The Vietnamese Community in Israel: A Profile

Profil de la communauté vietnamienne en Israël

Sabine Huynh (1)

1 HUJ - The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Both Canada and Israel have attracted and hosted diverse populations of immigrants, among which are Vietnamese refugees. The Vietnamese ethnic group has been the object of many demographic, ethnographic and socioeconomic studies in the United States, Canada, and Europe. In Israel, the relative lack of attention given to this group may have contributed to its weakening. The Vietnamese Israelis are not organized in any formal immigrant‘s association, which makes it hard for a researcher to reach them. The analysis presented here is the socio-demographic chapter of a broader sociolinguistic research project (in progress) on bilingual contact phenomena in the Vietnamese Israeli community, and Vietnamese-Hebrew code-switching/mixing. A study of sociolinguistic variation cannot be done without a thorough investigation of the speakers and their social context. This study aims at drawing a comprehensive profile of the Vietnamese Israeli community, and it is based on fieldwork carried out between November 2007 and May 2008. The community is formed mainly by Vietnamese refugees who were granted political asylum in Israel between 1977 and 1979. The methods used to gather data included: participant observation (Lynd and Lynd, 1929), ethnographic interviewing (Hammersley and Atkinson, 1993), with non-directive and directive questions asked at community gatherings, and one-to-one sociolinguistic interviews, adapting Labov‘s modules (Labov, 1984). The findings confirm the existence of a Vietnamese community in Israel whose structure is based on interaction networks involving about thirty families, largely concentrated in the localities of Jaffa and Bat Yam. Comprising about 150 people, it is probably one of the tiniest minority group in Israel, and that is one of the reasons why it should be accounted for. The present study investigates the community‘s divisions, its interactional patterns, and its loyalty factors (language, socioeconomic status, faith). Jerusalem Conference in Canadian Studies 44 Partly due to its size, the Vietnamese Israeli group may be considered as marginal. Moreover, its members‘ shared cultural and linguistic characteristics do not relate to the Israeli sociocultural system based on the existence of separate Jewish and Arab societies. Finally, in a census that only displays three distinct population groups, Jews, Arabs, and ―Others,‖ their presence goes unnoticed. As a consequence, they tend to suffer from relative estrangement and try to establish themselves in other countries, which could lead to the disintegration of the community. This paper emphasizes the need for awakening the community‘s sense of pride and belonging, as well as for enhancing its members‘ perception of self-worth.

Mots clés: Vietnamese community; Israel; Boat People

Domaines: Sociologie; Anthropologie sociale et ethnologie; Linguistique

Sabine Huynh. The Vietnamese Community in Israel: A Profile. 12th Biennial Jerusalem Conference in Canadian Studies (2008): Responding to the Challenge of Diversity in Canada, Israel and Beyond, The Halbert Centre for Canadian Studies and the Israel Association for Canadian Studies, Jun 2008, Jerusalem, Israel. ⟨hal-02914986⟩