Vietnamese community in Paris

[4] Following the colonization of Vietnam by France in 1862, Paris became a destination for Vietnamese students to study at the city's numerous educational institutions, as well as intellectuals and artists.

Following the conflict, a large number of these migrants opted to stay in France, with a majority settling in Paris and working as factory laborers or in service jobs.

For instance, Ho Chi Minh returned to France in 1919 after an earlier sojourn and studied politics in the city, where he also drafted works demanding greater civil rights for Vietnamese in the Indochina colony.

Numerous others who would also later play major political roles in Vietnam also studied in Paris up to Vietnamese independence in 1954, including Phan Chu Trinh and Ngô Đình Nhu.

However, due to the partition of Vietnam and the isolationism imposed by the North, the vast majority of Vietnamese coming to France during this time were from the South.

[8] After the Fall of Saigon in 1975 and end of the Vietnam War, the majority of Vietnamese refugees to France were settled in Paris and the surrounding Île-de-France metropolitan region.

From this period and into the 1980s, the area of the 13th arrondissement developed into a Little Vietnam, with a commercial district and community institutions created to serve the new Vietnamese immigrants, along with expanded services provided by established organizations such as the AGEVP.

[6] As the Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques does not provide race and ethnicity in its census estimates, it is difficult to determine the precise number of French citizens of Vietnamese descent in France and Paris.