Vietnamese people form the small immigrant community of Overseas Vietnamese in Bulgaria today, but their numbers were much higher in the 1980s. As of 2005, the Vietnamese community in Bulgaria

Bulgaria

Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...

 numbers 1,500, including Bulgarian residents and/or citizens

Bulgarian nationality law

right|200pxBulgarian nationality law is governed by the Constitution of Bulgaria of 1991 and the citizenship law of 1999 ....

. They mainly live in the capital Sofia

Sofia

Sofia is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria and the 12th largest city in the European Union with a population of 1.27 million people. It is located in western Bulgaria, at the foot of Mount Vitosha and approximately at the centre of the Balkan Peninsula.Prehistoric settlements were excavated...

, but also in Plovdiv

Plovdiv

Plovdiv is the second-largest city in Bulgaria after Sofia with a population of 338,153 inhabitants according to Census 2011. Plovdiv's history spans some 6,000 years, with traces of a Neolithic settlement dating to roughly 4000 BC; it is one of the oldest cities in Europe...

, Dimitrovgrad

Dimitrovgrad, Bulgaria

Dimitrovgrad is a town in Haskovo Province, South-central Bulgaria, located close to the province capital - Haskovo. It is a newly founded settlement, built in the end of the 1940s. and named after the communist leader Georgi Dimitrov. The town is the administrative centre of the homonymous...

 and Varna

Varna

Varna is the largest city and seaside resort on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast and third-largest in Bulgaria after Sofia and Plovdiv, with a population of 334,870 inhabitants according to Census 2011...

.

The Vietnamese diaspora in Bulgaria dates to the 1960s. In 1950, Bulgaria and Vietnam had established diplomatic relations and signed a mutual agreement to co-operate in cultural and educational affairs. As a result, the first Vietnamese students arrived in Bulgaria in 1960. The main subjects that the Vietnamese came to study were agriculture

Agriculture

Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...

, economics

Economics

Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...

, tourism

Tourism

Tourism is travel for recreational, leisure or business purposes. The World Tourism Organization defines tourists as people "traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes".Tourism has become a...

, humanities

Humanities

The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....

, arts

ARts

aRts, which stands for analog Real time synthesizer, is an audio framework that is no longer under development. It is best known for previously being used in KDE to simulate an analog synthesizer....

, medicine

Medicine

Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....

 and construction

Construction

In the fields of architecture and civil engineering, construction is a process that consists of the building or assembling of infrastructure. Far from being a single activity, large scale construction is a feat of human multitasking...

.

According to an international agreement of 1980, Bulgaria, along with other Comecon

Comecon

The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance , 1949–1991, was an economic organisation under hegemony of Soviet Union comprising the countries of the Eastern Bloc along with a number of communist states elsewhere in the world...

 members such as East Germany, Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...

 and the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

, accepted Vietnamese

Vietnamese people

The Vietnamese people are an ethnic group originating from present-day northern Vietnam and southern China. They are the majority ethnic group of Vietnam, comprising 86% of the population as of the 1999 census, and are officially known as Kinh to distinguish them from other ethnic groups in Vietnam...

 guest workers

Foreign worker

A foreign worker is a person who works in a country other than the one of which he or she is a citizen. The term migrant worker as discussed in the migrant worker page is used in a particular UN resolution as a synonym for "foreign worker"...

 in the country as a relatively cheaper manual labour

Manual labour

Manual labour , manual or manual work is physical work done by people, most especially in contrast to that done by machines, and also to that done by working animals...

 workforce

Workforce

The workforce is the labour pool in employment. It is generally used to describe those working for a single company or industry, but can also apply to a geographic region like a city, country, state, etc. The term generally excludes the employers or management, and implies those involved in...

. According to one estimate, over 35,000 Vietnamese people have worked in Bulgaria between 1980 and 1991, and 5,000 Vietnamese students have completed their higher education in various Bulgarian universities. Plattenbau

Plattenbau

Plattenbau is the German word for a building whose structure is constructed of large, prefabricated concrete slabs. The word is a compound of Platte and Bau...

ten (панелка; panelka) and mobile home

Mobile home

Mobile homes or static caravans are prefabricated homes built in factories, rather than on site, and then taken to the place where they will be occupied...

 hostel

Hostel

Hostels provide budget oriented, sociable accommodation where guests can rent a bed, usually a bunk bed, in a dormitory and share a bathroom, lounge and sometimes a kitchen. Rooms can be mixed or single-sex, although private rooms may also be available...

s were built in 1984 in the Krasna polyana

Krasna polyana

Krasna Polyana is a district in the western parts of Sofia. it has 65,442 inhabitants. The district includes six neighbourhoods: "Ilinden"; "Zapaden park"; "Razsadnika"; "Krasna Polyana" 1, 2 ,3. There are many green areas especially in the neighbourhood of "Zapaden Park" as the name suggests....

 municipality of Sofia to accommodate the Vietnamese; by 1990, the area had acquired the nickname "Little Saigon

Little Saigon

Little Saigon is a name given to any of several overseas Vietnamese immigrant and descendant communities outside Vietnam, usually in the United States...

