WATERING THE NEIGHBOUR'S GARDEN: THE GROWING - CICRED

TRANSNATIONAL MIGRATION, MARRIAGE AND TRAFFICKING…
ho), baby sitting (upon request), cooking and dish washing at food-stalls
in the market, coal-pieces pickering (to sell), goods transporters (to
markets, including markets in China), house or food-stall cleaning,
porter, ploughing (for hire), soil digging, etc. There are 2.6 percent of
the returnees that work as garbage collectors. Finally, a number of the
studied women work in fishing, simply catching sea and freshwater
creatures like crabs, snails, fishes from the shore.
Being trapped at that bottom of the local labour market, women
who took part in this study have to struggle to maintain a sufficient
income for themselves and their family. In responding to the question
about whether or not their family income was sufficient, 90.6 percent
answered that it was not, among which 64 percent considered it to be
largely insufficient. Only 9.4 percent of the entire sample estimated
their income to be sufficient. The majority of women (79.8 percent)
had to support an average of two family members, usually their own
children, old parents, brothers, or sisters.
2.4. Limitations of the study
There are a number of limitations in this study. First, the sample is
not representative of the trafficked and migrant population from Vietnam
to China. Given the illegality of these flows, the base population is
unknown and it would be impossible to draw a representative sample.
Second, the difference between voluntary and forced migration is at
times difficult to establish. As such, we do not have an exact figure
from the survey data of the proportion of women who were not deceived
or trafficked through their journey and life in China. Rather,
data from the interviews and from local leaders and border authorities
strongly suggest that the two processes are intertwined for a majority
of women (n=30). The conceptually blurred line between migration
and traffic allows us to consider the dynamic and relationship between
the two processes. The third limitation is the reliance on the experiences
of returnees. In many cases, returnees have been forced to go
back, or they have escaped from situations of forced labour or forced
or difficult marriages. As such, we do not have a sample which is
representative of the trafficked as no information is known of those
who stay. Fourth, the fact that migrants and victims of traffic themselves
acted as interviewers for a portion of the sample may have
diminished the quality of the data collection. This choice was made due
to the difficulty of contacting and interviewing women who have
returned from China, due to the stigma attached to them and their
typical reluctance to share their story with a stranger (interviewer).
Fifth, the study does not provide any direct evidence of the factors of
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