, celebrity figure Nguyễn Cao Kỳ Duyên, well-known for her role as the co-host of popular Vietnamese music production Paris By Night, and Trinh himself also has a celebrity role as the master of ceremonies for entertainment shows. After Nguyễn Cao Kỳ returned to Vietnam in 2004 and made favourable comments about the Communist government, the burden of being connected with a traitor reached Trịnh, who, however, divorced his first wife in 2008. The fact that Trịnh took a contract job in Vietnam in 2008/2009 is also regarded unfavourably by some community members. The celebrity entourage of the VOICE founder has often been highlighted by Vietnamese state media in order to discredit him and his organisation (Võ, 2015); however, the same factors are also viewed unfavourably by some members of migrant communities, especially those of a more conservative stance. Another challenge for the members of post-refugee communities is connected with putting trust in the actions of Vietnam-based activists. Well-known people such as journalist Điếu Cày, blogger Mẹ Nấm and advocate Cù Huy Hà Vũ, who have been subject to repression by the Communist government, have received substantial support from Vietnamese diasporic communities. After serving part of their prison sentences, they have been released—to some extent due to pressure by Vietnamese Americans lobbying US politicians—ordered to leave Vietnam and have settled in the United States. While the United States, as a major political player on the global scene and capable of exerting pressure on Vietnamese authorities, has been a primary destination for Vietnamese dissidents, some dissidents have settled in Europe. Included among the latter are Nguyen Van Đài, who received support from VOICE during the advocacy campaign aimed at his release from prison, and blogger Người Buôn Gió, who settled in Germany. While Eastern European countries are not major destinations for Vietnamese political dissidents, the mother of one of the imprisoned labour rights activists, Đỗ Thị Minh Hạnh, has been granted asylum in Poland thanks to Đàn Chim Việt journalists’ advocacy. It might be assumed that within the refugee-based Vietnamese American community, such dissidents would form another—although extremely limited in size—category of victims of communism. However, while the incorporation of the 1990s wave of former re-education camp prisoners into the community proceeded quite smoothly, at least with respect to ideology, the situation of the twenty-first-century activists unfolded differently. Sometimes the clashes

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resulting from the historically rooted differences have appeared as early as during the first encounters in person (Mặc, 2014). After being released from Vietnamese prison and arriving in Los Angeles, Điếu Cày, a renowned dissident blogger, was greeted by a large group of American Vietnamese. One of them, a former military officer of the Republic of Vietnam, attempted to hand the flag of South Vietnam to the dissident, who refrained from holding it. This event, which was extensively commented on in the diasporic media, illustrated the dilemma faced by many Vietnam-based activists. While embracing the ‘yellow flag’ is not compatible with their own background and would not be received well by the majority of Vietnamese society, for a large part of US-based Vietnamese it is perceived as a ‘loyalty test’ which enables one to decide whether the person originating from communist-ruled Vietnam is truly on the right side. In this respect, an interesting role has been played by Poland-based activists. In post-socialist countries, the institutions of the Vietnamese state, acting through the embassies as well as member organisations of the Vietnamese Fatherland Front, have managed to maintain a high degree of control over diasporic communities. However, actors operating under the pro-democratic agenda likewise maintain contact and co-operation with globally dispersed activists, including those related to VOICE. ĐCV journalists, for example, have continued their connection with dissident blogger Người Buôn Gió, who visited Warsaw while living in exile in Germany (Hồng, 2010). In 2018, Trịnh Hội and Nguyễn Anh Tuấn (the latter being a Vietnam activist who had participated in a scholarship program run by VOICE a couple of years earlier) were hosted by Warsaw Vietnamese activists. The meeting with them was attended by a relatively large group of over fifty guests, despite efforts by the Vietnamese embassy to force a change of meeting location.2 Another activist connected to VOICE, Trịnh Hữu Long, editor-in-chief of Luật Khoa Tập Chí, an online magazine—one of the major media platforms for pro-democratic actors—visited Warsaw during the 2014 protest against the China policy, together with one of the most renowned Vietnam-based dissidents, Nguyễn Quang A. Polish Vietnamese activists, such as one of the organisers of the 2014 protest, Phan Châu Thành, have maintained close relations with the aforementioned activists and participated in activities supporting their members in need. Moreover, Nguyễn Anh Tuấn and Trịnh Hữu Long are members of the largest Facebook group gathering the Polish Vietnamese, UWAGA—Người Việt ở Ba Lan, administered by Phan Châu Thành and other Polish Vietnamese activists. The group, with the stated aim of ‘improving the knowledge of legal regulations, education and culture among the Polish Vietnamese community’, provides a space to repost content related to Vietnambased dissident activism and includes the dissidents in discussion forums,

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thus proving the capability of social media to enhance and amplify the flow of information regardless of spatial constraints (Diani, 2000). Similarly, Czech-based Vietnamese activists, grouped around the Văn Lang Centre, maintain co-operation with activists linked to VOICE. Phạm Đoan Trang—a dissident journalist and former VOICE intern who was awarded the Reporters Without Borders prize in 2019—was granted the Homo Homini award in 2017 by Czech NGO People in Need. Since Trang has received a travel ban from the Vietnamese authorities, a Czech-Vietnamese activist from the Văn Lang Centre, Mai Nguyễn, accepted the award on her behalf. People in Need provides direct support to Vietnamese civil society activists, granting them summer scholarships; some VOICE interns and staff members have been among the beneficiaries. Most recently, People in Need joined the list of signatories to the petition prepared by Will Nguyen3 in support of Liberal Publishing House and other persecuted activists. It is notable that the deep ruptures that exist between the Western-based Vietnamese diaspora and Vietnam-based activists are not that prominent in the case of Vietnamese from Eastern European countries. People such as Phạm Đoan Trang and Trịnh Hữu Long—thirty- and forty-year-olds originating from North Vietnam and, in some cases, brought up in CPV-linked families—in many respects bear much resemblance to Poland-based activists, who also come from northern families. Nguyễn Quang A, a seventy-year-old educated in then-socialist Hungary in the 1970s, is a figure close to many former students from the Cold War era who were the core of emerging Vietnamese communities in Eastern Europe. Mutual trust and understanding between the two cohorts are therefore much easier to achieve.

7

Hope: Is Change Possible at All?

The issue of trust between the aforementioned individuals and groups making up the dispersed network of activists is directly related to another pivotal dimension of every social movement: hope. In sociological analyses of political social movements, hope is shown to be a crucial factor enabling participants to overcome the fear connected with opposing the political status quo, thereby enabling goal-seeking action (Castells, 2012). While disbelief in the possibility of achieving success would be detrimental to the pro-democratic movement and is not an explicitly expressed attitude, most of the activists I spoke to in the course of my research admitted that the overall conditions, both with respect to the internal situation in Vietnam and the global order, are not favourable. The endurance of non-democratic systems

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in Russia and particularly China, the failure of the Arab Spring revolutions and the right-wing turn in Western democracies create gloomy conditions for activists calling for the democratisation of authoritarian regimes. Therefore, the success of the movement is most often defined in rather cautious and minimalist terms, and transition into a fully democratic society is perceived as a long-term and remote goal. Unlike activists of previous decades who formed political parties and organisations such as the Democratic Party and Bloc 8406 in Vietnam and Việt Tân in the diaspora, in the second half of the 2010s, activists generally represent the ‘civil society approach’ (Kerkvliet, 2015, 2019). As such, they define the success of the movement in terms of promoting civic education and raising the awareness of broad masses of Vietnamese with respect to human rights and democratic standards rather than in terms of changing the political system. In their reliance on social media, the activists seem to share Clay Shirky’s (2011) claim that long-term goals such as fostering political participation and strengthening civil society are indeed the area in which the use of social media for promoting democracy is the most efficient. Regarding Vietnamese from Western countries, I observed that the distanced attitude with respect to the actions of Vietnam-based and VOICE-connected activists probably results not only from ruptures dating from the Cold War era but also from their scepticism toward the possible success of their actions. One of the members of the US-based organisations commemorating the legacy of the Republic of Vietnam, when asked whether attempts aimed at achieving political change in Vietnam, such as those conducted by VOICE, might succeed, said that ‘[w]e are a small boat swimming against a very strong current’. While their disbelief in changes to the political system in Vietnam is based on good reasons— such as little resonance of their activity in the Vietnamese society—it can also be assumed that the reasons behind their distanced attitude are more complex. For many members of the Vietnamese diaspora, the very character of contemporary Vietnamese society, with its culture largely influenced by the rule of the Communist Party, is not fully compatible with their actual longings, which are to a large extent shaped by nostalgia for South Vietnam and by refugee trauma. This ‘communist culture’, manifested by the use of specific linguistic expressions, daily-life habits and the growing prevalence of the northern Vietnamese accent, cannot be fully erased by the activists’ actions. As a return to the pre-1975 reality is not possible, the attitude which the Western-based Vietnamese are ready to offer to contemporary activists is somewhat deprived of the kind of enthusiasm that accompanied the efforts undertaken by diasporic actors soon after the fall of Saigon (Nguyễn, 2017).

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A different attitude is presented by representatives of Eastern European Vietnamese communities, who have personal experience of living in countries that successfully transitioned from authoritarian rule to liberal democracy, such as Poland or the Czech Republic. Owing to such experience, they can deliver hope for the possibility of changing the system. Such hope was indeed expressed by activists in the 1990s and early 2000s when a belief in the ‘end of history’ (Fukuyama, 1992) and the advent of liberal democracy all over the globe was prevalent. The Đàn Chim Việt journal provided a good example of such an approach. The editors of the journal often made comparisons between the history of Poland and Vietnam, expressing their belief that Vietnam would soon follow Poland on its path to democratisation. As one of its founders, Cao Ngọc Quỳnh, claimed, ‘Sooner or later we will achieve what Poles have achieved already’ (Navicka, 2004). However, in the geopolitical conditions of the 2010s, the belief that the other communist countries would follow the path of the European satellites of the Soviet Union and undergo democratic transition was no longer that widespread. Nevertheless, Eastern European Vietnamese still maintain their involvement in promoting change in Vietnam, perceiving the democratic transition of Vietnam as a long-term goal. The activists grouped in the UWAGA (the Người Việt ở Ba Lan group) stress that the main goal of the group is education—acting for the ‘advancement’ of the Vietnamese community in Poland.4 The concept of advancement is closely related to the ideas of civic education and civil society: the Vietnamese are encouraged to increase their knowledge regarding legal systems and political institutions, as well as to participate in both Polish and Vietnamese politics.5 The group served as a coordinating platform for the organisation of demonstrations around key socio-political issues, such as the Chinese policy on the South China Sea (2014), the Formosa issue (2016), and cyber-security and special economic zone laws (2018). As one of the organisers of the protest which took place in 2016 in the Vietnamese embassy in Warsaw claimed in an interview given to a Polish reporter from the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper (Wojtczuk, 2016), ‘We are making use of the fact that there is freedom of expression and demonstration in Poland to fight for the truth (about the ecological catastrophe in Vietnam)’.

8

Summary

This chapter discussed the engagement of the Vietnamese diaspora in political activism directed toward their country of origin, highlighting the internal

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diversity of overseas Vietnamese communities affected by traumatic experiences of war and exile, on the one hand, and socialist cosmopolitanism, on the other. Throughout the chapter, I have examined the various ways in which diasporic activists relate to Vietnam-based actors fighting for pro-democratic change. As I indicated, profound ruptures resulting from the politics of the Cold War era form an obstacle to developing co-operation between the largest and most resourceful communities—Vietnamese living in the United States and other Western countries—and the most prolific activists, brought up in and in many ways connected to Vietnam under socialist rule. However, initiatives aimed at transgressing these divisions are currently underway, the most prominent example being VOICE, an institution seeking support from overseas Vietnamese communities in order to train future cadres of Vietnamese activists. The development of the internet continues to play an important role in the contemporary dissident movement, as Web 2.0 has enabled the emergence of novel forms of social movements: loosely structured, decentralised networks, connecting spatially dispersed nodes of activists from Vietnam and the diaspora. However, while the analysis of activist networks related to VOICE indicates that the development of social media undoubtedly enables co-operation between physically distant activists as well as having an indispensable role as a platform for expressing dissent, it also shows that it does not by any means erase the pre-existing ruptures among circles of activists. Moreover, ‘offline’ physical space still remains a central focus of dissident activity. Activists constantly face the uneasy task of directly addressing Cold War era divisions. To do so, they focus on applying the liberal democratic postulates which supposedly provide a common ground for all actors interested in fostering change in Vietnam, such as the development of civil society (exemplified by VOICE training programs) or independent journalism (exemplified by Luật Khoa Tập Chí magazine). However, the movement remains very fragile, as illustrated by the deficiency of two aspects crucial for the development of a successful political movement—trust and hope—as well as a lack of resonance to their initiatives in Vietnamese society. To bring together various clusters of Vietnamese pro-democratic activists and their sympathisers, an important role could be played by a commonly overlooked segment of the Vietnamese diaspora: communities living in former Eastern European countries, particularly Polish Vietnamese and Czech Vietnamese. While it is doubtful that the pro-democratic movement will result in a substantial change in the political system in Vietnam in the foreseeable future, Eastern European Vietnamese might play a unique role in the diasporic initiatives that aim to build the fundamentals of civil society in Vietnam.

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Notes 1 For some of the vast literature discussing the ‘democracy promotion’ paradigm from critical perspective, see Smith (1994); Carothers (1999); and Guilhot (2005). 2 The meeting was supposed to take place in Raszyn Cultural House, a municipal institution; however, the house’s director renounced his decision to host the event after intervention from the Vietnamese embassy. 3 An American Vietnamese activist who cooperated with VOICE after being arrested in Vietnam in 2018 for his involvement in protests against the cyber-security law. 4 Conversation with Phan Chau Thanh. 5 During presidential elections in Poland in June/July 2020, multiple posts and discussions regarding the candidates appeared on the group’s Facebook page, with the vast majority of the posts supporting the liberal candidate, R. Trzaskowski, and expressing disapproval toward the ruling right-wing president, A. Duda, accused of authoritarian tendencies.

References BBC. (2011, December 19). Havel và Báo Dân Chủ Việt Nam ở Czech. BBC News. Tiếng Việt. https://www.bbc.com/vietnamese/vietnam/2011/12/111219_havel_vietnam_ democracy BBC. (2015, September 5). Đài Rfa ‘Hủy Hợp đồng’ với ông LÊ Diễn đức. BBC News. Tiếng Việt. https://www.bbc.com/vietnamese/vietnam/2015/09/150905_rfa_ contract_le_dien_duc BBC. (2017, June 29). ‘Mother mushroom’: Top Vietnamese blogger jailed for 10 years. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-40439837 Carney, E. N. (1993). The dangers of being a Vietnamese reporter. American Journalism Review, 15(9), 15. Carothers, T. (1999). Aiding democracy abroad: The learning curve. Brookings Institute Press. Castells, M. (2012). Networks of outrage and hope: Social movements in the internet age. Polity Press. Dang, T. V. (2005). The cultural work of anticommunism in the San Diego Vietnamese American community. Amerasia Journal, 31(2), 65–86. Diani, M. (2000). Social movement networks virtual and real. Information, Communication & Society, 3(3), 386–401. Fukuyama, F. (1992). The end of history and the last man. The Free Press. Guilhot, N. (2005). The democracy makers: Human rights and the politics of global order. Columbia University Press. Hồng, M. V. (2010, December 7). Người Buôn gió tại Thủ ĐÔ Warsaw Của Ba Lan. http://nhanquyenchovn.blogspot.com/2010/12/nguoi-buon-gio-tai-thu-o-warsawcua-ba.html

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Huy, Q. (2016, August 4). ‘Không Mắc Bẫy Việt Tân, Không Nghe Kẻ Xấu Lôi Kéo’. VietNamNet. https://vietnamnet.vn/vn/thoi-su/chinh-tri/khong-mac-bay-viet-tankhong-nghe-ke-xau-loi-keo-319382.html Kerkvliet, B. J. T. (2015). Regime critics: Democratization advocates in Vietnam, 1990s– 2014. Critical Asian Studies, 47(3), 359–387. Kerkvliet, B. J. T. (2019). Speaking out in Vietnam: Public political criticism in a communist party–ruled nation. Cornell University Press. Kolker, C. (1995, February 9). Casualties of war. Houston Press. http://www.houstonpress.com/1995-02-09/news/casualties-of-war/ Lam, A. (2005). Perfume dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese diaspora. Heyday Books. Le, C. N. (2009). ‘Better dead than red’: Anti-communist politics among Vietnamese Americans. In I. Zake (Ed.), Anti-communist minorities in the US: The political activism of ethnic refugees (pp. 189–209). Palgrave Macmillan. Le, S. L. (2011a). Truong Van Tran Incident. In J. H. X. Lee & K. M. Nadeau (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Asian American folklore and folklife (pp. 1215–1216). ABC-CLIO. Le, S. L. (2011b). Exploring the function of the anti-communist ideology and identity in the Vietnamese American diasporic community. Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement, 6(14), 1–25. Lê Dân. (2007, October 5). Đàn chim việt lên mạng để cổ võ Cho Dân Chủ và Nhân Quyền. Radio Free Asia. https://www.rfa.org/vietnamese/in_depth/ DanChimVietGoesOnlineToPromoteRightsAndDemocracy_LDan-20071005.html Mặc, L. (2014, October 29). Điếu cày và CỜ Vàng Tại Phi Trường Los Angeles. Radio Free Asia. https://www.rfa.org/vietnamese/in_depth/witne-tlk-ab-svn-flagdcay-10292014135647.html Manifesto of Charter 77. (1997, January 1). Libri Prohibiti. https://chnm.gmu.edu/1989/ archive/files/declaration-of-charter-77_4346bae392.pdf Navicka, B. (2004, November 20). Wietnamczyków czeka teraz walka na słowa, nie na bomby. http://radiothongluan.free.fr/To%20quoc.net/memo/ho_so_dan_chu/ 006%20Nguyen%20Gia%20Kieng/065_nguyen_gia_kieng.htm Nguyễn, P. T. (2017). Becoming refugee American: The politics of rescue in Little Saigon. University of Illinois Press. Nguyễn, P. T. (2018, June 22). Bảo vệ an Ninh Mạng là chính vì Lợi ích quốc gia, vì lợi ích mọi người. Báo Nhân Dân. https://nhandan.com.vn/chinhtri/item/36768002bao-ve-an-ninh-mang-la-chinh-vi-loi-ich-quoc-gia-vi-loi-ich-moi-nguoi.html Nguyễn, T.-D., & Datzberger, S. (2018, May 7). The environmental movement in Vietnam: A new frontier of civil society activism? Transnational Institute: Challenging Authoritarianism Series, 4. https://www.tni.org/en/publication/ environmentalism-and-authoritarian-politics-in-vietnam

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Pham, C. (2018). Mẹ Vắng Nhà [documentary]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=1MKElAMWwS8 Prados, J. (2009, August 26). The CIA’s Vietnam histories newly declassified CIA histories show its involvement in every aspect of the Indochina War. National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 284. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB284/ RSF. (2016, January 20). Cyber-dissident’s prison sentence cut from five years to four on appeal: Reporters without borders. RSF. https://rsf.org/en/news/cyberdissidents-prison-sentence-cut-five-years-four-appeal Senate of Canada. (2016, June 22). Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights. Senate of Canada. https://sencanada.ca/en/Content/Sen/committee/421/ridr/52733-e Sheffer, G. (2006). Diaspora politics: At home abroad. Cambridge University Press. Shirky, C. (2011). The political power of social media: Technology, the public sphere, and political change. Foreign Affairs, 90(1), 28–41. Smith, T. (1994). America’s mission: The United States and the worldwide struggle for democracy. Princeton University Press. Szymańska-Matusiewicz, G. (2015). The two Tết festivals: Transnational connections and internal diversity of the Vietnamese community in Poland. Central and Eastern European Migration Review, 4(1), 53–65. Szymańska-Matusiewicz, G. (2017). Remaking the state or creating civil society? Vietnamese migrant associations in Poland. Journal of Vietnamese Studies, 12(2), 42–72. Szymańska-Matusiewicz, G. (2019). Vietnamese in Poland: From socialist fraternity to the global capitalism era. Peter Lang. Thayer, C. A. (2009). The apparatus of authoritarian rule in Vietnam. In J. London (Ed.), Politics in contemporary Vietnam: Party, state and authority relations (Critical Studies of the Asia Pacific Series) (pp. 135–161). Palgrave Macmillan. Vietinfo. (2013, July 14). Phạm Hữu Uyển: SỨ Quán Việt Nam Cũng Cần Cộng Tác với tôi. Vietinfo. http://www.vietinfo.eu/cd-tai-sec/pham-huu-uyen-su-quan-viet-namcung-can-cong-tac-voi-toi.html Võ, K. L. (2015, July 27). Về Trịnh hội và TỔ chức voice. Báo Nhân Dân. https://www.nhandan.com.vn/chinhtri/item/26998002-ve-trinh-hoi-va-to-chucvoice.html VOICE. (2018, May 24). Học bổng xã hội Dân sự voice lần thứ 8—voice. VOICE. https://vietnamvoice.org/en/2018/05/hoc-bong-xa-hoi-dan-su-voice-dot-2-2018/ VOICE. (2019, June 29). Giải đáp: Học Bổng xã Hội Dân SỰ voice CÓ Phải LÀ phản động? VOICE. https://vietnamvoice.org/2019/06/giai-dap-hoc-bong-xa-hoi-dan-suvoice-co-phai-la-phan-dong VOICE. (n.d.). About us. VOICE. https://vietnamvoice.org/en/voice/

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Wojtczuk, M. (2016, June 12). Wietnamczycy protestowali w Wilanowie. ‘U was można demonstrować’. Wyborcza.pl. https://warszawa.wyborcza.pl/warszawa/7,34862,202 27559,wietnamczycy-protestowali-w-wilanowie-u-was-mozna-demonstrowac.html Ybox Team. (2019). Cảnh Báo TỔ chức Phản động voice VÀ Chương Trình Học Bổng xã Hội Dân SỰ Voice. YBOX. https://ybox.vn/tin-tuc/canh-bao-to-chuc-phan-dongvoice-va-chuong-trinh-hoc-bong-xa-hoi-dan-su-voice-5d146e22e871687914295151

CHAPTER 7

Capitalist Lack Vietnamese American Remittances as Cultural Supplement and Political Critique Ivan V. Small

1

Introduction

This chapter examines how remittances from post–Vietnam War refugees resettled in the United States not only served to materially and financially help family members in Vietnam, but they were also used politically to critique the failure of Vietnamese socialism and the communist revolution. In the 1970s and ’80s, remittances from political refugees resettled abroad often took material form because of the prohibition on financial transfers from the United States. In the process, they became tangible signifiers of the capitalist West’s supplementation of the Communist Bloc’s material lack. Material and later financial remittances became symbols of a social, cultural, economic and political world supposedly lost to communism. They were used by the United States as well as diaspora groups within the US as propaganda proxies to critique and undermine Vietnam’s socialist government, rather than draw attention to the humanitarian crisis caused by the US embargo and its refusal to pay reparations for wartime destruction. The representative politics of remittances in constructing an image of material and economic—and, by extension, sociocultural—lack in the Cold War Socialist Bloc, compelling a supplementary humanitarian urge by the capitalist West, is illustrated by the case of Vietnamese American remittances to Vietnam. This chapter draws on participant observation fieldwork initially conducted while based in Ho Chi Minh City in 2007–09 and in California between 2009 and 2014. Follow-up fieldwork visits to Vietnam were conducted on a semi-annual basis until 2019 in order to follow developments in the remittance arena as well as reconnect with informants. This chapter also presents materials from secondary literature and media reviews as well as document research at the US Library of Congress and the holdings of the Vietnam archives at Texas Tech University. In combining primary ethnographic and secondary media and archival materials, my purpose is to offer insight into the politics of remittances during the Cold War, including how they were experienced, structured © koninklijke brill nv, leideN, 2022 | DOI:10.1163/9789004513969_008

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and articulated by participants of trans–Iron Curtain financial and material exchanges as well as by government and media representatives that sought to publicise and politicise these personal gift flows.

