Hybridizing Cultures and Constructing Identities: Placemaking in Vietnamof the Vietnamese Migrants Working in Thailand

Abstract

This research analyzes a place called Làng Thái Lan (Thailand village) by focusing on the practices of four groups of people in a place: 1) Voluntary repatriated Vietnamese, known as "Việt Kiều hồi hương" (VKHH), who were from Thailand and Vietnamese migrants working in Thailand; 2) Their descendants; 3) New Vietnamese comers; and 4) Vietnamese migrants working in Thailand. This place is distinctive and outstanding compared to nearby areas. The study elaborates on this phenomenon using the concept of a "hybrid place" to pave the way for further exploration of this issue. The research emphasizes the people's practice in relation to the Vietnamese government policy of resettlement VKHH, the policy so-called “Đổi mới” (economic renovation) but still in the regime of socialism, and Thailand’s policy of “turning the battlefield to the trading field in the region”. The research also examines the geography and social settings of such people and places to identify preliminary issues that centered around “place-making”, “hybrid place” and “new ethnic identity”. This project utilizes interactionism and particular and constructionism paradigms. To construct the knowledge, the research uses theories and concepts that are relevant to the research issues, context-specific, and research paradigms. These include place-making, hybridization, and identity politics to elaborate the process of cultural hybridization and the identity construction of Vietnamese who used to live and/or work in Thailand and their pertaining issues.

This research closely examines transnational lives and everyday local practices in specific places to analyze four research objectives. First, to understand the place that Vietnamese migrants, in relation to the three other groups, make in Làng Thái Lan (Thailand village), Vietnam. Second, to explore the issues working with migrant community interpretation of their new value related to place-making that the unstable boundaries generated. Third, to analyze the process of capital accumulation, transformation, and conversion of Vietnamese migrants working in Thailand that are involved in place-making in Vietnam. And fourth, to analyze cultural hybridization and identity construction in the place-making process as well as analyze the pertaining issues. This research contributes five main arguments: 1) Làng Thái Lan serves as a negotiating space for identity and value for VKHH and Vietnamese migrants in their ancestral country; 2) Dual lives shape the place-making process; 3) The place cultivates a "culture of migration and mobility" through everyday practices and the roles of the actors; 4) The process of placemaking through cultural hybridization can contribute to the development of ASEAN communities from below; 5) Pertaining to the cultural remittance and hybridization of Confucian practice in placemaking.

This research has several implications: Firstly, it contributes to the discourse on ASEAN community building by emphasizing the importance of the ASEAN-from-below perspective. Secondly, to further develop the concept of building the ASEAN Community from below, it is crucial to elaborate on the idea of cultural networks. Thirdly, the interplay between transcultural flows and local power dynamics exerts a profound influence on place-based movements and cultural identities. Finally, through the use of multi-sited ethnography, which links various localities in two countries (Vietnam and Thailand) plus one (Laos) and examines social, cultural, and economic practices in international networks and progressive places, the researchers suggest that multi-sited ethnography should be used to follow people, goods, policy, discourse, ideas, specific problems, and so on across national borders when developing the idea of ASEAN from-below.

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