Vietnam and Czechoslovakia Brother Nations

To people unfamiliar with the special relationship that was forged between Czechoslovakia and Vietnam, the number of Vietnamese immigrants in the Czech Republic today might be somewhat surprising. Prague’s Sapa market is known locally as Little Hanoi, and people of Vietnamese origin, stereotypically running corner shops or bistros, seem to have settled in towns across the country: you can find a steaming bowl of authentic pho in even the smallest Silesian village.

In fact, the Vietnamese diaspora represents the third-largest immigrant community in the Czech Republic, after the Ukrainians and Slovaks. The exact size of the community is hard to measure, but in 2012 the documented number of people of Vietnamese origin living in the Czech Republic was almost 60,000. Estimates of the number of Vietnamese people living and working without documentation range from 5,000- 15,000. Indeed, the Czech Vietnamese diaspora ranks among the largest in Europe, after those in France and Germany. How did this situation arise? What specific circumstances encouraged migration from Southeast Asia to Central Europe?

The nations’ relationship was originally formed based on their shared socialist ideals. A migration flow was first created in the 1950s as part of Czechoslovakia’s conformity to Soviet internationalist ideology – it was thought that short-term migration between socialist countries would be mutually beneficial. Labour shortages could be addressed, and migrants would gain experience to help strengthen their domestic economy.

The first Vietnamese immigrants who took part in this labour-for-expertise exchange were either students or highly skilled workers, usually engineers or medical professionals. In the late 60s, when Czechoslovakia was experiencing a significant labour shortage, the programme was opened up to a small number of lowerskilled workers.

From the 1980s, trade between Vietnam and Czechoslovakia expanded to include large-scale one-way labour transfer from Asia to Czechoslovakia. The programme was expanded to address labour shortages in Czechoslovak factories, meaning that lower-skilled workers were now eligible. The Vietnamese government profited enormously from this arrangement – not only would

returning workers theoretically bring back skills and expertise that would enrich the struggling economy, but a portion of their wages was converted to dong and paid to the Vietnamese foreign office. With around 120,000 young workers earning Czechoslovak crowns at the end of the 80s, this constituted a significant cash flow.

Post-war Vietnam was incredibly unstable – at one point, interest rates reached a staggering 700%. In response to the economic situation, the government introduced the Đổi Mới reform programme in 1986. These drastic reforms, while superficially fulfilling their aim of making the Vietnamese economy more competitive, had widespread negative social and economic effects on the poorest social strata. They effectively converted the country from a socialist to a capitalist marketplace. Socialist ideology was sacrificed for productivity; Gore Vidal described the post-reform society as “free enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich.” The country became a capitalist economy in all but name, with huge wealth gaps opening between the richest and poorest parts of society. These inequalities remain today: it’s estimated that in modern-day Vietnam, a rich family’s income is 25 times greater than that of a poor family.

With these factors in mind, it’s hardly surprising that at least 20,000 Vietnamese nationals opted to stay in Czechoslovakia after the Velvet Revolution. The Republic’s drastic econo-political upheaval meant that the existing agreement between the brother nations was severed, but migration policy remained liberal until the start of the mid-2000s. Many people living in rural Vietnam took advantage of this “golden age” in Czechoslovak migratory policy to apply for work permits, either joining family and friends already established in Central Europe or making the journey independently with the help of newly established labour agencies that profited from the transfer of workers from one country to another.

While the Czech government has since formalised the immigration process making it harder to obtain work and residency permits migration from Vietnam still remains relatively consistent. In addition to people’s personal motivations for moving to the Czech Republic higher wages, a better standard of living, more opportunities for young people the Vietnamese government continues to encourage people to move abroad. This might seem counterintuitive, but emigration represents an important boon to the Vietnamese economy. In 2006, in response to significant long-term net emigration, the government formalised its right to claim remittances from overseas workers. In essence, the Vietnamese government retains the right to claim taxes from citizens working abroad.

Because migration from Vietnam to Czechoslovakia and then the Czech Republic occurred in waves over several decades, the Vietnamese immigrant community has developed an identity distinct from both its home and host culture. This group of people especially when second- and third-generation immigrants are considered occupy a liminal zone between traditional Vietnamese and Czech cultures. Not only that, the community has begun to stratify itself, and a class system based on wealth and length of residency is emerging.

