Abstract

To complicate the well-researched story of the activities of colonial emigréés in France, this article focuses on the role of less visible groups. Despite rhetoric about intellectuals fusing with the people, there was no enduring Vietnamese student-worker alliance in interwar France. Workers formed their own organizations, notably the Association des Cuisiniers Indochinois and the Association Amicale des Indochinois (Travailleurs Manuels). Careful study of the expressed desires, daily practices, and networks of these working-class expatriates demonstrates that language and routines played as large a role as regional origin in dividing the Vietnamese community in interwar France.