Elsevier

Geoforum

Volume 39, Issue 6, November 2008, Pages 2019-2029
Geoforum

Altered landscapes, altered livelihoods: The shifting experience of informal waste collecting during Hanoi’s urban transition

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.07.006Get rights and content

Abstract

A growing body of literature is concerned with urbanization processes in contemporary Vietnam and how the country’s globalizing cities of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City are increasingly becoming spaces of consumption. However, much less is known about how these changing spaces accommodate labour, and in turn support livelihoods. Using published empirical data on Hanoi’s informal waste collectors from 1992 [DiGregorio, M., 1994. Urban Harvest: Recycling as a Peasant Industry in Northern Vietnam. East–West Center, Hawaii, pp. 1–212] and my own data, including a survey of 575 waste collectors and 44 interviews, collected on Hanoi’s informal waste collectors in 2006, I explore the experiences of informal waste collectors (waste pickers and itinerant junk buyers) in Vietnam’s capital city of Hanoi. I argue that Vietnam’s globalizing economy and urban transition have been a catalyst for the growth of the informal waste collector population in Hanoi as well as a partial player in the gendering of this group and the work they undertake.

Introduction

The year 2006 marked the 20th anniversary of Doi Moi, the economic ‘renovation’ policy officially introduced by the Vietnamese Government in 1986. Twenty years on, the economic metamorphosis brought about by these policies has profoundly altered the country, particularly the urbanization process in its largest cities. Indeed, it is argued that Vietnam is beginning one of the most intensive urban transitions in the world (Douglass et al., 2002). The country’s official move from an economy based on socialist central planning to one driven by market forces has allowed for “the formation of urban labor markets as well as property markets and markets for goods and services” (Leaf, 2002, p. 24). There is now a growing body of literature concerned with urbanization processes in contemporary Vietnam. However, much less is known about how Hanoi’s changing economic and urban landscapes accommodate labour, and in turn support livelihoods. In this paper I explore the experience of informal labour in Vietnam’s globalizing capital city of Hanoi.

After Doi Moi’s introduction in the late 1980s, migration to urban areas became a major form of spatial mobility in Vietnam (ODI, 2006). Much of the migration in the last decade has been spontaneous and often temporary and circular in form (Geertman, 2007, Resurreccion and Khanh, 2007). The growing economic opportunities in Vietnam’s globalizing cities, and the ability to migrate freely as part of the Doi Moi package of reforms,1 have acted as a catalyst for what the popular press has dubbed “ruralization”, of Vietnam’s major cities (Douglass et al., 2002). This concept of “ruralization” refers to two processes: (1) the spatial expansion of the city into areas that were formally regarded as countryside; and (2) the increasing presence of rural commuters and migrants within urban areas engaged primarily in informal activities (Douglass et al., 2002). Although migration is not a new phenomenon, particularly to the Red River Delta region of Northern Vietnam (Hardy, 2003), temporary and circular migration is an increasingly popular choice for rural residents aware of the wealth of opportunities in the city, and in need of supplementing their low rural incomes. These migrants, referred to as floating migrants, typically reside in a guesthouse or temporary dwelling, without a household registration book (ho khau) and without registration with local authorities, for a period of time of approximately 1–3 months (Geertman, 2007).2 After a short period of time in the city, many temporary migrants return to the countryside during rice planting and harvest seasons when the demand for labour is highest (Resurreccion, 2005).

One of the many occupations migrants enter into when they arrive in Hanoi is informal3 waste collecting. Increasing consumption has, unsurprisingly, produced a burgeoning quantity of waste in the city. Remnants from Hanoi’s newly built housing stock, discarded consumer durables, and a miscellany of other leftover materials serve as a visible vestige of Vietnam’s economic growth; a ready labour force to forage for waste is a potent reminder of the social unevenness of rapid and intense development.

Using published empirical data on Hanoi’s informal waste collectors from 1992 (DiGregorio, 1994) and my own data collected on Hanoi’s informal waste collectors in 2006, I investigate how this group is impacted by the changing urban and rural dynamics ushered in by Doi Moi. This paper contributes to a growing body of literature concerned with urbanization processes in contemporary Vietnam (McGee, 1995, Drakakis-Smith and Dixon, 1997, Drummond, 1998, Leaf, 1999, Leaf, 2002, Smith and Scarpaci, 2000, Douglass et al., 2002) while simultaneously responding to McGee’s (2002) call for more case studies on the impacts of urban processes for individuals in different urban areas of Southeast Asia. As I will discuss later in this paper, migrants’ presence in Hanoi’s informal waste-recovery industry is not a new occurrence; however, the number of migrants undertaking waste-recovery as off-farm employment (usually temporarily, but also permanently in some cases) has substantially increased in recent years. Vietnam’s globalizing economy and urban transition have been a catalyst for this growth, as well as a partial player in the gendering of the industry and the work within it. Overall, the findings of this research suggest that the livelihoods of Hanoi’s informal waste collectors are forged through various processes of change occurring at multiple geographic and economic scales. Before discussing these points in detail, I will briefly discuss some of the characteristics of informal waste-recovery industries and some of the trends in academic literature concerned with this group of urban actors. I will also highlight the research methods used in this study.

