Part 1

• ‘Before They’re Gone’: Death and Memory in Vietnamese Diasporas Julien Le Hoangan Bourgogne-Franche-Comté University

  Death often occupies a central position in studies of Vietnamese memory, elucidating the roles of loss, mourning or trauma. Approaching this topic from a rather different perspective, my doctoral research sheds light on the importance of death as a catalyst for memory work in the context of family memory dynamics in Vietnamese diasporas. Drawing on theories of identity crisis that cover the long period of adulthood, I emphasize that birth and death are triggering events that reconfigure roles within families and lineages. These events reveal underlying traumas, silences, taboos or secrets, the effects of which are explored in this study. Experiencing the loss or apprehension of the loss of a relative appears to be a crucial turning point in the process of identity formation, particularly in the area of memory work and more specifically among people of diasporic descent. Older people may feel compelled to pass on their heritage and free themselves from family secrets. At the same time, younger generations, including children and grandchildren, realise that they are on the verge of losing not only their parental figures, but also their ties with their cultural heritage and ancestral roots. How can this dynamic influence, or be influenced by, traditional hierarchical roles between the generations? How can death initiate, speed up, slow down or even stop memory work? Drawing on data from semi-structured interviews and guided by the idea that memory work constitutes transgenerational care work, this article offers an insight into the complex interplay between death and memory within diasporic Vietnamese families.

• Masculinity and Patterns of Mobility among Male Vietnamese Migrants in Japan Huy Tran Bielefeld University

  Migration is one of the most prominent forces that shape individuals’ engagement with and negotiation of gender identities and subjectivities. While the feminization of migration in Asia has prompted a rich body of academic literature on the gender aspect in female migrants’ experiences, the gender dimension in men’s intra-Asian migration journey has commonly been either taken for granted other insufficiently examined. This paper presents the case of male Vietnamese migrants in Japan and their negotiation of masculinity throughout different phases of migration to provide a more nuanced understanding of how masculinity and migration intersect in male migrants’ lived experiences. Drawing on findings from ethnographic research and qualitative life-history interviews conducted with 71 male Vietnamese migrants in Japan and returnees in Vietnam, this paper investigates how patterns of mobility among Vietnamese migrant men, encompassing not only cross-border mobility but also social, gender, and sexual mobility, are shaped by the masculine ideology of achieving a mature “true man” status. It engages with the concept of “masculine capital” to shed light on the ways in which migration between Vietnam and Japan is treated as a transformative pathway that allows men to acquire better masculine status, especially upon their return to Vietnam after a period abroad. In other words, for many Vietnamese men, the pursuit of economic and educational opportunities abroad is intertwined with aspirations of fulfilling traditional Vietnamese masculine roles and responsibilities, such as providing financial support for their families and achieving social status and respectability as not only successful breadwinners but also contributors to the home society. Moreover, the pressure to conform to dominant masculine norms of strength, independence, and resilience often shapes migrants’ behaviors and interactions in both public and private spheres, influencing their experiences of social and gender mobility even after the migration project. As a result, the paper will shed light on the complex interplay between gender, migration, axes of identity, and mobility patterns. Such a perspective contributes to a broader understanding of the lived experiences of male Vietnamese migrants and underscores a gender-sensitive approach to understanding and addressing the challenges faced by male migrants in various stages of migration.

• Affects of Death in the Vietnamese Diaspora in Germany Max Müller Martin Luther University Halle

  In my talk, I will explore the complex emotional and spiritual landscapes navigated by members of the Vietnamese diaspora in Berlin, focusing on a Vietnamese-Buddhist pagoda in East Berlin. This pagoda serves as a vital community hub, facilitating spiritual practices and care for the deceased and bereaved. Recently, it has faced significant institutional challenges, including a closure mandate by local authorities due to zoning regulations. Despite these challenges, the pagoda remains an integral centre of community care, communal resistance, and solidarity, emphasising its importance for the Vietnamese diaspora in Berlin and beyond.
  Furthermore, I will discuss how these end-of-life care practices within the pagoda have given rise to a voluntary hospice care group, which has since become institutionalised. This hospice team supports Vietnamese migrants, particularly those in nursing homes and hospitals, by providing culturally specific care. This includes Vietnamese food, music, and language support, helping patients feel more connected to their home country and better prepared for ageing and death in the diaspora. This work highlights how culturally and language-sensitive hospice care addresses the emotional and affective needs of the dying and the bereaved, helping them cope with the unique challenges of facing death far from their ancestral homeland.
  Through this focus, my presentation will highlight the resilience and solidarity of the Vietnamese community in Berlin, illustrating how these community care efforts help navigate the complexities of living, ageing, and dying in a transnational context.

• Vietnamese immigration in Germany: Legalization Practices and the Intimate Experiences of Migration Legality Thanh-Nga Mai University Zürich

  The literature on migration has called Europe a ‘Fortress’ because of its border policing practices and strict immigration policies. This remark is particularly true to low-skilled migrants who despite the discouragement of the policies still try their luck. Following scholars working on legality and migration, in this presentation, I investigate the legalization strategies of Vietnamese migrants in Germany, specifically the moment when a migrant experiences the legal transition from undocumented to lawful resident, from temporary to permanent resident, as well as in reverse, from lawful resident to undocumented migrant. By doing so, I examine the legal practices that caused this transition to happen and the consequences of these choices and actions. The findings show that responding to restricting immigration, family unification has been seen by migrants as the legal gateway to realizing their desire for geographical mobility. Throughout the process of migration, family and intimacy have undergone tremendous transformations as the transition between legal statuses through adopted legalization strategies has moved certain family relations and intimacy in and out of legal and social recognition. As a result, the legalization of one’s move have set her family off on its structural and identity transformation.

