How Khmer and Kinh meet and get acquainted is interesting to examine, since scholarship and popular belief frequently mention the spatial segregation between Khmer and Kinh ethnic groups, with Khmer ethnic people traditionally living in their own rural communities in ‘phum’, gathered around the pagoda, and separated from Kinh people, while Kinh people often concentrate in towns and along well-connected thoroughfares (Truong Luu et al., 1993). Khmer and Kinh ethnic people are said traditionally to have resided in their own
communities, communicating together in their own separate languages, following their own religions and maintaining their own cultures, raising the question of how it is possible for them to meet each other and marry.
The findings from interviews with thirty-five couples reveal diversity in the circumstances by which the couples got acquainted. In line with the sociological literature about marriage markets (Kalmijn, 1998), three key contexts—the workplace, school setting and proximate residential areas—provided the most significant facilitating conditions for interethnic dating between these Kinh and Khmer people. The findings show that these three settings are places where most romantic relationships between Kinh and Khmer respondents have begun. In addition, social networks of friends and relatives are also mediators for initiating Khmer and Kinh intimate relations.
The workplace
The workplace is found to be a significant marriage market for the Kinh and Khmer couples in this study. Eleven of the thirty-five interviewed couples got acquainted through their workplace. The workplace is commonly a setting for diverse cultural and ethnic interactions to take place through obligational exchange.
I got to know Aly, a Khmer female working in a state agency in Tri Ton town, through the mediation of my female Khmer student. Aly’s younger sister is my student’s colleague so my student could easily persuade Aly to share her account of interethnic marriage. Because Aly was busy working during the daytime, she gave us an appointment one Wednesday evening. As per our appointment, my Khmer student and I arrived at Aly’s natal house where she was residing at around 7pm that evening but Aly was out with her son. We sat and talked with Aly’s sister about her job for about ten minutes before Aly returned home. I briefly introduced myself and the intention of my research, and it was lucky that Aly was very warm and shared her personal story with an open heart.
I was surprised to know that Aly and Thanh, her Kinh husband, were both residing in the same small town, but they did not meet each other until they started working in the same workplace. Her husband was born in an exclusively Kinh area. His father was assigned to
work in a state agency in Tri Ton town in 1985 and his family accompanied him to his new posting one year after that. It seemed to me that Thanh’s family did not highly appreciate the surrounding Khmers due to the gap in terms of education and occupation. Even though they had lived close to Khmer neighbors for more than twenty years, his family still limited their interaction with Khmers, and Thanh spoke no Khmer words to his Khmer wife and in- laws.
Aly and Thanh had not met each other until they started working in the same place in an enterprise in Tri Ton town. Obligatory exchanges at work meant that they had daily interpersonal interactions. In addition, extracurricular activities organized by their company for staff provided more chances for their intimate relationship to develop. Aly gladly recalled how her intimate relationship flourished:
After eight months of working together, my husband began to invite me out for coffee. It was funny that he was too timid to invite me alone so he invited a whole group of our colleagues to come along each time for the coffee. Later on, he came to my house almost every night to have a talk with me and my family members.
It is interesting to see that even though Thanh had been influenced by his family to limit his interactions with Kinh people, daily compulsory interactions in his workplace broke the barrier built by his family toward Khmers. In addition, the working environment brought him autonomy to develop his own friendship and even helped him to break his parents’ control and develop an intimate interpersonal relationship with a Khmer woman.
My field study found that schools are among the most important ‘white-collar’ workplaces in rural areas, where there are few factories, offices and shops. The school setting serves as a marriage market for its teachers, which has facilitated interethnic romantic relationships between Kinh and Khmer teachers. In line with a policy of Vietnam’s Education Department, all new teachers are normally assigned to work in remote schools in remote areas where teachers are in need. This policy has brought teachers from different areas and different ethnic groups together to teach in the same schools.
Neang Pho, a Khmer teacher, and Toan, her Kinh husband, both migrated to Long Xuyen city to pursue their education in An Giang University but they were not acquainted as they pursued different fields of study. They first met each other when they were assigned to teach in the same high school in a remote Khmer village. One sunny weekend afternoon, I approached the school where Neang Pho and Toan were working and the school was very secluded and quiet then. I could easily find the school boarding house where they were living because it was built on the left-hand side of the school, right beside the school’s entrance gate.
