Linguistic integration policy and its impact on the construction of language identity: The Vietnamese migrant community in Czechia

Abstract

In the 1970s and 1980s the Vietnamese arrived in Czechoslovakia as a group of guest-workers. According to the census in 1985, there were 19,350 Vietnamese living in the Czech territory (Heroldová & Matějová, 1987), but the number decreased to approximately 8,000 by 1994 (Mladá Fronta Dnes, 8th October 1994). However, based on the census data from CZSO (Czech Statistical Office) in 2014, due to changes in the political and economic environment, the number of Vietnamese in Czechia increased remarkably from 18,210 in 2001 to 52,612 in 2011. Nevertheless, even this figure greatly underestimates the real number of Vietnamese in the Czech Republic, mainly due to substantial illegal migration. According to CZSO, the Vietnamese community constituted 12.5% of immigrant population in Czechia in 2014, the third-biggest migrant community in this territory. This paper sets out to explore the role of current linguistic integration policy in the construction of language identity, mainly related to the migration of language communities in the period of globalization in Central and Eastern Europe contexts, by examining the case of a non-European language community, Vietnamese, in Czechia. The data served for discussion in this paper consider censuses and surveys conducted by several different researchers and official state bodies. The conclusion of this paper emphasizes the fact that the identity construction of Vietnamese and their second generation is developing reversely mainly due to two reasons: their internal cultural isolation and an education level which is supposed to be influenced by the current linguistic integration policy.