This article was downloaded by: [Georgetown University] On: 10 August 2013, At: 08:10 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK The Journal of Peasant Studies Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fjps20 Becoming and being urban in Hanoi: Rural-urban migration and relations in Viet Nam Nguyen Tuan Anh , Jonathan Rigg , Luong Thi Thu Huong & Dinh Thi Dieu Published online: 01 Mar 2012 To cite this article: Nguyen Tuan Anh , Jonathan Rigg , Luong Thi Thu Huong & Dinh Thi Dieu (2012) Becoming and being urban in Hanoi: Rural-urban migration and relations in Viet Nam, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 39:5, 1103-1131, DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2011.652618 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2011.652618 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/termsand-conditions The Journal of Peasant Studies Vol 39, No 5, December 2012, 1103–1131 Becoming and being urban in Hanoi: Rural-urban migration and relations in Viet Nam Downloaded by [Georgetown University] at 08:10 10 August 2013 Nguyen Tuan Anh, Jonathan Rigg, Luong Thi Thu Huong and Dinh Thi Dieu The discourse of the rural-urban migrant is that of a sojourner in the city, a man or a woman who will almost inevitably return to his or her rural roots and re-engage with farming and village living In this paper we ask whether ruralurban migrants can ‘become’ urban and shed their identification as temporary denizens of the city We develop a conceptual framework that provides five entry points to explore this process of becoming urban, and then apply the framework drawing on the experiences of migrants to Viet Nam’s capital, Hanoi We argue that even when migrants return to their homelands they so with altered priorities and on different terms The experience of migration was not infrequently transformative and life-changing While migrants may not ‘become’ urban in the fullest sense, their homeland had become a space of familial origin and emotional identification, not a place where people necessarily sought to reside, work, raise their children and build their lives Keywords: Viet Nam; migration; urbanisation; livelihoods; rural-urban relations The discourse of the rural-urban migrant In Asia, the main contributing factor to urbanisation remains internal rural-urban migration (UN Habitat 2009, 25) One view of rural-urban migrants in Asia is of a dislocated, disenfranchised and marginalised proletariat, displaced from rural areas to urban contexts In more radical interpretations, this is explicitly linked to the disruptive effects of capitalist transformation Davis refers to the ‘brutal tectonics of neoliberal globalization’ and the ‘forcible incorporation into the world market of the great subsistence peasantries of Asia and Africa’ with an end result of ‘rural ‘‘semiproletarianization’’, [and] the creation of a huge global class of immiserated semipeasants and farm labourers lacking existential security of subsistence’ (Davis 2006, 174, and see Glassman 2004) Other scholars are more positive about the motivations for, and the outcomes of migration seeing the process as livelihood enhancing and socially empowering As Bird and Deshingkar categorically state in their review of circular migration in India, ‘there is overwhelming evidence that internal migration can lead to positive change in both sending and receiving areas’ (2009, [emphasis added]), a view that Ploeg and Ye Jingzhong (2010) also endorse in their study of China.1 ‘This circular pattern [of migration in China] has a specific set of characteristics that positively feed into the process of industrialisation and simultaneously help to avoid major social and political unrest and the high levels of deprivation typically associated with ‘misery belts’ elsewhere’ (Ploeg and Ye Jingzhong 2010, 514) ISSN 0306-6150 print/ISSN 1743-9361 online Ó 2012 Taylor & Francis http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2011.652618 http://www.tandfonline.com Downloaded by [Georgetown University] at 08:10 10 August 2013 1104 Nguyen Tuan Anh et al Unlike the nineteenth century urbanisation process in Western Europe and North America and currently in much of Africa and Latin America (Ploeg and Ye Jingzhong 2010), most rural-urban migrants in Asia not relinquish their attachments – material, emotional and symbolic – to ‘home’ in the countryside Every lunar New Year, China experiences what has been called the world’s greatest human migration (Chang 2008) as scores of millions of urban migrants return to their rural homes.2 The same occurs in Viet Nam over Tet, in Thailand during the Songkran holidays, in the Philippines at Christmas, and in Indonesia during Idul Fitri From this has emerged a discourse of the Asian migrant that stresses their status as sojourners in the city In this schema, rural-urban migrants, who are mainly young and single and increasingly female, leave home as part of a family strategy to support the livelihood of the natal household They engage in work which is usually marginal and low paid, often informal, and rarely upwardly mobile Such migrants never throw off their identity – both self-expressed and externally reified – as ruralites; farmers on the make Their stay in the city remains a sojourn, where return is inevitable, and as such they never fully become members of urban society Migrant work is one component of an inter-locking livelihood, where income generation in the city must be understood in the context of livelihoods ‘back home’ Children, futures, parents, identities and aspirations remain rooted in the countryside, even while these migrants live and work in the city.3 Asian rural-urban migrants, therefore, constitute a large and significant portion of the urban population but they are not urbanites in the classic sense Such ruralurban migrants occupy what has been conceptualised as an interstitial – or ‘inbetween’ (see Resurreccion 2005, Agergaard et al 2011) – social and economic space They are denizens of the urban, but not its citizens; they live in the city, but belong to the countryside They work in the industrial and service sectors, but at core remain peasants (farmers); they are out of place, therefore, in multiple ways For governments, the rural-urban migrant represents a problem of management in the context of rapidly expanding urban populations and creaking city services; for scholars, they are a hard-to-pin-down population who are difficult to categorise and a challenge to research given their mobility; and for NGOs, migrants are the flotsam of capitalism who need to be protected and supported And yet it is also clear that not all migrants live on the edge of subsistence, scraping a living at the margins of the Asian miracle Some build productive and rewarding lives in the city They may arrive as refugees or speculative sojourners from the countryside, and yet make a relative success of their stay, so much so that some, over time, make the transition from rural migrants, to city sojourners, to urban citizens.4 It is this process of ‘becoming urban’ that the following paper seeks to illuminate How and why some migrants manage to make this transition, and what prevents – or inhibits – others from doing so? And how can we measure and China has some 130 million rural-urban migrant workers: ‘Together they represent the largest migration in human history; three times the number of people who emigrated to America from Europe over a century’ (Chang 2008, 12) Including rural-rural migrants, the total number on the move at the end of 2008 numbered 225 million (Ploeg and Ye Jingzhong 2010, 515) For various studies and reports that reflect this discourse, see UNDP (2009, 71–2), GSO (2006, 2), Anh Dang et al (1997, 313), Martin (2009, 10), Cai Fang et al (2009, 8–10), We Ha et al (2009, 4), and Tirtosudarm (2009, 29) For a parallel example considering the case of Vietnamese sojourners in Laos and Thailand, see Hardy 2005 The Journal of Peasant Studies 1105 Downloaded by [Georgetown University] at 08:10 10 August 2013 assess this progressive process of urban insinuation? As it has become common to observe, the world recently reached ‘an invisible but momentous milestone’: for the first time in human history, the greater portion of the globe’s population live in cities and towns, and the world is now more urban than it is rural (UNFPA 2007, and see Satterthwaite 2006) However, as we briefly outline below, the contours of the transformation are not as clearly delineated as this striking and resonant claim suggests In terms of numbers, living conditions, livelihood pathways and futures, for example, there are gaps in our knowledge of the migrants who make up such a significant part of the burgeoning but often highly unstable urban population Becoming urban: establishing a heterodox conceptual framework One of the key reasons why the contours of the urban transition in Asia are indistinct is because it is often unclear quite when and how rural-urban migrants become urban, and when they should be counted as