Abstract
How can the transformation of a collective, supra-individual social unit such as the nation state influence the identity of an ethnic minority group? This is an articulation between the two 'groups' or communities, both socially constructed and temporally and spatially resourced, which overlap on the identity scale. By studying the specific processes of the normative transformation of a nation state that project onto a specific 'ethnic group', we can discuss the relevance of the anchoring in identity in space and its traditional national dimension.
The attempt of this paper is to present the period of 'Velvet Revolution' and its influence on the ethnic minority of Vietnamese citizens residing in the territory of the Czech Republic (and the former Czechoslovak Socialist Republic). Secondly, I wish to identify certain exogenous factors (political and social normative framework of the majoritarian society) and endogenous factors (the change in the internal structure of Vietnamese diaspora), which influenced their self-identification and sense of belonging to certain social unity, while placing this problematic in the historical and geopolitical context of a nation-state under transformation.
During the time of real socialism members of a nation state within the 'Eastern Bloc' were not only bound by nationality, citizenship and subjected to a sovereign power, but they also belonged to an international solidarity group. Vietnamese immigrants residing in former Czechoslovakia are regarded as transnational par excellence.
They were not considered by the Czechoslovak government as to be members of the national minority group, and while being isolated from the majority society they developed complex ties with Vietnam as well as later on, with the fall of Berlin wall, their social networks spread to Western Europe.