ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: THE RACIAL GRAMMAR OF SOUTH- SOUTH COOPERATION: VIETNAMESE DEVELOPMENT EXPERTS IN MOZAMBIQUE Hang Minh Le, Doctor of Philosophy, 2022 Dissertation directed by: Professor Steven J. Klees, Department of Counseling, Higher Education, and Special Education In recent years, mounting criticisms of international development aid to education have led many policymakers, practitioners, and scholars to look to South-South cooperation (SSC) as an alternative. This study problematizes the current fascination with SSC through a critical narrative inquiry of six Vietnamese education and health development specialists in Mozambique. Since the 1980s, hundreds of Vietnamese teachers, policymakers, and education experts have been sent to Mozambique to support educational policy and practice, rooted in the spirit of Third World socialist solidarity. Yet these Vietnamese development experts have been largely invisible in normative accounts of international development and education aid. This study examines whether and how the Vietnamese-Mozambican program of expert cooperation recognizes, reproduces, and/or resists the typical racial hierarchies in international development, and whether their experience suggests more ethical forms of engaging in international aid and cooperation. On the one hand, as a bilateral governmental exchange, the Vietnamese-Mozambican case of SSC has a more balanced structure that is significantly different from traditional Western aid, and the Vietnamese experts enter the field with complex motivations focusing on themselves and their families rather than on the need to help strangers abroad. On the other hand, the experts? stories reveal how this is also an Asian-Black encounter underwritten by the global racial grammar of development which continues to govern who can count as developed and who continue to be the ?backward Other?. Through centering issues of racialization and racism in education and international development, with an explicit focus on de-romanticizing SSC, this study provides an important contribution to our understanding of international education development policy and practice as well as attempts to strive for a better world. THE RACIAL GRAMMAR OF SOUTH-SOUTH COOPERATION: VIETNAMESE DEVELOPMENT EXPERTS IN MOZAMBIQUE by Hang Minh Le Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2022 Advisory Committee: Professor Steven J. Klees, Chair Dr. Beth Douthirt-Cohen Professor Jing Lin Associate Professor Michelle V. Rowley Assistant Professor Zeena Zakharia ? Copyright by Hang Minh Le 2022 Acknowledgements This journey has been largely a joyful one, and I know that it is because every step along the way, I have been surrounded by warm teachers, colleagues, friends, and family. I feel clumsy with words because I do not know how to express the extent of my appreciation for all of you. At times when I was tired and pondered giving up, the force propelling me forward has been this sense of duty to present the Vietnamese experts? stories to the world. People should and need to hear them. Although I cannot name you here, I am beyond thankful to all of the participants, Vietnamese and Mozambican, who have graciously shared with me your stories, your reflections, and your advice. Thank you for welcoming me into your world. I hope I have done your stories justice. I am grateful to the University of Maryland-College Park?s Ann G. Wylie Dissertation Fellowship and the College of Education?s Support Program for Advancing Research and Collaboration (SPARC) for providing the financial support for my dissertation data collection and analysis. Thank you to the Embassy of Vietnam in Mozambique for allowing me access to their archive. They also helped me connect with colleagues at Mozambique?s Ministry of Education and Human Development and the Universidade Pedag?gica de Maputo, whose insights I will be forever grateful for. To my committee members, all of you are amazing inspirational figures as scholars, practitioners, and activists, and I am so lucky to have been guided by you. Mark, your thought-provoking and incisive questions about the world and your relentless commitment to the struggle have and will continue to be a model for me. ii Jing, thank you for agreeing to join my committee at a late stage, thank you for always being there with advice for my professional growth as a scholar, and thank you for expanding my intellectual boundaries with more holistic, contemplative, and ecological lenses. Beth, your course on culture and schooling was the first time I felt comfortable enough to engage in dialogue about race; as an international student from Vietnam, seeing the world through a racial lens did not come natural to me, and I would never have even thought of this research topic if not for that experience working with you. Zeena, I am so grateful for your willingness to comment on my research even before officially beginning at UMD; I benefited a lot from your advice, particularly in thinking about methodology and citational politics. Dr. Rowley, our class dialogue on racial grammar in your WMST601 course in Fall 2018 gave me the inspiration for this conceptual framework, and my final paper for that course became the foundation for this project?I am grateful to you for having been present on this journey from the very beginning, always challenging and inspiring me forward. Steve, you are the best advisor any graduate student can hope for. Thank you for believing in me and thank you for making me believe in myself. Most importantly, thank you for teaching me that another world is indeed possible. A conversation with Dr. Phan Le-Ha at CIES 2018 in Mexico convinced me to pick this topic instead of something easier but would definitely have not been as fulfilling. I am also thankful to colleagues in my Dissertation Mentoring Workshop at CIES 2021 for offering their feedback on an earlier draft of this work: Bob Spires, Mozynah Nofal, Zhuldyz Amankulova, and Aizuddin Mohamed Anuar. Many, many thanks to Bich-Hang Duong and Brent Edwards Jr. for offering me so much advice iii and support in navigating all the difficulties of doctoral education and being an emergent scholar. My friends in IEP, Jeremy, Brendan, Natalie, Melanie, Heidi, Ruchi, Annie, and everyone, thank you for all of your kindness. As I was working on this dissertation, I happened to climb a mountain. To the friends I met there who taught me the lesson of sincerity, thank you. To have been able to meet you this spring, how good it is. To my family who has been here for every step of the journey, always willing to help in whatever way they could, thank you. Thank you to the Vernons who made sure I had no need to worry about anything in the last rush to finish this dissertation. Thank you, Paul, my partner. You have always challenged me intellectually like no one else. Your imprint is all over this project. And to my parents, you not only provided me with emotional and material support, you both played an integral part in helping me make sense of what I was observing and hearing. This study would not have been possible without you. I am fortunate to be your daughter. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................... ii Table of Contents .......................................................................................................... v List of Tables .............................................................................................................. vii List of Figures ............................................................................................................ viii List of Abbreviations ................................................................................................... ix A Note on Citation ........................................................................................................ x Chapter 1: Introduction ............................................................................................. 1 Historical Background: Vietnam and Mozambique ................................................. 3 Vietnam?s Exchange of Experts with Mozambique ................................................. 7 Research Questions ................................................................................................. 10 Thesis Statement ..................................................................................................... 12 Significance............................................................................................................. 13 Outline of the Dissertation ...................................................................................... 15 Chapter 2. International Development, Education, and the (Re)Emergence of South-South Cooperation ......................................................................................... 17 Overview ................................................................................................................. 17 The Rise of Development as an Institutionalized Field .......................................... 18 The Role of Education in International Development ............................................ 24 Critiques of International Education and Development.......................................... 29 The (Re)Emergence of South-South Cooperation .................................................. 34 South-South Cooperation in Education .................................................................. 37 Chapter 3. Conceptual Framework: The Coloniality of Race in Development .. 45 Overview ................................................................................................................. 45 Conceptualizing Race ............................................................................................. 47 Entanglement of Coloniality, Racism, Education, and Development .................... 51 Structures of Development ..................................................................................... 56 Narratives of Development ..................................................................................... 58 Everyday Encounters of Development ................................................................... 61 Studying Racism Through the Expert ..................................................................... 64 Chapter 4. Methodology ........................................................................................... 67 Research Questions ................................................................................................. 67 Methodology: Critical Narrative Inquiry ................................................................ 67 Positionality ............................................................................................................ 71 Participants .............................................................................................................. 76 Data Collection ....................................................................................................... 77 Data Analysis and Presentation .............................................................................. 80 Constructing the Composite Narrative................................................................ 84 Validity ................................................................................................................... 87 Strengths and Limitations ....................................................................................... 93 Chapter 5. The State ................................................................................................. 97 Origin of Expert Exchange ..................................................................................... 99 Second Phase of Cooperation ............................................................................... 108 The Turning Point ............................................................................................. 108 v Renewal of the Education Expert Exchange Program ...................................... 112 Other Education Cooperation Activities ........................................................... 115 The power structure of Vietnam-Mozambique expert exchange .......................... 117 Division of decision-making ............................................................................. 117 Salary and Compensation ................................................................................. 120 Who Assists? ..................................................................................................... 124 Discussion ............................................................................................................. 127 Chapter 6. The Expert ............................................................................................ 130 The Expert?s Story ................................................................................................ 131 The ?80s - To Save Oneself and One?s Family ................................................. 131 Arrival ............................................................................................................... 144 Tears Became the Broth for My Rice ............................................................... 149 Work Responsibilities ....................................................................................... 154 The Importance of Language ............................................................................ 157 Resilience .............................................................................................................. 160 Discussion ............................................................................................................. 165 Struggle and Sacrifice ....................................................................................... 165 The Gendered Narrative of Women Experts .................................................... 169 Everyday Experience of Living in a ?Contact Zone? ........................................ 172 Chapter 7. Impact Evaluation ............................................................................... 175 Mozambique?s Perspective ................................................................................... 177 Why Vietnam? .................................................................................................. 177 Future Vision of Mozambique-Vietnam education cooperation ...................... 183 Vietnam?s Perspective .......................................................................................... 193 Suggestion to Improve the Program ................................................................. 193 Evaluation of Issues in Mozambique Education ............................................... 196 Quiet Pride ........................................................................................................ 202 The Pride of Women Experts ............................................................................ 205 Why Vietnamese Experts? ................................................................................ 207 ?Cheap? Labor - Cheap Expertise? .................................................................... 212 Discussion ............................................................................................................. 216 Chapter 8. The Racial Grammar of Development ............................................... 220 Scripts of Everyday Experience ............................................................................ 223 Slow .................................................................................................................. 223 Simple ............................................................................................................... 225 Racial Comparison ............................................................................................ 229 The Invisible Pervasiveness of Racial Grammar .................................................. 235 The ?Correct? Way to Speak About Race ......................................................... 236 Constructing Blocks of Racial Grammar .......................................................... 241 Discussion ............................................................................................................. 247 Chapter 9: Conclusion ............................................................................................ 251 South-South........................................................................................................... 252 Asian-Black........................................................................................................... 256 Recommendations ................................................................................................. 260 Abolishing Development ...................................................................................... 264 References ................................................................................................................ 269 vi List of Tables Table 1. Monthly Salary of Vietnamese Education Experts in Mozambique???119 vii List of Figures Figure 1. FRELIMO Leader Samora Machel, the First President of Mozambique, Welcoming General V? Nguy?n Gi?p to the Country (1980)????????...100 Figure 2. Sample Translated Call for Applicants to Become Education Experts in Angola and Mozambique??????????????????????...135 Figure 3. Distance to Hanoi carved into the front of the local ph? restaurant?...?145 viii List of Abbreviations CEPECE: Center for Expert and Technical Cooperation with External Countries CIE: Comparative and international education DAC: Development Assistance Committee FCDO: Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) FRELIMO: Frente de Liberta??o de Mo?ambique (Mozambique Liberation Front) ICT: Information and Communications Technology IMF: International Monetary Fund JICA: Japan International Cooperation Agency MINEDH: Minist?rio da Educa??o e Desenvolvimento Humano, Mozambique MOET: Ministry of Education and Training, Vietnam NGO: non-governmental organizations SSC: South-South cooperation UN: United Nations UP: Universidade Pedag?gica Maputo USAID: U.S. Agency for International Development WTO: World Trade Organization ix A Note on Citation Citation of Vietnamese names are in last name-middle name-first name order with diacritics (e.g. L? Minh H?ng instead of Hang M. Le), unless the person cited has used the Anglicized name order in the publication. x Chapter 1: Introduction In June 2010, the president of Maputo Municipal Council visited Hanoi to commemorate the 1000th anniversary of the founding of Vietnam?s capital city. Nestled in a portfolio of official communications between the two governments to confirm the logistics of this trip is a personal request made by the city mayor himself, The president also has a personal wish to be able to meet again his Vietnamese biology teacher (whose name is B?nh), who once worked as a Vietnamese education expert in Mozambique in the 1980s. Teacher B?nh was one of the thousands of Vietnamese teachers, doctors, agronomists, and engineers sent to Mozambique, as well as other socialist-aligned countries in Africa, as part of governmental expert exchanges between these countries. Rooted in the discourse of Third World socialist solidarity, their mission is to support other former colonies in moving towards rapid modernization and development, drawing on the common struggles of postcolonial reconstruction (Bayly, 2004). At the peak of the program in the mid-1980s, the export of these experts became a central part of the Vietnamese post-war economic recovery program, especially as the government struggled with declining aid from the USSR and ongoing hostilities with China. Although both Vietnam and Mozambique have de-emphasized the socialist orientation to their policies and development since the 1990s, Vietnamese experts continue to be sent to Mozambique as part of the broader bilateral education cooperation between these two countries. 1 The Global South, which both Vietnam and Mozambique would be typically categorized as a member of, is no stranger to international development aid. However, in most cases, aid is something delivered by the Global North to the Global South. Through diverse mechanisms of influence, ranging from the direct funding of new schools and programs to the provision of technical assistance with curriculum development and policymaking, states and actors from the Global North exert significant influence over the educational policies and practices in the South (Samoff, 2009). In recent years, this system of development aid has been besieged by criticisms of inefficiency, ineffectiveness, and the dominance of the Global North. Consequently, many scholars, policy makers, and development practitioners have become increasingly fascinated with South-South cooperation as an alternative form of development aid. South-South cooperation (SSC) refers to relationships of development exchange, assistance, and cooperation between Global South countries. The exchange of education experts between Vietnam and Mozambique is one such example. Advocates of SSC argue that unlike traditional Western foreign aid, these development relationships can draw on shared or similar experiences between the participating countries to provide contextually appropriate policy recommendations (Kragelund, 2019; Morais de S? e Silva, 2009). Furthermore, SSC purports to be guided by a principle of respect for national sovereignty, equality, non-interference in domestic affairs, and mutual benefits. This can appear to be a more desirable alternative to Western models of foreign aid, which have often been linked to neocolonial motivations (Rist, 2014). 2 This study problematizes the contemporary fascination with SSC through a critical narrative inquiry of six Vietnamese education experts in Mozambique (1980s- present). These Vietnamese development experts have been largely invisible in the normative international development aid system, as well as in education and development studies. The master narrative of international development and foreign aid views it as an altruistic endeavor led by the West/Global North to achieve common progress for all of humanity (Kothari, 2006; Rist, 2014). Within this master narrative, Mozambique and Vietnam can only be recognized as recipients rather than donors of development aid, despite decades of experience to the contrary. The Western narrative of aid also fails to recognize the many decades and cases of socialist cooperation that present an opposite model of assistance based on mutual solidarity and an explicit critique of global capitalism, inequalities, and injustices (Corona Gonz?lez et al., 2012). By bringing in these historically invisible actors in international development, this research contributes to a significant gap in the scholarship on South-South relations, particularly those rooted in socialist solidarity. Historical Background: Vietnam and Mozambique In 1974, a left-wing military coup in Portugal forced an abrupt end to the Portuguese colonial empire, paving the way for independence in Mozambique, one of its colonies, in the following year. The main independence movement at the time, Frente de Liberta??o de Mo?ambique or the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO), found itself suddenly thrust into a role it was quite unprepared for?the 3 role of governing an entire country (Johnston, 1990).1 Similar to most other colonies, Mozambique never received any substantial investment from the Portuguese in terms of industrialization, infrastructural development, and training of the native workforce. The mass exodus (about 90 percent) of the Portuguese colonist population back to their homeland caused a severe shortage of skilled labor in all sectors and levels of administration. This was further exacerbated by the lack of a formal education system and a 93 percent illiteracy rate (Johnston, 1990; Newitt, 2017). In 1977, FRELIMO made the explicit decision to pursue a Marxist-Leninist orientation and began various reforms to turn Mozambique fully into a socialist state. To address the crisis of skilled labor, they turned to their network of socialist allies for assistance under the name of ?socialist internationalism? and solidarity. In this same period, Vietnam had also just emerged from more than a century of war and violence with the national reunification of North and South under the Vietnamese Communist Party in 1975. The mid-1970s to late 1980s was an extremely difficult period in Vietnam. Not only was industrial infrastructure decimated by U.S. bombing during the war, reunified Vietnam now also had to deal with hostilities from the capitalist West, most of Southeast Asia, and China in the socialist bloc. Vietnam?s economy was completely dependent on the Soviet Union and its satellite states, which were mired in their own internal crises. Some of this assistance took the form of labor 1 According to Johnston (2014), FRELIMO leadership found it almost a pity that victory came so soon, as they were expecting many more years of struggles, and that ?it was in the struggle that both the leadership and the populace confronted the colonial ideas and practices they had internalized? (p. 280). At the time of independence, FRELIMO only controlled an area with about 10 percent of the population. It was never able to build up mass mobilization and mass support, which arguably contributed to the rise of civil war in Mozambique in the 1980s. 4 and student exchange between Vietnam and the socialist world in the name of socialist internationalism and solidarity. In the 1980s, approximately 300,000 unskilled workers were sent abroad to work in factories in the Soviet Union, East Germany, and other Eastern European countries (Schwenkel, 2014). About 7,200 experts were also sent to countries in Africa, including Algeria, Madagascar, Angola, Mozambique, and Congo, to support development in health, agriculture, education, and engineering (L? V?n T?ng, 2003; Tran et al., 2010). By the 1990s, however, the scale of the expert exchange program had been reduced to 1,500 people (L? V?n T?ng, 2003). Official Mozambican-Vietnamese relations date back to June 25, 1975, when Vietnam recognized Mozambique as a sovereign nation-state and established diplomatic relations just hours after Mozambique declared its independence from the Portuguese empire. Three years later, in 1978, Vietnam signed the first joint agreement on economic and cultural cooperation with Mozambique during a trip that President Nguy?n H?u Th? made across the African continent (Huynh, 2016).2 Such was the beginning of the traditional friendship and warm relationship between the two countries that has continued to this day. Official state discourses on both sides continue to regularly refer to this history and how Vietnam and Mozambique had supported each other in the struggle for national independence as well as the mission of rebuilding and pursuing economic development in both countries (Gon?alves, 2020; Kh?nh Lan, 2020). 