Part 2

• ‘The smell of acrylic is the smell of money’: tracking the growth of the Vietnamese nail salon industry in the UK Seb Rumsby University of Birmingham

  Over the past 20 years Vietnamese-run nail salons have grown at a phenomenal rate, spreading to every town and city across the UK. They have bucked the ‘death of the English high street’ trend as other shops are closing down in the face of online retail and changing consumer habits. This growth has been enabled by two crucial factors: (1) the ‘McDonaldsisation’ of cosmetics, whereby Vietnamese salons have undercut traditional manicure prices by offering a cheap, fast service stripped back of the fancy elements associated with this former luxury service. (2) The migration of thousands of Vietnamese people over to the UK, often via irregular border crossings and who work informally in salons for low wages. However, this growth combined with the cost-of-living crisis has resulted in fewer customers distributed among more salons, leading to intense competition within this ethnic enclave. This paper explores such dynamics through a mixed methods approach, analysing quantitative data from official UK statistics while interpreting trends and figures in light of qualitative fieldwork.

• “Evaluating decisions to leave Vietnam: Migrant narratives and aspirations” Tamsin Barber Oxford Brookes University

  This paper will explore decision-making narratives among Vietnamese migrants leaving northern central Vietnam for Europe and the UK. Drawing upon a sample of 65 qualitative interviews in Vietnam and the UK, migration rationalities are captured at different stages of the migration journey and are contrasted with those of local Vietnamese experts and officials and UK policy debates. Tracing competing narratives of ‘risk’ with more normative constructions of the ‘migrant -breadwinner’ narrative, this paper explores drivers of migration, local cultures of migration, and destination ‘choices’. Challenging political debates around the British ‘small boats crisis’, the paper will analyse the relevance of claims that the UK is an intended migration destination and will problematise binarized thinking relating to categories of forced/voluntary, intentional/ unintentional migration journeys in the Vietnamese case. The role of word-of-mouth, kin networks and the formation of new cultures of migration are explored to reveal localized nature of migration patterns. The paper argues against accounts which seek to offer single causal explanations for decisions to leave. It also demonstrates the value of capturing insights across different stages of the migration journey to highlight the shifting nature of migrants’ interpretive frameworks and mobility horizons.

• Vietnamese German entrepreneurship: Developments after the reunification Julia Behrens Bielefeld University Phi Hong Su

  The reunification of Germany and breakdown of the Soviet Union marked the early 1990s as time of major transformation. This was true not only for people with German passports, but also for those who have so far been underrepresented in research about this period of social upheaval. Among them were Vietnamese contract workers, many of whom remained in the newly-reunified country and pursued entrepreneurship as means of securing their livelihoods. Vietnamese entrepreneurs in the gastro and retail scenes became important actors in reunified Germany, meeting new consumer demand that the shifting capitalist economy could not yet provide. Vietnamese entrepreneurship in Germany would develop and adapt to changes in socioeconomic realities over the next three decades. Migrants retained their transnational business networks from socialist times, but have also expanded to adapt to new capitalist flows. The paper tells the story of selected Viet-German entrepreneurs, tracing the change of agencies and networks through the developments since 1990.

• Living in rapidly changing Vietnamese community in Japan: as the second-generation Vietnamese women Mika Hasebe Meiji Gakuin University

  In this report, the reporter aims to show how the rapid changes in Japan’s Vietnamese community have affected to the life of second-generation Vietnamese women living in Japan. The focus will be on their livelihoods. The reporter argues that changes in Vietnamese community have provided opportunities for them to take advantage of their Vietnamese identity for sustenance.
  The Vietnamese community in Japan began to form when the Japanese government started accepting boat people from Vietnam as refugees in 1978. By the end of the reception of Indochinese refugees in 2005, around 8,000 Vietnamese “refugees” had been accepted. Even among the approximately 8,000 people, there was significant diversity in terms of generations and experiences.
  As for the second generation, their identity fluctuates significantly. Although most of them have educated in Japan and achieved fluency in Japanese, some of them advanced to higher education levels, their mother tongue is Vietnamese, and Vietnamese is also the language which is spoken in their families. Some of them are denying Vietnamese identity as being “Vietnamese” in Japanese society is far from advantageous.
  However, since around 2000, the Vietnamese community in Japan has shifted from “refugees” community to “technical intern trainees” community. And this brings “second generation” women a significant opportunity. In 2003, the Vietnamese population in Japan was around 15,000. However, by 2013, it had increased fivefold to 75,000. By 2023, it further surged to 480,000, marking a sevenfold increase. The majority of them are technical intern trainees and students studying in Japanese language schools. Due to their poor working conditions and susceptibility to troubles, there has been a rapid expansion in the demand for Vietnamese interpreters. And this increasing demand means a great expansion in opportunities as interpreters for the second generation who raised in families of Vietnamese refugees and have experienced the disadvantage of being “Vietnamese”. This has provided them with opportunities to earn a living as interpreters and, in some cases, has also instilled confidence in their Vietnamese identity.

Abstract