Gender, Class and Nation in a Transnational Community: Practices of Identity among Undocumented Migrant Workers from Vietnam in Bangkok

Abstract

This article discusses the social construction of identities in transnational migration as experienced by a community of undocumented Vietnamese service workers in Bangkok. Being of rural origins, undocumented and on a temporal, sequential and circular move without a defi nite time line, these migrant workers are set apart from the larger and more established overseas Vietnamese community and knowledge workers. Members of the overseas community are active in recruiting and employing them. The transmigrant workers form their own community, weaving gender practices with identities such as family and community, ethnicity and nation to ensure mutual protection and support. Confl ating femininity with ethno-marking lends legitimacy to the control over transmigrant women as workers and their identity as Vietnamese. Identifi ed also as homemakers, these women also carry responsibilities for caring and maintaining the well-being of this community. Displacing their resistance and gender confl icts takes place by way of redefi ning social bonds in the community as kinship relations.