The second chapter of this thesis identifies a gap in research, i.e. an insufficient knowledge about the nature of the mechanisms through which trade can affect poverty, vulnerability and in consequence, inequality. This research has looked specifically at the role of ethnicity in this process.
Chapter five showed that the majority of Kinh farmers in the Mekong Delta identified that small land sizes, low profitability and insufficient resources to afford agricultural inputs formed the greatest threats to the future of farming.
Low land sizes are a type of tangible asset. It was also shown that there were strong relationships between living standards and education, an intangible asset.
Chapter six further explored the role of intangible assets especially, in relation to the Khmer ethnic minority people. Khmer people were found to suffer from a combination of disadvantages that effectively limited their ability to access essential sources of information and to make use of the main channel through which they can inform policy, i.e. village meetings. At a time when economic reform requires the knowledge and flexibility to adapt livelihood strategies to emerging opportunities, and to shift away from livelihood patterns that are no longer profitable, lack of access to information becomes much more significant. Trade liberalisation has resulted in greater competition from abroad, and it is important for farmers to improve their yield and efficiency. Khmer people have very limited access to the technical knowledge that they need to make their farming more efficient if they are unable to benefit from village information meetings where they could get such information. Statistics in Chapter Four also showed that employment opportunities are much more limited. The Qualitative data suggests that this is likely to be affected by Khmer people’s lack of education, language skills and due to Khmer people’s isolation from other communities. Such problems
affect both genders, but were found to be especially severe for women. Their livelihood choices are therefore likely to be much more limited.
These findings have a number of implications for the way the impacts of trade liberalisation are understood. While trade liberalisation is often studied and practised as though it is a policy of which the costs and benefits are evenly spread among all social groups, the case studies in this thesis have demonstrated the importance of the local context. Chapter two of this research has argued that much of the research into trade liberalisation has taken the form of models and cross-country regressions.
Such macro-level research fails to identify the importance of a variety of local conditions. For example, chapter four discussed some of the reasons that various researchers had given for the rise in crop diversification on very small farms. One of the suggested explanations was that a rise in urban and rural incomes had increased the demand for more expensive types of food, encouraging farmers to diversify their crop portfolios (Brandt & Benjamin, 2002). In fact, the research showed these reasons to be far more complex, as the decision to grow more crops was also inspired by direct advice by the commune and farmers’ association as well as by negative associations with rice farming as an “occupation of the poor”. Presenting trade liberalisation as though its effects can be understood in purely aggregate terms obscures the potential for policy makers to deal with the specific ways in which local communities and households respond to trade reform.
This research has identified a number of intangible assets that are highly instrumental in providing households with the resources to adapt to change.
There are many ways in which policy makers can ensure that such assets are better distributed and developed amongst diverse groups in society. It has been demonstrated that access to essential information about agricultural production strategies as well as about prices of land, crops and inputs, is a key determinant of economic outcomes at the local level.
Accordingly, further economic reforms should be accompanied by policies to better disseminate such information. For Khmer people, such policies will only be effective if the underlying factors that inhibit them from making use of
existing channels of information are also addressed. One of the most important overarching barriers Khmer people faced is marginalisation through direct discrimination, cultural stereotyping and policies that fail to address their specific needs and requirements. Khmer people’s social exclusion is found to reinforce low educational attainment and poor self-esteem, which consequently restricts people’s livelihood options.
Chapter six shows that better access to education will remove many of the barriers that Khmer people face in finding effective livelihood strategies to deal with trade reform, but that educational attainment cannot be achieved without addressing the wider problem of Khmer people’s isolation. Currently, the education system is not structured in a way that makes it likely that Khmer pupils will succeed. In order to bridge the economic divide between the ethnic groups, bridging the social divide needs to become a priority. The previous chapter has made some suggestions of ways in which Khmer people could become more integrated into Vietnamese society. Such initiatives should counter negative stereotyping, provide long-term constructive support for Khmer students in Vietnamese schools and help those who are no longer in school achieve basic qualifications in numeracy and literacy.
The findings also show that many of the intangible assets that Khmer people lack could be developed by better involving women in the development of their communities. Women expressed a strong interest in participating in local decision-making and had an interest in improving their communities’
access to medicine, sanitation and modern farming methods. In the short run, women could be made to feel more confident about participating in meetings to discuss those issues by ensuring that language support is available for those who need it. Gender training may help make commune officials more aware of the potential for women to participate actively in local decision-making. Such training should also stress the importance of ensuring that information about hygiene, illnesses, agricultural methods and any other important issues is made available to women as well as to men.
However, as argued in chapter six, to effectively tackle this ethnic poverty divide will require the government to make an ideological shift, from focusing on the perceived security risks posed by the Khmer people to a focus on the mobilisation of the Khmer people’s potential to improve their lives. The current emphasis on repressing Khmer culture and tradition in the interest of national unity is neither desirable from a human rights perspective, nor sustainable in the long run. As has been argued in chapter 2, ethnic inequality in itself poses a serious threat to social stability, and in order to create long-term security the high levels of inequality need to be addressed.
This issue has become more important due to the effects of trade liberalisation, which may pose threats for vulnerable communities but can also create opportunities for people to escape poverty.