Peasants on the Move

Date: Thu, 06 Sep 2001 11:00:28 +0200

from: Balazs Szalontai <HPHSZB01@phd.ceu.hu>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: peasants on the move

Dear All,

I would like to know something about the restrictions on travel the Vietnamese peasants were subjected to in the pre-doi moi period. In Stalin's Soviet Union and Mao's China, peasants were prohibited to leave their villages without authorization, and the Chinese authorities laid a particularly great stress on controlling rural-urban migration. I assume that similar restrictions did exist in the DRV (a declassified CIA report from 1968 actually notes it), but I do not know their scope. I am particularly interested in the time of their introduction. The Hungarian reports note that in 1960-61, hundreds of thousands left their villages for Hanoi because of the rural food shortage, but it is not clear whether this was a violation of such regulations or that the latter were introduced only a bit later.

Thanks in advance,

Balazs Szalontai

Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2001 23:46:04 -0700 (PDT)

From: jhannah@u.washington.edu

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: peasants on the move

Although there are certainly those more qualified in this area than I am, I'll put in my 2 cents:

Your question seems to conflate two related but different issues: restrictions on travel and restrictions on moving residence. Both are important and interesting, but I think they need to be kept distinct. My information is anecdotal, collected from people who lived in the south for at least part of the period 1975-86.

Travel restrictions:

During the late 1970s and early '80s there was a severe food shortage, at least in Saigon. People have told me of travel restrictions to and from the city, including road blocks for identifying and confiscating "black market" food. It is my impression that the road blocks were consistent with policy, but what happened to the confiscated food may not have been...

One author (the book is not yet published) describes her family's illegal emmigration to China in the mid 1980s. They travelled north from Saigon, partly overland and partly by plane. What made the trip possible was the company of a northern cadre who supplied phoney travel documents and who talked his way past various cadre along the way. Without the documents and the "guide," the trip would have been impossible.

Moving Household:

Changing residence during that time was also quite difficult due to the Ho Khau system. The Ho Khau was a book kept in each household listing the residents. It was used both by the Cong An (security police) to control population movement and as the basis for issuing rations. If a household included people not in the Ho Khau, or if people listed in the Ho Khau were absent without a proper excuse, rations could be cut or other disciplinary measures taken.

The author mentioned above writes about moving to Saigon from another southern city illegally in 1976 and attending school for a short time. When the family could not produce the Ho Khau on demand, she was forced to leave school. Others tell of not being able to find employment or having to work as undocumented laborers (secretly, of course, with all the possibilities for exploitation that implies) if they did not have a Ho Khau.

This system seems to be very similar to the system in China with the same name (though usually spelled Hau Khau). Dr. Kam Wing Chang of University of Washington (Seattle) has written quite extensively on the Chinese Hau Khau system and how it has affected migration and employment patterns there.

As I said, my information is anecdotal and limited to the post-liberation, pre-do-moi period; I do not know how things worked in the north. I look forward to other postings on this subject as it is of great interest to me as well.

Joe Hannah

Department of Geography

University of Washington

Seattle, Washington USA

Date: Fri, 7 Sep 2001 11:14:45 -0700

From: michael leaf <leaf@interchange.ubc.ca>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: peasants on the move

There is a fair bit written on the Chinese hukou system. In addition to the work of Kam Wing Chan (Cities with Invisible Walls: Reinterpreting Urbanization in Post-1949 China. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.), one could also look to that of Dorothy Solinger for a good intro to the topic. I would be very interested also in learning about the means by which the Vietnamese hokhau system was modeled after the Chinese hukou, and, for that matter, the degree to which it is an emulation. One potentially useful reference in the Vietnamese context is a paper summarizing UNDP-sponsored migration studies by Philip Guest ("The Dynamics of Internal Migration in Vietnam", UNDP Discussion Paper No. 1, Hanoi: United Nations Development Program, 1998.), though, as I recall, this did not get into the historical development of policy so much as its current effects on migration. I am greatly looking forward to future postings on this topic.

Michael Leaf

University of British Columbia

Date: Fri, 7 Sep 2001 16:36:51 -0400

From: daniel.m.goodkind@census.gov

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: peasants on the move

The Chinese hu-kou and Vietnamese ho-khau systems probably both began with the same intention (to limit rural-urban migration and facilitate social control). I don't know too much about the Vietnamese system, but my assumption is that it is currently (always has been?) much weaker. Evidence for that?

First, both the 1990 and 2000 Chinese census use the hu-kou registrationfor establishing which locality to count people. This summer a colleague and I gave a conference paper with details about this topic (e.g. China's floating population) - I can email a copy to those interested, and there are lots of references in the back (sorry, migration findings from the 2000 census are not out yet). In contrast, as far as I can tell, neither the 1989 nor 1999 census of Vietnam took any notice of ho khau in regard to which locality to count people. As in censuses of most other countries (including the US), they tried their best through other means to get at the notion of "usual residence."

More information is available from The Gioi Publishers' "1999 Population and Housing Census: Sample Results."

A more casual anecdote; during a small-scale survey of cultural change in 1993, I remember sitting in on an interview in rural QuangNam DaNang. We were beginning with questions about birthdates of family members. One householder could not remember some dates, scratched his chin, then shuffled over to a cabinet, upon which he located after a minute or so what I believe was the official ho khau form intended to list current household members and their birthdates (as well as deceased members and death dates, if I recall). Evidently it was way out of date, and he seemed rather puzzled by it. This gave me the impression that people were fairly blase about official designations (this was the only one of several dozen interviews where someone thought of digging up the ho khau form). Of course, this does not imply that records of current household members were not kept by official village registrars; indeed they were, at least in our particular villages, as we used them to select respondents -

DG

Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2001 12:48:19 +1000

From: Tana Li <tana@uow.edu.au>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: peasants on the move

List,

I reaslised that I am posting this at the risk of self-promotion, but just in case that there was something useful -

I published a short study on rural-urabn migration in Hanoi region. It was based on a 1993 survey of migrants in Hanoi and touches ho khau and other relevant issues regarding the movement of Vietnamese peasantry in the early 1990s.

The title of the book happened to be Peasants on the move, (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1996).

LI Tana

University Of Wollonogng

Date: Sun, 9 Sep 2001 09:17:20 -0400 (EDT)

From: smg7@cornell.edu

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: peasants on the move

Quoting Tana Li <tana@uow.edu.au>:

> I published a short study on rural-urabn migration in Hanoi region. It was based on a 1993 survey of migrants in Hanoi and touches ho khau and other relevant issues regarding the movement of Vietnamese peasantry in the early 1990s.

Dear Li and list:

It is really good that Li has checked in on this matter. It occurred to me that her fine work related to Dr. Szalontai's inquiry, but since his concern seems to be with an earlier period, I didn't follow through. At the least I wondered whether his choice of subject title for this thread was ironic or incidental in light of Li's study!

Now that I've piped up, I also wish to inquire whether Dr. Szalontai's interest includes population movements and policy under the RVN regime? What about that matter in light of strategic hamletting? And my question implies consideration of regional differences in internal migration through time....

sgraw