2018 Volume 17 Issue 2 Pages 207-226
This paper, based on fieldwork conducted among the ethnic groups speaking Hakka dialects in Vietnam, aims to answer the questions of who are the Ngái and how they perceive their own ethnicity, which may help fill some gaps in our current understandings on this ethnic group.
Our findings suggest that the Ngái and Khách (Hakka) groups, although living in different places and referred to by various names, share common distinctive features of culture, religion, language, history and the like. The perception of ethnicity among them is however relatively flexible and vague, partly because of migration, cohabitation and interaction with other groups in the places of settlement. This finding tends to support the theoretical suggestion that ethnicity is fluid and will change when circumstances change.
