Becoming Vietnamese-French: The Integration and Identity of the Vietnamese Diaspora in France Since 1975

Nhi Ha Truong

Introduction

The Vietnamese diaspora in France was born in the early 20s due to the colonial ties between France and Vietnam. It has been constantly changing with many waves of immigrations, especially around 1954 and 1975 which are important historical landmarks of Vietnam's history. According to the statistic of the UN High Commission on Refugees, the actual number of Vietnamese immigrants is around 250 000, making this the third largest Vietnamese diaspora in the world. This number comprises of both first-generation refugees, Vietnamese with French nationality and their descendants. Despite the long history and development of the diaspora, comprehensive studies on the life and integration of the Vietnamese immigrants in France are still very limited, essentially for 2 main reasons. First, the French government does not provide demographic and socio-economic indicators of immigrants by origins. Secondly, the Vietnamese diaspora in France is too dispersed in geographical locations and varied in lifestyle and social status.

As the Vietnamese community in France continues to grow and diversify, it gains importance in the society. The community is becoming more and more visible, most notably in Paris where the 13th district is home to a large concentration of Asian immigrants and businesses. It is also contributing and starting to play a more important economic and social role in its local communities. At the same time, new issues relating to integration and cultural adaptation arise. This is made even more complicated, because, as we will see, this community is not homogenous in any sense, and it contains inner conflicts and contradictions even though it still shares the common Vietnamese cultural and historical roots.

Given the importance of the Vietnamese diaspora in France and in light of the emerging serious issues concerning immigration in France, it is worthwhile to study the integration of the Vietnamese community in all economic, social and cultural aspects.

Defining Integration

Integration can be a subtle and confusing concept. Generally, integration is understood as bringing together or combining parts in order to create a larger unit or a whole. In the sociological context, integration of a minority group into a larger society can be regarded as a process of including, incorporating the group or the individuals in the group into that social system. Essentially, integration is a two-way or reciprocal process, produced by both the facilitation of the institutions in the host society and the efforts of the individuals or group to include themselves by creating relationships, functioning in the system and forming their attitudes towards the society.

This study, therefore, assesses the degree of integration of the Vietnamese immigrants in light of such social factors as the French immigration policies, the preconceptions towards Vietnamese immigrants, etc. as well as the characteristics of the community that shape their integration. The study also evaluates the process of integration in three levels. The first level involves basic adaptation into the society such as the acquisition of citizenship, standard of living and professional placement. The second level looks at the immigrant’s social and cultural interactions with the host society through the formation of relationships and network, their social affiliations, interracial marriages, etc. The final level probes the degree of the immigrant’s identification as a part of the host society.

Methodology
The study is supplemented by general demographic statistics, mainly provided by INSEE[1], which present a comprehensive picture of immigrant communities in France. The statistics, however, only include the immigrants who have not acquired French nationality, and the data on the Vietnamese immigrants are usually grouped with others from South East Asia. The study also consulted literature on the history and different aspects of development of the Vietnamese diaspora in France. This helped clarify the important developments in the history of the diaspora as well as determine the criteria for classification of the immigrants into different categories.

Interviews were then conducted on a sample which includes all of the categories determined. Interview questions are designed to capture the informants’ level of interaction with the French society, their connection to the Vietnam and Vietnamese cultural traditions as well as their personal identifications. The informants are located in Paris, Lyon, Grenoble, Marseille, Aix-en-Provence in France. They were recruited mainly through making acquaintances and some were by personal contacts.

The responses to the interviews, together with the information from data and literature, provided the materials for the analysis in this study.

Socio-economic integration

Almost all of the participants in the study acknowledge a division in the level of professional and social integration amongst the Vietnamese community, depending on the social class and level of recognized professional skills- a distinction between the Vietnamese who arrived in France before 1975 and those who immigrated after then. Apart from a small number of surviving “soldier-workers” who remained in France after the two world wars, the community before 1975 mainly comprised of scholars, students from upper-class families and a considerable number of Vietnamese having French nationality who were repatriated after the Geneva Accords in 1954.