Section snippets

Characteristics and demographics of informal waste collectors

Informal waste-recovery industries operate under economic pressure “motivated by demand for recovered materials and the income needs of the labor force” (DiGregorio, 1994, p. 58). In Hanoi, this system consists of a complex hierarchy, which includes a three-tiered network of waste collectors (city-based waste pickers, dumpsite pickers, and junk buyers),

Research methods

The research for this paper was conducted over an eight and a half month period of fieldwork in Hanoi, Vietnam. It consisted of two parts: a quantitative survey, using multi-stage random sampling; and qualitative interviews, designed to add depth to the survey results. The research was carried out with the assistance of Vietnamese research assistants, due to my lack of fluency in Vietnamese.7 I hired two supervisors to lead a team of six

The rural roots of Hanoi’s informal waste collectors

In order to understand waste recycling in Hanoi, we must first explore the political economy of rural Vietnam. The majority of waste collectors (75% in 2006) operating in Hanoi hail from Xuan Truong district in Nam Dinh province (formally known as Nam Ha province), located in the Red River Delta region of Vietnam. At first glance, this occupational choice may seem rather obscure. How did rural farmers (many of them women) from Nam Dinh province find themselves in Hanoi’s informal waste trade?

Summary and final thoughts

As I mentioned at the start of this paper, the livelihoods of informal waste collectors are forged through various processes of change occurring at multiple geographic and economic scales. As DiGregorio, 1994, DiGregorio, 1997, Douglass et al., 2002 have established, informal waste collecting in Vietnam has very deep rural roots. I argue that this informal trade has persisted, and even expanded, in recent decades due to interconnected processes of change, both in urban Hanoi and in rural

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Dr. David Chu Scholarship in Asia Pacific Studies for funding this research. I would also like to thank professors Virginia Maclaren, Amrita Daniere, Hy Van Luong, and Alana Boland for their comments on earlier versions of this paper. Lastly, I would like to sincerely thank Professor Scott Prudham and the members of his reading group for their thoughtful comments on this paper. The usual disclaimers apply.

References (47)

  • M. DiGregorio

    City and Countryside in the Red River Delta: Notes on Hanoi’s Recycling Industry

    (1997)
  • M. DiGregorio

    Linking community and small enterprise activities with urban waste management: Hanoi case study

    Urban Waste Expertise Programme

    (1998)
  • Douglass, M. et al., 2002. The Urban Transition in Vietnam. Department of Urban and Regional Planning, University of...
  • L. Drummond

    Urbanization in the outer city: a case study in Ho Chi Minh City’s suburbs

    Malaysian Journal of Tropical Geography

    (1998)
  • Environment Canada, 2007. The State of Canada’s Environment....
  • C. Furedy

    Socio-environmental Initiatives in solid waste management in southern cities: developing international comparisons

    Journal of Public Health

    (1997)
  • C. Furedy

    Sustainable consumption and municipal solid waste reduction in developing countries in Asia

  • S. Geertman

    The Self-Organizing City in Vietnam: Processes of Change and Transformation in Housing in Hanoi

    (2007)
  • S. Graham et al.

    Splintering urbanism: networked infrastructures technological mobilities and the urban condition

    (2001)
  • A. Hardy

    State visions, migrant decisions: population movements since the end of the Vietnam War

  • Y. Hayami et al.

    Waste pickers and collectors in Delhi: poverty and environment in an urban informal sector

    Journal of Development Studies

    (2006)
  • B. Henin

    Agrarian change in Vietnam’s northern upland region

    Journal of Contemporary Asia

    (2002)
  • B. van Horen

    Fragmented coherence: solid waste management in Colombo

    International Journal of Urban and Regional Research

    (2004)
  • Cited by (68)

    • Permission to appropriate: Waste pickers’ ‘guidelines’ for contesting and consolidating claims to waste on the streets of Tshwane, South Africa

      2022, Geoforum
      Citation Excerpt :

      Yet as many critical scholars have shown, waste economies have long been in existence, and waste picking has long been a widely present activity (for seminal work on waste pickers, see Keyes, 1974 for the Philippines; Birkbeck, 1978 for Colombia; de Kock, 1986 for South Africa). Contemporary literature on waste in the global south has often focused on the ways that select items in the waste stream constitute a resource used by the urban poor to earn a living (Millington and Lawhon, 2019; Beall, 1997; Dias, 2016; Medina, 2008; Samson, 2020; Viljoen et al., 2016; Coletto and Bisschop, 2017; Scheinberg and Anschutz, 2006; Mitchell, 2008). Some of this scholarship emphasizes the contribution of informal waste work to the economy through the way it creates economic value (Samson, 2020) and provides insight into the challenges of integrating waste pickers into policy and formal processes (Sekhwela and Samson, 2020; Simatele et al., 2017).

    • Understanding the role of informal sector for sustainable development of municipal solid waste management system: A case study in Vietnam

      2021, Waste Management
      Citation Excerpt :

      Our analysis of literature and reported involved SWM system in Vietnam showed that scholar studies on waste management in Vietnam are limited to waste component analysis, and general assessment on the role of formal activities (Kawai and Osako, 2013; Lockrey et al., 2016; Nguyen et al., 2009; Schneider et al., 2017a, 2017b). There is very little research focusing on evaluating roles and the ability to modernise informal sector (Kawai et al., 2012; Mitchell, 2009, 2008). The role of informal workers was first accentuated and studied in Vietnam in the 1990s and early 2000s (Digregorio, 1994; Ngo, 2001).

    • Reconsidering rural land use and livelihood transition under the pressure of urbanization in Vietnam: A case study of Hanoi

      2020, Land Use Policy
      Citation Excerpt :

      Is this early transition relevant outside this commune? First, the main activities that enabled the early transition in the Dong Mai commune, such as recyclable waste collection and small-scale trading in the form of roving vendors, have been widely recognized in the development of Hanoi and its surrounding areas after the Doi Moi reforms (DiGregorio, 1994; Mitchell, 2008). Second, similar patterns of transition were found in previous research on northern Vietnam, in cases without these specific activities.

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text