urbanites, rather than as ruralites It is not unusual for Asian households to have representation in both urban and rural spaces and associated economies, and they embrace both urban and rural sensibilities The aggregate data, as noted above, may identify an epochal shift in the balance of the rural and urban populations, yet very significant numbers not fit into such neat, categorical boxes A question addressed towards the end of this section as well in the conclusion of the paper is whether this large population of ‘neither-rural-nor-urban’ should be counted as occupying a third, ‘in-between’ category In this paper, we adopt a heterodox position in terms of how we view the process of becoming urban and, by association what we understand by ‘urban-ness’ and, therefore, ‘rural-ness’ We view the process as consisting of multiple, often overlapping, tendencies which we group here into five categories or entry points Each provides a different perspective to view – or approach – the integration of rural migrants into the urban fabric, and each draws on scholarship in different fields, as Table sets out (Table 1) At a very general level, the legalistic approach links with geographical literatures; livelihoods, to economic and development studies literatures; identity and behaviours to anthropology; and networks and associations to sociology As will become clear, none offers a neat solution or answer to the challenge and to the question of how and when a migrant becomes urban This is to be expected because, as the paper will illustrate, ‘becoming’ urban is multiple, contingent and – and importantly – reversible Perhaps the simplest, and certainly the neatest, way to answer the question, ‘when does a rural migrant become urban?’ is to take a legalistic or bureaucratic approach A rural migrant becomes an urbanite when s/he is officially registered, or counted, as such This takes the transition from rural to urban as simple and complete, achieved through the tick of a bureaucratic box Second, it is possible to take a livelihoods approach in which a rural migrant (and household) becomes urban when he or she builds a livelihood which is predominantly urban in provenance (location), character and weighting So rural migrants might be counted as urbanites when their livelihoods are predominantly based in an urban or peri-urban location, and involve livelihood activities that can be regarded as emblematic or constitutive of urban living A third way to approach the question is in terms of identity, both self-expressed and/or externally reified Does a migrant in an urban context consider him or herself rural or urban, sometimes expressed in terms of ‘home’, and how is 1106 Nguyen Tuan Anh et al Table Becoming urban: a conceptual framework Views of ‘becoming’ urban Legalistic Downloaded by [Georgetown University] at 08:10 10 August 2013 Livelihoods Identity and identification Social and cultural behaviours Social networks and associations Illustrative Counted as urban bureaucratically; household or individual registration records them as urban in terms of residence; census and population records treat them as urban Urban livelihoods in terms of provenance (location in an urban context) or character (associated with the urban) Migrant self-identifies as an urban, city dweller and it treated as such by other city dweller Norms of behaviour, attitude, dress, consumption patterns and social networks emblematic of urban life Social networks and association, and more generally social capital, is urban in location and distribution Supporting literatures Wu and Treiman 2004; Wong and Wai-Po 1998; Wong and Rigg 2010; Deshingkar 2006 de Haan 1999; Rakodi and Lloyd-Jones 2002 Silvey and Lawson 1999; Andersson 2001 Thompson 2004, 2007 Andersson 2001; Curran and Rivero-Fuentes 2003 that migrant treated by the rest of the urban population: as someone ‘out of place’, or as a fellow urbanite? Fourth, it is possible to focus on the behaviours, views, consumption patterns, preferences and everyday practices of migrants to determine whether they remain rural in their living patterns and practices, or have become urban Finally, we can map the social networks and associations – the configurations of social capital – that migrants deploy and ‘use’ to give meaning to their lives Where is the centre of gravity of such networks, and who or what constitutes these associative relations? It is the first two of these approaches (the legalistic/bureaucratic and the livelihoods approaches) to the question of becoming urban which have the most purchase in policy terms for the simple reason that they are the most easily measured and tracked: Where are you registered as living? What you do? And yet, as we expand in a moment, it is these two approaches which are arguably the most problematic because they not adequately deal with the mixed, partial and contingent processes by which migrants and their wider families become, over time, insinuated into the urban fabric It is through unravelling urban/city and rural/village identities, behaviours, consumption practices and the geographies of their social networks that we come to better understand migration as a social process In the remainder of this section, we focus particularly on the shortcomings of the first two approaches in Table 1, while touching more briefly on the limitations of the others The legalistic or bureaucratic approach suffers from the fact that there are many tens of millions of people living in urban areas of Asia who are still officially ‘rural’ If there is one lesson to be drawn from the experiences of countries across Asia, it is Downloaded by [Georgetown University] at 08:10 10 August 2013 The Journal of Peasant Studies 1107 that administrations have failed to keep up with the increasingly mobile nature of living and livelihoods From Mumbai to Ho Chi Minh City and Bangkok, official data capture only a small portion of what is going on as bureaucrats struggle with categories that are not fit for purpose and with populations who are far more agile than they are National censuses often not pick up short-term movements and population registers are either lacking or provide only rudimentary coverage: ‘For the most part, migration data remain patchy, non-comparable and difficult to access’ (UNDP 2009, 28, and see Newland 2009, 10) In an assessment of the situation for Asia, Kundu writes that ‘studies on internal migration are seriously constrained by the fact that no international organisation systematically collects or tabulates even the basic demographic information .in a cross sectionally and temporally comparable manner’, something he consider a ‘tragedy’ given the sheer number of migrants and their importance in policy terms (Kundu 2009, 14) As we discuss below, the issue of getting to grips, in simple numerical terms, with the scale of ruralurban migration in Asia is even more pressing in countries with household registration systems, notably China and Viet Nam (World Bank 2003, 22–23, Wu and Treiman 2004) In summary, when people are mobile, their residence ill-defined and temporary, censuses inadequate, social structures fluid, and livelihoods are ranged across space, there is a real empirical challenge of knowing the scale and nature of the ‘problem’ (as it is usually framed), and taking a legalistic approach has considerable shortcomings as a result.5 Taking a livelihoods approach to becoming urban also suffers for a range of equally trenchant reasons: because there are many people in urban areas pursuing agricultural pursuits (in the form of various forms of urban agriculture); there are an increasing number of factories (‘urban’ livelihoods) in rural areas;6 and it is not unusual for migrants to embrace livelihood complexes that are both rural and urban in their provenance and character The desire to put people into occupational boxes (‘worker’, ‘farmer’), not least for ease of categorisation, overlooks the mixed and fluid nature of livelihoods in much of the Global South When it comes to considering the process of becoming urban in terms of identities, migrants show an ability simultaneously to embrace multiple identities Treatment by others is also often ambiguous The same is true of urban ‘behaviours’, where research has clearly revealed that ‘urban’ behaviours, norms and attitudes are not tied to urban spaces, but have colonised the countryside as some rural villages have become socially urban (see Thompson 2004, 2007) Finally, mapping networks of association and their configuration does not provide clarity in terms of the relative importance of such associations in functional terms on the one hand, and their cultural and social significance on the other In briefly setting out the shortcomings attached to all these approaches to understanding the process of becoming urban, the intention is not to conclude that the task is an impossible one Rather, it emphasises that the development process, embodying as it does a number of inter-locking social, economic, political and geographical processes, is