Political Groceries: Supermarkets and Refugee Consumers in Little Saigon

Supermarkets in California Orange County’s Little Saigon are key sites in the negotiation of ethnic identity in Vietnamese refugee communities. Vietnamese supermarkets operate within global capitalist frameworks, while simultaneously serving as local spaces where community dynamics and ethnic identities are continuously redefined. This article outlines the economic, political, and social systems that structure refugee lives and undergird their right-wing and/or politically conservative positions. The study traces the supermarket industry post-World War ii and the role of Vietnamese refugees in the 1970s in developing Bolsa Avenue’s commercial strip. Conventional narratives of successful businesses and refugee assimilation, however, overlook ethnic stratification, as well as poverty and welfare dependence, among newer refugee groups. As Vietnamese Americans navigated global shifts in the late 20th Century, they anchored their claims for cultural authenticity in the transnational politics of South Vietnamese memory, ethnic heritage, and the American neoliberal embrace of multiculturalism. Histories of colonization and military intervention, however, often do not support these connections.