The Vietnamese diaspora refers to people of Vietnamese descent who live outside Vietnam.
The global overseas Vietnamese population is estimated at 5 million people. The largest communities are in the United States, with nearly 2.4 million Vietnamese Americans, alongside populations in France, Australia, and Germany. Smaller communities are found in Southeast Asia, particularly in Cambodia.
The Vietnamese diaspora emerged through waves of migration. First migration occurred during the French colonial period in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Later on, a refugee exodus following the Vietnam War in 1975 gave rise to thriving Vietnamese communities in the West. In later decades, the diaspora grew further through family reunification, economic migration, and educational opportunities.
Overseas Vietnamese continue to maintain some cultural connections, including continued use of the Vietnamese language, observance of traditional festivals such as Tết (Lunar New Year), and familial and economic connections, including approximately $14 billion USD in annual remittances to Vietnam.
Terminology In Vietnam, the term is usually used to describe Vietnamese people living abroad. Some overseas Vietnamese use the terms ('Overseas Vietnamese'), a neutral designation, or ('Free Vietnamese'), which carries a political connotation.
History These are some of the categories of overseas Vietnamese: People who left Vietnam before 1975. Most of these populations reside in neighboring countries, such as Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and China, before French colonization. During the French colonial era, tens of thousands of Vietnamese migrated to Metropolitan France as students or workers. People who fled Vietnam in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, some of them via Operation New Life and Operation Babylift. The largest majority were Vietnamese boat people and their descendants. This is the largest Vietnamese diaspora group, found mainly in North America, Western Europe, Hong Kong, and Australasia. People who migrated from Vietnam to other parts of the Soviet bloc during the Cold War era and chose to remain outside Vietnam after the Soviet collapse, and their descendants. This is the second-largest Vietnamese diaspora group, found mainly in the former Soviet Union and the ex-Warsaw Pact countries of Eastern Europe. Economic migrants who work in other Asian countries such Taiwan, Japan and South Korea. This includes Vietnamese women who married men from these countries through illegal marriage agencies. These agencies are the source of social tension, controversy, and have been criticized for resembling human trafficking. Some women in this category underwent violence by their foreign husbands. Vietnamese living in the Middle East and North Africa, in particular the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Morocco, Qatar and Kuwait. Some members of this population studied overseas and sought work in other countries.
According to a 2014 report by the Associated Press, "women make up at least two-thirds of workers who leave the country", and sometimes leave fathers behind to care for children. The report also said that "the total amount of remittances sent back from all Vietnamese workers overseas now exceeds $2 billion a year."
As of 2020, 190,000 Vietnamese were studying abroad. Most were studying in Australia (30,000), the United States (29,000), Canada (21,000), the UK (12,000) and Asian countries (70,000); and an unknown number of illegal Vietnamese immigrants, as unveiled by the Essex lorry deaths throughout networks of illegal human trades spanned from Asia to Europe.
By country United States
The United States is home to the largest population of overseas Vietnamese, which has grown more significantly since the 1970s. As of 2022, more than 1.3 million Vietnamese immigrants reside in the U.S., and the broader Vietnamese American population, which includes US-born individuals of Vietnamese descent, exceeds 2.3 million.
Mass migration from Vietnam began after the fall of Saigon in 1975, marking the end of the Vietnam War. During the North Vietnamese military offensive of March 1975, some South Vietnamese citizens were pushed farther and farther south into Saigon. On April 30, the final U.S. troops and diplomats left Saigon and the country came under the control of the Provisional Revolutionary Government. As a result, the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) took control of South Vietnam, leading some South Vietnamese to become refugees and immigrate to the United States.Do, Hien Duc. "The New Migrants from Asia: Vietnamese in the United States." OAH Magazine of History 10, no. 4 (1996): 61-66. Accessed November 11, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25163102.
Most immigrants fled to the United States as refugees following the end of the Vietnam War, arriving in three distinct waves from the 1960s to the 1990s. The first wave consisted mainly of South Vietnamese citizens and military personnel who had associations with the South Vietnamese government and the United States. The second wave brought more refugees from the former South Vietnam to the United States in what became known as the "boat people crisis." This wave was characterized by mainly rural people who lacked the education or wealth of the first wave, and some ethnic Chinese who were fleeing persecution by the Vietnamese government. The final wave took place in the 1980s into the 1990s. This group included thousands who were the children of Vietnamese mothers and American soldiers.
By 1979, the United Nations recognized that the Vietnamese refugee crisis was a "world problem," which led to the First Geneva Conference on Indochinese Refugees in July, 1979. The United States, United Kingdom, Australia, France, and Canada each agreed to accept refugees for resettlement, and Vietnamese refugee entries to the U.S. to peaked from 1979 to 1982. That year, President Jimmy Carter doubled the number of Southeast Asian refugees accepted into the United States, from 7,000 to 14,000. 62% of Americans said they disapproved of the measure.