never ‘complete’, and is rarely neat These five lenses offer ‘Despite our ability to establish these broad contours of movement, what we know is dwarfed by what we don’t know Unfortunately, migration data remain weak It is much easier for policy makers to count the international movements of shoes and cell-phones than of nurses and construction workers’ (UNDP 2009, 28) This is one of the particular characteristics of the Asian urbanisation/industrialisation experience (see Rigg 2001) 1108 Nguyen Tuan Anh et al complementary insights into the multiple and progressive ways in which rural migrants insinuate their way into the urban fabric as they make the transition from ruralites to urbanites, from denizens to citizens of the city, from sojourners to residents The process is probably never fully complete for the migrant – perhaps only for their children – but problematising the discourse of the rural-urban migrant in this way permits us to open up an avenue for analysis that pays attention to the process of becoming In particular, it helps to get away from the dichotomous (rural-urban) or trichotomous (ruralinbetween-urban) approach to understanding migrants and migration Downloaded by [Georgetown University] at 08:10 10 August 2013 Urbanisation, migration and registration in Viet Nam From 1975 through to the early 1990s, the rate of urbanisation in Viet Nam was low, and rural-urban migration stunted (Table 2) According to official data, there was no increase in levels of urbanisation between reunification in 1976 and 1990, with the figure remaining close to 20 per cent throughout the period As in China, this was because a strictly enforced household registration system (ho khau)and its coupling with access to social goods from education to health and food security strongly discouraged people from leaving their place of registration (see below).7 With the introduction of doi moi (‘renovation’, economic reform) in Viet Nam in 1986, the elemental link between an individual’s ho khaui and their access to the state subsidy system has been progressively eroded, rural-urban migration has accelerated, and rates of urbanisation have increased The Viet Nam Household Living Standards Survey (VHLSS) shows that between 1993 and 1998 seasonal migration increased six-fold (de Brauw and Harigaya 2007, 434), a large proportion of this human tide flowing to Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi (Figure 1) Table Urban population of Viet Nam (1976-2020) Year % urban 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1999 2005 2009 2020 20.6 20.1 19.7 19.5 19.1 18.6 19.1 19.1 19.2 19.3 19.7 19.9 20.1 20.8 21.6 24 26.4 29.6 35–45 Sources: Anh Dang et al (1997, 317), UNICEF (2010) Coxhead et al (2010) For a comparative discussion of China and Viet Nam, see McGee (2009) The Journal of Peasant Studies 1109 Downloaded by [Georgetown University] at 08:10 10 August 2013 Over the period since reunification in 1975, it is possible to identify three broad periods in Viet Nam’s urbanisation history: 1975–1986; 1986–1993; and 1993present From 1975 to 1986, urban population growth was largely through natural increase To a significant extent, mobility was controlled by the ho khau system and when it did occur, was usually officially sanctioned and mostly rural-rural rather than rural-urban As a result levels of urbanisation remained largely unchanged In 1986, with the introduction of doi moi the opportunities for movement began to grow, although it was not until the early 1990s, and in particular the promulgation of the 1993 Land Law, that the institutional barriers to migration had eased sufficiently to see a marked increase in rural-urban migration This ushered in the third period of urban growth, from 1993 to the present day during which there has occurred a marked increase in urbanisation and the relative size of the urban population, driven by rural-urban migration The household registration system in Viet Nam Until the late 1980s, Viet Nam’s household registration system largely ‘fixed’ people in space In the north of the country this was instituted over the course of the 1950s, and was then extended to the south with reunification and the creation of the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam in 1975 The household registration system served several purposes It was a powerful tool of surveillance and political control; it assisted in the management of resources under a socialist system where residence in an area secured access to services; and for the central state, the household registration system was an important means by which the state could ‘plan’ As Hardy (2001, 192) writes, Even when one died, the ho khau was still of importance Unregistered residents were not entitled to commune land for burial Before doi moi [reform], the link between identification and access to rights and services was all embracing To live without a ho khau was to live without the rights granted to Vietnamese citizens under the law And the ho khau .was intimately tied to place of residence Rights were granted in the place of registered residence, and in that place alone To be without a ho khau was not to be entertained lightly It alone guaranteed access to the services of the state; quite literally, without a ho khaui one could not eat (see Hardy 2001, 194) In time, the ho khau system was codified into four registration categories (GSO 2006, and see Leaf 1999, 305):8 – KT1: a person registered in the district where he/she resides – KT2: a person not registered in the district where he/she resides, but registered in another district of the same province/city9 – KT3: a person from another province/city who has temporary registration in their place of destination for a period of one year, after which the KT3 registration has to be re-issued (Since July 2007 the requirement to re-register has been lifted.) In reviewing documents of the city authorities, statistical agencies and the Hanoi Communist Party it is evident that while definitions of KT1 and KT2 are fairly clearly established and agreed, those for KT3 and KT4 vary considerably It is not particularly surprising, therefore, that interpretations of the latter two categories also differ There are two forms of KT2 registration: KT2 ‘arrived’ (or KT2 de^n) and KT2 ‘left’ (or KT2 di),  the latter held by the authorities in the migrant’s place of departure and the former in their place of arrival Downloaded by [Georgetown University] at 08:10 10 August 2013 1110 Figure Nguyen Tuan Anh et al Northern Viet Nam – KT4: a person from another province/city who has temporary registration in their place of destination for a period of six months, after which the KT4 registration has to be re-issued (Since July 2007 the requirement to re-register has been lifted.) There have been important modifications to the ho khau registration system over time, in particular its loosening, reflecting the reality of everyday lives and living in Viet Nam during the reform era.10 Since July 2007, a migrant with KT3 or KT4 registration can, after one year of living stably in their new location, request 10 The relevant laws, decrees and circulars are: Decree No 51-CP issued by the Government on 10 May 1997 on Registration and household management; the Law on Residence issued on 29 November 2006; Decree 107/2007/N D-CP issued on 25 June 2007 on guiding the implementation of the Law on Residence; Decree 56/2010/N D-CP issued on 24 May 2010 on Amendments and Supplements to a number of articles of Decree No 107/2007/ND-CP; Circular No.52/2010/TT-BCB on 30 November 2010 issued by Ministry of Public Security on Detailed provisions for the implementation of some articles of the Law on Residence; Decree No 107/2007/ND-CP dated 25/06/2007; and Decree No 56/2010/ND-CP dated 24/5/2010 Downloaded by [Georgetown University] at 08:10 10 August 2013 The Journal of Peasant Studies 1111 re-registration to KT1 with the important proviso that the owner of the house where they have been living supports the application Temporary migrants in Hanoi should be classified as KT2, KT3 or KT4, with the majority in the latter two classes However, partly because the ho khau system remains in place at the same time as its logic has been undermined by the economic reforms of doi moi, there is very good reason to believe that there is a widening gap between official data on residence and de facto residence, with a substantial and growing ‘floating’ population (see Dapice et al 2010, GSO 2006) As the UNDP observed in 2010, ‘there is a significant gap in data on internal migration [in Viet Nam], which carries widespread implications for understanding and measuring the parallel processes of migration and development, as well as for exploring how migration can be used to enhance Viet Nam’s socio-economic development’ (UNDP 2010, 5) An indication of the size of the under-reporting of migration flows is evident from the data on population on the one hand and number of workers employed in enterprises in Ho Chi Minh City on the other: the former grew by 7.5% between 