Part 1

• Different layers of illegality: social order among different groups of Vietnamese migrants living in Germany Trang Nguyen Max Weber Kolleg

  This paper explores the complexity of the social structure in which members of the undocumented Vietnamese group in Germany live in and define their sense of self. Being labelled “illegal” by law, this population is excluded from the legitimate economy of Germany. Within the Vietnamese ethnic community, they are discriminated and stigmatised as “those who have no paper”, “those come from the Central Coast region”, those “men either sell cigarettes or steal…and women just give birth and claim social benefits” by the more established community of migrants from Northern Vietnam.

• Migration, class mobility, and belonging: the case of Vietnamese migrants in Moscow Lan Anh Hoang The University of Melbourne

  Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has emerged as a destination of choice for hundreds of thousands of migrants from rural Vietnam. Post-Soviet Russia’s porous borders and a sizeable shadow economy provide low-skilled migrants with exceptional economic opportunities which would not be possible elsewhere. The vast majority of Vietnamese migrants in Russia earn their living from market trade, which is fraught with risks but also promises life-changing wealth. Those who manage to get ahead in Russia find themselves in a tricky situation where the low status accorded to market trade in Vietnamese society stands at odds with their new-found wealth. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted at Moscow’s markets from 2013 to 2016, I discuss how Vietnamese migrants’ subjectivities, social self-positioning, and mobility aspirations are configured by their place-based experiences within Russia’s migration regime. The enormous emotional and financial sacrifices that migrants make to secure an upgrade to the middle-class status for their children in the homeland reveal not only their sense of vulnerability and marginalisation in Russia but also the socialist values embedded in their conception of middleclassness. The case of Vietnamese in Moscow highlights the situatedness of aspirations and demonstrates that diaspora is not just a group of people but essentially a category of practice.

• Returning to Reunification: Vietnamese Workers and Their Struggle to Stay in Germany Paige Newhouse University of Michigan

  The conditions of Vietnamese labor changed after German reunification, as the new government worked relentlessly to repatriate Vietnamese workers. In this paper, I argue that some Vietnamese nationals envisioned their labor in East Germany or in other Eastern European countries as a path to permanent settlement in a reunified Germany. Their understanding of their migration clashed with the goals of the new German government, which did not envision Vietnamese workers as part of the reunified nation-state. Vietnamese contract workers had to adapt to the transition from a state-controlled economy to a capitalist one and to German national policies that purposefully excluded them from the labor market in attempts to force their return to Vietnam. Some workers organized and made demands of the state through community-based groups, while others worked in illegal trades or became self-employed.

• Transnational networks in reconfiguring Vietnamese migrants’ belonging: charitable actions and the media in two Polish cities Ewa Grabowska University of Warsaw

  In my paper, I draw from research in two biggest cities in Poland - Warsaw and ?ód? - to analyse how transnational networks reconfigure Vietnamese migrants’ belonging to Polish society. In Polish society Vietnamese migrants are seen as a closed, self-isolating group. During the coronavirus pandemic, Vietnamese businessmen used their transnational ties with their homeland and their locally-based business facilities (in the gastronomy and textile industry) to support Polish healthcare workers and organise charity donations. These philanthrophic activities are publicised in the media in an attempt to assert the Vietnamese community’s belonging to the Polish society and to present Vietnamese migrants as a valuable and successful migrant group who are willing to support Polish people and the state in a time of crisis. Using an intersectional approach to analyse Vietnamese migrants’ belonging, I highlight their image building strategies and support for medical staff and homeless and poor people. The study draws from netnographic research conducted on Facebook from January 2020 to July 2021, focusing on Polish online media releases related to Vietnamese charitable actions. In addition, I also conducted twelve interviews with 1 and 1.5 generation Vietnamese and Polish people cooperating with them.

