The Economic Pathways of Female Vietnamese American Refugees and Migrants

THE ECONOMIC PATHWAYS OF FEMALE VIETNAMESE

AMERICAN REFUGEES AND MIGRANTS

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DEDICATION

This thesis is dedicated to the people who made it possible:

Frank A. Brandeberry James H. V. To Kim Chi Ho

And to:

Penny S. Brandeberry

who, though she’ll never see it, believed in it.

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THE ECONOMIC PATHWAYS OF FEMALE VIETNAMESE

AMERICAN REFUGEES AND MIGRANTS

Elizabeth K. Brandeberry

ABSTRACT

Between 1975 and 2017, nearly two million members of the Vietnamese diaspora settled in the United States after fleeing war, the Vietnamese Communist regime, and seeking increased freedom and economic opportunities. More than half of these were women. This thesis fills a gap in the literature by viewing female Vietnamese American refugees through a lens of self-agency and by describing their economic pathways in both Vietnam and the United States. Nineteen semi-structured interviews and two group interactions were conducted in 2019 by the author in

Houston, Texas. A qualitative review was conducted of the emergent themes from the narratives.

Important facets of personal economic development in female Vietnamese American refugees and migrants appeared to be education/training, coping with discrimination, availability of an ethnic niche, and family support. These results may prove useful in both NGOs and government agencies working towards improving the economic outcomes of adult, female refugees.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION ...... iii

ABSTRACT ...... iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS ...... v

LIST OF TABLES ...... vii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ...... viii

CHAPTER 1: “THE VIETNAMESE LADIES” (INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND) ...... 1

A Personal Interest ...... 1 A Brief History ...... 3 The Vietnam War ...... 5 Waves of Refugees ...... 7 State of the Literature...... 9

CHAPTER 2: “TO WRITE INTO BEING THE SEETHING PRESENCE OF THINGS THAT APPEAR TO NOT BE THERE” (METHODOLOGY) ...... 12

Literature Search and Review ...... 12 Field Study Design ...... 14 Discussion of Field Study ...... 20 Data Analysis ...... 22 Demographics of the Sample ...... 24

CHAPTER 3: “IF A LAMP POST HA[D] LEGS, IT WOULD MOVE, TOO” (PRE-IMMIGRATION ECONOMIC PATHWAYS) ...... 28

Introduction ...... 28 Getting By in Post-1975 Vietnam ...... 30 Bartering and Selling in Refugee Camps ...... 36 Long-Term Implications ...... 40

CHAPTER 4: “THEY’VE ALREADY GIVEN UP EVERYTHNG…WHAT DO THEY HAVE TO LOSE?” (AMERICAN ECONOMIC PATHWAYS) ...... 44

Introduction ...... 44 Poverty and Early Work...... 46 Career Establishment ...... 52 Women as Entrepreneurs ...... 56 The Nail Industry ...... 60

CHAPTER 5: “GO BACK TO VIETNAM!” (EMPLOYMENT AND DISCRIMINATION) ...... 65

Introduction ...... 65 Anglo American Racism and Discrimination ...... 68 Inter-Minority Racism and Discrimination ...... 74 Intra-Group Discrimination Among Vietnamese Refugees and Migrants ...... 76 Gender-Based Discrimination ...... 78

CHAPTER 6: “WITHOUT A TEACHER, YOU CAN DO NOTHING” (EDUCATION AND GOVERNMENT AID) ...... 83

Introduction ...... 83 Education ...... 86 Government Aid and Welfare ...... 93

CHAPTER 7: “TO SHARE [SUCCESS] WITH ALL THE REFUGEES AND MIGRANTS” (CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS) ...... 101

Contributions to the Field ...... 101 Study Limitations ...... 102 Areas for Future Research ...... 103 Policy Implications ...... 104

APPENDIX A: INTERVIEW GUIDE ...... 112

APPENDIX B: SAMPLE STAKEHOLDER LETTER ...... 127

English ...... 127 Vietnamese ...... 129

APPENDIX C: CONSENT TO PARTICIPATE IN RESEARCH ...... 131

English ...... 131 Vietnamese ...... 134

REFERENCES ...... 136

LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1: BOOLEAN SEARCH TERMS………………………………………..……………..13 Table 2.2: WEB OF CONTACTS…………………………………...…………………………..18 Table 2.3: THEMATIC NODES IN NARRATIVE DATA……………………………………..23 Table 2.4: PARENTS’ OCCUPATIONS………………………………………………………..26 Table 3.1: PRE- AND POST-1975 VOLUNTARY EMPLOYMENT………………………….36 Table 4.1: ALL FACTORY WAGES AT START AND AT DECEMBER 2019 EQUIVALENT…………………………………………………………………………………..49 Table 4.2: INITIAL SERVICE INDUSTRY WAGES AT START AND AT DECEMBER 2019 EQUIVALENT…………………………………………………………………………….50 Table 4.3: REASONS FOR LEAVING EMPLOYMENT BY PARTICIPANT AND JOB NUMBER………………………………………………………………………………………..55 Table 6.1: STUDY PARTICIPANTS BY EDUCATION AND FUNDING…………….……...93

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

ARVN Army of the Republic of Vietnam AU American University DRV Democratic Republic of Vietnam H-O Homecoming Operation NEZ New Economic Zone NGO Non-Governmental Organization NVA North Vietnamese Army ODP Orderly Departure Program RVN Republic of Vietnam U.S. United States UNHCR United Nations High Commission on Refugees WRLC Washington Research Library Consortium

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CHAPTER 1 “THE VIETNAMESE LADIES” (INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND)

A Personal Interest

In a way that I could never have foreseen as a child, Vietnamese women have become quite important to me as an adult. I blame this completely on my husband, who, as a Vietnamese

American immigrant himself, introduced me to his family and his culture. My fascination started with the tales of his grandmother and how she’d fought, tooth and nail, to keep her family afloat after the fall of Saigon in 1975. She’d lost her husband to the Communists, faced a drastic loss of wealth and status, and was evicted from her own home. And yet she remained, resilient, proud, and innovative, in the face of deprivation. She used her skills as a former pharmacist to serve her community and managed to make enough money to support each of her six children to adulthood. Her story, like many stories of Vietnamese women who survived the Vietnam War, has never been recorded. Few family members, if any, have ever heard the full extent of it.

Though my husband’s grandmother never immigrated to the United States, many women who shared her trauma and resilience did. It is these untold stories, and the examples and lessons they may hold for modern refugees, that has drawn me to write about the economic lives of

Vietnamese American women. In the words of Yen Le Espiritu (2008), it is these unwritten histories that make me yearn “to pay attention to what modern history has been rendered ghostly and to write into being the seething presence of things that appear to not be there” (p. 1700).

I approached this study as novitiate to Vietnamese American culture and tradition with one intent: to amplify the voices of the Vietnamese American women who struggled and fought to make a living in the United States after the horrors of war (Espiritu 2014, p. 424). As such,

1 this thesis focuses on the economic pathways of female Vietnamese American refugees and migrants. The current literature on the Vietnamese American population tends to focus on physical or mental health outcomes and an apparent distrust of the government. Economic literature appears to fall mainly into two distinct subcategories: those that tout the Vietnamese

American population as a hardworking and successful “model minority” (discussed later in this chapter) and those that focus on Vietnamese Americans living on welfare or caught in low-wage, dead-end employments (Phan, Rivera, and Roberts-Wilbur 2005; Wang, Cresswell, and Nguyen

2017; Leong and Tang 2016; Tang 2015). Thus, the literature often assesses the demographics and refugee-centered emotions of their subjects but ignore the series of events and rational decisions that have led Vietnamese Americans to their current economic outcomes. This is the specific gap that this study intends to fill. Thus, the research question that guided the study was as follows: What types of employment and incomes do Vietnamese American women, who entered the United States as refugees or migrants from Vietnam, hold today and what paths did they take to achieve their current economic status?

Understanding the reasons behind these economic decisions and pathways, however, requires a basic understanding of the history and culture that has shaped Vietnamese American lives. For example, women’s roles in Vietnamese society have long determined their roles in household finances and family businesses. Philosophies, such as Confucianism, have also greatly influenced women’s economic decision-making processes. The Vietnam War, of course, was the catalyst that prompted so many Vietnamese women to flee to the United States and was simultaneously the cause of these women’s determination to survive, thrive, and build better futures for themselves and their children. Because of this, in order to understand the substantive

2 chapters of this thesis, it is first necessary to review a short history of women in Vietnam and the social structures that formed their economic perspectives.

A Brief History

To place this thesis in its proper context, one must understand and appreciate the complex and deeply nuanced history of Vietnam itself. As in many surrounding nations, the culture in

Vietnam has always been deeply patriarchal. Despite this, history shows that women have always played a special role in Vietnamese society. Legends say, for example, that the

Vietnamese people were born of a union between a mountain fairy princess named Au Co and a sea dragon called Lac Long Quan (Friedman and Johnson 2005). Together, they birthed one hundred sons. When the union dissolved, each parent took fifty sons back to their homelands—

Au Co to the mountains, and Lac Long Quan to the sea. It was the fifty sons of the fairy princess who became the Vietnamese people, and Au Co, the mother of a nation.

The prominence of women continued throughout the country’s history. There is evidence that Vietnamese women have enjoyed both property and inheritance rights for at least the past two thousand years (Womack 1995). They have also served as warriors, when the need arose, and as queens in their own rights. One prominent example is that of the Trung sisters. In 40

A.D., Trung Trac and Trung Nhi led men into battle to successfully overthrow Chinese invaders

(Ibid.). Trung Trac, the eldest sister, became queen and was recognized for instituting political and social reforms. At first an oral tradition, the story of the sisters has been constantly retold and reimagined in the succeeding millennia. The tale reminds the world that Vietnamese women are fighters at heart. In fact, the image of Vietnamese women as fighters and national protectors

3 may be responsible for the relatively more advanced status of their rights even today, especially when compared to women in surrounding Southeast Asian nations.

The Trung sisters were, however, only successful for a short time. Trung Trac’s queendom fell to the Chinese within a few years of her coronation, restarting Vietnam’s historical cycle of invasion, rebellion, and freedom. Vietnam had been conquered off and on by the Chinese since 111 B.C.E. and would continue this cycle until the 15th Century A.D., when the Vietnamese repelled their Chinese overlords for the last time (Phan, Rivera, and Robert-

Wilbur 2005). However, both Confucianism (introduced by the Chinese) and the Vietnamese resilience to the tragedy of warfare would remain core components of the culture. The latter was a trait that would continue to be necessary even in the modern era. In 1802, Vietnam finally became a single, consolidated empire under Emperor Gia Long, only to be conquered once more by the French in 1884 (Hastings 2015). French colonialism, though far shorter in duration than

China’s rule over Vietnam, would leave its mark on the culture just as definitely. For women, this entailed great advances in women’s rights. As had been the trend in France in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, upper-class and some middle-class women became formally educated— something that and long been denied them by patriarchal, Confucian values (Coughlin 1950).

All-female schools were established for these privileged few. Upper class women could study the arts and sciences, but politics was still considered a taboo subject for women. Middle-class women were instructed only in business management, which included the keeping of neat account ledgers (Marr 1976).

Business was, after all, a common occupation for women in Vietnam (Coughlin 1950).

They had historically functioned as shopkeepers and business managers, even though their husbands had received credit for the success of, and typically were the owners of, their venues.

Female business leadership was culturally acceptable, as was women’s handling of household and business-related finances. It is this combination, perhaps, that led to the high incidence of female business owners among post-1975 Vietnamese American women.

To better understand these women, however, it is important to create a brief timeline of one critical, historical event: the Vietnam War, or, as it is called in the modern Socialist Republic of Vietnam, the American War (Hastings 2018). Though most Americans remember the war as defining the late 1960s and early 1970s, the conflict actually started nearly two decades earlier in

1945 (Ibid.).

The Vietnam War

With help from their Communist allies, both China and the Soviet Union, Vietnam repelled the French in 1954 at the end of the First Indochina War (Hastings 2018). The Geneva

Conference was held that same year. The Geneva Agreement, which proceeded from the conference, created four nations of the former French Indochina: the Kingdom of Laos, the

Kingdom of Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (in the northern half of the country, retaining ties to China and the Soviet Union, hereafter referred to as the DRV), and the Republic of Vietnam (in the southern half of the country, hereafter referred to as the RVN) (Geneva

Conference 1954; Hastings 2018) . The United States, as the nation that had requested the referendum that led to the Geneva Conference, worked closely with the fledgling RVN. At first, the U.S. provided political and military advisors while the RVN sought to stabilize themselves and consolidate their power within the region. However, they soon determined the new government to be ineffective and, in 1963, supported a coup d’état that killed the South

Vietnamese president and replaced him with successive military leaders (Hastings 2018). One

5 year later, the United States claimed that the North Vietnamese had engaged them in two separate sea battles in the Gulf of Tonkin, the latter of which has been denounced as imaginative by critics (Greenspan 2018). Regardless, the attack(s) caused the U.S. to pass the Gulf of Tonkin

Resolution, which directed them to intervene in any Southeast Asian nation they deemed to be at risk of Communist aggression (U.S. Congress 1964). The deployment of troops followed and, in

1965, the United States sent both Marine and Army combat troops to enhance the Army of the

Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). In 1966, the U.S. Navy and Air Force entered the fray and, in

1968, the Tet Offensive saw the epoch of the Vietnam War with a combined force of 1.5 million

U.S. servicemen and ARVN soldiers (Hastings 2018).

Upon U.S. President Nixon’s inauguration in 1969, however, the United States began to gradually withdraw from the conflict in Vietnam (Lawrence 2008). Protests against the war had been growing in the United States since the mid-1960s. The draft culled around 40,000 young men from the American streets every month (History.com Editors 2020). Protests emerged from college campuses and spread like wildfire across the nation. Eventually, even icons such as

Martin Luther King, Jr., supported the cause (King 1967). Recognition of the public’s dissatisfaction was a major campaign point for Richard Nixon. Though he disliked the counterculture (read: hippies) that grew from the anti-war movement, he promised to bring

“peace with honor” to Vietnam if elected (Scanlon 2009, p. 255).

In 1973, Nixon succeeded. The Paris Peace Agreement was signed between the United

States, the RVN, and the DRV. The United States officially withdrew from Vietnam and, in less than twenty-four hours, the RVN and DRV resumed fighting (Hastings 2018; Lawrence 2008).

Two years later, Saigon fell to the DRV’s Communist forces and massive waves of refugees fled the country seeking asylum (Nguyen 2014).

Waves of Refugees

The first refugees to leave Vietnam (known as the First Wave) left in the first two years following the fall of Saigon (Marino 1998). These men, women, and children generally fled because they feared persecution from the new Communist-led government. They included former political and military leaders, the intelligentsia, and members of the bourgeoisie.

According to scholars, they were “typically education professionals with some Western exposure” (Marino 1998, p. 92). Between April 3rd and April 30th of 1975, the United States Air

Force (USAF) evacuated nearly 50,000 Vietnamese and American civilians from Vietnam via air; this was called Operation Frequent Wind and was the last official American operation carried out on Vietnamese soil (Warnock 2000). Additional efforts by the U.S. military to evacuate both

Americans and Vietnamese refugees included Operation Babylift, which evacuated 2,600

Vietnamese orphans; Operation New Arrivals, which flew many Vietnamese from Indochinese refugee camps to camps in the U.S.; and Operation New Life, in which an additional 130,000

Vietnamese refugees were brought to the United States (Ibid.).

The Second Wave of Vietnamese refugees are most commonly known as “the boat people” because of their iconic escape from their homeland via the sea (Espiritu 2014). In addition to sharing the same refugee camp experiences as the First Wave, the Second Wave also experienced multiple traumas at sea: the loss of loved ones thrown overboard, sickness and death in close quarters, capture by pirates, and the rape of young women either by pirates, the ship’s crew, or fellow refugees (Espiritu 2014; Nguyen 2009; Phan, Rivera, and Roberts-Wilbur 2005).

According to Freeman (1989), at least ten percent of Second Wave died en route to safety.

Members of the Second Wave who did manage to arrive at refugee camps or transit countries were granted asylum in the United States under the 1980 Refugee Act, a piece of legislation that

7 raised the annual refugee admittance ceiling, validated the UN’s definition of “refugee”, and created a process for meeting emergency influxes of international refugees that had not previously existed in American legislation. Previously, Vietnamese refugees had only been admitted into the United States via presidential order.

The Third Wave of Vietnamese American refugees entered the United States in the late

1980s and 1990s when the U.S.’s immigration policies became more welcoming to the

Vietnamese. New policies included the Amerasian Homecoming Act of 1988 and the implementation of the 1989 Humanitarian Operation Program (Parsons and Vezina 2008). The

Amerasian Homecoming Act facilitated the immigration of Amerasian children (mostly the sons and daughters of American GIs and local Vietnamese women) to the United States. Amerasians had become a discriminated racial majority in Vietnam after the war and were often viewed as living reminders of all that had been lost; many chose to leave Vietnam to both escape this discrimination and to be reunited with their families (Lamb 2009). By this time, both Vietnam and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNCHR) had recognized the dangers of the Second Wave’s boat crossings. Together, they established the Orderly Departure Program

(ODP) (International Catholic Migration Commission 1990). The ODP connected Vietnamese refugees with over forty receiving nations around the world, including the United States, and thereby greatly reduced the deaths and hardships that had previously been associated with leaving the country. The last U.S. operation that focused on bringing Vietnamese refugees into the United States was known as the Humanitarian Resettlement Program (H-O) (Office of

Spokesman 2005). This program was a joint effort between Vietnam’s government and the

United States Department of State. It was specifically aimed at attaining asylum for individuals

8 who had been detained in reeducation camps during the ODP and had therefore unable to leave at that time.

State of the Literature

In the United States, the fields of government, history, and military science tend to view the Vietnam war as a primarily American tragedy (Boot 2018; Hastings 2015; Nguyen 2014).

After all, more than 58,000 young American men were killed in the conflict, cut short at their primes. Most often, however, there is little to no remembrance of the South Vietnamese men they fought beside. It doesn’t help that there are no official statistics on the number of South

Vietnamese lives lost in the war, either in Vietnam or in the U.S. According to the U.S. military however, that number is likely somewhere between 200,000 and 250,000 for ARVN soldiers

(Spector n.d.). The number of civilian casualties is even greater—in 1995, Vietnam estimated that more than two million civilians had been killed in the North and South combined. More than three million people were displaced by the war, including the more than half a million

Vietnamese refugees who became U.S. citizens in the following decades (Nguyen 2014;

UNCHR 2000).

The majority of English-language literature that does focus on the former residents of the

RVN looks at those that sought asylum or immigrated to the United States. Though there are

Vietnamese enclaves in other English-speaking nations, none have garnered quite the same scholarly interest as those residing in America. The literature on Vietnamese American women can be divided into roughly five sections: the model minority discussion, physical and mental health interventions, critical refugee studies, and a lingering distrust of government institutions.

The majority of literature regarding Vietnamese refugees and migrants in the United

States tends to view the population as individuals in need of aid, as grateful recipients of aid from the United States, or as a “model minority” (Espiritu 2014). This last is due to how well some Americans believe the Vietnamese have assimilated into the American culture and to their supposedly high levels of economic and educational success when compared to other racial and ethnic minorities. This perspective, however, fails to recognize the self-agency and autonomy of the Vietnamese American population and does not convey the complexity of their lived experiences (Espiritu 2006; Leong and Tang 2016; Tang 2015). When published research does focus on self-agency, it tends to focus only how interventions can increase the agency of

Vietnamese Americans in terms of seeking mental health services or health screenings

(specifically, there are quite a few articles that focus on how Vietnamese American women can be encouraged to attend screenings for various cancers) (Gregg, Nguyen-Trung, Wang, and

Kobus 2011; Kim-Mozeleski et al. 2001; Nguyen-Trung et al. 2018). Because the authors of these health-centered articles generally perceive themselves as offering needed interventions to a vulnerable population, these articles (although hopefully increasing health opportunities) further support the neo-colonial paradigm that Vietnamese Americans remain in need of American beneficence.

Since the mid-2000s, the field of “critical refugee studies” has begun to force back the tide of literature that views refugees as the victimized recipients of the U.S.’s beneficence. In the context of Vietnamese Americans, this effort has largely been spearheaded by Yen Le Espiritu, whose book Body Counts (2014) summarizes her critical take on the idea that the United States, by engaging in imperialistic war in Southeast Asia, created the very refugees that they praised themselves for rescuing. Similarly, Mimi Thi Nguyen describes the coercive element of “the gift

10 of freedom” from the United States to Vietnamese refugees (2012). Nguyen argues that, in exchange for the specific brand of freedom offered by the liberal order. Vietnamese refugees and migrants have given in return their gratefulness of rescue, their assimilability into a new culture, and the credit for their successes (both economically and otherwise) to the U.S.

Both Nguyen (2012) and Espiritu (2006; 2008; 2014) discuss another prevalent theme in the literature: Vietnamese Americans’ lingering and intergenerational distrust of governments— whether that of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam or that of the United States. Even after decades spent in the U.S., elderly Vietnamese are still cautious about what information they’re willing to give the U.S. government. They are concerned (and rightly concerned, based on their experiences with Vietnam’s government) that the government may turn on them at any moment and, if applicable, take away benefits such as welfare, social security, healthcare, etc. (Wang,

Creswell, and Nguyen 2017). After all, the data gathered by the Communists after the fall of

Saigon was used to round up government workers, soldiers, and civilians alike for internment in reeducation camps or New Economic Zones (Nguyen 2009). This trepidation regarding government institutions spans national borders; Nathalie Nguyen (2009) remarks in Memory is

Another Country that Vietnamese refugees in Australia share similar concerns. This distrust is one reason that Vietnamese Americans have established tight-knit communities, ethnically focused enclaves, and even their own neighborhood watch groups (Haines, Rutherford, and

Thomas 1981). This is, of course, not universal among Vietnamese Americans and appears to be greatly reduced among second-generation, and even 1.5 generation (those who sought asylum with their parents at a young age and spent their formative years in the U.S.), Vietnamese

Americans in the United States.

CHAPTER 2

“TO WRITE INTO BEING THE SEETHING PRESENCE OF THINGS

THAT APPEAR TO NOT BE THERE”

(METHODOLOGY)

Literature Search and Review

This study began with an extensive synthesis of the current research on female

Vietnamese Americans, immigrant economics, and Vietnamese cultural identity. The purpose of this review was to establish cultural and academic contexts in which to place the current study.

Based on previous research, the study of the economic pathways of female Vietnamese

American refugees was found to be a unique addition to the current dialogue, underscoring the importance of this research.

According to Booth, Papaioannou, and Sutton (2013), conducting a research project without a systematic literature review is like “travelling to a strange and exotic country but never coming out of your hotel room” (p. 1). To avoid this egregious error, the researcher completed a thorough review of the existing research. Research was limited to the English language and to texts available through either the American University (AU) Library (online and in catalog), the

Washington Research Library Consortium (WRLC), and the private libraries of the author and her husband, AU faculty members, and interested members of the Vietnamese American community. Included research came from academic books, peer-reviewed journal articles, government reports and websites, non-governmental organization (NGO) reports and websites, and personal conversations with Vietnamese Americans. Though the researcher did consult

12 memoirs throughout the research, these documents were considered less credible than those described above due to their propensity for poetic license.

The researcher began the literature search with a set of defined Boolean search terms, used to find relevant information across AU’s online holdings, the WRLC’s online holdings, and the internet. Examples of these search terms can be seen below, in Chart 1.1:

TABLE 2.1: BOOLEAN SEARCH TERMS

Boolean Search Terms example list Method Timeframe Location Population Characteristics Situation interview* war* Vietnam* female refugee* econom* case stud* post-war* Viet Nam wom*n migra* work ethnograph* Vietnam War America* gender resettl* labor* review* War in Vietnam United States business* exploitat* communi* entrepreneur* job* 1975 industr*

Table 2.1 includes the list of Boolean search terms used at the beginning of the literature search. Further terms

were used as they were discovered to be relevant to the ongoing research.