Neang Pho and Toan were both migrant teachers so a place was arranged for them to stay in the school boarding house. The lack of external social activities in such a context increased socialization between colleagues. Having the same educational level and working in the same workplace, they were able to understand each other’s work and support each other easily. Both were living far from their family so the support they could give to each other was mutually appreciated. Being away from their community of origin and the weak control of mate selection from their respective families also may have facilitated the development of their intimate interethnic relationship. Toan, the Kinh husband, recalled how his intimacy developed:
At that time we were assigned to teach in the school, this commune was still deserted and there was no recreation activity. So we teachers just had drinks and chatted among ourselves after teaching hours. Sometimes we also organized a short tour for the teachers to the nearby mountains. Through frequent interactions, I developed more understanding about Khmer people and my intimacy toward my wife gradually developed. It is very hard to say exactly when my love toward my wife rose; I just remember that after having frequent interactions in the school setting for nearly two years, we really started dating.
My study sheds light on the fact that besides white-collar office settings, other manual workplaces such as rice fields and mining and construction sites also serve as a facilitating marriage market for Kinh-Khmer couples in rural areas. Specifically, in my study area, since they were established in the 1980s the mines in Co To commune—a Khmer- dominated area in Tri Ton district—have become an attractive destination for unemployed and itinerant laborers, including both Kinh and Khmer people, who come from all over the
country in search of jobs. As described above, Tri Ton town is a mountainous area so it was chosen to exploit the rock from the mountain. In Co To commune, there have been five rock mines since the 1980s but only three rock mines were still in operation when I did my field study and they have attracted many local and migrant workers. Many Kinh male laborers have migrated to Co To commune to work in these mines with local Khmer people. Three Kinh males interviewed in my study met their Khmer spouses through migrating to Co To to work in rock mining.
Figure 4.1 Rock mining in Co To
Thang, a Kinh migrant working in the rock mines in Co To commune, came from Can Tho city more than twenty years ago through his aunt’s help. Because Co To commune is a Khmer-dominated area with no Khmer language, Thang’s social interaction with the local Khmer community was very limited. His social network was mainly restricted to his aunt’s family and his coworkers in his work place. Having neither skill nor experience in mining, Thang was assigned work in the stage of breaking the big rocks up into smaller ones. He met his wife in the mining setting one year after that. Her task was to collect the broken
rocks, so their tasks provided them opportunities to work near each other daily. Thang cheerfully told his love story:
During break time, we often had tea and chatted together. We sometimes misunderstood each other during the first stage of our acquaintance since I could not communicate in Khmer while my wife’s Vietnamese capacity was very limited. However, daily personal interaction with my wife gradually linked us together. Seeing our arising romantic relationship, our co-workers sometimes teased us that they would present us with 100,000 VND if we got married.
This study shows that exposure to ethnically diverse workplaces such as this provides Kinh and Khmer people multiple opportunities to understand each other’s culture and circumstances. People in the same place of work normally have specific skills and knowledge in common and they may support each other in their daily job, which may facilitate interethnic friendships and romantic relationships. Frequent interactions in a shared workplace and occupational collaboration bridged the distance between Kinh and Khmer people and enriched their understanding about each other’s culture. The intimate interethnic Khmer-Kinh relationships surveyed in this study developed in both ‘white collar’ office settings and in manual labor workplaces.
It is worth noting the finding that some couples did not develop their romantic relationship directly in the workplace but in the context of their work responsibilities. Such was the experience of Tam: his home town is the Kinh-only commune of Phu Tan but when he graduated in 2002, he was assigned to teach in the all-Khmer commune of O Lam. It is interesting knowing that during his initial time in Le Tri, he was very scared of Khmer local people because of the history of the massacre by Pol Pot33 so he limited his contact with the Khmer local people. His story about his early days in O Lam and how he encountered his wife shows how his attitudes were transformed:
33 He refers to the invasion and massacre in 1978 of residents of this district by Khmer Rouge troops. In
Vietnam, the term Pon Pot (Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge supreme leader) is the condensed short-hand way by which the government and citizens refer to the Khmer Rouge regime of Democratic Kampuchea.
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I was very fearful of local people, especially when seeing groups of young Khmer men in a deserted area; I tried to find another way to go. However, one of my occupational obligations was to go to villagers’ houses to encourage their children to go to school. I gradually found that Khmer local people were also friendly and I became less fearful and had more contact with Khmer local people. Having frequent drinks with my wife’s uncle, I saw my wife was very beautiful so I made acquaintance with her.
This case reveals that interethnic Kinh-Khmer couples not only encounter each other directly in their work setting but also in the larger social field created by their work-related interactions.