2

Migratory Beginnings

In Vietnamese diaspora studies, the collective reference point of origin is 30 April 1975. The date by definition is founded upon a moment of loss and lack, which diasporic cultural production has in part sought to overcome or supplement ever since. Widely called the fall of Saigon, 30 April was the day that the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) capitulated to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) and southern Việt Công forces. In the aftermath of reunification, American policies aimed to punish and isolate the new government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Although the Hanoi government dropped its initial demand for war reparations by 1978, the US maintained a strict embargo and withheld diplomatic recognition of the post-unification government in Hanoi, an impasse that would continue for nearly twenty years. Meanwhile, botched attempts to impose command-economy socialism on a country reeling from more than thirty years of war led to mass shortage and poverty within Vietnam. By the mid-1980s, Vietnam was classified as one of the poorest countries in the world. Refugees—political but also increasingly economic1—took great risks to leave, many in rickety fishing boats not meant for long-distance sea voyages. These departures eventually contributed to an over four million–strong global diaspora. For many, refugee exile was intended to be temporary, but over the course of two generations, it led many to permanent resettlement. Vietnamese who successfully managed to make it abroad—usually arriving via refugee processing camps in Southeast Asia and then selected for resettlement in Western countries, including the United States, Australia, Canada and France, looked back to the homeland from which they were now exiled with consternation in the 1970s and ’80s. Many held deep political reservations about the new Communist regime ruling from Hanoi and worried how relatives and friends left behind were faring under its isolation from the West and failing internal management of the economy. As just one example of the disastrous economic conditions at the time, Vietnam—which is now one of the largest exporters of rice in the world—could not in the 1970s even produce enough rice to feed its own population (Kerkvliet, 2005), leading to hardship, especially in urban areas without immediate access to agriculture. Even the meagre quantities of rice that were produced were partially used to pay back

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war loans to China as part of the aid agreement with North Vietnam during the war. Given such dire living conditions, Vietnamese refugees resettled abroad began to send aid to support the survival of family members left behind. Commonly known as remittances, such aid from migrants often settled in Global North countries to home communities in the Global South is widespread among many migrant communities, and indeed in many cases it is a motivating factor for migration (Ratha & Maimbo, 2005). Development discourses have shifted from decrying the ‘brain drains’ caused by migration to celebrating the poverty-reducing and developmental potential of remittances, and governments from the Philippines to El Salvador have recalibrated their economic policies to encourage outbound migration and inbound remittances. But in the case of Vietnamese refugees in the 1970s and ’80s, migration was not so much a choice as an imperative, and sending remittances in the aftermath was not easy, particularly between the United States and Vietnam. Prior to 1995, the lack of official diplomatic and economic relations between the United States, where the majority of the Vietnamese diaspora had resettled, and Vietnam, where family members remained, meant that there were not readily available financial channels for sending money. In the 1980s, foreign assets control regulations in the United States limited remittance transfers to not more than $300 to an individual in Vietnam within any consecutive three-month period—a tiny amount, much of which would disappear to rent-seeking government officials and middlemen. Nonetheless, Vietnamese found creative ways to send aid. Starting in the late 1970s, Vietnamese in the diaspora began to send boxes of material goods to relatives. With the embargo, Vietnamese had a difficult time accessing supplies addressing basic needs, from food to shoes to toothpaste to medicine. Family members resettled overseas would collect such items and ship them in boxes to Vietnam. Recipient households in Vietnam would be notified of a shipment and would then have to travel to the international airport or, in more distant cases, the local People’s Committee to receive the box. Boxes were reported to be ‘swaddled in red tape and subject to surcharges, taxes and theft’ (Congressional Record House 9/12/85), yet they would continue to arrive in the hopes that at least a portion of the material goods could be converted to some kind of subsistence value for family members living in desperate economic conditions. The immediate purpose of such goods sent from abroad was, at a basic level, twofold. First, they provided recipients with much-needed items for survival. From clothes to soap to vitamins, Vietnamese in Vietnam were in desperate need of basic material goods. Second, however, such items provided a form of exchangeable value. They could be traded for other items, including immediate

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subsistence needs such as perishable food that could not be sent but were nonetheless in constant short supply in postwar Vietnam. Despite a ban on private trade, a black market for material exchange emerged in Vietnam, supplementing or even bypassing the local currency that had become prohibitively inflationary, running at over 700% prior to 1986. People would exchange material goods sent from abroad, such as electronic calculators, radios and watches, for needed foodstuffs such as rice, vegetables and meat. Black markets that facilitated such exchanges, featuring consumer good remittances from abroad, also conjured affective nostalgias for the capitalist lifestyles of the bygone pre-1975 era, particularly in Saigon, which had been a cosmopolitan city with international economic and cultural linkages to the United States and other capitalist Western countries. In particular, the Commodity Import Program arrangement to provide American aid to South Vietnam through consumer goods had fuelled an urban material consumption pattern that Saigon society had become accustomed to but which came to an abrupt halt after the Vietnam War and the Communist victory (Hunt, 2014).

3

Remittance Symbolisms

In such a situation, remittances—both material and eventually monetary— took on important symbolic meanings. They stood in for the more proximate and physical relations disrupted by exodus and exile. In filling the spatial but also emerging temporal gap between separated kin, remittances acquired an increasingly affective character that heightened spectres of migration but also imaginaries of migrants and the worlds they inhabited. These worlds, in the context of the Cold War, were highly politicised, and parallels have been analysed across the Communist Bloc (Borneman, 1992; Berdahl, 2009). Lack of individual incentives in centralised planning systems were critiqued as contributing to a lack of material production output. Only heavy-handed Stalinist control contributed to industrial progress in the Eastern Bloc, but even that had its limits. Conservative American political economist Nicholas Eberstadt, in his 1988 book The Poverty of Communism, declared that ‘policies of communist governments seem to generate material poverty and physical hardship’ (p. 297). Eberstadt, however, did not necessarily account for how the costs of the Cold War arms race, the Western embargo on Soviet satellite states and, in the case of Vietnam, the withholding of reconstruction aid to a country devastated by US-exacerbated warfare, contributed to this. Craig Whitney, a former American correspondent in Saigon from 1971 to 1973, returned to Ho Chi Minh City in 1984, and in an article titled ‘A Bitter Peace Life in Vietnam’, noted the sparse

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materialism that Marxist-Leninism had brought to the once prosperous city. He lamented that Vietnam had become a ‘backward, contradictory, impoverished country that is 30 years behind the economic boom and the traffic jams of Hong Kong and Bangkok’ (1984, p. 174). This was materially demonstrated, for example, when, upon visiting one of the city’s few department stores, Whitney found only ‘a pathetic collection of sprockets, chains, nuts and bolts for bicycles’ (1984, p. 174). Clearly, traffic jams in Whitney’s portrayal were indicative of a more materially advanced society than one where the only apparent sign of the dynamic mobile flows that characterise capitalism was a sparse assortment of primitive bicycle parts. Remittances that managed to creatively traverse the Cold War’s iron and bamboo curtains served to address basic needs and provide material exchange value for families in Vietnam. A 1984 report by the US Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs committee estimated that $200 million was sent annually by Vietnamese refugees—in retrospect, a drop in the bucket compared to the $16 billion sent in 2019 (see Figure 7.1). But amid the economic politics of the 1980s—during which the ‘gift of freedom’, as Mimi Nguyen (2012) describes American refugee discourses at the time,2 was heralded by social mobility marked by capitalist transformation—transnational homewardbound remittances also came to signify what was widely decried by analysts and observers such as Eberstadt (1988) and Whitney (1984) as an implicit lack in postwar Vietnam. Communism seemed to have not only failed in its ability to provide basic needs such as food, but it also highlighted a material culture lack that contrasted with South Vietnamese consumer society before 1975. Remittances were suspected of being insidiously solicited by a materially depraved and cash-strapped socialist Vietnamese government. During a 1985 US congressional legislative session regarding ‘the issue of Vietnamese involvement in clandestine international currency transfer’, Representative Dan Lungren of California decried that remittances from the diaspora contributed to a ‘well-organized underground economy in Vietnam … (in which) … most of the currency does not reach its intended destination; instead it ends up in the SRVN’s treasury. Vietnamese refugees in this country are victimized by a sophisticated manipulation scheme directed against them by the SRVN’ (Congressional Record—House, 1985). Lungren went so far as to suggest that remittance recipients were being coerced to request remittances from their ‘defenseless’ overseas relatives by local cadres. Yet it has also been argued that diasporic Vietnamese sending remittances were not unwitting victims, but were instead active agents in undermining the legitimacy of Vietnam’s communist ideology via the spending power and material symbolism of their remittances. Mandy Thomas, writing on the remittance

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situation in the 1990s, argued that ‘the desire of overseas Vietnamese to help their families under a regime they despise is an inherently political act’. Remittances, she argued, allowed ‘individuals to insinuate certain symbolic properties into the lives of the gift recipient, so overseas Vietnamese often wish to place the desire for consumer products within their families in the homeland … the gifts are viewed as a type of Trojan horse, which could lead to the disruption of the political system in Vietnam’ (1999, p. 154). As Elizabeth Vann (2006) has argued, socialist societies emphasise production, rather than consumption, as a means to organise collective identity. Historian Christina Kiar (2005) notes that socialist constructivist ideology made conscious efforts to re-designate commodities as material ‘comrades’ in everyday life—the hammer and sickle, for example, that were central to proletariat identity. However, in the case of international remittances, such ‘comrades’ in fact linked recipients to overseas kin and capitalist worlds. The circulation of ‘exotic’ overseas items sent as material remittances after 1975—from whiskey to watches—took on unexpected symbolic meanings, becoming mnemonic signifiers to past social worlds as experienced under the capitalist ‘old regime’. In doing so, they served as a nostalgic cultural supplement but also acted to critique the new Communist government. Economic sociologist Đang Phong (1999, 2000) observed that ‘Việt Kiều (overseas Vietnamese) could help their relatives more easily by sending goods back rather than foreign currency, as there was a market constantly hungry for them, both financially and psychologically. In every street and market place in Ho Chi Minh City as well as other urban centers of the South, the places with the “brightest prices” were always the shops selling goods sent back from France and the USA’. The role of these markets in circulating imaginaries of alternative capitalist life worlds was remarkable: Đang explains that ‘a system of relations came into being between those who left and those who stayed … these relations gave rise to a notion of the West which increasingly grew all out of proportion. The West took on the meaning of a promised land’. People selling remittance commodities in the market were described as having a ‘proud look on their face’, acting as ‘ambassadors for a civilization even higher than the civilization of reality’ (2000, p. 188). While the situation had changed by the start of my field research in 2007, these histories of in-situ post-revolution displacements did continue to affect remittance recipients’ perceptions of inclusion in Vietnamese society. In many cases, their frustration and withdrawal from the local economy led to critiques by non-remittance recipients that they had become lazy and dependent, when in fact their long term orientations, including migratory desires and investment intentions, had simply been shifted abroad over the longue durée. Many hoped that they would be

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able to one day leave Vietnam and immigrate abroad through family reunification, and they made plans (or lack thereof) accordingly.

4

Capitalist Imaginaries and Political Critiques

The Cold War is now over and since the Đổi Mới reforms that officially started in 1986, Vietnam has progressively re-entered the global capitalist sphere. In doing so, it finds itself reoriented toward a capitalist core centred on the United States, both a former Cold War enemy and an ally, depending on which side of the war you were on. Remittances, which preceded foreign direct investment flows and continue alongside them, have become an affective spectre for the nation that shape imaginaries and discourses, as Vincente Rafael (2000) has suggested in the case of the Philippines. The diasporic bodies—the majority from the US—that increasingly accompany remittance flows on return visits embody, for many, what Vietnamese can and should become, and in many hypothetical imaginations, what the country could have become had the American allied side won the Vietnamese civil war.3 Capitalism is both foreign and familiar for southern Vietnamese. One remittance receiver I met, named Vu, remarked, in an interview at a Danang coffee shop frequented by unemployed men, ‘back in the 1960s (South) Vietnam was rich—richer than China or Korea, now we lose to them’. Capitalism as reintroduced in the 1990s was, for him, only crony capitalism: Sure, there’s some economic development, but the wealth goes to the rich and doesn’t spread to the poor people, who can’t even afford to pay for their children to go to school or to other areas of the country outside of Saigon and Hanoi, where life is still as hard as it was before. You have to have connections to make money in Vietnam and most people don’t have them. Only the big people get rich here, the life of the common people doesn’t change. (Vu in interview with author, 2008) Another, named Hoang, noted the differences in capitalist environments for Vietnamese in Vietnam and abroad: Việt Kiều in America make easy money because the government there is good, providing citizens with economic opportunities, offering free education and taking care of people when they are old. It’s easy to earn and save money over there in America and send it back here where, even if

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you have talent, there are no opportunities to make money. (Hoang in interview with author, 2008) Ironically, many of the state services, such as health care and pensions, that Vietnamese imagined to be freely available to American citizens are those that the Vietnamese communist revolution had promised to its own populace. American neoliberalism, in a strange twist, becomes the basis to critique the failure of Vietnamese socialism to provide universal social services, educational access and welfare benefits. Numerous other interviews with remittance recipients that I conducted as part of research for a book (Small, 2019) on this topic reveal similar sentiments—remittances heighten reflections on the possibilities of capitalist accumulation elsewhere that make their production and sending possible. In their role of supplementing material lack, however, remittances also reveal and redirect frustrations with the Vietnamese government’s postwar failure to economically provide for its population, as well as its failure since Renovation to properly reintroduce capitalism. Remittances index the idealised myth of unfettered capitalism, as well as memories of what Philip Taylor (2001) has called an alternative South Vietnamese modernity that never fully came to be. For many remittance recipients, money in an authentic capitalist environment such as the United States is imagined to be easy to come by, accumulates, and is oriented toward an achievable future horizon. Such possibilities for accumulation are not deemed possible in Vietnam, where only crony capitalist dealings seem to prevail. Lisa Lowe (1996) has demonstrated how differentials in transnational labour spaces and regimes draw attention to not only the inclusions and exclusions of global capitalism but also present new transnational opportunities for imagined belonging and action. These can potentially challenge ‘the collectively forged images, histories, and narratives that place, displace, and replace individuals in relation to the national polity’, shaping ‘where they dwell, what they remember, and what they forget’ (p. 1). Nguyen-Vo Thu Huong (2008) further argues that neoliberalism produces Vietnamese gendered bodies that are conceptualised and classed across transnational lines. Arjun Appadurai (1996) has described the neoliberal globalised imagination as ‘an organized field of social practices … and a form of negotiation between sites of agency and globally defined fields of possibility’ (1996, p. 31). If we put these approaches in conversation to locate the particulars of how the imagination acts as a field of belonging and negotiation, remittance economies offer a revealing example. In remittance economies, the site of negotiation between local agency and global possibility is money and things themselves, as mediums and agents of

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the social relations they represent and affect through exchange. Remittances represent an intersectional commodity fetish that projects imagined subjectivities to and from the origins and destinations of their flows and across the landscapes they travel. For remittance recipients, remittances come to represent the lifeworld of the overseas giver and the enabling environments of economic agency they are perceived to access abroad. Despite their illusion, the displacement of the imagination into fantasy economic environments that link money and personhood, indexing the embodied potential of capitalism elsewhere, culturally supplement a local history of comparative material lack since 1975. Remittances then create multiple indices that disrupt the rootedness, assumptions of meanings and emplacement of citizenship and belonging. As such, remittances address not only economic needs but also serve as disgruntling forces of anticipatory unrest by practically and affectively critiquing a political and ideological system that has fallen short of its revolutionary promises. It does this in part through a process of what Jacques Derrida refers to as supplementation. Derrida describes ‘the movement of supplementarity’ as ‘the movement of play, permitted by the lack or absence of a center or origin’ (Derrida, 1978, p. 289). We will return to this play between lack and supplement later, but it is worth noting that Vietnamese postcolonial revolutionary ideals, in any form, never truly arrived in either North, South or unified Vietnam, as past and present Vietnamese political dialogues about how to tackle the country’s state of underdevelopment and inequality attest. The potentialities of such ideals and the absence of their realisation remain contentious reference points around which ongoing debate circulates about the successes, failures and alternative hypotheticals of the Vietnamese civil cum global war of 1954–1975. Whether the Vietnamese communist revolution might have achieved the promises of socialism without foreign exacerbation of Vietnam’s postcolonial civil war, or the West’s calculated economic isolation of the Vietnamese state afterwards, often remained unspoken in the critical reflections of the informants I interviewed for my remittance study. The global interconnectedness of markets upon which capitalist prosperity depends—and which was denied to postwar Vietnam by a twenty-year American embargo—rarely factors into discussions on how Vietnam arrived at its present socioeconomic threshold. As such, remittance flows, as with other economic activities in contemporary Vietnam, while not necessarily the same insidious Trojan horse of the Cold War era that Thomas (1999) observed, contribute to a politics of selective forgetting, celebratory neoliberalism and revolutionary displacement and deferral. In the process, pasts, futures, state capacities and ideologies come to be

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Figure 7.1 Growth in remittances to Vietnam (in US$ billions), 2001–2019 (Source: World Bank, license CC BY-4.0, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ BX.TRF.PWKR.CD.DT?end=2020&locations=VN&start=2000&view=chart)

gauged in part by their accompanied material affordances, or, as is more pointedly the case in such critiques, the lack thereof.

5

Pickled Politics and Originary Lack

The Vietnamese diaspora, especially in the United States, is rather conservative compared to other immigrant and Asian American groups, with more than half, on average, expressing preference for the Republican Party, especially among the first generation. Critical commentaries on the state of Communist Vietnam’s ‘lack’ on multiple fronts—from underdevelopment to human rights violations—are frequently invoked by many Vietnamese American political and community organisations and activists advocating for harsher US engagement and conditions, especially when it comes to Vietnam’s rapidly expanding trading relationship with the US and the world. Until World Trade Organization accession in 2007, normal trade between the US and Vietnam was subject to a renewable waiver of the Jackson-Vanik amendment. The waiver restricted trade with non-market economies without free emigration and therefore became a strategic target of congressional lobbying by Vietnamese Americans hoping to isolate Vietnam from the world economic stage.4 In a 1998 hearing on extending the Jackson-Vanik amendment, Nguyen Dinh Thang, director of Boat People SOS, a Vietnamese American NGO that assisted refugees fleeing Vietnam, remarked on the unsuitability of capitalism under the Vietnamese Communist Party:

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Capitalism, and with it free trade and an open market, can only exist where there are the rule of law, a system of check and balance, and vibrant civil society where the government observes fiscal accountability and financial transparency, where the workers are allowed to benefit from their hard work and to defend their own interests, and where fair competition is not hindered by rampant corruption, cronyism or state monopoly. None of these conditions exist in Vietnam. (HRG 105-933 1998, p. 37) Among the post-1975 Vietnamese American community in exile, transplanted Vietnamese cultural forms bred within the fertile soil of American capitalism, where much-lauded ideas of ‘freedom’ (tự do) that circulated among the diaspora were rooted as much in free-market economic principles as they were in democracy. Free/Western world socio-politico-economic ideologies were advocated to supplement and supplant a Vietnamese nation withering under the dead weight of Marxist-Leninism and crony Communist Party politics. Such ideologies were frequently conflated with cultural authenticity. As one Vietnamese American, named Thai, in San Jose California described, ‘The Communist Party has killed Vietnamese culture. People are so poor and have become lazy because there is no incentive to work hard. Here (in the US) we have preserved it, and will one day bring it back to Vietnam to flourish again’ (Thai in interview with author, 2009). Karin Aguilar-San Juan (2009) and others have argued that cultural productions in diasporic ‘little Saigons’ decentre the nation-state as the locus of authenticity from which culture is made legible, transmissible and authoritative. The ‘preservation’ of Vietnamese culture in diasporic anti-communist politics, intended to supplement a cultural lack resulting from the suppression of creativity, free expression and incentivisation in the homeland, articulates itself through American Cold War political propaganda and the Othering of those societies, even co-ethnics, on the opposite side of the old iron and bamboo curtains. Ho Chi Minh and Stalin are frequently co-evoked in Vietnamese American critiques of Vietnam for the devastation and death they brought upon their respective communist societies. The Vietnamese refugee community actively participates in disseminating such discourses through an extensive network of diasporic media outlets. Numerous Vietnamese American physical memorials also evoke South Vietnam–US wartime alliance solidarities and postwar boat refugee sagas, and they are often the gathering points for annual Black April events mourning the fall of South Vietnam. Over time, the politics of anti-communist cultural production have become economically expressed—embodied in the neoliberal celebration of transborder financial flows, in which capitalism’s dynamic circulation of money,

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goods and services is juxtaposed against the stereotyped immobility of socialism. Remittance assistance streams from the West are imagined by senders as well as Western nation governments to sustain the stagnating remains of once vibrant national, community and family traditions. Beyond direct subsistence assistance, in Vietnam remittances from the diaspora are often directed to things and activities such as maintaining ancestral tombs, rebuilding temples, hosting festivals and providing the material accoutrements for rites of passage such as weddings and funerals, with the rationale that these time-honoured rituals would simply die out without overseas aid as Vietnamese in Vietnam grapple with basic survival and the government withdraws support for what it considers to be reactionary bourgeoisie cultural remnants. Remittances also seed small business ventures in an economy in which market entry is not deemed accessible to those without political connections. Time and again, remittance senders decry the failures of the Communist Party to build accessible economic growth conditions that could elevate Vietnamese society at all levels and locales without the necessity of insider relations (quan hệ). Such critiques of communism rarely reflect on the irony in their rationales rooted in extending economic mobility and resource distribution across class and geographic spectrums. The capacity to preserve and cultivate culture in such a formulation is in fact a Marxist infrastructural one, dependent on an economic foundation and growth defined by resource accumulation and distribution that then supports a requisite superstructure for the flourishing of cultural expression. The lingering idea among many in the Vietnamese diaspora that culture is the primary victim of communism betrays uncertainty about locating its origins and defining and controlling the contours of what Vietnamese culture actually is. As Erik Harms (2011) has argued, culture and civilisation are conflated in Vietnamese discourses about ‘văn hóa’, and Vietnamese ‘culture’ therefore is something that must be actively cultivated by family, community and state. In such a formulation, good governance is essential for cultural survival, a characteristic on which the Communist Party does not receive high marks. For Vietnamese refugees who fled communism, there is a widespread sentiment that an authentic source of potential cultural expression was latent in at least partial form in the postcolonial Vietnamese state that was promised in the South after the defeat of the French in 1954. This is symbolically memorialised in the former republican yellow ‘heritage’ flag with three red stripes, ubiquitous in Vietnamese American communities and which many Vietnamese Americans maintain is the only permissible and legible symbol of Vietnamese culture, even while acknowledging that the current red flag with yellow star is the political flag of the regime that now rules Vietnam.5