The Xứ Mộc is the most successful part of the Vietnamese community. These individuals – the Vietnamese term means “old mouldies” – came to Czechoslovakia in the first wave of immigration in the 60s, either as skilled workers or as students, and gained permanent residency or citizenship before the Velvet Revolution. Many chose to open small businesses rather than continue their original career path and are now established entrepreneurs. Almost indivisible from this group are the Doanh Nghiệp Mới, whose stay began a decade or two later. Largely economic migrants, these people were convinced to leave Vietnam after the adoption of the Đổi Mới reform programme. They typically own smaller businesses than the “old mouldies”, but also enjoy a considerable level of financial success. Members of both these strata usually speak fluent or functionally fluent Czech and many have sufficient income to have their children raised by Czech nannies leading to a strange situation where some children and grandchildren of Vietnamese immigrants do not speak Vietnamese.

Photos for this article where provided by Adam Trachtman

The least autonomous and newest Vietnamese immigrants occupy the lowest strata of this proto-society. They are known as Thóc (grains of rice), and those compelled to work illegally in factories are called Gà (poultry), terms which call to mind the number of these people, their living conditions, and perhaps their perceived social value.

Now that the nations’ shared history extends over almost six decades, scholars are beginning to examine the nature of the Vietnamese-Czech community, paying particular attention to how much this group has integrated into mainstream Czech society. The Vietnamese diaspora in the Czech Republic is noticeably different from the Czech majority, but it also differs from its Ukrainian and Slovak counterparts: members have significantly lower access to political institutions and health insurance than either Czechs or second-generation Ukrainians and Slovaks; its population is much more evenly dispersed across the country than Slavonic immigrant groups, which tend to be concentrated in big cities; and a disproportionately high number of people of Vietnamese origin are self-employed.

The key differentiating factor between the Vietnamese diaspora and other large immigrant communities in the Czech Republic is the extent to which Czech and Vietnamese cultures diverge. Four of the five largest immigrant communities in the Czech Republic are Slavonic; while integrating into Czech mainstream culture is a challenge for any individual, these challenges are significantly mitigated when one’s host country has a similar culture and related native language. It would be ridiculous to claim that a person from Bratislava moving to Prague would experience the same difficulties as someone from Hanoi. Even people from eastern Russia, while certain to encounter some hiccups, especially when it comes to culture shock, will have a significant head start with the Czech language, which has been identified as integral to successful integration.

Vietnamese cultural integration has also been impeded by the nature of the state-sponsored migration programmes in the 60s. These programmes were based on Soviet internationalist ideology, which required more affluent socialist states to support their less developed socialist brother nations. However, there was no impetus to extend economic trade to cover cultural exchanges: Vietnamese workers and students in the 60s were not encouraged to share their culture with the Czechs and Slovaks they knew. Indeed, it seems the opposite was true – Vietnamese workers were housed separately from Czechs and Slovaks until after the Velvet Revolution. Czechoslovak-Vietnamese marriages were not technically illegal, but the organisers of labour movements seemed to try to segregate the communities to the greatest extent possible, even limiting their interactions outside of work.

That’s not to say that the Vietnamese community is still ghettoised; indeed, studies suggest that people of Vietnamese origin are remarkably evenly spread across the country, which is likely to promote more significant integration in coming years. Young Vietnamese people are significantly more visible in mainstream Czech society than their parents and grandparents, and often identify themselves as spiritually Vietnamese but socially and psychologically Czech.

As this Czech-Vietnamese generation reaches adolescence, wider Czech society has become more accepting of people of Vietnamese origin. This corresponds to a much greater sense of familiarity with Vietnamese culture, as well as a greater ability to socialise with people who identify as ethnically Vietnamese. While certain members of Czech society remain hostile to “visibly foreign” individuals, the widespread xenophobia of the 90s is rapidly disappearing. Young Vietnamese people still report low-level discrimination and bemoan stereotypes about Vietnamese people, but the situation seems to be getting brighter for the Vietnamese diaspora.

As linguistic hurdles are overcome and the diaspora becomes more legally and socially established, the Vietnamese community becomes more accessible. Indeed, since the Czech government named the Vietnamese a legal minority in 2012, there has been a significant increase in cultural events that aim to close the gap between mainstream Czech and Vietnamese immigrant culture. People are more used to the presence of a Vietnamese diaspora, and trends suggest that Czech people’s acceptance of a heterogeneous society will continue to increase. It seems likely that Czech culture will continue to be enriched by immigrants from Vietnam and beyond in years to come.