베트남에서 여성의 순환이주

Women s Circular Migration in Vietnam: a Study of Hanoi s Roving Street Vendors

There are many forces now at work in Vietnam that are affecting the working lives of all types of street vendors in Vietnam s cities. In this paper, we focus on a group of rural women who have become circular migrants to Hanoi in order to work as roving street vendors. These women come to Hanoi as the result of a decision that many rural families have been forced to make: in order to make up for the inadequate incomes that farmers earn from agriculture alone, one or more members of the household need to temporarily migrate to a city to earn extra income for the family. Economic theory argues that rural people migrate to cities because of the greater chance of earning income there. By using national income and consumption data, in combination with income data that we have gathered, we show how important the income earned in Hanoi is to the families of these women. Using the results of surveys that we and our students have conducted, we look at how families make the decision to migrate and in particular why it is the woman who migrates. We also discuss how the decision for a woman to migrate affects decisions about when to have children and how those children will be reared when the adult female in the household is absent for extended periods of time. We believe our results illustrate important issues that many rural families need to deal with in a time of rapid change in Vietnam.