Embodied Economies: Vietnamese Transnational Migration and Return Regimes

Abstract

This paper examines differentiated state policies towards two groups of overseas Vietnamese — “export” labourers and “returning” overseas Vietnamese — in order to highlight contradictory identity politics. Export labourers literally export their bodies and return money; their absence is the necessary condition for the capital flows they return. Overseas Vietnamese returnees on the other hand voluntarily return their bodies, which in most cases were preceded by remittance flows. Focusing on six case studies, along with an analysis of the evolution and contradictions of state policies towards Vietnamese “export labourers” and “overseas Vietnamese” within the constructed unitary classification of “Vietnamese in foreign countries”, this paper highlights the experiences of those living within changing global and state regimes of migration and mobility management. The contradictory notion of homeland return, as differentially articulated by the state and experienced by migrants, offers insight into how broader structures and spectres of global migration are not only ontologically negotiated by migrants themselves, but also illustrates the structural limitations as well as aspirations of the Vietnamese state to manage interstate mobility — both financial and bodily — within broader regimes of global mobility governance.

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