2 Other African countries that Vietnam signed a joint agreement with in this trip included Angola, Ethiopia, Guinea, the Congo, Angola, Ethiopia, Benin, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, and Madagascar. 5 Beginning in the mid-1980s, due to stagnation in economic productivity, entrenched extreme poverty, as well as external pressure to connect to the global capitalist market, both Mozambique and Vietnam began to adopt market-oriented reforms. Contemporary Vietnam and Mozambique are now well-known as ?success stories? in the international donor community due to their rapid progress according to conventional development indicators as well as their embrace of neoliberal economic reforms (Chimbutane, 2017; Gainsborough, 2010; Pitcher, 2002). Vietnam made the transition to lower middle-income country status in 2010, and in general has had solid results in poverty alleviation, health, and education. Mozambique, however, continues to be one of the poorest countries. It ranks as number 180 out of 188 countries on the Human Development Index (HDI) and still depends on foreign aid for 50 percent of its national budget (Newitt, 2017).3 Politically, Vietnam remains a socialist one party-state. Civil society participation in organizations not affiliated with the Party has increased, and there does seem to be a more open media environment (including social media) reflecting diverse societal interests and demands, particularly those tied to the rising urban middle class (Gainsborough, 2010; Schwenkel & Leshkowich, 2012). However, the Vietnamese Communist Party still retains absolute control of the highest decision- making level. In Mozambique, FRELIMO has continued to stay in power despite the constitutional move to multiparty democracy in the early 1990s. Newitt (2017) notes 3 While aid to Mozambique is about two billion dollars a year, Hanlon and Smart (2008) estimate that only 58 percent of aid is 'usable,' with the rest going instead to pay consultants, NGO employees, and administration costs. 6 that politics still largely follow the patrimonial style of the past, especially as privatization provides more lucrative ways to reward political patronage. The legacy of socialist connection between Vietnam and Mozambique has provided a solid foundation for current friendly foreign relations that emphasize trade and investment between the two countries. In addition to a sizable network of Vietnamese small entrepreneurs in Mozambique?many of whom in fact started out as government-contracted experts?there is a new wave of state-backed companies moving into the country that reflects the broader trend of Asian investment in the continent. In particular, a joint telecommunication company with the Viettel Telecoms Group, which is owned and operated by the Vietnamese military, is now Mozambique?s biggest mobile operator. Vietnam?s Exchange of Experts with Mozambique Expert exchange between Vietnam and Mozambique has been ongoing for many years, focusing on the three areas of education, health, and agriculture. In the Vietnamese language, these individuals are called chuy?n gia, which more accurately translates to ?specialists,? but they themselves adopted the French label ?un expert? (Bayly, 2004). Each posting abroad is negotiated by the two governments and would often last between three to four years. In the education sector, the individuals sent over can work in curriculum design, as high school or vocational teachers, or in policymaking within the Ministry of Education. In 2019, there were only three active posts, but the Ministries of Education in the two countries are in the middle of negotiating a new memorandum of understanding (as of 2022). In addition, every 7 year, about ten exchange students from Vietnam would come to Mozambique to learn Portuguese, while in turn, the Vietnamese government provides scholarships to Mozambican students in a variety of fields such as agriculture, veterinary medicine, or engineering. In the mid-1980s, the ?export? of experts was a central source of revenue for the Vietnamese government. The salaries and living costs for the specialists were paid by the host countries, and the informal agreement was that the expert would keep 15 percent of their salaries while contributing the rest to the Vietnamese government (Bayly, 2004). Nevertheless, this amount was still better than staying inside the country, especially as it allowed the experts to tap into the lucrative illicit trade markets abroad to gain more money. Many Vietnamese in those days were desperate for a chance to go abroad, though typically, only the most well-connected received the privilege to do so. These Vietnamese intellectuals and development experts constitute a tiny margin in the literature published in any language. Even in the Vietnamese scholarship, there has been only one study conducted by Nguy?n H??ng Giang (2018) which touches on expert exchange between Angola and Vietnam from a macro-level perspective. Likewise in English, I have only been able to find one published account about Vietnamese development experts sent to other Third World/Global South countries. In an anthropological research project on the cultural capital of the Hanoi intelligentsia families, Susan Bayly (2004) documented the experience of a Professor Le (pseudonym) who was sent to Guelma, Algeria, in 1986, alone and thousands of miles away from her family: 8 The term ?expert? and its modernist, technology-revering connotations might seem to sum up everything that anthropologists now routinely disparage about the ethnocentricity and authoritarianism that supposedly pervade both Western and socialist countries? projects of ?development.? Yet what Professor Le recalls feeling on that day in Guelma was profound anxiety, rather than any godlike feeling of power or superiority? Professor Le found herself on her own in dusty Guelma, clutching that lecture script which had been rendered into French by Ministry translators. If her students found her unintelligible, there was the threat of non-renewal or the sack. They were not really francophone and spoke to each other in what she calls ?their own language.? They also staged strikes, a thing hitherto unknown to her. To her relief, this was not a protest about her teaching. In fact, Guelma was then at the heart of the large-scale public agitations which have come to be known as the ?Berber Spring.? She knew no Arabic or Berber, and had little sense of what was happening around her. (pp. 335-338) Professor Le?s time in Guelma was one of profound loneliness and deep moral ambiguities, as she had to juggle the official mission of selfless sacrifice for socialist modernization with her own engagement in the grey economy as an entrepreneur, an ?overseas suitcase trafficker? who used her transnational positionality to facilitate the illicit trade of Japanese goods in and out of Vietnamese shadow markets (p. 337). Her experience as a woman was doubly isolating, as she was ?instructed? to restrict 9 herself in the foreigners? compound and minimize contact with Algerians (men), whereas other men experts were able to share accounts of warm friendship with their students (p. 338). As Bayly notes, ?Clearly it is possible to be transnational and to live a life of what I am calling socialist world citizenry, to be present in other people?s revolutionary or insurgent times, and yet to make little or no connection with them? (2004, p. 338). This sense of isolation was paradoxically ubiquitous in the world of socialist internationalism, as confirmed by the emerging literature on cases of socialist solidarity (Schwenkel, 2015; Slobodian, 2015; Weis, 2011). In almost all cases of socialist partnerships, governments embraced the rhetoric of solidarity and a globally- shared struggle for anti-colonialism and anti-capitalism, but were careful to manage transnational contact and relationships on the individual, everyday level. In other words, solidarity was marked by frictions and conflicts. The shift towards neoliberal capitalism in both Vietnam and Mozambique in this case further begs the question of whether and/or how the work of solidarity has changed from past to present. Through listening to those who lived and felt these relationships of South-South cooperation with socialist roots, we can better understand solidarity not as a romanticized panacea but as a concrete experience of human seeking to bond across borders and divides. Research Questions The aim of this dissertation is to highlight the voices of Vietnamese development experts that have gone unheard in development studies in order to expand the knowledge body on SSC past and present, especially those rooted in the 10 ethos of socialist solidarity. In addition, this study reveals some of the mechanisms through which these SSC development projects reproduce the borders and boundaries that divide humanity, and I deliver a structural critique of education development aid as a fundamentally unequal and racist institution. Last but not least, from the lived experience of the Vietnamese experts in Mozambique, this study examines how human beings in cross-cultural contact zones come to relate to each other across differences and the extent to which race as a grammar of development constrains solidarity endeavors. This is a crucial question to acknowledge in our collective struggle for global justice because solidarity is neither natural nor easy; on the contrary, it is difficult, it demands conscious efforts, and it requires all of us to unlearn the hegemonic rules of sociality. The central research question driving this study is: How does the expert exchange program between Vietnam and Mozambique, a case of South-South cooperation, reproduce and/or resist the racial hierarchies embedded in development as a project of Western modernity? It is supplemented by the following sub-questions: a) What stories do the Vietnamese development experts (chuy?n gia) who are working or had worked in Mozambique tell about their lived experience of this cooperation program? b) How are the experts? stories marked by race, racialization, and racism? 11 c) What do the experts? stories reveal about the differences and similarities, if they exist, between this socialist-inspired South-South cooperation program and the typical Western development aid model? Thesis Statement I argue that Vietnamese-Mozambican development exchanges can be seen as a double encounter. On the one hand, this cooperation in education is rooted in socialist commitments to anti-imperial solidarity, and in this sense, has the potential to model alternative ways of delivering foreign aid that are more appropriate to developing countries. Indeed, as a bilateral governmental exchange, the Vietnamese- Mozambican case of SSC has a significantly different division of power where the recipient side does most of the decision-making. A sense of shared past struggles for independence and current struggles for development provides a common base of friendship, mutual benefits, and willingness to view issues through the lens of history and structural injustice. The Vietnamese experts also come to this work with complex motivations focusing on themselves and their families rather than on a moral mission to save strangers abroad. On the other hand, this is also an Asian-Black encounter that bears the weight of global racial imaginaries which continue to perpetuate negative racial stereotypes (Christian, 2019). This racial dimension is especially reinforced by the international development aid apparatus, which continues to impose implicit hierarchies regarding who can count as developed and who continue to be the ?backward Other? (Ferguson, 2006; Kothari, 2006). For all the radical potential that this SSC promises in 12 challenging the traditional power imbalance between donors and recipients, it is subverted by the racial grammar that underwrites development aid and the cultural political economy of modern life. Traditional friendship may foster a certain degree of empathy for each other?s struggles, but it cannot fully overcome the shallow knowledge stemming from limited interracial contact. There is no sense of solidarity in a struggle to create another world; rather, it is about cooperation to fit into the world that is. Vietnamese-Mozambican SSC is not an alternative to development, it is merely an alternative in development. Significance This project contributes to a significant gap in comparative and international education (CIE), development studies, and postcolonial/decolonial studies by centering issues of race and coloniality in SSC to demonstrate the power dynamics that complicate this new popular tool in international development. The critique of education development assistance as a colonialist project has been a key concern for the field of CIE (Shahjahan, 2016; Sriprakash et al., 2019; Takayama et al., 2017; Vickers, 2019). Many education scholars, particularly in the field of CIE, have been engaged in efforts to improve education quality around the world. We are driven by our shared belief in the power of education for empowerment and the pursuit of global social justice. Yet as with any relationships of aid and cooperation, a key question is how to act ethically and confront the inherent power dynamics within international education development aid. Ethnographies of development aid have consistently found structural inequities built into the way aid projects are designed, 13 funded, and implemented on the ground (Benton, 2016). Racism, in particular, has always been ?the elephant in the room? (Crewe & Fernando, 2006). Most of these issues can be traced to the ongoing implicit assumption that experts from the West/Global North know best. This domination of the West/Global North has been intensely, and rightly, critiqued in recent years, but the obsession with critiquing the West can also lead to an overly simple view of SSC as the panacea for development. My research contributes to this conversation by centering issues of race and power in SSC in order to complicate this new popular tool in international development. This explicit engagement with unequal dynamics in SSC and development aid is essential if we want our educational research and practice in the Global South to do more good than harm. This project also contributes to the contemporary analysis of the ways that race now works on a global level and how postcolonial subjects wrestle with the colonial remnants of race in development projects. From this particular South-South development encounter, I hope to understand racial formations on a global scale and how meanings of Black skin and ?Chinese? features travel across borders, especially when mediated by larger discourses of South-South cooperation, solidarity, and development. This answers the call by various postcolonial and critical race scholars to move beyond a preoccupation with East/West or black-white dichotomy and examine contemporary logics of racialization and racism on a global scale (Mohanty, 2003; Todorova, 2018). The less-theorized nature of these other racial relations can lead to assumptions that Global South/postcolonial subjects are ?innocent? victims of racial oppression, thus promoting simple calls for South-South solidarity. Yet as 14 Black feminist and activist Audre Lorde (1984) has argued, we all have to acknowledge our mutual complicity with global systems of power over and against each other. The mere participation of Global South subjects in development, or in any global encounters, cannot be taken to mean that all is well, not when the rules of the game still follow Western ontologies and epistemologies. Such an understanding is critical to any anti-racist struggle for global social justice. Outline of the Dissertation Chapter 2 reviews the literature in CIE as well as development studies to provide an overview of the normative Western/Global North international development aid apparatus, its longstanding issues and criticisms, and the rise of the SSC model. Chapter 3 presents the conceptual framework for this dissertation which views racism as the social grammar of development and lays the case for examining the case of Vietnamese-Mozambican cooperation through a racial lens of the lived experience of Vietnamese development experts in Mozambique. Chapter 4 delves into the critical narrative inquiry methodology used in this study, including details about the participants, data collection, analysis and write-up, my positionality as the researcher, and acknowledgment of the strengths and limitations of this study. The findings of the study are presented in the following four chapters. In chapter 5, I present the main history and structure of the inter-governmental Vietnamese-Mozambican expert exchange program as well as the state?s official discourses on this program, which are important guiding maps for the Vietnamese experts in how they would make meaning of and narrate their lived experience. If the 15 state?s perspective is at the core of chapter 5, then chapter 6 centers the practitioners? lived experience through a fictionalized composite narrative of a singular character called the Expert. It retells a typical expert?s journey of becoming and being an expert from learning about this opportunity, preparation and application process, arrival in the country, the initial transition period, to possible contract extension or termination. Chapter 7 brings together voices from both the Mozambican and Vietnamese sides as they reflect on the impact and contribution of the Vietnamese experts as well as the future of this SSC. While the issues and unequal dynamics within this Vietnamese-Mozambican expert exchange program already emerge in chapters 5 to 7, chapter 8 returns to the quotes and narratives already shared in the previous chapters and expands on them with an explicit racial lens to illustrate how the racial grammar of development functions in this case. The dissertation concludes in chapter 9 with overarching reflection and recommendations for not only this SSC program but for international development as a whole. 16 Chapter 2. International Development, Education, and the (Re)Emergence of South-South Cooperation Overview The exchange of Vietnamese education development experts with Mozambique is an instance of South-South cooperation that must be situated within the larger field of international development assistance. Development is a contested term that nevertheless has become the central lynchpin for a gigantic system of global interactions, sometimes called an ?aid industry? (Haan, 2009), a ?military-academic- industrial complex? (Puar, 2017), and an ?empire? (Barnett, 2011). Generally, the term ?development? evokes vague promises of growth, improvement, progress, and a better life. It also brings to mind processes of industrialization, modernization, commodification, and globalization (Edelman & Haugerud, 2005). There is a sense of ?plasticity? to this term, where ?development? is now so widely used that it no longer means anything except for whatever its articulators want it to mean. This ambiguity allows the concept of development to become a fetishizing tool that can produce both empowerment as well as oppression through increased privatization and state control (Cooper & Packard, 1997). As Gilbert Rist (2014) argues: The strength of ?development? discourse comes of its power to seduce, in every sense of the term: to charm, to please, to fascinate, to set dreaming, but also to abuse, to turn away from the truth, to deceive. (p. 1) 17 While critiques of development have always been present and fierce (as the next section will discuss), there is a taken-for-granted commonsense now that development is a desirable and worthy goal that humanity must collectively pursue. In the words of Arturo Escobar (1995), development has colonized reality. Paradoxically, few would argue that international development has been a success; on the contrary, most would readily acknowledge its problems and failures, especially the practitioners who are involved in the everyday work of delivering development aid. Gudynas (2011) calls ?development? a ?zombie category? that is ?dead and alive at the same time? (p. 442). Failure to meet development goals is readily admitted, yet also immediately followed by assertion of renewed commitment and calls for new ways to do development, such as the jump from the Millennium to the Sustainable Development Goals, the incorporation of new rhetoric of ?participation,? or the object of interest in this research, ?South-South cooperation.? This chapter provides a brief overview of the international development aid apparatus, the central role of education within this field, and the rise of South-South cooperation in education and in development generally. A review of the development studies literature demonstrates the many problems and tensions that exist behind the rhetoric of assistance, cooperation, good intentions, and solidarity that structure international development aid, and in this particular case, South-South cooperation. The Rise of Development as an Institutionalized Field As scholarship on the histories of development has shown, the presumed necessity of development and its current institutionalized form is a recent invention of 18 the 20th century (Edelman & Haugerud, 2005; Escobar, 1995; Gardner & Lewis, 2015; Rist, 2014; Veltmeyer & Bowles, 2018). The notion of development and progress can be traced to Western Enlightenment thought, where development was understood philosophically as ?improving humankind (in the form of knowledge building, technological change, and wealth accumulation)? (McMichael, 2016, p. 2). Scholars have argued that such an idea could not have been imaginable without historical material changes of Europe through the rise of capitalism, industrialization, and urbanization. Social interventions associated with ?development? were carried out by the elites in order to both socially engineer emerging national societies for further growth as well as manage the resulting increase in public disorders. Toward the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century, empires also began to export these ideas, policies, and administrative projects of development to their colonies under the banner of the ?civilizing mission? or la mission civilisatrice, which indicated a shift in approach for better extraction of resources and productivity from the colonies. Rist (2014) describes this as a transitional period for colonial relations and governance ?in which brutal power relations existed alongside paternalist feelings of responsibility towards ?natives? who needed to be ?civilized?? (p. 47). The end of World War II marked a significant turning point in development history and the emergence of development in its contemporary institutionalized form. Suddenly, there was a ?discovery? and problematization of poverty in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, marking a rupture from the perspective on the colonies and the non-West before the 1940s. Prior to this point, colonial discourses believed that even if the natives could be enlightened by the colonizers, not much can be done about 19 their poverty because they did not have the capacity to develop or use science and technology (Escobar, 1995). With the new post-war discourse, however, development came to be seen as an achievable possibility, a humane goal for collective pursuit, and an objective that can be achieved through planned intervention (Cooper & Packard, 1997; Escobar, 1995; Rist, 2014). As Rist (2014) reminds us, ?For centuries no one? virtually no one?took it into their head to relieve the misery of others by structural measures, especially when they lived in different continents? (p. 1). The reconfiguration of the development discourse opened up the possibility and justification for a new system of intervention into foreign affairs. Scholars often point to two main events contributing to the emergence of contemporary international development aid: (1) the creation of the Bretton Woods institutions in 1944 and the United Nations in 1945; and (2) U.S. President Harry Truman?s Inaugural Address in 1949 (Cooper & Packard, 1997; Escobar, 1995; McMichael, 2016; Rist, 2014). First of all, the establishment of the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and later on the World Trade Organization (WTO) set the fundamental groundwork