2002 and 2005; the latter by 39% (Dapice et al 2010, 3) There is every reason to suppose that a similar discrepancy applies to Hanoi, and Viet Nam’s other larger urban centres such as Danang Across the country, it has been suggested that this floating population numbers between 12 and 16 million which, if broadly correct, represents between 13% and 18% of Viet Nam’s population (UNDP 2010, 5) While the formerly tight link between registration status and well-being (through access to state services) has been cut, migrants with one of the three temporary residency classes (KT2, KT3 and KT4) nonetheless are limited in their access to medical, educational and other social services as well civil rights including the right to vote Those with KT4 residency can only legally stay in a location for six months (extendable) and, until 2010, could not own land titles.11 At the same time, it is widely reported that re-registering (changing residency status) is time-consuming and burdensome, although unequally so across the country (UNDP 2010, 7) In light of this, it is not surprising that many migrants not register their arrival in a new place (or their boarding house landlords not it for them) and, if they do, then they not re-register after six months A new Law on Residence was introduced in 2007 which, on paper, has loosened some of these restrictions but there is evidence that it has been unevenly adopted, leading to a degree of confusion among migrants as to their rights (UNDP 2010, 8).12 Methods and research context The discussion that follows is based on fieldwork undertaken in Hanoi, Viet Nam’s capital, between September and December 2010, drawing on detailed interviews with 30 migrants across the city.13 As outlined above in general terms, because of uncertainties about the data on internal mobility not only in Viet Nam but across 11 This has since been relaxed Our migrant interviewees were similarly confused: they were unclear of their rights and responsibilities under the revised registration legislation 13 While Hanoi is Viet Nam’s capital city it is second in terms of population and economic weight to Ho Chi Minh City in the south 12 Downloaded by [Georgetown University] at 08:10 10 August 2013 The Journal of Peasant Studies 1117 when one is old and thinking of retiring Mr and Mrs Hang (interview #009, 21.9.2010), an electrician and cleaner respectively, borrowed 75 million VND19 from an assortment of friends and relatives to buy a 50m2 plot of land in Hanoi in 1998 which they were struggling to pay off – but which they nonetheless viewed as an excellent investment.20 The challenge even for middle-income migrants is that the cost of land in Hanoi has increased much more quickly than have wages (Table 5) Quite a number of our respondents who had arrived in Hanoi ten or more years previously lamented their foolishness in not buying land when they had the chance Mrs Hop (interview #016, 24.9.2010), who first arrived in Hanoi in 1998 but still squats on land from which she and her family were at imminent risk of being evicted at the time of the interview, told us: ‘I have lived her for ten years, and can’t buy a single square metre’ In contrast to a number of reports on Viet Nam’s registration system (e.g UNDP 2010), our interviewees did not notably remark that re-registration was particularly troublesome or expensive In the main it was that few saw any great advantage coming from re-registering They either did not have children in the city or managed to get them into city schools even without permanent residence, and for most the prospect of buying land was a distant dream in any case There was, however, also a rather surprising risk articulated by a number of the interviewees; namely, the risk that a migrant might lose access to his or her land in their ‘home’ village should they become, officially, too urban.21 It seems that rural districts and provinces sometimes treated this issue rather differently Some of our respondents saw no likelihood that their land would be re-allocated; others most certainly did, and kept their temporary status in Hanoi so that their land in the countryside would not be taken away from them We return to this issue in the context of livelihoods in the next section Table Hanoi’s land prices, 1989–2010 Date Cost (per metre2) Location 1989 1998 1999 2002 2007 2010 2010 2010 2010 million VND 1.5 million VND 1.4 million VND 10 million VND 10 million VND 60 million VND 100 million VND 120 million VND 200 million VND Hoan Kiem Cau Giay Thanh Xuan Cau Giay Tu Liem (peri-urban Hanoi) Hoan Kiem (but in a poor area with ‘drug addicts’) Cau Giay (away from main road) Cau Giay Cau Giay (close to main road) Source: migrant interviews, 2010 19 VND¼Viet Nam dong At the time of the research, US$1¼20,000 VND; £1¼30,000 VND Because Mr and Mrs Hang (interview #009, 21.9.2010) not have permanent residency in Hanoi they had to buy the land in the name of Mr Hang’s brother to circumvent the legal requirement to have residency 21 In a similar vein, the French archives reveal migrants in the colonial era begging to be allowed to pay their poll tax in the home village, as it was that payment that ensured their share of village land and their continued connection to the village Personal communication: Andrew Hardy 20 Downloaded by [Georgetown University] at 08:10 10 August 2013 1118 Nguyen Tuan Anh et al It has been suggested (e.g UNDP 2010) that there are large number of ‘KT0’ migrants in the larger cities of Viet Nam – migrants without any registration whatsoever, living beneath the administrative radar We did not find this, although it should be noted that our approach was not designed specifically to pick up on the issue and our sample was a small one We were generally impressed by the level of knowledge that ward leaders had of their areas of jurisdiction and those residing there Our sample did, however, support the contention that in Viet Nam’s larger cities there is a large ‘floating’ population of migrants who have lived in the city for many years but remain classified as temporary residents (Coxhead et al 2010) There is the possibility that intentional (under)reporting errors are used to maintain a basis of power among local officials, and that these are multiplied many times and then transmitted upwards to be reflected in aggregated statistics that bear little resemblance to the number of temporary registered migrants (personal communication, Michael Leaf) In terms of this paper, and overall, what the discussion so far suggests is that taking a legalistic approach to becoming urban, at least in Viet Nam, is problematic because of the way that the household registration system creates a context where registration status does not map onto the reality of a migrant’s engagement with the city Even though our 30 respondents had lived in Hanoi for an average of 14 years, the large majority still held temporary registration status In other countries, registration may not be quite so formulaic as it is in Viet Nam, but the wider point that governments are poorly equipped to deal with the growing mobility of people has wider resonance In a review of the situation in India, Bird and Deshingkar write: ‘Negative government attitudes combined with ignorance created by inadequate data sets has led to the widespread neglect of migration as an important force in economic development’ (Bird and Deshingkar 2009, 6) There is also the important point that while our interviewees in general saw no particular advantage from re-registering – so that bureaucratic hurdles were ignored or avoided rather than traversed – the absence of correct registration can become a problem should migrants have, for example, to deal with the police or the courts Urban livelihoods and rural security [From the] vast array of facts and figures [there are] certain principles or laws which appear to me to guide all migratory movements none of these currents of migration can compare in volume with that which arises from the desire inherent in most men to ‘better’ themselves in material respects (Ravenstein 1889, 286) While the majority of our interviewees may still have held temporary residency status in the city (or held no registration), and therefore could be counted rural in these narrow, bureaucratic terms, for the large majority their livelihoods were firmly urban in provenance and character While the literature on migration in Asia may stress the ‘inter-locking’ nature of rural and urban livelihoods, among our respondents there were only seven who combined rural and urban activities in a studied and therefore strategic manner.22 For the remainder, their livelihoods were focused on the city, and were focused full time on the urban context Even the seven cases where households combined farm and non-farm work, the balance of return was very much city-centred and the farm tended to ‘tick-over’ in a subsidiary fashion 22 Namely: interviews #006, #007, #008, #016, #018, #020 and #028 Downloaded by [Georgetown University] at 08:10 10 August 2013 The Journal