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Vietnam’s colonial legacy weighs heavy on the concept of culture, and anti-colonial discourse lamented the suppression of Vietnam’s cultural roots over three generations of French rule. Even after independence, how were the nation and state to recover the essential Vietnamese-ness of Vietnam after years of syncretism and hybridisation? South Vietnam’s embrace of personalism, as described by Duy Lap Nguyen (2020) in a cogent analysis of Ngo Dinh Diem’s first republic, was rooted in a philosophical belief grounded in material Marxist humanism via Emmanuel Mounier (1947) that it was imperative for Vietnam to overcome the interiorised shame inherited by its colonial past and restore the core unit of Vietnamese culture—the village—in order to fully rediscover, realise and unleash its societal potential. Stalinist Marxists in North Vietnam were considered to misunderstand the humanistic theoretical underpinnings of Marxism and therefore were ironically too doctrinaire and not Marxist enough, in Nguyen’s analysis, to successfully bring about a true postcolonial cultural renaissance. It is worth remembering that the origins of many key officials in Diem’s government were in the North. Their post-partition exodus to the South in 1954 laid the seeds for the war’s first diaspora, which would, if all went according to Saigon’s plans, eventually return to their homes in a reunified Vietnam. The loss of the North to communism, as the original land of the ethnic ‘VietKinh’ people situated around Hanoi before Vietnam’s southward expansion into Cham and Khmer lands from the fifteenth century, already represented an anxiously felt facet of national lack for the South, as the Republic of Vietnam did not include most of the geographies in which Vietnam’s foundational myths were rooted. In order to supplement this, South Vietnamese scholars attempted to realign key historical sites and moments to the South in republican historiography, as Claudine Ang (2013) has argued. Eventually the fall of the first republic ended the role of personalist philosophy in government, and by the time of the second republic, any remaining dreams of building a representative state that would properly restore, cultivate and embody Vietnamese ‘culture’ had given way to more immediate realpolitik scenarios after a series of clumsy military coups and regime transitions. The second refugee exodus occurred in 1975, when South Vietnam fell to North Vietnam. High ranking republican officials and army leaders, including many with northern origins, went into even further exile than the first refugee wave, this time outside of Vietnam in refugee camps across Southeast Asia and then in countries of permanent resettlement in the West. Without the ability to return, they eventually sent back remittances to support basic survival for family members and communities left in Vietnam. Over time, many found some basic economic footing in places of resettlement, particularly after

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secondary migration led to the bolstering of strong Southeast Asian American community nodes in places like California, where diaspora nationalist politics and culture were intimately entangled. Many of the older generation nonetheless remained affectively forlorn in the aftermath of their involuntary separation from the homeland, a situation that seemed to become permanent by the late 1980s. Remittances grew significantly in the following decades, especially as financial institutions permitted to deliver foreign currencies expanded after 2002 and the Vietnamese government symbolically embraced the diaspora as an integral part of the nation in 2004 with Politburo’s Resolution 36 (Que Huong, 2004). Remittances also came to be resignified to symbolise the relative or projected material successes that immigrants in places like the United States were experiencing or at least aspiring for, as well as an emergence of material culture values associated with diasporic community nodes immersed in a core sphere of global capitalism. Purchasing power became a means by which refugees asserted agency lost in the process of displacement. Material remittances sent to Vietnam may have served in some ways as the agential Trojan horse of capitalism that Mandy Thomas (1999) described, seeding homeland discontent in a communist system that had failed to produce postwar prosperity. But remittances were also practical, and the manner they manifested may also have been partially accidental. Numerous material items sent back to Vietnam in the early years were intended to be traded for subsistence items, but the selection of items by senders was not always based on a full understanding of the particular supply and demand contours of postwar Vietnam’s economy. It was perhaps then also the case that sent objects that could not be exchanged remained unused and dusty on shelves at home, as Thomas notes, but without having to necessarily ascribe as calculated an agenda to their use or non-use. Nonetheless, remittances, whether material or monetary, were also expressive actions intended to supplement the widely felt lack that pervaded refugee existences in faraway places of resettlement. Andrew Lam, a 1.5 generation Vietnamese American author, captures the sentiments of the diaspora, and especially the first generation, in an edited volume of Vietnamese American literature: ‘among Vietnamese, a collective understanding assumes that we have all suffered an epic loss, so it is pointless to ask … when we set foot on the American shore, History is already against us. Vietnam goes on without us. America goes on without acknowledging us’ (Tran, Lam and Nguyen, 1995). By forwarding money to Vietnam, remittance senders continually imagined the work that those remittances did to provide care for loved ones left behind. Huong, who was in her sixties and living in California, conveyed the simple satisfactions she felt every time she sent remittances to her aging mother:

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My mother is sad, two of her children have died already. When I call her on the telephone she can’t hear, so instead I send her money. Sending her a little money brings her so much happiness. Each time I send some money, just a hundred dollars every few months, I can imagine her carefully putting the money away in her breast pocket. With it she can go to the market to buy some bananas or sweet sticky rice, which she loves so much and used to feed me as a child. For the most part, she does not spend much, but just enjoys having and holding the money. It makes her feel secure remembering her daughter in America who has not forgotten her. (Huong in interview with author, 2009) Many remittance gifts were therefore not necessarily meant to merely boast of the Western material lifestyle senders could perceivably afford. They were practically intended to supplement the known lack of foodstuffs and exchangeable value in Vietnam’s embargoed command economy, as well as to assert agency in relinking transnational diasporic networks and at least indexing the affective impossibility of presence. In short, remittance sending supplemented the lingering emotional as well as practical lack caused by separation, displacement and exile. The 1985 congressional panel where Representative Lungren attempted to intervene in regulating a duplicitous clandestine remittance market—in which, he argued, Vietnamese Americans were being duped such that very little of their original money was reaching intended recipients—assumes those senders required or wanted such policy intervention. In ethnographic interviews, most senders, even during the early years, knew the risks of below-the-radar financial channels and yet chose to send money nonetheless. As one woman named Loan explained when asked about the risk of informal remittance channels, ‘What choice did we have? But over time, as we became familiar with them, we became more comfortable’ (Loan in interview with author, 2009). Even now, with formal financial channels readily available, a significant proportion of Vietnamese Americans choose to continue with more familiar (and now usually cheaper) informal ethnic remittance services and couriers in their local neighbourhoods, despite warnings by formal banking and money transfer institutions and policymakers that such channels may be insecure. Here, again, we see a process of financial transacting in which senders are not only supplementing the perceived material lack in an impoverished Vietnam but also the felt personal lack caused by displacement from an original homeland through the agency of sending. As one remittance sender in California concisely described, ‘sending money [to Vietnam] is a powerful feeling’. The exuberant emotional release gained from sending out into the world something of

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value—even if not particularly efficient in arriving at its intended destination, where it can be redomesticated as a productive input—may itself be a driving motivation for remittances, as Georges Bataille might argue in his reflections on the liberating irrationality of expenditure—‘the return of life’s immensity to the truth of exuberance’ (1988, p. 76). The agential and humanitarian expression of remittances is as important as their efficacy, if not more so. Indeed, as Nina Glick Schiller, Georges Fouron (2001), Hung Cam Thai (2014) and others have shown, it is the felt agency of sending as well as spending on homeland return trips that emotionally invigorates many low-wage earners, who may subsist with otherwise marginalised jobs and live in the United States. Supplementation is therefore occurring on multiple scales and is linked to differentiated capacities distributed across a globalised yet segmented economy. On one hand, former refugees finding their footing in the United States are sending money back to Vietnam in order to supplement a perceived material lack among families and communities in that country, as well as to address a felt emotional lack concerning their own status in American society. On the other, originally clandestine sending patterns that traversed political boundaries—and which, despite all their obstacles, Vietnamese Americans worked diligently to build across global diasporic networks—were seized and commented upon by American government officials, scholars, journalists and others. Their necessity and opacity were highlighted as further evidence of the ideological and material depravity of communism during the Cold War, extending from East Berlin to Havana to Pyongyang, whereby even political refugees with few resources were recruited to prop up the failing states they risked so much to escape from. For the United States, the felt loss of a major Cold War confrontation, Vietnam, became embodied in the formerly allied Indochinese refugees that arrived on American shores from 1975 onwards. The paternalistic acts of charity bestowed upon such refugees, perceived as helpless and in need of intervention, included efforts to oversee their remittance patterns—a phenomenon that has continued even though conditions have dramatically changed.6 Visualizing and managing remittances from refugees as a public policy issue in many ways also supplements a felt post–Vietnam War societal lack in the US—what former president George Bush Sr. called the ‘Vietnam Syndrome’. This syndrome emerged out of the failure of America’s over-confident Cold War commitment to proselytizing the unassailability of democracy and capitalism. Ultimately, they would be exposed for their shortcomings and contradictions over the bloody course of the Vietnam War as well as in subsequent US involvements overseas. Humanitarianism covers over, at least temporarily, the hollowness of imperial logic. In Capital, Marx reflected on the circulation of money, which, he says ‘continually moves away from its own starting-point … as the medium of

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circulation, [it] haunts the sphere of circulation and constantly moves around within it’ (1992, p. 213). The energy and intentions of remittances, most easily identified in money form and embodying the desires of those who send and receive them, cannot easily be constrained, nor does it seem possible to interrupt them. The unleashing of money’s global mobile energies contrasts with but also supplements the bulkier and more complex material sending patterns of the past, which still continue, especially with return migration. Despite the functional rationales for remittance flows and regulatory interventions to manage them, their tendencies to exuberantly continue and expand in the face of frustration, disappointment or even, as the case may be, economic successes in a tiger economy, where the added value of remittances may seem irrelevant, are continually unleashed in renewed and ever expanding circulations. Such circulatory energies do indeed seem to always move away from their starting points, just as the refugee experience for many moved from north to south to east and west despite an intentionality to always home to an elusive ‘place of origins’ (Morris, 2000). The increasing physical distance that perpetually invites surmounting (Willford, 2006) likewise instils a persistent sense of lack and a constant urge to supplement. Remittances, in their outward momentum, therefore demonstrate the supplementary dilemma of money—always desiring to restore meaning, connection and agency among their exchange participants but continually a step removed, creating further lacunas as they inevitably distance from and ultimately haunt their own sphere of circulation. In Given Time, Derrida (1992) describes the logical impossibility of gifts, which, by most analyses, remittances qualify as, at least in general form. By definition, a gift can never demand a return, be reciprocated or even be remembered. And yet it seemingly does all of these, causing us to continually question and suspect the meanings and intents of gifts. Still, Derrida says, ‘even if the gift were never anything but a simulacrum, one must still render an account of the possibility of this simulacrum and of the desire that impels toward this simulacrum’ (p. 31). The desire that impels, in this case, causing gifters to continually supplement that which was never really there or possible, is transnational yet perpetually partial in scope. Articulations of such desire must be contextualised within Cold War histories, political propagandas and affectations in which capitalism and capitalist subjects were deemed and deemed themselves as necessary to address the inherent material and cultural lack concomitant with global socialism—in this case, its Vietnamese manifestation. As this chapter has demonstrated, the supplementation of lack through diasporic remittance gifting occurred across multiple scales and registers. The bifurcated aporia on which such processual logic rests, however, suggests that the legacies and aspirations of such exchanges—even when revealed as

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simulacra—will, and always already have, haunt(ed) the circulation of remittances and the communities they connect and complicate.

Notes 1 Under international law, refugees are always political. Those who flee for economic reasons are called economic migrants. Given that economic conditions do not always allow the luxury of choice when it comes to migration, many human rights activists and lawyers have pushed for a recognition of ‘economic refugees’ (Harris, 1993). 2 Nguyen argues that refugee status in the US was conveyed as a ‘gift’ rather than a right and that refugees were therefore expected to demonstrate an impossible debt of gratitude to the US for their rescue and salvation from communism, rather than critiquing the imperialist American policies that contributed to wider war and destruction in Indochina in the first place. 3 Return visits by overseas Vietnamese are estimated by the Vietnamese government at over half a million trips annually. 4 The Jackson-Vanik amendment was part of the Trade Act of 1974, which intended to limit trade relations with Communist Bloc countries. 5 Vietnamese American activists in the 2000s targeted a number of municipalities with significant Vietnamese populations in states ranging from Louisiana to California to Washington to pass legislation mandating the former Republic of Vietnam flag as the representative flag of Vietnamese in public places. 6 On current policy interventions that spur public-private remittance flows and discount their migratory costs, as well as put the burden on senders to drive responsible development rather than on states to provide alternative livelihoods to migration, see Hernandez and Coutin (2006).

References Aguilar-San Juan, K. (2009). Little Saigons: Staying Vietnamese in America. University of Minnesota Press. Ang, C. (2013). Regionalism in southern narratives of Vietnamese history: The case of the ‘southern advance’ [Nam Tiến]. Journal of Vietnamese Studies, 8(3), 1–26. Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization. University of Minnesota Press. Bataille, G. (1988). The accursed share: An essay on general economy. Zone Books. Berdahl, D. (2009). On the life of postsocialism: Memory, consumption, Germany. Indiana University Press. Borneman, J. (1992). Belonging in the two Berlins: Kin, state, nation. Cambridge University Press. Congressional Record—House. (1985, September 12). The issue of Vietnamese involvement in clandestine international currency transfer. H7457-H7460.

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Dang, P. (1999). Việt Kiều Va Su Nhap Cuoc Voi Kinh Te Viet Nam. Vien Kinh Te. Dang, P. (2000). The Vietnamese diaspora: Returning and integrating into Vietnam. Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales, 16(1), 185–203. Derrida, J. (1978). Writing and difference. University of Chicago Press. Derrida, J. (1992). Given time. I, counterfeit money. University of Chicago Press. Eberstadt, N. (1988). The poverty of communism. Transaction Publishers. Glick-Schiller, N., & Fouron, G. (2001). Georges woke up laughing: Long distance nationalism and the search for home. Duke University Press. Harms, E. (2011). Saigon’s edge: On the margins of Ho Chi Minh City. University of Minnesota Press. Harris, E. K. (1993). Economic refugees: Unprotected in the United States by virtue of an inaccurate label. American University International Law Review, 9(1), 269–307. Hernandez, E., & Coutin, S. B. (2006). Remitting subjects: Migrants, money and states. Economy and Society, 35(2), 185–208. HRG. (1998). 105-933. Solution of disapproval of the Jackson-Vanik waiver for Vietnam. 7/7/98. Hearing on S.J. Res 47. Hunt, D. (2014). ‘Modern and strange things’: Peasants and mass consumer goods in the Mekong delta. Journal of Vietnamese Studies, 9(1), 36–61. Kerkvliet, B. (2005). The power of everyday politics: How Vietnamese peasants transformed national policy. Cornell University Press. Kiar, C. (2005). Imagine no possessions: The socialist objects of Russian constructivism. MIT Press. Lowe, L. (1996). Immigrant acts: On Asian American cultural politics. Duke University Press. Marx, K. (1992). Capital (C. J. Arthur., Ed.; B. Fowkes, Trans.). Lawrence and Wishart. Morris, R. (2000). In the place of origins: Modernity and its mediums in northern Thailand. Duke University Press. Mounier, E. (1947). Qu’est ce que le personalisme? Editions due Seuil. Nguyen, D. L. (2020). The unimagined community: Imperialism and culture in South Vietnam. Manchester University Press. Nguyen, M. (2012). The gift of freedom. Duke University Press. Nguyen-Vo, T. H. (2008). The ironies of freedom: Sex, culture and neoliberal governance in Vietnam. University of Washington Press. Que Huong Magazine. (2004). Resolution No. 36. http://quehuongonline.vn Rafael, V. L. (2000). White love: And other events in Filipino history. Duke University Press. Ratha, D., & Maimbo, M. (2005). Remittances: Development impacts and future prospects. World Bank. Small, I. V. (2019). Currencies of imagination: Channeling money and chasing mobility in Vietnam. Cornell University Press.

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Taylor, P. (2001). Fragments of the present: Searching for modernity in Vietnam’s south. University of Hawaii Press. Thai, H. (2014). Insufficient funds: The culture of money in low-wage transnational families. Stanford University Press. Thomas, M. (1999). Dislocations of desire: The transnational movement of gifts within the Vietnamese diaspora. Anthropological Forum, 9(2), 145–161. Tran, D., Lam, A., & Nguyen, H. (1995). Once upon a dream the Vietnamese-American experience. Andrews & McMeel. Vann, E. F. (2006). The limits of authenticity in Vietnamese consumer markets. American Anthropologist, 108(2), 286–296. Whitney, C. (1984, October 30). A bitter peace life in Vietnam. New York Times. Willford, A. (2006).The ‘already surmounted’ yet ‘secretly familiar’: Malaysian identity as symptom. Cultural Anthropology, 21, 31–59.

CHAPTER 8

Traditional Characteristics and New Dimensions Vietnamese American Self-Employment in the Twenty-First Century C. N. Le

1

Introduction

Vietnamese Americans are one of the more recent Asian American ethnic groups to arrive in the United States. While many Vietnamese came to the US because of the Vietnam War, in the almost fifty years since the end of the war, Vietnamese Americans have completely rebuilt their lives and their communities and have firmly entered the US mainstream (Aguilar-San Juan, 2009; Kibria, 1993; Lieu, 2011; Nguyen, 2017; Zhou & Bankston, 1998). One method through which many Vietnamese Americans have used to achieve socioeconomic mobility has been entrepreneurship (aka self-employment). This chapter will examine the characteristics of Vietnamese American entrepreneurship across the four metropolitan areas in the US that contain the largest population of Vietnamese Americans (Los Angeles/Orange County; San Francisco/Oakland/ San Jose; Houston; and Baltimore/Washington, DC/northern Virginia). Since Asian immigrants first arrived in the US back in the mid-1800s, entrepreneurship has been a commonly used mechanism to achieve socioeconomic mobility, social status and personal autonomy. In addition to working as gold miners, railroad workers and farmers, many of these early Chinese Americans opened their own small businesses, operating general stores and trading posts, farm stands and groceries, restaurants and other services (Chan, 1991; Lee, 2013). The contemporary relationships and effects of entrepreneurship and self-employment involve a dynamic confluence of both motivations and opportunities. In terms of opportunities, many ethnic entrepreneurs rely on family members, relatives and recently arrived co-ethnics as unpaid or cheap labour (Min, 1987; Sanders & Nee, 1996; Song, 2000; Zhou, 2004). In addition, it is not coincidental that many Asian small businesses are located in ethnic Asian communities, since such businesses rely heavily on co-ethnic patronage and vertical co-operation from suppliers and wholesalers for their economic survival (Le, 2012; Logan, Alba & Zhang, 2002; Rath et al., 2018), with the acknowledgement that not all Asian American-owned businesses are located in ethnic Asian enclaves and/or cater primarily to co-ethnics. © koninklijke brill nv, leideN, 2022 | DOI:10.1163/9789004513969_009

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Further, opportunities also take the form of economic niches that may have been abandoned by white ethnic business owners (Park, 1997; Yoon, 1997) and/ or the existence of several industries that offer easy entry (i.e., low start-up capital, little English required, etc.) but also involve intense competition and high risks of failure, such as garment making, restaurants and retail shops, to name just a few (Hum, 2002b; Waldinger, 1989). In addition, research on Asian American self-employment has emphasised the crucial role that co-ethnic social networks play in providing much-needed resources, whether material (i.e., rotating credit associations, purchasing existing small businesses from coethnics, etc.) or non-material (i.e., gaining entrepreneurial experience working for other business owners, information and leads on small business opportunities and tapping into co-ethnic labour pools) (Min, 2008; Sanders, Nee & Sernau, 2002). Second, in terms of motivations for entrepreneurship, self-employment for Asian Americans was traditionally used as a fall-back or last resort strategy in order to avoid blocked mobility and/or underemployment and potential discrimination in the paid labour market (Borjas, 1986; Light & Rosenstein, 1995). As mentioned, due to systematic discrimination and exclusion from full participation in American society, Chinese immigrants in the 1800s (and, later, other Asian immigrant groups) retreated into their own ethnic enclaves and resorted to opening their own businesses as a means of economic survival. Even in recent decades, this rationale for being self-employed has been applied to many Korean immigrants, many of whom lack sufficient English skills to attain paid employment commensurate with their education and/or occupational skills, and therefore they decide to be self-employed to circumvent blocked occupational mobility or avoid discrimination in the primary labour market (Min, 1996; Portes & Zhou, 1996). Therefore, viewed as a strategy to avoid labour market discrimination, self-employment has been conceptualised as running counter to the conventional assimilation process of incorporation into the mainstream labour market. Another motivation to enter self-employment focuses on different resources Asian Americans possess that more easily facilitate their entry to entrepreneurship. In fact, in recent decades, scholars are observing that many Asian Americans are choosing to enter self-employment rather than being forced into it as a last resort (Davila & Mora, 2004; Fairlie & Robb, 2010; Le, 2012; Zhou, 2004). One form of motivation draws on the ideas of Max Weber and his ‘Protestant ethic’ thesis and observes that some Asian cultures emphasise a strong work ethic, frugal attitudes, a willingness to delay gratification and a future-oriented outlook that stresses individual sacrifices for the good of later generations, all of which supposedly eases entry into entrepreneurship (Sanders & Nee, 1996).