These terms, and additional terms that stemmed from this search, were used in various combinations until data saturation was achieved. Upon saturation, the author reviewed each resource for project compatibility and marked the resulting documents for reading. Due to the nature of libraries, some documents were not available when requested and were therefore removed from the reading list. Some books that were not available through either the AU Library or the WRLC’s holding were acquired for the author’s personal library. Further readings were included in the literature reviews based on the suggestions of Dr. Erin Collins and Dr. Vidyamali

Samarasinghe, second reader and chairperson, respectively.

Notes from the above-described literature review were compiled in a single, searchable document from a plethora of handwritten notes and highlights taken by the researcher. These notes focused on relevant theories, statistics, histories, criticisms, interpretations, figures, and other pertinent information. In many cases, the research used a form of the snowball sampling method to add more literature to the review, perusing the references of especially relevant articles and then examining relevant entries (Bryman 2012). This helped to fill any gaps left by the Boolean search method described above.

Field Study Design

The thorough literature review informed the design of the field study. The researcher was particularly influenced by Nathalie Nguyen’s (2009) Memory is Another Country, Yen Le

Espiritu’s (2014) Body Counts, and Eric Tang’s (2015) Unsettled. Each of these works was based on a series of in-depth field interviews conducted by their respective authors. Because the current study aimed to gather rich ethnographic data and discrete information for analysis, semi- structured interviews were used. H. Russell Bernard notes that semi-structured interviews maintain the same “freewheeling quality” of unstructured interviews but are better suited for studies that must follow a close timeframe (2006, p. 212). This was appropriate, as the author had only two weeks to complete her field research. Bernard (2006) also noted that semi- structured interviews allow the researcher the freedom to pursue lines of thought distinct to each respondent without completely losing sight of the interview’s original intentions. This allowed the researcher to ask clarifying questions, help flesh out participants’ stories, and pursue unique lines of thought stemming from the original questions.

The author strove to remain professional and objective, while still maintaining interested body language, when engaging with respondents throughout the interview process. She specifically refrained from asking leading or loaded questions. The author did, however, use probes to enhance the richness of respondents’ narratives, including what Bernard (2006) describes as the “echo” probe, the “uh-huh” probe, and the “tell-me-more” probe (p. 218-219).

The “echo” probe repeats a respondent’s words, or summarizes the gist of their words, to show the interviewer’s understanding of the topic so far. This encourages the respondent to proceed with their narrative. The “uh-huh” probe consists of uttering encouraging sounds to the respondent during their narratives for the same purpose. Both of these probes are considered neutral, expressing interest but not attempting to lead the respondent towards a particular response. The “tell-me-more” probe was used less often in the research, as it is more necessary with quiet and withdrawn participants than it is with participants eager to tell their story (Bernard

2006, p. 219). The women in this sample generally proved to be the latter.

The interview guide (see Appendix A for full document) focused on determining the respondent’s demographics, educational history, work history, and experiences of discrimination.

Reflective, open-ended questions prompted participants to respond to additional issues, such as how they managed their time in order to fulfill the multiple demands of work, family, and leisure, and to consider linkages between the above factors. The interview guide was divided into three parts: a brief introduction to the project and a reminder of the respondent’s rights, a set of demographic and short answer questions, and a set of open-ended questions.

The guide was designed by the researcher to target a specific group: women who were

Vietnamese American, who were refugees from the War in Vietnam, and who had lived in the

U.S. long enough to have an economic history (arbitrarily set at 10 years). To access this

15 population, the researcher narrowed possible study sites down to California, Texas, or the

Washington, D.C., area, as these were considered to have the largest populations of Vietnamese

Americans in the nation (Espiritu 2014). The researcher settled on Houston, Texas, because she had greater personal connections to the Vietnamese American community in that location and felt this would facilitate the field work process. Houston, Texas, is home to the third-largest metro Vietnamese American population in the United States (Phan, Rivera, and Roberts-Wilbur

2005). Most Vietnamese Americans in the area make their home in the northwest part of this city, where the majority of the interviews took place.

Participants in this area were identified through the use of community stakeholders and the snowball effect. The contact process started with a small business owner with whom the author had previous contact, Ms. Thanh Ngan Nguyen (this is a pseudonym, as the stakeholder wished to remain anonymous). Ms. Thanh Ngan Nguyen was active in the community and was able to quickly prepare a list of other stakeholders that might be willing to recruit respondents for the study. She instructed the author to reference her in all initial correspondence with other community stakeholders, thereby lending her credibility in the community to the author. One stakeholder later informed the researcher that she would not have replied to the email had she not seen Ms. Thanh Ngan Nguyen’s name in the first paragraph, stating that Vietnamese Americans rarely trust outsiders with the kind of personal information that this study required.

Letters were drafted to each stakeholder describing the project and asking if they knew any women who would be willing to speak with the researcher, or, if they would be willing to speak with the researcher themselves (see Appendix B for sample document). Stakeholders were initially contacted via email (contacts were provided by Ms. Thanh Ngan Nguyen); each email included a personalized letter from the researcher and a copy of the informed consent document

16 created for this study (see Appendix C for informed consent document). In cases where Ms.

Thanh Ngan Nguyen stated that the recipient was more comfortable with the Vietnamese language, the author attached both the letter and the informed consent document in English and in Vietnamese. Vietnamese language documents were translated directly from the IRB-approved originals. These translations were done by Capt. James H. V. To, a native-level Vietnamese speaker as confirmed in the United States Air Force’s (USAF) Defense Language Proficiency

Test. He was chosen for two reasons. First, he grew up in the Houston, Texas, Vietnamese community and, as result, was able to use his connections to add additional stakeholders to the study. Second, he agreed to do the translations pro bono (though he had little choice in the matter—he is also the researcher’s husband). Capt. To placed an emphasis on expressing the intent of the documents rather than providing a word-for-word translation. Ms. Thanh Ngan

Nguyen reviewed both documents as a second eye and found them to be identical in meaning.

Capt. To further provided translation for approximately nine of the semi-structured interviews conducted in this survey. In each case, the respondent was asked if she was comfortable with

Capt. To’s presence. Each woman stated that she was. However, if a woman had declined his presence, Ms. Thanh Ngan Nguyen would have been asked to step in. Ms. Thanh Ngan Nguyen felt she was not proficient enough in English to be the primary translator, but was willing to be a supporting translator. She ended up being the primary translator for only one interview.

As stated above, contact with additional stakeholders was made by the researcher via email. Upon confirmation that these initial emails had been sent, Ms. Thanh Ngan Nguyen followed up via phone. Interestingly, three stakeholders chose to follow up solely with Ms.

Thanh Ngan Nguyen and had no contact with the researcher until the day of their scheduled interviews. In these cases, Ms. Thanh Ngan Nguyen kept the researcher apprised of

17 developments via telephone and text messaging. Below is a diagram of the web of contacts used to find participants for this study.

TABLE 2.2: WEB OF CONTACTS

Table 2.2 displays the web of contacts used to locate participants for this study. The stakeholders that replied to the researcher’s emails were also those that had a connection to either Ms. Thanh Ngan Nguyen or Capt. To.

One stakeholder was an acquaintance of the translator and responded with interest to both the translator and the researcher. This stakeholder was one of only three that responded to the researcher directly. Three more responded to Ms. Thanh Ngan Nguyen (business owner), and two chose not to respond at all (a Catholic church and a Vietnamese American community center). Because of these non-responses and the avid response of a Buddhist temple, the final sample contained more Buddhists than would normally be found in a Vietnamese American population. Ms. Thanh Ngan Nguyen also contacted four of her personal acquaintances to participate in the study that were not identified through the stakeholder process. The third line of this chart details how many respondents were identified through each stakeholder (Rx = respondents). In two cases, group interactions were possible in lieu of individual interviews.

However, due to time constraints, these group interactions were not included in the data for the final thesis.

It is interesting to note that each stakeholder responded, in some degree, because of their connection to either Ms. Thanh Ngan Nguyen or Capt. To. Every stakeholder contacted solely by the researcher did not respond, lending more credence to the idea that Vietnamese Americans are unlikely to engage with community outsiders unless these outsiders have been vetted by a community member. One stakeholder, also interviewed for this study, corroborated the fact that

Vietnamese Americans were quite skeptical of strangers wanting to hear their life stories. In post-1975 Vietnam, revealing family histories and/or past employments could cause the

Communists to either imprison or discriminate against them, especially if they or their families had once been wealthy or educated. It was clear that the author only become privy to these women’s histories because of her connection with Ms. Thanh Ngan Nguyen and Capt. To.

The author kept a comprehensive field journal to record interview notes (such as facial expressions or gestures not captured by the microphone) and details observed while visiting the

Houston, Texas, Vietnamese American community. These observations were later used to help interpret data and to track cultural factors that closely impacted the field work. One of the more important notes was told to the author by Ms. Thanh Ngan Nguyen. It regarded the polite practice of bringing small gifts (usually fruit or sweets) when visiting someone’s home or place of business. This was generally expected when one was visiting for the purpose of receiving something (i.e., an interview). To maintain goodwill with the community on behalf of Ms. Thanh

Ngan Nguyen, Capt. To, and herself, the researcher brought fruit pies to each house or place of business where an interview was conducted. This was not considered necessary for women who

19 came to Ms. Thanh Ngan Nguyen’s home or place of business for their interviews, nor was it considered necessary at the Buddhist temple.

Discussion of Field Study

The reality of the field study was full of both challenges and benefits. Once challenge that became apparent early in the study was the bias of the snowball sampling method towards women who had already been deemed “successful” by their community. According Bernard

(2006), snowball sampling depends entirely on the ability of participants to recommend others to the study. In large populations such as the female Vietnamese refugees and migrants in the

Houston, Texas, area, this method can lead to an over-inclusion of well-known or prominent individuals. In other terms, because the stakeholders knew this study would be one of the first of its kind to be published, the researcher speculates that these women sought to “manage” readers’ perceptions of Vietnamese American women as a group by, consciously or unconsciously, suggesting potential participants to the researcher that they considered to be examples of economic success. While this may be a limitation to the external validity of the sample, it also provided a unique look into how female Vietnamese Americans wished to be viewed.

Another challenge of the field study was triangulating the information that women gave in their narratives. Only three women offered supporting documentation to the researcher. One of these was a female judge who presented the researcher with items such as the announcement for her oath of office ceremony and an article that had been written about her achievements and that gave a summary of her life story. These documents were helpful in verifying her timeline of events. Another woman brought her family’s photo album to her interview and was able to show

20 the researcher images of the family members and friends she’d mentioned in her narrative. A third woman gave the researcher a copy of her memoir as corroboration.

In the sixteen remaining interviews, triangulation was much more difficult. No corroborating information was offered, and the researcher was left to conduct comparisons with historical online data and to map out each narrative’s timeline to ensure that ages, dates, and historical events lined up. For the most part, they did. There were two instances where the date of birth, age at immigration, and date of immigration conflicted. In these cases, the date of birth (of which the women were more confident than they were of their age at immigration) was subtracted from the date of immigration to attain the final age used in further calculations.

Further attempts to ensure the accuracy of narrative timelines included probing questions such as

“How long after [narrative event] did you start this job?” or, after being given the birth dates of children (which were easily recalled by most women), “Had your second child been born by the time you are describing?” Comparing the responses to these questions with the general timeline given by the women allowed the researcher to ensure some degree of cohesive validity in the narratives.

As is expected in a sample of nineteen, some women disagreed in their explanations of certain cultural phenomena. Wherever this occurred, this thesis presents both views and, if applicable, gives data on the number of women supporting each view. Disagreements among the sample were seen to enrich the narrative data instead of detracting from it, as contradicting opinions provided insight into the complexity of the culture.

A benefit to this study was the way it allowed participants to share their stories without fear of repercussion. Standard anonymity protections for the women in this study included the elimination of any identifiable data in the published account (information that could be used to

21 determine the respondent’s true identity). To maintain cohesive narratives, however, fake

Vietnamese names were assigned to each woman in a randomized order. To do this, the researcher used a random number generator to assign a number to each interview transcript. She then used a random name generator to assign female Vietnamese names to each narrative. In this way, the researcher is positive that there is no connection between the names used in this thesis and the women’s true identities. For the majority of women, anonymity was a large concern.

Because of their experiences in Communist Vietnam, they feared what may happen to relatives still living in Vietnam if their narratives became known in that country. Not all of their activities in post-1975 Vietnam were considered legal at the time and the majority of the women offered criticisms of the regime in their narratives.

Data Analysis

Data came from ethnographic field notes, collected documents, and transcriptions of recorded interviews and group interactions. Transcriptions were completed by the researcher using the Dragon Professional speech recognition program—no other individual (aside from participant-approved translators) were privy to the women’s full information. Non-narrative data was pulled from the transcriptions and entered into an Excel spreadsheet, which was used by the researcher to create descriptive statistics of the sample as a whole and to quickly reference highlights from each narrative. Data was coded by the randomized number associated with each interview.

TABLE 2.3: THEMATIC NODES IN NARATIVE DATA

Table 2.3 displays the initial nodes located in the narrative data and their connections to the economic process.

Narrative data was analyzed using the grounded theory approach, where repetitive themes and occurrences in the narratives are coded and grouped together to create coherent theories and concepts (Miles and Huberman 1994). This was accomplished with NVivo software. Chart 2.3, above, displays the initial nodes located in the narrative data and their connections to the economic process. Two nodes are not attached to the main diagram (Family and Social); this indicates that they are pervasive throughout the process and can be thought of as being linked to every other node featured in the main diagram.

The organization of these nodes determined the outline of this thesis. Chapter Three discusses the economic loss and opportunities that the women experienced both before and during the immigration process. This encompasses the nodes of Communism, Poverty, Violence,

Immigration, and, to a degree, Discrimination. Chapter Four discusses the women’s economic pathways after resettlement in the United States and encompasses the Resettlement and

Employment nodes. It also draws from the Discrimination and Education nodes. However, these

23 last two were seen to be significant topics on their own. Both Discrimination and Education greatly influenced the women’s views on employment and their chosen economic pathways. As a result, these nodes are addressed in Chapters Five and Six, respectively. The final chapter of this thesis focuses on the overall conclusions of this study and offers insight into its implications for

U.S. refugee policies. The nodes listed at the bottom of Chart 2.3 were not included in this thesis, as they were determined to have little overall effect on how and why women engaged in their economic pathways.

Demographics of the Sample

Between 1975 and 2005, 600,000 Vietnamese entered the U.S. as refugees, out of an estimated 1.6 million international refugees that had escaped Vietnam (Phan, Rivera, and

Roberts-Wilbur 2005). In 2015, an estimated 1.98 million Vietnamese Americans resided in the

United States; 64 percent of this population are reported to be foreign-born (Lopez, Cilluffo, and

Patten 2017). 76 percent of Vietnamese Americans have lived in the United States for more than ten years.

This study examined the lives of nineteen female Vietnamese refugees. Participants were an average of 29.68 years old when they left the country (median: 29 years; mode: 32 and 38 years [bimodal]; range: 5 – 58 years). Five women (26.32 percent) left Vietnam in 1975 and thirteen women (68.42 percent) spent time in communist Vietnam and left in or after 1976.

These thirteen women averaged 13.46 years living in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (median:

15 years; mode: 4 years; range: 3 – 30 years). Among the women, they averaged 34.35 years of life experience in the United States (median: 39 years; mode: 39 years; range: 8 – 49 years). At

24 the time of interview, the average age of the participants was 65.11 years (median: 67 years; mode: 67 and 69 years [bimodal]; range: 45 – 85 years).

All women in the sample were former residents of the RVN (South Vietnam) at the time of immigration and fled, either directly or indirectly, because of the Vietnam War. Seventeen women in the sample (89.47 percent) identified as the Kinh/Viet ethnicity (the largest ethnic group in Vietnam, which reportedly makes up 87 percent of the total Vietnamese population)

(Vietnam Embassy n.d.). The remaining two women (10.53 percent) identified as Vietnamese of

Chinese descent. Roughly two-thirds of the women claimed the Buddhist faith (63.16 percent), a little less than one-third identified as Roman Catholic Christians (31.58 percent), and one woman identified as having no religion (5.26 percent).

The majority of women hailed from urban areas (17 women; 89.47 percent); of these seventeen women, thirteen came from Saigon (later Ho Chi Minh City) or immediate surrounding areas. Six urban women (31.58 percent) came from elsewhere in southern Vietnam: one each from Thu Thiem, Vinh Luong, Ba Ria, Bien Hoa, Da Nang, and Kien Giang. Only two women reported coming from a rural area (10.53 percent).

Only four women chose to describe their parents’ educational levels. Of the mothers described, one was a high school graduate, two had four-year college degrees, and one had a master’s degree. Of the fathers, one was a high school graduate, one had some college, one had a four-year college degree, and one had a juris doctorate. The parents of participants could be roughly divided into the following categories of employment: business owners, military, education, medical, clerical, financial, factory workers, farm workers, retail workers, and homemakers. Participants’ parents appeared to be primarily employed as small business owners.

The following chart breaks down parental occupations by gender and employment type.

TABLE 2.4: PARENTS’ OCCUPATIONS

Parents' Occupations Industry Female Male Business Owner 6 5 Military N/A 3 Medical N/A 1 Clerical 1 N/A Financial 1 1 Retail 2 1 Farming 3 3 Factory 1 1 Homemaking 1 N/A *Missing Data 3 3

Table 2.4 depicts the occupations of the female participants’ parents by gender.

In this case, it is important to note that slightly more female parents were business owners than male parents. Most parental dyads that owned businesses were referred to as co-owners by the study’s participants, save for one mother that owned a sewing business while her husband was employed in the military. Interestingly, the members of twelve parental dyads were employed in the same industry as their spouses. Of the remaining seven dyads, three had military fathers

(whose wives engaged in retail, business ownership, or homemaking), one was a teacher

(female) / nurse (male) dyad, and three dyads were missing employment information.

Of the twelve women who fled Vietnam as adults (defined as being over the age of eighteen) and chose to supply their pre-immigration educational data, only two (16.67 percent) had not received a high school diploma. Four women had graduated from high school with no additional education (33.33 percent) and six women (50 percent) had received at least some college while living in Vietnam. Of these six women, one reported completing one year of college, one reported completing four years of college (but fled before completing the final courses needed to graduate), two received associate degrees, and two received bachelor’s

26 degrees. No women in the sample reported seeking technical or vocational training while living in Vietnam.

Of the fifteen women who were above the age of eighteen when they fled Vietnam, thirteen (86.67 percent) were married when they fled. There were no underage marriages recorded in this sample. At the time of immigration, thirteen of the fifteen (86.67 percent) adult women were mothers; however, these were not entirely the same thirteen women who were married at the time of immigration. The sample contained one woman who was married at the time of immigration, but without children, and one woman who had a child at the time of immigration but was unmarried. At the time they left Vietnam, the thirteen mothers averaged

2.08 children per woman (median: 2; mode: 1; range: 0 – 5). This average was higher than the

1975 U.S. national average of 1.86 live births per woman, but much lower than the 1975 average of 5.97 children per woman in Vietnam (Global Change Data Lab 2017).

These numbers increased when looking at women who married at some point in their lives (including while in the United States) and that ever gave birth to a child. Seventeen (89.47 percent) women of the total sample married at some point in their lives and eighteen (94.74 percent) women were mothers at the time of interview. These eighteen women averaged 2.94 children per person (median: 3; mode: 3; range: 0 – 5). This was higher than the Global Change

Data Lab’s last recorded year (2015) in both the United States and Vietnam, where the average live births per woman were 1.87 and 1.96, respectively.

CHAPTER 3:

“IF A LAMP POST HA[D] LEGS, IT WOULD MOVE TOO”

(PRE-IMMIGRATION ECONOMIC PATHWAYS)

Introduction

Most Vietnamese American women’s struggles for survival began on April 30th, 1975, the day the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) surrendered unconditionally to the North Vietnamese

Army (NVA) (Hastings 2018). More commonly known as the fall of Saigon, April 30th and the preceding days were characterized by bombings, looming tanks, looting, and utter chaos. For sympathizers of the RVN that hadn’t yet fled the country, the fall of Saigon represented not only a change in regime, but drastic shifts in status, wealth, occupation, and even life expectancy.

Women whose husbands, brothers, fathers, or sons had participated in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), who had been ranking political figures in the RVN, or had been part of the

Vietnamese intelligentsia were particularly at risk in the post-fall era (Nguyen 2009). Families were ripped apart by the chaos and the Communists—mothers and fathers were rounded up for reeducation camps and forced to labor in the regime’s New Economic Zones (NEZs). High- ranking members of the South Vietnamese military and government system fled for their lives or faced execution by firing squad (Espiritu 2014). Writers, artists, and intellectuals were arrested and sent to reeducation camps (Ibid.). Some South Vietnamese committed suicide, unable to see their beloved country fall under Communist rule and face the loss of their homeland. Children were shuffled around to their closest relatives for care, sometimes staying with grandparents or going to live with aunts and uncles. Some were eventually reunited with their parents; some never saw them again.

Nathalie Nguyen, in Memory is Another Country (2009), described how educated women, the women in the military auxiliaries and medical corps, the wives of government officials, and politically outspoken women were in as much danger as their male counterparts.

The class-based and status-based discrimination instituted in post-1975 Vietnam, however, affected more than the just the generation who had been active in supporting the South

Vietnamese government. One person’s actions or beliefs could endanger more than just themselves. One participant in this study, Do Mai Nguyet, recalled being asked to record the prior three generations of her family for the new Communist government:

The Communists asked me for three generations. Not only just, ‘What are you doing?’ but ‘What [are] your grandparents doing?’ and ‘What [are] your parents?’…And I was labeled as the blood thief of the people. I am like a people’s bloodsucker, you know? To have such a nice home, to own such a high status in the society… There’s no bourgeois class in Communist countries, so, any bourgeois are, you know, they are imperialists and the slave[s] of the Americans. And, so, that[’s] why not only me, but all my friends, and my colleagues, and all of us could find no job. [Not] even labor job. Any job that, if they require some paperwork, as soon as they find out that, oh, you know, your husband is in reeducation camps, then that’s it. That is disqualifying. The children couldn’t be in school because they have a father in the reeducation camp.

Do Mai Nguyet and her husband hadn’t worked for the military or the government to earn their time in reeducation camps. Instead, they had both been war reporters, darting through the front lines of the Vietnam War to bring back news to the South Vietnamese people. It was their journalism, and its obvious bias against the NVA, that made them enemies of the new

Communist regime after the fall of Saigon. Other families, to prevent this sort of persecution, destroyed all records of identification and family history (Nguyen 2009).

None of the other women in this study held positions as visible to the public eye as Do

Mai Nguyet. The majority of them did, however, embody both the most common vision of

Vietnamese war refugees, and the general targets of the new regime, as “typically educated professionals with some Western exposure” (Marino 1998, p. 92).

Getting by in Post-1975 Vietnam

Over one million men and women were rounded up by the Democratic Republic of

Vietnam (DRV) and forced into re-education camps. There, they were made to write out

‘confessions’ denouncing their support of the RVN, received little nutrition, were often ill, and could be beaten for any perceived non-compliance (Hastings 2018; Nguyen 2009). Many prisoners died while incarcerated. Of the 19 women interviewed for this study, four had personally experienced incarceration in reeducation camps—one as a political prisoner for two months, two as forced laborers in NEZs, and the fourth as an inmate at a work/reeducation camp.

None of the four chose to elaborate on these experiences while being interviewed and instead preferred to gloss over these emotionally charged periods of their lives. This is likely due to a classic symptom of posttraumatic stress disorder: the avoidance of memories that might cause flashbacks to traumatic and disturbing times (American Psychiatric Association 2013). In

Memory is Another Country, author Nathalie Nguyen (2009) also reported observing this and other symptoms in her interviewees. Tellingly, Nguyen discussed what she, through her interviews, began to perceive as common features of re-education camps: inmates were told they would only remain for a short time, were never told the exact duration of their stay, were regularly shifted from one camp to another, and were typically isolated from any news from the outside world (2009). New Economic Zones, however, were more similar to the communes used

30 by the Khmer Rouge in the Cambodian genocide. Rural inhabitants and select city dwellers

(read: the bourgeoisie class and other “blood thie[ves] of the people”) were forced to work in government-mandated agricultural sectors within certain areas of Vietnam. In contrast to the official government rhetoric of the time, participants in this study and those in studies by

Freeman (1989), Nguyen (2009), and Espiritu (2014), did not remember these zones as places where “nobody [was] forced to go” or where “thousands of volunteers—scholars, teachers, lawyers, university and college students and people from other walks of life—c[a]me to work in…during their holidays” (Chandola 1977, p. 83). Instead, former residents of NEZs tended to recall back-breaking labor, scarce resources, and being separated from family members.