of Peasant Studies 1119 While our sample is not large enough to draw any statistical inferences about the nature of those who combined farm/rural and non-farm/urban livelihoods, they represented a balance between men and women, they spanned a range of ages and dates of arrival in Hanoi, and were engaged in a variety of urban pursuits (Table 6) The single notable feature was that none had KT1 or KT2 registration This, though, can be seen simply as a reflection of the respondents’ continued livelihood engagement with their rural villages of origin One theme to recur time-and-again was the fact that it was difficult, even impossible, to sustain a reasonable standard of living on the basis of farm work alone In line with Ravenstein’s ‘law’, our respondents left their rural roots in the main ‘to ‘better’ themselves in material respects’ Even households with quite large holdings of land expressed the view that they had little choice but to migrate and find work in the city Mr Nhieˆn (interview #020, 28.9.2010) owned seven (one sao¼360m2) of land in Nam Dinh but was selling sandals from a bicycle along with other members of his extended family; only in this way, he said, could he pay his daughter’s university tuition fees of 700,000 VND per month From his land he could earn 14 million VND (two harvests of rice); from their work in Hanoi, he and his wife, in a good month, could make million VND It was common for migrants to turn over their land to relatives to farm – not infrequently without any rent being paid – and closing up their house, absenting themselves from the village except for periodic returns for major festivals and celebrations (see below) What is striking, however – and this resonates with other Asian countries – is that among the migrants we interviewed, notwithstanding the general view that agriculture was physically hard, socially unattractive and remuneratively marginal, the great majority still retained ownership of their land in the rural villages from which they originated, even if they did not farm it Only a very small number had sold their land De Brauw and Harigaya argue that migrants in Viet Nam keep hold of their land not least because land rights are uncertain (2007, 431) We propose that there is also a set of considerations that more broadly link to livelihood security While there is no doubt that rural livelihoods have become increasingly marginal in Viet Nam (as elsewhere in Asia), they were often still ‘sustainable’ in the sense that land provided the possibility of basic subsistence security Urban livelihoods were usually more remunerative, and provided the opportunity for accumulation, but they were also risky Thus, in part, our respondents were keeping hold of their land to Table #006 #007 #008 #016 #018 #020 #028 Migrants and their households with inter-locking livelihoods Age Gender Year of first arrival in Hanoi Occupation Registration 57 29 26 61 57 47 34 M F M F M M F 1990 2003 2004 1998 1990 1998 1997 Porter Seamstress Factory worker Boarding house owner Xe om driver Sandal seller Junk trader KT4 KT3 KT4 (?) KT4 KT4 No registration KT4 Source: migrant interviews, 2010 1120 Nguyen Tuan Anh et al Downloaded by [Georgetown University] at 08:10 10 August 2013 ensure livelihood security (even when they did not farm the land), but had largely abandoned farming so that they could achieve the possibility of upward livelihood mobility.23 Thus most of our rural migrants, in terms of their current, prevailing livelihoods were pursuing urban activities in urban space, with only a minority combining this with agriculture in their villages of origin But most were also keeping a livelihood toehold in the countryside Whether this toehold would be reactivated was often far from certain For many of the migrants in their 50s, intended return was equated with retirement, but not with a re-agrarianisation of living and livelihoods In terms of livelihoods, therefore, we found most of our respondents leading urban lives and pursuing urban livelihoods; but it was also true that these same migrants often remained rural in terms of their identities, to which we now turn City versus village identities, urban versus rural behaviours From our interviews, it emerged that one of the most persistent elements of the rural in the urban was reflected in migrant identities and, although to a lesser extent, in how urbanites regarded and treated rural migrants Mr Thinh (interview #026, 7.10.2010) was from Thanh Hoa, around 150 km south of Hanoi, and arrived in Hanoi in 1996 His son and daughter were at school and university in Hanoi respectively, he had a livelihood as a butcher which embedded him thoroughly in the city, he had bought land and a house in Hanoi, and had even gone so far as to sell the family house in his home village (but not his agricultural land) On a number of grounds, therefore, Mr Thinh had insinuated his way deeply into the fabric of the city Even so, he told us: I love my homeland [queˆ hu’o’ng].24 However, I not love agricultural production Agricultural production is a hard job I was even a good farmer But I not like farming The homeland is where I was born The homeland brought me up The homeland is in my heart The young and capable people should choose cities, the old should live in the countryside When you are of working age, you should live in cities When you retire you should live in the countryside (Interview #026, 7.10.2010) In this interview, and during a follow-up interview with Mr Thinh and his daughter (interview #026b, 10.11.2010), it was clear that notwithstanding their long engagement with Hanoi this family still identified strongly with their rural and village roots This was not, however, as farmers but rather as people from Thanh Hoa It was their rural and village roots, rather than their peasant origins which they valued and which they were keen to preserve Mr Xoai (interview #004, 6.9.2010) was a tofu maker who, like Mr Thinh, had also lived in Hanoi for a long period, 23 As well as livelihood security there is also the issue of security following death While the government has been trying for some years to encourage cremation (burial uses valuable farmland), among older generations to be buried in one’s homeland is highly important and this usually requires land (The government has also tried to promote cemeteries rather than individual burial plots on farmland, albeit not terribly successfully.) Personal communication: Andrew Hardy 24 Queˆ hu’o’ng is variously translated as ‘homeland’, ‘native place’ and ‘native land’ ‘Home’ is preferred here rather than ‘native’ because of its social intimations of belonging The French translation pays natal, however, is closer to the Vietnamese meaning of the term The Journal of Peasant Studies 1121 since 1987, and showed a similar emotional attachment to his rural roots Mr Xoai told us that he would ‘definitely’ return to Bac Ninh – after another five more years in Hanoi, he said.25 He put this in poetic terms, reciting the second verse of a popular Vietnamese song: Downloaded by [Georgetown University] at 08:10 10 August 2013 Queˆ hu’o’ng la` chum kh e’ˆ ngot` ˜ˆ nga`y Cho tre`o ha´i moi Queˆ hu’o’ng la` du’o`’ng di   hoc` ` bu’o`’m va`ng bay Con v e’ˆ ro’p Your homeland is a bunch of sweet starfruit For you to gather each day Your homeland is the path from school Which you follow home, shaded by yellow butterflies (interview #004, 6.9.2010; Lyrics by Do˜ˆ Trung Quaˆn; music by Gia´p V an Thach) ` Although Mr Xoai did not go on to recite the rest of the song, the end suggests that if you not remember your home village, you cannot become a ‘good person’ (thanh nguoi, meaning a moral person) It is, therefore, quite a stark statement on the Confucian value of attachment to home.26 The pull of the rural, or more particularly the village/homeland, is strong for migrants, even after a decade or more in Hanoi This was never, however, expressed in terms of a desire to return to farming and agriculture; often, quite the opposite The frequent references in Vietnamese poetry and literature, particularly in the north, to que huong – homeland – which we also saw in the way in which our respondents talked about their villages of origin, should not be interpreted as necessarily indicating an instrumental attachment to place Jacka writes of similarly conflicting emotions that attachment to home on the one hand and the attractions of the city on the other embody for young women migrants in Beijing: While the dynamism of the city exerts a powerful pull, my interlocutors indicated that the desire not to return to the countryside—because it is too poor, villagers’ thinking is too ‘backward’ and ‘feudal,’ farming is too draining, and they would not be able to readjust to rural life after living in the city—is often an even stronger motivation for remaining in Beijing (Jacka 2005, 64) Thuoc, 38 years old at the time we interviewed him, had arrived in Hanoi from Ha Tinh in 1998 (interview #025, 7.10.2010) He did not complete secondary school because of his family’s