Part 2

• A dynamic and comprehensive approach to Vietnamese international students’ belongings: a comparative study in Vancouver and Paris Anne-Ceclile Delaisse University of British Columbia

  International students have recently become a major emigration outflow from Vietnam and a prominent group of incoming Vietnamese immigrants in receiving countries like Canada and France. While research has mostly been conducted in bigger receiving countries like the US or Australia, this presentation will examine and compare Vietnamese international students’ mobilities and belongings across two other major but understudied receiving countries: Canada and France. Drawing upon 20 online interviews conducted with Vietnamese international students in Vancouver and Paris, my research extends the mobilities paradigm as well scholarship on belonging. I argue that students’ mobilities and ‘membership belonging’ are constructed in the context of Canada’s ‘academic capitalism’ (Kauppinen, 2015) as well as France’s universalist model of education but anti-immigration approach (Geisser, 2018). I examine how the Parisian and Vancouverite contexts, which include Vietnamese and Asian communities of different sizes, shape students’ experiences of racialization and ‘perceived belonging’. Students’ ‘sense of belonging’ are constructed through engaging with multiple cultures and languages both prior to and during their experiences abroad. I also show how students develop a ‘sense of belonging’ through negotiating between their ‘membership belonging’ and ‘perceived belonging’ in different countries.

• Finding home and community in virtual third places: The returns of Western-born Vietnamese Dan Le Kanazawa University

  Since the 1986 Doi Moi reform, an increasing number of labour migrants and students leave Viet Nam every year for better opportunities abroad. During the same period, a positive correlation can be seen with members of the diaspora returning to the country. According to government estimates, over 500,000 Vietnamese return to Vietnam each year to work, live, and retire. Among these returnees are a group who have made Viet Nam their home: the Western-born, second generation. This presentation explores the significance of online community memberships in the construction of identity and belonging among Western-born Vietnamese who “return” to their ancestral homeland. Drawing on 31 in-depth interviews with second generation Vietnamese living in Viet Nam, from 12 disparate Western countries, it examines when, how, and why they use information communication technologies to create identity and spaces of belonging. Employing a framework of social and migrant capital theories, I reveal the obstacles and advantages these return migrants encounter with belonging as they coexist with other western-born coethnics and locals in their ethnic homeland. A focus on the outcomes of various belongings between coethnics and locals is examined to demonstrate how returnees’ various capitals are impacted. My preliminary findings suggest that when confronted with exclusion and feelings of non-belonging, returnees seek out the familiar whether online or offline: other Western-born expats.

• Kinship Networks and Transnational Labor Migration Decision-making Linh Nguyen Thuy Hanoi Pedagogical University 2 Van Cao Thi Hanoi Pedagogical University 2

  This paper examines the kinship networks, particularly the various ways networks are expected to assist Vietnamese transnational labor migration during migration decision-making processes. Drawing on surveys and semi-structured interviews with Vietnamese migrant workers and their family members in some communities in Vietnamese rural areas, it shows that Vietnamese migrants capitalize on different functions of their kinship networks to facilitate their migratory endeavors. They are more likely to be tied to family networks, regarding them as not just the source of information and practical support but also the guarantees. The paper provides deep insights into the way migration choices are made by Vietnamese workers and, at the same time, underscores the effects of their migration choice.

• Undocumented Vietnamese migrant experiences of agency, precarity and non-belonging in the UK immigration system. Tamsin Barber Oxford Brookes University

  Vietnamese undocumented migrants have become almost exclusively associated with modern slavery in UK media and policy discussions. They have occupied a binary position as either vulnerable, passive victims of traffickers in need of rescue or criminals breaching UK immigration and employment law. This view overlooks both the finer nuances of their everyday experience and the wider set of issues experienced by these migrants; including vulnerability engendered under the asylum system and modern slavery policies and successful economic poverty reduction strategies. This paper explores the issues facing ‘low-skilled’, undocumented Vietnamese migrants in the UK by deploying the ‘migrant agency-precarity’ lens (Paret & Gleeson 2016) to better make sense of where and how vulnerability is produced and managed. We draw attention to wider processes of precaritisation which reinforce migrant vulnerability, prevent integration but also give rise to agency. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with migrants and experts, we reveal alternative narratives such as ‘choices to leave’ and ‘everyday and long-term coping strategies’ as areas of migrant agency and show how modern slavery policies can enforce a very specific kind of integration into the undocumented, precarious life in the UK.

Show Paper Abstracts

Abstract

Keywords

• Diaspora
• Labor
• Migration
• Social Change
• Vietnam