Friction in mobilities: Migrating to escape

Abstract

This study investigates professional migration from Vietnam to Australia and discusses one set of migration decisions previously published by Nguyen (2015). By analysing the migration decisions made by 15 Vietnamese migrant students under multiple intersecting influences, the study conceptualizes decision-making processes using Heideggerian terms friction and possibilities. This paper contributes to findings by previous research in that migration decisions are neither formed by pushes from the sending country nor pulls from the receiving country. Instead, migrants are regarded as active agents striving to manoeuvre their ontological beings by realizing interrelated possibilities out of constraints caused by their encounters with political, economic, social and familial structures that shape their aspirations for migration.