Social structures and the ability to choose: migration decision-making in rural Vietnam

This thesis aims to enhance understanding about gender and migration through its empirical investigation into decision-making processes about labour migration within rural households in Vietnam. It emphasises that migration is a gendered process shaped by social norms and structures. It will demonstrate that choices migrants and their households make during the migratory process reflect not only their gender identities and social positionings but also the household and community contexts they come from. The study adopts a multi-level approach that focuses on both agency and social structures as enabling and constraining forces of human actions in the decision-making process. At the individual level, it investigates how different forms of social identity shape one's ability to choose and the kind of choices s/he makes. Social identities structure men and women's perceptions of rights, obligations and legitimate behaviour and hence the way they choose to act in decision-making about migration. Going beyond the individual level, the research examines how intra-household dynamics, particularly the gendered division of labour and decision-making mechanism, as well as social norms and relations influence the way individuals and households strategise their migration. A village community in the Red River Delta of Northern Vietnam, where out-migration from rural areas is an important livelihood strategy for rural households and has been predicted to be more important in the coming years, has been chosen as a case study. Although both quantitative and qualitative data was collected and used for analyses, the research draws primarily on narratives of a randomly selected sample of migrants, nonmigrants and their household members. Research findings will enhance the evidence base for policy making and provide important theoretical and methodological insights for future research in the field.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo