Urbanization, Jobs, and the Family in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam

Bibliographic Data

ID3015486
AuthorsSetsuko Shibuya (Seisa University, 8-80 Satsukigaoka, Aoba-Ku, Yokohama City 227-8522, Japan ()., corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume49
Issue1
Pages93-108
Publication date2018-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Comparative Family Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0047-2328 • E-ISSN: 1929-9850
PublisherUniversity of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.3138/jcfs.49.1.93
OpenAlexW2912202528
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited14

In the rural Mekong Delta in Vietnam, social transformations, particularly rapid urbanization in the area, taking place in the last fifteen years have profound effects on rural family life. For the Vietnamese people in the Delta, family is not only at the core of their daily lives, but it also constitutes the social, economic, and spiritual world that is centered on agriculture. However, today a growing number of people have jobs in urban areas. How does working outside of family farming shape lives of the people in the rural Mekong Delta in Vietnam and how does that affect their family values? The article analyzes how working people's income is spent, how consumer culture is entering the rural family life, and how new social relationships outside of family is being shaped. A number of studies have been conducted on working children, especially daughters, and their families in East and Southeast Asian societies since the end of the twentieth century. However, people in the Delta live in a peculiar social situation where the economic system was shifted from socialist one to a free market system, and development, industrialization and urbanization are happening not only rapidly, but also suddenly. This article offers new insights into the shifting social world of Asian families by adding a particular case of the people in the Mekong Delta, who maintain strong connections to their families under Vietnam's social transformations

Agriculture · Delta · Development economics · Economic growth · Economics · Geography · Industrialisation · Livelihood · Mekong delta · Political science · Rural area · Social change · Socioeconomics · Sociology · Urbanization · Vietnamese · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies