Lan Anh Hoang

Breadwinning Wives and “Left-Behind” Husbands Men and Masculinities in the Vietnamese Transnational Family

This article explores an aspect of women’s transnational labor migration that has been understudied in many labor-sending countries: how men experience shifts in the household labor division triggered by women’s migration. In so doing, we shed light on the diverse ways notions of masculinity and gender identities are being reworked and renegotiated in the transnational family. Drawing on qualitative data collected from in-depth interviews with carers of left-behind children in Northern Vietnam, we show how men are confronted with the need to take on child care duties, which have traditionally been ascribed to women, while at the same time being under considerable pressure to live up to locally accepted masculinity ideals. We provide interesting insights into the changing family structures and dynamics in Vietnamese society where patriarchal norms continue to exert significant influence on different facets of life.

Transnational migration, changing care arrangements and left-behind children's responses in South-east Asia

Recent increases in the volume of labour migration from South-east Asia – and in particular the feminisation of these movements – suggest that millions of children are growing up in transnational families, separated from their migrant parents. Drawing on both quantitative and qualitative data collected in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, the study seeks to elucidate care arrangements for left-behind children and to understand the ways in which children respond to shifts in intimate family relations brought about by (re)configurations of their care. Our findings emphasise that children, through strategies of resistance, resilience and reworking, are conscious social actors and agents of their own development, albeit within constrained situations resulting from their parents’ migration.

Gendered networks and migration decision-making in Northern Vietnam

This paper examines the gender aspect of migrant networks, particularly the different ways networks are expected to assist mens or womens migration during migration decision-making processes. Through the case study of a farming community in Northern Vietnam, it shows that migrant networks are not gender neutral and, more importantly, men and women capitalise on different functions of networks to facilitate their migratory endeavours. Whilst men tend to be connected to relatively more extended networks primarily for practical support, women are more likely to be tied to family networks, which provide them with not just information and practical support but also social protection. These gender-specific expectations and uses of migrant networks have important implications for mens and womens mobility. The paper provides new insights into the way migration choices are made by men and women and at the same time underscores the importance of understanding migrant networks in researching migration.

Report for Children's Geographies: Inter-Asia roundtable on transnational migration and children in Asian contexts

Brenda S.A. Yeoh∗, Ah Eng Lai, Cheryll Alipio, Lan Anh Hoang, Theodora Lam and Melody C.W. Lu Department of Geography and Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, AS2, #03-01, 1 Arts Link, Kent Ridge, Singapore 117570, Singapore; Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, 469A Tower Block, #10-01, Bukit Timah Road, Singapore 259770, Singapore, School of Social and Political Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3010, Australia

‘I'd do it for love or for money’: Vietnamese women in Taiwan and the social construction of female migrant sexuality

Drawing on an ethnographic research in Vietnam and Taiwan, this article seeks to contribute to the global scholarship on migration and sexuality. It reveals interesting contradictions between the seemingly homogeneous stereotypes of Vietnamese womens sexuality, on the one hand, and the multiplicity and fluidity of actual sexual practices in real-life contexts, on the other hand. First, the presence of a number of chaste migrant women in our study challenges the common stereotype of female migrants as hypersexual and promiscuous menaces on the loose. Second, we question the emphasis on womens material greed and instrumentalism in normative discourses about Vietnamese womens engagement in extramarital relationship. While for some women in our research, sexual liaisons outside marriage are indeed orchestrated for financial gains, for others, extramarital sex is principally sought as a form of self-actualisation or an exploration of sexual pleasure and freedom that is absent from their marriage. The article emphasises the highly contextual nature of sexual norms and practices as well as the intersectionality of race, class and gender in the social construction of female sexuality in the context of transnational labour migration.

Moral Dilemmas of Transnational Migration Vietnamese Women in Taiwan

Given that care duties are central to the definition of motherhood across contexts, an extended separation from the woman’s family due to migration presents a major threat to her social identity as a mother and wife. Drawing on West and Zimmerman’s notion of “doing gender” and ethnographic research on Vietnamese low-waged contract workers in Taiwan, I provide vital insights into the discursive processes and everyday practices that underlie migrant women’s negotiations of motherhood and femininity. Specifically, I examine the various ways migrant women perform and negotiate meanings of hy sinh (self-sacrifice) and chịu đựng (endurance) that are core values of Vietnamese womanhood. Combating the stigma of bad motherhood and failed femininity, I emphasize, is not just about reasserting one’s sense of gendered self but also about reassuring her access to the future support and care of the family. The study emphasizes intentionality and pragmatism in women’s social doings of gender and highlights moral dilemmas in gender politics.

Transnational Labour Migration, Debts and Family Economics in Vietnam

A report commissioned by the World Bank in 2006 suggests that large parts of international remittances, which increased by 58 per cent to USD 232 billion between 2001 and 2005, were associated with the unprecedented rise in international migration from developing countries (Yeoh et al., 2005: 88). The need for foreign exchange earnings together with the pressure to relieve domestic unemployment are two principal reasons for the promotion of transnational labour migration by labour-sending countries (Wickramasekera, 2002: 8). The potential of reaping positive economic benefits from international migration is immense for poorer countries. However, amore important question arising from these facts and figures is whether increased remittances are automatically translated into enhanced wellbeing for migrant families and, if not, why and in what way migration fails to lead to development in its broadest sense.

Vietnamese migrant networks in Taiwan: the curse and boon of social capital

ABSTRACT Drawing on ethnographic research on Vietnamese migrant workers in Taiwan, I seek to engage with and contribute to the scholarship on migrant networks and social capital. My research demonstrates that migrant networks are central to the social life of Vietnamese workers, offering not only a vital source of material and psychological support but also a platform where relationships are developed, sustained and contested. It reveals both productive and destructive potentials of social capital in situations where the migrant labourer becomes a disenfranchized underclass and their radius of trust is unsettled by physical displacement. Through this research I highlight the complexities and subjectivities in individual experiences of social capital and offer important insights into the various ways in which social networks are reinterpreted and reconfigured at the intersection of mobility, class and ethnicity within the context of Asia.

Introduction: Migration, Remittances and the Family

The unprecedented rise in both the volume and the velocity of transnational labour migration in and from Asia in recent decades has led to significant social and economic changes not just on the scale of nation-states and communities but also within the most immediate core of human experience, the family. As people become increasingly mobile in response to the restructuring of the global economy, the family – and the accompanying processes of formation, maintenance and dissolution – continually adapts itself to changing or emerging livelihood strategies and the resultant shifts in living arrangements. New concepts such as the “transnational family” and “global householding” have been developed within migration scholarship to capture ongoing transformations of the Asian family as a result of migration. The “transnational family” is broadly defined by the notion that the family continues to share strong bonds of collective welfare and unity even though core members are distributed between two or more nation-states (Yeoh, 2009), while “global householding” emphasises the view that the formation and sustenance of households are increasingly reliant on the international movement of people and transactions among household members who reside in more than one national territory (Douglass, 2006).