Evaluations of ‘opportunity’ versus ‘risk’: Vietnamese migrants’ experiences and perceptions of the UK border

Guest post by Dr Tamsin Barber, Dr Hai Nguyen and Dr Phuc Nguyen. Tamsin is Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Co-Lead for the Migration and Refugees Network at Oxford Brookes University. Phuc is Senior lecturer in Policy Assessment at Yersin University in Da Lat and Research Institute Director at Trung Vuong University, Vietnam. Hai holds a Ph.D. from Kings College, University of London and works as an independent researcher. In this blog, they draw upon their recent Global Challenges project, to reflect on how Vietnamese migrants make sense of their perilous migration journeys to the UK through evaluations of risk and luck and an individualization of collective development aspirations. This is the third post in the Border Criminologies themed series on 'UK Borderscapes’, organised by Dr Karen Latricia Hough and Dr Kahina Le Louvier. 

Over the past decade, irregular migration from Vietnam to the UK and Europe has been on the increase, with an estimated 18,000 irregular migrants arriving in the UK each year; for example, see work by Muller.  Given the lack of official safe routes to migrate to the UK, these journeys are nearly always "dangerous" by definition and they highlight a unique example of racialised bordering. Racialised bordering takes place both externally, through immigration controls at the UK border; and internally, through protection policies aiming to prevent exploitation, modern slavery and trafficking, but often serving as border-policing.  In line with this trend, until 2022 Vietnamese migrants have consistently featured as one of the top three nationalities most frequently referred to the National Referral Mechanism which monitors victims of modern slavery.   

Encountering the hostile UK borders

Vietnamese migration to the UK has featured prominently in recent media and public policy debates on modern slavery, illegal border crossings, and labour exploitation. The plight of Vietnamese migrants came starkly under the global media spotlight after the Essex Lorry Tragedy on 23rd October 2019, when 39 Vietnamese nationals tragically lost their lives at the UK borders. This tragedy prompted the question of: why do Vietnamese migrants continue to take such perilous journeys to the UK? Media and public policy attention has focused on criminal gangs, modern slavery and ‘illegal’ border crossings, thus overlooking the deeper underlying causes and issues framing migrants’ imaginaries about UK border-crossings. Our research identifies three crucial and interrelated factors which provide a better understanding of this complex phenomenon.

Firstly, the role of Vietnamese migrants’ own understandings and sense-making when deciding to embark on such risky journeys. Secondly, the deeper cultural and political rationales which frame the migrant decision-making process. Thirdly, the ways in which the experiences of border-crossings and the UK’s hostile border regime transform migrants’ imaginaries and cement their resolve to succeed in their journey.  

Risk and collective aspiration

Our research, as featured in the edited volume ‘UK Borderscapes’, explores the intersections of these processes from migrants’ perspectives over different stages of their migration journey. It traces decisions to leave Vietnam, crossing the UK border, returning to Vietnam, and evaluations of risk and opportunity across the migration project. Drawing on in-depth interviews with migrants before, during and after migration, we explore their shifting perceptions, experiences and imaginaries of the UK border. We highlight the contrast between the expectations and realities of UK borders through migrant’s retrospective reflections.

Ideas around ‘risk’ and ‘aspiration’ are key to the migration journey, and migrants’ own interpretive frameworks often draw upon broader narratives in Vietnam surrounding the nations aspiration for development, something referred to as the ‘politics of aspiration’ in the work of Wilcox et al. We argue that these collectively derived aspirations have become internalised by individual migrants and manifest themselves as individual traits of luck, bravery and risk-taking during the migration journey.  Our participants faced a complex array of decisions surrounding the respective costs and risks related to migration routes which they weigh against aften competing personal and collective expectations. 

These complex decisions are further compounded by a shifting and highly stratified immigration and borders regime, which renders migrants more vulnerable through restricting rights and increasing surveillance. However, rather than representing a passive site of submission, UK borders also serve as an active landscape of subversion and contestation where Vietnamese migrants apply new meaning and assert agency through enacting bravery and responsibility.

Sites of contestation        

Using Brambilla’s notion of ‘borderscapes’ to explore the dynamics at play at UK borders, we identify key sites of contestation where border-crossing practices interact with migrant imaginaries. Specifically, the UK border regime creates a number of risks, such as refusal of entry, deportation, loss of identity, loss of money and death which underpin the imaginary of ‘deterrence’. However, the borderscape also becomes an active site where migrants enact bravery and responsibility to communities beyond the border itself, in turn mitigating the effect of deterrence. Vietnamese migrants’ origin cultures and political landscapes collide with UK’s racialised policyscapes to provide a treacherous frontier, which migrants must navigate, negotiate, and make sense of migration hazards and risks through culturally specific risk-management strategies.

Border imaginaries can play a powerful role in subverting different levels of bordering. By internalising the Vietnamese national policies and narratives which encourage citizens to strive for the ‘good life’ and enact ‘good citizenship’ under the politics of aspiration, individual migrants take it upon themselves to strive for success by going against the odds, but without access to more established migration support (such as those found in nations with labour-exchange contracts with Vietnam). Crossing the UK border offers much greater opportunity but also the risk of death, which are both framed as quests of bravery and luck. Adopting individualised narratives of risk-taking, luck and bravery (as personal capabilities) enables migrants a way to perform civic duty, fulfil familial responsibilities and claims to personal success. Borderwork, in this respect, operates at the conjunction of conflicting politics of aspiration in Vietnam with the practical realities of the UK border.

Embodying risk as individuals

The individualisation of risk serves as a stark reminder of how multiple states’ policies become embodied by individuals and render migrants more precarious. Evaluations of migration risk are counterbalanced by the risks of staying in Vietnam, where suffering (be it political, economic or social) can sometimes be deemed worse. The notion expressed by some of our participants - that Vietnamese people are happy when they put themselves in difficult and unfortunate circumstances, can be understood in terms of being grateful for having the opportunity to succeed by comparison to those who do not - is an indication of how deeply this politics of aspiration runs.

We argue that notwithstanding knowledge of the risks involved in border crossings and the hostile border enforcement regime, the imaginations of opportunities for transforming local Vietnamese livelihoods remain powerful and deep-seated political and cultural narratives for Vietnamese migrants. This framing still outweighs the UK policy of deterrence, particularly as information campaigns have been shown to have little success in Vietnam, as demonstrated in the work of Gavard-Suaire.  Instead, these migrants often remain uninformed or compelled to leave, as they are saddled with the responsibility of improving the welfare of their families and the nation, in regions offering few economic opportunities.

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