Bảo Khanh wrote this article in Vietnamese, published in Luat Khoa Magazine on May 16, 2025. Đàm Vĩnh Hằng translated it into English for The Vietnamese Magazine.
“Whose child is this?” “She’s Mrs. Ly’s granddaughter.”
A simple, innocent response that often draws a chuckle from those nearby. But behind the laughter quickly comes a wave of sympathy. Because everyone understands: behind that child’s naivety lies a painful emotional void.
I’ve heard countless conversations like this. Every Lunar New Year or long holiday, when people return to the countryside from the cities, they often stop to chat with unfamiliar children out of curiosity.
The adults laugh, the kids scratch their heads, and try to answer politely. Sometimes, the answers leave people deep in thought.
In areas like my hometown, where labor export has become the norm, children being raised by grandparents is no longer unusual. Some parents have children overseas while working abroad, then send them back to Việt Nam to be raised by their grandparents. Others give birth in Việt Nam and then leave the children behind as they depart to seek work in foreign lands.
According to a report by Thanh Niên newspaper, in just one small village in Nghệ An province, nearly 300 people have gone abroad for work, including many households where both parents are overseas. As locals there note: “These days, only the elderly, young children, and a few middle-aged folk remain in the village.”
Behind the billions of Vietnam đồng in remittances sent each year are countless children growing up without the presence of their parents.
These tender souls grow up under the care of the elderly—fed, taken to school, rocked to sleep, all by their grandparents. To them, grandma and grandpa are “mom and dad.”
Their real parents? They exist only in late-night video calls, hampered by time zone differences. Sometimes the children respond only because their grandparents tell them to, since they’re still too young to understand longing, or to wait eagerly for those calls. Only when a parcel arrives from abroad with new clothes or toys do the children light up with joy at the thought of their parents.
As they grow older, some begin to understand more, quietly wishing, “Mom, please don’t go overseas again.”
The parents who are migrant workers, too, ache for the moments they’re missing. They yearn to be part of their child’s early years—to hear the laughter, to hold them close. Instead, they settle for glimpses through a phone screen, always anxious about what might go wrong back home.
And yet, these parents still choose to work in another country, thousands of kilometers away.
For many Vietnamese, labor export has become a path of survival. According to the Department of Overseas Labor Management, in the first 11 months of 2024 alone, 143,160 Vietnamese workers were sent abroad under contract. Staying in Việt Nam, where unskilled labor earns little, buying land or building a proper home seems like an impossible dream. Some don’t even earn enough to pay the hefty traffic fines under the new Decree 168/2024/NĐ-CP.
So they go. They endure life in a foreign country, hoping to save enough money to return someday and settle. But when they finally come home, what then? Finding work post-migration is another dilemma with no easy answer.
It’s a cruel irony. A large segment of the population, especially the young, are forced to leave their homeland in search of a livelihood, yet Việt Nam’s leadership proudly proclaims record-breaking labor export numbers.
Do those in power truly understand that their citizens leave not because they want to, but because they see no future at home? Some even risk illegal border crossings, gambling their lives for a better tomorrow. Labor migration brings with it countless hardships. "Calling grandma ‘mom’" is just one of many heart-wrenching outcomes. In the villages with the highest rates of labor export, tragedy is not uncommon.
The recent deaths of four Vietnamese workers in Taiwan have stirred deep reflection about the plight of our people abroad. What cuts deepest is thinking of the parents who send their children off with hope in their hearts, only to receive an urn of ashes in return. Some die just months after arriving abroad, still burdened by the massive debts incurred to secure the job. Others leave behind children who are too young to comprehend what has happened.
And these are only a few of the many painful stories.
How heartbreaking it is: as the government rallies around the idea of a “rising Việt Nam,” its citizens are scrambling to rise on their own, desperately reaching for distant promises. They send back foreign currency, but what is left behind are broken childhoods and weary grandparents taking on parenthood all over again.
Whether they look ahead to an uncertain future abroad or back at the family they left behind, the weight of survival never lets up.
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