The first generation of Vietnamese immigrants survived; the second generation is figuring out who they are now that survival isn’t the end goal.
Nearly 70 years ago, a group of approximately 100 Vietnamese children came to Chrastava, Czechoslovakia, as part of an exchange program between Czechoslovakia and North Vietnam. This marked the beginning of what would become one of the most significant immigrant communities in the Czech Republic.
Today, as Tereza Freidingerova, a research fellow at Charles University’s Faculty of Social Sciences, remarked, you can find a Vietnamese family in every Czech village larger than 500 people. Freidingerova, who is also an analyst for the Czech aid organization People in Need, said that reality is different from many post-socialist countries, where Vietnamese families usually reside in major cities.
Arriving first as part of a labor migration scheme between Czechoslovak and Vietnamese communist comrades, the Vietnamese community now has a deep generational and cultural presence in the Czech Republic, where it makes up the third most populous minority after Ukrainians and Slovaks, estimated at around 80,000 people. The first generation built their lives through factory work and small-scale retail trading, then grocery stores and restaurants. Their children are better integrated into very different Czech customs and culture, drawing inspiration from both their Czech and Vietnamese identities.
The Hard-Working Vietnamese
The Vietnamese migration to Czechoslovakia initially took place within a socialist context, where labor and education exchanges were strictly under state control, said Freidingerova, who edited an academic volume, Vietnamese Diasporas along the Former Iron Curtain, published in 2025. “They all were state employees, working in state enterprises, together with their local comrades. They were completely involved in the system of socialism. They were socialized under socialism,” she said.
By the 1970s, thousands of Vietnamese vocational students had come to Czechoslovakia. By 1980, the number of Vietnamese trainees and workers on four-year temporary contracts in Czechoslovakia increased to 35,000.
The fall of the Czechoslovak communist government in 1989 opened a new path for Vietnamese workers, as the Velvet Revolution ended the labor cooperation contracts between the friendly socialist Czechoslovak and Vietnamese states. After 40 years of socialism, the government, however, untied the hands of those who wanted to start private businesses, even foreigners. Many Vietnamese chose to stay, with a large number shifting from factory work to opening small markets, and later many restaurants, nail salons, and other businesses.
“Opening grocery stores is the easiest way,” Freidingerova remarked. “You have a room, you have a cash register, you order the stuff, and you start.” It is a low-threshold job that does not require highly skilled staff or extensive language capacity. Vietnamese grocery stores, typically employing family members and almost never non-Vietnamese staff, are now ubiquitous in every Czech city and town, providing basic groceries and household items close to where most people live and often staying open late.
“In the 1990s, it was almost impossible to obtain a permanent residence permit under the very first alien act that we had,” Freidingerova said. “They needed 10 years of temporary residency to get permanent residency.” Not until the law was amended in 2013 were more Vietnamese able to obtain Czech citizenship without having to renounce their Vietnamese one. Yet few have chosen to make that move – only around 8,000 people, according to People in Need’s report published in July.
Tam Hoang was among those who arrived in 1988 under the state labor cooperation program. He now runs a small grocery shop in the southwestern town of Susice, following the same pattern that unfolded for many Vietnamese who pivoted from factory work to the marketplace after the revolution.
and warehouses is a focal point of Vietnamese life in the Czech Republic.
Photo by Mojmir Churavy / Wikimedia Commons
When he first arrived, Hoang worked in an automobile plant, one of hundreds of state-owned factories that recruited Vietnamese workers on four-year contracts, among thousands of other Vietnamese filling factory jobs. “The selection process was rigorous. Everyone went through the Vietnamese state screening process, learned Czech culture, and received one to three months of language training,” Tam told Transitions.
“The Czech language,” he adds, “was the hardest obstacle. … Even now there are people who cannot say a complete sentence in Czech.” Just under 44,000 people, roughly half of the estimated Vietnamese community, declared Vietnamese as their mother tongue in the last Czech census, in 2021.
The driving force for the first generation was simple: work hard and make money to support your family. In Hoang’s words, “We Vietnamese work only for our children and family back home – that’s why the working hours are so long.” While nearby Czech businesses close on weekends, the Vietnamese work tirelessly even on Saturdays and Sundays.
