From Subaltern to Free Worker: Exit, Voice, and Loyalty among Indochinas Subaltern Imperial Labor Camp Diaspora

in Metropolitan France, 19391944, Journal of Vietnamese Studies, Vol. 7, No. 3, pp. 7-54 [48pp]. DOI: 10.1525/vs.2012.7.3.7.

From Subaltern to Free Worker: Exit, Voice, and Loyalty among Indochinas Subaltern Imperial Labor Camp Diaspora in Metropolitan France, 19391944 Author: Tobias Rettig The twentieth century has seen its share of Vietnamese diasporas and migratory flows. In France alone, one counts six different Vietnamese diasporas, each unique in its composition, motivation, politics, and length of stay in France.1 The case of the Vietnamese Second World War diaspora in France is uniquewith the exception of the First World War diasporain that its migration was meant to be temporary (for the duration of the war only), organized by the French imperial nation-state that largely requisitioned rather than attracted labor, and in that the migrants were exclusively male. The French journalist Pierre Daum has called them forced labor, whereas the French-Vietnamese scholar LimKh Luguern refers to them as requisitioned workers or soldier workers [lnh th].2
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How did these roughly nineteen-thousand workers get to France? Why did the great majority stay on far longer than their contracts stipulated? What were their reactions towards their situation? The first part of this essay examines the individual and collective Vietnamese responses towards the French imperial nation-states call in late 1939 for Indochinese to work in Frances defense industries.3 It covers their requisition and recruitment, respectively, their rapid shipment to and arrival in France, and the period up to the metropoles unexpectedly swift defeat against Germany on June 22, 1940. In this first section, I distinguish primarily between two groups, namely the unskilled workers [ouvriers nonspcaliss (ONS)] and the interpreters and supervisors [surveillants]. Many of the ONS were poor, often illiterate, and for the most part, requisitioned. In contrast, the supervisors and interpreters generally came from better-off social and educational backgrounds; sometimes they were even the sons of notables and administrators. It was often the case that they had volunteered to serve in an intermediary role between the French administration and the ONS. The next part deals with the workers and translators attempts to cope, and sometimes to profit, from the militarized labor regime and camp system they found themselves in. How did they react to the deteriorating working and living conditions during the period from the establishment of the fascist Vichy government to the liberation of France in 1944? For the most part of these increasingly difficult three years, there was very little opportunity to escape the confines of the camps and very little scope to openly and collectively contest the administrative grip of the Agency for Indigenous, North African and Colonial Manpower [Service de Main duvre Indigne, Nord-Africaine et Coloniale] (hereafter MOI), which was in charge of the Indochinese workers. It was only when the tides of war changed in 1943 that the workers slowly began to assert themselves against a system that exploited them as unfree laborers and as colonial subjects. Finally, this essay covers the 1944 period during which many of the Vietnamese workers became radicalized and not only gained significant autonomy in terms of self-organization and the right to link up with French unions, but also access to the French labor market and professional training. In addition, they claimed for the establishment of an electoral democracy in Vietnam at a time when French Indochina was still under Vichy rule.4 In each of the three sections, I draw upon Albert O. Hirschmans concepts of exit, voice, and loyalty in order to better understand responses to decline in firms, organizations and states. According to Hirschman, when members or clients of any human grouping perceive that it is declining in quality or benefit to its members, they respond essentially in two ways. They can exit, withdraw from the relationship and leave the firm, organization, or state. Or they can voice grievances and proposals for change in attempt to repair or improve the relationship. Additionally, Hirschman posited that loyalty can affect the cost-benefit analysis of whether to use exit or voice, and to what degrees. The conceptual triangulation of exit, voice and loyalty, but also the responses and sometimes even pre-emptive measures of human groups to these signs of decline, provides important perspective on social action as well as on the relationship between economic and political action.5 Hirschmans template is sufficiently flexible to accommodate a wide variety of situations and responses. For the most part of the 19401944 period, the ONS found themselves in the polar opposite of a free market situation in which exit would usually be an easy strategy and firms would actually have a strong incentive to listen to voice. Instead, the Vietnamese workers were the subjects of a monopolistic and dominant imperial nation-state that was highly bureaucratic and strongly infused with racial hierarchies. It used the MOI as an organization to assign workers to defense-related tasks, later lease them to the private sector below French
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market rates, and prevent them until at least 1945 from entering the French free labor market. Throughout this period, the MOI largely affected and controlled their every lives.6 Hirschmans concept of exit, voice, and loyalty is sufficiently stringent to cover the various options open to the Indochinese, particularly why the unskilled workers and the interpreters and supervisors often chose different strategies. Finally, this concept can account for how complex and dynamic changes, such as those in the political and military arena, strongly influenced the workers and interpreters changing preferences for exit, voice, and loyalty during the 19391944 period.7 This essay aims to better understand a little known, at least outside of France, Vietnamese diaspora with unusual characteristics and an original history by using a new conceptual approach. More generally, it also intends to add to our knowledge of a relative blank spot in Vietnamese history, namely the 19391944 period. Many histories of French-Indochinese institutions, such as the military or penal system, end in 1939 or 1940, because of the historical and archival ruptures brought about by the Second World War.8 The few political histories that cover the war period tend to focus on French Indochina rather than the Vietnamese in France, and even less so on those parked in the camps.9 The same also holds true for sociohistorical studies of particular organizations such as the youth.10 For the remainder of the paper, please read on in the JVS.