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This ‘ethnic resources’ thesis emphasises cultural elements that arguably exist in many cultures but seem to be more pronounced in Asian groups. However, since measuring such ethnic resources is inherently difficult in general and virtually impossible using census data, I focus on a different form of motivation that emphasises ‘class resources’. Specifically, these ‘class resources’ take the form of entrepreneurs acquiring advanced education, job skills, previous managerial experience and/or financial capital in order to facilitate self-employment instead of seeking salaried professional jobs. Their class resources may lead them to focus on low-skill service industries normally associated with traditional ethnic enclaves, but increasingly, these entrepreneurs are emphasizing more professional types of business sectors, such as law, medicine, insurance, financial services, real estate and computer consulting (Davila & Mora, 2004; Min & Kim, 2017; Saxenian, 2002). In the process, these professional entrepreneurs cater to co-ethnic and non-co-ethnic clients alike. In fact, scholars have noted that Jews represent a historical case study of high rates of enclave-associated self-employment in the first generation, followed by high rates of professional-service self-employment for later generations (Lee, 2002). Therefore, while this phenomenon of linking entrepreneurship to assimilation is not new, up to this point, it has not been analysed for Asian Americans. Professional-service self-employment has, moreover, taken on new dimensions as many Asian American entrepreneurs increasingly leverage their transnational linkages between Asia and the US as well as the growth of the global high-skilled service economy. For example, focusing on Latin immigrant groups, scholars describe different types of ethnic businesses that routinely transcend geographic boundaries to provide two-way exchanges of goods and services between Latin American countries and the US (Hum, 2002a; Landolt, 2001; Raijman & Tienda, 2004). While this form of entrepreneurship among Asian American has received less attention, some scholars note that it represents a natural offshoot of the transnational ties that many Asian American entrepreneurs possess (Fairlie & Robb, 2010; Logan et al., 2002). Taken together, these new forms of entrepreneurship challenge traditional interpretations of self-employment as a last-resort strategy for economic survival in the face of employment discrimination. Instead, entrepreneurship is emerging as a favourable option even for those with the skills and networks associated with high levels of cultural assimilation who could gain high-quality jobs as paid employees in the primary labour market. Self-employment among Asian Americans inevitably has a gender component to it. In fact, scholars have recently begun to explore in more detail the complexities of Asian American entrepreneurship through a gendered lens. As

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illustrations of the importance of Asian American women’s contributions to small business ownership, Dhaliwal (1998) and others (see Park, 2005; Sanders et al., 2002; Song, 2000) expound on how many Asian small business are only able to be profitable due to the largely unpaid contributions of family members and, especially, of women and wives of male small business owners. Focusing more specifically on Asian women’s entrepreneurship, in her research on Korean women-owned nail salons in New York City, Kang (2010) notes that many of the women decided to start their own businesses for much of the same reasons Asian American men do—in order to avoid blocked mobility and potential underemployment in the paid labour market, and because the opportunities to enter self-employment were favourable and attractive. At the same time, she notes that many of these Korean women nail salon owners wanted to become more independent from their husbands, economically and interpersonally, and they were tired of working in their husband’s small business. In addition, owning their own small businesses afforded them considerable schedule flexibility and childcare options. Taken together, entrepreneurship among Asian Americans has evolved from a secondary focus within the entirety of Asian American history to a multifaceted and complex socioeconomic dynamic that goes beyond individual-level factors. These days, Asian American entrepreneurship now includes numerous niches and industries in which certain Asian ethnic groups are overrepresented, such as Indian Americans within the hotel and hospitality and fast food sectors and Vietnamese Americans within nail and hair salons (Dhingra, 2012; Hoang, 2015; Kang, 2010; Rangaswamy, 2007). In addition, the cumulative effects of Asian American entrepreneurship have contributed to the proliferation and prosperity of numerous communities around the US that have large numbers of Asian American residents or are even majority-Asian American (Kye, 2018; Ling, 2009; Wen, Lauderdale & Kandula, 2009; Zhou & Cho, 2010; Zhou, Tseng & Kim, 2009). If we focus on the dynamics of Vietnamese American entrepreneurship specifically, history shows that there were distinct waves of immigration after the Vietnam War. The first wave, from 1975 to 1976 and totalling around 120,000 people, generally comprised Vietnamese from professional, middle-class and urban backgrounds and/or those who had direct ties with either the US or South Vietnamese military during the war. The second wave of around 120,000 people occurred between 1977 and 1982 (it was generally known as the ‘boat people’ cohort) and included those from more working-class, rural and/or ethnic Chinese backgrounds. As each year progressed, subsequent arrivals to the US were more likely to be conventional immigrants (i.e., sponsored by family members, relatives or employers) rather than refugees (Bankston III & Zhou, 2020).

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The first and second waves of Vietnamese refugees were initially dispersed throughout the country, as per the US government’s policy of resettling the Vietnamese in as many different parts of the country as possible so that they would not overburden a particular city’s social resources and services at one time, as well as to encourage the Vietnamese to assimilate into ‘mainstream’ US society as quickly as possible rather than segregating themselves into isolated communities. But the government did not anticipate the refugee’s desire to be part of their own larger community, nor the fact that many Vietnamese were not used to living in the cold northern climates where they were initially settled. By the 1990s, large numbers of Vietnamese had migrated from their initial resettlement locations to join friends and family members in metropolitan areas that were beginning to develop ethnic Vietnamese communities (Bankston III & Zhou, 2020). As previously mentioned, these days, the top four US metropolitan areas with the largest populations of Vietnamese Americans are Los Angeles/Orange County, San Francisco/San Jose/Oakland, Houston and Baltimore/Washington, DC/northern Virginia.

2

Data and Methodology

Data comes from the US Census Bureau’s 2014–2018 American Community Survey (ACS) five-year combined sample created by combining 1% samples from the 2014–2018 ACS. With a sample size of over ten million individual respondents, the 2014–2018 ACS combines a large and robust sample size with a relatively recent sampling frame and is, therefore, the best choice for systematic and comparative demographic analyses by racial/ethnic group (in this case, Vietnamese Americans). Nonetheless, the main limitation of the 2014– 2018 ACS (and cross-sectional data in general) is that since it only represents a ‘snapshot’ of data at one particular time rather than a longitudinal study, it can miss issues of causality and temporal sequence. The sample population is limited to respondents who self-identified as either ‘Vietnamese’, ‘Vietnamese and Chinese’ or ‘White and Vietnamese’ to the Census’s racial identity question and to employed (at the time of response to the Census) respondents twenty-five to sixty-four years of age, commonly used by scholars to represent the period of most active labour force participation. Type of employment was categorised as paid employee or self-employed, as measured by respondents answering affirmatively that they were self-employed in their own business (incorporated or not incorporated), professional practice or farm. Some scholars note that the Census’s definition of self-employment may miss those who earn income from being self-employed but who do not

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identify themselves as being self-employed (i.e., employees of their own companies), those who are clandestinely self-employed or those who work in burgeoning ‘gig economy’ side jobs such as driving for Uber or Lyft, or delivering meals through DoorDash or GrubHub, or selling goods through eBay or Etsy and in which self-employment is not their main source of income. While acknowledging its limitations, I use the stricter aforementioned definition of those who self-identify as being self-employed. I also distinguish important subgroups within this Vietnamese American sample: those are ‘foreign-raised’ (immigrated to the US at age thirteen or older) versus those who are ‘US-raised’ (born in the US or immigrated at age twelve or younger); respondents who self-identified as either male or female; and respondents living in the four aforementioned metropolitan areas. Further, to illustrate that entrepreneurs can no longer be considered a single all-encompassing category, self-employment is divided into two categories: (1) ‘traditional’ industries such as garment making, restaurant, grocery, retail and personal services that are generally characterised by relatively low wages, manual labour, requiring low levels of education and professional training and which commonly found in Asian ethnic enclaves around the US; and (2) those located in ‘professional service’ industries such as legal, financial, insurance, real estate, scientific, management, education, health care and computer consulting that generally require high levels of education and occupational skills (see Logan, Alba & McNulty, 1994). One’s industry of employment is different from one’s occupation—that is, someone can have an occupation of a lawyer but within the food service industry, or, conversely, an occupation of a custodian within the financial services industry. As such, the variable ‘high-skill occupation’ denotes an occupation that requires advanced educational credentials and job skills and is usually associated with complex mental (as opposed to physical) job duties, relatively high pay and pleasant work conditions. In analysing why Vietnamese Americans (and other racial/ethnic minorities) engage in self-employment, scholars have put forth theoretical explanations that can be broken into four main conceptual categories: labour market discrimination, ethnic resources, class resources and structural opportunities. To capture potential motivations to be self-employed due to labour market discrimination, I also included no high school degree and limited English fluency (operationalised as a self-reported answer of ‘does not speak English’ or ‘speaks English but not well’ to the Census question of ‘How well does each person speak English?’). Ethnic resources are more difficult to measure but I included being married with a spouse present (as many self-employed Vietnamese Americans use spouses and other family members as unpaid workers). To test for potential class resource influences on being self-employed, I include having

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at least a master’s degree, working in a high-skill occupation and in a professional industry as independent variables. Finally, the ‘structural opportunities’ theory argues that certain industries offer easier entry into entrepreneurship in that they don’t require much education, job skill, English proficiency and/ or start-up costs. Such sectors are represented by the aforementioned ‘traditional’ industries that are associated with older Asian communities such as Chinatowns, including retail, grocery, restaurant and personal (i.e., beauty) services. At the same time, these ‘traditional’ industries are also characterised by relatively small profit margins and a high likelihood of failure and ownership turnover (see Hum, 2006; Zhou, 1992). In the following section, I first present descriptive statistics on demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of entrepreneurship among Vietnamese Americans disaggregated by gender, generation and metropolitan area. Second, I use logistic regression to analyse factors associated with being self-employed after controlling for a variety of independent variables, with different models for each gender and generation.

3

Results and Discussion

3.1 Descriptive Statistics Table 8.1 presents several sets of descriptive results related to entrepreneurship among Vietnamese Americans across gender, generation, metropolitan area and type of employment (self-employed or paid employee). For the sake of brevity, I highlight the most notable findings. First, Vietnamese American men and those who are foreign-raised consistently have higher rates of entrepreneurship than women and those who are US-raised, respectively, reinforcing previous research about not just Vietnamese Americans, but Asian Americans and immigrants as a whole which documents that entrepreneurship peaks within the first immigrant generation and then tends to decline with successive generations (Chaudhary 2015; Le 2007). Understanding that about 10% of all US workers are self-employed (Desilver, 2019), foreign-raised men and women have higher rates of being self-employed than US workers as a whole, while only Vietnamese American men in Houston have a higher than average rate among the US-raised. The data from Table 8.1 also tends to show that among foreign-raised Vietnamese American men and women, those who are self-employed consistently have lower rates of possessing a college degree, working in a professional industry and having a high-skill occupation, as well as lower median personal incomes compared to their counterparts who are paid employees. This

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Table 8.1  Descriptive characteristics of entrepreneurship of Vietnamese Americans Los Angeles/ Orange County

San Francisco/ San Jose/ Oakland

Houston

Baltimore/ Washington, DC/N. Virginia

Sample N

2,292

1,564

679

543

% Self-employed

13.8

11.8

15.5

12.3

% College degree (SE/PE)

26.8/29.3

18.9/33.6

25.7/29.1

28.4/47.3

% Professional industry (SE/PE)

21.1/18.9

11.4/20.3

16.2/15.5

17.9/42.6

% High-skill occupation (SE/PE)

17.7/25.6

12.4/34.6

13.3/23.7

11.9/36.3

Med. personal incomea (SE/PE)

$27.0/$43.4

$29.7/$54.0

$25.5/$42.3

$40.2/$59.4

Sample N

1,337

919

358

331

% Self-employed

10.4

9.0

12.6

7.9

% College degree (SE/PE)

57.6/60.4

47.0/38.8

55.6/56.5

69.2/69.2

% Professional industry (SE/PE)

36.7/41.7

27.7/42.0

37.8/44.7

65.4/64.6

% High-skill occupation (SE/PE)

30.2/40.2

28.9/43.7

26.7/42.2

50.0/55.1

Med. personal incomea (SE/PE)

$52.9/$55.0

$37.0/$65.0

$46.1/$61.5

$71.5/$80.8

Sample N

2,391

1,699

1,564

635

% Self-employed

13.1

10.8

11.8

12.3

% College degree (SE/PE)

20.1/24.4

20.2/27.2

18.9/33.6

28.4/47.3

% Professional industry (SE/PE)

14.1/25.6

15.3/27.2

11.4/20.3

17.9/42.6

% High-skill occupation (SE/PE)

9.3/19.9

11.5/23.8

12.4/34.6

11.9/36.3

Med. personal incomea (SE/PE)

$17.3/$26.1

$21.2/$33.0

$20.5/$25.6

$26.2/$37.9

Men Foreign-raised

US-raised

Women Foreign-raised

(cont.)

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Table 8.1  Descriptive characteristics of entrepreneurship of Vietnamese Americans (cont.) Los Angeles/ Orange County

San Francisco/ San Jose/ Oakland

Houston

Baltimore/ Washington, DC/N. Virginia

Sample N

1,226

853

341

345

% Self-employed

8.2

5.9

10.0

7.0

% College degree (SE/PE)

54.0/69.3

62.0/74.5

41.2/66.1

54.2/76.3

% Professional industry (SE/PE)

46.0/51.7

50.0/57.8

38.2/48.9

50.0/68.8

% High-skill occupation (SE/PE)

24.0/44.5

38.0/47.1

20.6/46.3

37.5/50.5

Med. personal incomea (SE/PE)

$36.0/$55.6

$47.5/$63.5

$37.0/$55.0

$59.3/$73.0

US-raised

a Thousands of dollars Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey, 2014–2018 combined sample

suggests that entrepreneurship is associated with lower socioeconomic status among foreign-raised Vietnamese Americans. However, the situation among US-raised Vietnamese Americans is somewhat different. Specifically, in many cases, self-employed US-raised Vietnamese Americans have similar or even higher rates of having a college degree, working in a professional industry and having a high-skill occupation, and they have similar or higher median personal incomes compared to their paid employee counterparts. Interestingly, this socioeconomic disparity between US-raised Vietnamese American entrepreneurs and paid employees is smaller among men but more pronounced among women. This suggests that the latter, at least for this current generation of US-raised Vietnamese American women and particularly for those who have high educational qualifications, overwhelmingly tend to enter paid employment rather than self-employment. Finally, in comparing characteristics of Vietnamese American entrepreneurship across the four metropolitan areas, the most glaring difference is that Vietnamese Americans (both as entrepreneurs and paid employees) in the Baltimore/Washington, DC/northern Virginia area have noticeably higher levels of socioeconomic attainment (i.e., having a college degree, working in a professional industry, having a high-skill occupation and median personal

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incomes) compared to the three other metropolitan areas. This finding is especially prominent among US-raised Vietnamese Americans. While this pattern might be related to the fact that much of the employment in this metropolitan area is tied to the federal government, these relatively high levels of socioeconomic attainment also exist for those who are self-employed. This suggests that Vietnamese American entrepreneurs in the Baltimore/Washington, DC/ northern Virginia area are more likely to work in professional service sectors and high-skill occupations, such as legal and medical services, as opposed to more ‘traditional’ businesses such as retail, groceries or restaurants. 3.2 Regression Results Table 8.2 presents statistically significant factors that affect the odds-ratio likelihood of being self-employed among Vietnamese Americans by gender and generation, calculated by logistic regression, which measures the simultaneous effect that different independent variables have on the dependent variable (the likelihood of being self-employed). The numbers presented are odds ratios, which are simpler ways to present logistic regression results. Odds ratios of 1 or higher indicate a positive effect of that independent variable on the likelihood of being self-employed, while an odds ratio of less than 1 indicates a negative effect. In looking at the first model, which includes just Vietnamese American men, the results show that age (i.e., the older a person is, the higher their likelihood of being self-employed), not having a high school degree, being married with a spouse present, working in a traditional industry and having a master’s degree or higher all have positive and statistically significant effects on being self-employed, net of all other factors in the model. Conversely, limited English proficiency, working in a high-skill occupation and living in the Baltimore/Washington, DC/northern Virginia area both have a negative effect on the likelihood of being self-employed. Going back to the four main theories of entrepreneurship mentioned earlier, the ‘labour market discrimination’ theory predicts that someone becomes self-employed because they experience discrimination in the paid labour market and therefore, reluctantly resorts to being self-employed as a backup plan. In this theory, not having a high school degree and limited English proficiency should both have positive effects on being self-employed. However, for Vietnamese American men, not having a high school degree does have a positive but limited English proficiency actually has a negative effect—so, therefore, support for the ‘labour market discrimination’ model is inconclusive. The ‘ethnic resources’ theory predicts that being married with a spouse present and/or living in one of the four metropolitan areas that also contain large numbers of potential co-ethnic customers should all have a positive effect on

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Traditional Characteristics and New Dimensions Table 8.2  Odds ratios of statistically signifijicant factors afffecting entrepreneurship of Vietnamese Americans

Intercept Age Male No high school degree Limited English Married, spouse present Traditional industry Foreign-raised Master’s degree or higher High-skill occupation Professional industry Los Angeles/Orange Co. San Francisco/San Jose Houston Baltimore/Washington, DC/North Virginia N Chi-square (df) −2 log likelihood

Men

Women

Foreign-raised

US-raised

–3.346 1.024b – 1.190b .699b 1.310b 3.799b

–3.315 1.015b –

–3.017 1.011b 1.336b

–4.383 1.045b 1.324b

.703b 1.450b 4.309b 1.107a 1.360b .516b

.709b 1.370b 4.107b – 1.493b .520b

.619b 1.306b 3.621b – 1.194a .573b

.837b .736b

.899a .824b

.799a

.714b

.730b

18,546 1,120 (13)b 13,498

19,230 1,532 (13)b 13,760

24,369 1,757 (13)b 19,279

1.343b .562b

13,407 698 (13)b 7,928

a p ≤ .10 b p ≤ .01 Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey, 2014–2018 combined sample

the likelihood of entrepreneurship. For Vietnamese American men, being married with spouse present has a positive effect, while living in the first three metropolitan areas has no statistically significant effect and, in fact, living in the Baltimore/Washington, DC/northern Virginia area actually has a negative effect. Therefore, we could say that there might be minimal tentative support for the ‘ethnic resources’ model among Vietnamese American men. The third theory of entrepreneurship, ‘class resources’, predicts that rather than choosing entrepreneurship as a backup plan, a person plans from the beginning to become self-employed and accumulates skills and training to do so. This theory predicts that having a master’s degree or higher, working in a

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high-skill occupation, and being in a professional industry should have positive effects on being self-employed. For Vietnamese American men, having a master’s degree does have a positive effect, which supports the ‘class resources’ theory. However, the results also show that working in a high-skill occupation has a strong negative effect on being self-employed. Therefore, there is conflicting support for the ‘class resources’ theory. The final theory of ‘structural opportunities’ predicts that certain industries—such as garment making, retail, grocery, restaurant and personal (i.e., beauty) services that are included in the ‘traditional industry’ variable—offer relatively easy entry into entrepreneurship (but also involve small profit margins and high chances of failure or owner turnover). Therefore, if the ‘traditional industry’ variable has a positive effect on being self-employed, this would strongly support the ‘structural opportunities model, and the results indeed show that working in a traditional industry does have a very strong positive effect for Vietnamese American men, so there appears to be strong support for this theory. This can also be seen in the large numbers of Vietnamese American-owned restaurants, grocery stores and beauty services small businesses that proliferate in these four metropolitan areas. Moving across to the second model for Vietnamese American women, the results generally correspond to those of their male counterparts. The main differences, however, show that not having a high school degree has no effect on the likelihood of being self-employed, which weakens the ‘labour market discrimination’ theory of entrepreneurship. Another difference between the genders is that living in either the Los Angeles/Orange County or the San Jose/Oakland metropolitan areas has a negative effect on being self-employed for Vietnamese American women, which weakens support for the ‘ethnic resources’ theory. Overall, it appears that entrepreneurship for Vietnamese American women does not follow any neat or conventional pattern. In other words, the results show that working in a traditional industry and being foreign-raised have positive effects on being self-employed, which suggests that many Vietnamese American entrepreneurs tend to be immigrants with lower levels of education and job skills. However, we also see that having a master’s degree or higher also has a positive effect on being self-employed. This suggests that there are some well-educated Vietnamese American women who are self-employed, but that they are more randomly distributed throughout the labour market rather than being concentrated in particular occupations or sectors. Among foreign-raised Vietnamese Americans, the first notable finding is that not having a high school degree does not have any effect on the likelihood of entrepreneurship and that limited English proficiency has a negative effect on being self-employed. As such, these findings contradict labour

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market discrimination as a theory of entrepreneurship in this contemporary age. The other findings for foreign-raised Vietnamese Americans are similar to those for women in that there is no overarching pattern, other than the strong positive effect of working in a traditional industry, which supports the theory of ‘structural opportunities’. In other words, the results show that there is still a strong pattern of foreign-raised Vietnamese Americans working in traditionally low-skill and low-wage industries such as restaurants, grocery stores and personal/beauty services. Finally, for US-raised Vietnamese Americans, there is also no obvious overarching pattern. What is notable, however, is that having a high-skill occupation has a strong negative effect and working in a professional industry has no effect on the likelihood of entrepreneurship, suggesting that there is no visible pattern of US-raised entrepreneurs shifting to highly skilled professional endeavours such as owning their own law or medical practice (although having a master’s degree or higher does have a positive effect). Perhaps Vietnamese Americans, as an Asian American population, are still relatively new and young and yet to demographically ‘mature’ in the same way that Chinese Americans and Japanese Americans have in terms of going into their third, fourth and later generations.

4

Policy Implications and Conclusion

Reviewing the four major theoretical models of factors influencing why racial, ethnic or immigrant groups become self-employed, the regression results show generally that in contrast to the early historical period of Asian American entrepreneurship which started in the late 1800s, labour market discrimination seems to be less of a factor in contemporary times. Similarly, ethnic resources, in the form of being married with the spouse present (and the assumption that spouses contribute to self-employment as a cheap or unpaid labour), still have consistent positive associations with being self-employed across gender and generation. There is some tentative support for the class resources theory that some Vietnamese Americans plan to become entrepreneurs, shown by the positive effect of having a master’s degree or higher, but this particular explanation still needs more supporting evidence and is less substantiated among Vietnamese Americans than other Asian American groups (see Le, 2012). Finally, employment in a traditional industry (as a proxy for structural opportunity theory) also continues to have a strong positive association with entrepreneurs across gender and generation—and judging by the consistently high odds ratios for this variable, the results show that structural opportunities still play a large role in the entrepreneurship patterns of Vietnamese Americans.

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On a more general level, scholars have outlined several policy recommendations that would facilitate more entrepreneurship, not just among Vietnamese Americans but also for other racial, ethnic and immigrant groups, as a means to attaining greater economic success and autonomy. This goal is particularly important when it comes to new gateway destinations around the US that are experiencing large increases in their minority populations in the age of ongoing globalisation. In these situations, such policy recommendations would emphasise the need to develop closer and mutually beneficial networks with other ethnic entrepreneurs, businesses and community organisations/associations, as well as more effective relationships with governmental business assistance and regulatory agencies (Hum, 2006). As one example, minority entrepreneurs can modernise their business operations, including recordkeeping and labour compliance practices, that will allow them to shift away from traditional niches into more contemporary professional service industries. Further, during times of financial recession, as the US economy continues to stagnate, as government funds to assist small businesses continue to dwindle and as economic instability becomes the new ‘normal’ for the foreseeable future, Vietnamese American entrepreneurs should be able to more freely access foreign capital, particularly from economies that are still expanding and have funds to invest, such as Vietnam, China, South Korea, Taiwan and India. Emerging research has described some examples in which some Asian Americans are increasingly leveraging their cross-border social and professional ties to utilise transnational financial resources and business opportunities (Drori, Honig & Wright, 2009; Honig, 2020; Landolt, 2001; Liu et al., 2020; Portes, Haller & Guarnizo, 2002; Varma, 2006; Wong, 2005). Policies that could facilitate transnational entrepreneurial ties might take the form of easing government red tape and subtle racial barriers into foreign and domestic sources of investment (Fairlie & Robb, 2010), promoting more foreign tourism to Asian ethnic enclaves such as Little Saigons and providing tax breaks to minority small business owners to reinvest their revenue to benefit the local community. Other measures could focus on greater integration of ethnic-focused with non-ethnic businesses, as well as self-employed with paid-employee businesses both inside and outside of enclave areas. Other policy steps could ensure that neighbourhood development plans include input from local and transnational Asian business owners, thereby increasing their stake in providing affordable social services and housing for long-time residents, many of whom are their customers (Hwang, 2015; Rath et al., 2018). As long as the US public recognises that such examples of foreign investment will ultimately benefit their communities, this increase in transnational entrepreneurship fits well within the broader history and contemporary dynamics of Vietnamese American integration into

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the US mainstream, which can put them at the forefront of demonstrating that globalisation can have positive effects for the US economy and society. Moreover, even while rates of self-employment and the business climate within traditional ethnic enclaves may fluctuate from year to year, professional service entrepreneurship is likely to increase in importance as a means to attain occupational and socioeconomic success for Vietnamese Americans in succeeding generations. Policy measures that not only welcome but also encourage these new forms of entrepreneurship must go beyond local considerations to include the new larger transnational context of these businesses. In the history of Vietnamese American migration and settlement in the US, entrepreneurship and community development have always been linked. As the twenty-first century and the effects of globalisation continue to evolve, the contours and dynamics of this relationship are taking on new forms and leading to diverse outcomes. Like many other Asian American entrepreneurs, Vietnamese Americans are increasingly using their transnational connections to further their structural assimilation into mainstream US society, whereas such connections were earlier seen as liabilities in their quest to attain mobility and assimilation. As this study highlights, self-employment is not necessarily a last-resort strategy associated with being less structurally assimilated; it is increasingly people’s first choice, one which reflects high levels of planning and preparation and is part of larger trends of increasing demographic diversification and transnational convergence.

