This article explores the continuing preference for sons in the context of low fertility in Vietnam. Although the total fertility rate for Vietnam declined from 6.0 children per woman of reproductive age in 1979 to 2.2 children in 1998, demographic evidence shows that son preference remains strong and influences contraceptive and fertility behavior. This study examines the underlying factors for son preference in a rural village in North Vietnam. The methodology includes focus-group discussions, an in-depth study of 25 families, and ethnographic observation. Results indicate that sons are highly desired for their social, symbolic, and economic value. In spite of four decades of socialist policies aimed at reducing gender-based inequalities and at weakening the patriarchal kinship system, the desire for sons continues to drive the family-building process. The article also indicates a gap between discourse and social practice with respect to roles assigned to children on the basis of their sex.
This special issue explores the analytical significance of immobility for understanding the inequalities that animate-and co-exist in tandem with-growing global mobility and migration. With a particular focus on the literature on migrant care workers, the collection examines how the socio-spatial mobility of these workers is blocked, stuck, and constrained, and how these immobilities are integral to their migration experiences. Extending Doreen Massey's idea of 'power geometries' to migration studies, we offer the concept of an 'im/mobility turn'-wherein the back slash highlights the connections between immobility and mobility -to emphasise how particular forms of movement are shaped by the regulations, inequalities, and disciplinary pressures that delimit that movement. In the current global context where antiimmigration and xenophobia are on the rise, and where temporary migrant labour regimes of all kinds are increasingly common, we argue that attention to the many forms of immobility that are evident in care work migration may offer clues for grasping how immobilities function in relation to contemporary migration politics more generally.
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