Keywords: Albert O. Hirschman, Indochinese workers, World War II, forced migration, Vietnamese Trotskyism Authors Note: Tobias Rettig is Assistant Professor of Southeast Asian Studies in the School of Social Sciences, Singapore Management University (SMU). He recently guest edited a special issue on the Ngh Tnh Soviets of 19301931 for South East Asia Research. This paper would not have been possible without the kind invitation of Judith Henchy and Chris Giebel and SMUs generous funding to attend the conference at the University of Washington, Seattle. Many thanks are due to Mariam B. Lam and Alex Cannon for their encouraging and insightful comments, and Trang Cao for her superb editing skills. Notes
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For example, see Le Huu Khoa, Les Asiatiques en France entre mythes et ralits: Entretien avec Le Huu Khoa [Asians in France between Myths and Realities: An Interview with Le Huu Khoa], Migrations Socit: Revue bimestrielle du CIEMI [Migrations [and] Society: Bisemestrial Journal of the CIEMI (International Migration Information and Study Center)] 14, no. 84 (NovemberDecember 2002): 108109; MarieEve Blanc, Vietnamese in France, in Encyclopedia of Diasporas: Immigrant and Refugee Cultures around the World, vol 2, Diaspora Communities, eds. Melvin Ember, Carol R. Ember, and Ian Skoggard (New York: Springer, 2004), 11581166. 2 Compare the titles of Pierre Daum, Immigrs de force: Les travailleurs indochinois en France, 19391952 [Forced Immigrants: The Indochinese Workers in France, 19391952] (Arles: Actes Sud (Editions Solin), 2009); and LimKh Luguern, Nhng ngi lnh th / Les travailleurs indochinois requis: parcours 19392006 [The Requisitioned Indochinese Workers: Life Courses 19392006] ( Nng: Nng, 2010). 3 The term is taken from Gary Wilder, The French Imperial Nation-State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism between the Two World Wars (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), and seems particularly apt for the period covered in this paper, which was characterized by a wide range of constitutional orders. Indochinese refers to any indigenous inhabitant of one of the five jurisdictions of French Indochina, although in reality the large majority of the so-called Indochinese were Vietnamese. I will use the terms Indochinese and Vietnamese

interchangeably unless referring to a more specific group. Some Vietnamese names that appear in this essay feature only some or no diacritics due to the sources available, but, where possible, full spellings were gleaned from ng Vn Long, Ngi Vit Php, 19401954 [The Vietnamese in France, 19401954] (Montreuil: T Sch Nghin Cu, 1997). 4 This paper regrettably cannot cover the highly complex 19451952 period during which the large majority of Vietnamese were repatriated. 5 See Albert O. Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970). For an interesting application of this conceptual model, see his Exit, Voice, and the Fate of the German Democratic Republic: An Essay in Conceptual History, World Politics 45, no. 2 (January 1993): 173202. 6 As a young man, Hirschman (born 1915), was confronted with similar questions and chose to leave Germany after Hitlers coming to power. He fought in the Spanish Civil War and was briefly based in Marseille helping refugees to flee Hitlers clutches. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_O._Hirschman and his biographers brief bio note at http://www.ssrc.org/hirschman/about (accessed October 4, 2011). 7 Other approaches would have been possible, such as testing them against a Foucauldian or Andersonian framework to examine the nature of power and discipline within the camps and the emergence of a modern political consciousness respectively. For example, see Peter Zinoman, The Colonial Bastille: A History of Imprisonment in Vietnam, 18621940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). 8 See, for example, Henri Eckert, Les militaires indochinois au service de la France, 18591939, 2 vols (Villeneuve dAsq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, [1998] 2000); Zinoman, The Colonial Bastille, covers the 18621940 period. 9 See David G. Marr, World War II and the Vietnamese Revolution, in Southeast Asia under Japanese Occupation: Transition and Transformation, ed. Alfred McCoy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Southeast Asian Studies, 1980), 125158; and Eric T. Jennings, Vichy in the Tropics: Ptains National Revolution in Madagascar, Guadeloupe, and Indochina, 19401944 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001). 10 Anne Raffin, Youth Mobilization in Vichy Indochina and its Legacies, 19401970 (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005).