for the institutional structure supporting all international development assistance henceforth. The immense role of these organizations in international development in general and in education specifically has been a subject of much research (Chabbott, 2003; Klees et al., 2012; Mundy, 2010; Peet, 2009; Samoff, 2013; Smith et al., 2007). These new institutions laid the foundation for a new way of conceiving international relations, one that would be articulated by Harry Truman in 1949 as Point Four in his foreign relations agenda: 20 Fourth, we must embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas. (as cited in Rist, 2014, p. 71) The conceptual innovation here was the introduction of the idea of ?underdevelopment? for the first time in a text with such wide circulation (Escobar, 1995; Rist, 2014). As Rist (2014) argues, while development in earlier Western philosophies was presented as something which simply ?happened? regardless of human intervention, ?the appearance of the term ?underdevelopment? evoked not only the idea of change in the direction of a final state but, above all, the possibility of bringing about such change?? (p. 73). It also reconfigured the relationship between the colonizer/colonized from one of irresolvable conflict except by violence to one of continuity and ?catch up? on the same spectrum of underdevelopment-development. The implicit theoretical framework here was Rostow?s stages of development model which posited a five-staged teleology of economic growth that all countries must go through before reaching the goal of development: advanced Western industrial capitalist society with high mass consumption. The role of Western ?developed? countries in this newfound humane project of international development was to provide the Third World with technical assistance to use the modern technologies necessary for development, conceived purely as growth in economic production. Over the years, there have been several distinct shifts in the main development models and theories influencing policy-making in developing countries: state-led development in the 1950s and 1960s, Latin American dependency theories in the 21 1970s, neoliberal structural adjustment policies in the 1980s, post-Washington Consensus emphasis on basic needs and poverty alleviation in the 1990s, and sustainable development in the 21st century (Hook & Rumsey, 2016). Nevertheless, mainstream development has never strayed far from the emphasis on ?technical assistance? through technical, rational, practical, and immediately applicable interventions designed to foster economic growth. Despite the ahistorical and atheoretical framing of mainstream development theories and practice, however, development has always been an ideological project. Rist (2014) argues that the United States pushed for development rather than colonialism because of its inherent interest in dismantling the colonial empires and gaining access to new markets in the colonies: ?the ?development programme? allowed it to deploy a new anti-colonial imperialism? (p. 75). As the Cold War deepened, there was more rationale for development assistance as Western countries sought new ways to lure recently decolonized countries away from communism and toward capitalism (Mitchell, 2002; Veltmeyer & Bowles, 2018). In the post-Cold War period, development aid continues to be deeply intertwined with the capitalist and geopolitical interests of the West (Mitchell & Sparke, 2016; Novelli, 2013). Underlying these shifts is an apparatus of international development aid that has been growing ever bigger, more complex, and professionalized. Development is now a multi-billion dollar industry, with the annual flow of official development finance to developing countries reaching US$311 billion in 2016 (Haan, 2009; 22 OECD, 2018).4 Typically, development aid happens in the form of a multi-year project with activities targeting health, education, agriculture, or increasingly, an integrated multi-sectoral approach (Nordbeck & Steurer, 2016; Veltmeyer & Bowles, 2018). Funding and policy directions tend to come from the World Bank, the IMF, UN agencies, bilateral development agencies, and a growing set of global governance actors, while NGOs, consultants, and national governments are responsible for the implementation of projects (Kamat, 2014; Mundy, 2010). The players involved in development range from: international multilateral agencies, bilateral aid agencies, international non-governmental organizations, foundations, various national governmental offices and departments, local NGOs, training and research centers, private contributors, private suppliers and contractors, consultants, freelancers, volunteers, etc. Current major multilateral players include the World Bank, UN agencies, the Asian Development Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank; while major bilateral aid agencies include the US (USAID), UK (FCDO), Norway (Norad), Australia (AusAid), Canada (CIDA), Japan (JICA), South Korea (KOICA), etc. While education aid generally comprises only about 4 per cent of the total aid budget, discursively, education is always high on the development agenda (Heyneman & Lee, 2016). Moreover, the impact of the development aid apparatus goes beyond its direct policy interventions and projects. It is important to acknowledge that this industry has spawned a very distinct cosmopolitan community of development practitioners and 4 This does include non-OECD development assistance, which includes South-South cooperation, but does not include external private finance, remittances, or philanthropy. If counting all sources of finance, OECD (2018) estimates that US$1.67 trillion were sent to developing countries in 2016. 23 their expatriate families, whose lifestyles affect the economies and communities of the developing countries in complicated but often under-examined ways in mainstream development studies (Fechter & Walsh, 2010). This is especially the case in aid-dependent countries where the presence of mostly white expats from the West has led to the growth of distinct expensive services and industries to support them (Appleby, 2010). Thus, the development aid industry has an enormous impact on developing countries, not just in terms of official outcomes of development projects but also in how the everyday experience of development assistance reconfigures local communities. International education development traces most of these trends in development aid, from the dominance of economic approaches in the mainstream (Klees, 2016), the shift to neoliberal market-led approaches to education from the 1980s onwards (Harber, 2014), to the contemporary trends of NGOization (Kamat, 2014), privatization (Verger et al., 2016), public-private partnership (Ginsburg et al., 2012), or the now dominant discourse of sustainable development (Tikly, 2017). The next section addresses the role of education in international development. The Role of Education in International Development The mainstream perspective on the importance of education is as articulated by Heyneman & Lee (2016): How communities learn? is a principal ingredient of their development. In modern economies, schools and universities are the 24 primary means by which knowledge is passed to new generations and how new knowledge is systematically incorporated. (p. 9) This perspective emerged with the rise of human capital theory in the 1960s, which paved the way for education to become a key instrument in the international development agenda (Chabbott, 2003; Harber, 2014; Sriprakash et al., 2020). According to human capital theory, education will increase individual productivity by providing them with the necessary skills and better health and nutrition. A more productive population will in turn enhance industrial development and economic growth (Harber, 2014; Klees, 2016). Rate-of-return studies also found that the more education an individual received, the higher their average earnings would be, and because wage was considered a proxy for productivity, the argument extended that a more educated individual would be more productive. Thus, economists began to advocate for the transition from seeing education as consumption to education as an investment in future growth, especially investment in primary education given its higher rates of return compared to that of higher education.5 Economic rate-of-return studies? support for education was complemented by sociological modernization theory (Harber, 2014; Rist, 2014). An influential study by Inkeles and Smith (1974) found that participation in modern schooling was the strongest variable resulting in an individual?s acquisition of modern personality traits.6 Examples of these modern personality traits include: openness to new 5 The validity of these rate-of-return studies is questionable, and some scholars have argued that these studies are ideological products designed to promote the agenda of capitalism (e.g. see Klees, 2016). 6 Again, this 1974 study by Inkeles and Smith has received major critiques over its methodology and conclusion. 25 experience, a strong sense of personal efficacy, a high degree of autonomy, valuing education and technical competence, taking interest in public affairs, and being an active citizen. Individuals with these modern personality traits can then become successful in the settings of modern industrial workplaces with their new organizational structures and rules of conduct. According to Inkeles and Smith (1974), ?Modern institutions need individuals who can keep to fixed schedules, observe abstract rules, make judgments on the basis of objective evidence, and follow authorities legitimated not by traditional or religious sanctions but by technical competence [original emphasis]? (p. 4). Consequently, the argument went, nation- states needed to invest in modern schooling so that their citizens would become modern individuals; otherwise, the country would not be able to successfully pursue industrialization and economic growth. The economic bias has been a feature of most mainstream international education development efforts throughout their history. Initially, education interventions were linked to workforce development and manpower planning: vocational training, engineering education, and teaching immediately applicable work skills (Psacharopoulos & Woodhall, 1985). However, with the influence of cost- benefit approaches to interventions and rate-of-return studies, the focus within international development aid to education overwhelmingly shifted to basic education (Chabbott, 2003). From the 1980s onward, aid to education, like other development sectors, has also come under the immense influence of neoliberal ideology and its set of policy recommendations. Contemporary manifestations of this neoliberal agenda in education aid are complex and include the over-emphasis on narrow learning skills as 26 measured by standardized tests; the rise of private actors in education; the encouragement of competition through charter schools, vouchers, and low-fee private schools; the introduction of New Public Management neoliberal rationalities into all levels of education; the assaults on teachers through discourses of accountability; etc. (Ball, 2016; Klees, 2008; Kumar & Hill, 2009). However, education is a central instrument in international development agenda, especially since the rise of the ?Education for All? movement in the 1990s, not just because of economic concerns but also its status as a universal human right and its position as a public good (Chabbott, 2003). Scholars in the field of CIE have played a major role in shifting the discourse in development so that it is now normative to acknowledge that education is worthy to pursue simply because it is a universal human right (Tomasevki, 2003). The field has also pushed for perspectives like Amartya Sen?s capabilities approach which argues that education is both valuable intrinsically on its own and as a tool to expand other human freedoms to live the life that they actually value (Saito, 2003; Sen, 1999). The public good aspect of education also manifests through links to improved health and longevity, reduced infant mortality, democratization, poverty alleviation, crime reduction, improving social equality, peace and conflict resolution, psychosocial wellbeing, community building and social cohesion, higher civic engagement, greater resilience against disasters, etc. (Harber, 2014). These perspectives all come together in mainstream education development discourses. For example, the World Bank?s 2018 World Development Report on Education frames the promise of education as follows: 27 Education is a basic human right, and it is central to unlocking human capabilities. It also has tremendous instrumental value. Education raises human capital, productivity, incomes, employability, and economic growth. But its benefits go far beyond these monetary gains: education also makes people healthier and gives them more control over their lives. And it generates trust, boosts social capital, and create institutions that promote inclusion and shared prosperity. (2018, p. 38) The combination of these perspectives?economic instrumentalism, human rights, and capabilities?shape the dominant imaginaries in international education development, establishing as unquestionable the expansion of educational access and the improvement of education quality for all children worldwide. The consolidation of the ?Education for All? agenda from 1990 to present and the increasing subjection of education around the world to a global governance agenda further speaks to the taken-for-granted nature of education in development (Chabbott, 2003; Mundy, 2010; Tikly, 2017). When the promises of education as a ?silver bullet? become so ingrained in our imaginaries of development and progress, it is perhaps no surprise that the energy around uncovering the issues and failures of education has been just as fierce. Influenced by dependency and world-systems theories as well as critical theories in education, CIE scholars have noted the tendency for education to reproduce the status quo and exacerbate inequalities and inequities in all dimensions, including class, gender, race, ethnicity, language, urban-rural spatiality, abilities, sexuality, and global East/West or North/South or First/Third World hierarchies (Apple, 2013; Brock-Utne, 28 2000; Carnoy, 1974; Farrell, 2013; Giroux, 1997; Kosciw & Pizmony-Levy, 2016; M. Srivastava et al., 2015; Stromquist, 2006). The question of how to actually push for educational progress is also unresolved; in education, it is impossible to find one-size- fits-all solutions, which goes against the core of mainstream development as a project of spreading technical, universally-applicable interventions around the world (Chabbott, 2003; Steiner-Khamsi, 2013).7 Nevertheless, what ties the field and its diverse ranges of critiques together is a persistent shared commitment to ensuring that every child receives a quality education.8 This is an important context to keep in mind when discussing the specific critiques of education development aid below. Critiques of International Education and Development The list of what is wrong in education development aid is long and perhaps never-ending. As Chabbott (2003) notes, endemic to the field throughout the past eighty years has been a general acknowledgement that most development projects fail. There is a ?ritualized rationality? in international education development where ?international development organizations and practitioners would assert that failures to date had generated ?lessons learned? that would inform and improve future development efforts? (p. 43). The range of critiques is very wide. For example, a 7 This has not stopped many mainstream education interventions, of course, especially with the rise of the ?best practices? movement (Klees et al., 2020; Steiner-Khamsi, 2013). 8 This is different from the post-development literature for example, which calls for the dismantling of the entire development paradigm. In contrast, there is no equivalent post-education argument, and it is hard to find arguments calling for the eradication of education, aside from Ivan Illich?s de-schooling society proposal. No matter how critical one can be of contemporary education, there is a core belief in the transformative power of education?so long as we can get it right. 29 recent essay by Nick Burnett (2019), which has prompted many responses in the field, opens with the following list of issues: There is little leadership; global priorities are obscure; the major debates are increasingly irrelevant and divorced from reality on the ground; the number of children out-of-school has stagnated for over a decade; little progress has been made in tackling the global learning crisis; knowledge about what works in education is surprisingly limited; global public goods are massively underfunded; huge global financing requirements show little prospect of being met; and the neediest low-income countries, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, do not receive the external financial and technical support necessary if they are to develop their education system. (p. 15) Heyneman and Lee (2016) provide similar diagnoses: (1) lack of coordination in the development apparatus; (2) unreliable data; (3) weakened domestic institutions; (4) funding decreases and instability; (5) exacerbation of dependency;9 (6) inconsistency and misdirection of aid, such as India still receiving so much educational aid when it has the capacity to fund a space program, nuclear arsenal, and a significant military; and (7) inter-donor coordination, where excessive coordination can make aid recipients more vulnerable to short-term ?fads? in development priorities. It is outside the scope of this study to discuss in-depth the validity of these critiques. However, as other scholars have noted, the act of problematization can itself be a discursive technique to push for ideological solutions and reforms (Auld & 9 For example, aid constitutes 66 percent of education budget in Mozambique in 2011. 30 Morris, 2016; Srivastava, 2010). Many scholars would argue that these issues are structurally built into Development itself as a project driven by the West/Global North, and what is necessary is an overhaul of the entire system of aid (Brehm & Silova, 2010; Samoff, 2009). On the other hand, mainstream development studies often follow a ?tinkering? approach in order to address existing issues, with solutions that largely fall in line with the technical, ahistorical, and neoliberal paradigms that dominate development work (Edelman & Haugerud, 2005). Contemporary trends include: 1. Neoliberal approach of looking to the market for solutions: This includes the trade-over-aid advocates such as Easterly (2006) and Moyo (2009); increasing market competition in education through private schools, charter schools, vouchers (Klees, 2008); and the introduction of neoliberal governmentalities into the experience of schooling through test-based accountability, performance pay, promoting global citizenship education only for economic instrumental reasons of success in the global labor market, and reframing education, progress, and well-being as the responsibility of the individual (Holloway & Brass, 2018; Marshall, 2011; Turner, 2014; Verger et al., 2019). 2. Results-based management of aid projects: This approach argues that aid has failed because of bad governance and management. It suggests further rationalization of the development process to increase the traceability and accountability of aid, where aid projects will have logical and predictable chains of causality: input -> activities -> output -> outcome -> impact (Sundberg, 2019). Part of this trend also includes the emphasis on better monitoring and 31 evaluation to produce evidence-based decision-making, with valid evidence that comes from experimental research such as randomized controlled trials (Castillo & Wagner, 2014; Edwards Jr. et al., 2020). 3. Ownership and participation of new development partners: This addresses the critique of international development aid as a Western-centric endeavor by increasing country and local ownership of the aid process, as well as including more players in the conversation. This idea of ?participation? is not new; since the 1970s, it has been argued that for development to work for the poor, they themselves have to be involved in the process (Veltmeyer & Bowles, 2018). Kamat (2014) notes that the World Bank and the IMF are now the largest funders of local capacity building, people?s participation, civic empowerment, and self-governing communities. The mainstreaming of ?participation? is arguably an alignment with the neoliberal agenda of depoliticizing resistance and reproducing the status quo (Edwards Jr. & Klees, 2012). As many scholars have noted, the ?NGOization? of development from the 1990s onwards has effectively depoliticized civil society efforts to pursue progress and instead turned them into rationalized actors under intense pressure to demonstrate short-term measurable outcomes in order to compete for more external funding (Choudry & Kapoor, 2013; Feldman, 2003; Kamat, 2014). In addition, the rising participation of community stakeholders in development projects has reshaped social struggles from a political contestation into a technical issue that can be solved by development interventions (Kamat, 2014). Another recent trend in development is the rise of public-private partnerships, another mechanism that purports to 32 bring more funding and effective managerial techniques to development. In reality, it only furthers the depoliticization of social development and undermining the true empowerment of the most disadvantaged (Miraftab, 2004). Outside of these mainstream trends, it is also important to acknowledge the strong postcolonial/decolonial critique of development in the field of CIE. In the 2019 Presidential Address at the Comparative and International Education Society annual meeting in San Francisco, Regina Cortina (2019) critiqued the dominance of Western paradigms of knowledge production in international education development and called for the development of decolonial thinking and respect for Indigenous epistemologies, building on a long history of comparative education scholars on a similar search for alternative education and development practices (Brehm & Silova, 2010; Hayhoe, 2000; Klees, 2020; Masemann, 1990; Silova, 2019; Stein et al., 2017). Indeed, the political economy of education scholarship has pointed out the diverse mechanisms of influence of the West in setting global education agendas: direct advice and agenda-setting; indirect conditions through standardized templates and processes; influence in the donor community; participation in policy debates; commissioned research; international conferences; recruitment of local professionals trained in the West; and influence through cross-national achievement assessments (Samoff, 2009). This echoes the larger postcolonial critique of development as an ideology of the West, with its Eurocentrism and hierarchies defining non-Western ways of life as inferior, traditional, and in need of replacement by Western ways of knowing, feeling, and doing (Escobar, 1995; Ziai, 2017). 