Strategies of migration to upland areas in contemporary Vietnam

Migration has changed the face of Vietnam's highlands in the second half of the 20th century. Areas of forest and swidden agriculture, inhabited by ethnic minorities, have lost their tree cover and, especially in the Central Highlands, are planted with coffee and other commodity agriculture. Their populations now have a high proportion of lowland Vietnamese in‐migrants. This paper argues that this transformation is the product of two sets of strategies. One is a state strategy, set in place in the North in 1954 and extended to the South after reunification, to ‘tame’ the region, in terms both of economy and security. The other consists of the strategies of ordinary people in the plains of the North, who migrated with or without reference to the state, hoping to get rich in a region recently described in the lowlands as a ‘promised land’. State organised migration programmes, the Doi Moi process of economic reform, and the decisions and struggles of these families and individuals thus combined to bring about the transformation of the highlands. As the paper shows, however, this combination, has not been without its difficulties.