Annabelle Wilkins - Migration, Work and Home-Making in the City: Dwelling and Belonging among Vietnamese Communities in London

Annabelle Wilkins

First published 2019

by Routledge

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2019 Annabelle Wilkins

The right of Annabelle Wilkins to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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ISBN: 978-1-138-57717-6 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-351-26768-7 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman

by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire

For the migrant, home is a carpet bag of memories, emotions and experiences. It is now but it is then. It is over here yet over there. Real and tangible yet imagined and mythologised, home is deconstructed on departure and then constantly reconstructed as the migrant experience and life cycle evolve. Home is a mental construction that the migrant installs within a material edifice in order to connect over there with over here and make the unfamiliar, familiar. Work is a vital sustaining and maintaining ingredient of home. Be it carried out externally or within the dwelling place, it provides the immigrant with the wherewithal to maintain an independent existence in an urban environment and the ability to connect with the city and its people. It is argued that work is the driving force of migration, yet we must not overlook the push factors of war, persecution and human displacement. In examining the experiences of Vietnamese migrants in London, with particular focus on the area of Hackney in East London, Annabelle Wilkins brings all these factors together. Her protagonists range from those who left Vietnam as refugees between 1975 and the 1990s to more recent arrivals that have come as part of family reunification or as students or entrepreneurs.

As the author points out, the Vietnamese population in Britain has been regarded as invisible in comparison with other migrant groups. It is a deficit which this book certainly goes some way towards redressing. The emotional turmoil of migration, particularly in the lives of those who came to London as refugees is not overlooked. Indeed, it feeds into our understanding of the process of settlement and cultural fusion which is an inevitable part of the migrant experience. As readers we are introduced to the important role religious and spiritual practices play in bringing home in Vietnam to home in Hackney. Ancestor worship, irrespective of religious affiliation, is an important element of Vietnamese life and one which is part of the transnational culture which links lives in cities such as Ho Chi Minh and London. By comparing homes in the two locations the reader is able to appreciate the contrasts and similarities that exist between the place of departure and that of arrival and thus the challenges that exist for those setting out to (re)create home in a new urban space. For some overcrowding will not be a new experience, nor will be working at home, as this is common to those living in the crowded conditions of cities in Vietnam, where economic activity is frequently fused with the domestic, to the point where separate rooms designated as bedrooms may not exist. Home work is still carried out by Vietnamese living in London; one example is that of a food journalist who gives lessons in Vietnamese cookery in her living room, leaving her bedroom as her private space. Immigrants working outside the home, in the ever-growing number of Vietnamese restaurants and traditional provision shops, illustrate the transnational nature of their economic activity and the way in which these occupations enhance their links with the city in which they are living; work providing a bridge between over there and over here. A more negative employment aspect is that of the increasing number of Vietnamese workers to be found in the nail salons which are flourishing all over Britain and which have been exposed as providing fronts for human trafficking and slavery.