Visiting Marriages and Remote Parenting: Changing Strategies of Rural–Urban Migrants to Hanoi, Vietnam

Abstract

Despite the ongoing centrality of marriage and reproduction in Vietnam, family and spousal separation is an increasing reality for many poor rural–urban migrants. We offer a social relational analysis of reproduction to explore how migrant men and women in their peak child-bearing and child-rearing years negotiate conjugal strategies and expectations. Labour migration for these poor men and women involves high costs for family relations, social identities and emotional experiences which are strongly patterned by gender. This social relational analysis of reproduction deepens analyses of changing marriage relations and studies of internal labour migration