The South Vietnamese coming to the U.S. in the second wave did not come willingly. They were forced out of their homes by the NVA and sought refuge in the United States. Some of these people felt betrayed by the U.S.'s handling of the situation in Vietnam and felt conflicted about making the journey there.Chu, Lan T. "From Reaction to Action: Re-conceptualizing the Vietnamese American Diasporic Experience." Journal of Vietnamese Studies 11, no. 2 (2016): 37-42. Accessed October 7, 2020. doi:10.2307/26377908. Nearly all the Vietnamese migrants to the United States during this time were listed as refugees, not as immigrants, because of the forced manner in which they had been exiled to the United States; 99% of Vietnamese newcomers to the United States who received a Green Card in 1982 fell into this category.
The majority live in metropolitan areas in the western half of the country, especially in California and Texas. There are particularly large communities in Orange County, California, San Jose, California, Houston, Texas and Seattle, Washington. Those who fled to escape the North Vietnamese takeover are generally antagonistic toward the communist government of Vietnam. In 2015, 30% of Vietnamese Americans had attained a bachelor's degree or higher (compared to 19% for the general population). Specifically, 21% of Vietnamese Americans had attained a bachelor's degree (37% for U.S. born Vietnamese and 18% for foreign-born Vietnamese), and 8.9% had attained a postgraduate degree (14% for U.S. born Vietnamese and 7% for foreign-born Vietnamese), compared to 11% postgraduate degree attainment among the general American population.
Cambodia
Vietnamese constitute about 5% of the population of Cambodia. Vietnamese people are the top tourist group in Cambodia, with 130,831, up 19% as of 2011.Cambodia receives 778,467 int'l tourists in Q1, up 14% . News.xinhuanet.com (2011-05-03). Retrieved on 2011-05-30.
China
The Vietnamese in China are known as the Gin ethnic group, arriving in Southeastern China beginning in the 16th century. They largely reside in the province of Guangxi and speak Vietnamese and a local variety of Cantonese.
, 79,000 Vietnamese nationals were living in China. They formed the second largest group of expatriates in China, while Burmese nationals were the largest.
France
The number of ethnic Vietnamese living in France is estimated to be about 350,000 as of 2014. France was the first Western country where Vietnamese migrants settled due to the colonization of Vietnam by France that began in the 1850s.Nguyen Quy Dao, La diaspora vietnamienne et sa coopération avec le Vietnam, 2013 (in French) The colonial period saw a representation of Vietnamese students in France, and professional and blue-collar workers, with some settling permanently.La Diaspora Vietnamienne en France un cas particulier (in French) The country would continue to be home to by far the largest overseas Vietnamese population outside Asia until the 1980s, when a higher number of Vietnam War refugees resettled in the United States.Blanc, Marie-Eve. Encyclopedia of Diasporas: Immigrant and Refugee Cultures Around the World, Springer, pp. 1158–1166, 2004.
A number of Vietnamese loyal to the colonial government and Vietnamese married to French colonists emigrated to France following Vietnam's independence through the Geneva Accords in 1954. During the Vietnam War, a number of students and those involved in commerce from South Vietnam continued to arrive in France. The largest influx of Vietnamese people arrived in France as refugees after the Fall of Saigon and end of the Vietnam War in 1975. Vietnamese refugees who settled in France usually had higher levels of education and affluence than Vietnamese refugees who settled in North America, Australia, and the rest of Europe, possibly due to cultural familiarity with French culture and that some Vietnamese families had already settled in France.
Most Vietnamese in France live in Paris and the surrounding Île-de-France area, while some reside in urban centers in the south-east of the country, primarily Marseille, Lyon, and Toulouse. Earlier Vietnamese migrants settled in the cities of Lille and Bordeaux.
A generation of Vietnamese refugees continues to hold on to traditional values. The later generations of French-born Vietnamese identify with French culture rather than Vietnamese, as most were raised and brought up in the French system rather than the Vietnamese one. Some of the French media and politicians view the Vietnamese community as a "model minority", in part because they are represented as having a high degree of integration within the French society and having high economic and academic success.La diaspora vietnamienne (in French)
The Vietnamese community in France is divided between those who oppose the communist Hanoi government and those who are supportive of it.Bousquet p. 5Helping the World's homeless; Vietnamese in France proud, divided The Christian Science Monitor, 1980 This division in the community has been present since the 1950s when some Vietnamese students and workers in France supported and praised the communist Viet Minh's policies back home, while Vietnamese loyal to the colonial or non-communist governments and immigrated to France were largely anti-communist. This political rift increased after the fall of Saigon in 1975 when anti-communist refugees from South Vietnam arrived and established community networks and institutions. The two camps have contradictory political goals and ideologies. Such political divisions have prevented the Vietnamese in France from forming a more unified community in their host nation, as their counterparts have in North America and Australia (1980).
Australia