Abstract: This study examines children’s everyday experiences in Hanoi during Vietnam’s subsidy era (1955–1986), including the Vietnam-American war. Combining intergenerational interviews, photo elicitation, focus groups, and oral histories, we explore how children navigated socialist policies, food shortages, and other economic challenges. Despite limited resources, children demonstrated remarkable resourcefulness, creativity, and resilience, adapting to constraints through informal play and contributing to household economies. Their mobility and play in communal spaces fostered social ties and strengthened their coping capacity. Our findings contribute to literature on children’s resilience by revealing how Hanoi’s children actively shaped their play, labor, and mobilities amidst adversity.
Turner et al. (2025) studied this question.