Two of the four women who experienced incarceration/forced labor also shared another similarity: both of their husbands were also incarcerated in separate re-education camps at the same time they were. Ho Thanh Chau, the above woman who was sent to a work camp, waited

19 years for her husband to be released from a reeducation camp. Upon his release, they immediately immigrated to the United States under the Orderly Departure Program’s

Homecoming Operation (H-O), an agreement between the United States and the Socialist

Republic of Vietnam (VN) that allowed former reeducation camp detainees to become American citizens (Office of the Spokesman 2005; Warnock 2000). Ho Thanh Chau found it difficult to talk about those nineteen years in Vietnam, but her struggle for economic survival during that time is similar to that of many other southern Vietnamese women. Upon her release from the reeducation school and for the remainder of her husband’s incarceration, Ho Thanh Chau moved back in with her parents, became a single mother of three children, and engaged in the petty retail of small items to help her family survive.

Her parents had previously owned and operated a rice processing plant, but it was confiscated by the new government soon after the fall of Saigon, as was the family house. “They took everything,” Ho Thanh Chau said through her translator, adding that her “family was targeted from beginning to end” because of how profitable her parents’ business had been. She recalled being left in such poverty under the Communist regime that both she and her children became malnourished. Without enough food, she couldn’t produce milk for her baby; without reliable income, she couldn’t afford formula. Instead, she squeezed the juice from bananas and mixed it with a little bit of sugar to feed her infant. Ho Thanh Chau considered escaping the country with just her children to give them a better life, but her husband (who she brought supplemental food and medicine when she could manage) threatened suicide if she stopped visiting him in the reeducation camp.

For the necessary income to support her children and husband, Ho Thanh Chau became a street seller, selling whatever was available at the time: coffee, sugarcane, etc. She recalled that members of the NVA would come up to her cart and take whatever fruits, vegetables, or items they wanted without paying her, knowing that there was no way she could fight back. She had no legal or protective recourses because of how the government had labeled her middle-class

(bourgeois) family and because her husband was being “reeducated” for having been an officer in the ARVN. Because, as Do Mai Nguyet discussed in the introduction to this chapter, the

Socialist Republic of Vietnam severely limited the economic resources and opportunities to

“blood thie[ves] of the people”, there were often no other options besides becoming street sellers or engaging in ‘petty retail’. ‘Petty retail’, in this paper, refers to the selling of small goods or food items from a cart or home and is a term meant to reduce possible confusion between those who sold goods/items on the streets and those who sold sex in the same locations.

Of the nine other adult women who fled to the U.S. after 1975 and had the opportunity to work for an income (i.e., were not incarcerated right up until their departure), four more found petty retail to be their best option for supporting themselves and their families. These women sold whatever items or goods they could find or make. Do Mai Nguyet recalled the following:

In Vietnam, after 1975…the winners came from the north. And the north was almost destroyed by the war. They were very, very poor. They had no things. So, after 1975, they came south and they tried to buy everything we had. Just, like, the window drapes [could] help feed me and my baby for two days…when I had nothing else to sell, I just take half of my roof, my house roof, the brick[s], to sell it. Yeah. Anything. They would buy anything. And that’s how we survived in the first year after the fall.

Another woman, Duong Thuy Truc, remembered selling handmade soap and homemade meals and offering sewing services out of her home. She was able to earn an income because many people in those days would “go around…in the neighborhood…purchas[ing] at your house” for the goods they needed. Duong Thuy Truc saw this as a way to augment her husband’s meager income. Though he had worked for the South Vietnamese government before the fall of

Saigon, the new regime had still needed lower-level clerical and accounting employees to keep things running smoothly in the city. As such, her husband had not been fired when the

Communists came. However, Duong Thuy Truc stated that, “the money they pay [him] for the whole month, we could spend that for our family just about two or three days. That’s it.” Her husband’s income had fallen significantly with the change in regime, which had prompted

Duong Thuy Truc to engage in petty retail and the provision of sewing services.

Two of the women who engaged in petty retail also reported receiving gifts from their parents who had immigrated to the United States before them. Gifts with high resale values were

33 sent instead of cash due to a high incidence of “missing mail” that occurred after 1975.

Participants in this study asserted that gifts of money rarely arrived at their doorsteps, believing that bundles of cash were easily spotted in the mail and then stolen by government agents checking for banned items (which could include anti-government propaganda, western literature, pornography, etc.). Physical gifts intended for resale were a more reliable source of income, as it was believed that government agents would be less likely to steal things that required resale to turn a profit. This was thought to be because smuggling items out of their offices and into the community required much more effort and stealth than such officers were willing to impart for these (often) small sums.

Rather than physical gifts, Ly Thi Thom recalled receiving remittances from the father of her child. They’d met during her six years in a refugee camp and become a de facto family unit before their Malaysian camp closed its doors and shipped them back to Vietnam in the mid-

1990s. The man had apparently left a both children and a wife in Vietnam and quickly immigrated with them to the United States upon his return. Despite this, he regularly sent remittances to Ly Thi Thom to help support her and their son. Later, he divorced his first wife and married Ly Thi Thom and helped her, and their son, immigrate to the United States in 2005.

These remittances were helpful, but not enough to cover living costs. For a few years, Ly Thi

Thom became a retail “middleman”, where she would purchase cheap children’s clothing in Ho

Chi Minh City (nee Saigon), and then resell it at higher prices in Kien Giang, a rural location in

Vietnam. However, she found that the constant traveling made it difficult for her to prepare for her immigration interview (this was required to prove her marriage was legitimate and not a farce to gain U.S. citizenship). Instead, she decided to work in the black market with a business partner. Together, they established a lottery system, where her business partner would sell lottery

34 tickets in Ho Chi Minh City while Ly Thi Thom kept the books managed the accounting. It was a fairly lucrative endeavor until the business partner died of cancer, which prompted Li Thi Thom to abandon the scheme and rely more fully on her husband’s remittances.

Five of the ten women who remained in Vietnam after 1975 have thus far been described above as engaging in petty retail and/or receiving gifts or remittances from expatriates. A sixth woman reported that her large family had been split up into NEZs and work camps when the

Communists took over and that she’d sought passage to the U.S. after re-gathering some of her family members. She paid for her family’s immigration, and her time waiting for their releases, with gold jewelry that she and other family members had kept hidden through years in captivity.

The last four of the ten adult women who worked in post-1975 Vietnam were able to keep their original occupations under the new regime. These four women included two seamstresses, an accountant, and an electrician. Notedly, none of these occupations were considered to be related to the military, the former RVN government, or the United States; neither were they considered to be a part of the intelligentsia. This is likely why their careers remained largely unaffected by the new government. Of the five women described above who did lose their jobs after the fall of Saigon and Ho Thanh Chau, one had been a journalist, one a teacher, one a university student, two had been successful business owners, and one had supported her grandparents’ successful business. These occupations, unfortunately, fell into at least one of the several categories of employments that the new government felt threatened by: the media, the intelligentsia, or the bourgeois property owners. As a result, these women had been forced to seek alternative forms of employment.

TABLE 3.1: PRE- AND POST-1975 VOLUNTARY EMPLOYMENT

Pre- and Post-1975 Voluntary Employment Re-education Camp or New Participant Name Former Occupation New Occupation Economic Zone? Ngo Xuyen No electrician * Nguyen Hong Diep Yes bus. owner N/A Do Mai Nguyet Yes journalist petty retail Ho Thanh Chau Yes teacher petty retail Dao Tam Thu No accountant * Ho Thi Hue No seamstress * Duong Thuy Truc No student petty retail Nguyen Thi Tran No seamstress * Vu Thi Lanh Yes bus. owner petty retail Ly Thi Thom No fam. business petty retail * indicates that new occupation is the same as former occupation

Table 3.1 lists the ten women who continued to live in Vietnam after 1975 and were of working age. The figure describes whether each woman spent time incarcerated/in forced labor and details their pre- and post-1975 occupations.

However, even retaining the same employment was not a guard against increased poverty. Dao Tham Thu, an accountant, found that her post-1975 salary was no longer enough to feed her family. She, too, resorted to petty retail as a side endeavor, though it was not her primary source of income as it had been for the five women described above.

Bartering and Selling in Refugee Camps

Of the eighteen women who chose to discuss their stories of immigration, fifteen spent time in at least one refugee camp. Five of the women spent time in more than one refugee camp on their way to, and within, the United States. These women lived in one or more of seven different nations: the United States (5 women), Malaysia (5 women), Guam (4 women), Thailand

(4 women), Indonesia (2 women), the Philippines (2 women), and Singapore (1 woman). The

36 camps located in the United States included the following: Fort Chaffee in Arkansas (three women), Fort Indiantown Gap in Pennsylvania (one woman), and Camp Pendleton in California

(one woman). These women spent an average of 7.9 months (median: 2.25 months, mode: 11 months, range: one day to 72 months) in refugee camps.

All refugee camps had certain facets in common: they provided food, shelter, childcare necessities, health care, and hygiene products to refugees at no cost (Malcolm 1975). However, the camps were, more often than not, filled to overcapacity with refugees (Nguyen 2009; Nguyen

2014). At first, refugees were housed in formally built, permanent structures intended for the specific purpose of housing them. However, after heavy influxes of refugees (particularly after the fall of Saigon), these permanent structures gave way to hastily erected tent cities where overcrowding, poor hygiene, and diseases became major concerns. As Paul Collier and

Alexander Betts note, an assumption of impermanent nature of camps led to the construction of schools, housing, and other facilities at “an unacceptably low standard” (2018, p. 137). Despite this, many refugee camps have managed to exist for decades. The “external provision of food, clothing, and shelter is absolutely essential in the aftermath of having to run for your life”, the authors also noted, “[b]ut over time, if it is provided as a substitute for access to jobs, education, and other opportunities, humanitarian aid soon undermines human dignity and autonomy” (2018, p. 136). As Yen Le Espiritu (2014) noted, the lack of human dignity in the refugee camps of the

Vietnam War often led to thefts, muggings, rapes, and even murders between refugees. Young women were particularly at risk of sexual violence. A lack of resources further led to poor nutrition, hygiene, and health outcomes, each of which was reported by various women in the current study. Mothers, specifically, often remembered trying their best to overcome the malnutrition and illnesses of their children with the limited resources of the camp. In some cases,

37 according to Yen Le Espiritu (2014), this led refugees to establish small businesses to both provide a basic income and serve the needs of the camp community; these could include “bakery shops, tailor shops, fruit stands, small markets, and even discos and bars” (p. 74). The establishment of these types of microbusinesses was not always legal, however, and some refugees turned to illegal activities to help support their families. One woman in this sample, discussed below, engaged in illegal petty retail simply so that her young son, born in the refugee camp, could taste fresh fruit for the first time.

While living in refugee camps, the women in this study specifically recalled being hungry, being reduced to a “primitive” existence, being fearful of crime perpetrated by camp workers and other refugees, not having enough medicine for their children, and severe overcrowding. Ly Thi Thom, who stayed in refugee camps longer than any other woman in the sample (72 months) and ran the illegal lottery system described in the above section, recalled the conditions of a Malaysian camp she once occupied. She stated (via translator) that “twenty people live[d] together” in an 8’ x 8’ room, where “there was no doors, no windows, nothing was closed, [and] everything was open [sic]”. She also recalled, via translator, her son’s malnutrition and her illegal efforts to provide him with a more varied diet:

So, [the refugees] couldn’t cook, everything was provided to them, you know, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But you couldn’t cook at all…so, when she was making the sticky rice to sell, which was also illegal because they didn’t allow that…the money she earned was in secret. Yeah. It was really just for her son…[who] didn’t have, like, adequate food…he didn’t know what fruit was.

Ly Thi Thom further affirmed, “because my son so little, I need to buy some food for him to eat…I need to do that [sic]”. Because of her illegal economic activities, she recalled running

38 from the camp police on several occasions. Eventually, however, she was arrested for cooking and selling her sticky rice just outside the refugee camp to both locals and fellow refugees. As punishment, the camp authorities placed her on parole for a month and required her to attend regular check-ins with the camp’s officers. She was, however, able to buy fresh fruit for her son for a short period of time before her arrest.

Another respondent, Nguyen Hong Diep, used her experiences as a former pharmacy owner to earn money while in a refugee camp, which was also located in Malaysia. Nguyen

Hong Diep wrote to a friend in France and was able to purchase 4-5 large boxes of medications and have them shipped to her. While she kept some of these medicines for her family, she sold the majority to fellow refugees who were unable to get appropriate care at the camp’s swamped medical facilities. Nguyen Hong Diep saw the overcrowded and under-resourced nature of refugee camps as an opportunity for her specific skill set. However, she also sold some of the jewelry she had brought from Vietnam to augment the income she earned from selling medications. Through both endeavors, she was able to improve the living standard of her family and prepare herself financially for eventual resettlement in the United States.

Another woman, who was only seven years old at the time she escaped from Vietnam, recalled her father doing something similar for extra food and money during their time in a refugee camp. Her father had been a registered nurse in Vietnam and, once in the refugee camp, offered his services to Vietnamese families who either did not trust the camp’s medical services or could not access them due to overcrowding and the camp’s lack of resources. He didn’t charge exorbitant prices however, because he understood that no one in the camp had money to waste.

To augment this income, the participant recalled her father receiving dried foodstuffs, including beans and noodles, from friends and family already living abroad.

Long-Term Implications

Although the re-education camps, forced labor experiences, and refugee camp struggles ended when the respondents were able to immigrate to the United States, their long-term effects did not. One of the more obvious results of these experiences is post-traumatic stress disorder

(PTSD) (American Psychiatric Association 2013). Both the physical and emotional stress experienced as a result of the war leaves imprints on the bodies and minds of refugees, sometimes even dictating the paths their economic lives would take in the United States (Herman

1997; Van Der Kolk 2015). According to Yen Le Espiritu (2014), the high levels of somatic and psychological stress that refugees experienced in camps often continued, undiminished, for at least one full year into resettlement before subsiding into chronic post-traumatic symptoms.

Traditional symptoms of PTSD can include hypervigilance, insomnia, nightmares, flashbacks, agitation, aggression, and avoidance behaviors (American Psychiatric Association 2013).

Respondents reported symptoms in various ways, including descriptions of suicidal ideation, a lack of hope, and a lingering fear of the government. Still others refused to speak about their experiences in Vietnam at all, a classic avoidance behavior. During the interviews, women often began crying as they talked about the struggles they endured in Vietnam. Nguyen Hong Diep for example, suffered depression upon first arriving in the United States, both because of her previous experiences in Vietnam and the difficulty of adjusting to a new life. At one point, her daughter offered to provide for her so that Nguyen Hong Diep could take some time off for mental health. Some participants could not recall past events in Vietnam without re-experiencing extraordinarily heightened levels of stress and fear, as the memory of these emotions were so engrained in their psyche. These flashbacks occurred regularly in interviews where women chose to speak about their time in post-1975 Vietnam.

However, the lingering effects of the Vietnam War were felt by more than just the women themselves; the trauma of several women’s husbands also affected the women’s career paths. Tran Xuan Thu, who immigrated at a young age in 1979 and was able to observe each successive wave of immigration from Vietnam to the United States, recalled of the men who had been political prisoners:

There was another wave, I think in the ‘90s, of people who were just released from reeducation camps. And so, they had a harder time because they were, you know, imprisoned. And then, when they got out, they were older, and, you know, and they were in military. I don’t know if they knew…how to translate those trades or those skills into anything else once they came to the U.S. So, I think they may have had a harder time. So, I think people need[ed] different types of help depending on, you know, the circumstance that made them come here, you know, their job or what they were used to, you know, before they came [to the U.S.].

Ho Thanh Chau, whose husband was incarcerated in a re-education camp for nineteen years, said that symptoms of PTSD severely limited her husband’s life in the United States. In her view,

“he was not there” anymore. He had become a shell of his former self after so many years of abuse and neglect at the hands of the Communist regime. Her husband was unable to work again after his release because of intrusive trauma symptoms and, within a few years of his immigration, passed away due to illness. Ho Thanh Chau, however, was no stranger to being the sole household provider by this point. She’d already raised her children by herself for nineteen years while making frequent trips to her husband’s re-education camp to provide him with additional food and medicine. She was used to bearing the dual roles of nurturer and economic provider. Caring and providing for her husband in the United States was easier than it had been in Vietnam—at least in the U.S., she stated in her interview, she could be close to him and have

41 support from her older children. She could also ensure he received appropriate medical care.

Caretaking and nursing, however, was more than simply an important life skill for Ho Thanh

Chau. It was a passion that she’d never been able to pursue during her life in Vietnam. In the

U.S., however, she eventually became a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) and was able to spend her last working years in that field.

For Vu Thi Lanh, however, her husband’s time in a re-education camp affected their lives in America quite differently. She recalled that her husband nearly died in the camp because of an untreated stomach ailment combined with malnutrition; she believes he survived only because she was able to bring him extra food through several long, perilous, cross-country journeys to his facility. Her husband ended up being incarcerated for a total of twelve years as a result of his prior employment with the RVN’s intelligence. However, instead of retreating within himself to deal with possible PTSD, as Ho Thanh Chau’s husband had done, Vu Thi Lanh’s husband asked his wife not to work in the US and to let him provide for her. She recalled:

I stayed home because my husband said my life was too difficult in Vietnam. He should work instead. My husband and my children didn’t want me to work…Him and [our] children would work to sustain our family. Honestly, I wanted to work to help supplement our incomes and to send money back to my family in Vietnam…I really wanted to help them, but I couldn’t.

Vu Thi Lanh waited fifteen years before seeking permanent employment in the United States because of her husband’s wishes. Eventually, however, she found employment anyway. She became an employee at her brother’s wholesale business, where she “cleaned vegetables and helped with the cashier.”

Overall, the analyses contained in this chapter show that the Vietnamese American women in this study survived tragedy, heightened stress, malnutrition, and violence in the forms of the re-education camps, New Economic Zones, and refugee camps that characterized their lives after the Vietnam War. Despite this, they remained resilient and resourceful enough to be ever on the lookout for ways to improve the living standards of their families. For those who remained in Vietnam post-1975, this often included starting microbusinesses or conducting petty retail to earn much-needed income. For those who spent long stretches of time in refugee camps, similar entrepreneurial activities were undertaken. However, these endeavors were not always protected by law enforcement or entirely legal. In some cases, these activities put the women who undertook them at risk of violence, theft (as with Ho Thanh Chau, whose cart was routinely targeted by soldiers), or incarceration (as with Ly Thi Thom, who sold sticky rice in a Malaysian refugee camp).

CHAPTER 4: “THEY’VE ALREADY GIVEN UP EVERYTHING…WHAT DO THEY HAVE TO LOSE?”

(AMERICAN ECONOMIC PATHWAYS)

Introduction

In her 2001 seminal work Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, Barbara

Ehrenreich details her anthropological study on how women were (not) able to get by on minimum wage earnings in the United States. Poverty, she concluded, was inescapable at minimum wage. Payments for rent, transportation, food, insurance, communication devices, and other necessities often exceeded income, even if a person worked overtime or for more than one employer. The physical demands of low-wage work and the lack of fiscal access to healthy diet options produced adverse health effects, increased bodily stress, and decreased mental health outcomes. Immigrants faced even harder times, Ehrenreich asserted, because being white- skinned and fluent in English were both assets for the working poor.

According to Yen Le Espiritu (2014), the poverty rate of Vietnamese refugees and

Vietnamese Americans has consistently been higher than the national average (i.e., 25 percent vs. 12 percent in 1990). Data gathered at the last census in 2010, however, shows that this gap has been tightening in recent decades and that poverty rates are now almost identical for

Vietnamese Americans and the general population: 14.7 percent vs. 14.3 percent, respectively

(Macartney, Bishaw, and Fontenot 2013). Despite this encouraging trend, real, abject poverty was a stark reality for many Vietnamese refugees and immigrants upon first entering the United

States.

According to the ethnographic survey conducted for this study, every respondent recalled experiences of poverty upon arrival. Because of the suddenness of the fall of Saigon, few

44 families or individuals were truly prepared to start a new life in a distant country (Freeman 1989;

Nguyen 2009). They often left Vietnam with only a small amount of family jewelry, a little food, and a few extra changes of clothes. In some cases, such as with Pham Thi Thu Trang, female refugees fled with nothing more than the clothes on their backs and a single a single set of extra clothing. For reference, Pham Thi Thu Trang had been separated from her family during the bombing of Saigon and had sought refuge on a ship in the harbor. Though she’d intended to simply wait out the assault and then return to the family home, the ship immediately set sail to

Guam upon the unexpected fall of the city. She was only seventeen years old.

Before being allowed to live in the U.S., all Vietnamese refugees had to have sponsors— groups, organizations, employment firms, or families that were willing to help them through resettlement (Kantor and Einhorn 2016; Nguyen 2014). Prior to 1975, private agencies (mostly religious) had largely taken care of refugee resettlement concerns; with the massive influx of refugees in April and May of 1975 and after, the U.S. government provided stipends to any family or group willing to become a sponsor (Kantor and Einhorn 2016). In 1980, sponsorship once again became a professionalized task and only direct blood relatives could act as independent sponsors for new refugees.

Most Vietnamese refugees (around 75 percent) were sponsored by individual families that did not require immediate employment (Nguyen 2014; Parsons and Vezina 2018). Those that were sponsored by churches were often cared for by donations of time, money, and supplies from various church members. In this study, there was mention of only one family (a younger participant’s parents) that was sponsored by an employment firm and was immediately given employment upon arrival. This left the majority of refugees to find jobs through social networks or hiring agencies. In the current research, however, it was most common for female refugees

45 and migrants to find employment with the help of a family member who had already entered the labor force. Relatives often felt obligated to help poorer or less experienced family members find employment because of the strong kinship structure present in Vietnamese culture (Wang,

Creswell, and Nguyen 2017). Siblings appeared to be the most likely to aid each other. This is in line with the Vietnamese acceptance of Confucian relationship hierarchies, where it is assumed that older/more experienced siblings must care for younger/less experienced siblings in the same way a king must care for his subjects and a husband, his wife (Tiwald 2011). This includes helping one’s siblings navigate a new country and become economically stable in that country.

Only a minority of women found employment through professionals such as social workers, employment programs, or community centers.

Of the sixteen women who arrived in the United States as adults (eighteen years or older), nine of them found work within one year. Three more women could not remember how long it took them to find their first job in America, and one woman was never employed in the United

States. Only three women recalled waiting longer than one year to find employment—one sought employment after completing an associate degree and two more waited ten years and three years, respectively, to seek employment. Both of these women who waited to seek employment did so to be stay-at-home mothers. Both also had husbands working full-time during these periods of unemployment.

Poverty and Early Work

“Our lives were hard,” Vu Thi Lanh explained in her interview, “I lived very thriftily. My husband was very patient, me, maybe not so. Hunger didn’t faze him as much; maybe he learned that at the prison camp.” When Vu Thi Lanh’s family first moved into an apartment, she did not

46 even have dishes to feed her family on or pots and pans to cook with. However, the apartment manager noticed the problem and gave her family some items. The kindness had such an impact on Vu Thi Lanh that she still has one of those original dishes, nearly thirty years later. Another woman, Ngo Kim Hang, was sponsored out of Fort Chaffee by her sister-in-law and recalled living in her sister-in-law’s small home with five or six other refugee families. Each family lived in a single room. Ngo Kim Hang, her husband, and her two small children shared a bedroom with a single twin-sized bed. They stayed there for two years until they were able to save up enough money for their own apartment.

Initial poverty for Vietnamese Americans was exacerbated by a lack of effective transportation. Those that settled in large cities were able to use subways and trains (when they had the money) but many of the women in this study recalled depending on friends and family to take them to their first jobs. This limited their job searches, as they didn’t wish to inconvenience the driver with long drives or by asking them to go too far out of their way. This was a common issue among the working poor in the United States and was not limited to newly resettled refugees (Ehrenreich 2001). Families often pooled their resources to purchase a single used, older vehicle to be shared among relatives. In Ngo Xuyen’s case, one used car was shared by herself, her mother, and five siblings that all lived in the same household. This made jobs located close to their home attractive, and Ngo Xuyen recalled choosing work at a computer factory located only 3.5 miles away from her home for her first job in the U.S.

