Debt and (un)freedoms: The case of transnational labour migration from Vietnam

•Debt is vital for our understanding of transnational contract labour migration in Asia.•Debt enables and constrains people’s mobility and agency at the same time.•Because agency is socially embedded, the relationship between debt and freedom is highly fluid.•Gender shapes the various ways debt and (un)freedom are experienced and responded to.•Debt and migration result from existing inequalities and reproduce those inequalities. Transnational labour migration in Asia is largely organised by sophisticated networks of commercial brokers who thrive on highly restrictive migration regimes and disparities in the distribution of labour and employment across the region. The commercialisation of migration brokerage has important implications for migrants’ mobility and wellbeing, not least because of the inflated cost of migration and the increased financial pressure on migrant families as a result. While there is growing attention to debt in the migration scholarship, broader debates on the migration and development nexus continue to underestimate the significance of the issue. Drawing on qualitative research on Vietnamese migrant workers in Taiwan and their families in Vietnam, this paper provides nuanced insights into how debt shapes the ways migrants navigate the transnational migration industry and reproduces inequalities in labour-sending countries. Debt might enable or constrain people’s agency and mobility, a relationship that is not static but fluid and context-specific. The study shows that debt is vital for our understanding of transnational contract labour migration in Asia and emphasises temporality and subjectivity in migrants’ experience of and response to debt.