straightened circumstances, and came to the city in search of work For the first three or four years after he arrived he found a series of low paid, menial and marginal jobs – as a cart puller, bricklayer’s assistant and dish-washer He and his wife, however, managed to save enough to set up a restaurant, which they were running at the time of the interview, with Thuoc also working part-time as a xe om (motorcycle taxi) driver In 2009, he relinquished his rights to agricultural land in his homeland in order to secure Hanoi residency, and get his only child, a son, into school: 25 26 By which time, Bac Ninh may well have been engulfed by Hanoi! I am grateful to Andrew Hardy for pointing out this link 1122 Nguyen Tuan Anh et al Interviewer: Have you bought land or a house in Hanoi? Thuoc: [No, but] probably in the future At present, we cannot buy We only have the intention Interviewer: Have you got enough money to buy a house? Thuoc: Not yet We will wait to see how our business fares in the future Interviewer: How many times per year you visit your homeland? Thuoc: Three or four times per year Downloaded by [Georgetown University] at 08:10 10 August 2013 Interviewer: Why you visit your homeland? Thuoc: [To] visit my parents, and my brothers and sisters My sentiments for my homeland are very strong, so I visit my homeland often Interviewer: Do you prefer to live here or live in your homeland? Thuoc: I prefer to live here because there is a lot of work here to do, and not much work in my homeland Interviewer: Do you intend to return and reside in your homeland in the future? Thuoc: Yes, when I retire I will return to my homeland Interviewer: When will you return and settle in your homeland? Thuoc: When my son has grown up, I will retire and I will return and live in my homeland Interviewer: Do you think your son will settle in Hanoi or in your homeland? Thuoc: If he does well at school, he will live in Hanoi There is also the question of whether this pull of the rural and the homeland was likely to be transmitted inter-generationally Sons and daughters who had been educated in Hanoi, who had few friends in their parents’ home villages, who may never had spent more than a week or two in the village over Tet (lunar New Year), and who probably did not know how to farm, have different identities from their parents, identities which are more urban than rural In terms of how migrants are treated by other urbanites, this was rarely conveyed to us as particularly problematic Most still had their non-Hanoian accents which marked them out as originating from the provinces, and certain occupations – such as junk scavenging, xe om driving, portering, and selling goods from bicycles – are classic migrant livelihoods (see DiGregorio 1994 for an early study) The men and women undertaking these types of work are, almost without exception, migrants There was also a sense among some of our interviewees that such work was demeaning Mr Vinh (interview #006, 14.9.2010) was a porter in the local market, selling his labour day-today and hour-to-hour, doing ‘the hardest job in the city’, as he put it Mr Vinh had arrived in Hanoi in 1990 from Thanh Hoa’s Quang Xuong district, one of that province’s poorest areas, leaving because his young family were hungry and travelling to Hanoi was the only thing he could think to In the two decades he had spent labouring in Hanoi while his wife continued to manage the farm he had, remarkably, managed to put three of his four children through university.27 When we came to ask 27 Throughout this 20 year period of city work, Mr Vinh remained a short-term ‘temporary’ migrant in Hanoi, with KT4 registration Downloaded by [Georgetown University] at 08:10 10 August 2013 The Journal of Peasant Studies 1123 whether we could take a photo of him for our records he rather reluctantly agreed, but asked us not to publicise the photograph because he did not want his children’s friends, colleagues or employers to see what he did to get by: it might be embarrassing But while such work might be regarded as demeaning, we did not find that such differences stigmatised migrants in a manner that has been alluded to in some other countries, such as Thailand and India (see Korinek et al 2005, Bird and Deshingkar 2009), possibly because such a large proportion of Hanoi’s population are migrants, the children of migrants, or the grandchildren of migrants.28 One does not have to dig very deeply into the past to uncover the rural origins of most of the city’s population Linked to the issue of urban/city and rural/village identities, is that of behaviour Thompson, working in Malaysia, writes of the degree to which his kampong (village) has become ‘socially urban’ in the way in which people consume, dress, behave and interact: ‘In contrast to the pervasive rhetoric that reinforces a sense of rural–urban difference through nostalgic fixation, this paper argues that kampong [villages] in Malaysia today have become as much urban as rural spaces [with] respect to production, consumption and social interaction .’ (Thompson 2004, 2357) Like Derks’ work in Cambodia, the penetration of television and the mass media into the countryside, has ‘brought the city closer than ever to the world of Cambodia’s villagers’ (2008, 142) At the same time, urban attitudes can be found in rural areas The issue, perhaps, is that while the designations ‘rural’ and ‘urban’, which are often paired with ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’, used to have a strong(er) spatial and geographical designation, this has been eroded with increasing mobility People – like the xe om driver Mr Viet (interview #018, 28.9.2010), the junk scavenger Ms Lien (interview #017, 24.9.2010), and the porter Mr Vinh (interview #006, 14.9.2010) – might be visibly ‘rural’, but this was more a measure of the work they did, and therefore their class, than where they lived The reverse was also true: urban sensibilities and behaviours are colonising rural spaces and settlements as those who have worked in urban areas and in factories bring their habits and tendencies back to their rural places of origin It is often when people return to the countryside that the progressive transformations in behaviour that arise from living and working in the city become evident Tham (interview #022b, 10.11.2010), the daughter of Mrs Hong a migrant from Nam Dinh, had married a Nam Dinh man and from time-to-time had to visit her husband’s village and parents-in-law In talking about the differences between people from Hanoi and the outer provinces, Tham said that country folk were rather shy and did not interact smoothly with Hanoians, who were more confident, worldly and articulate Never having farmed, she knew nothing about agriculture and when she visited her husband’s village felt out of place, surrounded by rice fields – a fish out of water The other villagers in her husband’s village regarded her as a Hanoian, but she tried to fit in by dressing appropriately and eating the simple food set before her She didn’t wear dresses or skirts, she told us, because she thought this would be interpreted as meaning she was work shy and unwilling to take on manual jobs around the house When it came to clothes and fashion, Tham said that rural people tried to dress in a modern way, but often a little too brashly – they ‘follow trends but in a country manner’, she said This hints, once more, at differences which are as much about 28 Annuska Derks (2008) also writes of Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital, being a ‘city of migrants’ Downloaded by [Georgetown University] at 08:10 10 August 2013 1124 Nguyen Tuan Anh et al class as they are about geography It may be possible to be modern in the rural; but to be urbane – to be sophisticated – is a slightly different thing Tham may have become a new urbanite, but the transition was not always successfully navigated Linh (interview #008, 14.9.2010), a young migrant from Yen Thanh district, Nghe An province, had arrived in Hanoi in 2004 and was working in a joint stock garment factory at the time of our interview He told us that he had no desire whatsoever to work in the paddy field, the occupation that he was born to (No man of his age, he told us, stays at home to farm: only the ‘incompetent’ and the ‘stupid’.) At the same time, he was intimidated by people with better qualifications or higher education than he had achieved On reviewing this interview, we sensed that Linh was a migrant caught between two worlds He professed a desire to be modern and move on from his farming and rural roots; and yet he actively avoided mixing with those who might enable him to achieve this He was a frustrated young man; his girl friend had just dumped him – an event which he blamed on his rural roots, his rustic manner, and his limited education There are now subtleties, fine gradations of difference, that the designations ‘urban behaviours’ and ‘rural behaviours’ not adequately accommodate To be urban encompasses as a set of social and cultural practices and a way – or