Today, the Vietnamese still hold an unwavering appreciation for their roots – many families teach their children to speak Vietnamese, cook traditional Vietnamese dishes, and celebrate traditional holidays, such as Tet, Vietnamese Women’s Day, or Trung Thu (the Moon Festival).
What filters down through generations, interviews with both the first and second reveal, is sincerity, compassion, and diligence. Thi Minh Tam Hoang, a first-generation Vietnamese-Czech who came to the Czech Republic in 2008, encapsulates this spirit most simply: “Vietnam is much more than just a distant country in Asia. It is a nation with a rich history, a vibrant culture, and people who are warm, kind, and deeply connected. Vietnamese people place great importance on family, value hard work and perseverance, and always strive to build a better life wherever they are.”
The second generation has benefitted from their parents’ emphasis on education, family solidarity, and mutual aid, commented Duc Anh Le, a co-organizer of a photo show on younger Vietnamese that ran in Prague last summer. “Most young Vietnamese now have a very good understanding of what their parents went through, and they are trying to build on that. At the same time they are seeking a balance between duty toward family and community, and their own path in life,” he said.
The In-Between Culture
The second generation was handed down a solid foundation to flourish in their career ambitions, pursuing more non-conventional jobs. Monika Tran, one of that generation, said, “There are a lot of people working in social media, graphic design, the arts, and film and such, and we owe that a lot to our parents who have built us this basis so that we can spring or jump further up, that we can branch out. We don’t have to think about sustaining ourselves anymore; we’re not in survival mode anymore.”
[Tran is a manager at the Skautsky Institut, a community center and civil society hub in Prague where the Transitions office is located.]
Tran describes a state of mind familiar to many Vietnamese-Czech kids: “I often find myself on the edge of two cultures, not fully being Vietnamese, because my mentality is so European, and I don’t know a lot of Vietnamese culture.” She points to the feelings of inheriting a culture that feels so far away, recalling how Tet (the Vietnamese Lunar New Year) is celebrated in Vietnam so differently than in Czechia and how she does not remember many Vietnamese kids’ songs.
What Filters Down
Tran’s experiences exemplify how a second-generation Vietnamese-Czech navigates the gray area in between two cultures – a common experience of many children of immigrants.
Some of those younger people see art as a way to build closer mutual understanding. The Blooms of the Future project, co-funded by the European Union, voices the journeys of people with migrant backgrounds, sharing stories of cultural identity, heritage, and deep historical roots.
The initiative showcases short films that explore the experience of being children of immigrants and hosts educational discussion panels and workshops to bridge the narrative gap between first- and second-generation Vietnamese-Czechs. Through oral storytelling and visual arts, this student-led project has created a space to explore what it means to be Vietnamese in the Czech Republic today and how this cultural identity shifts across generations.
For Thuy Linh Be, Tranova Phuong Mai, and Mai Phuong Hoang, members of Blooms of the Future in their mid- to late-20s and children of Vietnamese immigrants themselves, the answer is simply acceptance. Linh admits, “I think that a lot of us just accept the fact that we will never know for sure what we are, but to accept that we can choose both sides.” Wrestling with their in-between identity, the second generation tries to find a middle ground where they can celebrate both aspects of being Vietnamese and Czech.
Visual and video art is the chosen medium for an exhibition currently running at the Goethe Institute in Prague. “Unspoken Names,” displaying the work of five early-30s Vietnamese artists from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Germany, forms part of the German cultural center’s autumn cycle of Vietnamese-themed events, including coffee tastings and screenings of Blooms of the Future films.
The hard-working immigrant label has followed the Vietnamese people across generations, from the first generation, who came as assembly line workers, to the generations after. Yet, this story captures only one facet of the multifarious and fast-changing Vietnamese community.
Tran remarked, “I would really hope that Czech society would recognize more that we are all individuals with different stories and experiences, and while we share the same ethnicity, I wouldn’t want people to just put us all in one bag.”
Vi Nguyen is an editorial intern at Transitions and a student at Davidson College in the United States, studying political science with a focus on international relations and security studies.
