Forms of population movement in the third world 47
Case study A The Vietnamese 'boat people': economic migrants or political refugees? On 29 October 1991 Vietnam, Hong Kong and Great Britain signed an accord which opened the way for the forced repatriation of so-called 'boat people' to Vietnam. Up to 50,000 people now face an involuntary return to the country that they fled, in many cases with nothing but the clothes on their backs, having got no further than the squalid conditions of a Hong Kong detention centre. The enforced return of fifty-one Vietnamese asylum seekers in December 1989 caused an international outcry and was followed by riots in the detention camps. This time, the detainees have pledged mass suicides, proclaiming 'Dead is better than Red'. At the heart of their plight lies the narrow and controversial distinction between a 'political refugee' and an 'economic migrant'. Until mid-1979, there was little challenge to the refugee status of the more than half a million Vietnamese and ethnic Chinese who fled the Communist takeover in Vietnam. Many had worked closely with the Americans before the South fell to the Communists in April 1975, and were readily accepted for resettlement in the United States. Subsequent waves of refugees left because of political persecution, the Communist regime's firm clampdown on the capitalist sector, and because of Vietnam's deteriorating relationship with China, which particularly affected the safety and economic well-being of the ethnic Chinese community in Vietnam. A large proportion of departees were Vietnamese Chinese. The vast majority of people who have left Vietnam since 1979 have been ethnic Vietnamese, drawn mainly from the lower and middle classes -people who do not appear to have been the direct targets of state repression. Their departure has occurred at a time of economic crisis in Vietnam, and has led to the assumption that these people are leaving Vietnam because of the prospect of a better life after resettlement in a new country. There is little doubt that economic factors have figured quite prominently in the movement decisions of many, but they do not tell the whole story. Many have also fled Vietnam because they face ,iv rnminatinn fpar nprcertitinn nr herail,P thaw arP idPnlnairallv nnnncpri