33 What is interesting is that across the debate, there is a belief that actors in the Global South would provide promising alternatives in/to education and development. The inclusion of the Global South seems to be the right solution no matter which side it is. For the critics of development, the South will provide diverse Indigenous knowledges that challenge Western orthodoxies (Brehm & Silova, 2010). For those on the mainstream, the South is a promising ground of ?best practices? that can be transferred to similar contexts of underdevelopment (Robinson et al., 2016; UNDP, 2016). The mainstream discursive shift towards the participation of the Global South maps onto a material shift in the global development landscape where emerging donors such as China and India play an increasingly important role. In a way, it can be argued that South-South cooperation is the new era of development cooperation, and it is certainly portrayed as such at the highest level of the international development apparatus (Eyben & Savage, 2013). The next section provides a more in-depth examination of this phenomenon. The (Re)Emergence of South-South Cooperation South-South cooperation (SSC) refers to relationships of development exchange, assistance, and cooperation between Global South countries. According to the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation, SSC is ?guided by the principles of respect for national sovereignty, national ownership and independence, equality, non-conditionality, non-interference in domestic affairs and mutual benefit? (UNOSSC, 2019). Contemporary SSC is a complex phenomenon with many actors involved and entails the reconfiguration of aid modalities, sectoral focus, and forms 34 of aid (Kragelund, 2019; Mawdsley, 2017). What is considered a ?Global South? country is also important to address. One way to conceive of the Global South is by the UN definition of what counts as a ?less-developed country,? which includes the lower 133 countries on the UN?s Human Development Index (Kragelund, 2019). However, the concept of Global South is rarely used without an implicit reference to the Global North, with coded meanings of a hierarchy where the Global North is superior. Indeed, North-South is often used as a proxy for rich-poor, developed- underdeveloped, First-Third World, and aid givers-recipients (Chisholm & Steiner- Khamsi, 2009). Academic scholarship on SSC generally characterizes it as an emerging form of development assistance since the 2000s, led by emerging donors such as China and India (Jules & Morais de S? e Silva, 2008). In truth, however, SSC relations have been ongoing in many parts of the world since the decolonization and Third World solidarity movements dating back to the 1950s (Kragelund, 2019; Morais de S? e Silva, 2009; Rist, 2014). From the 1950s to the 1970s in particular, former colonies advanced a ?third worldist? conception of development and social justice ?built around claims for a larger share of the world?s resources to be devoted to the poorest countries without compromising the latter?s sovereignty? (Cooper & Packard, 1997). In particular, building on dependency theory advanced by Latin American scholars, many Third World countries at this time pushed for a New International Economic Order that challenged the hegemony of the West in the global economy (Rist, 2014). Cheru (2016) divides the scholarly reactions to SSC into four camps: the alarmists, the sceptics, the critics of ?new imperialism,? and the pragmatic 35 cheerleaders. The tendency towards negative reactions in the literature speaks to the extent to which development studies are concerned with geopolitical interests, particularly the notion that Western hegemony in development is being contested by the rise of China (Yuan, 2019). Kragelund (2018) observes that the early literature on China-Africa cooperation ?is rich on examples of pre-established conclusions of the effects of the rejuvenation of China?s interest in development,? with claims that this new form of aid would support rogue states, corruption, and poor governance (p. 221). Macro-level debate over whether Western or Chinese model of development aid is better has also led to serious gaps in the SSC literature, both in terms of historical contextualization and geographical inclusion of cases beyond China-Africa relations (Kragelund, 2019). Many scholars view SSC as a unique chance for a paradigm shift in development. For example, Six (2009) argues: Precisely because China, India and other Southern donors act in an interest-oriented manner and, for historical reasons, cannot apply the same pseudo-emancipatory rhetoric as the Western development paradigm does, we should consider their rise as a unique chance for real progress towards serious partnership between the different states and societies involved in development efforts. (p. 1109) Such optimism is tempered by others who question whether the emerging donors truly constitute a paradigm shift. While indeed, the inclusion of more donors into the development landscape would increase the bargaining power of aid recipients because donors now have further competition among themselves, the volume of aid is still 36 dominated by the Western Development Assistance Committee (DAC) bloc. Furthermore, new SSC projects which are predominantly based on trade and expansion of foreign direct investment into private industries do not radically alter the Global South?s place in the global division of labor, since many countries of the Global South remain suppliers of raw materials (Kragelund, 2018, p. 222). Moreover, Carmody and Kragelund (2016) point out that Sino-African investment is itself embedded in a broader structure of Western/capitalist empire, with 15 percent of World Bank projects in Africa in 2005-2006 being taken up by Chinese firms. The key question here is to what extent SSC continues to be shaped by political and ideological aims, and how do these encounters manage the inherently unequal relationship between donors and recipients of aid (Morgan & Zheng, 2019; H. F. Siu & McGovern, 2017). Although less research has been done on Brazilian development aid to Mozambique and other Lusophone countries in Africa, similar concerns about donor interests and unequal power relations have been expressed (Ress, 2018; Taela, 2017). South-South Cooperation in Education SSC in education also has a long history which particularly flourished in the 1970s and 1980s. As Morais de S? e Silva (2009) reminds us, ?Paulo Freire himself assisted a number of countries in Africa, China attempted to lead an autonomous Third World bloc? and a battalion of Cuban teachers was sent to the newly independent socialist countries in Portuguese-speaking Africa? (p. 39). In this period, SSC was conceived as a means to raise the voices of the Global South and increase 37 their self-reliance and independence from the West. Many of these SSC initiatives disappeared in the 1980s and 1990s, when economic and political crises around the world, and the consequential Structural Adjustment Programs, forced most countries to focus on their own domestic issues. However, since 1999, SSC in education has made a return with the establishment of the World Bank?s Global Development Network. The important shift is that unlike the emphasis on self-reliance and solidarity in the old phase, contemporary SSC emphasizes technical lesson-drawing and the transfer of best practices (Chisholm & Steiner-Khamsi, 2009). It is also more often a triangular form of North-South-South transfer, in which donors from the Global North offer financial, technological, and other resources to support programs designed by the Global South (Steiner-Khamsi, 2009). For the development mainstream, the justification for SSC in education is as follows: Policy transfer can be seen as a response to critics who have blamed international cooperation projects for not being people-centered and being disconnected from people?s realities. Thus, SSC could be the way forward, as cooperating countries are believed to have more similar realities and tend to develop more horizontal relations. Additionally, the assumption that SSC tends to be neutral and free from imperialistic motives bring political approval to it. At the end of the day, it is an appealing and ?politically correct? modality of international development cooperation. (Morais de S? e Silva, 2009, p. 49) 38 Most contemporary SSCs in education happen in the higher education sector through activities such as scholarships, language training, research cooperation, and establishment of international universities (Holmarsdottir et al., 2013; Ress, 2019; Yuan, 2019). It is suggested that Global South donors view higher education assistance as more technical and less intrusive on the aid recipient?s sovereignty (Mochizuki, 2009). Nevertheless, SSC in higher education has been consistently problematized in the literature for reproducing an unequal aid donor-recipient relationship (Gillespie, 2009; Ress, 2018; Soudien, 2009). Outside of higher education, there are also examples of SSCs that are policy transfer of low-cost educational innovations at the primary education level, such as Bangladesh?s BRAC (Chabbott, 2009), Brazil?s Alfasol literacy program (Morais de S? e Silva, 2005), and Colombia?s Escuela Nueva (Tarlau, 2017). Previous research on these SSCs has critically unpacked persistent issues and unequal relations of power behind the nice rhetoric of cooperation, partnership, and solidarity. For example, Morais de S? e Silva (2005) argues that the transfer of Brazil?s Alfasol literacy program to Mozambique was a ?package delivery? that was not adapted to the Mozambican multilingual contexts, nor did it incorporate their already-existing expertise in adult literacy education. With the case of BRAC, Chabbott (2009) points out that while Global North aid agencies always highlight the ?easily? transferrable low-cost structure of BRAC schools to potential ?borrowers? of the model, they never emphasize the strong management structure that the NGO has put in place in order to ensure success. Similarly, my study on the policy transfer of Escuela Nueva to Vietnam and the Philippines describes the centrality of Western players in the project 39 and the lack of contextualization or the true ownership of teachers on the ground (Le, 2018). It reflects a reality that while many consider SSC to be a desirable alternative to Western international development aid, contemporary SSC is still very much rooted in a North-South-South dynamic, where ostensibly South-South initiatives continue to be backed by funding and technical expertise delivered by the Global North (Steiner-Khamsi, 2009). What has been less discussed in mainstream SSC in education efforts is socialist-inspired examples of exchange. The prime example would be the huge influence that Cuba has had over the years in postcolonial and (post)socialist developing contexts. Hickling-Hudson et al.?s (2012) edited volume reveals how Cuba has maintained a strong cooperation network with countries from Africa and Latin America through the provision of scholarships to study in Cuba or through sending Cuban educators (and healthcare workers) abroad for capacity building. A particular area of strength is in the spread of the Yo, Si Puedo adult literacy program to 29 countries around the world, helping more than six million people in the Global South to acquire basic literacy (Boughton & Durnan, 2014). Cuba?s experience with SSC is often praised for providing a postcolonial approach to educational development (Hickling-Hudson et al., 2012). In particular, what differentiates Cuba?s form of international assistance from the Western development aid model is the way such partnership is designed to promote mutual benefits, ensure equality of participants in the negotiation and implementation process, and adaptation to the specific needs and resources of each partner country. In cases of countries severely lacking in resources, such as Haiti, 40 Cuba provides its assistance free of charge. Cuba does not impose aid conditionalities on other countries, and particularly not to pursue the ideological goal of drawing more participants into the web of economic globalization (Hickling-Hudson et al., 2012). As Corona Gonzalez et al. (2012) argues: The continued application of solidarity principles in Cuba's foreign trade relations means that partner countries agree to exchange assistance based not on the ?laws? of the market (profits, competition, protection of intellectual property rights), but on cooperation for mutual support. (p. 66) Thus, embedded within Cuba?s international assistance is the explicit critique of capitalism, inequalities, exploitation, and dependency that are promoted by Western development. The principle of solidarity in Cuban internationalism today is a legacy of the large network of socialist aid and transnational connection in the 20th century, which is only beginning to receive academic attention again (Slobodian, 2015). This network provided the grounding for numerous cases of education assistance in the socialist world, particularly through the provision of scholarships for students to study in the Soviet Union, East Germany, Cuba, and certain Eastern European countries. Another common example was the building of boarding schools in socialist Europe for children from postcolonial countries such as Namibia, Tanzania, or Mozambique (Weis, 2011; see also case studies in Slobodian, 2015). Official discourses often portrayed these initiatives as ?socialist assistance? as an explicit contrast to Western ?development aid.? For example, in East Germany discourse, ?development aid? was 41 considered as ?nothing more than a capitalist smokescreen and one of the central means for achieving the social, economic, military, strategic, and foreign policy goals of neo-colonialism? (Weis, 2011, p. 356). In contrast, ?socialist assistance? is based on solidarity, meaning the willingness and commitment to help and sacrifice for each other, not based on the sense of helping the less fortunate Other but rather the moral imperative to assume one?s responsibility to a global community (Schwenkel, 2015; Weis, 2011). Nevertheless, empirical studies of cross-cultural socialist relations have always found frictions. You might recall Professor Le?s narrative in the introduction. The ambiguities and segregation that Professor Le experienced is largely echoed in other research examining the lived experience of these socialist assistance projects. For example, East German development experts working on an urban reconstruction project in Vietnam were not allowed to visit their Vietnamese colleagues? homes, and all contact between foreigners and nationals were carefully monitored by the party- state (Schwenkel, 2015). In another example, while solidarity and anti-colonial struggles were an important part of the socialist school curriculum, Weis (2011) found that children in East Germany were much more likely to write a letter to Nelson Mandela than to their classmates from Africa. For these children, and arguably for the broader society, Africans lived more as ?moral constructs? than real human beings, and the scholar framed this as the problem of ?emphasizing the solidarity between peoples at the cost of the solidarity between people? (p. 366). Slobodian (2015) brought an explicit racial lens to common discourses of ?socialist internationalism? and found that despite socialism?s self-portrayal as an anticolonial 42 world where racism was absent, visual representation reproduced the many exaggerated and offensive stereotypical depictions of people of color, while foregrounding the role of the whites. Issues of racism and xenophobia circulated in many of these socialist solidarity exchanges. Anthropologies of contemporary South-South development encounters have also found racial tension in actual everyday practice, disrupting the official rhetoric of ?solidarity? and ?shared interests? that frame most SSC interventions (DeHart, 2012; Ress, 2018; Siu & McGovern, 2017). For example, DeHart?s (2012) study of Chinese development in Costa Rica found that this case of SSC continues to reproduce a racialized hierarchy of developmental difference. While Chinese workers in Costa Rica became ?emblematic of the promise of efficient capitalist production and high- tech, world-class products,? they also became racialized as compliant, efficient, and obedient labor who would do the manual grunt work that Costa Ricans would not stoop to doing (p. 1372). In the reverse direction, many Chinese migrants and entrepreneurs engage in anti-black discrimination and racialize Africans through common racist tropes of laziness, stupidity, and backwardness (Sheridan, 2017). African migrants to China are also subjected to pejorative discourses about their lack of suzhi, or quality as a human, that contribute to urban segregation and exclusion (Wilczak, 2018). In studies of China-Africa and India-Africa educational exchanges, Gillespie (2009) and Soudien (2009) reaffirm the everyday realities of racism, racial hostility, and xenophobia lying beneath the positive connotations of exchange and partnership in SSC. Ress? (2019) study also documents the complexities of racialization that 43 African international students in Brazil undergo in ways that reproduce their marginalization despite the rhetoric of postcolonial solidarity. These studies point to Chisholm?s (2009) call that, ?South-South relations need to grapple with the very same issues that North-South relations have to confront: inequalities of power, wealth, and racism? (p. 10). The South African scholar expanded that there is nothing inherently wrong with concepts and practices of aid and SSC, but, what renders them problematic is the inequality at the heart of the relationship. Concepts such as ?partnership? and ?ownership? simply serve to ?obscure the structured roles that perpetuate inequalities? insofar as they do not acknowledge the inequalities inherent in the relationship. (p. 7) This highlights the need for in-depth scholarship into SSC without falling prey to the impulse to romanticize the Global South, which will serve to uncover the possibilities for anticolonial solidarity and resistance. 44 Chapter 3. Conceptual Framework: The Coloniality of Race in Development Overview Vietnamese-Mozambican development exchanges can be seen as a double encounter. On the one hand, it is a South-South encounter rooted in commitments to anti-imperial solidarity. On the other hand, it is also an Asian-Black encounter in a ?contact zone,? conceptualized by Mary Louise Pratt (2008) as ?social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination? (p. 4). I argue that these encounters at the contact zone inevitably bear the weight of global racial imaginaries (Christian, 2019; Wekker, 2016). The racial dimension is especially reinforced by the international development aid apparatus, which continues to carry implicit hierarchies regarding who can count as developed and who continue to be the ?backward Other? (Ferguson, 2006; Kothari, 2006). Thus, this research examines racism and racialization in South-South development cooperation through the lived experience of Vietnamese development experts in Mozambique. It does so through a conceptual framework that views racism as the social grammar of development.10 In using ?grammar? as a framing device, I want to draw attention to the following aspects of grammar and how it can illuminate the working of race, racism, and racialization: 10 This is inspired by other scholars who have used the same framing of race as a social grammar to analyze lived experience in the U.S. (Spillers, 1987; Wilderson III, 2010) and the Netherlands (Wekker, 2016). These scholars? usage of grammar, however, was more of a discursive technique without going in-depth into the mechanisms of ?grammar? as a system of rules. 45 ? First, grammar is a system of rules ordering our experience and our world. Mastering grammar is one fundamental aspect of being considered a good subject. It can be assumed that most people sharing a language or living in a shared social context know of its grammar. ? Second, while grammar is pervasive, one hardly ever sees it or recognizes that it is working. Grammar is not spoken and rarely made visible. Grammar recedes into the background as an invisible ruling hand. ? Third, grammar often only becomes visible once it is transgressed, and the effect is correction and disciplining of the transgressor. ? Fourth, grammatical rules shift with time, but at any given point, they will seem iron-like, essential, and absolute. ? Fifth, much energy is invested in maintaining current grammatical rules. ? Sixth, grammar is not deterministic. One system of grammar can underlie unlimited configurations and possibilities of expression?so long as they still fall within the boundary of allowance. All these properties apply to the working of racism, particularly its dual pervasiveness and invisibility. Indeed, in international development, race is both ubiquitous in everyday experience and made taboo in discussion of development aid (Crewe & Fernando, 2006; Lough & Carter-Black, 2015). This chapter begins to unveil the multiple ways in which development is racist?in other words, how racism functions as part of the grammar of development. First, I engage with issues surrounding the conceptualization of race, racism, and racialization, especially in a 46 global context. Next, I will discuss how development is racist in its structure, narratives, and everyday experience. The final part of the chapter makes the case for studying the ?experts? due to their central position interfacing with both the discourses and structures as well as the social relations of development aid. Conceptualizing Race It is important to acknowledge that attempts to define and circumscribe race, and consequently racism, have always been themselves acts of power. Particular definitions of race and racism become a major part of the language of social contestation around equality, equity, domination, oppression, marginalization, and social justice. Recognizing that, this study uses the following broad conceptualization of race as: a constructed category of difference, where phenotypical, cultural, linguistic, and/or other specific characteristics are ascribed to designated groups; these groups are accordingly rendered the subjects of systemic and sustained discriminatory ideas and practices. (Bakan & Dua, 2014, p. 6) There are three important things to highlight in this definition. First, race is constructed, meaning that there is nothing essentially different about the biology of humans that justify the division of humanity into multiple races, which is supported by studies that demonstrate how there is more difference within races rather than between races (Back & Solomos, 2000; Goldberg, 2009; Omi & Winant, 2014; Silva, 2007). The social construction of race also means that manifestations of racism are 47 always changing in accordance with different historical, economic, and sociopolitical contexts (Hall, 1980). Omi and Winant (2014) describes this through the lens of ?racial formation,? or the socio-historical process through which racial meanings and categories are constantly (re)produced and contested in the social struggle to define how societies should be organized, ruled, and represented (see also Silva, 2007). Second, race is ascribed to people, pointing to the inseparable nature of race and the process of racialization which attaches certain racial meanings and preconceived judgment about superiority or inferiority to specific bodies (Weiner, 2012). These preconceived notions about superiority/inferiority leads to the third important point to note: racism is not just a discursive phenomenon but has material dimensions of subjecting racialized beings to systemic domination, discrimination, marginalization, and/or oppression (Hall, 1980; Harris, 1993). As noted by Back and Solomos (2000), a feature of contemporary racism is that ?manifestations of race are coded in a language that aims to circumvent accusations of racism? (p. 20). This is achieved by the essentialization of biological racism based on phenotypical differences as the only form of racism in everyday discourses. This narrow conceptualization of racism allows for arguments that racism is obsolete because it has been debunked by science. Interestingly, this is a perspective taken both by liberal scholars who feel the moral imperative to declare the ?end of racism,? as well as the advocates of ?color-blind? society.11 This has led to 11 It is important to acknowledge the role of international organizations in reifying this idea that race is at root a biological concept and that its legitimacy should be decided by biologists. Bernasconi (2012) points to the UNESCO Statement on Race of 1950 as establishing the dominant way of combating racism: first, to assign race to the body and thus to biology, and consequently to argue that because biologists deny race, there is no rational or legitimate basis for racism. As Bernasconi (2012) argues, ?One consequence of the UNESCO strategy is that it makes racism not so much a moral failing or a 48 what many describe as an impasse in mainstream thought about contemporary racism and racialization, where scholars are unable to see the embeddedness but also continually changing manifestations of racism in different historical and social contexts (Bernasconi, 2012; Grosfoguel, 2016; Silva, 2007). In particular, the transformation of biological racism into cultural statements (e.g. culture of poverty discourses) has been allowed to go unchecked (Omi & Winant, 2014; Silva, 2007). Confusion around race and racism is a particular issue when trying to locate it within a global framework (Christian, 2019; Grosfoguel, 2016; Weiner, 2012). Grosfoguel et al. (2015) argue: On many occasions, we confuse the specific social form of marking racism in one region of the world with what is taken to be as the exclusive form or universal definition of racism? This leads us to the false conclusion that racism does not exist in other parts of the world if the form of marking racism in one particular region or country does not coincide with the ?common-sense? way of marking it in our own country. (pp. 636-637) As a consequence, Grosfoguel et al. (2015) presents a more expansive framework of racism as a dividing line of superiority and inferiority. In their words, ?Racism is a global hierarchy of human superiority and inferiority, politically, culturally and economically produced and reproduced for centuries by the institutions of the ?capitalist/patriarchal western-centric/Christian-centric modern/colonial world- political tool as an epistemological error? tended to ignore or downplay systemic or structural racism? (p. 211). 