Another factor that limited the income of newly resettled Vietnamese refugees and migrants were remittances. The same Confucian relationship hierarchy discussed in the introduction to this chapter guided refugees to send a portion of their earning back to parents and/or siblings who remained in Vietnam. As Espiritu (2006) noted, “even when Vietnamese are

47 under-employed and barely eking out a living, they are still better off in the United States than if they had remained in Vietnam” (p. 414). In Vietnamese culture, even comparative wealth is wealth to be shared. For those participants who did not send any kind of remittances back to

Vietnam, the most common reason for not doing so was because no family members or close friends remained in the country. Though responsible for the welfare of many families in developing nations, remittances are a unique economic burden for refugees and immigrants in places like the United States (Thai 2014). In 2019, the World Bank estimated that Vietnam received 17 billion USD in remittances from expatriates around the globe, landing them in the top ten of receiving nations (Dezan Shira and Associates 2018; World Bank 2020). Researchers estimate that up to 60 percent of these remittances came from the United States alone.

Despite the setbacks of general poverty, a lack of transportation, and the need to send regular remittances to family in Vietnam, Vietnamese refugees and migrants in the United States found ways to support themselves and their families, mostly through hard work. Only one woman in the sample reported using government funds to raise her children and plan her retirement years. With the exception of this woman and the three women who sought asylum as children, respondents’ first full-time employments consisted exclusively of either factory work or work in the service industry (fifteen women in total).

Four of these fifteen women first found employment in factories, three of which produced computer parts and one of which produced fabric. Nguyen Thi Tran, after spending seven years as a seamstress, found that factory work netted twice the amount of her previous job. She alleged that she’d been paid $3.50 per hour as a seamstress and $7 per hour as a factory worker. For reference, Nguyen Thi Tran had started working at the computer fabrication plant in 1988, when the minimum wage was $3.35 per hour (Kurtz, Yellin, and Houp 2019). The lowest factory wage

48 reported in this study was $3.50 per hour, though this was reported by a woman who started the job in 1979 when the minimum wage was $2.90 per hour. The highest factory wage reported was around $17 or $18 per hour, in 2009 when the minimum wage was $7.25. The woman earning this wage had six years of experience at the factory and had been promoted as one of the factory’s higher-paid technicians.

TABLE 4.1: ALL FACTORY WAGES AT START AND AT DECEMBER 2019

EQUIVALENT

All Factory Wages at Start and at December 2019 Equivalent Minimum Fabrication First Job Years Wage at Starting Wage Minimum Participant Name Wage 2019 Type in US? Worked Start 2019 Equivalent Wage at Start Equivalent Ngo Xuyen Computer Yes 2002-2004 $9.50 $13.51 $5.15 $7.32 " " No 2006-2010 $17.00 $21.62 " $6.55 Nguyen Hong Diep Computer Yes 1978-1984 $3.50 $13.32 $2.30 $8.75 " Automotive No 1984-1988 $7.80 $19.11 $3.35 $8.21 Ho Thi Hue Computer Yes 1995-1996 $4.50 $7.56 $4.25 $7.14 " Plastics No 1996-1996 $6.00 $9.74 $4.75 $7.71 " Computer No 1996-2000 $7.00 $11.37 " " Duong Thuy Truc Fabric Yes 1990-1990 * * $3.80 $7.32 Nguyen Thi Tran Computer No 1988-1998 $7.00 $14.99 $3.35 $7.17 Legend:" = same value as above Sources: Kurtz, Yellin, and Houp 2019 * = missing data Bureau of Labor Statistics 2020 Perrins and Nilsen n.d.

Table 4.1 depicts all factory-based positions held by the participants in this study, the type of fabrication, the minimum wage and actual wage at start, and the 2019 equivalents of the minimum and actual wage at start.

The other ten women in this cohort first sought employment in the service industry. Four of these women were clerks (three in grocery stores and one in a hospital), two were seamstresses, two worked in the beauty industry (one cosmetologist and one nail technician), one woman was a caretaker for an elderly man, and one woman was a typist. In this group, there were two main outliers in terms of initial wages. Do Mai Nguyet, who earned the least of those who first worked in the service industry, earned an average of $1.80 per hour in 1989, equivalent

49 to $3.68 per hour in 2019 purchasing power. Do Mai Nguyet did not work for a specific business or company, rather, she completed piece-rate sewing work with her sister and a friend, both of whom worked at what the respondent termed a “sweatshop” sewing firm. As this participant was sharing in the (likely) minimum wage work of two other women, and was not a seamstress by trade, this may very well be an accurate reporting of her first wages in the United States. The second anomaly, however, is likely due to either a slip of the tongue or a compromised memory.

Pham Thi Thu Trang claimed that she earned “a little bit more than one thousand for two week[s]” as a hospital clerk in 1975—close to $12.50 per hour in a 40-hour work week. In 2019 purchasing power, this was $58.13 per hour. This number is likely inaccurate, especially given that Pham Thi Thu Trang had just finished high school at the time of hire and had no professional experience.

TABLE 4.2: INITIAL SERVICE INDUSTRY WAGES AT START AND AT DECEMBER

2019 EQUIVALENT

Initial Service Industry Wages at Start and at December 2019 Equivalent First Job in Years Wage at Starting Wage Minimum Wage Minimum Wage Participant Name Service Type US? Worked Start 2019 Equivalent at Start 2019 Equivalent Tran Ngoc Thao Clerk Yes 1981-1986 $3.75 $10.30 $3.35 $9.20 Do Mai Nguyet Seamstress Yes 1989-1980 $1.80 $3.68 " $6.85 Ngo Kim Hang Typist Yes 1976-1978 $5.00 $22.13 $2.30 $10.18 Ho Thanh Chau Caretaker Yes 1994-1996 $3.13 $5.39 $4.25 $7.32 Nguyen Thi Tran Seamstress Yes 1982-1989 * * $3.35 $8.86 Vu Thi Lanh Restaurant Yes 1991-1991 $2.50 $4.68 $4.25 $7.95 Pham Thi Thu Trang Clerk Yes 1975-1987 $12.50 $58.13 $2.10 $9.76 Dang Thi Do Beauty Yes 1980-1984 * * $3.10 $9.27 Dang Nhung Phuong Clerk Yes 1978-1981 * * $2.30 $8.75 Ly Thi Thom Beauty Yes 2005-2015 * * $5.15 $6.72 Legend:" = same value as above Sources: Kurtz, Yellin, and Houp 2019 * = missing data Bureau of Labor Statistics 2020 Perrins and Nilsen n.d

Table 4.2 depicts the initial wages of each service industry job held as a participant’s first employment after arrival, the minimum wage and actual wage at start, and 2019 equivalents of the minimum wage and actual wage at start.

When removing Pham Thi Thu Trang’s $12.50 per hour outlier, factory work appears to have been more profitable as an early job than engaging in the service industry ($12.35 per hour in factory work compared to $9.24 per hour in the service industry).

An important factor that led to these early jobs was the large Vietnamese American community network in the United States, even as early as 1975. Of the 15 women who were of working age when they arrived in Vietnam and chose to seek paid employment, 10 found their first jobs with the help of another person. For the majority, this help came from someone in the

Vietnamese American community. Four women sought help from family members: one was helped by her sister, one by a brother-in-law, and two by their sisters-in-law. An additional four women found their jobs with the help of friends within the Vietnamese American community.

The remaining two of the fifteen women found help from someone else: one was referred by a local Vietnamese American professional (dentist) and one aided by an Anglo-American teacher- advocate at a community college. In most cases, the family member/friend/professional that helped participants find their initial employments did so through social connections and/or networking. For example, a friend who already worked for a good employer could recommend the participant to that employer, a sister that had extra piece-rate sewing work could share that work with her sibling, or a friend of the family that knew a business owner in need of staff could recommend a newly arrived refugee. In a minority of cases, the person who helped the interviewees find their first jobs helped by offering much-needed transportation to interviews or by helping participants scour help-wanted ads in the newspaper (internet-based job searches and online applications were not commonly available until the end of the 20th Century).

Career Establishment

Of the eighteen women in the sample that sought employment at some point during their lives in the United States, each held an average of 4.2 jobs over the course of their lives in

America (seventy-five jobs in total were held by the women in the sample). The number of jobs held by a participant ranged from zero (one participant) to seven (three participants). As discussed above, factory and/or manufacturing jobs were common initial employments for

Vietnamese women. They were not, however, common mid-career or late-career employments

(55 percent of manufacturing jobs were held within a woman’s first two employments in the

U.S.; 82 percent were held within her first three employments). There was one outlier where a participant worked at four consecutive manufacturing plants before switching to the service industry. In total, manufacturing jobs made up only 12 percent of the total number of jobs held by the participants.

Each of the eighteen women who sought employment retired from, or were still working in at the time of interview, the service industry—whether as professionals, business owners, or employees. 88 percent of all jobs held by the women were in the service industry and each of the eighteen women who sought employment worked in the service industry at some point in their careers.

Six women (33%) in the sample held professional positions at some point in their career

(defined as a position that requires formal education as a barrier to entry): an electrician, a pharmacist, a doctor, an investor, a nurse, a journalist, and an attorney/judge. Almost half of these women (the pharmacist, doctor, and investor) were under the age of ten when they arrived in the United States and therefore attended American high schools and professional colleges to obtain their degrees and/or licenses. The nurse and the attorney/judge also sought professional

52 education as adults in the United States. Only the electrician and the journalist had been trained in Vietnam and were able to transfer their skills to their respective American industries.

According to most scholars, this type of occupational and educational transference is rare among immigrants, especially among refugees who often lose important documentation on their journeys to asylum (Leong and Tang 2016; Nguyen 2009; Nguyen 2014; Novak and Chen 2013;

Robertson and Grant 2016). However, the majority of the literature speaks to a lack of job transferability in Vietnamese male refugees, rather than their female counterparts. As Haya Stier

(1991) stated in her study on immigrant women, “although half of the immigrant population is female, they are seldom seen as economic migrants, but rather as companions to their husbands

(when dealing with married women) or to other family members” (p. 67. There do not appear to be any studies describing the job transferability of female Vietnamese refugees and migrants; however, the research based on male Vietnamese refugees and migrants suggests that licenses and education often transferred poorly (Marino 1998). The literature further suggests that, because male Vietnamese refugees and immigrants were unable to transfer their skills or education to the U.S., their wives became alternative primary income earners (Marino 1998;

Nguyen 2009; Nguyen 2014). This is because the women appeared to learn English faster than, and were more willing to seek lower-paid employment than, Vietnamese men (Marino 1998;

Phan, Rivera, Roberts-Wilbur 2005). Most women in this sample, however, reported that their husbands held jobs simultaneous with their own employments.

There was a high percentage of business owners among the participants, which is perhaps related to the sample being skewed towards what some might define as “successful” women. Of the eighteen women who sought employment, 12 individuals (67 percent) owned a business at some point in their American careers. Five of these women owned two separate businesses at

53 different times in their careers. Three of these five women switched industry types between businesses (i.e., from owning a liquor store to owning a salon; from owning a restaurant to owning a grocery store; and from owning a translation service to owning a washeteria). The fourth woman, the only doctor in the sample, owned two private practices at different points in her career. The fifth woman reported owning three separate nail salons at different points in her career. Only one woman owned and operated two businesses at the same time: Ngo Kim Hang, who owned a translation and interpreting service and a washeteria simultaneously.

Of the 75 total employments held by the nineteen women in this sample, only ten were still held at the time of interview. The participants described a variety of reasons that they ended their individual employments. These included (in ranked order): relocation (9 jobs), family reasons (i.e., staying home with children) (8 jobs), graduating from school (8 jobs), selling a business (7 jobs), retirement (6 jobs), finding higher-paid employment (6 jobs), buying a business to run (5 jobs), being laid off or let go (4 jobs), personal reasons (i.e., death of a loved one) (4 jobs), being promoted to a new position within the same company (4 jobs), and health reasons (2 jobs). There were only two jobs where the reason for leaving was not described during the interview. Chart 4.3 lists each reason for leaving by participant and by the number of jobs held by each participant.

TABLE 4.3: REASONS FOR LEAVING EMPPLOYMENT BY PARTICIPANT AND JOB

NUMBER

Reasons for Leaving Employment by Participant and Job Number Job 1 Job 2 Job 3 Job 4 Job 5 Job 6 Job 7 Ngo Xuyen laid off better emp. * current . . . Tran Ngoc Thao personal retired retired . . . . Tran Xuan Thu graduated laid off sold bus. sold bus. . . . Le Thu Thuy graduated graduated relocated relocated family * family Dinh My Ngoc graduated promoted family current . . . Nguyen Hong Diep personal bough bus. sold bus. . . . . Do Mai Nguyet relocated better emp. relocated better emp. better emp. relocated current Bui Quy Thi ...... Ngo Kim Hang promoted relocated graduated graduated graduated promoted current Ho Thanh Chau graduated retired . . . . . Dao Tan Thu current ...... Ho Thi Hue relocated relocated laid off laid off retired . . Duong Thuy Truc family promoted personal family retired . . Nguyen Thi Tran better emp. better emp. bought bus. sold bus. current . . Vu Thi Lanh health health retired . . . . Pham Thi Thu Trang bought bus. sold bus. personal current . . . Dang Thi Do family family family . . . . Dang Nhung Phuong relocated bought bus. sold bus. current current . . Ly Thi Thom bought bus. sold bus. current . . . . . = job number not applicable * = missing data bus. = business

Table 4.3 depicts the respondents’ reasons for leaving each employment held during their careers.

It is important several aspects of Chart 4.3. First, there were only two women who held less than three separate jobs during their careers in the United States: Bui Quy Thi who never sought employment, and Dao Tam Thu, who earned a professional childcare license and ran a daycare for her grandchildren throughout her life in the U.S. The descriptive statistics described above suggest that most of the women in this study left employments for family reasons, as seven of the nine relocations recorded in the sample were due to efforts to move closer to family members that had been resettled in different locations of the United States.

Women as Entrepreneurs

As discussed above, twelve of the nineteen women (63 percent) in this sample owned a business of some sort during their careers in the United States. This percentage, however, is less a representative of entrepreneurialism among Vietnamese refugees and migrants in general than it is a suggestion of how the Vietnamese people in the United States would like to be perceived by non-immigrant America. This bias originated in the sampling method, as snowball sampling can lead to an over-inclusion of well-known or prominent individuals in a sample (Bernard

2006).

Robertson and Grant (2016) suggest that immigrants with higher education levels tend to seek out business ownership opportunities as a method of preventing “brain waste” (p. 395).

Because of a lack of skill and/or education transfer, many educated immigrants feel underemployed in the low-income, low-skilled industries that are willing to hire individuals with minimal employment qualifications. Thus, immigrants may see only two options for social advancement (or, for some, for the reclamation of the social status once enjoyed in their former nations): education or entrepreneurialism. Of the two, entrepreneurialism is seen to be the quickest route to earning an income and supporting a family.

For some women, however, the decision to start or purchase a business was based not only on rational choice, but also on an intrinsic desire to be a business owner (Sowell 2015). In

Vietnamese culture, women have, for thousands of years, been traditionally responsible for shop keeping and operating family-owned businesses (Coughlin 1950). They have enjoyed the inheritance rights and property rights that allowed them to own their own businesses since at least 40 A.D., far longer than the women in any other Southeast Asian nation (Womack 1995).

Women even tended to operate the businesses owned by their husbands in traditional culture,

56 though the men received the most credit for the business’s success. Women’s proprietorship stemmed also stemmed from a long tradition of wives working to support husbands spent their time studying for government examinations. This is rooted, as so much of Vietnamese culture is, in Confucianism.

Vietnam was ruled by China off and on from 111 B.C.E. to 1426 (Hastings 2018; Marino

1998). The Chinese brought with them the Confucian practice of imperial civil servant examinations, which required that a man be well-versed in the Confucian classics before he could become a prestigious government official (Spring 2011). Passing the exam required years, if not decades, of full-time study. Once a man passed, however, he, his family, and his village were honored—the achievements of one man on the examination could place a previously unknown village on the map and bring wealth to the whole community (Ibid.). To ensure this outcome, is was common for wives to be the sole economic providers for their children and their husbands (as well as the sole nurturer) until such time as the husband could become a government official. Then, women believed, they would be able to live a life of luxury because of their husbands’ importance. These Confucian-based examinations continued past the time of

Chinese rule and were practiced well into the 19th Century in Vietnam—Ho Chi Minh’s father, for example, studied many years to pass the exam, married his teacher’s daughter, and was offered a prestigious position. He, however, rejected the offer and remained a local schoolteacher while his wife continued to work the family’s rice fields (Spring 2011).

In many cases, owning and/or operating a business brought more than just a sustainable income to Vietnamese women—it brought a sense of empowerment and fiscal authority. In a world run by a strict, male-centric hierarchy, business ownership was one of the few ways women could express authority. Though this tradition has since changed in terms of practice, the

57 spirit of it continues to live on in lives of both Vietnamese women and female Vietnamese

Americans. According to The ASEAN Post, 31.3 percent of all businesses in Vietnam are owned by women today (Hasnan 2019). This is higher than in most European countries, the PRC, and the United States. Data also suggests that expatriate Vietnamese women share this same predilection for business ownership. In 2000, immigrant women owned 5 percent of all businesses in the United States; 4.9 percent of these female immigrant-owned businesses were owned by female Vietnamese refugees and migrants (a total of 27,721 female business owners)

(Pearce 2005). At the time, this was lower only than female entrepreneurs from South Korea and

Mexico.

When asked why she wanted to own a business, Pham Thi Thu Trang stated, “I don’t know why. I just want to be a business lady. I don’t know why,” she repeated, “I just want to be in business.” Though Pham Thi Thu Trang had already worked as a hospital clerk for twelve years, she yearned to build something of her own and to be her own boss. Each of the businesswomen in the sample recalled that it was extremely difficult to start their first venture, particularly because of the early poverty of being refugees in the United States (Nguyen 2014).

The women’s first businesses typically required years of saving before the business could be purchased, and then between six months and a year of hard work to become profitable without strict oversight. Duong Thuy Truc, for example, recalled the following:

Any penny we can, we save it all. I put it in, [and] I bought that [business]. I bought that nail shop…I have to work real, real, real hard to build the business, because [when I bought it] the business is zero. And when, you know, when you are ready to put all the money over there, what [do] you do? You have to survive…you have to survive by that money. And I worked real hard. And I think, about six months in…I lost about, more than ten pounds. I skinny…it’s [just] me in the shop. And I don’t want to go to

restroom either. I want to go, but, like, I don’t know. [A]t the second I’m not here, some customer [could] come in. What [would] I do? I would lose them. You know how I feel?

This difficulty was overcome through three avenues: though the hard work and saving described above and through the intense, closely-knit ethnic network established by the

Vietnamese in the United States. Aguilar-San Juan (2009), after all, noted in her book Little

Saigons: Staying Vietnamese in America: “what’s good for business is good for the community” and vice versa (p. 95). This study’s ethnographic survey sample contained a microcosm example of just such a network. Pham Thi Thu Trang, who owned three nail salons during her career, appeared to be a sort of area “linchpin”. She regularly employed both friends and family, as well as other Vietnamese refugees and migrants. These jobs brought opportunities to new migrants who could benefit from her experience in both the beauty industry and her knowledge of the

United States in general. Pham Thi Thu Trang, while helping build the Vietnamese community through her businesses, also leaned on the community to keep these same businesses afloat.

When multiple salons became “too hard to run” simultaneously, she hired a friend to manage one of her businesses. This friend was Duong Thuy Truc, who took over the struggling business venture and “made it grow real, real good” before handing it back over to Pham Thi Thu Trang.

This experience of managing and growing a nail salon prompted Duong Thuy Truc to purchase her own salon closer to home, which she ran for two and a half years before retiring to spend time with her grandchildren. Upon retirement, she sold her business for a large profit to new

Vietnamese American owners.

The Nail Industry

Four women in the sample each owned a beauty salon at some point in their careers in the

United States. Nail salons seemed to be the most popular choice and were followed closely only by grocery stores in business-owning popularity (three women owned a grocery store at some point in their career). In fact, 16 percent of all jobs held by participants were in the beauty industry (92 percent of these were in nail salons; the remaining were in hair/nail salons). Outside research supports the assumption that the nail industry is a common employment choice for

Vietnamese women (and some Vietnamese men, as well) (Eckstein and Nguyen 2011;

Federman, Harrington, and Krynski 2006; Nguyen 2010; Nguyen 2014; Willet 2005). Scholars estimate there are several reasons for this. Eckstein and Nguyen (2011) suggest that Vietnamese engagement with the nail industry began in California, where actress Tippi Hedren (who had her screen debut in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds) was supposedly “impressed with the women’s hand dexterity” (p. 651). To help female refugees, she arranged for her personal manicurist to teach them and also convinced a local beauty school to provide the women with free professional courses on the art of nail painting. Ms. Hedren also encouraged the school to help the women find manicuring jobs. One of these initial students started the first Vietnamese-owned nail salon and beauty school in the United States. This school began offering nail technician classes in

Vietnamese and therefore reduced several previous barriers to entry in the industry for

Vietnamese refugees and migrants: English language proficiency and ethnic discrimination

(Eckstein and Nguyen 2011; Nguyen 2010). The nail industry quickly gained a reputation for being Vietnamese-friendly and for offering a quick route to sustainable employment for female refugees and migrants.

Today, the nail industry is overwhelmingly operated by Vietnamese immigrants and

Vietnamese Americans. Based on the 2000 U.S. Census Data, Federman, Harrington, and

Krynski (2006) assert that 41 percent of all manicurists in the United States are Vietnamese immigrants or descendants of Vietnamese immigrants; furthermore, 5 percent of all Vietnamese in the United States are employed in the nail industry (as compared to only 0.04 percent of the general public). Manicuring, however, was not recognized as a formal employment by the U.S.

Department of Labor until the 1980s (Eckstein and Nguyen 2011). By the early 2000s, however, it was one of the fastest growing industries. In 2017, the nail care industry garnered over eight billion dollars per annum (Quach et al. 2018). Opening nail salons has become a profitable industry, but also a hazardous one: scholars suggest that the materials used in nail products can cause “cancer, adverse reproductive health, respiratory irritation, neurological conditions, and allergic reactions” (Ibid., p. 1042). Cancer is another concern that arisen with rise of nail salons, which may account for the extensive literature on encouraging Vietnamese American women to attend cancer screenings. Literature on the nail industry, specifically, has recently focused on both describing and improving health practices in salons. Interesting, the presence of these risks was never mentioned by the women in this study, who chose to elaborate more on the close ethnic ties in, and the flexibility of, the industry.

Regardless, the nail industry has attractively low barriers to entry for Vietnamese women.

In the State of Texas, where this study was conducted, a nail technician license has only three requirements: six hundred hours of training on manicuring, safety, and professionalism; a written or practical exam; and a license renewal every two years (Cosmetology-License.com n.d.(a)).

Many schools in the Houston, Texas, area have courses in Vietnamese and the state exam can be administered in Vietnamese. The women in this sample recalled completing their training

61 requirements within three months and then being able to find immediate work (sometimes, they were employed the day after graduation). In fact, it was the quick training, easy licensure, and general availability of positions that drew women to work in the nail industry. Duong Thuy Truc noted, “I think that most of the people, the lady Vietnamese, they picked…the nail business because they think that, ‘Okay. That one is the one that’s easy for you to get licensed, to become worker’”. She added that most initial refugees just wanted to find employment “real fast” to help support their families. Duong Thuy Truc understood this, but also lamented the fact that many

Vietnamese nail technicians were underemployed because of this fact: “Some people [that have] very high education, they still go get that job. Because they try to do something real quick to help the family.”

