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Vietnamese people in the Czech Republic, including citizens and non-citizens, are the third-largest ethnic minority in the country overall (after Slovaks and Ukrainians), and the largest Asian ethnic group, numbering more than 38,000 people according to the 2021 census.

It is the third-largest Vietnamese diaspora in Europe, after Germany and France, and one of the most populous Vietnamese diasporas of the world.

Demographics

According to the 1991 census, there were 421 ethnic Vietnamese in the Czech Republic. According to the 2001 census, there were 17,462 ethnic Vietnamese in the Czech Republic. In the 2011 census, 29,660 people listed their ethnicity as Vietnamese. In the 2021 census, 31,469 people listed their ethnicity as Vietnamese, and 7,254 other people listed Vietnamese ethnicity as one of two their ethnicities (making it 38,723 people in total).

Nguyen, the most common Vietnamese surname, was the 9th most common surname in the Czech Republic in 2011, when 21,020 people with this surname were registered.

The largest group of Vietnamese people (about 16,000, including those with temporary residence) lives in Prague. About 2,500–3,000 people are registered in each of the other largest cities in the Czech Republic – Brno, Ostrava and Plzeň. The main centre of the Vietnamese community is Cheb, with about 3,300 people.

History

Vietnamese immigrants began settling in the Czech Republic during the communist period, when Vietnam, which sought to bolster its skilled workforce, sent students and guest workers to socialist Czechoslovakia for education and training. The Vietnamese communist government was told to pay the western communist countries for their help in the Vietnam War. In lieu of money, they sent their citizens there as indentured workers for subsistence wages. Following the collapse of communism in Czechoslovakia, a significant number have moved towards establishing their own businesses and integrating more broadly into society, similar to the experience of other overseas Vietnamese in Western countries. However, the small business sector remains the key economic domain of first-generation Vietnamese people in the Czech Republic.

Status

In the Czech Republic, national minorities are afforded classic national minority rights, including government funding for the protection of their language and culture. In recent years, the Vietnamese community has sought recognition as a national minority. In 2004, however, the Government Council for National Minorities, the advisory body of the Czech Government on the issues of national minorities, concluded that the Vietnamese do not constitute a "national minority", as this term only applies to indigenous minorities who have inhabited the Czech territory for a long period of time. Eventually in 2013, a representative of the Vietnamese was accepted as a member of the Government Council for National Minorities, which in the absence of precise legal criteria, has been understood as an official recognition of the Vietnamese ethnic minority as a national minority by both authorities and the public. In Prague, which has the largest community of Vietnamese, a Vietnamese representative had been a member of the city's National Minority Council and Vietnamese had been included in Prague's policy for national minorities before this happened at the national level.

Notable people

• Monika Leová (born 1991), TV presenter and model, Czech Miss 2013
• Filip Nguyen (born 1992), footballer
• Ha Thanh Špetlíková [cs] (born 1989), actress
• Thai Dai Van Nguyen (born 2001), chess grandmaster

See also

• Czech Republic–Vietnam relations
• Chinese people in the Czech Republic
• Sapa – Vietnamese marketplace in Prague

Notes

1. Including those with temporary residence.
2. However, the statistics are distorted by the fact that female and male forms of the same Czech surnames were counted separately, while the total number of Nguyens refers to both male and female bearers of the surname.

References

1. ^ "Statistiky: Cizinci s povoleným pobytem" (in Czech). Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic. Retrieved 8 December 2024.
2. "First Vietnamese pagoda opens in Czech Republic". Thanh Nien News. Vietnam National Youth Federation. 26 January 2008. Archived from the original on 31 January 2008. Retrieved 1 February 2008.
3. https://www.czso.cz/documents/11292/44321488/c01R04_2016.xlsx/50fe0cfc-7c34-4325-9d83-31c574f4cab3?version=1.0
4. "Národnost". Census 2021. Czech Statistical Office. Retrieved 9 December 2024.
5. "Nguyen je devátým nejčastějším příjmením v Česku, poráží i Procházky". iDNES.cz (in Czech). 8 June 2011. Retrieved 9 December 2024.
6. O'Connor, Coilin (29 May 2007). "Is the Czech Republic's Vietnamese community finally starting to feel at home?". Czech Radio. Retrieved 3 July 2024.
7. Čermáková, Martina (4 April 2007). "Still a Thorn in the Eye: The Vietnamese-Czech dialog". Provokator Magazine. Retrieved 1 February 2008.
8. ^ "The City of Prague's National Minority Policy". Prague City Hall. 2007. Retrieved 1 February 2008.
9. Sloboda, Marián (2016). "Historicity and citizenship as conditions for national minority rights in Central Europe: old principles in a new migration context". Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. 42 (11): 1808–1824. doi:10.1080/1369183x.2015.1132158. S2CID 146245837.
10. Kascian, Kyril; Vasilevich, Hanna (2013). "Czech Republic Acknowledgement of Belarusian and Vietnamese as New Minorities". European Yearbook of Minority Issues. 12: 353–371. doi:10.1163/9789004306134_015. Retrieved 23 August 2017.

External links

• (in Czech) Klub Hanoi - association promoting Vietnamese-Czech relations
• A glimpse at Prague's secretive Vietnamese community
• 2004 article on Prague's Vietnamese community

• Asian diaspora in the Czech Republic
• Ethnic groups in the Czech Republic
• Vietnamese diaspora by country
• Czech people of Vietnamese descent
• Vietnamese diaspora in the Czech Republic