Abstract

In the second half of 1944, the majority of the roughly fourteen thousand Vietnamese workers who had arrived in France four years earlier, but remained stranded there following France's defeat in June 1940, took advantage of the power vacuum created by the liberation of France. They would launch a diasporic-metropolitan precursor of the Vietnamese August Revolution of 1945 by successfully claiming workers' rights and a sense of dignity they had previously been denied. Loosely adopting Hirschman's concepts of “exit, voice, and loyalty,” this essay investigates the strategies chosen by this subaltern imperial workforce to emancipate itself from the militarized labor camp system. It argues that different interests led the largely illiterate workers and the French-speaking supervisors and interpreters to opt for different strategies.

Full Text
Paper version not known

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call

Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.