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Le, C. N. (2012). New dimensions of Asian American self-employment in Los Angeles and New York. Asian American & Pacific Islander Nexus, 10(2), 55–76. Lee, J.-Y. J. (2002). Civility in the city: Blacks, Jews, and Koreans in urban America. Harvard University Press. Lee, S. S.-H. (2013). A new history of Asian America. Routledge. Lieu, N. T. (2011). The American dream in Vietnamese. University of Minnesota Press. Light, I., & Rosenstein, C. (1995). Race, ethnicity, and entrepreneurship in urban America. Aldine de Gruyter. Ling, H. (Ed.). (2009). Asian America: Forming new communities, expanding boundaries. Rutgers University Press. Liu, Y., Namatovu, R., Karadeniz, E. E., Schøtt, T., & Minto-Coy, I. D. (2020). Entrepreneurs’ transnational networks channelling exports: Diasporas from Central & South America, Sub-Sahara Africa, Middle East & North Africa, Asia, and the European culture region. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 46(10), 2106–2125. doi:10.1080/ 1369183X.2018.1560002 Logan, J. R., Alba, R. D., & McNulty, T. L. (1994). Ethnic economies in metropolitan regions: Miami and beyond. Social Forces, 72, 691–724. Logan, J., Alba, R., & Zhang, W. (2002). Immigrant enclaves and ethnic communities in New York and Los Angeles. American Sociological Review, 67, 299–322. Min, P. G. (1987). Factors contributing to ethnic business: A comprehensive synthesis. International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 28, 173–189. Min, P. G. (1996). Caught in the middle: Korean communities in New York and Los Angeles. University of California Press. Min, P. G. (2008). Ethnic solidarity for economic survival: Korean greengrocers in New York City. Russell Sage Foundation. Min, P. G., & Kim, C. (2017). The changing effect of education on Asian immigrants’ self-employment. Sociological Inquiry, 88(3), 435–466. doi:10.1111/soin.12212 Nguyen, P. T. (2017). Becoming refugee American: The politics of rescue in Little Saigon. University of Illinois Press. Park, K. (1997). The Korean American dream: Immigrants and small business in New York City. Cornell University Press. Park, L. (2005). Consuming citizenship: Children of Asian immigrant entrepreneurs. Stanford University Press. Portes, A., Haller, W. J., & Guarnizo, L. E. (2002). Transnational entrepreneurs: An alternative form of immigrant economic adaptation. American Sociological Review, 67, 278–298. Portes, A., & Zhou, M. (1996). Self-employment and the earnings of immigrants. American Sociological Review, 61, 219–230.

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Raijman, R., & Tienda, M. (2004). Ethnic foundations of economic transactions: Mexican and Korean immigrant entrepreneurs in Chicago. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 26(5), 783–801. Rangaswamy, P. (2007). South Asians in Dunkin’ Donuts: Niche development in the franchise industry. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 33(4), 671–686. Rath, J., Bodaar, A., Wagemaakers, T., & Wu, P. Y. (2018). Chinatown 2.0: The difficult flowering of an ethnically themed shopping area. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 44(1), 81–98. Sanders, J. M., & Nee, V. (1996). Immigrant self-employment: The family as social capital and the value of human capital. American Sociological Review, 61, 231–249. Sanders, J., Nee, V., & Sernau, S. (2002). Asian immigrants’ reliance on social ties in a multiethnic labor market. Social Forces, 81(1), 281–314. Saxenian, A. (2002). Silicon Valley’s new immigrant high-growth entrepreneurs. Economic Development Quarterly, 16, 20–31. Song, M. (2000). Helping out: Children’s labor in ethnic businesses. Temple University Press. Varma, R. (2006). Harbingers of global change: India’s techno-immigrants in the United States. Rowman & Littlefield. Waldinger, R. (1989). Structural opportunity or ethnic advantage? Immigrant business development in New York. International Migration Review, 23, 48–72. Wen, M., Lauderdale, D. S., & Kandula, N. R. (2009). Ethnic neighborhoods in multiethnic America, 1990–2000: Resurgent ethnicity in the ethnoburbs? Social Forces, 88(1), 425–460. Wong, B. P. (2005). The Chinese in Silicon Valley: Globalization, social networks, and ethnic identity. Rowman & Littlefield. Yoon, I.-J. (1997). On my own: Korean businesses and race relations in America. University of Chicago Press. Zhou, M. (1992). New York’s Chinatown: The socioeconomic potential of an urban enclave. Temple University Press. Zhou, M. (2004). Revisiting ethnic entrepreneurship: Convergencies, controversies, and conceptual advancements. International Migration Review, 38, 1040–1075. Zhou, M., & Bankston, C. L. (1998). Growing up American: How Vietnamese children adapt to life in the United States. Russell Sage Foundation. Zhou, M., & Cho, M. (2010). Noneconomic effects of ethnic entrepreneurship: A focused look at the Chinese and Korean enclave economies in Los Angeles. Thunderbird International Business Review, 52(2), 83–96. Zhou, M., Tseng, Y.-F., & Kim, R. (2009). Rethinking residential assimilation: The case of a Chinese ethnoburb in the San Gabriel Valley, California. Amerasia Journal, 34(3), 53–83.

CHAPTER 9

The Price of Nailing It Emotional Labour in the Nail Salon Industry Anna Vu

In 1975, actress Tippi Hedren was working as a volunteer with a program called Food for the Hungry (FH). One of her tasks was to visit a Vietnamese refugee camp in Sacramento, California, and help the refugees who had come to America after the fall of Saigon to escape communism and find a better life for themselves. Ms. Hedren had become famous for her starring roles in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964). Her on-screen persona was invariably polished and elegant, much like her carefully manicured nails, which Hedren discovered were intriguing to the Vietnamese women in Camp Hope. Hedren quickly realised that with their nimble fingers and innate sense of artistry, the Vietnamese women would be perfectly suited to work in nail salons. Hedren flew in her own manicurist to teach an initial group of twenty women the essentials of the craft. However, as Robert Merton, the famous American functionalist, would remind us, every action carries with it unintended and unanticipated consequences. Ms. Hedren had no idea what her decision would bring forth—the creation of an ever expanding nail salon industry in the United States, Canada and now many parts of the world. My aim in this chapter will be twofold: first to provide some discussion of what I called the ‘political economy of the nail salon industry’, particularly as it relates to Vietnamese immigrants’ involvement in this ethnic niche. The chapter will then focus on the ‘emotional labour’ story of owners and workers in the industry. Here I will examine the social-psychological consequences of engaging in ‘body work’, which constantly requires the worker to adopt an attitude of subservience. How do nail artists derive meaning and dignity from doing work which on the surface appears to constantly place them in a subservient position? As Snow and Anderson have argued in their study Identity Work among the Homeless: The Verbal Construction and Avowal of Personal Identities (1987), a sense of self-worth must be sustained even when one’s situation is so desperate that the structures and roles which make everyday life possible have been lost. David Snow and Leon Anderson assert that if we cannot see ourselves as valuable human beings and impose meaning on our experiences, we will give up the struggle for survival. These concerns are especially relevant for my © koninklijke brill nv, leideN, 2022 | DOI:10.1163/9789004513969_010

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research, and I will explore the forms of identity work employed by nail salon workers1 in order to sustain an often tenuous and compromised sense of self.

1

Snapshot of the Nail Salon Industry

According to the 2017 figures in Nails Magazine, consumer spending in the nail industry in the US totalled approximately $8.5 billion. Canada does not keep a separate figure for nail salons alone, but along with hair care services, the value of this beauty industry stands at $5 billion. Similarly, nail care spending in Russia is classified under the category ‘beauty’ and is reported to be at $14.6 billion. The figure is much smaller (but remains significant) when considered separately. The market size for nail care spending in Germany is $2.8 billion; for Japan, it is $1.4 billion. It is predicted that the industry will continue to experience steady growth due to the increase in per capita disposable income, growing consumer confidence and the expanding adult population aged twenty to sixty-four (Roy, 2017). Vietnamese immigrants (largely women) now make up almost half of all nail professionals, and in some cases (e.g., California), this number increases to 80%. In Canada, in the Greater Toronto Area alone, it is estimated that 90% of stand-alone nail salons are owned and staffed by Vietnamese (Marlin, 2009). Today one can easily find a nail shop in almost any commercial sector in neighbourhoods across North America. The ubiquitous presence of nail salons and the Vietnamese domination of this industry has come to be known as the ‘McNailing of America’—a term which describes how the Vietnamese have transformed professional nail care, once offered as a secondary service in beauty salons for well-to-do clientele, into a mass, affordable service for everyone the same way McDonald’s has revolutionised the fast food industry (Eskstein & Nguyen, 2011, pp. 653–654). To illustrate this point, a full manicure and pedicure service cost $70 in 1993—which was considered pricey for many middle-class Canadians at the time. Today salons can offer a manicure for as low as $15 and a pedicure for $35. Thus, a well-groomed set of hands and feet can be obtained by almost everyone, including teenagers. The viability of this industry is only made possible by a constantly renewed pool of immigrant labour—especially newly arrived immigrants. According to a report by the UCLA Labor Center on nail salon workers and the industry in the US: ‘To this day, new Vietnamese immigrants continue to enter the nail salon workforce’ (Sharma et al., 2018). It is an ethnic economy which has certainly helped ease the assimilation process of newcomers and provides them with a solid start in their newly adopted country, but this has come with

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certain costs. Indeed, in recent years there has been a growing interest in the nail salon industry, especially with regard to health and safety issues as well as the prevalence of worker exploitation (Nir, 2015). Research on immigrants’ participating in an ethnic economy or ethnic enclave economy, as proposed by Portes and associates (Portes & Jensen, 1987, 1989; Portes & Zhou, 1993) has yielded mixed results. While some immigrants may benefit from working in an ethnic enclave (according to Portes and colleagues), scholars have pointed out the problem of ‘class struggle’ between employers and employees which can negatively impact economic outcomes for immigrants. The owners rely on their ethnic ties ‘to insulate and to persuade and reproduce a pliant lowwage immigrant workforce, not to help workers to enter into self-employment’ (Sanders & Nee, 1987, p. 773). However, as we will find out, this is not always the case for Vietnamese-owned nail salons.

2

Theoretical Foundations/Body Labour

In carrying out my research, I am indebted to the earlier work of both Arlie Russell Hochschild (1979, 1983) and Miliann Kang (2003, 2010). Kang’s work explores the dimensions of power and deference—the social-psychological underbelly of the nail salon industry. Her focus is on the power dynamics involved in ‘body labour’, which by definition forces the giver into a position of subservience. This service has become increasingly available to women of all social and racial groups in New York’s 3,000 plus nail salons. In Kang’s view, however, aesthetics is beside the point. Kang argues that the nail salon is a venue for the interplay between gender, class and race. The perfect manicure thus stands for more than itself: It symbolises the right of women—who make up the majority of nail salon customers—to claim power which may have been denied them with their partners, in their work lives or in family relationships. Yet ironically, both the client and the manicurist are co-conspirators in a process that commodifies and objectifies the body. The client’s body is an object to be transformed, and the manicurist is the tool that makes this transformation possible. Thus, Kang’s research explores not only the relationships between clients and workers but also the reasons which motivate women to engage in this act of self-transformation, which, as noted, is often quite complex and profound. As Kang observes: ‘no individual woman suddenly wakes up with the idea that manicured nails are central to her identity’ (Kang, 2010, p. 9). Kang’s research reveals that the meaning of the manicure is often connected to the culture and aspirations of the clients. Middle-class Caucasian women tend to prefer

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subdued, work-appropriate nails, whereas black women opt for flamboyant, artistic manicures that serve to express their individuality. Miliann Kang’s insights on the motivations of clients are undoubtedly valuable, but my research will focus on the social-psychological consequences of emotional labour—that is, emotion work which is carried out for a wage. As Hochschild explains, emotional labour ‘requires one to induce or suppress feelings in order to sustain the outward countenance that produces the proper state of mind in others’ (Hochschild, 1983, p. 7). Hochschild was of course referring to her own research on the emotional labour of flight attendants, but her observation that this labour is necessary to sustain the client’s ‘sense of being cared for in a convivial and safe place’ (1983, p. 7) applies equally to the situation of nail salon workers. Following Hochschild’s definition, it should be emphasised that emotion work refers to the evoking or suppressing of emotions (management), which may be carried out for a variety of reasons, but emotional labour refers to emotion management which is undertaken as a necessary part of one’s livelihood. Deference is a key aspect of body labour and one’s interaction with clients. Indeed, when pedicures are being given, the nail artist is positioned at the feet of her client with her head bowed. There is the constant requirement that she serves others, and in the process of doing so, she surrenders her individuality and her autonomy, which is devastating to the self. I wish to examine the practices which these workers rely on to help salvage the self. In other words, how do nail technicians reconfigure their roles so that they are more than nameless, faceless ciphers? I anticipate that many of these nail artists employ a narrative that allows them to take comfort in their roles and preserve a sense of their own dignity. They attempt to see themselves as offering a valuable service to women (and, in some cases, men), who are overworked and stressed, and thus they are not simply giving them a manicure or pedicure—they are offering them care and emotional support. Simply put, it is a situation in which one’s ‘deep acting’ is sold for a wage. Inner feelings are thus managed in order to produce the appropriate persona. This means that any emotions that do not meet the expected deference and demeanour must be suppressed—for example, anger, exhaustion or boredom. Instead they must evoke the appropriate feelings of cheerfulness, caring and sympathy. In the service industry—and, in fact, in any job that requires intensive faceto-face contact with clients—the degree to which a worker can successfully engage in emotional labour is important in ensuring the desired outcome. To the extent that a manicurist can be not only competent but also friendly, accommodating and understanding—all of the qualities associated with the

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prototypical ‘mother’—she will attract and retain the client because the client is likely to request the same manicurist on her next visit. As an interviewee named Cindy revealed, ‘the biggest sign of success in the nail salon industry is to have a client ask to see a specific worker by name’. If, on the other hand, a nail artist is seen as cold or indifferent to her client’s needs, she is much less inclined to be successful. Thus, a worker’s success is likely to be strongly correlated with her ability to manage her emotions.2 It must be emphasised, however, that the management of emotions is not an easy task—and as Arlie Russell Hochschild reminds us, it is not always done successfully. Unlike Erving Goffman (1959) who speaks of ‘impression management’ as mere performance, Hochschild refers to ‘deep acting’, which may not even take place on a conscious level. Hochschild’s occasional use of theatrical terms should not be taken to mean that in her view we lack an authentic inner self. Rather, the need to engage in deep acting and manage emotions is a testament to the hold that the social has over us. Yet it is precisely because we do possess a core self that emotion work/emotional labour exacts such a psychic toll. For Hochschild, then, the central issue vis-à-vis the individual and society is that the dictates of the social do violence to our emotions, or at the very least, cause us to become disconnected from them. Because we are real, and therefore cannot entirely deny or suppress ‘inappropriate’ emotions, or evoke ‘appropriate’ emotions on command, there will be leakage or moments when we display what is unintended and disruptive. Needless to say, the task of emotion management is exhausting. It seems nail artists are involved in a double or two-pronged narrative: there is the work they must do in order to impose meaning on their lives, which is largely internal and therefore may only be visible to themselves. At the same time, there is the work they must engage in to succeed in their job—that is, the maintenance of a cheerful, composed and sympathetic demeanour. Of course, the two narratives overlap and are reciprocal to some degree. If manicurists cannot convince themselves that there is a higher purpose being served by their work—ultimately for their children or other family obligations—it would likely be very difficult to continue. However, this internal narrative, even if carried out successfully, will not necessarily make it possible for them to work cheerfully and maintain a submissive demeanour day after day. Yet this is integral to their success on the job, as I have noted. In addition to the need to exert strict control over their emotions in order to present the appropriate demeanour, there is the lack of control experienced by these workers in terms of time spent on the job (volume is necessary, especially if prices for services rendered are low), and of course, the inability to choose one’s clients, who may be polite, kind and generous—or who are equally likely

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to be rude, demanding and stingy. This lack of autonomy, which is characteristic of so many jobs in the service sector, is amplified by the quasi-intimate nature of bodywork.

3

Methodology

My interest in the nail salon business and how this industry has served as an economic foundation for the Vietnamese diaspora community has been in the making for some years. I started this project with the belief that it would be relatively easy for me to find participants. Being a refugee myself, I share the same immigration history and experience with many nail salon workers. I was optimistic that this ‘insider status’—that, is having a shared past and immigrant ethnicity—would be an advantage. However, this was not the case, as I quickly realised that I was merely a ‘peripheral’ member in that I was not part of the nail salon workers’ culture and did not participate in the core activities of the group (Adler & Adler, 1987). As a researcher, I also occupy the position of an ‘outsider’ which sets me apart from this population. I did not have ‘complete’ membership because I was not part of the population under study. This outsider status is further amplified by the gap in educational attainment between myself and many of the nail artists. Research has indicated that 28% of nail salon workers have less than a high school level of education, and 39% have a high school degree (Sharma et al., 2018). These factors combined made it difficult to both gain complete acceptance by the workers and to create a certain level of safety and comfort for them to open up to me. Several reasons may contribute to people’s reluctance. First, there is a kind of social stigma associated with doing ‘body service work’—particularly within Vietnamese culture, which often views working on people’s nails as dirty and demeaning. There is also the issue of immigration status, which would affect how workers get paid. If, for example, a worker is undocumented and is paid in cash, then it is understandable that she would not feel comfortable talking to an ‘outsider’ about her job. The timing of this research also did not work in my favour. In October of 2019, people around the world were shocked to learn of the thirty-nine Vietnamese migrants found dead in a refrigerated container headed for the UK (Gentleman & Trong, 2020). The victims had paid their way to be smuggled into the UK for a chance at a better life. For many of them, this meant working in nail salons without any legal immigration status. With the intense media focus on the nail salon industry as a result of this tragedy, it is understandable that workers would feel shy or uncomfortable talking about their work.

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I began by setting up a Facebook group and inviting people to join. Some of these people work in the industry while others are frequent clients of nail salons. This, in my view, was a good strategy since the group is ‘private’ but at the same time ‘public’ enough so that people can exchange conversations specific to the industry or share stories about the nail salons. However, my research plan faced yet another setback. In the early months of 2020, much of the world was forced into a lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic. It became impossible for me to arrange for in-person meetings. I shifted my strategy to conducting the interviews online, which I thought would work out well in this situation. Everywhere almost everyone was ordered to shelter in place or stay home, which again I thought would be advantageous for me since people would then have a lot of free time. This was not the case. Nail salons were some of the hardest-hit industries, especially since the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, made an unsubstantiated claim that the state’s first case of the coronavirus started in a Vietnamese nail salon. Faced with an enormous loss of revenue and, in many cases, of people’s livelihoods, I felt it would be insensitive of me to contact people for interviews about work that they were no longer able to do. Rather than relying only on ‘structured’ interviews, I shifted to casual conversations about nail salon work with people over the internet and in small, friendly gatherings when possible. I also decided to include written and visual materials (e.g., ethnic newspapers and websites, local newspapers, documentaries, video clips, personal stories and blogs) as part of my data collection.

4

Employment in the Ethnic Niche Economy: Opportunity or Exploitation?

In her research on ethnic minority businesses, Susan Bagwell (2008) highlights the importance of transnational family networks in contributing to the development and expansion of ethnic businesses, such as the nail care sector in the UK by the Vietnamese. These personal networks provide access to various kinds of resources, including financial, as well as human and social capital. At the same time, Bagwell cautions that these networks can also limit innovation and diversification. For many Vietnamese, entering the nail salon business is an attractive option because it requires little investment and education. Nail work demands minimal training, and the workers do not need to have a high level of language proficiency. Depending on the location, but in many places (especially in Canada), nail technicians do not need to have a licence. In fact, according to

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Nails Magazine, the industry’s leading publication, out of Canada’s ten provinces and three territories, only four provinces (British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia) require workers to have formal certification. This involves classroom training where students learn the technical skills and other aspects of the industry, such as sterilisation and sanitation, nail diseases and disorders, artificial applications, nail arts, service techniques and business development. In US cities with a large Vietnamese population, training classes for nail technicians are even offered in Vietnamese. Thus, newly arrived immigrants are often drawn to working in nail salons. As one Vietnamese student shared on her blog about the experience of living and working in Canada: ‘with my small stature, very little knowledge of English, and with no family or friends, I decided from day one that I wanted to learn how to do nails’ (Tạp chí Canada, n.d.). Vietnamese nail salons usually operate under the ăn chia or profit-sharing system. This can be a fifty-fifty formula in which the owner and worker split evenly the amount charged to the customer. In cases where the worker is more experienced, the percentage can be sixty-forty (60% for the worker and 40% for the owner). The industry operates mainly as a cash business, as an interviewee named Linda, whose salon is located in Toronto (Canada), revealed to me. On average, a worker with minimal experience can earn between $100 and $200 a day excluding tips, which Linda says is at least $5 per customer. During the busy months, the daily earnings can go up to about $500. Thus, because nail salons operate primarily on cash transactions, it is not a surprise that workers would feel reluctant to talk about their work. My respondent, Linda, does not believe that this has much to do with the social stigma, as is commonly perceived. According to her, nail salons are a very profitable business, which also means that there are more taxes to be paid. Therefore, many workers prefer to be paid in cash (or only partially by cheque). This type of arrangement benefits both the workers and owners—at least in the short term. Linda also feels that in general, people do not like to talk about their work and that it is not unique to those working in the nail salons.3 There is also the issue of security, according to Theresa, a former nail salon worker in California. As this is a lucrative cash business, people may be afraid of getting robbed if they reveal too much about what they do. Theresa also points out that some workers may be receiving government assistance while working in the salon to earn extra money, which, again, is another reason people may not want to talk to others about their work.4 Even though nail work offers economic benefits, workers often suffer from the social stigma associated with it. Vietnamese culture tends to value highly

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skilled professions, especially engineering, law and medicine. At the same time, there is a tendency to devalue occupations such as nail salon work, especially among older, first-generation Vietnamese, many of whom came to North America as refugees. There is often a strong desire on their part to feel that they have done well for themselves and their families. Working in nail salons is thus seen as moving down the social ladder, even though it may have the opposite economic effect. As explained in an article in Vietnamese newspaper Thanh Nien: ‘although very lucrative and honest work, there is no other profession that is looked upon with annoyance, and sometimes with sly and cheap contempt as nail work’. Vietnamese people, whether directly or indirectly, refer to nail work by various demeaning terms such as ‘filing’, working in ‘nai’ (many Vietnamese intentionally write and pronounce this word incorrectly as a way to ridicule the profession), and ‘hugging American leg’ (indicating the act of giving someone a pedicure or a foot massage where the worker is positioned in a subordinate manner compared to her client, Nguyen, 2019).

