International labour migration by women from Vietnam to Taiwan: policy and practice.

This article aims to investigate the efficacy of the Vietnamese government's policy to use international labour migration, specifically domestic workers, as a tool for the economic development of women. Several context-specific factors, including social and cultural, were found to limit the size and duration of the development impact of such a policy. The article concludes that international labour migration cannot be a substitute for government policies and programmes supporting skill development and industrial investments in the poorer provinces of Vietnam, which are home to many of the labour migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]