Livelihoods Trajectories of Migrant Workers in the Vietnamese Electronics Sector

Since the early 2000s, development organizations have proposed integration into global value chains as a viable strategy for economic development at the country level. Despite mixed findings regarding its effectiveness, several countries in the Global South have followed this strategy. This paper aims at assessing the outcome of such integration using the Vietnamese electronics sector as a case study. In the past 25 years, Vietnam has been progressively integrating into Global Production Network. Due to the rising inflow of Foreign Direct Investment, the Red River Delta area specialized in the production electronics components and consumer goods, with the creation of a manufacturing cluster. Following this capital flow, the country has adapted its institutional and regulatory apparatus to facilitate the creation of domestic and foreign-invested factories in the electronics sector, aiming at fostering economic and human development through integration in Global Production Network, as suggested by the Global Value Chain for Development Agenda. This paper aims at assessing the impact of such dynamics on working conditions and workers’ livelihoods in the electronics sector, using both quantitative and qualitative methods. While the dynamic trends in wages may suggest a positive trajectory with regards to workers’ incomes, in-depth interviews conducted in northern Vietnam and a disaggregated analysis of workers’ salaries reveal a more complex situation, where migrant workers have to face work intensification and an increasingly restricted space for action in order to keep their livelihoods standards above the poverty line.