49 system?? (p. 636). Different contexts and their own particular colonial histories would produce different racial projects, with racism manifesting through diverse markers such as color, ethnicity, language, culture, or religion (Omi & Winant, 2014; Weiner, 2012). The particular ways that racism manifest also continually morph and shift, avoiding easy designation as an expression of racism. Duster (2001) compares race to water to describe its morphing properties: Race, like H2O, can take many forms, but unlike H2O, it can transform itself in a nanosecond. It takes time for ice to boil or for vapor to condense and freeze, but race can be simultaneously Janus- faced and multi-face(et)ed - and also produce a singularly dominant social hierarchy. Indeed, if we make the fundamental mistake of reifying any one of those states as more real than another, we will lose basic insights into the nature and character of racial stratification? (p. 115) This also connects to the argument that Black feminist scholars have made regarding intersectionality of systems of oppression (Collins & Bilge, 2016; Crenshaw, 1991). The particular experience of racism differs based on each person?s simultaneous positionalities on other axes of difference: gender, class, sexuality, ability, language, nationality, etc. In order to understand domination/privilege and oppression, it is not enough to only focus on one particular axis of difference; rather, ?these grammars of difference co-construct each other? (Wekker, 2016, p. 22). Again, this points to the importance of careful engagement with the historical specificities of each racial manifestation as an articulation of multiple dynamics (Hall, 1980). This 50 includes locating racism within a particular material political economy, meaning the specific relations of production and exploitation. For example, with this project, it has to do with the increasing investment of Vietnamese entrepreneurs in Africa and the dominance of a Vietnamese telecommunications corporation backed by the military in Mozambique and Angola. It also brings up an interesting dimension of how to view the development of Asian-Black racial antagonism in a relationship that was previously grounded in non-capitalist, socialist ideology of solidarity. In addition to the material dimension, Grosfoguel et al. (2015) argue that racism must also be located within the particular history of colonial relations, both past and present. This ties in with what Latin American scholars have pointed out as the phenomenon of ?coloniality,? which names the continuation of colonial imaginaries and practices of exploitation and governance throughout the world even after former colonies gain independence (Mignolo, 2011; Quijano, 2000). To situate contemporary global workings of racism in the ?colonial histories of empire,? as Grosfoguel et al. (2015) put it, necessitates an engagement with international development?the apparatus that is arguably the modern expression of empires. Entanglement of Coloniality, Racism, Education, and Development In discussing the scholarship on racism, it is important to note: Almost without exception, scholars have focused on antiblack racism to the exclusion of other possible forms of racism, and the scholarly consensus tends to be that this form of racism took shape over the 51 course of the modern period in parallel to the growth of the institution of [Africans?] slavery. (Smith, 2015, p. 29) Without de-emphasizing the disastrous violence of the transatlantic slave trade to the lives of innumerable people and its role in laying the foundation of contemporary society today, scholars have begun to complicate the relationship between the slave trade and the emergence of the contemporary form of racism as we know it (Silva, 2007; Smith, 2015; Wynter, 2003). As Smith (2015) argues, [T]he Portuguese slave traders who had plied the coast of West Africa a few centuries earlier had by no means conceived of their activity as a radical break with past practices. Somehow, between the 1500s and [1787], modern slavery in the Atlantic world had come to be seen as fundamentally racial, as grounded in racial difference rather than simply rationalized post hoc in terms of it. (p. 6) Colonial relations of power and capitalist exploitation were major enablers, but the emergence of contemporary racism also required an onto-epistemological revolution in Western Europe (Pratt, 2008; Silva, 2007; Wynter, 2003). Pre-capitalist expression of racism in the sense of xenophobia and hostility certainly existed not just in the West but also in historical Asia-Africa encounters (Kowner & Demel, 2013; Siu & McGovern, 2017; Smith, 2015). However, what is distinctive about racism as emerged from Western colonialism and imperialism is the establishment of race as a global taxonomy of human beings, largely tracing the wider attempts to classify and categorize the entirety of the natural world under the rise of the natural sciences (Pratt, 2008; Silva, 2007; Wynter, 2003). Also influenced by this shift in Western 52 ontology, contemporary racism is marked by a veneer of scientific rigor through scientific fields such as natural history, biology, and anthropology, despite its quick collapse under any closer scrutiny of the empirical evidence (Goldberg, 2009; Smith, 2015). Why was this project of creating a global racial taxonomy of the human so essential that so much of the knowledge production apparatus in the West was contributing to it, as Silva (2007) and Pratt (2008) have demonstrated? Silva (2007) argues that the function of this production of the racially subjugated subject was to elevate and protect the figure of the (Western) Man as a rational, self-determined subject, who must be distinguished from the Other whose minds are still subjected to their ?state of nature? conditions, not far removed from animals at all. As Sylvia Wynter (2003) expressed, this then was the founding modern ontological statement lying at the root of the production of the racial. What it produced was a hierarchy of humanity, ?one in which the ?Negro? had to be, imperatively, at the bottom? (p. 309). As many scholars in postcolonial/decolonial studies and critical race and ethnic studies have noted, this hierarchy rooted in colonialism has largely remained intact to this day, even if it is dressed in new expressions such as cultural difference or a ?development-underdevelopment? gap (Bakan & Dua, 2014; Bernasconi, 2012; Grosfoguel, 2016; Lowe, 2015; Quijano, 2000; Silva, 2007; Stein & Andreotti, 2018; Wynter, 2003). This coloniality of race belongs to what Edward Said (1993) described as the cultural archive of colonialism which established a new horizon of imagination as follows: 53 There was virtual unanimity that subject races should be ruled, that there are subject races, that one race deserves and has consistently earned the right to be considered the race whose main mission is to expand beyond its own domain. (pp. 52?53) This cultural archive was built up by the cultural political economy of colonialism, but also intimately tied to processes of the modern knowledge production apparatus. This points to the intimate connection between racial formation and modernist sciences, research expertise, and rationality. Hence it is important to investigate development?s complicity with reproducing racial formation on a global scale in today?s age, especially given its ties to science, expertise, and Western modernity (Escobar, 1995; Mitchell, 2002). Education is a particularly apt area to explore these dynamics. Of all the different sectors of development, education seems to be the one that most embodies the grandiose spirit of development in the sense of continual learning, growth, and aspiration towards something greater and absolute. Embedded in the dominant model of education is the hierarchy of people who have mastered knowledge (the teacher) and those who are ignorant (the student), just like the development apparatus? hierarchy of the expert and the local. Modern education at its core is also a political project to shape the present and future of the entire population of a society; state and non-state actors invest so much into education because of the assumption that education is one of the best tools to achieve development, progress, social mobility, and advancement towards Western modernity (Kaplan, 2006). Of course, as Anibal Quijano (2000) and Walter Mignolo (2011) point out, the underside of this quest for 54 modernity is coloniality. To accept the dreams of modernization and development embedded in education is to adopt the worldview that some human beings (and their cultures) are ?backward? while others are ?advanced,? reproducing the colonial logic of governance that uses the global racial taxonomy to divide humanity (Grosfoguel, 2016). Yet with very few exceptions, race as a lens has been largely absent from the literature on international development (Kothari, 2006; Loftsd?ttir, 2009). In studies of SSC in education as well, with the exception of Susanne Ress?s (2019) recent work on Brazil?s new international university UNILAB, race has not often been used as a central analytic. Where race shows up in the SSC in education scholarship is in various findings of xenophobia, hostility, and racial discrimination that African students experience in Brazil (Ress, 2019), China (Gillespie, 2009), and India (Soudien, 2009). However, these experiences of racism never become the central focus of the study. Noticing similar trends in the development literature as a whole where instances of racism are always discussed as marginal to the main text, Benton (2016) asks what it means when race always become bracketed from the main conclusion of the study, or in other words, ?Race is noteworthy but not a central concern? (p. 4). The utter unwillingness to address race in development does not mean that racism is not operating. Below, I address some mechanisms of racism in development in terms of development?s overarching structure, its common narratives, and the everyday experience of the development aid industry. 55 Structures of Development Development aid always already encodes a relationship of superiority and inferiority. As the previous chapter noted, the assumed superiority of the West/North is interwoven throughout the rise of institutionalized development. The predominant power structure in the normative development aid model is one where the development experts from the West/North ?enjoy a greater capacity to affect others in ways that reproduce structural power? while enjoying greater resilience against things that would ?challenge their prior understandings, including understanding of self and their relations with others? (Jakimow, 2022, p. 617). It is manifested for example through their capacity to represent most of humanity through the lens of poverty and underdevelopment, the hegemony of Western epistemologies in evaluating what works and what are best practices, or their usage of selective metrics of progress that would inevitably show that the West is more advanced (Escobar, 1995; Rist, 2014; Sabaratnam, 2017). In many ways, the international development apparatus continues to carry these implicit hierarchies of who count as developed and who continue to be the backward Other that needs paternalistic intervention (Ferguson, 2006; Kothari, 2006; Mohanty, 2003). Liberal racism is encoded into these discourses and aspirations of progress. Liberal racism means a belief that people can still be ?improved? despite their inferiority, as long as they adopt the values and habits of the West (Silva, 2007; Smith, 2015). This is certainly what education development assistance promises. However, at the heart of liberal racism is the ongoing perception of social groups divided into different positions on a hierarchy of superiority-inferiority. 56 Furthermore, as Lisa Lowe (2015) and many other critical theory scholars remind us, the end goal of being ?developed? and its promise of universal progress depends on only a selected few being included into the framework of modern liberalism, while other subjects, practices, and geographies continue to be relegated as not fully human. In other words, development always requires its Other (Ferguson, 2006; Mohanty, 2003; Puar, 2017). Anthropology of development has shown how development projects are typically associated with the rise of violent authoritarianism, land grab, gentrification, and more invasive control of the population in the name of ?security? (Springer, 2015; Tsing, 2005). The pursuit of liberal universality always entails the violent working of intersecting systems of capitalism, patriarchy, racism, heterosexism, and ableism. To return to Sylvia Wynter?s (2003) argument, the most critical issue with our contemporary world is that the white Western form of Man still stands as the singular standard of what a human being should be, and its elevation requires the subjugation of all others. Racism in development also manifests in coded assumptions surrounding expertise and who can be the ?expert.? This speaks to the epistemic racism at the core of development. Epistemic racism refers to the assumption that dominant Western ontologies and epistemologies are a priori taken to be the most advanced and rational way to know the world, while other non-Western traditions are worthless (Cortina, 2019; Santos, 2014). There is also the assumption of the universal applicability of Western expertise (Kothari, 2006; Mitchell, 2002). Indeed, one idea at the core of modern education is arguably to work towards the eradication of ?traditional? ways of thinking and move instead to the universal model of Western scientific method 57 (Odora Hoppers, 2014). The modality of contemporary development assistance, whether North-South or South-South, is highly influenced by the Western modern scientific method and the value it places on objectivity, rationality, and distilling the world into simplified models with controlled variables to find the right technical solutions. However, as Mitchell (2002) finds in his study of development in Egypt, the work of experts when entering a new context of development always entailed: the reorganization of knowledge rather than an introduction of expertise where none had existed before? [T]he existing practice, like the old knowledge of irrigation, involved an expertise that was too widely dispersed to provide a means for building imperial power?or the profits of a Boston consulting firm. (p. 41) This also suggests the distinct political economy dimension of epistemic racism: it allows for the proliferation of a new, highly lucrative knowledge production apparatus in the Global North. This way of thinking that divides humanity into a hierarchy of racial superiority and inferiority continues to set out the rules of engagement for South- South development encounters. It is connected to the circulation of particular narratives and representations that again re-inscribe cultural-racial difference. Narratives of Development Chabbott (2003) notes that there is a certain ritualized performativity to international development work, where certain narratives are repeated until they become taken-for-granted truths. For example, one of the most often expressed 58 explanations of why children are out of school is that their traditional cultures do not value education. This kind of narrative is particularly prevalent surrounding the ?Third World girl? and the many obstacles she faces to getting an education: traditionally, girls are pushed into child marriage; traditionally, girls are not as valued as boys; traditionally, girls belong in the house; etc. Even when development research or project acknowledges additional explanations, ?culture? always rears its head as one of the things to blame. Other common culturalist diagnoses of education issues include: Cambodia?s system is characterized as having an issue with a traditional culture of violence (Springer, 2009), or Vietnam?s education is troubled by a traditional culture of teacher dominance in the classroom (Nguyen et al., 2012). The entire continent of Africa is often brushed by an essentialized framing of a ?dark? continent with stereotypical representations of failed states, violence, insecurity, ethnic conflicts, HIV/AIDs, diseases, poverty, and corruption. This is often explained by traditional and backward cultures, lack of appreciation for the importance of education, laziness, etc. (Ferguson, 2006). Even as development aid is poured into Africa, these interventions are still rooted in assumptions about people in Africa as backward and in need of help from the White?and perhaps now Asian? ?saviors? to move towards progress (Lumumba-Kasongo, 2011; Razack, 2004). As Kothari (2006) argues, culturalist explanations of lack of development or development failures also affect which solutions are proposed: The increasing tendency to understand the causes of underdevelopment as wholly embedded within societies, rather than as a consequence of their historical and contemporary relations with the 59 west, has led to the proliferation of studies on, for example, interethnic conflict, corruption and poor governance. More specifically, there has been a racialization of discussions on HIV/AIDS that attribute to Africans a kind of sexual promiscuity and irresponsibility that is assumed not to be true of the west. (p. 16) Indeed, much scholarship has discussed how discursive representations of problems in education and development contribute to the proposal of ideological recommendations, particularly neoliberal solutions such as privatization or decentralization (Le, 2019; Srivastava, 2010; Tarlau & Moeller, 2019). These culturalist explanations of poverty and underdevelopment are contemporary manifestations of racism in post- and neocolonial contexts (Bakan & Dua, 2014; Escobar, 1995; Sriprakash et al., 2019). For example, the discursive creation of the average ?Third World woman/girl? is a racist discourse that reproduces the colonial White patriarchy as articulated by Spivak, ?white men are saving brown women from brown men? (Spivak, 1988).12 However, these hegemonic narratives in development are marked by racial aphasia, or a calculated forgetting of race (Crewe & Fernando, 2006; Kothari, 2006). As Kothari (2006) critiques, the race-neutral vocabulary of development allows for a situation where ?proliferating and ever- changing development terminologies and the imperative to focus on policy formulation, project implementation and techniques shapes avelopmental frame that bypasses and depoliticizes structural conditions of inequality, including ?race?? 12 See the following literature for further decolonial critique of gender and education discourses: Mohanty (2003), Khoja-Moolji (2018), and Chilisa and Ntseane (2010). 60 (p. 17). The side-stepping of ?race? functions as a move to innocence by contemporary, mostly White, development practitioners to absolve themselves from the legacy of colonialism and racism and justify their ongoing intervention in these contexts. Everyday Encounters of Development Racism in the development literature has often been discussed at the discursive and structural level, tying it to the coloniality of aid as discussed above (Benton, 2016; Kothari, 2006). Benton (2016) critiques this literature for failing to name explicitly the racialized practices that happen at the everyday level of development aid. In particular, development studies are often too focused on the impact and outcome of development interventions and consequently forgets that this, too, is a ?contact zone? between different cultures (Pratt, 2008). As such, it cannot escape the tensions that are bound to appear when one suddenly encounters the Other: tensions of hostility, xenophobia, and racism. The emerging trend of qualitative and particularly ethnographic scholarship into ?Aidland??the world of development workers?has shown that everyday aid encounters are quite problematic and full of embedded inequalities (Mosse, 2011). Hierarchies in terms of North-South relationships, gender, and biopolitics have been acknowledged (Fassin, 2007). It also manifests in the professional ladder in development where, even though 90 percent of those working in development are national staff, most leadership positions are filled by (mainly white) expats (Crewe & Fernando, 2006). Roth?s (2019) research on development practitioners found that 61 several national staffs in her study started out as drivers or translators, despite having university degrees and considerable job experience, before they could move into programming or management positions. The unequal system of remuneration and benefits between international and national staff, as well as between INGOs, local NGOs, international volunteers and local volunteers, has been widely acknowledged (Appleby, 2010; Chabbott, 2009). The life of development practitioners is also highly segregated, with expats often able to lead a highly mobile ?astronaut? lifestyle in development enclaves, with expensive accommodations and lifestyles, including parties and social gatherings, which are at odds with the developing context they are supposed to be in (Appleby, 2010; Kennedy, 2005; Mosse, 2011). Apthorpe (2005) coined the term of Aidland by drawing inspiration from Alice in Wonderland to argue, ?Stepping into Aidland is like stepping off one planet into another, a virtual another, not that this means that it is any less real to those who work in or depend on or are affected by it in other ways? (p. 1). In this scholarship, Benton (2016) notes that race has been epigraphic and epigrammatic, ?situated in a space peripheral or marginal to the main text, hovering over it in ways that make it easy to deny its centrality and significance? (p. 4). This does not mean that racism is not operative in development work. One of the most obvious and consistently noted manifestations is the preference for white development practitioners. For example, Lough & Carter-Black (2015) examines this racial dynamic through the case of international volunteers as another group of development aid ?givers.? They found that the aid recipients tended to prefer white volunteers because of the assumption that white experts would bring more resources, 62 knowledge, and expertise, while being more trustworthy than the ?corrupted? local volunteers. Similar findings of the preference for white practitioners have been found in Indonesia (Chung, 2019), Nicaragua (Goudge, 2003), Niger (Loftsd?ttir, 2009), Tanzania and Mozambique (Baaz, 2005). In practice, development is still often considered to be a project of the ?whites? (Loftsd?ttir, 2009). Even expatriates who are from the Global South working in headquarters of development agencies in the North are rarely recognized as capable development professionals (Crewe & Fernando, 2006). This raises the question once again of who can become an ?expert.? Crewe and Fernando (2006) give the anecdote of a manager working in a European donor agency commenting on his colleagues from the South: We have two research programmes managed by organisations in the South and they are both a disaster. I mean, it is nothing racial, it is just that they don?t work at that analytical level. We need a [White] expatriate for the conceptual thinking, then the local consultant can do more of the running around for you. (p. 45) As the authors argued, this manager was not expressing an explicit form of racism. However, his assumption about analytical thinking as something being done better by white development practitioners, as well as his denial of race, reproduced the colonial assumption that only white/Western people are capable of abstract universalizing thinking so associated with the dominant form of expertise in development. 63 Language racism also plays a role in reproducing hierarchies within development work (Roth, 2019). This can be manifested in the particular language skills that development professionals carry. As Roth (2019) argues: The emphasis on technical expertise devalues language skills of national staff which are taken for granted or othered, while it is legitimate?and necessary?for international staff to rely on translators and bi- or multilingual colleagues. (p. 43) Beyond language proficiency, development practitioners are also divided by their abilities to be conversant with the latest discourses and tools in international development: gender analysis, impact evaluation, the latest log frame, etc. These implicit norms offer hidden advantages to white expatriates from the Global North who usually have more educational and cultural capital to acquire this professional language and skills of development. Studying Racism Through the Expert To summarize, many in international development, whether scholars or practitioners, do acknowledge the coloniality of development, the power differentials involved, and the biased positionalities of the ?expert? (Mosse, 2011; Sabaratnam, 2017). However, with the exception of a very few, these hierarchies are rarely named explicitly as ?race? (Kothari, 2006; Loftsd?ttir, 2009; White, 2002). Race is a taboo in development studies so far, because as Crewe and Fernando (2006) argue, addressing this issue will necessitate a revolution of the entire development structure. 64 Even for those that name development as a racialized landscape, the critique so far has largely centered a white-black dichotomy, which allows South-South cooperation to sometimes emerge as the panacea for decolonization (Taela, 2017). There is a tendency to romanticize South-South cooperation, as if it will be able to fix many, if not all, of these unequal hierarchies in international development (Morais de S? e Silva, 2009). However, as emerging scholarship into actual South-South relations is starting to point out, contemporary South-South cooperation and development is still very much rooted in a North-South-South dynamic, where ostensibly South-South initiatives continue to be backed by funding and technical expertise delivered by the Global North (Steiner-Khamsi, 2009). Even the earlier forms of socialist South-South development trafficked in its own version of ?Red racism? (Law, 2012; Todorova, 2018). According to Todorova (2018), socialist state ideology relied on an ongoing system of distinct but equal biological races as well as a hierarchy of unequal ?nationalities? which racialized human subjects in the Soviet Empire and Central and Eastern Europe based on ?borrowed? racial and racist knowledges originating in the West. In particular, Todorova (2018) documents how Romani and Muslim women were marked by these socialist racial taxonomies for eradication and re-education, which involved ?boarding schools to uproot the children of colonialized mothers, dislocation of families and communities, eradication of local languages deemed unimportant and ?primitive,? erasure of entire cultural groups, and the unveiling and undressing of Muslim women? (p. 120). This all highlights the importance of explicitly naming racialized structures, discourses, and practices in South-South education development cooperation. I 65 propose to do so through studying the practitioners involved in development work themselves. As Kothari (2005) argues: ?Experts? embody the unequal relationship between the ?First? and ?Third? Worlds, and between donors and aid recipients, and exemplify the process through which development is located within institutionalized practices. (p. 426) Standing at a nexus that interfaces both with the discourses and structures of development and the social relations of aid, the expert offers a valuable perspective into the tensions and problems of development aid in all its dimensions. Indeed, the people who have named racism in development so far have often been those with practitioner experience themselves (Appleby, 2010; Benton, 2016; Crewe & Fernando, 2006; Eyben, 2014). This project in particular examines a relationship of South-South development exchange that has been little discussed in the literature, between two (post)socialist countries Vietnam and Mozambique, in order to discuss the racial grammar of Asian- Black relations beneath the rhetoric of solidarity. In so doing, it examines the coloniality of the structures and discourses of development aid while untangling the specificities of contemporary Asian-Black comparative racialization, both vis-?