Date of Award

4-1997

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Anthropology

First Advisor

Dr. Ann Miles

Second Advisor

Erika Loeffler

Access Setting

Masters Thesis-Open Access

Abstract

This paper examines the circumstances that affect the decisions of young women living in rural southern Vietnam to move to Ho Chi Minh City in search of employment. Issues of power, submission, and responsibility that underlie interpersonal relationships in Vietnam will be discussed with special attention to the way they affect the lives of Vietnamese women. It has been widely suggested that rural out-migration in developing countries is largely economically driven. My own field research in Vietnam during the summer of 1996 suggests that the migration of women in southern Vietnam is not simply an attempt to make more money. Rather, these decisions are embedded in a particular sense of responsibility, and can be understood both as acts of submission to and acts of resistance against a male-dominated society.

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