Given their long duration of stay and acquisition of appropriate French professional training, many have acquired French citizenship and become upper-middle class professionals. They usually have respectable status in the French society and live reasonably well in middle-class districts and suburbs in urban areas such as Paris, Lyon, Nice, Lille, etc. Their professional and social standings signal a strong integration in the French society. Like many others, for Thanh, owner of a small consulting firm in Paris who has lived for more than 40 years in France, “social status seems to precede racial identity”. Thanh identifies only with the Vietnamese in this social circle who are mainly professionals such as physicians, engineers, lawyers, scientists, university professors, civil servants and does not feel any connection with the more recent Vietnamese immigrants.

The socio-economic integration of this group is, however, still facing many subtle forms of limitations. It is obvious that the majority of the Vietnamese immigrants does not have diverse professional profiles and are most often underrepresented in politics and in business. History professor at University of Paris 7, Nhuan, comments that the majority of skilled Vietnamese concentrate in professions related to academia, research, medicine, technology, etc. because these professions do not require wide social connections and allow them to advance most easily according to their qualifications. Moreover, careers in politics and business are difficult for immigrants due to the conservatism and discrimination still present in the French society.

On the other hand, the post-1975 immigrants group is usually less well integrated into the French professional and social life. While most of the previous wave of immigrants enjoyed proper French education in Vietnam or in France after they immigrated, many of the later “boat people” had little education, a large percentage did not attend higher education or professional school. Many who had obtained their education and training in Vietnam prior to their arrival usually do not have their qualifications recognized by the French system or encounter difficulties in getting professional employments due to lack of proficiency in the language. Some have taken training programs provided by the French authorities when they first arrived as refugees and have found lower-middle class professions such as technicians, computer scientists, etc. while the rest usually just gave up their professions and accepted alternative jobs. Hanh, for instance, was a surgeon in Vietnam but she has been working as an administrator in a hospital in Paris since she migrated to France 18 years ago. Likewise, Lam had an engineering degree in Vietnam but unable to find a suitable job, opened his own small Asian restaurant in Marseille where he and his family have been working for almost 20 years.

A significant number of the post-1975 immigrants, mostly Vietnamese of Chinese origin, however, have little professional skills. They usually adopted manual work in manufacturing factories, or worked for Asian restaurants and small business such as exotic food or art crafts stores or small travel agencies owned by other immigrants. In smaller and less populated cities, these businesses are spread out in markets, neighborhoods, train stations, etc. Nevertheless, in larger and more developed regions such as Lyon, Paris, they tend to group into a condensed area, forming both a popular commercial center and a distinct community economy. Explaining the phenomenon of Asian business concentration, Buu, a restaurateur in 13^th district in Paris, recalls that he used to live in an immigrant quarter in the suburb when he first arrived in 1986. Like many others, Buu worked in a factory and saved up to relocate to the 13^th district where living among other Asian immigrants eased his worries of cultural differences with immigrants from elsewhere. The tight-knit social network in the community also helped Buu with his business and social life. In fact, the expanding community economy is offering better employment and business opportunities compared to manual work in French factories for many immigrants. The cheap prices and exotic products not only cater to the Asian immigrant community but also attract native French and other immigrants.

For a large number of the more recent immigrants, the difficulties they face in socio-economic integration due to the lack of appropriate skills and fluency in the French language is further aggravated by their legal status. The French legal system only considers applications for citizenship when the subject is regarded as well assimilated into the French society, that is acculturated and having stable employment. Mai, a middle-aged woman from Marseille, among others, still holds refugee status after her 20 years of settlement, marriage and births of 5 children in France. She finds her legal status and lack of competency in French language substantial obstacles to her employment opportunities and social life. She stays at her HLM home (moderately priced housing provided by the government) and relies on social security to support her children. Not a small number of recent Vietnamese immigrants, especially those in the provincial areas and suburban areas, are in the same situation with Mai. They share that with the new regulations on immigration, it is increasingly more difficult to obtain French citizenship. The influx of immigrants from Asia and elsewhere is also creating more difficulties with finding employments and social problems.

