Listening to ethnic Vietnamese living along the Tonle Sap:
A community at a crossroads
Along the Tonle Sap River in Cambodia, ethnic Vietnamese residents have been living in floating villages for generations. Despite the fact that most were born in the area and can recall even up to four previous generations there, they have largely been excluded from mainstream Cambodian society for a myriad of social and legal reasons.
In 2019, community researchers went into the floating villages using a conversational inquiry approach known as Facilitative Listening Design (FLD). They gathered information from 40 residents who opened up about living on the margins of society during a time that their communities were being dismantled and they were finding themselves being ordered to relocate.
This report shares a snapshot in time of a community that has largely vanished from the waterway. Today, few residents continue to live aboard their boats. The information provides important dimensions of life for those with precarious legal identity or at risk of statelessness. It shares the struggles as well as the hopes and dreams of those who find themselves in the situation of living as the perpetual “other” in a society in which they may be considered foreign, but continues to be “home.”
Read the full report here.
