City of Ghosts

Abstract

This article links motorbike use with the work and living conditions of young migrant women in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) to highlight an example of the social and economic consequences of migration-assisted economic development in Southeast Asia. It traces a woman's life from her teenage years in the market of a small seaside town in Vietnam to her purchase of a motorbike, migration to HCMC, move into a rooming house, and work in a major department store as a cosmetics saleswoman. The reflections on urban life by the woman and her roommates lead the author to consider the notion that the condition of the unregistered and temporary migrant is like that of the unrequited wandering ghosts (co hon), which are said to invisibly roam the city's streets. While the author details the political economy of marginalization that situates the migrant saleswoman, he also shows how she struggles within it to constitute herself over time rather than in the present and to free herself from abstraction-producing social categories, both old and new. This article details the experience of a migrant saleswoman in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) as an example of the restricted right to the city that is emerging from migration-assisted economic development in Southeast Asia. Using biographic and ethnographic research, I trace the woman's life from her teenage years spent working in a market in the small seaside town of Long Hai, to her purchase of a motorbike, migration to HCMC, move into a rooming house, and work in a major department store. As the woman and her roommates share their reflections on urban life, I imagine the city as a place of ghosts, where the migrant saleswoman lives unregistered in temporary accommodation and in a struggle to constitute herself as a person in a state of becoming rather than siCritical Asian Studies

Turf wars: The livelihood and mobility frictions of motorbike taxi drivers on Hanoi's streets

“…At the street level, vulnerable road users, such as street vendors and drivers of ‘improvised‐looking’ motorbikes, are frequently targeted for random checks by transport police, often with demands for bribes (Carruthers, 2018: 17; see also Peters, 2012, Turner, 2020). These traffic police ( cảnh sát giao thông ) are widely recognised as being notoriously corrupt, commonly regarded as ‘an extension of state oppression and corruption’ (Crook, 2014: 18).…”

Bringing the countryside to the city: Practices and imaginations of the rural in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

“…The ‘rural’, he states ‘represents not only a place, but a way of life’ where some urban residents exist ‘as repositories of a “village cultural character” (bản sắc văn hóa làng xã)’ (2011b: 459). Peters’ respondents lament that they are invisible in a chaotic, wealthy, and crowded Ho Chi Minh City; they are ‘cô hồn’ (wandering ghosts) who are ‘symbols of anonymity in the city’ (2012: 553) and whose ‘unsettled lives’ (Peters, 2012: 559) in urban life are by turns settled and meaningful in their countryside homes.…”

“…Moreover, the relatively young age of Vietnam’s citizens gives Ho Chi Minh City a strong sense of prospect or potentiality, as if the city’s ‘best’ (e.g. stronger economic growth, continuing rapid urban population increase, a better educated population) days are in front of it (Elliott, 2012; Peters, 2012).…”

“…Respondents in Ho Chi Minh City who are not living with their families frequently mention getting to a place financially where they can return to the countryside and provide their families with a ‘normal’ or ‘ordinary’ (bình thường) Vietnamese life (Karis, 2013; Peters, 2012). The city is meaningful as a means to an end, as a physical space to use and take advantage of before eventually returning the countryside ‘home’.…”

“…Second, implicit to debates surrounding the growing importance of the urban in Asia is to question what place ‘the rural’ has in society (e.g. Barker et al, 2014; Peters, 2012; Rimmer and Dick, 2009; Taylor, 2011). In this paper the countryside’s role in urban development is enlivened by tracing some of the ways in which city life is changed by practices that are described as ‘rural’ in nature.…”