Becoming and being urban in Hanoi: Rural-urban migration and relations in Viet Nam
The discourse of the rural-urban migrant is that of a sojourner in the
city, a man or a woman who will almost inevitably return to his or her
rural roots and re-engage with farming and village living. In this paper
we ask whether rural-urban migrants can 'become' urban and shed their
identification as temporary denizens of the city. We develop a
conceptual framework that provides five entry points to explore this
process of becoming urban, and then apply the framework drawing on the
experiences of migrants to Viet Nam's capital, Hanoi. We argue that even
when migrants do return to their homelands they do so with altered
priorities and on different terms. The experience of migration was not
infrequently transformative and life-changing. While migrants may not
'become' urban in the fullest sense, their homeland had become a space
of familial origin and emotional identification, not a place where
people necessarily sought to reside, work, raise their children and
build their lives.
Nhận xét
Đăng nhận xét