Temporal Access and Gendered Care: Livelihoods, Staying and Migration in Vietnam's Coastal Mangrove Communities

ABSTRACT

Access to coastal resources depends not only on property, governance and proximity but also on whether ecological, household and bodily demands can be coordinated. This article examines how Khmer women negotiate mangrove and marine livelihoods in three coastal phum (villages) in Sóc Trăng, Vietnam's Mekong Delta. Drawing on an ethnographic case study, 13 narrative interviews (7 conducted as mobile interviews), participant observation and informal conversations, it examines temporal access, productive–reproductive coordination and staying or migration. Access depended on aligning tides, weather, routes, transport, bodily capacity, care and market waiting. Childcare, illness, cultivation and ritual obligations shaped whether and when livelihood work could occur. Women's local availability often sustained households while others migrated, although care could also organise collective movement. The article develops chronotopic care to explain this gendered coordination and cautions against equating livelihood continuity with resilience.