Vietnamese Diasporas: an introduction

In one of the most significant and highly visible diasporas of the late twentieth century, more than two million Vietnamese left their homeland in the 20 years that followed the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. The extent of this diaspora was unprecedented in Vietnamese history as was the international response, and Vietnamese were resettled in 50 countries worldwide. The post-1975 diaspora is the largest and most well known of what I have devised as the four broad categories of modern Vietnamese diasporas—colonial, socialist, refugee and twenty-first-century labour and social mobilities. Aside from the refugee diaspora, other significant migrations included colonial labour in France and New Caledonia in the first half of the twentieth century, and socialist state-linked migrations to the Soviet Union and other countries in the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. In the twenty-first century, the large numbers of Vietnamese moving abroad are workers, students and marriage migrants. This chapter maps and analyses Vietnamese migrations and diasporas, and outlines the contributions made in the volume under five headings: colonial legacies; refugees, histories and communities; migrant workers, international students and mobilities; literary and cultural production; and diasporas and negotiations.