-vis each other as well as with the international development as a regime of whiteness. 66 Chapter 4. Methodology Research Questions How does the expert exchange program between Vietnam and Mozambique, a case of South-South cooperation, reproduce and/or resist the racial hierarchies embedded in development as a project of Western modernity? a) What stories do the Vietnamese development experts (chuy?n gia) who are working or had worked in Mozambique tell about their lived experience of this cooperation program? b) How are the experts? stories marked by race, racialization, and racism? c) What do the experts? stories reveal about the differences and similarities, if they exist, between this socialist-inspired South-South cooperation program and the typical Western development aid model? Methodology: Critical Narrative Inquiry This study embraces a critical narrative inquiry methodology that seeks to be explicitly anticolonial and antiracist (Swadener & Mutua, 2008). As the agenda of the study is to challenge the type of South-South development that continues to be racist and colonial in nature, the process of inquiry must also necessarily disrupt modernist, colonialist, and Western ways of knowing that underpin typical research endeavors. As such, critical narrative inquiry is chosen in order to center the voices and experiences of participants who have largely been voiceless, misheard, or actively silenced in Western academia. 67 Narrative inquiry methodology intentionally uses an extremely small sample (often 1-5 individuals) to explore in-depth the nuances of an individual?s lived experience through their own stories, which sheds light on their identities and how they see themselves within the world (Trahar & Yu, 2015). Among different qualitative methodologies, narrative inquiry emerged relatively recently in the 1980s. However, its immense growth in the past decades in wide ranging number of discipline?health, education, law, social work?signals a ?biographical? turn in the social sciences and the recognition that allowing practitioners to tell their stories can have a transformative impact on professional institutions and push for social change (Chamberlayne et al., 2000; Chase, 2018). In the emphasis on participants? lived experience, narrative inquiry has many commonalities with other qualitative methodologies such as ethnography, phenomenology, or case study. What makes narrative inquiry distinctive is the centrality of the lived experience in the form of narrative; in other words, narrative inquiry begins and ends with the participants? story as they tell it and interpret it (Chase, 2018; Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). Chase (2018) defines narrative as: A personal narrative is a distinct form of communication: It is meaning making through the shaping of experience; a way of understanding one?s own or others? actions; of organizing events, objects, feelings, or thoughts in relation to each other; of connecting and seeing the consequences of actions, events, feelings, or thoughts over time (in the past, present, and/or future). (p. 951) 68 Those who use narrative inquiry share the perspective that humans, individually and socially, lead storied lives. In the words of Clandinin and Connelly (2000): People shape their daily lives by stories of who they and others are and as they interpret their past in terms of their stories. Story, in the current idiom, is a portal through which a person enters the world and by which their experience of the world is interpreted and made personally meaningful. Narrative inquiry, the study of experience as story, then, is first and foremost a way of thinking about experience. To use narrative inquiry methodology is to adopt a particular view of experience as phenomenon under study. (p. 375) From these conceptualizations, it is clear that participants? process of meaning- making is also a crucial part of narrative inquiry. In other words, the interest is not just for the researcher to come to know about the experience, but also to understand how the people involved themselves make meaning of this experience. Narratives not only provide windows into the ways that storytellers view their social worlds; they also reveal the socially shared conventions and rules that shape what stories can be uttered and how they should be told (Gubrium & Holstein, 2008). As such, it is important to pay attention to the narrative environment, which is the social context of the storytelling process. Recent narrative inquiry research is also increasingly interested in the social life of narratives: How are they used? Who uses them? What is the effect on different audience? (Chase, 2018). 69 This is where the critical aspect of this study comes in: I will contextualize my participants? narratives within broader materialist and discursive relations of power. This aligns with what feminist and critical theories have pointed out as truth production as a form of power (Stone-Mediatore, 2003). In the act of re-narrating their lived experiences, participants are always engaging in a process of aligning their stories with broader narratives, frameworks, and discourses, where implicit racialized ideas and hierarchies exist (Gee, 2015). These are uncovered through the decisions they make about what to highlight in their stories, inclusion of certain ?plot? elements, ways of characterizing other people that they encounter, etc. The stories they tell must also be examined within a broader narrative context that includes spatial, temporal, social, cultural, political, and economic dimensions (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). This engaged analysis of both the content of the narratives and their situatedness within the social context can reveal the ways that racism functions as the social grammar of development work. Moreover, I also follow feminist scholars in arguing that the act of narration can transform lived experience into critical knowledge and political consciousness (Stone-Mediatore, 2003). Storytelling is a reflexive process and can urge the participants to make explicit everyday experience of discomfort and disagreement with the status quo. Just as the politics of knowledge production inevitably influence the storytelling process of my participants, they also are inherent in my own act of storytelling through the representation of participants? narratives in this research. In the next section, I make explicit my positionality as a scholar and my personal commitments with this work. 70 Positionality In a sense, I grew up next to Aidland. My childhood in the mid-1990s and early 2000s coincided with the period when Vietnam was just opening its door to (Western) foreign actors again and there was a flood of foreign aid and international NGOs into the country. My father sometimes took part-time work as an interpreter at development conferences, and my mother split her time between work at a government research center and an international NGO working on environment conservation. She was, in other words, part of the ubiquitous but less visible ?national staff? group within international development. My first professional experience was an internship in high school with this same environmental international NGO, where I worked on translating reports, policy briefs, and assisted with organizing conferences. Thus, from a young age, I had learned of the vocabulary of development: M&E, log frame, per diem, the Millennium Development Goals, and the notion that there is such a career as the ?expert.? Early exposure to the ?dark side? of development aid, as Kennedy (2005) frames it, actually made me quite unimpressed with international development, especially its highly unequal distribution of benefits and the large percentage of aid that actually goes back to experts, consultants, and companies based in the Global North. My undergraduate education at an extremely leftist liberal arts college in the U.S., Swarthmore College, where Edward Said?s Orientalism was an informal required reading for all students, further made me more passionate about critiquing the entire development project rather than actually join it. My research interests and core agenda as a scholar, from the undergraduate to Ph.D. level, all revolve around critiquing the undue influence of international aid agencies, as well as 71 Western paradigms as a whole, in education around the world. This is also one of the dimensions that frame the agenda of this dissertation. Yet in July 2018, I became the development ?expert? in a short action research project with an international NGO to examine their early childhood education and development projects in Cambodia. It was the most difficult month in my life, because it forced me to deal with the question: What happens when a subject of the Global South like me participates in the circuit/circus of international development? How am I reproducing the power dynamics inherent in development? All of the sudden, I was doing exactly the things I found most troubling about development: being shuttled around villages to produce some deterministic accounts of Cambodia, working under the assumption that I would provide coherent policy recommendations in a compressed time-frame, and receiving better remuneration and benefits than my interpreter who was more accurately my co-researcher. For example, I was ?paid?? through per diem?for my time off during the weekend, but she was not, even though she had to follow me around during these days of break as well. In one of the meetings, my supervisor said that through this project, he would like me to improve the research capacity of the organization?s local M&E staff and program officers. I visibly flinched as I looked at the Cambodian woman sitting across from me, who was much older, much more experienced at navigating the government-NGO landscape in Cambodia, and generally much more capable than me. Yet by virtue of my graduate education in the U.S., I was considered to be better than her at ?analytical thinking? and conducting ?research,? echoing what other scholars have found and named as racism in other studies (Crewe & Fernando, 2006). I left 72 Cambodia with a lot of dissonance and questions about the experience of other development practitioners from the Global South. I was used to orienting my critique of development against the West/Global North, but Cambodia taught me to recognize a need to turn the analytical lens to South-South relations themselves. In a parallel development in my life, my ?home??in the sense of where my parents live?had suddenly shifted to the African continent, as my father?s position as ambassador required us to move to South Africa and then to Mozambique. I first came to know of Vietnamese experts in Africa at tea parties and potlucks with their wives, mothers, and daughters. While the husbands would work in Mozambique and Angola, the rest of the family would move to Johannesburg in order to take advantage of the English-speaking education system. The Women?s Group, that was what we called ourselves, would marvel at having found each other so far from home, and so isolated from the rest of society. The only contact these Vietnamese women have had with non-white South Africans was them as hired help. Conversations more often than not turned to complaints about their maids: they were too slow, too lazy, they moved like sloths, they were unable to do even the simplest things. The term they used was not Africans or South Africans?it was explicitly ?Blacks.? One time, in a car, one woman looked outside the window and saw two Black men napping by the road in the middle of the afternoon, a typical sight in South Africa. She asked, ?Why are they just sleeping all the time? Why don?t they go find work?? She was probably voicing an internal question that all of us?even I, I must admit?had had at one time or another. I think she genuinely meant this as a question and not a censure, a question derived from the unbridgeable chasm between her and 73 the Other that precluded any sense of understanding. In this particular ?contact zone,? with and without actual contact, it was all too easy to pull on images from the media of Blacks as lazy, unskilled, and responsible for their own joblessness. The stories about ?Africa? uttered in these Vietnamese enclaves perform the same old script of a supposed incomprehensibility about the underdevelopment of Africa, even though the underlying implicit explanation for most people has always been ?race? (Ferguson, 2006; Mbembe, 2017). In the Vietnamese imaginary, Africa continues to be the ?dark continent? associated with various lacking, associated with diseases, malnutrition, extreme poverty, lack of education, crime, conflict, violence, statelessness, etc. (V? ??c Li?m, 2018). On a more daily, micro level of human encounters, Africans? namely Blacks?were stereotyped as slow, lazy, slothful, unable to do their jobs as well as the Vietnamese would do. It is interesting how these comments also seem to draw on the global racial stereotypes of the Asian woman who is nimble, fast, efficient, obedient (Bui, 2015; Chen, 2012). The juxtaposition of the Asians and the Blacks in this sense of slow versus efficient workers calls up a ranking of their liveliness, which Mel Chen (2012) argues to be a technique of dehumanization. It is from these personal encounters that I cannot help but view all encounters of South-South cooperation and solidarity with skepticism, which I recognize as one of my biases. When the thrust of modernization and development that lies at the foundation of South-South cooperation is still rooted in colonial logic (Escobar, 1995; Ferguson, 2006; Kothari, 2006; Tlostanova & Mignolo, 2009), can any development initiatives be detached from racism? I think development will always be a double story: a story of the collaborative ?will to improve? (Li, 2007), but also a story of 74 dissonance and discontent with the structures of development. As a result, I want to examine the ways in which these South-South development projects continue to engage in bordering and boundary-making, in reconstituting the face of the absolutely alien Other who cannot belong to the same humanity. The reason that I want to do this work is because I choose to commit to a vision of a radically alternative world, one that necessarily requires social movements that dismantle all interlocking systems of oppression. I bear gratitude to Black women intellectuals like Audre Lorde and Angela Davis who have insisted that all of our struggles all over the world are interconnected, and I also bear gratitude to transnational feminists like Chandra Mohanty who have argued against a false ?global sisterhood? model of solidarity. I believe in a feminist solidarity politics that thrives on the wealth of our differences, and I believe in the power of transnational social movements, but for that to be truly anti-imperial, anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal, and anti-racist, I think there is a need for an acknowledgment of our mutual complicity with power over and against others (Hong, 2015). The mere inclusion of subjects from the Global South like me in development, or in any global encounters, cannot be taken to mean that all is well. But crucially, I also want to ask: What emerges in these cross-cultural encounters that can serve as foundation for alternative ways of relating across differences? Through these local cosmopolitan encounters, what are the possibilities for human connections as we try to reach across the divide? Drawing inspiration from women of color feminism, I want to look at these ?emergent? racial formations with not just despair but also critical hope. This does not mean a na?ve buying into South- 75 South cooperation as a radical solution, but rather to see South-South relations still as a ground of promise where a true global solidarity may be cultivated. Participants This study focuses on the lived experience of six Vietnamese development ?experts? (chuy?n gia) who have worked in Mozambique on educational projects at different points between the 1980s and present. This allows for a temporal comparison of how socialist (pre-1990s) and post-socialist (roughly 1990s-present) rhetoric and practice of cooperation differently influence their experience and practice. The six Vietnamese development experts include four education experts as well as two health experts for comparative purposes. Four are still active, while the other two experts had finished their assignments and transitioned to other jobs in Vietnam and Mozambique. One expert previously worked in Mozambique but then transitioned to Angola. In addition to these six participations, another education expert who worked in the 1980s allowed me to use their writings from an unpublished memoir as another narrative source. Due to COVID-19 challenges, I could not interview this person and therefore did not include them as a participant; however, their narrative embedded in the memoir formed a significant part of my data. The six participants were purposefully sampled in order to get a diversity of voices about gender, age, social class, hometown, educational background, family composition, other characteristics that can influence their experience, as well as the type of projects they were engaged in in Mozambique. Several of these participants were also specially invited because they occupied key social positions in the 76 Vietnamese expert community. As such, I knew they were ?information rich cases? from whom I could gather a lot of stories of central importance to the study (Cook & Dixson, 2013, p. 1245). This purposeful sampling is not meant to support claims about representation or validity of the study; rather, I simply want to capture different voices and stories. The narratives of these six Vietnamese experts were not only gathered from them through in-depth interviews, but also through participant observation at social gatherings, informal conversations with their friends and colleagues, as well as other visual and written artifacts they decided to share with me. There is an equal mix of women and men experts included in the study. The participants are all over the age of 30, and a couple of them are in their 60s, old enough to have retired in Vietnam. All participants are married with children; however, no one brought their family with them to Mozambique. Due to confidentiality concerns given the extremely small size of the entire population of Vietnamese experts in Mozambique, I cannot give more specific detail about their background or work responsibilities. This is because, for instance, if I describe one participant as being a man in their 40s working at the ministry, this is already enough detail to identify who exactly this person is. The findings of this dissertation are also represented in one composite narrative of all the participants in order to protect their confidentiality; this will be further discussed in the data analysis section below. Data Collection With each Vietnamese expert, I conducted one official in-depth interview lasting between 60 and 90 minutes in addition to several additional informal 77 conversations before and after this official interview. All conversations were in Vietnamese. Three of the interviews were audio-recorded, while the other three participants were reluctant to be on tape. In addition, I engaged in informal conversations at social gatherings with them, their family members, Mozambican colleagues, and friends in order to assemble additional angles to the narratives. I also asked the experts to share any additional narrative materials, including letters, presentations, articles, essays, photos, and other artifacts that the participants felt would add to their stories. From the other education expert who would have become my seventh participant, I received a collection of memoir essays they had written and shared with other friends and colleagues on their almost two decades of experience as an expert, and then as a key individual in the training program for prospective experts after they had finished their assignment. In order to collect Mozambican voices and perspectives on this expert exchange program, I conducted one semi-structured interview of about an hour with a Mozambican government official who has been working closely with the Vietnamese experts. In addition, I had two meetings with representatives from Mozambique?s Ministry of Education (MINEDH) as well as the Universidade Pedag?gica (UP) de Maputo that were similar to a focus group. Finally, I also interviewed a Mozambican student who had formerly studied abroad in Vietnam and was now working for a government institution in Mozambique. While I offered the choice of an interpreter at these meetings, all of the Mozambican participants actually chose to use English as the medium of communication. Although I had wanted to go to a school that one of 78 my participants had worked in, in order to collect perspectives from non-elite sources, this ended up not happening because of pandemic conditions. After each interview and conversation, I immediately transcribed the taped interviews or cleaned up my handwritten minutes of non-taped interviews. I also wrote down memos that included initial reactions and analyses, follow-up questions, and construction of emergent ?interpretive stories? (Kim, 2016). These stories were also used as prompts for later interviews with each participant as a form of member check and co-construction of meaning. This helped make more explicit the process through which each participant makes meaning of their lived experience and the decisions they make, whether implicit or explicit, in crafting their narratives. My memos also included interpretive comments at specific points in time throughout the research project. As such, they were included in the analysis as an interesting source of data about my own role and process of becoming the researcher, interpreter, and eventually storyteller of the experts? stories. Additionally, while in Mozambique, I conducted archival work at the Embassy of Vietnam in Mozambique and examined official documents from 2009- 2016 regarding not only the education cooperation projects but other areas of bilateral cooperation. These archival sources provide a look at the official state discourse surrounding this SSC as well as the high-level negotiation process to construct the structure of this exchange. As Chapter 5 will discuss, this state narrative is just as integral to the narrative of individual experts. Originally, the plan was to also gain access to the Vietnamese Ministry of Education (MOET)?s archive in order to collect additional program records. However, I could not do so because of two reasons. 