This ethnographic field study demonstrated that the flexibility of the beauty industry could be seen as either an advantage or a disadvantage by the participants. Duong Thuy Truc declared, “the nails business, they don’t have any policy…they just work with each other by feeling, by the emotion, you know that? So, this is very flexible…and that is good, but it is bad, too”. In this statement, Duong Thuy Truc wasn’t suggesting that there were no rules and regulations controlling the safety protocols, etc., of the industry. She was, instead, referring to the interpersonal relations within a nail salon. “All of the nail people,” she added, “they behave differently. [The level of skill for] some is real high, some is real low…You never know who’s what.” She may have also been suggesting that there was not a clear sense of hierarchy or position in most nail salons. She recalled her time as a salon owner, stating that, with “fifteen lad[ies], maybe they ha[d] about twenty ideas” about how the salon was supposed to be run and about who should work in what position. For some, this type of interpersonal and inter-worker social flexibility was a pro of the industry. For others, it was simply too chaotic.

Another flexible factor, according to this study’s sample, was the intensity of the work. A nail technician could work part-time, full-time, or every day of the week. The women were paid a commission on each job they completed throughout their shift. If they wanted to increase their work pace and earn more money, they could move to a busier or newer salon. According to the women who worked in the industry, “jobs are always available in the nail business” (Ly Thi

Thom). If one nail technician position didn’t suit a woman’s needs, then she simply found another one. The employment gaps between jobs were usually no longer than a few days. Ly Thi

Thom even suggested it was possible to “quit today, start a new job tomorrow” without any prior preparation if one already had correct license. She also asserted it was common for women to simply quit their jobs to go on vacation and then find a new one upon their return. “If you wanna take a vacation for two weeks or two months, that’s up to you…your break depend on you,” she stated via translator. Workers in the nail industry did not receive comprehensive benefits packages, including paid vacations. Ly Thi Thom concluded, “Vacation hours? You don’t get any of that. You work, you have money. No work, no money.” Again, this sort of flexibility was controversial—some women enjoyed the freedom to move around between salons and not be tied down to one specific location or, perhaps, one bad salon owner or difficult coworker. Other women preferred to have greater stability and security in their professional lives.

One connection that each of the nail technicians and salon owners in this sample shared was concern that the long hours of the nail salons, and the frequent requirement to work on weekends, made it difficult for them to spend time with their families. Duong Thuy Truc said it was difficult to find enough time to raise her children “correctly” while working in the nail business. Pham Thi Thu Trang, who owned three nail salons during her career (and still owned one at the time of interview), stated that she did not have “a lot of time to spend with the family”

63 and that she was looking forward to retiring in a few months after her youngest son graduated from university. Nguyen Thi Tran claimed that working as a nail technician was her idea of retirement: “I retire already, but I still working…full-time. Yeah. Five day a week. And Sunday in temple”. She had retired as the owner of a laundromat, which she had run for a total of ten years. At the time of interview, she was going on her thirteenth year as a nail technician in the

Houston area. She agreed during her interview that she should probably re-examine the definition of retirement.

The data in this chapter suggests that Vietnamese American women tended to begin their careers in the United States by working at low-skilled, low income jobs. Factory and production jobs were common in this early stage of resettlement. However, the women continuously sought employments with higher wages as they gained more experience. Upon retirement, or at the time of interview, every woman in the sample worked in the service industry. Nail technician positions were particularly popular, as early Vietnamese Americans had developed nail salons into a niche industry.

CHAPTER 5

“GO BACK TO VIETNAM”

(EMPLOYMENT AND DISCRIMINATION)

Introduction

The United States has a long history of racism and discrimination against Asian immigrants that dates back to 1790 (Lowe 1998). Shortly thereafter, the fledgling nation’s imperialistic ideas of manifest destiny and its westward expansion to the California coast created a burgeoning sense of nationalism. That nationalism came with an inherent fear of the “other”— a fear of the non-white, non-European, and non-Christian (and often non-male) individual that represented societal backwardness a divergence from the liberal ideas of democracy, freedom, and rule of law (Espiritu 2014). Asian American women were particularly denigrated as

“exotic”, “backward”, “oppressed”, “ignorant, poor, uneducated, tradition-bound”, etc. (Mohanty

1991, p. 56; Parpart 1993, p. 447).

Prior to the decade before the American Civil War (1861-1865), Asian immigrants were so few in the Americas that they garnered little attention in either politics or history books. Near the half-mark of the 19th Century, however, Chinese immigrants increased in number as they fled from droughts and wars in their home country and positioned themselves in the newly burgeoning California gold mining industry (Office of the Historian 2016). During this time, the descriptors “Chinese” and “Mongolian” appeared to be used by government officials to refer to

Asian immigrants of multiple nationalities. As was inevitable due the United States’ rise in nationalism and accompanying xenophobia, Anglo Americans began to distrust both Asian immigrants and Asian Americans. Distrust turned into resentment, and, in 1854, the United

States Supreme Court determined that both Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans would be banned from testifying in court (African Americans and Native Americans were already banned from doing so) (Kurashige 2016). In 1882, the discrimination towards Asian Americans worsened with the Chinese Exclusion Acts, which notably banned the immigration of Chinese individuals for ten years (and was renewed in 1892 for another ten years by the Geary Act, which also provided for the immediate deportation of any person of Chinese descent who was convicted of a crime within U.S. borders) (Leong and Tang 2016; Lowe 1998; Tang 2015). These acts also made Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans already residing in the United States ineligible for American citizenship (Office of the Historian 2016). Their ineligibility lasted until 1943, in the middle of World War II—a time when the U.S. sought to offer an olive branch to previously stigmatized (non-Japanese) Asian Americans for political reasons. The U.S. Department of State notes that the passage of the original Chinese Exclusion Acts “stemmed from economic and cultural tensions” of the time (Office of the Historian 2016). Other scholars have been less diplomatic and cited what has now become a common refrain of the political right against immigrants du jour: that “real” (white) Americans were losing their jobs to immigrants because immigrants were willing to work worse jobs for longer hours at lower pay (Leong and Tang

2016; Lowe 1998).

This same refrain was echoed less than a hundred years later when Vietnamese refugees surged into an American population that, for the most part, did not want them. Many Americans blamed the Vietnamese for the tragic loss of life during the war and more than half of the population felt that the Vietnamese should be turned away from U.S. borders (Espiritu 2014). In the words of Yen Le Espiritu, a noted scholar on Vietnamese refugee issues, “To be a

Vietnamese refugee in the United States [was] to be subjected to prying questions about ‘the

66 war,’…denigrated as welfare recipients by conservatives, and pitied and/or celebrated as the model minority by liberals” (2014, p. xi, 171). Espiritu also claims that, in many ways, the idea of “Southeast Asian refugees as the white man’s burden” was how the U.S. government rebranded their role in the Vietnam War (Espritu 2008, p. 1700). The war itself had been lost:

58,220 Americans had been killed, the U.S. had abandoned their allies, and the South

Vietnamese had fallen under Communist rule (Hastings 2018). By taking in so many Vietnamese refugees, helping them resettle in the “land of the free”, integrating them into social programs, etc., the U.S. sought to rebrand their previous role in the Vietnam War under a new term: that of the “honorable savior” of the plighted Vietnamese (Espiritu 2014; Lowe 1998). Saviors, however, require victims in need of redemption. The Vietnamese, already the victims of a long war, also became the further victims “of inferiority, immorality, and unassimilability” that the

United States had fought to save (Espiritu 2014, p. 424).

James Freeman, another noted scholar in the field, suggests that Vietnamese Americans have been largely dismayed by this kind of rhetoric (1989). Indeed, the women in this study largely refused to engage in this “victim” narrative. To most participants, the idea of being on welfare was pejorative: all but one rejected social programs in favor of the long hours, hard work, and low pay that had prompted white Americans to call for the Chinese Exclusion Acts.

However, by the time the majority of Vietnamese refugees and migrants arrived in the United

States, Asian Americans had also become celebrated in the myth of the model minority (Espiritu

2006; 2014; Leong and Tang 2016; Tang 2015). The model minority myth argued that Asian

Americans were more successful than other minorities in the United States because of their hard work ethic, their high regard for education, and persistent family values (Espiritu 2006).

Anglo American Racism and Discrimination

Yen Le Espiritu, in Body Counts, noted that many Asian Americans participated in the creation of the model minority myth as they sought to differentiate themselves from low-income minorities (2006; 2014). The women in this study both propagated, and, indeed, promoted, this idea of Asian American exceptionalism, despite receiving criticism and discrimination from their typically non-Asian work colleagues. For example, Duong Thuy Truc recalled the following interaction from when she worked at a grocery warehouse, packaging produce:

Some of my, my coworkers, they tell [me], “Stop it. Slow down. You kill me. Because if you [work fast] like that, everybody have to [work fast] like that. And I can’t” … I say, “Yeah. Yes, I know.” But…I’m [an] active person. I just [work] like that. So, I said, “Okay. I try.” That means the [other workers], they tried to go real fast to get the point [a points-based system tracked the women’s total output] but I have to try to slow down, to cut down, don’t get the point too high.

Duong Thuy Truc was willing to work as hard as she could for as long as she could so that she could be promoted and earn more money to take care of her family. Nguyen Hong Diep shared a similar experience. Both women, though cognizant of the discrimination from coworkers, appeared proud of their hard work ethic and felt that other workers exhibited laziness. However, the myth of the model minority was not the only racialized stereotype that affected the women at work. As mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, many white Americans expected the

Vietnamese to be socially backwards and uneducated (Espiritu 2014). Ngo Xuyen, who worked in the computer manufacture/repair industry for most of her life and had been educated as an electrician in Vietnam, remembered it was difficult for white Americans to believe that she had the proper training and background to be working as an IT specialist for her local city government:

So, it’s, it’s more hard over [here]. And they white people, so, they say that, “Hey, don’t know what school you learn. What degree [do you have]?” … [They’re upset] when [the Vietnamese] come from the poor country and now they have better job than [white Americans]…We have the tools, we have the office, and we have the computer, and everything.

Ngo Xuyen recalled that this type of discrimination was not common in her life; there was really only one white American male that repeatedly questioned her employment qualifications. She ignored him for the most part, but finally confronted him about his behavior:

But I say to him…“Hey. I never ask about your daughter. She graduate? She have a good job? When you [were] a electrician, I didn’t compare my job with your job, or your daughter’s job. Why you compare with me?” And he laugh and he never [questioned me] again.

Ngo Xuyen also noted another form of discrimination that affected her economically when compared to white Americans: she was routinely paid less than her white counterparts. She noted that it was common for white Americans get “a little bit more pay” than the Vietnamese. This type of discrimination was echoed in the narratives of several other participants. Though the women knew they were being paid less than their white, male counterparts, few complained about the injustice and instead chose to rationalize it. Duong Thuy Truc stated, for example:

[For whites] they have to pay about nine or almost ten [dollars] for them. But they pay me $6.30. But I’m okay with that. I never compare. I never say that, “Okay, why you pay me that?” Because I know I still learning…I try to work and I work more than what I can [easily do]. So…I think that okay. First of all, we just came in here. We need a job. We need money to take care of the kid. We

need somewhere to live because I cannot live with my sister forever.

For many newly resettled refugees, any income was better than no income. The women in this study seemed especially driven to earn money for their families because (as described in

Chapter Six of this thesis), their friends and families were adamant that they not take handouts from the government. The women often believed that dedication and hard work in low-paying jobs would eventually lead to higher-paying jobs.

It was “common for American[s], like white American[s], to just say “go back to

Vietnam””. Anti-Asian discrimination was not, however, limited to full-grown adults—Dinh My

Ngoc, upon entering grade school as a young refugee, recalled “I thought they’d never seen an

Asian [before]…I was often the only Asian in my school”. She also recalled being bullied by other children for her accented English. This was a common theme—many of the study’s respondents recalled being bullied and/or discriminated against because of their accents or difficulty with the English language. Le Thu Thuy, who also grew up in the United States and spent most of her formative years in the U.S., recalled her time working as a pharmacist in a rural Texas town: “I had a lot of complaints about my accent, that they couldn’t understand me.

This was only in Lubbock…the people in Lubbock were saying they couldn’t understand my

English.” Ho Thanh Chau echoed this sentiment when recalling the time she spent training to become a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) (via translator): “they make fun of her because her

English wasn’t very well. But she just turn around and ask them, “Well, can [you] speak

Vietnamese?”…They bully her a lot…but it didn’t faze her. She’s not afraid of them.”

Ly Thi Thom agreed that the heaviest complaints about Vietnamese accents and the worst discriminative attitudes existed in small, rural towns. She recalled her years owning/operating a nail salon in Hemphill, Texas (via translator):

That city, that town, is very, very discriminative. Even to, like, blacks and whites. They don’t like each other, let alone her, being a Vietnamese woman having her own business…[if] it was a white, a mainly white church, it was all white people. In the black church, it was all black people. They don’t mix…In her business it was less discriminative…she still had blacks and whites come to her shop but they [didn’t] mix with each other.

However, unlike Ngo Xuyen, the electrician discussed earlier, Ly Thi Thom remained largely passive to the racism occurring in and around her nail salon. She reported that she “just kind of brush[ed] it off” because “she’s not crazy like the gunmans [reference to American mass shootings] out there. She’s not gonna go shoot up people because…they don’t like her.” In fact, the majority of the women in this study remained largely nonconfrontational against aggressors at work. When they did respond, they commonly did so with words designed gently correct the perpetrator without further angering them (see Ngo Xuyen’s response, earlier in this chapter).

This is reminiscent of one of the traditional Confucian household roles of Vietnamese women— that of being the mediators responsible for family harmony (Jiang 2009). It is also similar to how modern Vietnamese women reportedly react to domestic violence (Horton and Rydstrom 2011;

Rydstrom 2003).

Helle Rydstrom’s work describes the “hot” nature of Vietnamese men (tinh nong) and the

“cool” nature of Vietnamese women (tinh lanh) (Rydstrom 2003, p. 685). Hot natures are assumed to be quick to anger and eruptive and are closely related to the consumption of alcohol.

Cool natures, however, represent passive and calming forces. In a married couple, the woman’s

71 coolness is thought to temper the man’s heat and bring harmony to the household. It appears to be this same cool and calming force that the Vietnamese American women employed to combat racism in their employments and/or businesses. In this context, the racist, discriminative, or disgruntled American customer or coworker was the one endowed with a “hot” nature that the

“cool” woman needed calm him and bring the situation back into harmony.

Passivity, however, appeared to be a more common reaction of Vietnamese American women to racism and discrimination in the workplace than this gentle method of confrontation.

Of the thirteen women who claimed to have experienced some type of discrimination in the

United States, only three described any type of engagement with the perpetrator(s). The rest stated that they either ignored the discrimination or attributed it to ignorance. Do Mai Nguyet, one of the more optimistic study participants, stated:

People discriminate against me. I say this is a country of newcomers…I give them the benefit of the doubt that they are ignorant. They don’t know who I am. Once they know me, they will love me. I believe so.

In general, the other women were less optimistic about their passivity. They commented that,

“there’s nothing [I] could’ve done” or “I tried not to, like, even focus on it, or even recognize it, or even think about it too much” (Tran Ngoc Thao and Le Thu Thuy, respectively). Perhaps some of this passivity and reluctance to engage with perpetrators came from a simple fact: most participants who had remained in Vietnam past 1975 believed that American forms of discrimination and racism were less terrible than what they had encountered under Communist rule. Do Mai Nguyet, when asked if she had experienced discrimination in the United States, stated:

Of course I did. But I was used to it in my four years in Vietnam. It was much worse by my own people, so, that’s nothing. I think that, you know, a lot of people were so angry at it. And I used to be friends with some, you know, African American friends. And they were so angry for their past and for their ancestors’ pasts, being slaves and being mistreated. And I said that angers and hatreds take you nowhere in [life]. They only hold you hostage…Why don’t you be grateful to be here? Be grateful that now you no longer slave. Now you no longer political prisoner. Now you no longer starving.

In general, discrimination from Anglo Americans was more common than discrimination from other minorities or from within the Vietnamese American community (though each of these did occur and will also be discussed in later sections of this chapter). Beyond the fact that

Caucasians have long been the racial majority in the U.S. (and, logically, would therefore be responsible for greater incidence of discrimination because of their sheer numbers), there is also evidence that the social distance between Vietnamese Americans and Anglo Americans is greater than that between Anglo Americans and other racial and ethnic minorities. Parrillo and

Donoghue (2005) updated Emory Bogardus’s original social distance studies for the new millennium. Most importantly, they updated Bogardus’s original list of minorities (developed more than eighty years ago) to include the rising number of Vietnamese Americans in the United

States population. In post-9/11 2001, the authors found that white Americans viewed the

Vietnamese more negatively than twenty-seven other ethnicities; the only two groups they disliked more were Muslims of any nationality and Arabs (Parrillo and Donghue 2005). The authors’ follow-up study in 2011 found that Caucasian attitudes towards the Vietnamese population had improved only slightly: they were now viewed more favorably than five groups instead of only two: those that were less favored were Koreans, Indians (India), Haitians, Arabs,

73 and Muslims of any nationality (Parrillo and Donghue 2013). Many scholars argue that relations between Anglo Americans and Vietnamese Americans were already better in 2001 than they were in 1975, when the majority of Vietnamese refugees began fleeing to the United States (Do

1999; Espiritu 2014; Freeman 1989; Kurashige 2016; Pew Research Center 2016; Pike 2008;

Stur 2011). This is evidence that, where racial attitudes are concerned, change comes slowly if it comes at all.

Inter-Minority Racism and Discrimination

The fact that most racism and discrimination originated from Anglo Americans does not mean that Vietnamese Americans did not receive discrimination from other racial and ethnic minority groups. For example, Nguyen Hong Diep recalled being bullied by Indian immigrants in the Chrysler factory where she worked (via translator):

She said that she was bullied by, like, the Indians…they would give her extra work to do. Like, their work. And, like, they would yell at her. But she understood what they meant and she got really sad, you know? Because, because she was from a wealthy family back in Vietnam. She didn’t have to, like, [do] manual labor, things like that. But when she [was] at home, she cried for several months…But her daughter said that, “It’s okay. You can just stay home. I’ll work and I’ll help you.” But [every] morning, you know, she wake up and…she goes to work [again].

Nguyen Hong Diep’s experience is proof that inter-minority racism and discrimination (indeed, any racism and discrimination) could be severe enough to produce symptoms of clinical depression in Vietnamese Americans (American Psychiatric Association 2013).

Nguyen Thi Tran recalled a slightly more severe form of inter-minority discrimination: employment-based exploitation. She remembered her time working for a family-owned curtain-

74 making business. She stated (via translator): “She said she worked for [a] Jewish family. It was pretty bad…no break time, no lunch time…seven years…no raise…she said there’s not enough money to feed her family.” According to the respondent, her family was only able to get by with the addition of her husband’s work income. When Nguyen Thi Tran resigned from this position, she immediately went to work at a computer manufacturing factory where she was paid twice her previous wage, received all mandated breaks, and was allowed to eat lunch. She recalled her relief at the factory’s “strict” observance of labor laws and stated that “not much” discrimination took place there.

Ngo Kim Hang recalled an entirely different kind of inter-minority racial discrimination.

In her case, she was accused of being the racist. Ngo Kim Hang spent much of her career as a judge and recalled that, initially, defendants from other minority groups would try to cast her as racist and incompetent so that they could escape punishment for their crimes. They also attempted to manipulate her emotionally, knowing that she was a new judge and was not yet as experienced as the other magistrates they had faced.

I remember a couple incidents…I remember one time, one [Mexican American woman] came to my court and was late, and she [had gone] to a different location. So, I issue the warrant for arrest. [Her husband] came in. His wife didn’t speak English. Just Spanish only…but the husband spoke very good English. He had been in the U.S. for a long time, so he knew. He was very demanding. So, he came in and he make a big thing about [his] wife [going] downtown: “She already went…why you issue warrant for her arrest? Why?” And then he was loud and rude. So, I said… “If you keep talking, I give you warning. I put you in jail.” He kept talking…he thought he could run over me. So, he was louder and he kept talking. So, finally, I said, “I will hold you in contempt of court. You go to jail…” When he saw the police, he began to cry. He said, “Ahhh, why you put me in jail?” I told the officer… “bring him back after lunch. Because I want to release him so he could go home with his wife”…But after that he went

to…the Spanish clerks and all the staff who were Spanish…saying this judge discriminating against Spanish people. Okay? Because I put one Spanish-speaking person in jail…So, you see, the difficulty [for me] would be not only with the job, but with the staff, but with the people around me. Because I’m the minority…So, I had no backup. So, I have to survive on my own.

In this example, Ngo Kim Hang, because of her position as a judge, was unable to solve a confrontation through either of the methods described in the first section of this chapter: passivity or gentle correction. Instead, she adapted her approach in order to maintain her authority as a justice figure. In this way, she achieved her goal of maintaining order in the courtroom, despite the fact that the defendant in question still tried to convince her staff that she was racist. Ngo Kim Hang also mentioned that a similar situation had happened with an African

American male and described how she had handled it in a similar fashion. “But later on,” she recalled, “[my staff] knew that, if I had to put somebody in jail, that person would have to be very bad. They [would have] deserve[d] it.” Eventually, Ngo Kim Hang was able to build a reputation as a fair judge, which guarded her from further accusations of racial discrimination.

Intra-Group Discrimination Among Vietnamese Refugees and Migrants

Despite the overwhelming prevalence of racism and discrimination that Vietnamese

Americans experienced at the hand of white Americans and other racial and ethnic minorities, several participants also recalled being discriminated against, and even exploited by, other

Vietnamese American refugees and immigrants. One woman, Vu Thi Lanh, discussed how there was a rigid social/income hierarchy among Vietnamese Americans that had remained with the

Vietnamese as they settled in the United States. Refugees and migrants that had been members of the upper classes before the fall of Saigon often disparaged those who had not. Vu Thi Lanh

76 stated, “in Vietnam, when you don’t have…a lot of money…they look [at] you different…they look [down on you].” Vu Thi Lanh claimed that she did not experience too much of this type of discrimination from white Americans and other racial and ethnic minorities, but that, within

Vietnamese communities, it was very much present. This social stratification may be an intra- group reflection of Vietnamese Americans’ tendency to “try to insulate themselves from lower- class minorities, whom they associate with low education and poor paying jobs” (Freeman 1996, p. 73). In contrast, Bui Quy Thi recalled the opposite. She claimed that she never experienced any discrimination after arriving in the United States because she never left the Vietnamese enclave where she lived and shopped (however, Bui Quy Thi was also the only interviewee that never sought employment in the U.S., which may also have contributed to her lack of experience with discrimination). The contrast between these two views of the Vietnamese American community produces more questions than answers and demands more research into the issue of

Vietnamese American vs. Vietnamese American discrimination.

However, Ho Thanh Chau described a case where she was explicitly exploited by a family of fellow Vietnamese American refugees. To find work, she searched job postings within her local Vietnamese community and found work as a caretaker for an elderly man in a vegetative state. She was hired by the man’s son, a local Vietnamese American dentist with a reputable income. She described her working situation in the following interview excerpt (via translator):

She said…that they didn’t pay her very much because they told her that, “if you do ‘above the table’ [work]…the government would come in and take the tax” and stuff like that. So, they paid her in cash and they didn’t pay very much. She didn’t realize how much she was supposed to be paid until she became a nurse. A CNA…She said that, like, they scam her…she said she had to make

food for, like, not just the person she was taking care for, but also the [dentist’s wife] and her son, too…she said it was terrible and she had to do a lot of work. But not much pay…they only pay her $500 [per month]…the conditions, she was tricked into it…[When] social workers…come and check on the guy…the family doesn’t want them to find out about her because they pay her under the table…[so,] they tell her, like, “If you see the [social worker’s] car, like, don’t walk into the house”…she says she’d just, like, circle around [the neighborhood], afraid of being caught…They exploited her a lot…they wanted, like, a maid, you know? To dust stuff…She does a lot more [work than she’s] supposed to.

Ho Thanh Chau’s experience shows how more experienced refugees and immigrants (the family she worked for had been in the U.S. for over five years by the time she met them) used their knowledge of immigrant vulnerabilities (a lack of knowledge of American labor laws/minimum wage requirements and a distrust of governments or anyone outside the Vietnamese community) to exploit fellow refugees and migrants. This family knew that new refugees would trust the words of a successful family and be unlikely to seek outside corroboration or recourse (Tingvold,

Middelthon, Allen, and Hauff 2011). In this case, they were correct. Ho Thanh Chau worked for the family for a total of three years while she studied to become a Certified Nursing Assistant

(CNA). Afterwards, she found employment at a nursing home. She recalled that, in her new position, she was paid more than three times her previous wage ($9.50 per hour, or $1,520 per month) had scheduled hours, and knew exactly what her job duties were. Ho Thanh Chau worked at the same nursing home until she retired ten years later and recalled no discrimination during her time there.

