Vietnamese migration to the UK
Over the past 10 years, a growing number of Vietnamese people have been migrating to Europe with hopes of a better life.
This has taken place largely under the radar, but in 2019 the horrific Essex 39 tragedy in the United Kingdom, where 39 Vietnamese bodies were found in the back of a lorry, drew global attention to the trend. Since then, reporters have exposed several smuggling networks which facilitate irregular border crossings, from the Netherlands to Malta, with the UK often seen as the target destination. In fact, the UK’s Home Office has reported a ten-fold increase in Vietnamese nationals arriving in small boats in 2024 so far.
The majority of recent Vietnamese migrants to Europe hail from a handful of provinces in North and North Central Vietnam. Despite widespread knowledge of the dangers involved in crossing the English Channel and risks of exploitative working conditions in nail salons or cannabis farms, many young people have come to believe that leaving their homeland behind, where they see no future, is the only way to secure one.
But what impact does transnational migration have on the leftbehind communities? Let’s take a look at Nghe An, the province which the majority of Essex 39 victims hailed from.
Nghe An has a proud nationalist history. Vietnam’s legendary independence hero, Ho Chí Minh, was born there. Today, however, the story of Nghe An is largely about economic migration.
The province has countless new mansions funded by remittances. Yet look behind the affluent facade and you’ll see a much darker reality. Local communities are “hollowed out” as most young, working-age people have left the village, leaving only the elders and children.
Migration has always been a collective endeavour. The whole household (and sometimes wider relatives) pool their resources to facilitate one person’s travels abroad, who in turn is expected to repay the investment in the future. In Nghe An, it is striking to see so many children of long-term emigrants being cared for by older siblings, aunts and grandparents.
Minh* was only one year old when his mother and father left to find work abroad; eventually they ended up in the UK. Minh was nurtured by his paternal grandparents, while mum and dad sent back remittances to pay for his upkeep and education. Now Minh is 16, and his parents still have not been able to return to Vietnam due to fears they would not be able to get back to the UK.
He has never met his five-yearold brother, although they speak on the phone regularly. Minh would like to move to the UK and be reunited with his parents, but they do not have UK residency status so it will be difficult.
Vietnamese concepts of kinship stretch far beyond the nuclear family, and the ability of relatives (or sometimes even neighbours) to pick up childcare responsibilities for extended periods has been essential for facilitating the vast numbers of labour migration journeys out of Nghe An.
At the same time, migration takes its toll on family and community coherence. Many marriages break down when someone moves abroad and finds a new partner, sometimes leaving children destitute back home.
One man described the situation in his home village as “turmoil” as traditional family structures are torn apart, and the elderly are left to pick up the pieces.
In contrast to the optimistic, government-backed vision of remittance-funded development, here we see the dark side of migration: the depletion of Nghe An’s social fabric, which is replaced by rising inequality as remittances enrich some households but not others. Ironically, transnational migration threatens to undermine the very bonds of kinship which enabled it in the first place.
What are they leaving behind? Since the end of the Vietnam War, Vietnam has managed to escape desperate poverty in a generation, an economic miracle for what used to be one of the poorest nations in the world.
However, prosperity has not been equally distributed nationwide. Vietnam’s impressive sustained national GDP growth figures mask the rapidly increasing income inequalities. In recent years among Vietnam’s 58 provinces, just 12 including and surrounding Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City have received almost 60 percent of Vietnam’s Foreign Direct Investment, leaving very little for the rest of the country.
"In contrast to the optimistic, government-backed vision of remittance-funded development, here we see the dark side of migration: the depletion of Nghe An’s social fabric, which is replaced by rising inequality as remittances enrich some households but not others."