ARI Working Paper Series

This paper examines the influences of gender identity on individual ability to exercise agency in migration decision making through a case study of Thang Loi Village in Vietnam. Women and men exert agency with reference to prevailing social norms in order to negotiate for or against their own migration and that of others. It has been well recognised that, beyond sex, their specific gender identity as mothers or fathers, daughters or sons, husbands or wives, etc. impacts on who can migrate for what kind of work. However, this study explores the more neglected ways in which gender structures migration.

While, the findings show that decision making about migration was overwhelmingly consensual in nature this did not necessarily mean that migration was equally in everyone’s best interests. Women’s agency around their own migration was in part constrained because they were forced to negotiate for their interests whilst trying to preserve family harmony. Whilst social norms supported men’s power to make unilateral decisions and whilst they resorted to powerful threats of divorce to get their way, this did not prevent wives from resisting unwelcome decisions by ‘passive’ means. The paper deepens feminist insights into the ways in which migration is gendered.