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.
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