Viet Nam Policy Brief: Health, HIV and Labour Migration in the GMS

Viet Nam is a source country for labour migration with extensive outmigration for Vietnamese workers to countries in Asia and worldwide, actively supported by the Vietnamese Government as a key economic development strategy. Within the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS), Vietnamese migration is largely irregular. Cambodia is the most popular destination, with an estimated 49,000 Vietnamese migrants in 20091 working in trades, services, and construction, and a further 1 million who relocated to Viet Nam between 1985 and 1998 and still have irregular status.