Rural Urban Migration In Vietnam

This edited volume provides a comprehensive overview of rural-urban migration in Vietnam. It addresses a wide range of important topics, including Vietnam’s household registration system (ho khau), migration trends, remittance behaviour and social networking. In addition, it examines migrants’ earnings, their children’s schooling, housing issues and their families’ consumption behaviour in their destination cities. The book is mainly based on new data from the Australian National University's ‘Study of Rural-Urban Migration in Vietnam with Insights from China and Indonesia’ (VRUM) project, which identifies migrants from the large-scale, representative ‘Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey’ 2012 (VHLSS2012). In addition to the data from the VRUM project, the book draws on other widely used data sources to provide a comprehensive picture of rural-urban migrants in Vietnam. By highlighting the issues and challenges brought about by the large-scale rural-urban migration in Vietnam, the book helps researchers and policymakers more effectively formulate policies to respond to those challenges. Moreover, Vietnam’s experience can serve as lessons learnt to other transitional/developing countries.

Almost all developing countries are plagued by the problem of peasants crowding into cities in search of a better life. For scholars of and visitors to Vietnam, it is increasingly clear that the problem has also arrived in this recently freed socialist economy. Is it going to get worse before it gets better? What is the official response to the social disruptions and friction it causes? This ISEAS study completed at the end of 1993 is one of a few early surveys of this urban drift, and provides empirical data on the spontaneous migration to Hanoi from its rural environs. It also draws on a vast corpus of journalistic and academic literature in Vietnamese as well as government documents and decrees. The final work provides a picture of the migration pattern, the lifestyle of migrants in the city, the institutional changes that have been energized by this movement, and its many political and socioeconomic implications.

"The migration of labor from rural to urban areas is an important part of the urbanization process in developing countries. Even though it has been the focus of abundant research over the past five decades, some key policy questions have not found clear answers yet. To what extent is internal migration a desirable phenomenon and under what circumstances? Should governments intervene and, if so, with what types of interventions? What should be their policy objectives? To shed light on these important issues, the authors survey the existing theoretical models and their conflicting policy implications and discuss the policies that may be justified based on recent relevant empirical studies. A key limitation is that much of the empirical literature does not provide structural tests of the theoretical models, but only provides partial findings that can support or invalidate intuitions and in that sense, support or invalidate the policy implications of the models. The authors' broad assessment of the literature is that migration can be beneficial or at least be turned into a beneficial phenomenon so that in general migration restrictions are not desirable. They also identify some data issues and research topics which merit further investigation. "--World Bank web site.

With the adoption of new market-oriented policies, Vietnam has transformed itself from one of the world's poorest countries during the 1980s, into an economy with one of the highest growth rates during the 1990s. Using macroeconomic and household survey data, this publication examines a range of issues including: the causes of Vietnam's economic growth and future prospects; the impact on household welfare and poverty levels, school enrolment, child health and other socioeconomic outcomes; and the nature of poverty in Vietnam and the effectiveness of government policies for poverty reduction, drawing lessons for Vietnam and for other low-income developing countries.