Cultural Integration

The interactions and participations of the immigrants in the social and cultural life of the host society constitute the next step in their integration after their professional and social placement: that of cultural integration. Similar to socio-economic integration, the degree of cultural integration is also roughly divided for the pre- and post-1975 immigrants groups essentially due to the difference in the amount of interactions and connections they have with the French society and the Vietnamese immigrant community. Most of the informants from the first group describe having wide social circles with mostly native French people and some Vietnamese people in their social class. Living dispersedly in neighborhoods with mainly French residents and working in the middle-upper class professions, their contact with the Vietnamese immigrants from other backgrounds and with the activities in the Vietnamese immigrant community is relatively limited. Most of them participate in sport, recreation or special interest organizations which are normally French dominated. The number of Franco-Vietnamese mixed marriages is also described by the informants, based on observing their acquaintances, as very common for this group. A majority of them even does not speak much the Vietnamese language at home because their children or spouses are not able to converse fluently or at all in Vietnamese. Many of them have visited Vietnam only once or twice since the time they migrated.

Nevertheless, despite the lack of contact with the Vietnamese immigrant community and the near complete immersion into the French social life, most of the pre-1975 immigrants, especially those not in a racially mixed marriage, still maintain a Vietnamese lifestyle at home and guard their interests and connections with the Vietnamese culture and with Vietnam. All of the informants in this group said they still have Vietnamese cuisine at their home more often than or as regularly as they do French cuisine and they also often dine with their families in Vietnamese restaurants. They never miss the Vietnamese festivals such as the annual Tet celebration and occasionally attend cultural performances both by artists from Vietnam and by the immigrant community. Claudine, who took over the gallery La Maison du Vietnam in Paris, which used to be a part of a Vietnamese organization that discontinued its activities since the 90s, still imports books, journals and art crafts from Vietnam for sale and opens Vietnamese language and traditional music classes to cater to the interests of her patrons most of whom are Vietnamese immigrants and their descendants.

Moreover, and especially for the older people, a number among the pre-1975 Vietnamese immigrants still attends Vietnamese churches or frequents Vietnamese Buddhist pagodas. The presence of over 300 Vietnamese pagodas and many other religious organizations in all over the France is one of the many efforts to maintain the Vietnamese culture. These religious affiliations however, exist separately for the 2 immigrant groups- those leaving Vietnam before and after 1975, for reason of their social and more fundamentally, political differentiation. In recent years, there have been revived interests among the pre-1975 Vietnamese to support associations that promote and sustain Vietnamese culture and language such as traditional martial art associations, language classes, etc. The participants in these associations, however, only represent the minority of the pre-1975 group.

Besides, the main actor behind most of these cultural activities is the Union Générale des Vietnamiens en France (UGVF) which is an organization founded since the 1920’s by Vietnamese students in France then who rallied for their campaigns to call an end to the French colonization in Vietnam and subsequently the Vietnam War. Since 1975, the UGVF is strongly connected with and usually believed to be supported by the Vietnamese government. Its current focus is on promoting cultural activities among the Vietnamese in France. The development of the UGVF is particularly interesting to our study because it provides several reflection and insights to the changes in the integration process of the Vietnamese community, especially prior to 1975. Liem, an engineer from Paris who came to France as a student in the 1960’s and has remained there since then, recounts the experience in 1975 as the turning point of the Vietnamese community in France. As a student, Liem was actively involved in the political activities of the many Vietnamese student organizations in France and his social circle consisted mostly of other Vietnamese with the same vocation. The change in the political landscape in Vietnam in 1975, however, altered Liem’s plan to return to his home country after it regained independence. Liem decided to leave the organizations and looked to settle permanently in France. Liem’s situation was not unique. In fact, Thu, the administrator for the UGVF, recounts that after 1975, the membership of the association of about 4000 reduced by more than half and those who remained do not participate as actively in the association’s activities.

