Since 1986, the reform and opening-up policy began to be implemented in
Vietnam. The Vietnamese government has listed the border development
policy as an important project in order to maintain national sovereignty and the
consistency of the market economic model. Implementing this policy brought
ethnic minorities, who have been living at the border, into the global
free-market economy, and provided them with more choices and livelihood
changes. Currently, cross-border seasonal work is the primary way of
livelihood. This article focused on how the Hmong people in Meo Vac district,
Ha Giang province, the border area between Vietnam – China, formed a way of
making a living by cross-border migrant labor, and figured out the causes.
Through observation and in-depth interviews with semi-structured
questionnaires, this study found the following resultes: Firstly, the cross-border
migration of the Hmong people is primarily pushed by the combination of
unfavorable natural and poor living conditions in their native areas, along with
limited benefits from government policies. Secondly, China's relatively high
level of economic development and the long history of mutual exchange habits
between both sides have created pull factors. Thirdly, the combination of
geographical conditions, historical factors, economic models, and their own
family and social structure has uniquely shaped the Hmong people's
cross-border working methods, labor practices, work content, timing, and
intermediary channels. Nowadays, cross-border migrant labor became a part of
the Hmong’s participation in commodification and globalization on the
Vietnam-China border while it is strongly supporting the original closed
subsistence agriculture soceity.