5

Power from Below

As mentioned, there have been many reports on health concerns and labour exploitation in the nail salon industry. For example, in 2015, the New York Times published a series of articles which helped bring to the public’s attention the dark side of working in nail salons (Nir, 2015). Similarly, in 2015, PhD student Reena Shadaan of York University conducted research on the nail care industry in Canada and pointed out the health dangers and mistreatment that goes on in Canadian salons (Kelly, 2018). These reports point to the unequal power relations between nail salon owners and workers. However, my research indicates that workers can have a lot of say in the business, particularly once they have become very skilful and have been able to amass a good customer base. A worker can use these valuable assets as a bargaining chip to negotiate a better profit-sharing arrangement or working conditions. She can cultivate her own client loyalty and pressure to leave if her terms are not met. It is thus in the interest of the owner to keep the workers happy. The workers, on the other hand, are motivated to constantly improve their skills and increase their own clientele. Not only does this give them better leverage in their negotiations with owners, but they also have the goal of owning their own salons or become independent contractors. Vietnamese have had a long tradition of owning their own businesses—especially with small household enterprises which have been the main job providers for their families after the agricultural sector (Pasquier-Doumer, Oudin, & Nguyen, 2017)—and they tend to carry this

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ambition with them once they have resettled in their adopted country. One study has shown that almost a third of the industry’s workforce is classified as self-employed rather than employees, which is three times higher than the national rate of self-employment for the US (Sharma et al., 2018). According to my interviewee Linda, ‘of the people who work in this business for over five years, nine out of ten would go out on their own to open a salon’.5 The nail industry has provided a lot of financial support for Vietnamese families. Many success stories in the community are credited to parents’ hard work in nail salons. This industry is considered a key economy that has helped Vietnamese families (both back home and in the West) to not only sustain themselves but also thrive: ‘thanks to the nail business, our people are well-off. We are able to help our family in Vietnam and put our children through college to become engineers, lawyers, and doctors’(VN Express, 2007). In effect, many Vietnamese families have achieved what is considered the American dream, exemplified by the success of their children. But as their children become educated and successful, they also choose to follow a different career path. This means that there is often a shortage of workers. For these reasons, workers in nail salons today can have a high degree of power and influence in the work that they do. Nail salons in rural areas often have a hard time attracting workers. Even though workers can earn more money working in remote locations because there is less competition, finding workers willing to relocate and work in such areas can be difficult. Vietnamese tend to prefer living in urban settings with large Vietnamese concentrations so that they can have easy access to ethnic goods and services. One person recounts a story about a friend from Los Angeles who was invited to work in a nail salon in Wisconsin, which was newly opened and had many customers. Some days she was so busy that she had just enough time to down a bowl of instant noodles. At the end of the month, this friend said that she had earned $9,000. She continued to work for two months, but after that, she packed up and moved back to Los Angeles because she felt that the place was so remote and depressing. According to her, there was nothing to do but to watch TV or movies or play cards during the cold winter. But this worker’s two months stay was already considered long. Others lasted only a few days before they hurried back to the warm sunshine of California. In another case, a young Vietnamese woman also opened a salon in a shopping mall in Columbus, Ohio. Her concerns were similar to those of the aforementioned owner, who said that the place is so far away and cold that it is hard to find manicurists. Because of that, she had to offer some added incentives, including high salaries, paid living expenses and paid holidays, in order to attract and keep the workers. She worried that if the workers were not happy

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and decided to leave suddenly, she would be stuck doing the work all by herself (Nguyễn, 2019). As the research on nail salons demonstrates, ethnic niche economies may offer opportunities for workers to be exploited by owners, especially when these workers feel that they have no other economic options. At the same time, the accounts here have also shown that many owners are savvy enough to realise that they could not carry on without their employees—and happy, well-paid employees are also productive and loyal. This means that it is in the interest of nail salon owners to attend to the health and safety of both customers and workers as well as to engage in profit sharing—which may seem counterproductive for the owner, but in the long run it is good business practice. Long-term employees also maintain a loyal customer base, which would be difficult for the salon to retain if employees go elsewhere. The accounts above also illustrate that co-ethnic origin can both shape and mute the differences in power between owners and workers. It should be noted that owners of nail salons often start out as workers themselves, and therefore they are able to understand the concerns of their employees. Similarly, those who work in the nail salon industry often aspire to open their own shops. This convergence of interests makes it possible for owners and workers to understand each other in ways which are seldom seen in other industries. The generous profit-sharing arrangements are indicative of this convergence of interests, but also a reflection of shared experiences. Yet even if the economic aspect of nail salon work is addressed to the satisfaction of all parties involved, there is still the issue of emotional labour, and the effort to impose meaning on work, which, as we have already seen, is held in contempt by many members of the Vietnamese community. I will examine the attempt to impose meaning on one’s work experiences in the next section.

6

Emotional Labour and the Creation of Meaning

In order to really understand and appreciate the work that nail artists do, I decided to visit a nail salon in Montreal one Saturday afternoon in early September 2020—as a customer. I wanted to get the feel of what it’s like to work in a nail salon, and since it was difficult to get people to open up to me, I thought this was the best way to carry out some observational fieldwork. It was my first time visiting a salon, as I have never been comfortable being pampered and served by others—especially for something as personal and intimate as cutting one’s nails. I was greeted by Cindy, a Vietnamese lady who has been in the business for about twenty years and has been the owner of this particular

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salon for fifteen years. I was led to a pedicure chair and another Vietnamese lady in her fifties began to work on my feet. First, I was given a footbath in a tub filled with warm running water and a light fragrant soap. The lady then gently scrubbed the soles of my feet until they were smooth using a special tool, and methodically massaged both feet in a rhythmic motion. I was then asked to pick a colour of polish, and she proceeded to carefully polish each toenail. She performed each task with care and gentleness and paid special attention to detail. I praised her work and commented that she must enjoy what she does. She nodded and said it’s not hard work. She enjoys working there because of the atmosphere and has refused offers to work at other places. Later I was given a manicure by another worker—a young Vietnamese woman in her early twenties who is here as an international student, and finally, Cindy came over to give my fingernails several nice coats of gel polish. I’d had the opportunity to chat with Cindy through social media several weeks before I visited her nail salon. I asked about her work and how she got started in the industry: ‘It took me 8 years to think about what I wanted to do as a career. I tried other kinds of work, such as being a seamstress and pharmacy assistant, but I didn’t find them satisfying and the pay wasn’t that much. With the nail salon, I get to interact with customers, oftentimes from different professional fields which I can learn from them’.6 As both an owner and a worker, Cindy takes pride in her ability to offer beauty advice to clients and help them improve their overall sense of self: ‘With upper-class customers, I can give them higher, more elaborate service. For customers with mid-range income, I offer them ways to look good and still save money. Customers in the low-income bracket, I show them products that cost less and give them the care and attention to make them feel good’. The explanation Cindy offered points to the latent function of working in the nail salon industry—that, in fact, it is not just about the nails. Cindy believes that she is providing a valuable service to her clients: ‘In the beginning, I was scared when customers came in with very difficult cases such as infected toenails, but I always believed in my ability to make things better for them by being patient, caring and attentive. Over the years I have had many customers who called me the best foot doctor for poor people. It sounds strange but it makes me happy. People say it costs $80 to see a podiatrist where the doctor only clips the toenails, without paying attention to making them look nice’. As a testament to how Cindy values her work, she presented me with a video clip of a regular customer of more than twelve years, Joelle, and asked what she thought about the services at the salon: ‘I am very happy with the work. A good nail salon worker needs to know how to match the nails with the hands. I appreciate the suggestions, quality and the willingness to always

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do the maximum, and making sure that the work is perfect.7 It gives the client the feeling of being beautiful. I also like the ambiance and the feeling of being part of a family, and appreciate the professionalism and Cindy’s experience. I appreciate the attention to hygiene’. In another video clip, a customer of fifteen years, Danielle, remarks that she likes coming to Cindy’s salon because she feels like she is part of the family, the employees are professional, the work is well done and she gets compliments on her nails. Danielle continues, ‘doing nails takes a lot of creativity with regard to colours and designs. It would break my heart if I have to stop coming to Cindy’s’. As noted earlier, Vietnamese culture tends to devalue nail work. I asked Cindy for her thoughts on this issue, and she once again turned to her client Danielle to provide her own testament on the value of nail salon work. According to Danielle, nail work makes people like her feel good. She likes seeing her hands and feet beautiful. ‘It’s important for mood or confidence, and wellbeing. There’s no such thing as low-class work. There’s a need for every kind of work, like there is a need for people cleaning the streets and buildings. I am happy the service exists’. Another client, Genevieve, added that she really likes Cindy’s work. Genevieve works in cinema and uses her hands a lot, and she says that she has travelled a lot and has had her nails done abroad, but the work is never as good as Cindy’s: ‘Working with people is important. The work makes people feel better’. Genevieve has ingrown toenails and foot corns/calluses, which can hurt when walking: ‘Cindy’s care for feet improves our lives. Many older people cannot take care of themselves properly anymore, so these services are important’. Sometimes there is also the issue of emotional attachment. Recently a long-time customer, Arean, who was only twenty-four years old, passed away because of a sudden illness. Cindy was informed of this sad news by Arean’s two cousins and two friends, who came to visit Cindy at the salon. But this was no ordinary visit. It was their first time going there after Arean had recommended them many times, but she was now gone, and they wanted to make the visit in memory of Arean. They asked Cindy to give each of them a special set of nails just the way Arean used to have them done. The women hugged and cried while getting their nails done. Cindy told me that she felt so sad and shocked about Arean and it made her realise even more the importance of doing her best work and making every customer happy every time. In another touching story, Cindy tells me how she has been able to help a young woman get off drugs and turn her life around. This young client was often under the influence of drugs when she came to get her nails done. There were times when she fell asleep or could not sit up straight. At other times she

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would cry or laugh, and she even fell to the floor. But sometimes she was very lucid and she would tell Cindy her life story. It was then that Cindy learned that the young woman had an addict mother, and when she was nine years old, her father became her sole custodian. She also became an addict herself. Cindy shared the following story: I advised her that if she wanted to change her life, she had to get off drugs. She was so young and had her whole life ahead of her. I used my own life story as an example to tell her that it didn’t matter what circumstances you came from, it was up to the individual to change things. I kept talking to her like that for about six months and I promised her that if she was off drugs for good, I would give her one year of free nail services. I don’t know if what I said had an effect on her or her own determination, but for six months I didn’t see her come back. Then one day she came with her son. She hugged me and cried. She thanked me for my patience and good heart, and for my advice and for sharing my own personal story with her. She was trying to get off drugs for the past six months and she had succeeded. She met her love and had moved in with him in the countryside. I did her nails and as promised, did not charge her for the service. But her boyfriend insisted on paying and offered me a $20 tip. He thanked me, because of what I did[,] he now found a beautiful woman. I cried even harder than the young woman because I was so happy and proud of what I did. That is also the reason why I’m always enthusiastic about this profession, even though I get tired and discouraged sometimes. And it is also why I always dress up and try to look my best every morning for work. I want to create a sense of trust and confidence for my customers. Not all stories about working in the nail salon industry are positive, of course. As I have noted, nail salons have a profit-sharing system between workers and the owners, such as a sixty-forty or a fifty-fifty model. This can lead to problems among workers when they compete for customers, especially in large, busy salons. The same competition can also occur between an individual worker and the owner. In general, the owner has the final say in deciding which worker gets to serve which client, unless, of course, the client asks for a specific manicurist. Furthermore, the owner can also decide that she wants the client for herself if the client happens to be a generous tipper. The level of competition increases in bigger, busier, and more upscale salons. In the end, the winner of this so-called competition is the one who earns the most money in the salon (often it is the owner), and she would make sure that her effort does not go unnoticed.

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Thanh Thuy, a former nail salon artist who used to work in both Orange County and Houston, recounted her story in a Vietnamese language website devoted to helping those working in the industry: ‘many workers take pride in the fact that they are making good money by showing off their glamor with luxury cars and Bebe clothes, Gucci bags … expensive jewelries’. Nail salon work has enabled Thanh Thuy and her family to overcome the early difficulties and succeed in America. She felt sad that these ‘bad stories’ are being generated about the nail salon industry. Of course, this is a matter of perspective: ‘Bad or good depends on the judgment and opinion of each person. But for one thing, I’m not sure who can live and work in such an environment for a long time without losing oneself’. Another nail technician, Xuan, offered a more thoughtful reflection when she said that the nail profession is noble, honest and respectable (as are other beauty service jobs). She hopes that people working in the industry are not blinded by money and let it negatively affect their ‘dignity and honor, and especially to not feel embarrassed when they talk about their job’. As we can see, although working in the nail salon has its challenges, including the health risks and the need to navigate complicated workplace relationships and social interactions, the economic return continues to be a strong driving force. For newcomers with limited resources—whether financial or cultural—who have to adapt and assimilate quickly, nail work seems to offer the perfect entry point to the labour market, especially if they have other family obligations to fulfil. The stories from the nail salon workers I encountered also have another common thread: they live for the next generation. Their hope is for their children to have a good education and to be successful. Hoa, a nail salon worker from Nashville (Tennessee) confirms this point when she notes: ‘Vietnamese go into the nail salon business … largely to help their families and to put their children through school’. Huynh, who owns a nail salon in Naples (Florida) where he works ten hours a day, six days a week, sums it up succinctly: ‘The most important thing is that I can work hard to prepare for the future of my daughter. She has equal opportunity in education’ (Kap et al., 2014). Nail salon workers also send support to their families in Vietnam. Tam Nguyen, the founder and president of Advance Beauty College in California notes that based on his observation, nearly all of the Vietnamese Americans in the industry send a portion of their earnings home. ‘That is their motivation’, says Nguyen in an interview with TakePart magazine (Hoang, 2015). According to him, the success of Vietnamese in the nail salon industry is attributable to not only their creativity, enthusiasm and drive—perhaps more importantly, it is due to ‘their ability to view hard work from the perspective of a refugee. In other words, given their history, Vietnamese refugees in particular expect that they will have to work hard and make sacrifices. They do this for the benefit of family members who are

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still in Vietnam and also for the benefit of their children. A nail salon worker in California put it poignantly when asked to reflect on the future of young Vietnamese: ‘they can get successful jobs and don’t have to smile for tips’(Do, 2013). Ultimately, as Vietnamese, they wish to be known and respected by society for professions other than as workers in the nail salon industry. The aforementioned accounts of the experiences of nail salon workers suggest the importance of intrinsic factors as determinants of job satisfaction. We have seen that some workers are largely motivated by the opportunity to profit share, and thus increase their income, but the allure of this extrinsic factor is often short-lived. Those who remain in the business, like Cindy, refer to sources of satisfaction which transcend the mere act of creating beautiful nails. For Cindy and others, the emotional component and the ability to create meaning through one’s work are essential. Cindy referred to the satisfaction she gained as a result of being able to help a client who had a drug problem, and she was also grateful for the opportunity to comfort the friends and family members of a client who had died unexpectedly. Similarly long-term clients spoke of the warm, familial atmosphere at the salon and sense of being cared for, which extended beyond the shade of nail polish they had chosen. Hochschild has given us great insights into the meaning of emotional labour and the function served by creating narratives which allow us to carry on despite difficult conditions in both our personal and our work lives. However, it should be emphasised that narratives often contain a kernel of truth. For example, Cindy’s emphasis on the satisfaction she gains from helping others sustains her in times of stress and exhaustion. Clearly one’s work, no matter what one does, cannot be enjoyable and meaningful 100% of the time, but for Cindy and many like her, it has value on its own terms. Cindy’s experiences demonstrate that when it is possible to enjoy one’s work and to feel that one has made a real contribution, the need to engage in continual emotional labour is lessened.

7

The Future of Nail Salons

According to my respondent Linda, customers today demand high standards with regard to hygiene, the setting or site of the salon and the level of services being offered. Today’s salons tend to be high end and offer a kind of luxury pampering (e.g., gorgeous décor, relaxing music, snacks and drinks and even a wet bar). Nail shops are always competing with each other to stand out and attract customers. All of this is, of course, in the context of the pre–COVID-19 era. The nail salon industry has been severely affected by the pandemic. In places such as

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California, nail salon owners and workers have held many protests to demand that local officials allow them to reopen. The nail salon sector suffered a major public relations setback when Governor Newsom made an unsubstantiated claim that a local nail salon was responsible for the state’s first case of the coronavirus. Even when the state gave the green light for businesses to reopen, including the personal care industry, nail salons had to wait an extra two weeks. Because the industry is predominantly Vietnamese, they feel particularly targeted and fearful of anti-Asian backlash that Newsom’s comment might have sparked. Undoubtedly, the pandemic has caused major financial hardship for the industry and has devastated the Vietnamese community. Many salons now can no longer absorb the loss and have been forced to close permanently. Tracy, a salon owner says in an article published in newspaper Voice & Viewpoint of San Diego) that her years of savings are gone. Tracy has been paying almost $13,500 in rent per month for a salon she owns, which also employs twenty-two people. The nail salon industry is so intimately linked to the Vietnamese community that some worry the pandemic might end this life-sustaining occupation for Vietnamese families. Tam Nguyen, co-founder of Nailing It for America, a coalition that was formed in the wake of the pandemic to help nail salons and health care workers, summed up this relationship succinctly when he said: ‘there’s not one Vietnamese-American that doesn’t have a family member or close friends working at a nail salon. This is an immigrant, refugee population that’s going to get disproportionately affected’ (Du Sault, 2020). Ironically, though, it has been the Vietnamese community that has made the nail salon industry into what it is today: changing it from an exclusive luxury to a discount, walk-in service accessible to everyone. But this has come at a big cost, as we have seen. As a result of the pandemic, nail salons now need to find a new way of doing business that is safe, profitable and sustainable. One possibility would be to increase the price of the nail care service. But this would require a great deal of co-operation on the part of the consumers, who would have to be willing to pay a higher price for a service that they have been accustomed to receiving for much less since the Vietnamese took over. This would certainly help offset the rising cost associated with following new health guidelines and other restrictions. However, the downside to this ‘old’ way would be that it might bring an end to the many smaller, family-owned nail shops because they would simply not have the capital to keep up with the rising costs while profits continue to fall. They may also need to rethink their business model, particularly with regard to the practice of cash transactions and compensation systems to the workers. If workers wish to access government assistance and other help they might need, it is necessary that they contribute to the public fund by paying their share of the taxes.

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In a post-COVID environment, what is the future of this ethnic niche economy? Some nail salon owners, as I have indicated, may choose to adapt by offering services at a higher price in order to make up for lost business and to stay afloat; others may find that this is untenable and they will not be able to maintain their client base. If that is the case, will the Vietnamese continue in this business, or will there be a process of ethnic succession as it passes to another group, possibly newer immigrants. If some Vietnamese decide to leave the nail salon business, this could be an indication that many members of the community now feel able to pursue other goals. As some of my respondents have indicated, they became involved in this industry to ensure their children’s future. Once the next generation has become established in other professions, the nail salon business may have outlived its usefulness, and this is understandable. As always, such a question about the future of the community cannot be answered definitively, at least not without further research. One might say that the nail salon industry and the Vietnamese involvement in it is an evolving situation. I look forward to revisiting it through a further longitudinal study.

Notes 1 Throughout this chapter, the terms ‘nail salon workers’, ‘nail technicians’, ‘nail artists’, and ‘manicurists’ are used interchangeably. 2 This type of emotional labour is required by an array of jobs that share the following important characteristics: (1) face-to-face or voice-to-voice interactions with the public; (2) a directive from management to produce a specific emotional state in clients—for example, relaxation, a feeling of safety and contentment; (3) control by employers over the workers’ emotional state, which is ensured through training and surveillance. The emotional labour required by nail salon workers certainly fits all three of these criteria. 3 Interview, 14 April 2020. 4 Discussion in a private Facebook group on 3 May 2019. 5 Linda, interview, 14 April 2002. 6 Conversation with Cindy, September 2020. 7 The testaments from Cindy’s clients are given in French originally, which I have translated into English.

References Adler, P. A., & Adler, P. (1987). Membership roles in field research. Sage. Bagwell, S. (2008). Transnational family networks and minority business development: The case of Vietnamese nail-shops in the UK. International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour & Research, 14(6), 377–394.

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Do, A. (2013, July 18). In Vietnamese salons, nails, polish and unvarnished opinions. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-ff-nail-chat-20130718-dtohtmlstory.html Du Sault, L. (2020, September 9). Coronavirus shutdowns are hitting Vietnameseowned nail salons hard. CalMatters. https://sdvoice.info/coronavirus-shutdownsare-hitting-vietnamese-owned-nail-salons-hard/ Eskstein, S., & Nguyen, T.-N. (2011). The making and transnationalization of an ethnic niche: Vietnamese manicurists. International Migration Review, 45(3), 639–674. Gentleman, A., & Trong, G. (2020, December 21). After 39 Vietnamese trafficking victims died in UK, has anything changed? The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/ law/2020/dec/21/essex-lorry-deaths-vietnamese-trafficking-victims-died-uk-hasanything-changed Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Doubleday. Hoang, C. (2015, May 5). The fascinating story behind why so many technicians are Vietnamese. Take Part. http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/05/05/tippi-hedrenvietnamese-refugees-nail-industry Hochschild, A. R. (1979, November). Emotion work, feeling rules, and social structure. American Journal of Sociology, 85(3), 551–575. Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. University of California Press. Kang, M. (2003, December). The managed hand: The commercialization of bodies and emotions in Korean immigrant-owned nail salons. Gender & Society, 17(6), 820–839. Kang, M. (2010). The managed hand: Race, gender, and the body in beauty service work. University of California Press. Kap, L., Cordle, I. P., & Charles, J. (2014, March 2). Polishing the American Dream: Vietnamese-owned nail salons are spread throughout US. Naple Daily News. https://archive.naplesnews.com/business/polishing-the-american-dreamvietnamese-owned-nail-salons-are-spread-throughout-us-ep-459840548330748022.html/ Kelly, D. (2018). Nail biter. York University Magazine. https://magazine.yorku.ca/issues/ winter-2018/nail-biter/ Marlin, B. (2009, October 15). Nailing down a new business. Toronto Star. Nguyen, H. T. (2019, January 25). Người Việt làm nail ở Mỹ: Chuyện hậu trường về các ‘thế lực’ đối đầu nhau. Thanh Niên. https://thanhnien.vn/nguoi-viet-lam-nail-o-mychuyen-hau-truong-ve-cac-the-luc-doi-dau-nhau-post821768.html Nir, M. S. (2015, May 7). The price of nice nails. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/10/nyregion/at-nail-salons-in-nyc-manicuristsare-underpaid-and-unprotected.html Pasquier-Doumer, L., Oudin, X., & Nguyen, T. (2017). The importance of household business and informal sector for inclusive growth in Vietnam. Thế Giới Publishers.