Migration for work in ethnically distinct frontier areas has increased these people’s interactions and contact with other ethnic groups. The direction of mobility—be it from the city to the countryside, the country to the city, or from one rural locality to another— depends on the nature of their occupation and their socioeconomic status. These migrant workers still cling to their ethnic networks and identity but they also develop interactions and associations with the local ethnic people. Work-related outreach tasks increase the chances for them to meet prospective spouses in the wider society and not exclusively within the workplace. Furthermore, such migrants are also increasingly independent of their parents so parents have less direct control over the choices that their children make. One additional significant factor that should be mentioned is the unbalanced sex ratio in a migrant group in the destination area, which may induce the migrant to seek a mate outside his or her ethnic group. The unavailability of a mate in the same ethnic group also impacts on the decision to date persons outside of one’s own ethnic group.
Educational institutions
Educational institutions are common sites for peer socialization and dating, so education is assumed to be a mechanism affecting the probability of interethnic marriage. The schooling context is an important marriage market for Kinh and Khmer couples. High school and university are places of interaction for people from different places and different ethnic backgrounds. Students are normally of the same age and educational cohorts and include both male and female students so intimate relationships can easily develop. In addition, higher education also increases people’s exposure to different cultural perspectives and highly educated people have a more individualistic attitude and broad view on life (Kalmijn, 1998).
Consistent with Barnett’s discussion on the impact of increased contact between students of different nationalities on intermarriage occurrence (Barnett, 1963), this study reveals that with the state supporting policy in education for minorities, increased enrolment of Khmer students into state school and colleges has facilitated contact between Khmer and Kinh students. Highly educated Khmer people are also fluent in Kinh language so they have no barrier in communication with Kinh people.
In addition, in terms of the demographic aspect, as not many Khmer ethnic students are able to pursue higher education, those that do are surrounded by a high concentration of Kinh people; they have less opportunity to find a mate at the same educational level in the same ethnic group. In addition, the schooling environment brings more status-equivalent contact with persons of other races or ethnic groups. In line with previous discussion by O'Leary and Finnäs (2002) about the consequence of education on dating, five couples interviewed in this study became acquainted and dated at their school and while their dating was not made directly in a schooling setting, educational institutions indirectly provided them with public and leisure activities such as sporting and music in which many people can join together.
Khang, a Khmer teacher in Tri Ton town, met his Kinh wife when they were both students at An Giang University. Khang’s hometown is O Lam commune, a Khmer-dominated area
in Tri Ton district and his wife, Loan, came from Nui Sap town in Thoai Son district. Even though they were in different classes, they both lived in the university dormitory so they got acquainted by joining the after-school activities. One late Saturday afternoon, I arrived at Khang’s house as appointed but only his wife and his daughter were at home. His wife was very enthusiastic, inviting me in for a glass of coffee and she called Khang to tell him I was there. After I talked with his wife for about thirty minutes, Khang came back home from a coffee shop with his friends. He kindly shared his love story:
Fate brought us together. We first met in very incidental circumstances. My friend, not me, daily kicked a shuttlecock with a group of university students. Once day, he was sick and I replaced him in the group and I met my wife there. Interestingly, my wife also did not usually play with the group but just went with her friend on that day. It may be because our fate has tied us together.
Similarly, Linh’s hometown was in Ba Chuc commune while Chuong, her Khmer husband, was in O Lam commune, a Khmer-dominated area. Linh and Chuong also got acquainted by migrating to Tri Ton town to pursue their education. Linh studied in Nguyen Trung Truc high school while Chuong was in the Ethnic Boarding high school, but they got acquainted since Linh lived with her aunt’s friend whose house was next door to the house of her husband’s aunt where he was living. Because Linh had grown up in a commune that had experienced the massacre by Khmer Rouge troops and her family had a prejudice toward Khmer people as ‘aggressive’, ‘dirty’ and ‘backward’, Linh also kept a distance from Khmer people. By virtue of living close to her husband in Tri Ton town, they had a chance to chat daily so her prejudice toward Khmer gradually lessened. Linh told me that her romantic relationship gradually developed during their time studying in Tri Ton and their love was deeper when they both went to An Giang University to follow their higher education.
It is worth describing the marriage market role of An Giang University. The intermingling of students of different socioeconomic backgrounds and ethnicity can easily be seen in this educational institution. As An Giang province is one of four provinces in the Mekong Delta, and Vietnam has a large population of Khmer people, Khmer students can be easily found across An Giang University campus. I observed that Khmer students were present in
every faculty of the university but the highest densities of Khmer students were in the Faculty of Education and the Faculty of Agricultural and Natural Resources. Khmer students were found in almost every class in these two faculties. An Giang University, therefore, is an ideal marriage market for Kinh and Khmer students. In my own experience when teaching in a Rural Development class, I observed that four Khmer students in a forty-two student class integrated very well into the Kinh-dominated class. In contrast to