Stay or Return, When and Where Family Reunion Will Happen?

Since early of 2000’, due to a high demand for their labor, Vietnamese women have dramatically joined and out-numbered men in spontaneous migration streams especially from rural areas to cities and industrialized zones (General Statistical Office 2005b, 2010b). Participating in the movements are not only single but also married women, many of whom had to leave their families behind. General Statistical Office and IOM Vietnam (2012) reported that married female migrants who moved alone to work made up the single biggest group of migrants in their study. However, until now little is known about the group. This paper will contribute to the knowledge gap by exploring the plan for family reunion among mother-migrant/father-stay-at-home families in contemporary Vietnam. Based on in-depth interviews carried out in 2013 with matched husbands-wife pairs in the receiving city and the sending villages, this paper counters the commonly-held view of internal migration that migrants moving for work once arrive in the city will try to remain and live there. This paper argues that wife-out-migration for work after getting family consensus does not lead to spousal abandonment. Family reunion will definitely happen often in village of origin due to the commitment to ancestor and elderly, the land or house ownership in the sending village and the unfamiliar feeling with city life. The decision on when family reunion happens tends to be the choice and negotiation of migrant wives while the decision on where it happens more likely belongs to stay-at-home husbands. By claiming that family reunion certainly happens in the village of origin, this paper also stresses the need to provide more  social supports for migrant mothers/wives and their left behinds in maintaining family ties while living apart and readapting into family and community once migrants return home.