The Hmong community in Aubigny-sur-Nère, France: the case study of a successful dialogue with the local authority to recognize the Hmong cultural identity.
Introduction : The Hmong community is originally an ethnic group from China who, following persecutions, moved to Indochina (French colony), to settle in what will become later Laos. Several years later, the Hmong were “forced” to take part in the Indochina wars alongside with the French (1946-1954), and the American Secret War (1962-1975) to respectively fight against the Japanese imperialism and the “Vietnamization". The Hmong community motivation to engage in this war revealed to be more culturally based than politically based in the sense that both imperialism and communism represented
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Therefore, France is a multicultural country, with the Hmong community living in its soil since more than 40 years now and who called on settling down permanently. However, the recognition of the Hmong cultural components resulting from immigration was delayed, not least because the state has long considered immigrant populations and their cultures only in terms of social policies. The Hmong community still represents a cultural minority in France that remains largely ignored and its history and its culture, misunderstood. Recently, it seems that the Hmong community in France, spread in different cities, is getting together under a network of Hmong associations, in France and overseas, in order to obviate at this issue, struggling to be recognized as a cultural minority through cultural manifestations. The best illustration of such successful integration of the Hmong community and its cultural activism is embodied by the Hmong community in Aubingy-sur-Nère, in the center of France, who is organizing a Hmong festival every year since 2015 in a way that it gives a more powerful voice to the Hmong