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Patterns of Precarity: Historical Trajectories of Vietnamese Labour Mobility

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2019

Oliver Tappe Open the ORCID record for Oliver Tappe [Opens in a new window]
Oliver Tappe*
Affiliation:
University of Hamburg and University of Cologne; otappe@uni-koeln.de
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Abstract

In past and present Vietnam, the dialectic of precarity and resilience shapes the everyday lives of mobile labourers. Vietnamese labour mobility is characterised by an interplay between precariousness ‘at home’ and the uncertainties of migration. The paper aims to highlight continuities and contingencies in the longue durée of Vietnamese work migration through a historical contextualisation of precarious labour relations. Both colonial ‘coolie’ workers and present-day labour migrants share similar experiences, for example socioeconomic marginalisation in the regions of origin, opportunity and risk, and emerging translocal identities.

Keywords

MigrationLabourVietnamLaosColonialism
Type
Article
Information
TRaNS: Trans-Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia , Volume 7 , Special Issue 1: Southeast Asian Trajectories of Labour Mobility , May 2019 , pp. 19 - 42
Copyright
Copyright © Institute for East Asian Studies, Sogang University 2019 

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