Too French in Vietnam, Too Vietnamese in France: The Double Absence

Introduction: A Split Identity in a Globalized World

In 2025, identity is more complex than ever—especially for those who navigate between cultures. For Vietnamese adoptees raised in France, the experience of returning to Vietnam often reveals a painful paradox: being perceived as too French in Vietnam, and too Vietnamese in France. This cultural in-betweenness, often invisible, leads to what sociologist Abdelmalek Sayad once called the "double absence".

This article explores the identity fracture experienced by transnational adoptees, caught between two heritages, two worlds, and two sets of expectations—through a comparative, interdisciplinary, and cross-cultural lens rooted in sociology, anthropology, ethnicity studies, and American studies. It engages with ethnic groups, race and ethnicity, whites, racial group perspectives, and acknowledges the role of social construct theory in modern identity frameworks.

Growing Up in France: Between Visibility and Alienation

From the outside, many Vietnamese adoptees were raised in French families with love, access to education, and stability. Yet the external markers—skin color, facial features, last names—set them apart. In the schoolyard, in public transport, in job interviews, the question arises: "Where are you really from?"

Despite being culturally French, this question of origin creates an emotional rupture. The desire to belong meets the reminder of otherness. This is not just about racism—it’s about being socially identified as ethnically different within a nation-state built on assimilation and informed by race ethnicity assumptions.

"I never felt Vietnamese growing up, but people kept reminding me that I wasn’t truly French either."

The experience echoes that of ethnic minorities, immigrant descendants, and people of color, yet adoptees often lack a tribal, native-American, Arab, African-American, or diasporic community. They grow up with cultural amnesia, disconnected from ancestral histories, backgrounds, and ethnic identity, and rediscovering their roots becomes a solo quest. This mirrors the struggles of indigenous peoples, Pacific islanders, mestizo populations, white-and-black children, and racialized minorities, all of whom contend with racial classification, racial identity, categorize, civil rights, and anthropological frameworks, as well as processes of self identification and being categorized based on race or ethnicity.

Returning to Vietnam: A Misplaced Homecoming

For many, a trip back to Vietnam is seen as a potential resolution—a reconnection with biological roots, birth culture, and perhaps even citizenship, ancestry, or affiliation. But the reality often clashes with expectations.

In Vietnam, adoptees are often seen as foreigners. They don’t speak the language, dress differently, and hold foreign passports. Local people may call them Việt kiều or Tây. There’s admiration, but also distance.

"People were kind, but I could feel I was not one of them. I was a guest."

The result is disorientation. The dream of homecoming becomes a confrontation with another form of exclusion—an unfamiliarity with one’s own ethnic background, cultural identity, or national identity. This tension often echoes broader experiences faced by minority groups, racial groups, multiracial and biracial individuals, and those of American-Indian, Asian American, Hispanic, Pacific islander, Caucasian, Black African, Native Hawaiian, Alaska Native, Indians, and respondents in census bureau records.

The Psychological Weight of In-Betweenness

This cultural liminality can generate a profound identity confusion. Belonging nowhere, feeling uprooted from both cultures, adoptees may internalize a sense of non-existence.

The psychological effects can include:

• Chronic identity doubt

• Loneliness

• Hyper-adaptation

• Impostor syndrome in both settings

Some turn to DNA tests, birth-parent searches, or genealogical reconstruction as a way to anchor their fragmented identity. Others choose to build new narratives—through art, social-justice work, or storytelling that embraces cultural differences, racially diverse perspectives, and ethnicities, and challenges racial discrimination, slavery, stereotypes, and historically embedded inequality, segregation, and socioeconomic divisions. Many adoptees now identify with a more inclusive sense of self, spanning mixed ethnic and interracial affiliations that reflect people of all races and all races.

"I stopped looking for a place to belong. I started creating one."

Rethinking Identity in the Diaspora Age

In a hyper-connected world, identities are more fluid, and belonging can be chosen, not inherited. The "double absence" is painful, but it also opens space for hybrid identities, multi-ethnic belonging, trans communities, interdisciplinary affiliations, and new forms of advocacy grounded in equality, cultural diversity, ethnic diversity, and awareness of racial disparities, stratification, and the role of genetics, ancestry, and biologically interpreted race people in constructing difference.

Today, Vietnamese adoptees are founding associations, writing books, making films, and building platforms like blogs and forums where they reclaim the right to define themselves on their own terms, often in defiance of racial and ethnic labels and classifications based on race.

Identity is no longer a fixed box. It is a personal landscape in motion.

Conclusion: From Absence to Presence

The experience of being too French in Vietnam, and too Vietnamese in France, is not a dead-end. It’s a call to reimagine identity—not as a place of origin, but as a continuous negotiation.

By embracing this complexity, adoptees contribute to broader conversations about globalization, migration, multiculturalism, societies, social norms, minority rights, religions, race-relations, racial categories, racial classification, disparities, inequality, oppression, and the structures of ethnicity and race, including the lived realities of mixed race, white ethnic, group of people classifications, include race questions, and genetically influenced narratives. These dynamics affect people of different races, race groups, and white people, reinforcing the significance of understanding how we are categorized in systems that shape demographics.

The journey is long, emotional, and never fully resolved—but it transforms absence into presence, fracture into force.

FAQ – Identity, Adoption, and Belonging (2025)

What is the double absence?
A sociological term describing the feeling of being excluded from both the culture of origin and the host culture.

Why do Vietnamese adoptees feel out of place in both countries?
Because they are raised in a different cultural environment than their birth country, and still seen as outsiders in their adoptive country due to their racial, ethnic, or minority-group identity.

Can returning to Vietnam resolve identity issues?
Not always. It may provide answers but can also highlight new cultural disconnections.

How can adoptees cope with this dual alienation?
By building self-defined identities, connecting with others with similar experiences, and engaging in personal or collective healing work.

Is this issue common in international adoptions?
Yes. Many international adoptees and marginalized peoples report similar experiences of cultural liminality, prejudice, stereotypes, and identity conflict.

Where can I learn more or find support?
Organizations like Racines Vietnam, online adoptee communities, and cultural therapy groups are good starting points for scholarly exploration, minority advocacy, ethnic group solidarity, and understanding demographic and census data related to ethnic identity, nationality, and race-relations, including insights from respondents, anthropologists, census bureau categorizations, and research on social construct, ancestry, mulatto history, one drop rule, and the complexities of races and ethnicities across the subcontinent and geographical worldviews.