Southeast Asia Collection Blog

Di cư và chuyển đổi lối sống. English. [Migration and change in the way of life : an anthropological introduction to the Vietnamese community in Laos] / Nguyen Duy Thieu, editor. Hanoi : Thế Giới Publishers, 2008.

This is a collection of ethnographic essays on the Vietnamese population in Laos. It is the fruit of a joint research project involving the Institute for Southeast Asian Studies in Vietnam and the Institute for Cultural Research in Laos. The common thread that runs through each of the essays presented here is the exodus (or more precisely, exoduses) of Vietnamese to Laos, the first wave dating from the French colonial period, the motives for migrating, and the challenges Vietnamese have faced in assimilating to Lao culture and society. It is an important topic and, with a few notable exceptions, covered reasonably well. It is not especially well-written. It has a certain unpolished feel, but this may have something to do with the fact that it is a translation.