FDI Flows and Local Livelihoods in Northern Vietnam-A Case Study in Van Duong Commune of Bac Ninh Province

Located in Red River Delta, Bac Ninh province is considered as the most dense destination of FDI in in Northern Vietnam since the time of Doi Moi. One of solutions by the province to attract FDI is to rent land out at a low price. As a result, about 60 percent of farmland has been converted into industrial zones where are mainly filled up by FDI enterprises from Japan, Korea, and China. Many farm households in rural areas lost their farm land. Although the compensation was considered as a start-up capital for the process of shifting to new livelihood strategies, most of the households in the land loss areas used a major part of the compensation for their house building and purchase of living assets. When the compensation ran out, the households faced difficulties in their lives as they were not self-sufficient in food anymore. Through the lenses of national and provincial authorities, FDI flows bring a numbers of positive effects on local livelihoods such as employment creation and higher wage payments while several researchers complained that land loss labors have been mostly pushed in unofficial labor market in urban areas. This research which has been done in Van Duong commune, Bac Ninh province indicated that land loss households and their family members actively overcome the difficulties by building the diverse and complex livelihood strategies.

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