WATERING THE NEIGHBOUR'S GARDEN: THE GROWING - CICRED

Transnational Migration, Marriage and
Trafficking at the China-Vietnam Border
LE BACH Duong, Danièle BÉLANGER, KHUAT Thu Hong
1. Introduction
The end of the Cold war has marked a radical change in the history
of international migration processes (Castles, 2000). After several
decades of controlled and limited international mobility, citizens of the
former or reformed communist States began to have new opportunities
to cross borders for tourism, visits, temporary or permanent migration
for work and other socioeconomic needs. At the same time, the
opening of borders of these nation-states has led to important in-flows
of nationals from other countries. The increase in internal and international
migrations within and between China and Vietnam are part of
this important migration transition. Changing migration patterns in
these two reformed economies (from planned to market) are generally
linked to the far-reaching economic changes of the past two decades,
accompanied by necessary ‘more’ open-border policies that facilitate
the circulation of goods, capital, and people (Dang and Le, 2001; Dang,
2003).
While in the 1970s and 1980s, the vast majority of Asian migrant
workers migrated to the rich-oil countries of the Middle-East, this
trend now has changed in favour of intra-Asia migration (IOM, 2005).
Citizens of many developing countries of Asia now consider migration,
for the most part temporary work migration, in the realm of possibilities
to better their lives (Hugo, 2004). Most male migrants work in
manufacturing and fisheries, and most female migrants labour as nannies,
domestic workers or in the entertainment and sex industry (Piper,
2004). Due to the disengagement of governments of sending countries
in the recruitment and training process of workers, a private and semiprivate
migration industry that recruits, trains and transports workers
across borders and waters has rapidly developed. Not all recruitment is
legal, fair and ethical, however, and potential workers can easily be