The Changing Configuration of Rural–Urban Migration and Remittance Flows in Vietnam

The literature on domestic migration and remittances in developing countries has focused heavily on the acceleration of rural-to-urban migration and the one-way flow of remittances to migrants' rural families. A longitudinal and panel study of seven rural communities in three regions of Vietnam discovers a changing configuration of domestic migration and remittance flows in the country that is not easy to detect from national aggregate statistics. Numerous migrants from rural communities in the Red River Delta in the North and Mekong Delta in the South have returned home, migration in pursuit of education has increased, and remittance flows have become multidirectional. This changing configuration has to do not only with migrants' calculation of economic costs and benefits but also with a socioculturally constructed web of moral obligations to family members.