grammar – of living (Bourdieu 2000) Urban and rural in terms of behaviour are not mutually exclusive categories; and neither are they tied to place Social networks and obligations The final way in which we consider the process of becoming urban, is in terms of the social networks, associations and obligations that structure migrants’ everyday lives The question we sought to illuminate in our interviews was: the spatial and social configurations of these networks indicate the continuing importance of rural living, or they constitute a shift towards urban living? Linh’s case (interview #008, 14.9.2010), mentioned above, shows how social networks may become re-sited but not re-worked His former school friends had all left the village so that when he did return home it was ‘boring’ – there was simply no one there.29 At the same time, however, he had not built up a social network that might be described as urban in configuration; he mixed with other migrants, many from his own province, and rented a room close to his place of work in Phuong Mai Ward, which he shared with five other young migrant men In the year prior to the interview he had not returned home at all (even during the Tet holiday), but this extended period of living in Hanoi was not translated into a social network that could be viewed as indicative of a deep engagement with the urban Linh can be contrasted with the experience of Ms Hang (interview #009, 21.9.2010), the 34 year-old cleaner who had arrived in Hanoi at the end of 2000 and managed, with her husband, to buy land in the city (see above): their social networks in the city had substantially thickened over time, revealing a more profound embedding in the social fabric of the city While she returned to her rural roots for major events and festivities like Tet, Independence Day, and her sister’s wedding, her 29 The observation that many villages in the Red River Delta consist largely of the older generations and children of school age was mentioned time-and-again Younger cohorts of working age have left to find work elsewhere, more often than not in urban or peri-urban settings Downloaded by [Georgetown University] at 08:10 10 August 2013 The Journal of Peasant Studies 1125 stock of social capital in Hanoi had developed, while that in her home village had gradually diminished She had joined her local area committee, helped to organise children’s festivities in her ward connected with the autumn full moon festival, and had good and well developed relations with her neighbours To be sure, she also told us that despite her best efforts Hanoians seemed hard to get to know, but she was actively and successfully embedding herself in urban society There was often a strong sense of obligation to a migrant’s rural origins We saw this operating in both a symbolic and a material manner Regarding the former, the role of patrilineal traditions among the Kinh (Viet) of the Red River Delta area (where most of our migrants originated), was significant The importance of ‘home’ and ‘homeland’ (see above), emotionally important for many, was made yet more important in the Vietnamese context because a patriline is recorded, confirmed and celebrated in genealogies inscribed in ancestral altars (Bryant 2002, and see Friedman et al 2003, Rydstrom et al 2008) The eldest son has ritual obligations, which connect dead members of a patriline (a line of descent from father to son) with those who are yet to become Migration, clearly, can disrupt these familial connections and obligations particularly when migrants are male and especially if they are eldest sons It creates a social and cultural context where ‘return’, periodic though it may be, and continuing contact and the performance of certain rites become important While there is evidence that patrilineal traditions have become frayed (or re-worked), because of the combined effects of a long period of war, attempts to create a new Vietnamese society based on socialist and communist principles, and the ‘modernisation’ effects of the reform (doi moi) process, they are nonetheless significant in shaping the connections that migrants maintain with home.30 Mr Viet (interview #018, 28.9.2010), the 57 year-old xe om driver introduced earlier, had been living in Hanoi for 20 years but as an eldest son felt a strong sense of obligation in terms of the maintenance of the family patriline He returned to the village for all major and many minor events, celebrations and festivities, and maintained close contacts with his village, partly because of his obligations as an eldest son – and this despite the fact that as he had four daughters and no son, so it will be his brother’s son who will take on responsibility for the patriline on Mr Viet’s death But not everyone is quite so assiduous as Mr Viet; Ms Duyeˆn’s (interview #024, 7.10.2010) father is an eldest son from Thanh Chuong, Nghe An (300 km south of Hanoi), and shuttles between his children in different parts of the country (from Ho Chi Minh City in the south to Hanoi in the north), only occasionally returning to his birthplace to worship at the ancestral altar For him, the obligations of being an eldest son only extended to periodic visits, and not to maintaining a more substantial social and ritual engagement with the village Of more general relevance were the material obligations that migrants felt towards their rural roots, and the roles that these had in shaping social associations For husbands and wives who were separated by migration, this was characteristic; indeed, it was the very justification for migration Daughters, and sometimes sons, 30 There is reason to suggest that with doi moi, patrilineal principles may have become more important, rather than less While Viet Nam may be a transitional and modernising society, certain elements that might be viewed as emblematic of tradition have been revitalised, such as life cycle ceremonies Doi moi has loosened the old communist strictures on acceptable practice while also redirecting responsibilities for social protection back to the family Downloaded by [Georgetown University] at 08:10 10 August 2013 1126 Nguyen Tuan Anh et al also felt an obligation towards their natal families This was reflected in the remittance of money by children to ageing parents to support their existences in the countryside, by wives and husbands to their partners to finance the reproduction of the family, and by parents to sons and daughters to subsidise their education, and sometimes by migrants to the natal community more generally in the form of donations to maintain, for example, the ancestral house Perhaps the most striking of such instances was that of 18 year-old Ha Ha (interview #010, 21.9.2010) was working as a waitress in a restaurant when we interviewed her, having arrived in Hanoi from Hau Loc District, Thang Hoa province (149 km south of Hanoi) six years previously Her situation was difficult, and had been almost throughout her time in the city She had no registration papers, was working in a restaurant and sleeping on the restaurant tables at night (after a succession of marginal and poorly paid jobs), and had been forced to leave home to find work in 2004 at the age of 12 Her life in Hanoi was largely shaped by the demands that her mother, a single parent, placed on her Her elder sister and husband had run up considerable debts during an unsuccessful foray to Malaysia to find work, and they were both working as contract labourers in China at the time of our interview There was continual pressure on Ha to remit money home, and her mother and sister kept regular tabs by mobile phone Even though she rarely returned home (just once in two years, she told us), Ha’s obligations and contacts with home were strong and continuing Ha, in tears, told us that her mother didn’t care for or support her; she was just a source of income for the wider family and her own future and prospects were being sacrificed in the process She wanted to take a vocational course to acquire some skills that might get her out of the dead-end jobs she had been forced to take on; but she couldn’t afford to because all her spare income was channelled back to her mother and sister A common theme among those poorer migrants with material obligations in rural areas was for their social networks to extend back to their villages of origin, rather than to weave their way through Hanoi society Mr Thanh (interview #027, 7.10.2010), from Nam Dinh (90 km south of Hanoi), was a building site porter and had been working in Hanoi for six years He was sharing a grubby basement room with two other migrants from the same village and could neither afford the money to bring his family to Hanoi, nor the time to build any meaningful social life in the city – he rarely went out, and in the evenings stayed in his room and watched TV He earned some million VND per month (US$150) and was able to save about million VND (US$50) which he either took home himself or sometimes gave to a bus driver friend heading to his village All the surplus income he earned