79 Firstly, MOET had recently merged the center in charge of the expert exchange program into another department and in this transition process, program records had not been reorganized. Secondly, the exact time I was in Hanoi also coincided with the strictest lockdown and other pandemic control policies, which restricted my plan for data collection. Data Analysis and Presentation The data collected was analyzed through three rounds of qualitative holistic content analysis of the data. As this was a narrative inquiry, I did not want to merely break the data apart using traditional coding method of qualitative research. Instead, I also worked on bringing these elements together and ?restorying? the narrative (Ollerenshaw & Creswell, 2002; Saldana, 2016). While thematic coding across-case was useful in order to draw out common themes in different participants? experience, it was just as important to attend to a holistic analysis of each individual case in order to understand how these discrete themes were integrated to construct an entire narrative (Beal, 2013; Josselson, 2011). Holistic analysis allowed me to keep check of how each moment of storytelling was akin to a snapshot of their internal conversation with themselves at that point in time, ?it is their ways of making sense of their perceptions and experiences? (Pham & Saltmarsh, 2013, p. 134). Why did the participant bring up this anecdote at this point in the conversation? The progression of the story also revealed a lot about their inner worlds. An in-depth understanding of their narrative choices then enabled me to work on ?re-storying? the narrative from the original raw data (Ollerenshaw & Creswell, 2002). It is commonly acknowledged 80 in narrative inquiry that people often do not retell their experience in a linear temporal progression, and ?re-storying? is a common task that a researcher utilizing narrative inquiry must engage in in order to put these story elements back into a timeline, analyze how they relate to one another, and figure out how to present the narrative in the study (Beal, 2013). During data collection and the initial process of analysis, I quickly realized just how identifying my participants? stories were. The strength of narrative inquiry in highlighting the specificities also became a limitation in whether I could maintain their confidentiality, a legitimate concern that did appear because they were here officially as government employees. As briefly discussed earlier, due to the small size of the entire population of Vietnamese in Mozambique, let alone those who were here as experts, normal techniques to maintain confidentiality such as using pseudonyms, being vague in reference to participants, or changing certain irrelevant details, were not adequate in this project. Consequently, I chose to present all of their stories in a fictionalized composite narrative of a singular character called the Expert. Fictionalization and composite narratives are common techniques in narrative inquiry, especially in studies explicitly dealing with the counter-narratives of marginalized people in society who could be at risk for participating in this type of research (e.g., Caine et al., 2017; Espino, 2012; Funnell & Dao, 2013; Lopez et al., 2019; Patr?n et al., 2021; Smith et al., 2007; Spowart & Turner, 2021; Willis, 2019). Most writings that have made the decision to construct composite narratives tend to do so from the imperative to maintain the anonymity of the participants (Caine et al., 2017; Spowart & Turner, 2021). However, Caine et al. (2017) argue that in addition 81 to this purpose, the technique of fictionalization also offers unique analytical insights because, as a way to engage in creative imagination, it also enriches the space of inquiry and the understandings we can glean from the research. Indeed, a moment of intellectual breakthrough for me in this dissertation was to realize that constructing the composite narrative was not just a part of write-up but rather a central step in data analysis, inspired by Richardson and St. Pierre (2005). Fictionalization did not mean I could create narratives out of thin air or arrange story elements together randomly. This is why I used ?fictionalized? rather than ?fictional? to emphasize that this narrative is still derived solely from the data. I follow Willis? (2018) rule for fictionalization in this regard, These accounts are stories, not fictions, in that each description is based solely on interview data, and all quotations come directly from interviews. The only modification is to present data from several interviews as if it were from a single individual. (p. 482) In this study too, the direct quotes, as well as the long narrative of the Expert in first-person perspective in Chapter 6, come directly from what they said in the interviews or memorable quotes I wrote down after informal conversations. The fictionalized elements lie in some transition words added to smooth out the narrative, the place where particular points or anecdotes were raised, the contextual detail of the conversations, and certain detail mentioned about their work that I changed to protect their anonymity. Each word, sentence, and paragraph took careful consideration to see if I was misrepresenting the narratives from any participants by including them together. Does it make sense for this quote from this person to follow that narrative 82 from someone else? What is it about their life, experience, and identity that led them to this particular utterance, and how do I honor this linkage in my composite narrative? Am I staying true to my participants in their entirety? In questioning myself like so, the process forced me to immerse myself even deeper in the participants? lifeworlds to understand them. In fact, I feel as if I have a better understanding of my participants in this study compared to any previous qualitative research I had done, because I was doing more than just copying and pasting quotes from the transcripts they gave me, or cataloguing their anecdotes under ?codes.? There were several moments where I gained new and unexpected insights from this process of fictionalization. For example, Chapter 6 is divided into two sections, one written from the first-person point of view of the composite character the Expert, and the other written as a dialogue between the Expert and me. The process of coming up with this format of representation, of fictionalizing the data from several different interviews, entailed me coming to the realization of how significant it was that the ?raw data? of this study came from dialogue. There were comments that were and could only have been uttered because the participant was talking to me?the researcher is not exactly replaceable in this kind of study, and arguably in any of qualitative studies. The stories from the ?80s, for example, were told in a way that specifically targeted someone from the younger generation like me who had never experienced Vietnamese life under the command economy. In chapter 7, there is a moment when a woman expert told me to ?Just try it, just try. Like what people tend to say, the more you confront challenges, the more you realize how grown you are? (p. 205). I had interpreted it as a general observation about her life up 83 until the very moment I typed that sentence down on my word document. Yet this reflection and life lesson was not uttered just for herself, it was also the kind encouragement from an older Vietnamese woman to a younger one?me. Constructing the Composite Narrative My data analysis contained three rounds. In the first round, I simply read through all the narrative materials I had collected for each individual participant and sat with them for a few days. This was when I came up with my initial grasp and understanding of each person?s experience, as well as some emergent interesting patterns that I could explore further later through thematic coding. This coding process was round two of my analysis, where I used inductive and in vivo codes to discover the common patterns and themes in the experience of all participants. I used these themes as the initial building blocks for the ?plot? of the composite narrative. These themes were also rearranged chronologically to reconstruct a typical expert?s journey from learning about this opportunity, preparation and application process, arrival in the country, the initial transition period, to possible contract extension or termination. Then, in the third round of data analysis, I began to add detail to the composite narrative by re-examining and selecting the direct quotes from the participants. I returned to holistically examining each participant?s narrative alone and together, figuring how the direct quotes coded to each category and theme could align with each other, and whether the longer context of each direct quote necessitated additional interpretation. This third round also blurred into my writing 84 process, as I realized during working on this dissertation that analysis and write-up could not be separated from each other. Centering the narrative on a single character of course presents a barrier in dealing with different and/or conflicting experience and thoughts. Where the diversity of responses was noteworthy, such as the range of motivations behind becoming an expert, I included them as references to friends and other colleagues?already a common storytelling element that my participants used. Written this way, it was still possible to portray the richness of experience while protecting the anonymity of my participants. The gender of the Expert was deliberately kept vague in sections of the composite narrative where both the men and women in my study had shared similar things, but the reader probably noticed sections where the Expert became a woman to portray certain parts of the experience that were explicitly gendered. An additional thing to note is that this composite narrative is presented in two different narration formats: a story told from the Expert?s first-person point of view (presented in the beginning of Chapter 6), and constructed dialogues between the Expert and me, the researcher, at various social settings. The choice of using two different ways of representing the data is meant to reflect the variety of openness with which different stories were shared. Some were responses to my questions that are typical of the qualitative interview, particularly questions that call for some self- reflection and analysis; these moments were presented as a dialogue to maintain the conversational spirit behind these utterances. But then there were moments when the stories simply flowed out of my research participants without any need for prompting or questions; these moments felt like the stories they held the closest to their heart, the 85 memories most salient in their mind when they reflect upon their entire journey as a Vietnamese expert in Mozambique. It felt appropriate to let these moments be retold from the Expert?s first-person perspective in order to portray the sincerity of these memories. Throughout this inquiry process, I used the following questions from Loseke (2012) and Espino (2012) to engage with the specific elements of narrative in the data, including: 1. Establishing the relational context of this storytelling moment: Who is the author? Why was the story told? Who is the audience? What is the relationality between the storyteller and the audience? What is the implication of this relationship? 2. Close reading: What is the plot? Who are the characters? How did the participants frame their stories? What is the moral of the story? What, if anything, is missing from the story? How do I interpret the silence within their narratives? 3. Characterizing explicit descriptions of story characters: How are characters and events described? What are the implications? 4. Unpacking the implicit codes and narratives: What are the implicit assumptions and codes in the narrative? What does this do to the reception of the narrative? How does this narrative function in social life? What master narratives are present in the construction of the story? In what ways are counternarratives developed? 86 These questions reveal how my data analysis also attends to layers of meaning within a single narrative, and how it may include multiple voices and dialogues not just with the self but also with various others and communities (Chase, 2018). This begins to touch at the social life of stories, which will also be a dimension for analysis, with questions about ?the circumstances under which certain stories get told (or don?t get told) in everyday life, what narrators (whether people or organizations) are doing in relation to various audiences as they tell their stories, and the social consequences of their storytelling? (p. 956). Validity Traditional criteria to establish validity and scientific rigor, drawing largely from naturalistic inquiry and positivism, include internal validity, generalizability, replicability, and neutrality (Lincoln & Guba, 1986). As a critical narrative inquiry, this study unapologetically fails most of these conventional categories of validity. Instead, I draw on other criteria for ?good research? that qualitative scholars have engaged in developing over the years, while still recognizing that the idea of criteria is also a contested conversation that deal with larger onto-epistemological questions (Tracy, 2010). For example, Lincoln and Guba (1986) reframed the validity conversation into one of the trustworthiness of research, with dimensions of credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability. This notion of trustworthiness is part of a transactional validity, where emergent methods to address trustworthiness are meant to ?ensure an accurate reflection of reality? (Cho & Trent, 2006, p. 322). These include techniques such as triangulation or member checking. In 87 addition to this sense of transactional validity, critical qualitative scholars also increasingly push for transformational validity, which asks: To what extent is the research pushing for social change? This entails engagement with self-reflexivity, the crisis of representation, and issues of power in research (Cho & Trent, 2006). In this dissertation, I see all three as important goals of the research. Tracy?s (2010) eight key criteria of good qualitative research offers a framework that combines my research goals: (1) Worthy topic; (2) Rich rigor; (3) Sincerity; (4) Credibility; (5) Resonance; (6) Significant contribution; (7) Ethics; and (8) Meaningful coherence. Even within the context of qualitative research though, the fictionalization aspect of this study may invite a lot of skepticism from the readers with regard to the validity of these findings. Even I, the researcher, had to wrestle with the idea of a fictionalized composite narrative for many months. The simple question is: would it be trustworthy enough? With any composite narratives, the audience is asked to put a lot of trust in the researcher. At least ?in traditional qualitative research reports, facts are piled on facts, interview quotes are stacked on interview quotes?all in the name of rigor, completeness, and accuracy? (Caulley, 2008, p. 429). The familiarity of this structure can increase trust, and meanwhile, as Caine and colleagues (2017) put it, ?It is perhaps tempting to think that fictionalizing, whatever its form, contradicts the objectives of good research, the purpose of which one could understand is to faithfully represent phenomena and/or experience? (p. 216). The implicit assumption is that fictionalization signifies a lack of integrity and that creativity has no place in research, an assumption that is arguably a manifestation of the hegemony of modern Western epistemology. 88 Jeong-Hee Kim (2016) draws on Blumenfeld-Jones to assert that ?fidelity? rather than ?truth? should be used to evaluate narrative inquiry. ?[W]hile truth is what happened in a situation (the truth of the matter), fidelity is what it (what happened) means to the storyteller (fidelity to what happened for that person)? (p. 111). It is important to acknowledge that the ?truths? the participants were sharing were also already fictionalized accounts. To engage in fictionalization and creativity while constructing a composite narrative is to respect that artificiality, to analyze its fidelity and meaning to the participants, and to engage in inquiry as an artistic process. In so doing, I as the researcher can stitch together narrative fragments from various real events and moments in ways that still protect the anonymity of the participants ?without stripping away the rawness? of their stories (Clough, 2002, p. 8). Engaging and addressing these validity concerns is not a technical process of including better techniques, such as member-checking or the positionality statement, into my research. Of course, I committed to member checking throughout the process of research design, data collection, data analysis, and presentation of findings. I also engaged in ways to protect the participants? voices and the nuance of the Vietnamese language by conducting analysis in Vietnamese and only translating it into English during the write-up. I used discussion with critical friends who are Vietnamese scholars and intellectuals to ensure that I am capturing what my participants want to express to the best of my abilities. However, I have also come to realize that good research requires a combination of a systematic approach to my research as well as a heartfelt commitment to my research agenda and the goal of pushing for critical, transformative change. I cannot use methods such as member checks as if they alone 89 can be the magic wand helping me drive away threats to validity (Cho & Trent, 2006). Upholding the validity and rigor of research is a constant process of critical reflexivity. For example, member check is not itself a process free of potential conflicts. What are the power relations involved? I am entering a relationship with my research participants from a position that navigates privileges and lack of privileges. I am a researcher, but I am also a young woman?two identity dimensions that place me in a subordinate position to most of the research participants, especially in the Vietnamese social context. I entered the field as the daughter of the Ambassador of Vietnam, which both facilitated a high degree of access but also brought questions of how I must conduct myself to maintain the reputation or ?face? of my family?again, an important Vietnamese concern. It also meant that I was seen as directly adjacent to the Vietnamese Embassy, which inevitably led to some degree of political sensitivity for my participants?all people used to living in an authoritarian context. I was committed to sharing with my participants my thoughts, interpretations, and drafts, but no matter what, there was a certain discomfort my participants had to negotiate with when they were collaborating with me. Chase (2018) offers a caution that is relevant here: ?Narrative researchers have long viewed personal narratives as encouraging understanding among people whose experiences and social locations differ. But researchers shouldn?t assume that narrative always connects people? (p. 962). Indeed, one of the assumptions I initially brought with me to the field was that having a critical narrative inquiry methodology with the emphasis on elevating the voices of the experts would make them more open 90 to sharing their stories with me. However, this was not an automatic process. ?Speaking and listening across differences are skills that must be learned. In particular, the skill of listening to another?s story involves acknowledging the limits of one?s ability to imagine the other?s experience? (Chase, 2018, p. 962). As a result, one of the most important things I have always aspired to in this study is humility and being open to discomfort. I was fully open about my positionalities, research aims, role as an emergent young scholar, how I was benefitting from this, and my vulnerabilities. However, in the end, it was up to the participants to decide whether and to what extent they would trust me. In addition to the ethical consideration, establishing a deep relationship with the participants also plays a key role in addressing the question of credibility: How do I know what I am telling is what is happening or has happened? A coded question is also that how do I (and the audience) know the participants are telling the ?truth.? While I discussed truth in the sense of fidelity earlier, it still seems important to address this because audience of my previous research?all contexts where people may not be interested in speaking truths to those aligned with the elite or relatively more privileged?has all asked this kind of skeptical question. I personally have chosen not to focus on this question of truths versus lies as I think it is unproductive. Stories change with each act of storytelling. This is a reflection of the way that stories keep pace with the life of the storytellers; as people change, their reflection on past events changes, and the ways they make meaning of their lived experience also change. The only stories that never change are dead stories?stories forced dead in order to control its meaning and power. 91 Kim (2016) offers one way of navigating the aliveness of stories by adopting both faith and suspicion, where it is ?not about suspecting that what our participants told us might not be true, but rather it is about decoding or demystifying the implicit meaning that might go unnoticed? (p. 194). This also entails the use of crystallization to gather multiple types of data from multiple voices and perspectives. As Tracy (2010) argues, the goal of crystallization is ?not to provide researchers with a more valid singular truth, but to open up a more complex, in-depth, but still thoroughly partial, understanding of the issue? (p. 844). To summarize, I see ?responses to threats to validity? as a constant reflexive process of engaging with questions of methodology, epistemology, ontology, and axiology throughout the research process. In the end, I am committed to the following ?manifesto? on the trustworthiness of critical narrative research that Moss (2004) offers as follows, I define provisions of trustworthiness of this sort as acts of integrity that researchers take to ensure they seek truth by contextualizing their studies and disclosing all relevant procedures in the study. I further define provisions of trustworthiness in critical narrative research by the researcher?s commitment to include all points of view as contrasted to the common points of view that emerge, protecting participant?s well-being while putting their voices in the forefront as a model of authentic participation in educational research. Finally, trustworthiness in critical narrative research goes beyond the study itself and includes the publication of the critical stories and taking responsibility for the 92 resultant social action that may result by design or consequence from the study. (p. 371) Strengths and Limitations This dissertation offers many strengths to further the understanding of the experience of development experts from the Global South, using the particular case of Vietnamese experts sent to Mozambique. The use of critical narrative inquiry allows for the centering of their voices, the untangling of the historical specificities of each person?s engagement with development in Mozambique and how racial ideas interact with their experience, as well as finding the tensions, contradictions, and counter- narratives to the master stories of development. An in-depth exploration of only six experts and their lived experience in a holistic sense also allows for a better unpacking of the nuanced working of interlocking systems of oppression. This study also aims to be explicitly decolonizing, both in its design, its findings, and the presentation of these findings. The design of this study is meant not only to uncover the voices of the subaltern in order to add more ?knowledge? to the world, but to explicitly tackle the process of research itself, with ?research? being one of the ?dirtiest? words that have been introduced to developing/(post)colonial contexts (Smith, 2012). Through the findings of the dissertation, I examine both the material and the discursive, as well as the structures and lived experience, of development. This critical bifocality (Weis & Fine, 2012) moves beyond critique and pushes explicitly for an engagement with the potential transformation of international 93 development. Finally, in the use of creativity in data write-up, I am also engaging in decolonizing research and unsettling what is considered good research. One of the biggest limitations of working with such a small community is the issue of confidentiality and political sensitivity, especially given how the participants are government employees. In order to still have the depth of a narrative inquiry while protecting the participants, I made the decision to construct a fictionalized composite narrative which has its own trade-off of reducing the multivocality. Instead of having seven different voices, the narrative as presented to the audience may appear flattened and overly smoothed. Moreover, in this univocal narrative, the voice of women experts may appear to be louder than that of the men. This reflects the impact of my particular positionality as a young Vietnamese woman on the data I was able to gather. My participants were all older and what one would consider ?elite participants.? As such, there was a certain power differential, particularly with the older men, that made them still quite distant from me and unwilling to open up fully to share their most intimate thoughts. If I was a man, it would have been more likely for me to be invited to informal social occasions of male camaraderie; that is a slice of their lived experience that I would never be able to access. I also must acknowledge that because the entirety of this study took place at the height of the COVID-19 global pandemic, the data I was able to gather was more limited than I had planned for. I entered the field in Mozambique in September 2020, and then went to Vietnam in June 2021. This meant that I could not have the deep ?hanging out? and building bonds with my participants to the extent that I had imagined. In particular, the period that I was in Hanoi, Vietnam, was also when the 94 city imposed its most severe level of restriction. For three months, I could not even leave my house. As a consequence, I had to reduce my number of experts from ten to six. I also could not complete the planned archival research in Hanoi which would have provided more information on the history of the program. The small number of participants likely reduces the transferability of this study. However, I hope that the thick description embedded in this narrative inquiry can still increase its potential resonance in multiple ways with the audience (Tracy, 2010). I also emphasize the narrative environment and social life of these texts. This is a trend in narrative research in non-Western contexts which increasingly show how ?historical, cultural, and political contexts produce and preclude possibilities for narration in any particular circumstance? (Chase, 2018, p. 963). Through examining how racism functions as the grammar of development in this particular case, I hope to inspire others to pose similar questions in other contexts they are situated in. Another major limitation is that the Mozambican perspectives are still marginal in this study, which means I am unable to capture this ?exchange? of development experts in the true spirit of socialist solidarity it was meant to be. As an outsider to the community, I do not feel I am currently capable of ethically telling their stories. However, the emphasis on the experience of Vietnamese development experts can still provide rich data on how racial ideas and dynamics are reproduced, resisted, and transformed in these moments of cross-border human engagements. This will be a good foundation for future study on the relationality of Vietnamese and Mozambicans in this exchange as well as in broader South-South education development encounters. 