The following article is the perspective of translator Nguyen Quoc Vuong, former lecturer of history department, Hanoi Pedagogical University, author of several books on Japanese education. He has been studying and working for 8 years here and has just returned to Vietnam:
This is a sensitive and sensitive issue not because it belongs to a taboo area, but because it is a topic that causes self-esteem or makes many people feel insulting to think that the writer has “negative” view towards the Vietnamese community abroad.
As a person who has lived for about 8 years in Japan, including many years working part-time as an interpreter for trade unions, companies employing Vietnamese workers, and Japanese lawyers supporting the law. For Vietnamese people who are detained in Japan, I would like to try to discuss the reasons why Vietnamese people have lived abroad for a long time and still behave uncivilized and violate local laws.
Firstly, even though they have been living abroad for a long time, most Vietnamese people go abroad to study and live when they have “formed official values” and “lifestyles” are quite solid.
Most of the Vietnamese people go abroad to study and work when they have passed the important age to form personality. They graduated from high school or graduated from college.
For example, the international student community in the places I study in Japan (I have studied at two different universities in Japan), the majority of people come to Japan after graduating from high school (a few) and Most of them have graduated from universities in Vietnam.
After 18-20 years living in a developing country, living habits, important values… have been firmly formed. Those habits and values may be appropriate or “no problem” while in Vietnam, but when “applied” to maintain them in a foreign country, it can cause problems or violate the law.
Secondly, when going abroad, Vietnamese tend to live in groups to create a community like a small village. When leaving the homeland, the lack of feelings has made the empathy among people with a common sense of origin, language, culture very strong.
Therefore, Vietnamese people are easy to get to know, easy to befriend with each other and tend to live close together to exchange, share and help each other. They can rent the same block, live in the same neighborhood or stay in the same geographic area with a small radius. They created a Vietnamese community linked with each other often, in many ways.
The advantage of this lifestyle is that they can socialize, tighten their emotions during happy and sad times and help each other in life. However, its disadvantages are also very much.
Thirdly, Vietnamese people are not well prepared to live abroad and have poor adaptability. Except for a few cases where parents work in an international environment or students, students whose parents are foreigners, most of the students, students and employees of Vietnam do not have good backgrounds. to live in a multicultural environment.
Weak foreign language proficiency is an obstacle. It is not clear how in other communities, but in Japan alone, I find that the proportion of Vietnamese who can communicate in Japanese with Japanese is only a very small percentage.
Finally, all the causes for the Vietnamese people to violate the laws of their host countries in varying degrees.
This situation makes not only the criminals, those suspected of being troubled and punished, but others, even if they did not do anything wrong, also suffer from indigenous attitudes to discriminatory acts. treated or otherwise harshly.
This is a huge disadvantage that prevents Vietnamese people from promoting their ability in integration with the international community.