was channelled back to the village to support his wife and son, and invest in land.31 While his social networks were focused on his family in the village, the village itself had become socially hollow due to wide-scale and sustained migrant absences Mr Thanh told us that among his age group, the majority of men had left the village, mostly to go south, to work as fishers, builders and in various manual occupations The only time when returning home would mean seeing his old school friends and peers was during the annual Tet holiday when most came back ‘home’; at other times the village was 31 He had purchased a house plot (but not yet built a house), and also spent 20 million VND buying a fish pond in the village The Journal of Peasant Studies 1127 Downloaded by [Georgetown University] at 08:10 10 August 2013 not a place he wished to stay in His medium term plan was to bring his wife to Hanoi, just as soon as he could find a decent job for her Conclusion This paper began with a problem and a challenge: the world may be portrayed as mostly ‘urban’ for the first time ever, but we know – and particularly for Asia – that much of this relative increase in the urban population is accounted for by migrants There is also substantial evidence from across the Asian region that the scale of rural-urban migration is poorly understood; there are scores of millions of migrants who not find their way into national censuses, and remain invisible – with as many as 100 million ‘phantom farmers’ in China alone (Rawski and Mead 1998) Finally, we know that until now many of these migrants, whatever their number may be, have tended not to relinquish their rural origins, whether physically (they have periodically or permanently returned home), emotionally (they have continued to identify with their rural origins), or functionally (they have remained a part of families or households with rural extensions) From this has emerged the discourse of the rural-urban migrant rehearsed in the opening to the paper: of migrant as peasant sojourner But there is the nagging sense that there are many more wrinkles to this portrayal of the migrant as a peasant sojourner than such a characterisation presents A significant portion of migrants will not return home; and if they it will not be to re-engage with farming Their urban attachments are thickening and their rural ones thinning This is often reflected in a certain ambivalence among migrants regarding their ‘place’ For the children of migrants, their dissociation from their rural ‘homes’ is more profound still, particularly if they have been educated in an urban world such as Hanoi Mr Truong’s 19 year-old son, Duong, was an apprentice hairdresser in the city but was still – officially – a temporary resident, as were his parents But he told us that most of his friends had left his father’s village in Thai Binh where he was born and spent his early childhood, and he had no wish or desire to return; socially the village offered little to attract him and he could not imagine pursuing a career in the countryside – there were simply not the opportunities (interview #001b, 11.11.2010) Duong’s parents and many of the older migrants we interviewed first arrived in Hanoi as farmers: this is what they knew They were less school leavers than farm leavers More recent migrants have sometimes never farmed, and have arrived in Hanoi straight from school: this is what they know The research intentionally targeted the ‘stayers’, rather than the ‘leavers’ Our respondents are by-and-large those who have managed to remain in the city and, in that sense, have made a success of their sojourn They have variously integrated and insinuated their way into the fabric of the city, sometimes becoming in the process de facto residents in the city Using a framework drawing on a range scholarship, we have highlighted the different and sometimes seemingly contradictory ways in which people become urban, and employed this to explore the process in one city: Hanoi What has become clear is that our migrants did not make clear transitions from rural to urban, whether in terms of outlook, livelihoods or behaviour There was no doubt that coming to Hanoi and working, often for extended periods, in the city was a transformative experience for our respondents It was life-changing in the broadest sense of the term It enhanced a migrant’s skill base; it altered their world views; it changed their behaviours; and it re-worked their livelihoods The experience of Downloaded by [Georgetown University] at 08:10 10 August 2013 1128 Nguyen Tuan Anh et al migration, however, not only transformed migrants and their households; it also had the power to transform economic and social space more widely through the ways in which the effects of migration rippled through geographical settlements, economic sectors and society In some of the literature, migrants are conceptualised as caught ‘between’ the rural and urban (e.g Resurreccion 2005, Agergaard et al 2011, Korinek et al 2005) This usefully highlights the sometimes special nature of rural migrants’ engagement with urban life and living However we would add two caveats to this formulation First of all, we see ‘becoming urban’ as a process and, in some instances, as a household project There is no question in our mind that some of our interviewees, and certainly their children, were on the way to becoming urban, distancing themselves from their rural origins whether that is framed in terms of livelihoods, identities, behaviours or in the narrow bureaucratic sense Their links with rural areas, in all these senses, were becoming gradually compromised The second caveat concerns the path of transition from one mode of living (rural) to another (urban) As the discussion shows, their status was not so much ‘in-between’ as enmeshed in both rural and urban contexts; not so much a spectrum of conditions, practices and characteristics that span rural and urban, but a mosaic of possibilities Urban transitions in Asia, and the place of migrants in those transitions (as agents and as objects), is not neat and turbulence free (see Leaf 2002) Ma and Biao Xiang (1998) make an eloquent and persuasive case for the power of ‘native place’ in China to shape rural-urban migrants’ engagement with the city They argue that ‘native place is more than just a space to live; it represents the primordial place where they belong’ (Ma and Biao Xiang 1998, 580) In Viet Nam, ‘homeland’ has a similar resonance and, as we explore, continues to be drawn upon rhetorically and materially to support, explain and give meaning to a migrant’s place in the city We also suggest, however, that there has occurred a subtle but important shift in the nature of the connection with home for some migrants Emotionally, their attachment to home remained strong (see Jacka 2005); but very few of our migrants seemed to be desirous to return home to live and work Homeland had become a space of familial origin and emotional identification But it was not where people sought necessarily to reside, work, raise their children and build their lives These sojourning rural folk and their children were on their way to becoming urban Acknowledgements The field research on which this paper draws was funded by the ‘The Challenges of the Agrarian Transition in Southeast Asia’ project, a Major Collaborative Research Initiative of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada coordinated by Rodolphe De Koninck See http://catsea1.caac.umontreal.ca/ChATSEA/en/ChATSEA_Home.html We are also grateful for the support of Viet Nam National University and the Hanoi University of Science and, in particular, to Professor Pham Van Cu and Dr Tran Anh Tuan The research would not have been possible without the enthusiastic engagement of our interviewees and their families in both Hanoi and in rural areas The paper was completed while Jonathan Rigg was a Gledden Senior Visiting Fellow at the University of Western Australia in Perth and he would like to acknowledge the support of the Institute of Advanced Studies at UWA, the School of Earth and Environment and, in particular, Dr Brian Shaw and Professor Matthew Tonts The paper has benefitted enormously from the comments of Andrew Hardy, of the Ecole franc¸aise d’Extreˆme Orient in Hanoi, Michael Leaf (University of British Columbia) and Gordon McLeod (Durham University) as well as three 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Nam; migration; urbanisation; livelihoods; rural -urban relations The discourse of the rural -urban migrant In Asia, the main contributing factor to urbanisation remains internal rural -urban migration. .. 2012, 1103–1131 Becoming and being urban in Hanoi: Rural -urban migration and relations in Viet Nam Downloaded by [Georgetown University] at 08:10 10 August 2013 Nguyen Tuan Anh, Jonathan Rigg, Luong... eroded, rural -urban migration has accelerated, and rates of urbanisation have increased The Viet Nam Household Living Standards Survey (VHLSS) shows that between 1993 and 1998 seasonal migration increased