Gender-Based Discrimination

The women in this study recalled more discrimination based on their race than they did because they were female. For many participants, gender-based discrimination appeared to be

78 more of an afterthought than a primary concern. Phan, Rivera, and Roberts-Wilbur (2005), in their study on the development of Vietnamese American women’s personal identities, argued that the “majority of women of color see their race before their gender (90%)” (p. 306). This perception of identity, based on feelings of solidarity within a racial or ethnic group, appears to be common among women who identify as members of racial minorities, including African

American women (Miville and Ferguson 2014)

However, it is likely that the women in this study did experience a disconnect between traditional Vietnamese gender roles and the more liberalized gender roles of American women, or, at least, between the traits Anglo Americans thought a Third World woman exhibited and what traits white women thought all females should exhibit. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, a noted feminist scholar, argued that many white feminists of the time believed Third World women to be “sexually constrained…ignorant, poor, uneducated, tradition-bound, domestic, family- oriented, victimized, etc.” (p. 56). The stories brought back from the war by American soldiers did little to change this perception, adding only that Vietnamese women embodied one of two archetypes: that of the no-nonsense, uptight, and restrictive matron (or “dragon lady”) or the young, nubile sex object (Stur 2011). Obviously, the reality was quite different and much more complicated.

In this study, the women discussed these racialized gender expectations only in passing if they discussed them at all. One reason for this may be that 36.84 percent of all study participants worked in the female-dominated beauty industry. According to the Pew Research Center, gender-based discrimination is less common in female-dominated industries than it is in male- dominated industries (Parker 2018). The women in this study were, as a group, more interested in describing their resilience to discrimination and their adaptivity in resettlement and economic

79 endeavors. They also tended to describe the strength and intelligence that they hoped their daughters would one day embody. Scholars in the field, however, tended to be less forward- looking than the women in the study. In general, most scholars agree that, in 1975 and the decades following, Vietnamese women were still expected to exhibit some traditional tenets of

Confucianism (Jiang 2009; Nguyen 2009; Nguyen 2014). These included the Four Virtues of

Confucianism: to be hard-working, well-spoken, well-behaved, and well-groomed (Nguyen

2014). In Memory is Another Country, author Nathalie Nguyen observes that Vietnamese women

“were instructed to be modest, hardworking, and quiet, and not to indulge in unseemly displays of emotion” (2009, p. 52). Women were also expected to observe the Three Obediences: submitting to their fathers before marriage, to their husbands during marriage, and to their eldest sons during widowhood (Nguyen 2014). The Three Obediences clearly illustrate the idea that, in traditional Vietnamese culture, women were expected to be subservient to men. The Five

Relations, another tenet of Confucianism confirms that, just as a citizen is subject to his ruler, a wife is subject to her husband (Abrams et al. 2016; Tiwald 2011).

In comparison, the women in the United States had already fought for and gained female suffrage, passed the Equal Pay Act of 1963, and seen the Supreme Court rule in women’s favor in Roe v. Wade in 1973 (French 2008). Though women’s rights in the United States often lagged behind those of more progressive nations (and still do), these advancements represented a stark contrast in ideologies.

Despite this fact, two out of the nineteen women interviewed still recalled instances of gender discrimination. For the most part, these were women who sought to work in what was (in the decades following the fall of Saigon) still considered to be a ‘man’s world’: news reporting and the judicial system (Bulkeley 2002; United States Courts 2019).

Ngo Kim Hang, the judge described in the above section on discrimination between

Vietnamese Americans and other minorities, discussed how she was discriminated against as a female judge.

Usually…a judge would be male, right? More male judge[s]. And then judge would be Anglos, more or less Anglos…comparing the size…I would be petite. Very small…They will always think, like, I’m probably inferior…if I had been a big, tall Anglo or African [American] male judge…they would not want to act up in the courtrooms. But some of them acted up in the courtroom because they thought that they could intimidate me. So, that’s what I had to deal with.

Ngo Kim Hang, because she was a woman, had both a smaller stature and a less “booming” voice than the male judges of her acquaintance. At the time she took the bench, both were considered to be assets in maintaining judicial authority and order in the courtroom.

Do Mai Nguyet, who worked as a news reporter for a large part of her career, experienced reproductive discrimination. She recalled being invited to interview for her first reporting job in the United States while she was pregnant, but not yet showing. Since her arrival in the United States, Do Mai Nguyet had been mentored by a female English-as-a-Second-

Language (ESL) teacher from her community. Participant 210 asked her teacher’s advice about her upcoming interview and recalled, “my teacher friend told me, ‘don’t tell them [about your pregnancy] until…you are hired’”. At this time, around the mid-1980s, employers had a habit of discriminating against pregnant women by refusing to hire them because they did not want the fiscal responsibility of paying for a woman’s maternity leave. Men were deemed to be “safer” job candidates because paternity leave was not (and still isn’t) something that existed in

American employment culture. According to Time, some modern business owners still believe women to be risky hires for this reason (Huang 2016).

Do Mai Nguyet’s other experience of gender discrimination came from her own friends and family. She explained that, for each of her five pregnancies, “I was hoping for a boy because everybody said, “you got to have a boy””. Instead, she gave birth to five girls that she adored.

This type of discrimination, known as “son preference”, appears to be common among East

Asian immigrants because of the Confucian influences described above (Jiang 2009; Nguyen

2009). In some Asian nations, this preference has resulted in female infanticides and preference- based abortions of female fetuses (Miller 2001). Though no participant in this study reported any actions of this kind, a few women did speak about how the Vietnamese culture valued males over females. As Ho Thi Hue noted, “in Vietnam, you know, the men is the number one.”

As discussed throughout this chapter, the economic pathways of Vietnamese American women have often been hindered by both racial and gender-based discrimination from those around them. In this study, the women specifically recalled discrimination based on their work ethics, their supposed ignorance, and their accents. They were often bullied, received lower wages, and were even exploited by fellow Vietnamese American refugees. However, the women in this study showed that they were able to cope with this discrimination via either passivity or gentle correction. Overall, gender-based discrimination seemed less common than racial discrimination. Despite this, a few participants did recall experiencing difficulties along their economic pathways because of both Confucian-based gender expectations and pre-conceived biases of the American people.

CHAPTER 6:

“WITHOUT A TEACHER, YOU CAN DO NOTHING”

(EDUCATION AND GOVERNMENT AID)

Introduction

Education has traditionally been highly valued in Confucian-based societies (Espiritu

2006; Waley 1989). Vietnam, whose interaction with the ideology extends as far back as 111

B.C.E., is no exception (Marino 1998). As Pham and Fry (2005) state, “respect for learning and teachers have been enduring traits of the Vietnamese people throughout it its civilization…it was thought that ‘without a teacher, you can do nothing’” (p. 201). As discussed previously in this thesis, social and political advancement in early Vietnam relied on state-sponsored examinations that often required years, if not decades, of study to complete. Once passed, however, exam rankings allowed male scholars to drastically improve their family’s quality of life and bring wealth to their native villages (Spring 2011). In this way, education was seen as a tool, or as a means to an end, for a family’s and a community’s economic provision. Education was also, as is commonly acknowledged, a method for creating sustainable human and capital (Sowell 2015).

This was especially the case for Vietnamese women in the late French colonial era, who had traditionally received less education than men in Confucian societies (Nguyen 2009; Spring

2011). Women received little to no education under either Chinese imperialism or French colonialism, save for at the end of 19th Century when a Vietnamese reformist group opened a

“non-tuition” university for both men and women (Pham and Fry 2005, p. 203). Though this school was closed by the French in 1908, the Vietnamese had already adopted the European notion of female educational attainment. For women, particularly those in the upper social

83 classes, formal educational attainment became a trait that enhanced their desirability as brides for wealthy, learned, or aristocratic men (Coughlin 1950). This slow opening of the educational system to women, coupled with the opportunity for economic and social advancement, gradually increased the incidence of educated women in the nation. As early as 1950, records indicate that it was common for middle- to upper-class Vietnamese women to have some amount of formal education, ranging from high school graduation to the completion of post-graduate degrees in prestigious francophone universities (Ibid.).

It wasn’t until the fall of Saigon in 1975 that this burgeoning of women’s education, both in general and of the female Vietnamese academy specifically, ground to a halt. The majority of students and professors, males and females alike, found their academic careers cut short by the

Communists’ war on the South Vietnamese intelligentsia (Espiritu 2014; Freeman 1989; Nguyen

2009). It was this purging of the intelligentsia, and of business owners and political officials, that made the first wave of Vietnamese refugees into the United States so unique from subsequent waves (Espiritu 2014; Lowe 1996). The first Vietnamese to flee the country were those that had due fear of persecution from the incoming government; in other words, it was the most educated, well-connected, and affluent families that first flooded the refugee camps and found asylum in the United States (Espiritu 2014; Hastings 2018). It is, perhaps, this very real commonality that reinforced the model minority myth stereotypes that have since plagued generations of

Vietnamese immigrants. After all, the American public’s first exposure to the Vietnamese people

(beyond what they had heard from soldiers or seen on their televisions) were highly educated individuals determined to apply their skills in a new job market.

Greenman (2013) suggests that this strong connection to educational attainment as a life- long value is prominent only in first- and second-generation immigrants. This ethnographic field

84 survey reflected this assumption, as those who were mothers of adolescent second-generation

Vietnamese Americans commonly expressed their concern and confusion over their children’s lack of regard for grades, discipline, and utter devotion to “be[ing] like the other kids” their age.

These parents believed that their children would struggle to find decent employment as adults if they didn’t take their studies seriously in grade school and high school.

This assumption is likely based on the 1.5-generation’s observance of their first- generation parents and their own dedication to education. Each 1.5-generation woman in the sample (three total) recalled watching their parents struggle to make ends meet and provide for their children. One of the three, Le Thu Thuy, remembered growing up with little-to-no supervision from her constantly working father, who both worked outside of the home and ran a small convenience store out of their living room. Her father stressed to her the importance of education in having a better life. It must have worked, because Le Thu Thuy became a pharmacist and married a man that would later become a physician. In fact, each of the three 1.5- generation women in this study attained a high degree of education: there was one pharmacist, one doctor, and a woman who held an MBA.

Another reason that education may have seemed so important to first- and 1.5-generation

Vietnamese Americans is what appears to be, at least among this sample, a cultural resistance to government welfare. Other studies, such as that of Yen Le Espiritu (2014), assert that a large number of Vietnamese Americans find their lives to be “characterized by unstable, minimum- wage employment, welfare dependency, and participation in the informal economy” (p. 99). Eric

Tang (2015), however, argues that, while these characteristics may accurately describe the majority of Cambodian refugees in the United States, the Vietnamese American population is more economically heterogeneous. The Vietnamese, unlike the Cambodians, have distinct ethnic

85 enclaves that support business enterprises and have a more elite “professional class” mixed in with their poorer community members (Tang 2015, p. 9). It is from this class that the sample for this study was most likely drawn.

Education

According to the Pew Research Center, 52 percent of foreign-born Vietnamese

Americans (including both the first- and 1.5-generations) have received schooling equivalent to a high school diploma or less (Lopez, Cilluffo, and Patten 2017). Another 22 percent have attended some college, 18 percent have graduated with a bachelor’s degree, and only 7 percent have attained a postgraduate or professional degree. Following this format, the current sample produced the following statistics (minus three women, who chose only to discuss their current licenses instead of prior education): 31.25 percent received schooling equivalent to a high school diploma or less, 43.75 percent attended some college (57.14 percent of these received an associate degree and 42.86 received no degree), none graduated with only a bachelor’s degree, and 25 percent attained a postgraduate or professional degree. These statistics include schooling pursued in either the United States or Vietnam. Statistics concerning pre-immigration educational levels can be found in Chapter Three in the section on demographics.

In contrast to the sample from the Pew Research Center, this sample appears to contain more highly educated women than the typical Vietnamese American population. This may be due to the bias of the snowball sampling method toward more “successful” women and it may also reflect that the sample was mostly taken from the “professional” strata of Vietnamese society, as discussed by Tang (2014, p. 9). Regardless, the sample’s emphasis on education ensured that that interviews covered this topic richly.

Most women described their educational endeavors as a means for accomplishing a goal, whether that be improved economic status or access to a particular employment field (i.e., through professional degrees). Ngo Kim Hang, who later became a municipal judge, said about her first few years in the U.S.: “I took a number a classes, but not geared toward a major. But it was all geared toward my job.” It would be nearly two decades before she decided to pursue a JD and become an attorney, and later, a judge. First, however, Ngo Kim Hang was more interested in earning whatever money she could so her family would not have to continue imposing on her sister-in-law’s hospitality. She saw that clerical and typist positions were the most commonly available jobs for unskilled women in Chicago, Illinois, in the late 1970s. Thus, she enrolled in typing classes at a local community college, where she also took English language classes

(despite having been an English teacher in Vietnam, she became worried when English radio stations spoke too quickly for her to understand), classes on “office procedures”, and lessons on computer use. When Ngo Kim Hang secured her first job as a typist, she was able to put out only forty words per minute and often brought her work home, typing well into the night to finish assignments and become successful at her job. When she moved to Texas, she continued this pattern of studying to increase her job prospects. This time, she took classes on preparing taxes and soon opened a business providing tax and translation services. As she became drawn into translating for the local judicial system, she began taking additional classes centered on the

American legal system. “I always tried to take the classes in order to improve…my job skill”,

Ngo Kim Hang summarized in her interview.

For many women in the sample, formal education was just as much a means to an end as it was for Ngo Kim Hang in the initial stages of her life in the United States. It wasn’t until later in Ngo Kim Hang’s life that her relationship with education shifted, becoming more of a refuge

87 from a stressful life than a way to accomplish a goal. By the time her eldest son was accepted into medical school, her marriage had fallen apart. Pressure to keep the family together until her sons finished college, pressure from friends and family members, and her husband’s threatened suicide prevented her from filing for divorce. Instead, she enrolled in law school so that she would have little time to spend at home with her estranged husband.

Le Thu Thuy, who became a professional pharmacist, cited yet another reason for pursuing formal education that led to a well-paying job:

I see [my parents] working hard and it motivates me…It’s like, we risked our life to come over here by boat…and so, with all of the risks, the sacrifice we make, [we have to] make something of it. You know? It’s easy to say for us when I see my parents working so hard as I was growing up.

Le Thu Thuy believed in making something of herself, and in becoming successful, so that the sacrifices made by her parents would not be in vain. If her parents had struggled to give her the opportunities of the U.S., then she was going to take advantage of them. Another study participant, Do Mai Nguyet (the journalist) recalled having the same sort of motivation. When she first arrived in the U.S., she became a seamstress in the informal economy. The work wasn’t the most lucrative, but she recalled making “good money” that supported her family. Her father, however, had different ideas. “My father looked at [my husband and I],” Do Mai Nguyet stated in her interview, “and he said, ‘You didn’t risk your life on the high seas to become a seamstress in America’”. Soon after this comment, Do Mai Nguyet, her husband, and their children moved to California, where she enrolled in a community college to better her English, formed a professional network, and engaged in a series of consecutively higher-paying jobs that eventually led her to start a second career as a Vietnamese American journalist in San Diego. Over the

88 course of her post-immigration life, Do Mai Nguyet completed eight years of college. While she may have initially taken classes to improve her job prospects, she, like Ngo Kim Hang described above, recounted a secondary reason for pursuing formal education: “I love to learn,” she stated enthusiastically, “I am a forever student. I love to learn everything [because] I want to do the best in everything I do.”

Though the reasons for pursuing formal education may have differed across women and across lifetimes, the strong effort put forth by these students remained constant. As much as a hard work ethic was a part of the model minority myth, it was also a one of many Vietnamese core values. Ngo Kim Hang, for example, recalled how hard she worked when preparing to take the bar exam:

My kids say they could never do the way I did. I never leave the chair, [except] for a few minutes going to the restroom and things like that…I don’t waste time doing other things…So, no party, no dinner outside, nothing. Just focus on finishing the bar exam. So, I think because of my resilience and my hard working, it was paid off.

To her great relief, Ngo Kim Hang passed the bar exam on her first try. This trait of hard work, however, was not limited to traditional, degree-oriented formal education. English-as-a-Second-

Language (ESL) classes were a critical component of these women’s educational attainment and economic pathways in the United States.

Thirteen of the sixteen women who sought some type of formal instruction in the United

States took ESL classes. This number includes the three women who immigrated to the U.S. under the age of ten, whose elementary and high school curricula included English classes for native speakers. The remaining women who sought ESL instruction did so from a mix of

89 community colleges and community institutions, such as churches or community centers. Three of these thirteen women had sought English language training in both Vietnam and the United

States (Ngo Kim Hang had even been an English teacher in Vietnam). An additional three women, who did not study English in the United States, had taken courses on the subject before leaving Vietnam. In total, 84.21 percent (sixteen women) of the current sample had studied

English at some point in their lives.

Several previous studies have noted that understanding the English language has been critical for Vietnamese American refugees aiming to succeed in the United States. According to

Haines, Rutherford, and Thomas (1981), “the key element in successful economic adjustment

[for Vietnamese Americans] has usually been identified as English language competence” (p.

312). Female Vietnamese refugees tended to pick up the language more quickly than their male counterparts, which may have led, in part, to the increased incidence of women as primary economic providers in Vietnamese American families after the Vietnam War (Phan, Rivera, and

Roberts-Wilbur 2005). Other scholars noted that a lack of English language skills was linked with co-residency among families who could not afford separate housing units (Wang, Creswell, and Nguyen 2017). Barbara Ehrenreich echoed this sentiment by claiming, in Nickel and Dimed:

On (Not) Getting by in America, that English language skills greatly increased the prospect of higher paying jobs for the working poor.

The women in this sample tended to agree. Dang Nhung Phuong stated, “I ha[d] education in Vietnam in English, that’s why…it’s easy for me to get, apply the job.” Ngo Kim

Hang, the attorney and judge discussed earlier, further equated a knowledge of the English language with success in general, stating that her family had found “success in that sense that they are successful in their business [and] they learned to speak English well.” Dang Thi Do,

90 who owned both a restaurant and a grocery store during her career, briefly summarized her beliefs on the issue: “Some people come here, work hard, do a lot. And then, if you don’t know much English, you have big problem. I know little English when I come here…So, I don’t have that much problem. I know where to go, who I talk with.”

However, having a poor command of English, or even having a strong Vietnamese accent, was sometimes known to cause discrimination for the women in this study. Dinh My

Ngoc, who eventually earned an MBA and opened an investing company after immigrating to the U.S. at age eight, noted that other children made fun of her in because of her difficulty with learning a new language. As a child, she found the English language to be “challenging” and recalled that “kids are mean.” She also noted, however, that learning a new language had been easier for her than for her husband. She believed this was because she’d been younger when she entered the American school system than he had—he’d immigrated to the U.S. in the 10th Grade and she’d arrived in time for the 3rd Grade. Le Thu Thuy, the pharmacist discussed earlier in this chapter, recalled, “I had a lot of complaints about my accent” in her employment. She added, however, that this kind of discrimination was more common in rural areas than it was in a metroplex like Houston, Texas, where the interviews took place.

52.63 percent of the women in this study (ten women) sought yet another form of education during their careers in the United States—vocational training. In all cases, this involved the pursuance of a professional license that qualified the women for work in a particular service industry. These women most commonly sought work in the beauty industry, as was discussed in greater detail in Chapter Four of this thesis. Five of the ten women who pursued certifications became licensed nail technicians after completing the relevant coursework, three more earned cosmetology licenses, one woman received a professional childcare license, and one

91 woman became a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA). To earn these certifications, various amounts of education were required. In the State of Texas, nail technicians had to complete 600 hours of training; cosmetologists were required to complete 1500 hours of training; professional child caretakers completed 30 hours of training annually for license renewal, not including pre- license orientation training, first aid, and CPR training; and CNAs were required to complete an associate degree in their field before obtaining licensure (Cosmetology-License.com n.d.(a);

Cosmetology-License.com n.d.(b); Wonder School 2017).

Each of the women who sought vocational education and obtained a professional license did so as a means to procuring a job in their chosen industries—all except one. Dao Tam Thu, who obtained a professional childcare license in the State of Texas, used her credentials to start a daycare that catered only to her five grandchildren. She made no profit from this endeavor, as she did not charge her three daughters for her services. It was, however, a full-time job. Dao Tam

Thu stated, via her translator, that she would “wake up before her daughters [went] to work and take care of the kids all day.” She worked “at least full time, if not sixty” hours per week as a childcare professional, transporting the children to school and sports practices. It was a job that she was still engaged in at the time of her interview. As soon as her oldest grandchildren became toddlers, new infants had been born into her daughters’ families. The works was never-ending.

Dao Tam Thu laughed when she stated that there were always car seats in the back of her vehicle, despite her own children being long grown.

TABLE 6.1: STUDY PARTICIPANTS BY EDUCATION AND FUNDING

Study Participants By Education and Funding Highest Highest Age at ESL in ESL in Educational Welfare or Name Education in Education in Immigration Vietnam? U.S.? Financial Aid? Benefits? Vietnam U.S. Ngo Xuyen 32 Associate Deg. Assoc. Yes No Yes No Tran Ngoc Thao 38 HS N/A Yes No No No Tran Xuan Thu 5 None MD No Yes Yes No Le Thu Thuy 7 None Pharm. No Yes Yes No Dinh My Ngoc 8 3rd Grade MBA * Yes No No Nguyen Hong Diep 44 HS None * No No No Do Mai Nguyet 29 Some College Some College Yes Yes Yes No Bui Quy Thi 23 * Cosmetolgy * Yes No Yes Ngo Kim Hang 25 Bachelor Deg. JD Yes Yes * No Ho Thanh Chau 50 Bachelor Deg. Associate Deg. * Yes * No Child Care Dao Tam Thu 58 Associate Deg. * Yes * No Cert. Nail Ho Thi Hue 32 Middle School * * * No Technician Nail Duong Thuy Truc 38 Some College * Yes * No Technician Nail Nguyen Thi Tran 26 * Yes Yes * Yes Technician Vu Thi Lanh 42 HS None * Yes No No Nail Pham Thi Thu 17 HS Technician/ * Yes * No Trang Some College Associate Dang Thi Do 22 HS Deg./ * Yes * * Cosmetology Dang Nhung Nail 27 * Yes * * No Phuong Technician Nail Ly Thi Thom 35 9th Grade * * * No Technician

Table 6.1 depicts the formal and vocational educational achievements of each woman in the sample and depicts whether or not she took ESL classes, sought educational financial aid, or received government assistance.

Government Aid and Welfare

With a desire for education came the need to fund that education. For the majority of women in this sample, that education was funded via financial aid that came in the form of federal loans or scholarships. Of the nine women that sought formal education in the United

States (including the CNA, who completed an associate degree to attain her license), four

93 explicitly discussed using some sort of financial aid to cover the costs of their classes. Four more women chose not to discuss their finances at the time of their educations, and one woman specifically stated that she worked to pay her way through college. The majority of financial aid for the women in this sample took the form of both subsidized and unsubsidized federal loans, scholarships, and Pell Grants (Federal Student Aid N.d.). Seven of these nine women also worked at least part-time while attending courses, or attended courses part-time while working at least forty hours per week. For the women who arrived as adults in the United States, the availability of financial aid was the only reason they could even consider pursuing a formal education. They struggled to make ends meet as it was—there was no extra money to spend on schooling unless it was for their young children. Members of the 1.5 generation, however, described slightly different circumstances. Their financial situations had benefitted from the hard work of their first-generation parents, but funds for college still remained elusive. Dinh My

Ngoc, who earned an MBA, recalled: “We weren’t rich, but then we weren’t poor enough either.

We were the kind of in-between people, you know, you don’t fully qualify for a scholarship or grants and, but you really can’t afford a whole lot…you had to work, too.”