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Portes, A., & Jensen, L. (1987). What’s an ethnic enclave? The case for conceptual clarity. American Sociological Review, 52(6), 768–771. Portes, A., & Jensen, L. (1989). The enclave and the entrants: Patterns of ethnic enterprise in Miami before and after Mariel. American Sociological Review, 54(6), 929–949. Portes, A., & Zhou, M. (1993). The new second generation: Segmented assimilation and its variants. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 530(1), 75–96. Sanders, J. M., & Nee, V. (1987, December). Limits of ethnic solidarity in the enclave economy. American Sociological Review, 52(6), 745–773. Sharma, P., Waheed, S., Nguyen, V., Reyna, L., Orellana, R., Katz, L., … Lapira, K. (2018). Nail files: A study of nail salon workers and industry in the United States. UCLA Labor Center. Snow, D., & Anderson, L. (1987, May). Identity work among the homeless: The verbal construction and avowal of personal identities. American Journal of Sociology, 92(6), 1336–1471. Roy, S. (2017, July). InternatioNAILS: Canada: Nails au naturale. https://www.nailsmag.com/380366/internationails-canada-nails-au-naturale Tạp chí Canada. (n.d.). Nước mắt hạnh phúc nghề làm nail ở Canada. https://www.tapchicanada.com/dat-nuoc-canada/song-o-canada/nuoc-mat-hanhphuc-nghe-lam-nail-o-canada.html VN Express. (2007, July 7). Làm giàu bằng nghề nail ở Mỹ. https://vnexpress.net/lamgiau-bang-nghe-nail-o-my-2086514.html

CHAPTER 10

Vietnamese Women in the Australian Defence Force Minorities, Histories and Cultural Heritage Nathalie Huynh Chau Nguyen

In 1991, Tam Tran,1 a captain and medical officer in the Australian Army, was deployed to northern Iraq as part of Operation Habitat to provide humanitarian assistance to Kurdish refugees. It was the first time since the Vietnam War that an Australian Army medical unit had been deployed overseas (Blaxland, 2014). In an oral history interview twenty-six years later, Tran notes: ‘I was one of five women in the Australian medical contingent. Of the seventy-five personnel, five were doctors. Four of us actually went out in the field. They needed female doctors for cultural reasons’. Tran and other medical personnel carried out their duties in May and June 1991 in sweltering conditions and under the ongoing threat of missile attacks and unexploded ordinance, including chemical weapons (Neuhaus & Mascall-Dare, 2014). By the end of their deployment, Australian medical personnel had treated more than 3,000 patients, over 80% of whom were children (Blaxland, 2014). Tran’s words highlight her minority status not only in the medical contingent but also in the army and the wider Australian Defence Force (ADF). As a Vietnamese doctor and female army officer in the Australian military, she was a rarity. While the number of Vietnamese and other Asian Australian service personnel in the ADF has increased steadily over the last twenty years, little is known about their histories, motivations for enlisting and experiences in the military. This is a surprising omission in Australian military historiography, as Asian Australians form an important minority in Australia. Asian countries represent six of the top ten countries of birth in Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2020) and seven of the top ten source countries of permanent migration to Australia (Australian Department of Home Affairs, 2019). While total overseas-born account for 29.7% of the Australian population, the top six Asian Australian communities (Chinese, Indian, Filipino, Vietnamese, Malaysian and Sri Lankan) collectively account for 8.8% of the population (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2020). The Vietnamese community is significant because it is Australia’s largest refugee community, growing from 1,000 people in 1975 to 277,400 in 2016 or © koninklijke brill nv, leideN, 2022 | DOI:10.1163/9789004513969_011

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1.2% of the Australian population (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2017). Vietnamese refugees arrived in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and formed the ‘first and most difficult test case’ of the abolition of the White Australia Policy (Viviani, 1996, p. 1), with a high profile in the media and in public discourse (Thomas, 1997). The Vietnamese community in Australia is at a major juncture in its history, and over the next two decades, it will transition from a largely first-generation community marked by the refugee experience to a secondgeneration community coming to terms with the history and legacy of this refugee past. Until I conducted a pilot project on Vietnamese in the ADF in 2017–2018, however, there was no information on the number of Vietnamese or other Asian personnel in the three services—army, air force and navy—or the gender and generational breakdowns for these numbers. The pilot project revealed that in 2002, there were only twelve Vietnamese women and ninety Vietnamese service personnel overall in the permanent ADF.2 By 2018, the number of women had quadrupled to fifty-two, while the overall number of Vietnamese personnel in the permanent ADF had tripled to 275.3 The great majority of Vietnamese ADF personnel are from the second generation.4 Oral history provides an avenue as well as a valuable lens for focusing on the life histories and perspectives of minority groups within society. As noted by Lynn Abrams, the oral history interview is ‘a complex historical document that contains many layers of meaning and is itself embedded within wider social forces’ (2010, p. 16). In this chapter, I examine the narratives of three former and current Vietnamese servicewomen in the ADF, as well as the intersection of family history, motivations for enlisting, and experiences in the military in their accounts. All three oral history interviews were conducted in Australia in 2017. Shaped by heritage and Australian cultures, the women’s stories are embedded in a wider narrative of Vietnamese migration to Australia and the increasing numbers of women and Asians as minorities in the Australian military. The first is Tam Tran, who served as a major and medical officer in the Australian Army; the second, Dana Pham, a flight lieutenant and personnel capability officer in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF); and the third, Fiona Nguyen, a midshipman and aviation engineering student in the Royal Australian Navy (RAN). Tran joined the army as a direct-entry captain in 1990 after completing her medical training as a registrar, and she was promoted to major in 1994 before leaving the army in 1995. Pham obtained a university degree in accounting before joining the air force as a flying officer in 2014. She was promoted to flight lieutenant three years later. Nguyen joined the navy in 2014 straight after high school, graduating from the Royal Australian Naval Academy as a midshipman before studying at UNSW Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA). She went on to become an aerospace engineer and was promoted

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to sub-lieutenant (Baumgartner, 2019). The combined service of these three women covers three decades in the ADF, from the 1990s through to the 2010s. While the women’s accounts represent minority voices on multiple levels, Dana Pham’s narrative as a transgender servicewoman adds a further level of complexity to these representations.

1

Women, Asians and Transgender Personnel in the ADF

The Annual Report 2017–18 notes a 17.9% participation rate for women in the permanent ADF (Australian Department of Defence, 2018). Female participation rates are highest in the air force, at 22.1%, followed by the navy, at 21.5%, and the army, at 14.3% (Australian Department of Defence, 2018). While these female participation rates represent a considerable increase from thirty-four years earlier, when women represented 7.3% of the air force, 6% of the navy and 6.1% of the army in 1984—the first year in which Defence collected statistics on women in the ADF (Anderson, 1990)—women remain significantly underrepresented in the Australian military. Women were restricted from participating in combat or combat-related duties under Section 43 of the 1984 Sex Discrimination Act; however, this situation changed on 30 May 1990, when ‘the Minister for Defence, Science and Personnel announced, on the recommendation of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, that Australian Defence Force women will serve in combat-related positions’ (Anderson, 1990, p. 69). Australia was only the seventh Western nation to permit women to serve in combat positions, the other six being the United Kingdom, Denmark, Norway, Canada, Belgium and the Netherlands (Anderson, 1990). The Australian Department of Defence notes that ‘since January 2016, all ADF employment categories have been open to women’ (2017, p. 106). Changes in Defence policy reflect the recognition that the ADF should be more reflective of the society that it serves and more inclusive of women, Indigenous Australians, Australians from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) persons (Australian Department of Defence, 2020b). However, there remain significant gaps in the information available on minorities in the ADF. While the Defence Census 2015 Public Report, for example, provides statistics for specific minorities, such as those of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent, and who those who are LGBTI, there is no breakdown of the non-English speaking background category and therefore no information on the different communities in this category (Australian Department of Defence, 2016). The Defence Census 2019 Public Report, released at the end of 2020, provided, for the first time, some numerical

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data on Asian Australian representation, identifying India and the Philippines as the most common Asian countries of birth in the permanent ADF, at 1% each, and India, China and Malaysia as the most common countries of birth in the reserve ADF, at 1% each, but information was not provided on other ethnic minorities (Australian Department of Defence, 2020a). The report notes that 0.5% of permanent ADF members identify as transgender and includes category X (intersex/indeterminate/unspecified) under the demographic profile (Australian Department of Defence, 2020a). The pilot project that I conducted in 2017–18 revealed that Vietnamese personnel constituted 0.55% of the ADF.5 While this may seem like an underrepresentation since the Vietnamese community makes up over 1% of the Australian population, it is considerably offset by the fact that the great majority are from the second generation. Transgender people were not formally banned from serving in the ADF before 2000, when Defence Instruction General 16-16 was implemented, according to which ‘a person undergoing or contemplating gender reassignment cannot be considered suitable for service in the ADF because of the need for ongoing treatment and/or the presence of a psychiatric disorder’ (Riseman, 2016, pp. 144–145). Although this instruction was repealed in 2010, thereby ‘positioning Australia as an international leader in terms of recognizing the contribution that transgender and gender diverse people can make to military institutions’, a five-year policy vacuum followed before new health directives were applied in 2015 (Riseman, 2016, p. 141). Noah Riseman argues, however, that the new directives have proven problematic, ‘removing the case-by-case approach to treatment for gender dysphoria, [and] disempowering transgender members whose transition will require hormone treatment or gender reassignment surgery’ (Riseman, 2016, p. 144). While an estimated 15,500 transgender personnel serve in the US military (Dietert & Dentice, 2015), in the ADF, twenty-five transgender members ‘are known to each other through a closed Facebook group’ (Riseman, 2016, p. 144). The narratives of these three Vietnamese servicewomen therefore take place against a background of shifting policies in the ADF in response to the recognition for diversity and inclusion in the military. I will explore their oral histories in detail before examining the ways in which their accounts converge and diverge.

2

‘Like a Fish Out of Water’: Tam Tran

Tam Tran was born in 1965 in Nha Trang, South Vietnam, and was the second youngest of six children. Her father was a sergeant in the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces (RVNAF) and her mother a housekeeper who also ran the

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corner store in their village. Tran remembers that they ‘had to do without a lot’: there were no toilets in the house and ‘cooking was on an open fire’. The family lived in Cam Ranh Bay. Three of her father’s brothers were also soldiers in the RVNAF. Her paternal grandfather was a merchant and died young, while her grandmother was a housewife and farmer. Her maternal grandfather also died young—apparently during the Indochina War (1946–1954). Both sides of the family originated from central Vietnam and were Buddhist. Tran notes that her father was discharged in 1972 and was a civilian working in the Agriculture Department when the war ended in 1975. Tran’s family escaped from Vietnam by boat in 1976. Rejected successively by four neighbouring countries, the refugees reached northern Australia in October 1976. Remarkably, all survived the journey. Tran relates the following account: Our departure was pretty chaotic. There was an orderly movement from our house to the meeting point, then from there out to the boats, and that was pretty scary. Once we got on the boat, it was sickness all around– vomiting for twenty-four, forty-eight hours or so. There were fifty-four people. Our entire family left. It was a long journey, I mean, we got all the way to Darwin. It took us fifty-two to fifty-three days to get to Australia, a long, harrowing trip. We were lucky to get all the way here safely. The people smugglers were meant to take our boat out to international waters and offload us to a merchant ship but half of the people who were meant to join us got caught, hence the chaos. We had to keep going, we arrived in Malaysia but they gave us fuel and food and told us to move on. We went to Thailand and the same thing happened. No one would accept us but they did provide us with fuel and food. Singapore didn’t accept us, and neither did Indonesia. Then from Indonesia, we got to Darwin. A day and a half out from Australia, we ran out of water. … Fortunately, we all did survive. We didn’t lose anybody. We were the third boat [the third Vietnamese refugee boat to reach Darwin]. Tran’s family stayed in Darwin for a week before they were flown to Brisbane. Tran went to the local state school and remembers that she struggled to get used to English. A high achiever with a Tertiary Entrance Score of 985 out of 990, Tran got into medicine at the University of Queensland. She applied for an army scholarship in her third year of medicine. As she explains, she needed to support herself: I was the first to make it to such a prestigious degree, and medicine at that time was six years of undergraduate study. My parents had lots of children and struggled financially to put me through.

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University was free for all students in Australia at that time, but I still struggled to manage all the other expenses so I looked into scholarships and found myself applying for the army in 1985. The terms of the scholarship were that I had to pass every year, and when I graduated, I had to work for the number of years that they sponsored me plus an extra year. The army provided for expenses like books and extra tuition fees, and basically a wage. I was earning, per year, more than my dad, who was working for General Motors Holden as an assembly line welder. My mum worked in a cordial factory. In 1990, after graduating from medical school and completing her two years as an intern and registrar, Tran ‘joined the army proper, like a fish out of water’. She recounts: I had no army training. I had no idea what was required of me. I got posted to 1st Field Hospital at Ingleburn in Sydney. After six months, I was sent to officer training camp. It was hard. Gruelling. Cried a lot. I remember the obstacle course, the 50K march. The full gear was about my whole body weight. My funniest story about that was the 50K march with all the other big gung-ho people. I had my backpack, my rifle, and my helmet, and I was lagging so much behind that they sent a soldier to take my backpack off me. A little later, I was still battling behind and so they took off my rifle. I was just walking by myself and I was still behind everybody else. I was the smallest person. There were about forty or fifty others in her cohort. The direct-entry officers were not just doctors but also dentists, psychologists, physiotherapists, teachers, nurses—all had a university degree. Tran recollects that ‘about 10% were girls’ but that there was only one other Asian in her class, a doctor of Indian background. She offers the following assessment of her training: All the instructors were very good and helpful. I didn’t feel that I had any episodes of racism. I’m sure there were comments related to sexism, because there were not that many females but at the time it just went over my head, so it didn’t impact me in any way, shape or form. After six weeks, you’re just like everybody else. Your fitness improves dramatically. That’s what happens when you’re young. You adapt quickly. We had to learn to shoot and clean our rifle, put it together, take it apart. I mean, the year after, I had to go to Iraq so that was second nature.

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During her deployment in Iraq in 1991, she remembers the heat, the sight of destroyed villages and the fact that medical personnel had to carry weapons while discharging their duties. She relates: The Australian contingent was located at Gir-i-Pit, about thirty kilometres north of Dahak in northern Iraq. They chartered a Qantas plane, flew us from Sydney to Turkey, and then from Turkey we went by truck to Iraq. It took us two days. It was a war zone, lots of villages had been bombed. It was very hot, desert-like conditions. We took care of our own accommodation and set up tents. The British provided security for us. We worked with an interpreter, we would go out to different locations, then the local people would come, and we would treat them—normal wound cases, general practice and a few cases of tropical diseases and mine injuries. As backup, we had the British hospital located about forty minutes’ drive away. All of us had an AK-47. It’s a big rifle and you can’t really work with it slung over your shoulder, so we would have to take it off and put it on the ground and then assign a soldier to look after it. This was cumbersome. So we talked our commanding officer into allowing us doctors and nurses to carry pistols instead, and that was easier to work with. We saw patients from dusk to dawn. This experience triggered Tran’s memories as a child in South Vietnam at the end of the Vietnam War, witnessing refugees fleeing south in 1975, although this did not register with her at the time. Tran relates that debriefing at the time was rather sketchy and admits that the impact of her overseas deployment did not hit her until ‘a few years later’: These people were refugees. Their villages had been bombed and destroyed. They’d gone away and come back to nothing. I treated lots of children— that was the highlight. At the time, it wasn’t so distressing because we didn’t process it that much but when I got back to Australia, it was more distressing. It brought back memories of when people were fleeing Vietnam and people from villages or towns further north were coming down and moving to Saigon at the end of the war. I was a child at the time so I didn’t know what these people along the streets were all about. It’s not until you’re older, and see scenes like that in Iraq, you put two and two together. Tran received the Conspicuous Service Medal for her service (Neuhaus & Mascall-Dare, 2014). She married another Vietnamese refugee in late 1991. In

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1992, she requested a transfer to Bangkok to study for a diploma of tropical medicine at Mahidol University for six months and was then posted to Townsville. Tran had a daughter in 1994, and was promoted to major that same year. This meant administrative responsibilities rather than hands-on medical work. She states: ‘There were about fifty to sixty people under my command. You’re responsible for their career progression and their welfare. Your time is taken up by disciplinary action. I didn’t like that. So I only stayed for a year’. Tran left the army in 1995, returned to Brisbane in 1997 and set up her own practice in 1998. She has been in general private practice for twenty years. In assessing her army experience, she notes, ‘It obviously gave me self-confidence. I learnt a lot of leadership skills and they stood me well as I set up my own business. The army has given me a lot and I’m grateful for it’. In relation to coming to terms with her deployment and the work that she did with Kurdish refugees, Tran refers to common ground with her father, a South Vietnamese veteran who had served his country during the war: It was subsequently talking to my dad about my experience and comparing it with what he did, and listening to him and his stories of when he was fighting in the Vietnam War. That helped, because he was experienced as a soldier, whereas my experience in the army was as an officer, so there’s a big difference there, and my time wasn’t as gruesome as his. In a way it put it in perspective. My dad was a signaller so he tells of being out in the field, how they were shot at, how bullets went past them, how they got hit through their helmets, and he had episodes where bullets pierced the machine he was carrying but missed him, seeing a lot of his friends dying on the field and not being able to do anything about it. Tran inspired her female cousin in America to join the military. She notes that the advantage of working for a much larger organisation is that her cousin had the opportunity to specialise in anaesthesiology while serving. This was not an option that had been available to Tran in the ADF. As a pioneer of her generation, Tran’s story was noted in the Australian press at the time, and it is featured in histories and government publications of Australian service, particularly in relation to medical women in the Australian Army and humanitarian operations (Neuhaus and Mascall-Dare, 2014; Blaxland, 2014; Australian Department of Veterans’ Affairs, 2019). Tran observes: ‘They were using me, as a former Vietnamese refugee, now looking after other refugees, so when I came back from Iraq, I met with the Prime Minister and did all these speeches’. While these acknowledge her background as a Vietnamese refugee in Australia, and her distinctive contribution to the ADF, they do not

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contextualise her place in terms of the record of Vietnamese or Asian service in the ADF.

3

‘I Wasn’t Born Dana’: Dana Pham

Dana Pham6 was born in the late 1980s in Sydney and grew up in Cabramatta. Her parents were born in the 1960s in South Vietnam, her father in Can Tho and her mother in Soc Trang. Both left Vietnam by boat in the early 1980s and reached Malaysia. They met each other in the refugee camp of Pulau Bidong and arrived in Australia in the mid-1980s. They married and became Australian citizens. Pham was their only child. She notes, ‘If it wasn’t for the Vietnam War, my parents wouldn’t have met each other in Malaysia, and they wouldn’t have come here to Australia and given birth to me’. Pham’s parents sent her to Vietnamese school on Saturdays, and Pham grew up speaking Vietnamese. During her oral history interview, she first identifies her rank in the air force and then explains: I wasn’t born Dana. I was assigned male at birth. I’m transgender. My parents thought that they had a son and that their son would grow up and still be their son. Obviously that didn’t happen and we’ll get to that story in a moment. But I think it’s very relevant to the cultural upbringing my parents gave. They’re both a product of the Vietnam War and so am I. They both gave me a Catholic upbringing and they were conservative parents. The earliest I remember feeling different was when I was four and my parents had a family friend who had a daughter who had an upcoming birthday party. My parents wanted to buy as a gift a white frilly dress. They tried it on me and I did my modelling part. Most boys, I think, would have objected. Pham notes that as she grew older, her ‘gender dysphoria became more apparent’. She dressed androgynously and relates: ‘It got worse during high school. My parents saw it as a phase. Talking about it was taboo and I didn’t know the word “transsexualism” until I was fourteen. I don’t think I knew the word ‘transgender’ until I was sixteen or seventeen. I wanted to study and to excel but in hindsight, my mind was overtaken by not being able to express my gender’. Another major issue for Pham was ‘culture and ethnicity’. Her Year 6 teacher informed her that her ‘interactions with [her] parents in the Vietnamese language impeded [her] English literacy at school’. Pham relates: ‘I was becoming

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a teenager and I went through many years in my life feeling conflicted about my nationality as in my citizenship’. Pham remembers that she came out to some contemporaries in high school: ‘The rumour spread but people flat out refused to believe it [laughs], which worked out for me because I never got bullied for being transgender’. She reflects that the money that her parents spent on sending her to coaching college would have been better spent on gender reassignment surgery and that had she been allowed to transition at the time, she would have been able to focus better on her studies. Pham attended the University of Western Sydney, studied accounting and started transitioning at the age of twenty-one, in 2009. As she states, ‘I got to a point where if I couldn’t be myself, I didn’t want to live any longer. I wouldn’t say I was suicidal, I had to make a decision and I did’. Pham realised that accounting was not for her. She joined her local State Emergency Service in 2011, met her partner (whom she is still with) and decided that she wanted to join the ADF. This proved to be a lengthy process. She explains: In 2010, Defence dropped the policy that effectively banned transgender personnel from serving. There was a policy vacuum. It made Defence Force Recruiting’s life much harder. I guess the big medical question for them was if you are on deployment, say you lost your medication for four to six weeks, what’s going to happen? I was able to address that. I got my bilateral orchiectomy because it’s much cheaper than the full gender reassignment surgery to prove that if I lost medication I’ve lost my natural mechanism to produce testosterone so you don’t need to worry about that. They didn’t force me to have the surgery. I just thought I was smart. I clearly wasn’t. As for Pham’s motivations for enlisting, she states: It’s about surviving. It took me three and a half years to get in, but when I finally joined Defence, I had this sense that questions about my loyalty to Australia, my nationality, my ethnicity—I could put all of that behind. By joining the ADF and serving my country, here’s the proof—it’s not the only reason I joined, but it was one and it felt good. I’m showing my loyalty to this country. If anyone ever questions my loyalty again, I can shoot back and say, did you serve at some point? … It’s been a long time since someone’s approached me and made a racial slur or said something about my parents or my ethnicity. So I’m glad I don’t have to play the Defence card because I do not want to.

