Development and brain drain: a review of Vietnamese labour export and skilled migration

Abstract

Despite a growing body of research assessing the impacts of the 1986 Renovation (Đổi Mới) Policy on labour migration, little is known about how this policy influenced the evolution of labour export and professional migration policies in Vietnam. Based on the limited literature and secondary media sources available, this article aims to sketch the landscape of work migration from Vietnam, which is the result of the government’s attempt to participate in the international arena. In attempting to map out the research landscape through a review of work migration since 1986, this paper argues that the mobilities of recent Vietnamese work migrants have been shaped by social, economic and political conditions in Vietnam. Market socialism and multilateralism dictated by the Đổi Mới and subsequent policies have encouraged an outflow of labour migration as an emerging export industry managed by the government, and self-initiated professional migration as the government’s development tool for human capacity building. While politicians claim that Vietnam’s development is compromised by brain drain, little is known about the mobilities of skilled Vietnamese migrants as well as the extent to which the outflows of work migrants bring back forces for development. As there is a tendency to include labour export and self-initiated skilled migration as an amorphous group, this article points out five ‘myths’ in the research profile of Vietnamese work migration.

Keywords:

• development
• Đổi Mới Policy
• labour migration
• professional migration
• social mobility
• Vietnam’s brain drain

Notes

1. The poverty line in rural areas in the period between 2011 and 2015 is set as an annual income of less than 250 USD.

2. For example, according to the 2012 survey carried out by Vietnam’ Centre for Studies and Applied Sciences in Gender – Family – Women and Adolescents, 44% of laborers were found victims of human trafficking in Libya, 34.11% in China and Taiwan, and 38.51% in Japan. Most of the victims were found to have little education (Huong, 2012, p. 6).

3. According to Decree 126/2007/NĐ-CP, each labour broker agency is required to have an authorized capital of five billion Vietnamese Dong (equivalent to 250,000 USD).

4. For more information on this, please go to http://www.vatgia.com, and search for ‘xuat khau lao dong.’