Therefore, even though the pre-1975 group of the Vietnamese immigrant community has been present in France for a rather long period of time, based on the described changes in its development, it can be said that for the majority of the community, the process of motivated integration has been more recent. It is hence not surprising that in spite of the strong degree of social and economic integration, the Vietnamese immigrants have never become fully integrated on the cultural plane. One common observation for all of the informants through the interviews that betrays a very uniquely Vietnamese socialization standard is their view on how to integrate into the French society. In describing the integration of Vietnamese in France in general, almost everyone relates to the Vietnamese axiom “Nhap gia tuy tuc” which literally means when one joins a household, one has to follow the regulations of that house. Such thinking is probably one of the factors that allow the Vietnamese immigrants to blend in the French society much more successfully in comparison to the other immigrant communities. The Vietnamese tenet of “Con hon cha la nha co phuc” which means a family has great fortune if the children surpass the parents, purportedly in professional and social advancement is strongly present in the familial life of the Vietnamese community as well. The descendants of Vietnamese immigrants, according to INSEE, do relatively better than other immigrant descendants in school because they value education highly and are serious about their professional future. Most parents often encourage their children to take extra classes to do better in exams and to get admitted to more prestigious schools. They also expect their children to follow “safe” and well-paid careers, such as in medicine, engineering, management, as they believe that having good professions will ensure their children a stable future and a respected place in society.

Such ways of thinking that influence their settlement into the French society and their familial traditions strongly define the lifestyle of the post-1975 immigrant group as well. The tenet of subtly and harmoniously blending in the host society is the main factor behind the smooth adjustment into society of the Vietnamese immigrants relative to other recent groups of immigrants in France. It is also responsible for the general opinion in France that the Vietnamese immigrants are subtle, hard-working, peaceful and considerate compared to immigrants from elsewhere which helps them avoid most problems of racial discrimination. The second generation of the post-1975 immigrants is also increasingly making progress in advancing their social and professional status. Most of them also focus on getting a good education and making way into more privileged professions than their parents’. The social and professional division between the descendants of the immigrants from the pre-1975 and post-1975 groups, based on the informants, is much less obvious than that among their parents.

The current difference in the degree of cultural integration for the 2 groups therefore stems mostly from the difference in their level of familiarity and acquaintance with the French society and culture as well as their remaining connections with the Vietnamese community. For the post-1975 immigrants, their legal status, lack of language proficiency and work environment are the main factors that do not allow them to attain the same level of socialization with the French as the pre-1975 generation. The tight community also limits the cultural influences from the French society at large. Their activities have a distinct traditional Vietnamese focus, and most of their social activities take place within the local Vietnamese community. The post-1975 immigrants also participate in cultural and religious organizations that usually carry an anti-communist sentiment and thus exclude most of the pre-1975 immigrants. The interactions between the 2 groups are, as also explained above, restricted by their different political tendencies even though most people often subtly avoid the issues with politics.

Besides, because of their shorter time in France and their abrupt departure from Vietnam, they actually still have many family members and relations in Vietnam. Many hope that they will eventually return to Vietnam for their retirement, or will help their relations migrate and settle in France and thus still maintain strong ties and regular contacts with Vietnamese relations. In recent year, there have been more and more immigrants visiting Vietnam, many on very regular basis such as every one or two years. Another indicator of their strong ties to Vietnam is the increasing rate of Vietnamese immigrants in France coming back to buy property or to start businesses in Vietnam.

However, in areas with sizeable Vietnamese communities, the immigrants are increasingly cooperating with local government and businesses in order to organize cultural festivities to promote Vietnamese culture to the general French society. The annual Tet festival, for example, is one of the events that usually see the presence of the local authorities and attract wide participation the French population.