Often, however, there were multiple people in each family attending college simultaneously. Do Mai Nguyet attended college at the same time as her husband; with one vehicle, both remained on campus until the latest class was finished. For Ngo Xuyen, the struggle for education was even more intense. She and five other siblings attended the same college and also shared one car between them during their first year. All six brothers and sisters arrived on campus in time for the earliest class of the day and stayed until the last class, regardless of what time their personal classes took place. If they were lucky, Ngo Xuyen recalled, they could get a ride home from friends and not wait until their siblings’ classes ended

94 for the day. Ngo Kim Hang remembered a similar, but slightly different difficulty: she pursued her JD while simultaneously helping her two sons through college (one going through medical school and the other studying to be an accountant). She stated in her interview:

Three people in college. At one time. My younger [son]…got in to UT. My, my first son was at Baylor, and I was at law school… Many times I called them up and said that, “I think that I failed this time. I don’t think that I will make law school.” So, I cried…but I felt like I was up in the top of the tree. I did not know how to get down. I felt like, if I get down now, I will be knock[ed] off. I will be. And I had no future. So, I felt like I had to go. I had to somehow survive this. So, it was very difficult for me.

With multiple generations and multiple other family members attending college at the same time, educational financial aid was even more critical. According to most scholars, so were other kinds of aid and welfare. However, there appears to be a dichotomy in the Vietnamese American mind between these two types of government aid—while financial loans, gifts, and scholarships were deemed acceptable and greatly appreciated by the women in this sample, government payouts, such as welfare, were seen in an opposing light.

As stated in the introduction to this chapter, the current sample is likely biased towards

“successful” Vietnamese American women. This does not mean, however, that the women in this study did not experience the same hardship and poverty in the early years of their resettlement as did many other thousands of refugees form the Vietnam War. What it may suggest, instead, is that resistance to government-sponsored welfare may be based on status.

Of the nineteen women in this study, only two reported ever receiving non-educational aid from the government. A third woman did not respond to the question. Of the two that did receive benefits and/or welfare, one reported she had just started receiving social security

95 retirement a few months before her interview. The second woman, Bui Quy Thi, reported that she had lived off government assistance since arriving in the United States and that she was now also being supported by her grown children. Bui Quy Thi stated that she made the decision not to work because she was a single mother raising two children on her own. Her second child was born in the United States while her first child was still young, so it left little time for her find childcare while seeking employment and/or education.

A fourth woman applied for government assistance, buy reported that she found a job before her application had been completely processed. A member of the 1.5 generation who eventually became a physician, Tran Xuan Thu, recalled that her parents had received assistance when they first arrived in the United States, but that this had lasted only until they found regular employment. She confirmed that her 1.5 generation Vietnamese American family had never had a need for government assistance, beyond what they considered to be educational financial aid.

Other women in the sample, however, willingly shared their dislike or avoidance of welfare when asked if they had ever received government assistance. Pham Thu Thi Trang, who came to the United States as a seventeen-year-old, married one year later, and eventually owned three separate nail salons, stated in her interview: “We always work. We work hard…We never have welfare for nothing. Not yet.” Do Mai Nguyet explained her avoidance of welfare and government assistance in a more thorough, though perhaps less adamant, fashion:

With the financial aid, and the loans, student loans we got from the school we were going [to], we were able to keep our family going until I got the part-time job…Everybody at the time told me that I was not smart for doing so. They said that, ‘California has such wonderful welfare program, and since you have two children and you want to go back to school, why don’t you get on the welfare program to get your studies done?’ And that’s much safer. But I guess I’m too proud for that. And also, my father was too

proud…and my teacher, the ESL teacher, was also too proud and she tell me, ‘No matter how much…no matter how tiny money you make…but it is still what you earn instead of having to rely on public assistance. If you are capable to earn your own income, then why should you do that?’ So, I really went against the tide at the time. That’s what I thought. Because all of my friends, everybody I know, they [were] going to school [and] on welfare assistance until they got out of school. My best friend, she did that. She also have a son with her, and she was on welfare assistance, on housing, on everything, and then on financial aid. And then, every month she was able to buy, I remember she told me that I should do like her, every month she was able to buy an ounce of gold to save…welfare was, you know, enough. As refugees, we didn’t need much. We were very, very basic. So, welfare assistance [was] more than we need. Then she was able to save and then…she got her degree. I never got my degree because I was too busy working. But my friend was able to get [hers] and she kept telling me, ‘See? Look at me, you know, I got the degree before you do.’ But I’m still proud of what I did.

This begs the question of just how, exactly, receiving financial aid for education (i.e., a federal subsidized loan that does not have to be repaid) differs from receiving other forms of government aid (i.e., Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, TANF) in the Vietnamese

American psyche. In the women’s narratives, it appears that non-educational government assistance is linked with the lack of a hard work ethic, while educational assistance is not. The simple explanation lies in the difference between philanthropy and investment.

However, no true explanation is ever simple. In this case, one must understand the nuanced relationship that the Vietnamese people have with both education and their litany of previous governments. The introduction to this chapter briefly discussed the Chinese imperial exam system, while Chapter Four discusses women’s traditional roles in supporting their scholarly husbands. Here, however, the focus in on how education is perceived by Vietnamese

Americans as a result of the former examination system.

Most importantly, the imperial examination system was perceived to be a system of meritocracy, whereby the most competent and intelligent men would naturally rise to power within the government. If a man proved himself at the lowest level of exams, he earned the ability to take the next level, and so forth, until he passed the highest levels and became a government official. Proven capability was rewarded by increased opportunities. As education became more and more common in the late French colonial era, it also became a de facto social barrier separating low-status individuals from high-status individuals. Funding for education, however, remained scarce. This was because, in order to maintain education as a barrier to entry to higher status, it had to be difficult to attain—not just anyone could be allowed to pass that barrier. Loan programs (both before and during Communist control) were practically nonexistent. Funding had to come from either one’s family or from an outside institution. Even if the money came from one’s parents, funds for schooling were only given to the children that showed the most promise in academics, as there were typically five or more children in a

Vietnamese family and not enough funds to educate them all. If an outside institution, or even the government, decided to grant a scholarship or otherwise pay for an individual’s education, then that meant that they, too, believed that that individual showed more promise of success than other applicants. In the government’s case, it was also because they expected the student to work for them upon graduation.

In this same way, it is likely that Vietnamese Americans viewed U.S. government’s willingness to pay for their educations as a confirmation of their competence. Federal loans were not acts of philanthropy, they were investments that had been earned through hard work, dedication, and resilience. Welfare, on the other hand was an act of philanthropy. This is where the distinction lies. Furthermore, there seemed to be a consensus among the narratives that these

98 investments could be repaid in the form of social and economic contributions after graduation— hence, why many of the women spoke of “giving back” to the United States for all that they had received after being accepted as refugees after the Vietnam War.

In conclusion, this chapter has shown that education, whether it be formal or vocational, is critically important in the Vietnamese culture and is often used as means for acquiring higher- paying jobs and a higher social status. Formal education, in particular, served an economic purpose for the women in this study. Pursuing higher degrees, such as a JD, MBA, or an MD, allowed them to break past barriers to entry in such lucrative fields as law, business, and medicine. Perhaps more economically critical, however, was the women’s engagement in the study of the English language. The overwhelming majority of women in this sample have studied

English at some point in their careers, whether in the United States or in Vietnam. According to the literature, a mastery of the English language is a key predictor of future economic success in refugees. Vocational training was, it seems, unique among Vietnamese Americans in that it was almost entirely geared towards the beauty industry, particularly towards the licensing of nail technicians. The high incidence of both nail technicians and cosmetologists in this sample is evidence of high Vietnamese American engagement in the industry.

Education, however, requires funding. For the women in this sample, this funding mostly came from either federal loans or other scholarships. Though white Americans may equate subsidized federal loans with welfare programs such as TANF (in the aspect that neither have to be repaid and are “gifts” from the government), this is not the case for Vietnamese Americans, who feel that non-repayable educational loans are “investments” earned through hard work and competence. Welfare, however, is viewed through a dichotomy: some Vietnamese Americans

99 view it as a legitimate income for those in difficult life situations, others feel it is an affront to their hard work ethic and disparage it in all its forms.

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CHAPTER 7

“TO SHARE [SUCCESS] WITH ALL THE REFUGEES AND MIGRANTS”

(CONCLUDING REMARKS AND RECOMMENDATIONS)

Contributions to the Field

This study set out to describe and analyze the economic pathways of female Vietnamese

American refugees and migrants. However, due to the richness of detail and nuances contained in the participants’ narratives, it has done more than that. This research has exhibited the importance that Vietnamese American women place on the survival of their families and their determination to personally ensure this survival. It has also illuminated the resilience of female refugees. Despite facing human rights abuses in post-1975 Vietnam, abject poverty and health risks in refugee camps, workplace racism and discrimination, and the struggle for educational and economic advancement, Vietnamese American women have flourished. They have shown themselves to be entrepreneurs. They have also shown themselves to be the pioneers of their own ethnic niche industry—showing their ability to mold the American economic environment to suit their own needs.

This thesis has also shed light on how thousands of years of Vietnamese history, society, and culture still affect Vietnamese American women’s modern economic decisions, expectations, and pathways. Particularly, this study found that the Confucian notions of hard work and upward social mobility via education remained important motivations in the economic lives of

Vietnamese American women. In this way, the past appears to be tightly entwined with the present in Vietnamese American lives. One novel component of this thesis is that it manages to

101 unwind these interconnected components to present a clear picture of these women’s lived economic experiences as they struggled to survive in both Vietnam and the United States.

Study Limitations

The primary limitation for this study is the tendency of the snowball sampling method to cause an over-inclusion of study participants that are considered to be “successful” in their communities. The women included in this study appear to fall in this category based on differences in demographic cohorts between the current sample and other recent studies on the

Vietnamese American population. This is particularly notable in terms of education and employment type. In conclusion, this limitation results in a lower external validity for the current study.

Another limitation was the small sample size, which did not allow further statistical analysis. A larger sample size would have allowed for linear and logistic regression model analysis, which would have led to more concrete conclusions regarding the data. Instead, this study relies on an almost purely qualitative review with the addition of descriptive statistics.

The researcher also observed that respondents were less likely to exhibit emotional responses during their interviews if the primary translator, Capt. To, was present. This was not the case in the two interviews where a female friend of the respondent served as a translator. This leads the researcher to believe that the presence of a woman, particularly a friend, lowers

Vietnamese American women’s inhibitions and enhances the richness of their narratives. With a friend who is likely already aware of their experiences, they do not have to appear as strong as they may wish to in front of a male stranger.

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Furthermore, the researcher was informed after the field study had taken place that several of the women had held back details of their narratives because “they didn’t want to burden” the researcher. It was implied, however, that the women may have been willing to share the burdening aspects of their stories in subsequent interviews once they were sure the researcher really did want to know about them. This appears to be tied to the Vietnamese American community’s uncertainty of outsiders and underscores the importance of establishing close ties within the community as a researcher. Multiple interviews per respondent would likely have drawn out more information and elicited more trust. Unfortunately, the time constraints of this field survey prevented the use of this method.

Areas for Future Research

The analyses contained in this thesis illuminate not only the importance of employment for female Vietnamese American refugees and migrants, but why employment (and women’s pathways to it) are so important. The Vietnamese American penchant for hard work and entrepreneurialism, as seen in this sample, is largely derived from their long, complex, and richly nuanced cultural history. To elicit deeper connections between this history and women’s economic pathways, future research should encompass greater numbers of participants, multiple study sites, and multiple interviews with each respondent.

However, in the search to understand and analyze the economic pathways of the current sample, new questions have also arisen. The author has determined areas for future research and analysis:

1) How would the outcomes of this study change if 1) there were a greater representation of

all income levels among the participants, and 2) the study was conducted at multiple sites

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in addition to the Houston, Texas, metroplex? Would less emphasis be placed on formal

education and more emphasis placed on vocational education and on sustaining low-wage

pay for unskilled labor (though Barbara Ehrenreich argues, convincingly, that no labor is

truly “unskilled”)?

2) Does the determination to learn the English language exist across all income and status

levels, or is it unique to the “successful” women analyzed in this sample?

3) Just how greatly does the 1.5 generation differ from the first generation in terms of their

reliance on Confucian-based educational expectations, and why?

4) Why are intra-group perspectives on the Vietnamese American community so

contradictive (i.e., why did some women in this sample find the community comforting,

while others found it constricting)?

To answer these questions, and the many others have arisen from this research, more research is clearly required.

Policy Implications

The emphasis that this study places on education and low-skilled work opportunities has clear implications for refugee policy in the United States. This sample indicates that refugee women, particularly in the Southeast Asian context, are willing to work in order to support their families. If treated fairly and in accordance with labor laws, these women will exhibit dedication to their work and a strong work ethic. Upon first arriving in the United States, they will be willing to work in low-skilled, low-income employments. They will, however, seek out any education or training that can help them break past this low-skilled, low-income job barrier. One theme was maintained by each woman that worked in the U.S.—she pursued higher incomes as

104 she gained American work experience. No woman in the sample took a job that made less than her previous employment (unless forced to by relocation or other circumstances). Because female Vietnamese American refugees and migrants are resilient and dedicated, it would have been a grave injustice for them to have remained in refugee camps where no economic or educational opportunities were present. This would have limited the women’s pride in contributing to their families, their educational and economic achievements, and their contribution to the greater economies of resettlement nations. Refugee policy should, instead of focusing on the containment of refugees and outdated reintegration measures, focus on supporting refugees’ economic aspirations and economic empowerment.

And yet, today, more than twenty million international refugees suffer live in refugee camps around the world (Betts and Collier 2018). Alexander Betts and Paul Collier, both of the

University of Oxford, strongly argue in their book Refuge: Transforming a Broken System that employment opportunities are key components for lessening the economic burden of refugee camps on host countries and for preventing aid dependency, malnutrition, and violence among the refugees themselves. Camps, however, are not the only locations where refugees languish without economic opportunities. The number of modern refugees that live on the fringes of large cities is growing rapidly. Refugees are prohibited from working or seeking education/job trainings. Their children attend substandard schools set aside for them. Many parents, like Ly Thi

Thom in this study, resort to illegal activities to provide an income to keep themselves and their children healthy. This only serves to heighten the risk that these men and women already face as refugees. Ideally, refugee policies should aim to reduce the barriers facing this already vulnerable population pursue permanent resettlement (and citizenship) as their main objectives.

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Protocols for refugees have remained largely the same for the past seventy years. The

1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees was designed in a post-World War II era when refugees were European and fleeing persecution from ideologies such as Nazism and

Communism (United Nations General Assembly 1951). Refugee camps were made to be temporary because, in most cases, they were. Allied nations in the wake of World War II eagerly accepted these European dissidents and many of them repatriated at the end of the war (Betts and

Collier 2017). However, the majority of modern refugees are no longer fleeing ideologies and the nations waiting to resettle them are fewer and farther between. Modern refugees, according to

Betts and Collier, are fleeing disorder and chaos and often have no homes to return to, even if their conflicts were to end. Furthermore, these refugees are distinct from World War II refugees in that they are non-white, non-European, and from developing nations. The lack of opportunities for modern refugees a racialized issue that has, for many countries in the developed world, become increasingly about individuals’ “right to migrate” rather than about global humanitarian needs and providing assistance to stateless persons (Bett and Collier 2017, p. 6).

This shift in politics has turned refugees into issues of national and border security. This is particularly the case in post-9/11 U.S., where a degree of xenophobia has slowly been giving rise to the appearance of nationalism in current politics. This xenophobia and nationalism have been particularly marked throughout the Trump administration. However, Europe, too, has seen an increase in nationalism and a rising distaste for allowing the Third World “other” to cross into their developed borders.

A common argument against refugees (as discussed in Chapter Five of this thesis) is that they bring with them high crime rates, a determination to “steal” jobs from natives, and a tendency to abuse the welfare system. According to the sample analyzed for the current study,

106 each of these is blatantly false. No participant in this study had ever been arrested within U.S. borders, they competed fairly for jobs they were qualified for (and, perhaps, even had a harder time gaining jobs because of discrimination), and only one woman out of nineteen used welfare for the majority of her life in the United States (5.26 percent of this sample, compared to a U.S. national average of 21.3 percent in 2015) (United States Census Bureau 2015). As a group, these women contributed much more to the U.S. economy than they received from government assistance programs (including academic loans).

This leads one to conclude that crime and job theft may not be sufficient reasons for rejecting international refugees from resettling in the United States. Micinski (2018), suggests that there are other factors at play in the U.S.’s refugee policies: a phenomenon he calls the

“politics of neighbors” (p. 255). The “politics of neighbors” indicates that it not humanitarian concerns nor “American relationships with refugee-producing countries, but rather their neighbors—the refugee-receiving countries—that determines how the U.S. prioritizes refugee resettlement” (Micinski 2018, p. 253). In other words, it is the U.S.’s strategic and political interests, and whether or not accepting refugees can further these aims, that determines U.S. refugee policy during any given refugee crisis. Refugee policy has become more of a tool for foreign policy and a domestic security than a practice of resettling refugees in safe havens and structuring integration into receiving societies.

Kerwin (2005) states that the shift away from humanitarian-oriented refugee policies and towards security-oriented refugee policies happened, for the most part, around 9/11. Less than two years later, for example, the U.S. government’s Immigration and Naturalizations Service was incorporated into the new Department of Homeland Security (Ibid.). Making refugees a matter of national security has demanded two actions from the U.S. government: “protection

107 from harm, as well as [the] promotion of vital economic and political interests” in the nation’s favor (Kerwin 2005, p. 750).

So, how, then, can the United States incorporate the protection of the American people, the promotion of their vital interests, and humanitarian operations into U.S. refugee policy? The answer is to look at the evidence and act accordingly. Though this thesis does not analyze crime rates among refugees, there are other scholarly works that do. New American Economy, a bipartisan think tank, suggests that the introduction of refugees into major U.S. cities actually reduces property and violent crime rates (2017). Of the top ten U.S. cities that received the most refugees in comparison to the local population between 2006 and 2015, only one showed an increase in local crime; all others showed marked decreases. An article originally published by the Immigration Policy Center additionally states that foreign-born males in the United States are, on average, five times less likely to be incarcerated than their native-born counterparts (the data did not include women, who make up only seven percent of incarcerated individuals in the

U.S.) (Rumbaut and Ewing 2007). Based on this data, Americans are more at risk of being victimized by the U.S.’s native-born population than they are of being victimized by first- generation refugees and migrants.

In terms of job competition, the research is also quite clear. New, large influxes into a population do create greater competition for scarce resources (i.e., jobs). Though some refugees and migrants may have held prominent positions in their countries of origin, the overwhelming majority of all refugees and migrants enter the United States as low-skilled laborers. This is due to either a lack of skill/qualification transference or because they were also low-skilled laborers before seeking asylum. Influxes into low-skilled, low-wage jobs have several economic impacts.

In the short run, they do increase job competition (though whether this can be termed “stealing”

108 is another thought entirely and implies that unfilled jobs already “belong” to someone else)

(Sowell 2015). In the short term, ceteris paribus and assuming immigrants to be a perfect substitute for native-born labor, a surplus of labor will also lower wages until the equilibrium of an economy of scale is regained. However, if refugees and migrants are imperfect substitutes for native-born workers because of language difficulties or a lack of training, the wages of native- born workers will rise as they become preferred over immigrant labor. The majority of empirical data on the subject suggests that refugees and migrants are, in fact, imperfect substitutes for a native-born labor force (Dadush 2014).

There are also several distinct benefits to refugee influxes in the long run. Job competition drives investments in human capital, such as education or further job training, for both the native-born population and the immigrant population. Higher human capital tends to lead to higher incomes and greater productivity. Based on the results of this thesis, female refugees are likely to enter the workforce as low-skilled laborers, seek further education or training, and then proceed to higher-paid employments commensurate with their experience and new degree of human capital. Native-born populations will either do the same and experience an increase in quality of life due to their competition with refugees and immigrants, or they will find that the initial labor surplus declines and low-skilled wages rise once more, restoring their incomes to pre-influx levels.

Influxes in refugees and migrants have further benefits for the U.S. economy. They increase demand in key markets such as housing, transportation, agriculture, education, etc. With the exception of remittances, the wages of refugees are invested in their local economies in the same way as the wages of the native-born population (Haines, Rutherford, and Thomas 1981;

Nguyen 2009). This spurs economic growth in local communities and, in the long run, in the

109 nation as a whole (Sowell 2015). Thus, it appears than humanitarian-oriented refugee objectives and goals of national growth and well-being are, in fact, compatible.

Despite this, the United States has become more and more stringent with U.S. refugee policy under the Trump administration. In the fall of 2019, the U.S. Department of State said only 18,000 refugees would be admitted into the nation in the following twelve months—a record low (BBC News 2019). Trump also issued an executive order allowing both states and communities to opt out of receiving ay refugees that managed to enter the U.S. (The White

House 2019). The following year, U.S. refugee policy appeared to become even more restrictive, as a June 22, 2020 issue of The Economist stated that Trump’s policies preventing low-skilled

Central American refugees from entering the United States “greatly reduced the number of official resettlement opportunities for refugees, where America had led the rest of the world for decades” (n.p.).

The recommendation of this thesis is in direct contrast to what appears to be the current direction of United States refugee policy. Because of the long-lasting benefits and economic drive of most refugees, it is the suggestion of this thesis that U.S. refugee policy become more friendly to low-skilled refugees and migrants by allowing greater numbers of refugees to enter the United States and by actively combatting the stereotype of the violent refugee. Doing so could de-stigmatize a population, reduce metropolitan crime rates per capita, increase the human capital of the nation, grow the national economy, and express democratic values to the American public and the world at large. This would not only achieve the goal of national economic growth, but also achieve the more humanitarian-oriented goals of decreasing risks to vulnerable populations and empowering victims of chaos and conflict around the world. The women described in this thesis, and their determined economic pathways towards economic survival and

110 financial security, are examples of what both the U.S. and the world’s refugees stand to gain from a more amicable and welcoming relationship.

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APPENDIX A

INTERVIEW GUIDE

(in original formatting)

Introduction

My name is Elizabeth Brandeberry and I am a graduate student at American University. I am writing my thesis on the pathways to economic empowerment used by female Vietnamese refugees and migrants upon settling in the United States. This means that I’m interested in knowing how you helped yourself or your family to establish new careers, continue old careers in a new place, start new businesses, or otherwise generate income.

Through my research, I am hopeful that I will be able to document how female Vietnamese refugees and migrants accomplished (or balanced) the necessities of American life with their complex cultural backgrounds. I hope the literature I create may be of use to current and future refugees and migrants entering the United States.

Instructions

Recording With your permission, I would like to record this interview. This will help me retrieve direct quotes and compare narratives between individuals. However, if you would prefer that I not record this interview, that is okay as well.

1. Do you consent to the recording of this interview? a. YES b. NO

Emotional Concerns Some questions in this interview have the potential to cause you emotional stress. If, at any time, you would like to either pause or end the interview, we will do so. If there are any questions you would rather not answer, those questions can be skipped. On the other hand, if any question prompts you to share additional information, please feel free to do so. Rich and detailed narratives will help me better describe your pathways to economic empowerment.

2. Understanding that you may experience emotional distress during this interview, would you still like to proceed? a. YES b. NO

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Anonymity For your safety, I will not use your real name in my writing. I may instead assign you a pseudonym for the sake of attributing direct quotes in my discussion. I am the only person who will know who is represented by each pseudonym and will not share this information with anyone else (including my translator (if needed), other researchers, editors, faculty members, etc.).

Language I regret that I am only able to conduct this interview in English. If you have not requested a translator prior to this meeting and would like to have one, we can reschedule this interview for a time when a translator is available. I have retained a translator who will only be available during certain time periods this winter. This translator is a 28-year-old male Vietnamese-American immigrant employed by the United States Air Force. His mother is, like you, also a Vietnamese immigrant who has agreed to participate in this study. I have known this individual for seven years and trust him implicitly. However, if you would not feel comfortable telling your story in his presence, I understand. If you have another translator in mind, please provide me with his/her contact information, and I will coordinate a meeting with the three of us. Otherwise, please let me know what traits (i.e., gender, age, etc.) that you are looking for and I will attempt to find another translator.

