6 The impact of political factors on the Vietnamese migrant organizations in Poland 1

A challenge for the following analysis is on examining the Vietnamese migrant organizations ² in Poland and for embedding their occurrence within the framework of factors that affect their development and functioning. Particular attention will be paid to the transnational dimension of this phenomenon. The hypothesis to be tested is Bousquet's statement formulated in the early 1990s that states that the major macro-level factor that binds Vietnamese migrants concerns politics (1991: 15–20). The following study aims at verifying this supposition with regard to the functioning of the Vietnamese migrant organizations in Poland in the 2000s. This study examines the top-down influence of the macro-factors on the mezzo-of organizations. In order to verify the above-mentioned hypothesis, an overview into the impact of political factors in the countries of arrival and origin since World War II is to be presented. Subsequently, two contemporary Vietnamese organizations in Poland are analyzed.