Marriage migration, single men, and social reproduction in migrants’ communities of origin in Vietnam

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes the repercussions of marriage migration for Vietnamese communities of origin in two ways. Firstly, it argues that a life-course perspective and the concept of “care circulation” expand understandings of the implications of marriage migration for reproduction and care in countries of origin. Secondly, it documents how marriage migration unsettles reproduction and care patterns primarily because sending communities face difficulties in marrying their own sons to village women. The article is based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2012 in two regions of Vietnam particularly affected by international marriage migration and is informed by other projects conducted since the mid-2000s. Results suggest that migration among young women who migrate without the intention of return bears a different significance for gender and development than migration among women who have moved further along in their life course. Marriage migration in Vietnam takes place at a critical juncture of the life course when gender power relations may be reconfigured in the country of origin. A focus on men and their families in migrants’ communities of origin provides new insight. In sum, a life-course perspective broadens the scope of the relationship between migration, gender inequalities, reproduction, and care.

KEYWORDS:

• Marriage migration
• Vietnam
• impact of migration
• life-course
• gender
• singlehood

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Nicola Piper, Robert Shepherd, Ito Peng, Charles Fleury, and the graduate students of the 2015 seminar “The Life-Course Approach in Sociology” at the Université Laval for their useful feedback on a previous version of this paper. I also thank Nguyen Thi Van for her assistance during the fieldwork conducted for this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Hochschild 2000.

2 Cortes 2015; Graham and Jordan 2011; Graham et al. 2012.

3 Parreñas 2001, 2005.

4 Bélanger, Giang Ling, and Duong 2011.

5 General Statistical Office 2011, 108.

6 Locke et al. 2013a; Wingens et al. 2011.

7 Baldassar and Merla 2013.

8 Locke et al. 2013b.

9 McDaniel and Bernard 2011.

10 Wingens et al. 2011, 2.

11 Wingens et al. 2011, 3.

12 Kogan et al. 2011.

13 Kley 2011.

14 Courgeau 2014.

15 Kulu and Milewski 2008.

16 Locke et al. 2013; Yeoh, Chee, and Baey 2013.

17 Kofman 2012, 154.

18 Baldassar and Merla 2013.

19 Baldassar and Merla 2013, 25 (emphasis added).

20 Kofman and Raghuram 2009, 3.

21 Bélanger 2010.

22 Bélanger and Tran Giang Linh 2011.

23 Bélanger, Giang Linh, and Hong 2013.

24 Piper and Roces 2003.

25 Bélanger, Giang Ling, and Duong 2011.

26 Bélanger, Giang Ling, and Duong 2011.

27 Yeoh et al. 2013.

28 The normal sex ratio at birth for human populations is 105 boys for 100 girls. This ratio has been increasing steadily in Vietnam since the middle of the last decade, which indicates an increase in the use of abortion when the fetus is female in order to have a son. See Guilmoto 2012.

29 Hoang 2015.

30 Bélanger 2016.

31 Bélanger and Wang 2012.

32 Yeoh et al. 2013; Yeoh, Chee, and Dung Vu 2013; Yeoh, Chee, and Dung Vu 2014.

33 Hoang and Yeoh 2015.

34 Kim 2012.

35 Thai 2008.

36 I am fluent in Vietnamese, so no interpretation or translation was involved in the research, except for quotations translated from Vietnamese to English for inclusion in this article.

37 Unpublished results at the commune level from the 2009 census. Raw data were provided to the author by the General Statistical Office of Vietnam.

38 Unpublished data from the marriage registration data of the communes studied. Data provided by the People Committees of the communes studied and analyzed by the author.

39 Bélanger, Giang Linh, and Hong 2013.

40 Unpublished data from the marriage registration data of the communes studied. Data are provided by the People Committees of the communes analyzed here.

41 Elder 1985, 31f.

42 Wingens et al. 2011, 15.

43 Elder 1985, 35.

44 Yeoh et al. 2013.

45 In fact, although this is the stereotypical version of Vietnamese family relationships, much scholarship has highlighted how Vietnamese families are more bilinear.

46 Salaff 1981.

47 Bélanger and Pendakis 2009.

48 In the life-course perspective, the notion of normative timing refers to “the societal validity of age norms: on-time transitions typically are advantageous or, at least, imply non-negative consequences, while off-time transitions constitute asynchronicities within and between trajectories and tend to yield disadvantageous consequences.” See Wingens et al. 2011, 17.

49 Bourdieu 2002.

50 Bourdieu 2002.

51 Pincus and Sender 2008.

52 Guilmoto and de Loenzien 2014.

53 Bélanger forthcoming.

Additional information

Funding

I would like to acknowledge the funding made available to me for this project by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Partnership Grant “Gender, Migration, and the Work of Care” [grant number 895-2012-1021].

Notes on contributors

Danièle Bélanger

Danièle Bélanger is a Professor of Geography at Université Laval, Québec City, Canada. Her research focuses on migration policies, migration experiences and gender in Asia and the Americas with a particular focus on Vietnam and China. She is a co-author, with Tanya Basok, Rojas Wiesner, Martha Luz, and Guillermo Candiz, of Rethinking Transit Migration. Precarity, Mobility, and Self-making in Mexico (2015) and co-editor, with Lisa Drummond, Lisa and Van Nguyen-Marshall of The Reinvention of Distinction: Middle Class in Urban Vietnam (2012).