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Pham’s assertion that ADF service would essentially make an Australian out of her echoes statements by some transgender personnel in the US military that the army would ‘make a man out of [them]’ (Dietert and Dentice, 2015, pp. 6–7) except that hers focuses on ethnicity rather than masculinity. Pham relates that she applied for a number of jobs in the ADF, and in mid-2014, was appointed an officer in the RAAF. She attended Officer Training School (OTS) at RAAF Base East Sale for seventeen to eighteen weeks and noted: I was fairly open about being transgender when I was still living in Sydney. I had no prior experience with the military and I just crawled back into the closet. I didn’t like having to feel that I couldn’t be open about a very important part of my life. Air Force was turning me from a civilian to an airwoman and eventually an officer. I opened up to a very small handful of people. But after OTS, they posted me back to RAAF Base Richmond so it was a godsend because [my] parents and partner were back in Sydney. It works out really well. Eventually, I came out again. After three years, she was promoted to flight lieutenant. One positive aspect of her life is that Pham’s success in building a career in the ADF led to a distinct improvement in her relationship with her parents. She relates: Ever since joining the air force, my relationship with my parents has improved dramatically. I think my dad has a level of reverence and respect for servicemen and women. I think that earlier in life, they didn’t expect their child to join the military. I’m gathering that they settled for ‘Well, okay, she’s now a daughter. She’s doing really well for herself and she’s also military which we didn’t expect but we don’t have an issue with that’. They take an interest in what I do in my postings. Like any parents, they just want me to do well. I do feel privileged about that. Pham asserts that she has not experienced any issues with being either Vietnamese or transgender in the ADF: I haven’t experienced anything to do with being Vietnamese in any way, shape or form. I don’t think that has ever been an issue. Transgender, no. Ever since coming out—and I keep on having to come out—no, I haven’t. I should’ve mentioned that whilst Defence is becoming a more diverse workforce, for the most part, I’ve worked with and for—I’m going to have to stereotype here—middle-aged and old white men. I don’t know how else to put it. They don’t have an issue with me. I don’t have an issue with

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them. Because of their life experiences, they tend to think in particular ways. Being thrown into that environment, I subconsciously adapt and assimilate into that. Pham states that she is the only member of her family to have served in the military. She related that she never met either of her grandfathers, and provided more details of her Vietnamese family history. Her paternal grandfather had a ceramic business that was seized by the postwar authorities, and her father had to move from place to place ‘seeking refuge’. She clarifies: ‘My grandparents owned a mid-sized business. The new regime acquired their private property so the family’s livelihood went out the door. Is that the only reason my dad was jumping from one place to another? I guess there was no real freedom of movement after the war. He did what he needed to do until an opportunity came for him to get on a boat and leave’. While Pham provides details of her officer training course, unlike Tran, she makes no reference to the particular difficulties or challenges of physical training. She was ‘the only Vietnamese’ to go through training, although there were ‘two or three Chinese kids’. She believes the air force will get more diverse, and adds, ‘I’m sure if I stay in the air force for a long time, I’ll live to see that I’m working with and working for officers from a much more multicultural workforce’. In terms of her identity in the ADF, Pham is more closely involved with the LGBTI community than with other Vietnamese: Ever since joining, I’ve marched with the air force contingent at the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras every year. This weekend, I’m going to the Sydney Military Pride Ball, which is an LGBTIQ-themed event. This is going to be my third time and we always have such a ball. So I have that level of involvement. But Vietnamese folk, it’s a nicety if I did meet them but it’s not a big deal to me. Pham’s words convey the fact that she rarely encounters other Vietnamese service personnel. While she states that it would be ‘a nicety’ if she did meet other Vietnamese in the ADF, her narrative makes it clear that her sense of acceptance as a transgender servicewoman in the ADF, and her involvement with the LGBTI community, take priority.

4

‘I Did Always Like the Idea of the Military’: Fiona Nguyen

Fiona Nguyen7 was born in 1996 in Melbourne, and grew up in the western suburbs. Nguyen relates that her mother8 came from a military family in the

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former South Vietnam and had two uncles who had served in the RVNAF, one of whom was a pilot. Her mother arrived in Australia in 1994. Nguyen lived for a brief period of six months in Vietnam in 2000 before her mother returned to Australia. She grew up with the two languages—Vietnamese and English—at home and attended Vietnamese Saturday school. She excelled academically, finishing high school with an Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) of 96.9, and received two offers: one was for biomedicine at the University of Melbourne and the other engineering in the navy. She opted for the navy and graduated from the Royal Australian Naval College as a midshipman in 2014, while still underage. When I interviewed her in 2017, she was completing her engineering studies at UNSW Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) in Canberra. Nguyen states: I should point out that I studied Vietnamese from a very young age. I spoke Vietnamese at home with my mother. At Saturday school, I was one of the three top students that always got an award. The school was run by the South Vietnamese Army Veterans’ Association. So, typical kind of Asian family, high performing academically, you studied six out of seven days. The aim was to get me academically prepared to get to university for a better life. I was intending to go into medicine. All my subjects pointed to medicine but … financially, we could not afford medicine. This is when the ADF comes into the story. Like Tran, Nguyen highlights her small frame and notes that the physical challenges of joining the military were a major concern for her. It was the reason she applied for the navy rather than the army: I did always like the idea of the military but being able to physically cope—I didn’t know about this. I was probably so unfit it was not even funny. You can see my size, there’s probably no chance I can survive the harsh physical demands of the army. So the navy it was. Because of my technical aptitude, I looked at the most technical application that I could have in the navy. It was aviation engineering. At the final officer selection board, they asked me questions such as, ‘What is your history, what are you interested in, why do you want to join the navy?’ I answered them as confidently as I could. Then they asked me questions about my specialty, which was aviation. I might have thumped them a little bit too hard with the responses because they said, ‘Okay you can stop, we don’t have to know more’.

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Nguyen is forthright about the intensity of the New Entry Officers’ Course (NEOC), including the assessments: It’s a very intense twenty-two-week course where they prepare a person straight off the street to become an officer. It’s meant to give you the shock of your life. It’s meant to test how you cope under stress, being hammered with everything navy. You wake up at 5:30 am and lights out at 22:00, but as everyone knows, you’ve got a lot of stuff to do, so you tend to work at night past ten o’clock. So, a lot of sleep deprivation. The final assessment is named after the Battle of Matapan. It’s a fiveday exercise outfield. You’re being tasked with living on a life raft. That was brutal. I guess having survived those, it gives you comfort in the future when you face other situations which are similar or even tougher. I finally graduated NEOC. I was amazed and it was obviously a very emotional time. One striking element of Nguyen’s narrative is the fact that she had to deal with difficult family circumstances while she was studying and throughout officer training. She notes that her mother wanted her to do medicine and was against her joining Defence, and that no family member attended her graduation from the naval academy. Her repetition of the adverb ‘unfortunately’ reveals her grief at this absence: My mother was falling apart. She actually left the house the day after I joined Defence. It was quite a struggle personally and emotionally to get through training. They talk about resilience training. Try and deal with that, plus what’s going on at home. But I kept it really low-key because I didn’t want to jeopardise my position in the ADF. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any family attend because my mother was really stressed at the time. It was unfortunate because I was actually given a parade position, I was colour officer. I was quite proud of that. Unfortunately, they [her parents] could not attend. But I’ve been used to that for my entire life. It was a bit sad, but that happens. As to why Nguyen joined the navy, she relates the following reasons: It was really to be able to apply my technical skills to something worthwhile, to actually be able to make a difference, you might say, and benefit the greater good. Joining Defence was really the best decision of my life.

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Camaraderie is also another reason. Because the relationships you form are lifelong relationships. There’s not really another organisation where you hold such long relationships from the day you join to the day you retire. These connections keep people bonded together. While Nguyen highlights the positive aspects of Defence, in particular the bonding relationships and networks built in the tri-service environment of ADFA, she also points to problematic areas, including the rate of attrition in the ADF. She notes that half of her original cohort left and ‘that only about fifty midshipmen arrived at ADFA, from the one hundred-plus that started’. She emphasises that at the strategic level, Defence should be focusing on personnel who want long-term careers rather than on those who ‘join to leave at the end of return of service’. Nguyen also identifies the challenges facing Defence regarding recruitment among ethnic communities. She stated: It’s rare, Asians. Being Vietnamese is very rare. The surname Nguyen is so rare in Defence that a lot of people don’t know how to pronounce it. The funny pronunciations that I’ve heard! It’s the Smith of Vietnam and yet some people have never seen it before. I know the ADF wants to be diverse. But one problem with recruitment is they’ve got to reach out to these areas where there are ethnic populations. Having lived in them I didn’t know what Defence was. In all honesty, I’m that special case where I live in both worlds. I’ve got the Asian ethnic Vietnamese background but I’m also comfortable with the Australian and Western way of the military because I’ve got those two influences. Later in her interview, she specifies the different lengths of return of service, which can vary from nine years for engineers to fourteen years for pilots, and why certain professions are more lucrative in civilian life: ‘There’s quite an attrition rate for engineers because Defence engineers are respected in the civilian world. People think it’s better to work for Boeing, Qantas, big corporations because they’re getting offered huge salary deals. Retention is a command level problem’. As with Tran’s and Pham’s accounts, Nguyen’s narrative circles back to her Vietnamese family history and the hardships her mother’s family endured during and after the war. She notes that her mother left Vietnam under ‘pretty horrendous’ conditions: The war was a very hard time on Vietnam. From what I’ve heard, from my mother’s generation, there were thirteen siblings and only seven are alive

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today. That figure alone can tell you how bad living conditions were, during and after the war. Even my mum’s oldest sister, her first child died in the womb because of how stressful it was trying to raise all the younger siblings. It was really sad, struggling with mass poverty postwar. As with Tran, Nguyen refers to receiving media attention: ‘I appeared in the newspapers and I know my Vietnamese school was so proud about that, being a veterans’ association’. Like Pham, Nguyen envisions a long-term career in the ADF.

5

The Narratives

Oral history has enabled Tam Tran, Dana Pham and Fiona Nguyen to construct personal narratives of their experiences in the ADF as well as contribute to a wider project on Vietnamese service personnel. Their narratives reveal, in Penny Summerfield’s words, ‘a high level of understanding of the interview’s dual purpose’ (1998, p. 31). By joining the ADF, these three women were drawing not only on more than a century of female service in the Australian military but also on two decades of female military service in South Vietnam, and Vietnamese historical precedents such as the Trung sisters in the first century (Nguyen, 2016). The women come from different generations and family circumstances, and their military careers take place against a background of increasing diversity in the ADF. Tran is the only one to have been born in Vietnam and to have firsthand experience of war and the boat journey. As a child refugee who arrived in Australia in 1976, she is from the 1.5 generation. Both Pham and Nguyen, on the other hand, were born in Australia and are a generation removed from Tran’s experiences. As second-generation Vietnamese, they can only convey information about family histories and the refugee experience gleaned from parents and other family members. The narratives of all three women reveal a level of ambiguity on the part of their families relating to their enlistment. Tran did not inform her parents that she had applied for an army scholarship. She only advised them once she was successful, and relates that her parents were ‘surprised’ but ‘happy’ when they heard about the amount of money she would be receiving. Pham had a difficult relationship with her parents up to and after she transitioned in 2009. In this respect, her experience parallels that of many transgender people who ‘experience rejection or alienation from their family’ (Doussa, Power, & Riggs, 2020, p. 273). Her situation was made even more complicated by Vietnamese cultural mores, according to which families not only

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traditionally privilege sons but also prioritise indirect expression and a reluctance to confront problems directly (Nguyen & Bowles, 2008). As Pham notes, ‘talking about it was taboo’. Pham’s parents envisioned their child becoming ‘a doctor or a dentist or a lawyer. … Becoming an Australian Defence Force officer was probably the last thing on their mind’. With a now-established career in the air force, Pham related that she has found acceptance at last from her parents. As for Nguyen, she admits that she did not discuss her plans to join the ADF with her mother: ‘She wanted me to do medicine. As you know with Asian families, medicine is the biggest thing to get into. What is the military?’ The reaction of Nguyen’s mother is evident by her failure to attend her daughter’s graduation from the naval academy in 2014. While the responses of the parents to their daughters joining the military may be related to their own experience of war and the aftermath of war in Vietnam, this is not made explicit in the narratives. The three women had distinct pathways into the military. Affordability of university study9 was a factor but a sense of vocation also came into play. Both Tran and Nguyen were high-achieving students who had the opportunity to study medicine. As Tran’s experience reveals, even though she did not have to pay tuition fees as a medical student in the 1980s, she struggled with other costs such as textbooks. Her army scholarship enabled her to not only support herself but also contribute to her family’s finances. As she notes, ‘I was earning, per year, more than my dad working’. For Nguyen, thirty years later, medical school was not an affordable option. She was faced with a difficult choice. She had considered the possibility of a navy scholarship but there was no guarantee of it, and she adds that ‘I wasn’t keen on just becoming a normal doctor, because really I wanted to be in the military’. For Pham, the ADF represented a new career and ‘surviving’, as she notes. Her experience differs from those of Tran and Nguyen in that she was not only concerned with her Vietnamese cultural identity but also her identity as a transgender woman. Joining the ADF, as she states, was her way of asserting her loyalty to Australia and pre-empting any negative comments from others regarding her ethnicity. Her account focuses on her unique experiences as a Vietnamese transgender servicewoman. She sought to join the ADF at the precise juncture in which there was a policy vacuum in relation to transgender personnel, and she acknowledges that this led to a lengthy enlistment process that took three times longer than for other personnel. Although she does not regret transitioning, she does regret a partial operation in 2012—as she notes, the money her parents invested in coaching college during her high school years would have been better spent on gender reassignment surgery. Her case supports Riseman’s assertion of the disempowering effects of later ADF health directives on transgender personnel

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whose transitions require hormone therapy or surgery (Riseman, 2016). Pham’s narrative makes it clear, however, that she has made a successful career for herself in the air force and that she takes pride in participating as a military officer in LGBTI pride marches and balls. The women’s identities as Vietnamese servicewomen in the ADF are shaped not only by family histories of war and forced migration but also by bicultural and bilingual formations in Australia. Their trajectories attest to their commitment to both heritage and Australian cultures. All three retain a strong grasp of their heritage language and culture. Tran is fluent in Vietnamese, while Pham asserts the centrality of the Vietnam War and the refugee aftermath in her life history. Nguyen, for her part, specifies that her Vietnamese language school was run by a South Vietnamese veterans’ association. This engagement with her heritage language and culture is linked with her family’s military history in South Vietnam and the Vietnamese veterans and refugees who resettled in Sydney in the 1970s and 1980s. As Nguyen notes, ‘I’ve got the Asian ethnic Vietnamese background but I’m also comfortable with the Australian and Western way of the military because I’ve got those two influences’. The narratives of all three reveal the positive effects of biculturalism in terms of identification with both heritage and mainstream cultures, developing a level of comfort and proficiency with both (Schwartz & Unger, 2010; Brooker & Lawrence, 2012) and successfully negotiating an Australian military identity while retaining their Vietnamese cultural identity. The women’s minority status does not appear to have negatively impinged upon them in terms of their career trajectories. The ADF highlighted the roles of Tran and Nguyen as successful female officers in the Australian military. Tran was ‘considered a role model to young Vietnamese women’ (Neuhaus & Mascall-Dare, 2014, p. 252) and is prominently featured in the Australian Department of Veterans’ Affairs’ Control: Stories of Australian peacekeeping and humanitarian operations (2019). Nguyen received local media attention in 2014 and from the Navy Daily in 2019 while deployed during a major naval exercise (Baumgartner, 2019). Tran’s and Nguyen’s photographs are included in several publications. As for Pham, her case as a transgender servicewoman has been analysed in Riseman’s work on transgender policy in the ADF (Riseman, 2016). All three have been the subject of media and scholarly interest, which has largely focused on them as individual success stories or relevant case studies in relation to a specific minority (women or transgender personnel) rather than as members of a growing minority of Asian personnel in the ADF. While the women’s enlistment in the ADF may have derived from pragmatic concerns—and, in Pham’s case, concerns relating to racism, citizenship and rights that have driven the enlistment of minorities in other militaries (Burk, 1995;

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Ishaq & Hussain, 2002)—what is distinctive about them is their Vietnamese heritage and a family history of war and exodus. Their narratives circle back to that family history in greater depth. Tran provide graphic details of what her father experienced as a South Vietnamese soldier. Pham refers to the Communist authorities seizing her paternal grandfather’s business and property. Her account of her father having to constantly hide from the authorities suggests that like many others in postwar Vietnam, he was seeking to escape forced de-urbanisation and forced labour (Desbarats, 1990). Nguyen, for her part, like Tran, came from a military family in South Vietnam—in this case, on her mother’s side, as two of her mother’s uncles had served in the RVNAF. In her case, a family history of hardship and trauma in Vietnam is implicit—as she highlights, her mother had twelve siblings and, of those, only half are still alive. While she notes her mother’s struggles with mental health issues, she also relates that her mother has not spoken about her Vietnamese past. While their knowledge of their Vietnamese family history might be incomplete, all three women acknowledge the strong anchor of their heritage culture. Their narratives cover a period of increasing enlistment of Vietnamese in the ADF, especially among the second generation. Their trajectories reveal a meld of heritage and Australian cultures as well as the strengths and unique gifts of their bicultural upbringing. Pham’s statement that her parents have now accepted her as their daughter and an officer with a successful career in the ADF attests to the positive shifts in transgenerational communication and understanding among first- and second-generation Vietnamese in Australia.

Notes 1 Tam Tran, phone interview by the author, 21 October 2017, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. 2 These figures refer to service personnel with ‘Vietnamese-sounding’ names. The statistics for ADF personnel with ‘Vietnamese-sounding’ names in 2002–2018 were generated at the author’s request while she was conducting a pilot project on Vietnamese in the ADF in 2017– 2018. She provided a comprehensive list of Vietnamese surnames to Peter Twiss, Directorate Workforce Information, Workforce Planning, Department of Defence, and asked him to provide data based on gender, service, first generation, second generation, permanent and reserve. She thanks him for doing so. Unfortunately, data prior to 2002 are not available. 3 The percentage of Vietnamese personnel in the permanent ADF more than doubled over sixteen years, going from 0.2% in 2002 to 0.5% in 2018. 4 228 (or 82%) are from the second generation and 47 from the first generation. 5 457 Vietnamese personnel, including 72 women (permanent and reserve) out of 83,284 ADF personnel (permanent and reserve) or 0.55%. 6 Dana Pham, interview by the author, 17 September 2017, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia. 7 Fiona Nguyen, interview by the author, 17 September 2017, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia.

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8 At the interviewee’s request, no details are provided regarding her father. 9 The Whitlam Labor government abolished university fees in Australia in 1974; however, these fees were reinstated fifteen years later by the Hawke Labor government in 1989 under the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS).

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Index Australia 3, 7, 10, 24, 53, 67, 68, 84, 101, 103, 111, 124, 181–190, 193, 196–200 boat people 7–10, 24, 32, 67, 75, 81, 83–88, 91, 94, 96, 97, 107, 113, 132, 146 Canada 3, 6, 7, 11, 24, 67, 68, 75, 76, 84, 103, 111, 124, 161, 162, 168, 169, 183 California 8, 30, 32, 34, 40, 46, 54, 55, 58, 63, 64, 67, 75, 102, 123, 127, 133, 136, 137, 140, 161, 167, 168, 170, 175–177 China 2, 36, 47, 104, 114, 116, 117, 125, 129, 156, 184 Cold War 70, 83, 101, 104, 106, 108, 115, 116, 118, 123, 126, 127, 129, 131, 133, 138, 139 colonialism 5–7, 11, 15–18, 20, 25, 135 communism 2, 9, 10, 39, 65, 66, 70, 72, 74, 83, 109, 113, 123, 126, 127, 134, 135, 138, 140, 161 contract labour 8, 15–17, 83–92, 94–96 diaspora 1–12, 14, 15, 24, 26, 33, 37, 42, 50, 52–55, 59, 62, 63, 65–70, 74, 78–81, 95, 96, 101–103, 105, 106, 108, 109, 112, 113, 115–118, 123–125, 127, 132–136, 166 dissidents 8, 47, 101, 102, 106–108, 113–115, 118 employment 10, 31, 38, 54, 86, 87, 143–149, 151, 152, 155, 157, 163, 167, 170, 183 entrepreneurship 10, 70, 143–146, 149–157 ethnic 1, 4, 5, 10, 17, 30, 40, 42–44, 47–52, 54, 57–59, 83, 107, 135, 137, 143–148, 152–157, 161–163, 167, 170, 171, 178, 184, 195, 198 France 7, 11, 15, 23, 25, 53, 54, 84, 94, 124, 128 gender 11, 50, 96, 145, 149, 152, 155, 163, 182, 184, 189, 190, 197, 199 Germany 3, 7, 8, 54, 83–97, 113, 114, 162 Hanoi 14, 15, 17, 19–21, 23, 25, 26, 67, 85, 88–93, 95, 96, 124, 129, 135 Ho Chi Minh 8, 18, 19, 21, 22, 63–65, 73, 133 Ho Chi Minh City 93, 123, 126, 128

homeland 1–6, 11, 14, 18–20, 24–27, 32, 42, 48, 49, 56, 59, 65, 70, 71, 74, 78, 85, 124, 128, 133, 136–138 identity 3, 6, 7, 15, 22, 26, 27, 33, 35, 38, 42–44, 47, 48, 51, 53, 57–59, 65, 68, 72, 74, 75, 77, 80, 105, 128, 147, 161–163, 192, 197, 198 intellectuals 5, 11, 54, 62, 63, 68–71, 74, 79, 80, 85, 90, 101, 106 labour migration 8, 15 language 8, 14, 22–24, 38, 39, 43, 44, 49–52, 54, 66, 70, 71, 85, 86, 109, 111, 167, 175, 189, 193, 198 media 24, 27, 79, 95, 96, 101, 105, 107, 108, 110, 111, 113–116, 118, 123, 124, 133, 166, 172, 182, 196, 198 nail salon 10, 12, 146, 161–178 New Caledonia 3, 7, 9, 14–27 North Vietnam 9, 18, 19, 22, 47, 50, 106, 107, 115, 124, 125, 135 Poland 3, 8, 54, 83, 84, 96, 97, 106, 107, 113–115, 117, 119 poverty 9, 16, 19, 20, 33–35, 124–126, 196 racism 1, 10, 19, 22, 58, 79, 87, 186, 198 refugees 33, 39, 55, 67, 75, 79, 94, 101, 103, 105, 109, 111–113, 116, 124, 127, 133, 135, 136, 139, 140, 147, 161, 166, 175, 177, 181, 182, 185, 187–189, 196, 198 remittances 123, 125–131, 134, 136–140 Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces 184 return to Vietnam 9, 12, 17, 19, 24–26, 33, 52, 85, 87, 91, 111 Saigon 7, 14, 30–36, 38, 46, 63, 66, 68, 70, 81, 84, 101, 116, 124, 126, 129, 133, 135, 156, 161, 187 second generation 8, 11, 24, 26, 42–44, 46, 48, 52, 53, 55, 56, 59, 63, 70, 73, 76, 79, 84, 182, 184, 196, 199

204 social mobility 7, 30, 31, 35–37, 127 South Vietnam 1, 9, 11, 18–20, 43, 49, 67, 68, 70, 72, 80, 97, 101, 102, 105, 109, 111, 112, 114, 116, 126, 129, 133, 135, 184, 187, 189, 193, 196, 198, 199 Soviet Union 106, 117

Index 113, 118, 123–126, 129, 130, 132, 136, 138, 143, 161 upward mobility 10, 11

transnational 7, 14, 15, 23, 26, 27, 40, 42, 43, 52–56, 59, 83, 88, 89, 91, 92, 95, 96, 103, 127, 130, 137, 139, 145, 156, 157, 167

Việt Kiều 14, 15, 19, 21–24, 26, 27, 75, 112, 128, 129 Vietnam War 2, 7, 11, 14, 32, 39, 67, 71, 80, 126, 138, 143, 146, 181, 182, 187–189, 198 Vietnamese Overseas Initiative for Conscience Empowerment 8, 101

United Kingdom (UK) 3, 6, 7, 183 United States (US) 1–3, 7, 8, 10, 11, 20, 24, 30–33, 37, 71, 103, 105, 107, 109, 110, 112,

women 8, 10, 11, 16, 17, 20, 43, 52, 87, 91, 92, 95, 146, 149–151, 153–155, 161–164, 173, 181–185, 188, 191, 196–199