Women's Migration in the Multiple Contexts of Economic Development: Vietnamese Marriage Migrants in South Korea

• In Event: 505 - Section on Global and Transnational Sociology Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 07. Migration and Transnationalism

Abstract

This article attempts to understand the dynamics of both internal and international migration of women in the multilple contexts of economic development including national economic development of Vietnam and Korea. The rural to urban migration of young women in search for factory work was an important visible trend in many developing countries and Vietnam was not an exception. At the same time, however, the international marriage migration was also observed during this period of the Vietnam’s rapid economic growth. Each phenomenon is explained by using a different unit of analysis. In this article, I attempt to locate internal labor migration and international marriage migration in Vietnam in the context of the national economic development and the growing regional disparity and mobility in Asia. In particular, I examine how the current migration trends reflect the distinctive characteristics of household strategies during the current Vietnamese economic development in the global era, which resonates with the analysis of global care chain. Based on two periods of field research in 2007- 2008 and 2011- 2012, I locate the Vietnamese marriage migrants’ narratives of their work and marriage decision in their life course and analyze how individual’s decision for migration is grounded in trajectories of political economic changes in both Vietnam and Korea.

Author

• Hyunok Lee, Yonsei University