Unofficial Hanoians: Migration, Native Place and Urban Citizenship in Vietnam

Abstract

Independent migration to Hanoi has surged dramatically over two decades of deepening market reforms, blurring the distinctions between urban and rural lives once maintained so carefully by the Communist Party of Vietnam. However many urban migrants face ongoing legal and social obstacles in Hanoi, tied to an outmoded system of household registration (ho khau), and widespread anxieties about the ‘floating population’ threatening to overwhelm the city. This article shows how one group of ‘unofficial Hanoians’—migrant motorbike taxi drivers from Nam Dinh Province—navigate a system of differentiated urban citizenship by forging communities and mutual assistance networks around shared ‘native places’ (que huong) to find employment, housing and social support in the city. It also reveals how Hanoi's marginal urban spaces—home to entrenched migrant communities of ambiguous legality—emerge as key arenas in the negotiation of Vietnamese citizenship, forcing national leaders, city officials, landlords and residents to grapple with questions of free movement and the rights of rural citizens to transgress urban space.

Keywords:

• Citizenship
• Migration
• Urbanisation
• Native Place
• Collective Action
• Vietnam
• Hanoi

Notes

1. In total, Hanoi comprises ten densely populated ‘urban districts’ (quan) and eighteen more agricultural ‘rural districts’ (huyen) in the surrounding countryside.

2. An open-air restaurant serving inexpensive draft beer and noodle and rice dishes.

3. My research in Vietnam was supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the Centre for International, Comparative and Area Studies at the University of California, San Diego.

4. The concept of citizenship frames this paper, but when applied to Vietnam, it remains more an analytical tool for understanding urban membership than a call for popular action. In fact, interviewees in Thinh Liet only once mentioned the term ‘citizen’ (cong dan) spontaneously, when the son of a makeshift beverage stop owner assured me that his family remained ‘good citizens’ in spite of their technically illegal occupation of street space.

5. KT1 status applies to established Hanoi families; KT2 status applies to people registered in the same province, but currently living in a different district; KT3 status applies to people living long term in a different province with official permission; KT4 status applies to contracted seasonal workers and students living temporarily outside their registered home.

6. There is, however, a sizable Nam Dinh migrant community in Ho Chi Minh City and the surrounding industrial area, organised enough to support a number of native-place associations (hoi dong huong).

7. For a more complete treatment of social networks in the livelihood strategies of mobile Vietnamese citizens, see Winkels’ (2012) analysis of the complex role of social capital in mitigating risk among migrants to the Central Highlands.

8. Native-place associations (hoi dong huong) have ‘proliferated’ in Hanoi over the past decade (Schlecker 2005). Usually most popular with students and retirees, I found a number of associations operating among labour migrants as well. Such groups organise social gatherings in the city and sponsor projects in the ‘homeland’ such as temple reconstructions, death anniversary (ngay gio) events and education funds.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Timothy Karis

Timothy Karis is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, San Diego