Interrogating Dislocated Masculinities and HIV Vulnerabilities: A Case Study of Vietnamese Migrants Workers in Southern Laos

Abstract

Souvanxay Phetchanpheng et al. the Economic Quadrangle, a transnational area roughly corresponding to the Golden Triangle, few villages benefit from the economic expansion of the region. The commercial market is largely dominated by Chinese entrepreneurs and local people have a minimal commercial role. Through their transnational networks, Chinese businessmen and corporations are the main beneficiaries of the economic benefits of the North-South Corridor linking Kunming (Yunnan, China) to Bangkok (Tan 2014). In the district of Tonpheung for example, the construction sites (road, casino, hotels, etc.) of the "Golden Triangle" special economic zone started in 2008 offered few jobs to Laotian people. The majority of workers on these sites are Burmese and Chinese (Tan 2014). Similarly, the vast rail construction site started in the north of the country, which will connect by 2021 China with Laos, has drained about 5,000 workers, most of whom are Vietnamese and Chinese nationals. For this scheme, part of Xi Jinping's Belt and Road Initiative, only a small number of Lao workers, perceived as less skilled, have been employed. 1 The work opportunities offered to the younger Lao generation are consequently often limited to agrarian work and to occupations in the civil service. This intensification of cross-border migrations in the Great Mekong region has mostly been examined through the lens of border control and state sovereignty, but little is known about the lived experiences and trajectories of these Vietnamese and Chinese migrants (Molland 2017). These mobilities undertaken in a context of socioeconomic vulnerability may create new economic opportunities, but also new marital situations for couples and families. Indeed, these situations offer renewed sexual encounters for married male migrants, while heightening vulnerabilities to infectious diseases, among which HIV. This paper analyses these issues through an ethnographic fieldwork among Vietnamese migrant workers in southern Laos, in the city of Savannakhet. We mobilise the concept of dislocating masculinity (Cornwall & Lindisfarne 1994) to explore within our field of research and from a broader perspective the question of embodiment, agency and the relation between masculine styles and social contexts. Increasing transnational mobilities have indeed shaped new forms of bodily, sexual or affective intimacies intrinsically tied to power, gender, race, class and structural socioeconomic factors, which must be understood in their historical, social and cultural context. Intimacy, emotions and sexuality have long been neglected in migration studies because of the overwhelming paradigm of political economy whose equation of migrants with workforce left little space to the study of their affective, romantic and sexual desires and identities. Feminist, post-colonial and queer epistemologies and the increasing feminisation of migrations in the past decades have brought back these topics, pushing scholars to call for a "sexual turn" in the study of migration (Mai & King 20...