Identification and Identities

As stated above, the level of identification with the host society is one of the criteria that this study uses to analyze the degree of integration for the Vietnamese immigrants in France. As with socio-economic and cultural integration, the levels of identification with the French society are differentiated for the first generation of pre- and post-1975 immigrants. Many among the older immigrants who arrived after 1975 still do not feel they are part of the new society. Almost all, even those with French citizenship, still refer to themselves as Vietnamese only. They are aware of the stereotypes against them and also form stereotypes toward the native French. Most of them still maintain strong ties with relatives, family members in Vietnam and many express their wish to eventually go back to Vietnam, or to live in retirement in Vietnam. The ties are further enforced by the availability of up-to-dates about Vietnam and the easiness of traveling to visit and communication with their relations in Vietnam. Given that context, it is not surprising that many of the post 1975 immigrants do not feel as strong a sense of belonging in the French society as opposed to with the Vietnamese society.

The sense of identification with the French society is slightly different for the pre-1975 group. Their easiness in associating with the society mainly comes from their professional qualification and social status. For Hong from Marseille, financial manager in a government investment organization, the French society is relatively democratic, and with her status, she feels completely a part of the society. Many of the informants in this group do not visit Vietnam frequently and are reluctant with the idea of coming back to live in Vietnam. Nevertheless, even though they identify with the French society according to their social class, most still refer to themselves by their Vietnamese ethnic identity rather than their legal identity as French citizens. For Hong, among others, she is a “Vietnamese living in France” and not a French.

Whereas the sense of identity is clear for the first generation immigrants and any identification they have with the French society is only on the social and professional levels, for the second and maybe later generations, identity becomes a critical issues as they try to reconcile the two aspects of their social, cultural and racial identity: being born and raised in the French society, but have roots in Vietnamese family culture. A study by INSEE indicates that the second-generation Vietnamese, both of parents who immigrated before and after 1975, are among the least to be conscious of their ethnic difference as compared to the descendants of other immigrants. Generally, as the informants describe, they most often feel as French because except for their families they are surrounded by French relations and their level of education, social and professional activities make them feel that they are not different from their French-by-origin peers. Even for Alex, who lives in a Vietnamese concentrated area in Grenoble and whose parents only speak to him in Vietnamese and Chinese at home, he feels more comfortable identifying himself as French because he is more familiar with the French culture and lifestyle. Alex’s view represents that of the majority of the informants in this category.

Nevertheless, the sense of identity is very subtle and depends much on social influences but also on personal characters. It is therefore not surprising that many responses from the informants do not give permission to a simple generalization. For Binh, for example, born in France of parents who had migrated to France when they were students, his French identity is being increasingly challenged by the awareness about Vietnam. Binh joins the Union des Jeunes Vietnamiens en France (UJVF) - a sub-association of the UGVF to learn Vietnamese and connect with other second-generation Vietnamese where he also meets many students from Vietnam studying in France. Binh describes the contact as “a shock” to his sense of identity and he feels “ni l’un ni l’autre” (not one or another). Some of the informants also express their identifying with the descendants of the other immigrant groups. The interviews also suggest that the sense of confusion in finding a balanced mixture for their French and Vietnamese identities also has to do with the interpretation of “integration” in France. “Assimilation” is more frequently used than “integration” in referring to the process of fitting into the French society. “Assimilation” carries a connotation of absorbing the dominant culture and becoming a part of it and does not facilitate the idea of a double identity of being a Vietnamese-French.

Conclusion

As the world becomes more connected, the movement of people across borders will be increasing and diversifying in means and nature. At the same time, it is essential for policymakers to ensure the smooth and constructive integration of immigrants into new societies, as social divide between locals and immigrants can have far reaching consequences. The integration process thus needs more in-depth substantial studies across a range of discipline. In this study, we have been able to form a rough overall picture of the integration process of Vietnamese immigrants in France even though this is complex, differentiated and the small number of the informants interviewed will not be able to represent all aspects and variations. What becomes evidence in the study is the two-way nature of integration, because both the features of the host society and the distinctive characteristics of the immigrant community are determinant of the process. Such characteristics can be economic, political, historical and cultural or all. As the study has shown, the differences in these aspects between different groups of Vietnamese immigrants in France are behind their different degrees socialization and integration. Lastly, this study also hopes to initiate more studies on the integration of different diasporas based on the comparative analysis of interplay between social, political, cultural, economic and historical factors.

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