". The hostels are still known as "the Vietnamese hostels" today, although their demolition has been considered by the Capital Municipality as they have since decayed

Urban decay

Urban decay is the process whereby a previously functioning city, or part of a city, falls into disrepair and decrepitude...

 into an unregulated Roma

Roma in Bulgaria

The Roma in Bulgaria are the country's second largest minority and third largest ethnic group . According to the 2001 census, there were 370,908 Roma in Bulgaria, equivalent to 4.7% of the country's total population, making Bulgaria the European country with the highest percentage of Roma.Experts'...

-inhabited slum

Slum

A slum, as defined by United Nations agency UN-HABITAT, is a run-down area of a city characterized by substandard housing and squalor and lacking in tenure security. According to the United Nations, the percentage of urban dwellers living in slums decreased from 47 percent to 37 percent in the...

.

The idea was to compensate Bulgaria's lack of sufficient manual workforce and at the same time to relieve Vietnam

Vietnam

Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...

 of some of its growing population, with the trained workers potentially coming back. In practice, however, this co-operation was subject to much corruption in Vietnam, with many members of its richest class of merchants paying bribes equivalent to around €

Euro

The euro is the official currency of the eurozone: 17 of the 27 member states of the European Union. It is also the currency used by the Institutions of the European Union. The eurozone consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg,...

1,000 (in 1985) to be sent to Bulgaria, where they expanded their speculative business, engaging in black market trade, production of counterfeit

Counterfeit

To counterfeit means to illegally imitate something. Counterfeit products are often produced with the intent to take advantage of the superior value of the imitated product...

 goods such as jeans

Jeans

Jeans are trousers made from denim. Some of the earliest American blue jeans were made by Jacob Davis, Calvin Rogers, and Levi Strauss in 1873. Starting in the 1950s, jeans, originally designed for cowboys, became popular among teenagers. Historic brands include Levi's, Lee, and Wrangler...

, etc. As a consequence, shortly after the democratic changes of 1989, Bulgaria arranged the accelerated return of most of the Vietnamese workers to Vietnam, effective in 1991.

Of the thousands of Vietnamese, all but the students and those who had married in Bulgaria left. Since 1991, Bulgaria has been a target country for economic immigrants from Vietnam, as the average wages remained higher despite the country's difficulties in the 1990s. Along with the Chinese

Chinese people

The term Chinese people may refer to any of the following:*People with Han Chinese ethnicity ....

, Koreans, Arabs and other immigrants, the Vietnamese have established a presence among the vendors in Sofia's well-known and frequented bazaar

Bazaar

A bazaar , Cypriot Greek: pantopoula) is a permanent merchandising area, marketplace, or street of shops where goods and services are exchanged or sold. The term is sometimes also used to refer to the "network of merchants, bankers and craftsmen" who work that area...

 Iliyantsi. The number of Vietnamese immigrants is constantly rising, although they are yet to feature more prominently in Bulgaria's social life and media.

In 2008, it was widely reported and discussed that Bulgaria, now a European Union

European Union

The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...

 member, is again looking to employ Vietnamese workers, as unemployment

Unemployment

Unemployment , as defined by the International Labour Organization, occurs when people are without jobs and they have actively sought work within the past four weeks...

 in the country has been largely solved as an issue (with unemployment rates comparable to those in France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 or Belgium

Belgium

Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

 and lower than in Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

 or Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

) and on the contrary, there is a lack of workers in the rapidly developing building and tourism

Tourism in Bulgaria

Bulgaria is a country with a historical and cultural heritage, and attractive natural landscapes, one of the most visited tourist destinations in Southeast Europe. Tourism, as an industry, has been an important source of economic growth. In 2008 Bulgaria was visited by 8.9 million tourists,...

branches in particular. Vietnamese would be offered jobs on contract terms with temporary residence in Bulgaria.