This report discusses how the lack of adequate policies and
institutional programmes of social protection for migrants in general,
and the residence-based nature of the current social policy
framework in particular, create multiple vulnerabilities and social
exclusion among rural-urban migrants in Vietnam. The report also
introduces some recent limited responses by the State which are
intended to address the situation. It proposes that the State should
firstly recognise the legal status of migrants in destination areas and
secondly increase migrants’ access to key social and economic
resources. In most instances, a strategy based on this proposition
would call for a significant departure from current approaches,
practices and institutional arrangements underlying the
government’s social protection policies.