3. Would you like to use a translator for this interview? a. YES b. NO

2. (If yes) Is the above-described translator acceptable to you? a. YES b. NO

3. (If no) Who would you suggest as a translator? (open-ended) a. NAME: ______b. PHONE: ______c. EMAIL: ______

4. (If no answer to Question 3) If you have no one in mind, could you please describe an individual you would be comfortable speaking in the presence of? (open-ended) NOTES: ______

Additional Concerns or Questions

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4. Do you have any concerns that you would like me to be aware of, or questions that you would like to ask, before we begin the interview? a. YES b. NO

5. (If yes, open-ended) Would you please share these with me so that we may discuss them? I would like to ensure that you are as comfortable as possible during this interview. NOTES: ______

6. May we begin the interview? a. YES b. NO

Basic Demographic Questions

1. What is your date of birth? If unknown, how old do you think you are today? a. ______(enter month/day/year or estimation) b. ______(enter age or estimation)

2. What is your ethnicity? (select all that apply) a. KINH/VIET b. TAY c. THAI d. MUONG e. KHMER KROM f. HMONG g. NUNG h. CHINESE i. DAO j. OTHER______(enter other ethnicity)

3. What religion do you practice? a. BUDDHISM b. CATHOLICISM c. TAOISM d. OTHER______(enter other religion)

4. What was your highest level of education? (select one) a. NONE

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b. SOME PRIMARY c. PRIMARY d. SOME SECONDARY e. SECONDARY f. SOME UNIVERSITY g. BACHELOR’S h. SOME GRADUATE i. MASTER’S j. DOCTORAL k. SOME TRADE l. TRADE SCHOOL

5. What was your father’s highest level of education? (select one) a. NONE b. SOME PRIMARY c. PRIMARY d. SOME SECONDARY e. SECONDARY f. SOME UNIVERSITY g. BACHELOR’S h. SOME GRADUATE i. MASTER’S j. DOCTORAL k. SOME TRADE l. TRADE SCHOOL

6. What was your father’s profession? a. ______(include homemaker as profession) b. NOTES: ______

7. What was your mother’s highest level of education? (select one) a. NONE b. SOME PRIMARY c. PRIMARY d. SOME SECONDARY e. SECONDARY f. SOME UNIVERSITY g. BACHELOR’S h. SOME GRADUATE i. MASTER’S j. DOCTORAL

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k. SOME TRADE l. TRADE SCHOOL

8. What was your mother’s profession? a. ______(include homemaker as profession) b. NOTES: ______

9. Are you a refugee or a migrant? (select one) a. REFUGEE (officially requested asylum and received it) b. MIGRANT (came to the United States in another way)

PRE-EMIGRATION QUESTIONS

Reminder: You may choose not to answer any question for any reason. Please let me know if you are uncomfortable with a question, and we will skip that question and proceed to the next.

10. What city/village did you live in in Vietnam? a. City/Village Name: ______

11. Did you live in a rural or urban area when you lived in Vietnam? (select one) a. RURAL b. URBAN

12. How old were you when you emigrated from Vietnam? a. ______(enter age or estimate)

13. Did you have a profession at the time that you left? What was it? a. YES b. NO c. If yes, ______(include homemaker as profession)

14. What were your daily activities in this profession? (open answer) a. ______15. How much were you paid in this profession? a. ______(enter amount, VND or USD)

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16. Were you the sole provider for your household? a. YES b. NO

17. Were you married at the time you left Vietnam? (select one) a. YES b. NO c. If yes: i. When did you get married? How old were you? 1. ______(enter month/day/year or estimation) 2. ______(enter age or estimation) ii. Have you been married more than once? 1. YES 2. NO iii. How many times have you been married? 1. ONCE 2. TWICE 3. THREE TIMES 4. FOUR TIMES OR MORE iv. Did you have any children? 1. YES 2. NO 3. If yes: a. How many children did you have when leaving Vietnam? i. ONE ii. TWO iii. THREE iv. FOUR v. FIVE vi. SIX OR MORE 18. When did you leave Vietnam? a. ______MONTH/DAY/YEAR b. ______ESTIMATED DATE c. ______ESTIMATED AGE (numeric) 19. When did you arrive in the United States? a. ______MONTH/DAY/YEAR b. ______ESTIMATED DATE c. ______ESTIMATED AGE (numeric) 20. Did you lose any family members during your journey to the United States? a. YES b. NO 21. Did you spend time in a refugee camp?

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a. YES b. NO c. If yes, where was the camp located, and what was the name of the camp? i. ______LOCATION ii. ______NAME d. How long did you reside in that camp? i. LESS THAN 6 MONTHS ii. LESS THAN 12 MONTHS iii. ONE YEAR iv. TWO YEARS v. THREE YEARS vi. FOUR YEARS vii. FIVE YEARS OR MORE e. NOTES: ______

Post-Immigration Questions

22. Where were you first settled in the United States? a. ______STATE b. ______CITY 23. How many wage earners were living in your household within the first year of immigration? a. ONE (just the interviewee) b. ONE (not the interviewee) c. TWO d. THREE OR MORE 24. Were you the sole provider for your household? a. YES b. NO 25. Did you start seeking paid employment immediately upon arriving in the United States, or did you wait before seeking paid employment? a. IMMEDIATELY b. WITHIN ONE MONTH c. WITHIN THREE MONTHS d. WITHIN SIX MONTHS e. WITHIN ONE YEAR f. WITHIN TWO YEARS g. WITHIN FIVE YEARS h. WITHIN TEN YEARS i. AFTER TEN YEARS

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j. NEVER SOUGHT PAID EMPLOYMENT 26. If you waited before seeking any type of paid employment, what was your reason for waiting? (open-ended) NOTES: ______27. How long did you seek paid employment before being hired? a. ONE TO SEVEN DAYS b. ONE TO FOUR WEEKS c. ONE MONTH d. TWO MONTHS e. THREE MONTHS f. FOUR MONTHS g. FIVE MONTHS h. SIX MONTHS i. SEVEN MONTHS OR MORE 28. What prompted you to seek paid employment? (open-ended) NOTES: ______29. Was there someone who helped you find paid employment? a. YES b. NO c. If yes, who was this person? i. SPOUSE ii. SIBLING iii. PARENT iv. FRIEND v. SPONSOR vi. CLERGY vii. OTHER: ______d. How did this person help you find paid employment? (open-ended) NOTES: ______e. Do you think you would have found paid employment without the assistance of this person? (open-ended)

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NOTES: ______30. Did you seek any other type of assistance when looking for paid employment? a. YES b. NO c. If yes: What other types assistance did you seek? (open-ended) NOTES: ______31. If you did not seek any type of assistance when looking for paid employment, what was your reason for not doing so? (open-ended) NOTES: ______32. What barriers did you face in seeking paid employment? NOTES: ______33. Did you face discrimination based on your ethnicity or gender? a. YES b. NO c. NOTES: ______d. If yes: e. How did this discrimination make you feel, as an individual, as a member of the Vietnamese community, and as an American? (open-ended) NOTES: ______

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34. How did you overcome these barriers and/or discriminations in your life? (open-ended) NOTES: ______35. Did you seek skills training, education, or language courses before seeking paid employment? a. YES b. NO c. If yes, what kind? i. SKILLS TRAINING ii. EDUCATION 1. Level education before: ______2. Level of education after: ______iii. LANGUAGE COURSES 1. What language did you study? ______2. How long did you study it? ______iv. OTHER TRAINING/EDUCATION: ______d. If yes, was there an individual or organization that sponsored your training or education? i. YES ii. NO iii. If yes, who? ______36. What was your first type of employment in the United States? a. FULL TIME b. PART TIME c. TEMPORARY d. SEASONAL 37. What was the title of your job? a. ______DESCRIPTION 38. What were your job duties? (open-ended) NOTES: ______39. How much did you make at this job? a. ______USD 40. How long did you stay at this job? a. ______MONTHS/YEARS

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41. Please list all other employments up until the current time: a. Type of Employment: ______b. Location of Employment: ______c. Wages Earned: ______d. Years of Employment: ______e. Did someone help you? ______i. If yes, who? ______ii. How did they help? (open-ended) NOTES: ______f. Why did you select this form of paid employment? (open-ended) NOTES: ______g. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> h. Type of Employment: ______i. Location of Employment: ______j. Wages Earned: ______k. Years of Employment: ______l. Did someone help you? ______m. If yes, who? ______n. How did they help? (open-ended) NOTES: ______o. Why did you select this form of paid employment? (open-ended) NOTES: ______p. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> q. Type of Employment: ______r. Location of Employment: ______s. Wages Earned: ______t. Years of Employment: ______

122 u. Did someone help you? ______v. If yes, who? ______w. How did they help? (open-ended) NOTES: ______x. Why did you select this form of paid employment? (open-ended) NOTES: ______y. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> z. Type of Employment: ______aa. Location of Employment: ______bb. Wages Earned: ______cc. Years of Employment: ______dd. Did someone help you? ______ee. If yes, who? ______ff. How did they help? (open-ended) NOTES: ______gg. Why did you select this form of paid employment? (open-ended) NOTES: ______hh. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> ii. Type of Employment: ______jj. Location of Employment: ______kk. Wages Earned: ______ll. Years of Employment: ______mm. Did someone help you? ______nn. If yes, who? ______oo. How did they help? (open-ended) NOTES: ______

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______pp. Why did you select this form of paid employment? (open-ended) NOTES: ______qq. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 42. Please list the locations you’ve lived in the United States up until the present: a. State: ______b. City: ______c. Years: ______d. Why did you move here? (open-ended) NOTES: ______e. Why did you leave here? (open-ended) NOTES: ______f. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> g. State: ______h. City: ______i. Years: ______j. State: ______k. City: ______l. Years: ______m. Why did you move here? (open-ended) n. NOTES: o. ______p. Why did you leave here? (open-ended) q. NOTES: r. ______

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______s. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> t. State: ______u. City: ______v. Years: ______w. Why did you move here? (open-ended) NOTES: ______x. Why did you leave here? (open-ended) NOTES: ______y. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> z. State: ______aa. City: ______bb. Years: ______cc. Why did you move here? (open-ended) NOTES: ______dd. Why did you leave here? (open-ended) NOTES: ______ee. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> ff. State: ______gg. City: ______hh. Years: ______ii. Why did you move here? (open-ended) NOTES: ______

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______jj. Why did you leave here? (open-ended) NOTES: ______kk. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> ll. State: ______mm. City: ______nn. Years: ______oo. Why did you move here? (open-ended) NOTES: ______pp. Why did you leave here? (open-ended) NOTES: ______qq. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Open-Ended Questions

43. Why did you leave Vietnam? 44. Please tell me the story of your immigration. 45. Please tell me about your life in the United States. 46. Do you think your family has been successful in the United States? If so, what do you think is responsible for this success? 47. What drove you to seek economic empowerment for yourself? 48. What barriers have you faced in attaining economic empowerment? 49. How did you overcome these barriers? 50. What did you first think of the work culture in the United States, and how have your perceptions changed over time? 51. Please tell me about your family. 52. How did you balance work and family (especially if you were the sole provider)? 53. What was your life like outside of work and family? 54. Is there anything else you would like me to know?

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APPENDIX B

SAMPLE STAKEHOLDER LETTERS

(original formatting with omissions for privacy)

Elizabeth Brandeberry, MSc American University 4400 Massachusetts Ave NW Washington, DC 20016

[insert greeting and name],

My name is Elizabeth Brandeberry. I am a graduate student at American University in Washington, D.C., and I am researching the pathways to economic empowerment used by female Vietnamese Americans after migrating to the United States. This means that I’m interested in knowing how female members of the Vietnamese community helped themselves and/or their families to establish new careers, continue old careers in a new place, start new businesses, or otherwise generate income.

Through my research, I am hopeful that I will be able to document how female Vietnamese Americans accomplished (or balanced) the necessities of American life with their complex cultural backgrounds. I hope my research will be of use to current and future refugees and migrants entering the United States.

I received your name from Ms. Kim Chi Ho, and, I have contacted you because I am hopeful you might be willing to speak with me or know of others who may wish to participate in the study. I am specifically interested in women who migrated from Vietnam, resettled in the United States, and have experience working, training, or going to school in the United States. I’d love to speak to women of all ages for this study. Every woman’s story is important, even if she doesn’t define herself or her family as an ‘economic success.’

I will be in Houston between November 16th and November 23rd. If possible, I would like to schedule in-person interviews, but I will also be available via phone if these dates conflict with anyone’s schedule. I anticipate each interview will last between 1-2 hours. There is minimal risk associated with this study, as all identifiable information will be known only to myself (the researcher) and will NOT be used in any published material.

If you know of anyone that may be willing to be interviewed, have questions concerning the study, please contact me via phone or email, listed below: 127

Cell: (817) 681-8703 Email: [email protected]

I sincerely thank you for taking the time to read this letter and for helping with my research, if you choose to do so.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth Brandeberry, MSc Graduate Student American University 4400 Massachusetts Ave NW Washington, DC 20016

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Elizabeth Brandeberry, MSc American University 4400 Massachusetts Ave NW Washington, DC 20016

Thưa Bà,

Tôi là Elizabeth Brandeberry, nghiên cứu sinh tốt nghiệp tại trường American University ở Washington, D.C.. Hiện tại, tôi đang tiến hành một nghiên cứu về những con đường dẩn đến sự thành dạt trong kinh tế của phụ nữ người Mỹ gốc Việt sau khi di cư. Điều này có nghĩa là tôi rất quan tâm đến những phương pháp của phụ nữ người Mỹ gốc Việt để giúp cho bản thân và gia đình để thiết lập cuộc sống, tiếp tục sư nghiệp, hoặc thành lập một kinh doanh mới.

Qua dự án nghiên cứu này, tôi hy vọng có thể lưu lại được những cách thức và kiến thiết để phụ nữ người Mỹ gốc Việt vừa có thể đạt sự thành công ở quê hương mới. Hơn nữa, một nguyện vọng khác của tôi là được sử dụng kết quả của cuộc nghiên cứu này để hổ trợ cho những người tị nạn và nhập cư ở hiện tại và trong tương lai ở Hoa Kỳ.

Tôi có lòng tin rằng Bà hoặc tổ chức của Bà là những thành phần đáng tin cậy trong cộng đồng người Việt ở Houston, TX. Tôi hy vọng là Bà có thể truyền bá nghiên cứu này với những phụ nữ có thể sẵn sàng để nói chuyện với tôi. Đặc biệt là những người có kinh nghiệm làm việc, đào tạo, hoặc học tập sau khi tái định cư ở Hoa Kỳ. Tôi mong muốn đươc được nói chuyện với phụ nữ ở mọi lứa tuổi. Tất cả câu chuyện của bất kỳ người phụ nữ nào đều rất quan trọng như nhau.

Tôi sẽ có mặt tại thành phố Houston từ ngày 14 tháng 11 đến ngày 23 tháng 11. Nếu có thể, tôi muốn được phỏng vấn trực tiếp và có mâu thuẫn gì với lịch trình này, tôi cũng có thể phỏng vấn trên điện thoại hoặc những phương tiện truyền thông khác. Tôi dự đoán mỗi cuộc phỏng vấn sẽ kéo dài từ 1 tới 2 giờ. Những rủi ro liên quan đến nghiên cứu này là tối thiểu. Tất cả các thông tin nhận dạng chỉ được phổ biến với cá nhân tôi (nhà nghiên cứu) và sẽ không được sử dụng trong bất kỳ tài liệu được công bố nào.

Nếu Bà biết bất cứ ai có thể sẵn sàng tiếp nhận phỏng vấn, xin vui lòng liên hệ với điện thoại hoặc email dưới đây:

Điên thoại: (817) 681-8703 Email: [email protected]

Nếu Bà, với tư cách là một thành viên quan hệ cộng đồng, có bất kỳ câu hỏi nào khác về nghiên cứu này, muốn tham dự cuộc phỏng vấn hoặc muốn biết thêm chi tiết. Xin vui lòng liên hệ với tôi.

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Tôi chân thành cảm ơn Bà đã dành thời gian để đọc bức thư này. Và rất cảm ơn với sự giúp đỡ nếu Bà có lựa chọn để tham dự dự án này,

Trân trọng,

Elizabeth Brandeberry, MSc Nghiên cứu sinh tốt nghiệp American University 4400 Massachusetts Ave NW Washington, DC 20016

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APPENDIX B

CONSENT TO PARTICIPATE IN RESEARCH

(original formatting with omissions for privacy)

Consent to Participate in Research

Identification of Investigators & Purpose of Study You are being asked to participate in a research study conducted by Elizabeth Brandeberry from American University. The purpose of this study is to explore the economic pathways of female Vietnamese Americans in the United States. This study will contribute to the student’s completion of her master’s thesis.

Research Procedures Should you decide to participate in this research study, you will be asked to sign this consent form once all your questions have been answered to your satisfaction. This study consists of an interview that will be administered to individual participants in Houston, TX. You will be asked to provide answers to a series of questions related to your economic path since arriving in the United States. If you agree, this interview will be audio recorded.

Time Required Participation in this study will require approximately one hour of your time.

Risks The investigator does not perceive more than minimal risks from your involvement in this study.

Benefits Potential benefits from participation in this study include helping academics and US policy makers better understand how female refugees/migrants succeed or fail economically. This may lead to more effective programs to help women succeed economically in the future.

Confidentiality The results of this research will be presented in a published master’s thesis. The results of this project will be coded in such a way that the respondent’s identity will not be attached to the final form of this study. The researcher retains the right to use and publish non-identifiable data. While individual responses are confidential, aggregate data will be presented representing averages or generalizations about the responses as a whole. All data will be stored in a secure location accessible only to the researcher. Upon completion of the study, all information that matches up individual respondents with their answers will be destroyed, including audio recordings of that data. Transcripts of audio recordings may be retained for use in future studies, after all identifiers have been deleted.

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Participation & Withdrawal Your participation is entirely voluntary. You are free to choose not to participate. Should you choose to participate, you can withdraw at any time without consequences of any kind. You may also refuse to answer any individual question without consequences.

Questions about the Study If you have questions or concerns during the time of your participation in this study, or after its completion or you would like to receive a copy of the final aggregate results of this study, please contact:

Researcher’s Name: Elizabeth Brandeberry, MSc

Researcher’s Contact Information: [email protected] (817) 681-8703

Advisors’ Names: Dr. Erin Collins Dr. Vidyamali Samarasinghe

Department and Program: International Development School of International Service American University

Questions about Your Rights as a Research Subject Matt Zembrzuski IRB Coordinator American University (202)885-3447 [email protected]

Giving of Consent I have read this consent form and I understand what is being requested of me as a participant in this study. I freely consent to participate. I have been given satisfactory answers to my questions. The investigator provided me with a copy of this form. I certify that I am at least 18 years of age.

I give consent to be audio taped during my interview. ______(initials)

______Name of Participant (Printed)

______Name of Participant (Signed) Date

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______Name of Researcher (Signed) Date

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Đơn Đồng ý Tham Gia Nghiên Cứu

Xác Định Điều Tra & Nghiên Cứu Bà đang được yêu cầu để tham gia vào một dự án bởi Elizabeth Brandeberry, nghiên cứu sinh tốt nghiệp ở trường đại học American University. Mục đích của nghiên cứu này là để khám phá con đường tiến tới thành công ở lãnh vực kinh tế của phụ nữ người Mỹ gốc Việt tại Hoa Kỳ. Nghiên cứu này sẽ góp phần trong luận án thạc sĩ của nghiên cứu sinh đã nêu tên ở trên.

Quy Trình Nghiên Cứu Nếu Bà quyết dịnh tham gia vào nghiên cứu này, Bà sẽ được yêu cầu ký vào tờ đơn đồng ý này. Dự án này bao gồm một cuộc phỏng vấn cho người tham gia ở Houston, TX. Bà sẽ được yêu cầu trả lời cho những câu hỏi liên quan đến cách thức mưu sinh sau khi đến Hoa Kỳ. Nếu Bà cho phép, cuộc phỏng vấn này sẽ được ghi âm.

Thời Gian Cần Thiết Sẽ cần khoảng một giờ tới hai giờ đồng hồ để hoàn tất cuộc phỏng vấn này.

Rủi Ro Rủi ro sẽ được tối thiểu cho những người tham gia.

Lợi Ích Mục dích của nghiên cứu này là để tăng cường sự hiểu biết về những kinh nghiệm dẫn đến thành công trong lãnh vực kinh tế của người tị nạn hoặc di dân. Thông qua các học giả khác và những nhà hoạch định chính sách Hoa Kỳ, điều này có thể dẩn đến những chương trình hiệu quả hơn để hỗ trợ cho phụ nữ trong tương lai.

Bảo Mật Kết quả của nghiên cứu này sẽ được xuất bản trong một luận án. Danh tính của người tham dự sẽ được mã hóa và sẽ không phổ biến trong phiên bản công khai. Nhà nghiên cứu sẽ giữ lại quyền sử dụng và xuất bản những dữ liệu không nhận dạng cho người tham dự phỏng vấn. Mặc dù các phản hồi của từng cá nhân tham gia là bí mật, dữ liệu tổng hợp sẽ đươc trình bày để đại diện cho khuynh hướng được nêu ra trên các cuộc phỏng vấn.Tất cả dữ liệu sẽ được luu trữ ở một nơi an toàn dành riêng cho nghiên cứu sinh. Khi dự án đã hoàn thành, tất cả thông tin có thể dùng để định dạng những cá thể đã tham dự bao gồm những câu trả lời riêng lẽ và các băng ghi âm sẽ được tiêu hủy. Sau khi xóa bỏ các dữ liệu đinh dạng, những văn bản ghi chú của băng ghi âm có thể được giữ lại để sử dụng trong các nghiên cứu khác.

Tham Gia & Rút Lui Sự tham gia của Bà là hoàn toàn tự nguyện. Bà có quyền lựa chọn không tham gia. Nếu Bà đồng ý tham dự, Bà có thể rút lui bất cứ lúc nào và sẽ không có hậu quả dưới bất cứ bất kỳ hình thức. Bà cũng có thể từ chối trả lời bất kỳ câu hỏi cá nhân nào.

Thắc Mắc Về Dự Án Nếu Bà có thắc mắc trong thời hạn tham gia vào nghiên cứu này, hoặc sau khi hoàn thành dự án, xin vui lòng liên hệ với:

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Thông Tin Liên Lạc Với Nghiên Cứu Sinh: Elizabeth Brandeberry [email protected] (817) 681-8703

Tư Vấn Dự Án: Tiến Sĩ Erin Collins Tiến Sĩ Vidyamali Samarasinghe

Bộ Môn Và Chương Trình: International Development School of International Service American University

Thắc Mắc Về Quyền Lợi Của Đối Tượng Nghiên Cứu: Matt Zembrzuski Điều Phối Viên American University (202)885-3447 [email protected]

Đồng Ý Để Tham Gia Dự Án Nghiên Cứu: Tôi đã đọc mẫu đơn này và tôi hiểu những gì đang được yêu cầu khi tham gia vào nghiên cứu này. Tôi tự nguyện tham dự. Tôi đã được nghiên cứu sinh giải tỏa tất cả thắc mắc. Tôi đã nhận được một bản sao của mẫu đơn này. Tôi xác nhận rằng tôi ít nhất 18 tuổi.

Tôi đồng ý để ghi âm trong cuộc phỏng vấn.

______Người Tham Gia (Tên Họ)

______Người Tham Gia (Chữ ký) Ngày

______Nghiên Cứu Sinh (Chữ ký) Ngày

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Aguilar-San Juan, Karin. 2009. Little Saigons: Staying in Vietnamese America. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Albert, Eleanor. 2019. “The Evolution of U.S.–Vietnam Ties.” The Council on Foreign Relations. Last modified March 20, 2019. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/evolution- us-vietnam-ties.

American Psychiatric Association. 2013. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition: DSM-V. 5th ed. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association Publishing.

Arafah, Rami B. 2016. “Predicting Economic Incorporation Among Newly Resettled Refugees in the United States: A Micro-Level Statistical Analysis.” PhD diss., University of California at Berkeley. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7rp436r0.

Aslund, Anna, and Ingela Backstrom. 2015. “Creation of Value to Society – A Process Map of the Societal Entrepreneurship Area.” Total Quality Management and Business Excellence 26, no. 3-4 (April): 385-399. https://doi.org/10.1080/14783363.2013.835897.

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