95 The biggest challenge is that in the end, I as the researcher still hold more power in re-writing and re-narrating my participants? stories. Consequently, how exactly will my research be decolonizing? I am wary that the resistance aspect of this research still operates at a largely discursive level, without tackling the material structure of international development. Swadener and Mutua (2008) also raise the point that there is something always colonizing in ?certain research that studies, produces, and silences specific groups (e.g. persons with disabilities) through the ways it constructs and consumes knowledge and experiences about such groups? (p. 35). This is a legitimate question to ask of how my study produces and attempts to make coherent this particular group of ?Vietnamese development experts.? 96 Chapter 5. The State I first met the Expert on a beautiful Saturday morning in Maputo. The Expert had chosen to meet at the caf? of one of the fanciest hotels in the city. From our veranda perched on a hilltop, the azure of the cloudless sky blended into the grayish blue of the ocean below. There was a lot of white and Asian around us?this must be a hotspot for expats. The table across from us was actually occupied by a group of Vietnamese, they waved to the Expert. ?So? You must be surprised we have a place like this here, right?? The Expert joked. I had gotten used to such questions. Look at this, you wouldn?t expect the capital city to look this bad right? You must be disappointed. How can this compare to the United States? Even Vietnam is better. Vietnamese people showing me around Maputo tended to assume that I, as someone who had just come over from the States, would be shocked by both the ?underdevelopment? and that there would exist pockets that resembled Europe or the West. There were times they drove me to the less urbanized parts of the city ?to show you the real Maputo,? as if poverty was a morbid tourist attraction or hallmark of the city. It spoke to their assumptions, imaginaries, and perhaps own experience, of what a traveler to Mozambique must feel. ?Why did you pick a research topic that would make you come all the way here anyway?? The Expert continued to be skeptical of my topic. Again, I had gotten used to such questions. Interestingly, among all the people who had shown skepticism of my dissertation project, most had been Vietnamese. One auntie was quite 97 straightforward in her dismissal, Why did you pick such a boring topic? It was as if there would be nothing valuable to learn from this program of sending Vietnamese experts abroad, as if it was unthinkable that there would be value in what Vietnamese people had offered to the world. So once again I explained, ?In my studies, I have read a lot of research about development aid in education from the West to developing countries. But there has been very little research on education cooperation and assistance between developing countries themselves, such as Vietnam. So through this project, I want to help people better understand the efforts and contribution that Vietnamese education experts in Africa, particularly in Mozambique, have made in the past decades. I want to listen to your own stories about this program?? My introductory spiel was actually only halfway through?and I have not even reached the informed consent process?but the Expert already jumped in and cut me off. ?This program of expert exchange began in the 1980s, when Deputy Prime Minister V? Nguy?n Gi?p came over to visit our African friends and witnessed their plights. He could see that these countries were extremely lacking in people with the expertise to help spur development in that difficult period. That was why he proposed that we send Vietnamese experts in education, health, and agriculture over to help our friends.? Eventually I would realize that no matter who I talked to, this narrative was always the beginning of their story. This was the official narrative that the Vietnamese State used, and consequently the experts had learned to use, to explain the history of the program. That the State perspective also served as the opening to 98 personal narratives reflected the core of this development assistance program as an intergovernmental program of bilateral cooperation, as well as the importance of this official basis and history to the experts? experience. Therefore, the narrative of this dissertation will also begin from the vision of the State. Origin of Expert Exchange General V? Nguy?n Gi?p is almost always credited as the first person to come up with the idea of sending Vietnamese experts to African countries. As the chief architect of ?i?n Bi?n Ph? in 1954?the decisive victory that led to France?s withdrawal from all its colonies in French Indochina?he is one of the most respected leaders in Vietnam, arguably only second to Ho Chi Minh. In the late 1970s, in the role of Deputy Prime Minister, he made several trips to various countries in Africa as part of Vietnamese leadership?s efforts to ?thank our brother countries and friends who had greatly supported and helped Vietnam in our struggle for national independence? (L? Qu?c H?ng, 2013). According to an unpublished memoir from one of the experts who had worked in Angola for almost two decades?hereafter referred to as the Memoir, In the ?70s of the last century, General V? Nguy?n Gi?p visited a few African countries and when working with the leaders of these countries, he suggested that because Vietnam was still very poor economically, we still could not help them or repay the loans they had given to us previously. However, Vietnam had a group of intellectuals 99 who had been trained both at home and in our brother countries, with high skills level and had been tempered through a ferocious war to defend our country. They are skilled doctors, experienced teachers, and agricultural engineers with extensive experience in growing deepwater rice and food crops with short turnover? If we can bring this intellectual force to work in these countries, it would be beneficial to both sides. These countries were very interested in this suggestion made by the General. This anecdote reveals the sense of mutuality and gratitude that lie at the root of the establishment of this program to send Vietnamese experts over, at least according to the official narrative. This intellectual labor force became a way for Vietnam to pay back its debt to African nation-states for their support, material and moral, in Vietnam?s independence movement. Though Asian-African transnational bonds of solidarity against imperialism are sadly underexamined in the historical scholarship (Huynh, 2016), a lot of mutual learning, resource exchange, and support occurred between these groups of people, especially during the fervent wave of decolonization in the mid-20th century. Nguy?n H??ng Giang (2018) argues that the bond between Vietnamese people and the people of Africa is one between brothers who shared the same circumstance of being former colonies of Western empires; President H? Ch? Minh first laid the foundation for this relationship in the 1920s when he worked with African colleagues in the Asian- African Association of Oppressed Peoples in Paris. ?The shared historical similarities and desire for national independence brought the people of Vietnam and of African 100 countries closer together. As a result, in Vietnam?s foreign policy, relations with countries in Africa? go beyond a simple relationship based on benefits? (Nguyen Huong Giang, 2018, p. 13). In Vietnam, one often-repeated narrative is the great inspiration that Vietnamese victory over French and U.S. imperialism had had for other peoples fighting for independence around the world, especially those in Africa (e.g. T?n N? Th? Ninh, 2013). According to Professor V? D??ng Ninh, who taught Southeast Asian history in a university in Madagascar in the early ?80s, during his lectures on Vietnamese history, Madagascar students posed many questions about H? Ch? Minh, about V? Nguy?n Gi?p, and about ?i?n Bi?n Ph?. Above all, the most common question was: How was Vietnam, also a poor colony, able to defeat the French? How did you manage to accomplish such a major victory? (H??ng Giang, 2013). More than just acting as a symbol of hope, however, there are historical records of the mutual material and training support that Vietnam had had with several countries in Africa. For example, among the troops that the French empire dispatched to Vietnam, a significant number of them were African soldiers, including Algerians who then became inspired by Vietnamese ideology or directly received training from Vietnam on strategies and tactics, and who upon returning home, became leaders of their country? own independence movement (Huynh, 2016). In another example, when Mr. Angula, at the time a minister of agriculture in Namibia, visited General V? Nguy?n Gi?p while attending the Vietnam-Africa seminar in 2004, he sincerely expressed that throughout the struggle for independence, leaders in Namibia always carried the books that General Gi?p had written on the revolutionary struggle; 101 Mr. Angula himself had spent a lot of time researching and evaluating the significant contribution that the Vietnamese revolution had made to the decolonization struggles of the people in Africa, which included the victory at ?i?n Bi?n Ph? that had become synonymous with General Gi?p?s name (Tr?n Tr?ng Trung, 2006). It would make sense then how, in a 2009 meeting between the President of Mozambique at the time, Armando E. Ghebuza, and the Ambassador of Vietnam, President Guebuza said, In the past, Mozambique and Vietnam both fought in the same trench of decolonization for our independence and freedom, and now, we continue to fight in the same trench against poverty and backwardness. (Embassy of Vietnam in Mozambique, 2009) This quote embodies the spirit of continued solidarity in a shared struggle between Mozambique and Vietnam through the exchange of experience and expertise, only that the shape of this ?struggle? had transformed from the war against colonialism to the war against poverty. The desire to mutually learn from others who were mired in the same ?trenches?, whether of colonialism or contemporary poverty, has always been there and will continue to be there. It is a special kind of bond that can lead two country leaders to embrace with giant smiles on their face, as can be seen in one of the iconic photos in the archive of Vietnamese-Mozambican relations of the meeting between Samora Machel and General Gi?p in 1980 (Figure 1). 102 Figure 1 FRELIMO Leader Samora Machel, the First President of Mozambique, Welcoming General V? Nguy?n Gi?p to the Country (1980) It is also necessary to ground General V? Nguy?n Gi?p?s proposal to send Vietnamese experts abroad in the global context of expert exchange in the socialist bloc at this time. Arguably, this network of socialist assistance via sending experts to provide technical expertise parallels the emergence of Western international development aid, with both enterprises being rooted in geopolitical motivations (Rist, 2014). Vietnam was embedded in this network of socialist assistance mainly as a recipient of scholarships for students to attend higher education in the Soviet Union, 103 Cuba, China, and a few other countries (Nguy?n Th? Thanh H??ng, 2020). In fact, many of the experts that went over in the first wave of expert exchange were themselves educated in Cuba or the Soviet Union. Furthermore, Vietnam also received a significant number of experts into the country, including those from Soviet Union or East Germany; between 1955-1965, about 2,500 Soviet experts came to work in Vietnam in a variety of fields (Schwenkel, 2015). It is reasonable to expect that Vietnam drew cues from this type of cooperative activity as something it could also establish with countries in Africa, especially given the financial benefits of expert exchange as well. Other research has found that when Cuba sends its doctors, teachers, and other skilled workers abroad, more than 50 percent of the experts? salaries would go to the government (Blue, 2010). In the case of Vietnam, the program of expert exchange initially operated on a similar basis. Bayly?s (2004) study retold conversations with Vietnamese intelligentsia who went on missions to countries in Africa in the ?80s and described expert cooperation as ?central to Vietnam?s recovery strategy in its rock-bottom post- reunification privation years? (p. 336). In that period, the experts were there to ?earn for the state? (p. 337), with as much as 85 percent of their salaries going straight back to the government (see also Chapter 6). Revenue from expert exchange thus became a lifeline for the Vietnamese government in this economically tumultuous time when the country was still under U.S. embargo, involved in an active border conflict with China, and embroiled in the invasion and post-war reconstruction of Cambodia, all while its biggest ally the Soviet Union was barreling towards dissolution. It should be noted that up until the early 2000s, expert exchange was considered as part of the 104 broader program of labor export in Vietnam (Cao V?n S?m, 2001; L? V?n T?ng, 2003; Tr?n V?n H?ng, 1999, 2002). For example, Directive 41/CT-TW from the Politburo of Vietnam on the export of labor and experts, issued on September 22, 1998, clearly brought labor export and expert exchange into the same policy discourse, The export of labor and experts is a socio-economic activity that contributes to human capital development, resolves unemployment, provides income and skills-training for laborers, while increasing the revenue in foreign currency for the country as well as strengthening the international cooperation between us and other countries. (Politburo of the Communist Party of Vietnam, 1998) After General V? Nguy?n Gi?p made his suggestion, an Association on Expert Cooperation was formed in the Council of Ministers, the highest level of bureaucrats in the government, to establish this program. Notable intellectuals were involved, such as the first person to receive a doctorate in Chemistry in Vietnam, Mr. Ho?ng H?u B?nh. In addition to official diplomatic channels of negotiation, officials also utilized informal meeting spaces such as international conferences to advocate for this program. For example, the Minister of Health at the time, ??ng H?i Xu?n, used the International Conferences on Health organized by OMS to discuss with his counterparts in African countries from North Africa to sub-Saharan Africa on the possibility of sending Vietnamese doctors over to work in their countries. As a result, in 1980, Vietnam signed the first few agreements to dispatch experts abroad with a few countries in Francophone Africa such as Algeria and Madagascar. As for 105 the Lusophone former colonies, it was not until 1983 that the official agreement was set up, and due to the language barrier, there were fewer experts who went to Angola and Mozambique. In the early days, many of them actually only had French proficiency and were given three months to familiarize themselves with Portuguese. They could have been teachers from high schools, vocational schools, universities, or officials working in the Ministry of Education. Shortly after, doctors also began to arrive. According to the Memoir, ?In reality, our cooperation with [these countries] were mainly limited in the two fields of Health and Education, but this cooperation has continued to this day. Outside of these two fields, we also began some cooperative activities in agriculture, finance, but because the efficacy was not high so they only lasted for a very short period of time.? According to records at the embassy, the Vietnamese community in Mozambique emerged in 1985. Prior to this, in February 1979, the Ministry of Education and Training in Vietnam actually already sent a first group of 10 students to Mozambique to attend a three-year training course in Portuguese translation and interpretation at the Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, Maputo. However, it was not until the experts officially arrived and began their postings that the Vietnamese community would begin to grow. The official records only makes reference to the ?hundreds of experts? in education, health, and agriculture who began to arrive to work under the bilateral contract between the two countries, but experts involved in the program claim that at its peak, there must have been 100 education specialists in Mozambique simultaneously. Meanwhile, more experts went to Angola. In 1989- 1990 alone, Vietnam sent 321 experts to Angola, and every year the number of 106 education and health experts working in this country would be around 100 and 150, respectively (Nguy?n H??ng Giang, 2018). With the worsening civil war in Mozambique in the late 1980s, the number of experts gradually decreased. There was a period of time that no education experts were present in the country. It was the Vietnamese government?s regulation that no expert or labor could be sent to countries that had an active conflict or at risk of imminent active conflict; in fact, they should be called home (Nguy?n H??ng Giang, 2018). On the other hand, in Angola, many Vietnamese experts volunteered to stay, some working through several years of no salaries, and this display of solidarity was later attributed as the reason for the large scale of the Vietnamese expert program in Angola today, which is about ten times the size of the delegation in Mozambique. Nevertheless, to this day, expert exchange is still brought up as a key marker of the traditional friendship between Mozambique and Vietnam. A documentary commemorating 35 years of relations between the two countries commented, Vietnam and Mozambique have a longstanding traditional relationship of solidarity, friendship, and cooperation. In the 35 years since we established diplomatic relations, the two countries have focused on promoting expert cooperation, economic, trade, investment? It is notable that in this documentary script, ?expert cooperation? was listed first in the activities of cooperation between the two countries, signaling the importance of this program to establishing the ?longstanding traditional relationship of solidarity, friendship, and cooperation? between Mozambique and Vietnam. While the exact shape and extent of cooperation has undergone tremendous changes over the past four 107 decades, as the next section discusses, this traditional friendship?much of it wrought by the contribution of the initial wave of Vietnamese experts in the 1980s?would form the foundation for the negotiation of new projects. Second Phase of Cooperation The Turning Point Between 1990 and the early 2000s, there was a lull in cooperative activities between Vietnam and Mozambique due to political and economic difficulties in both countries. However, in the first few years of the 21st century, there were several steps towards restarting different cooperation activities. In 2003, Vice President Tr??ng M? Hoa of Vietnam made an official trip to Mozambique and on this occasion, the two countries signed several agreements and protocols, including the 2003 Agreement on Cooperation in Economic, Culture, and Science and Technology. In 2006, Mozambique?s Minister of Foreign Affairs Alcinda Antonio visited Vietnam and asserted that Mozambique would like to prioritize agriculture, health, and education and training as areas of cooperation because they had a high opinion of Vietnam?s success in poverty reduction and performance in development indicators in these fields. As reiterated in multiple official documents at the highest level, the essence of cooperation between the two governments continues to be bilateral cooperation ?rooted in the traditional friendship for mutual benefits between the two countries.? For example, the 2003 Agreement on Economic, Cultural, Scientific, and Technological Cooperation begins with the following motivations of both countries, 108 Desirous of establishing cooperative relations on the fields of economy, culture, science, technology and trade between the two countries on the basis of equality and mutual interests, taking into account each country?s needs and capacity. Wishing to strengthen the relations of friendship and cooperation between the two countries, thus actively contributing to cause of peace and cooperation in the two respective regions. (2003, original emphasis) This emphasis on ?equality? and ?mutual interests? as the basis of cooperation are characteristic of many instances of South-South cooperation (Kragelund, 2019). The turning point in Vietnam-Mozambique relations came in 2007 and 2008 when, during high-level visits of leaders, Vietnam and Mozambique announced a new era for the traditional relationship of friendship, solidarity, and cooperation between the two countries (Embassy of Vietnam in Mozambique, 2009). If in the early years of diplomatic relations, the main areas of cooperation were in agriculture, health, and education, then from this point onward, Vietnam-Mozambique relations also expanded into new sectors such as telecommunications, oil and gas, and mining (Dang Giang, 2013). Of course, agriculture continued to be pinpointed as an area with high potential for long-term cooperation, and Vietnam committed to sending agro- engineers as well as help Mozambique construct research centers in this field. However, many cooperation activities shifted to the trilateral model of working together with a Global North donor, such as multiple rice cultivation projects in Zambezia, Mozambique funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). By 2010, Vietnam had sent quite a number of engineers, agro-engineers, and 109 experienced farmers to participate in agricultural development projects in Mozambique that are funded by Japan and Libya, with a salary between USD1,000- 2,000/month. The rice crops, irrigation designs, machines, and agricultural tools used in these projects all came from Vietnam. Why was it in Vietnam?s interest to promote agricultural cooperation with Mozambique? According to the official discourse, Mozambique was an ideal country for Vietnam to step-by-step expand its agricultural production, first focusing on cash crops (rubbers), high-quality cash crops (cashews, tea, coffee?), while simultaneously shifting land- and labor-intensive agricultural activities to Mozambique and saving the constrained land resource in Vietnam for high-tech agriculture (Dang Giang, 2013). Vietnamese technical assistance in agriculture was no longer simply a mission of solidarity in poverty alleviation and development; it now fit into broader strategies for Vietnam to maneuver the value- added chains of global capitalism. The interest in finding new areas to profit through bilateral cooperation? especially for Vietnam, is most clear in telecommunications, particularly with the growth of Movitel. Movitel is a joint cooperation between Mozambique?s SPI (Management and Investment)?a holding company of the FRELIMO Party, and Vietnam?s Viettel Group?a state-owned enterprise that is operated by the Ministry of Defense. In 2010, Movitel won the bid to become the third telecommunications provider in Mozambique. By 2021, Movitel has become the biggest network provider in Mozambique with a coverage of 70 percent of the national telecommunications 110 infrastructure. As will be further explored in later parts of this dissertation, the Movitel joint enterprise is a significant player in Vietnam-Mozambique relations.13 Interestingly, the emergence of Movitel was initially framed in a global racial capitalism perspective. When a leader of Vietnamese?s Viettel Group initially visited Mozambique and several other African countries to evaluate the potential of this project, he discussed the general potential of Vietnam-Africa cooperation in telecommunications as an intervention against the trend of foreign telecommunications companies making short-term investments to extract high profits, then withdrawing while the local telecommunications infrastructure remained underdeveloped with high service fees. According to a June 2010 news bulletin about the bid for the third telecommunications network in Mozambique, country leaders highly evaluated Viettel?s strategic business plan as appropriate for the development goals and current telecommunications conditions in the country, especially with its mission of helping the poor access Internet; they also criticize the exploitative profit- grabbing business approach of foreign telecommunications corporations that had caused significant social damage in Africa (Embassy of Vietnam in Mozambique, 2010b). These new areas and projects of cooperation between Mozambique and Vietnam reflect the reality of this new era of cooperation. This is an era where both 13 The Mozambique market was also Viettel Group?s entry point into investment in various countries in Africa, including Burundi, Cameroon, and Tanzania. Africa is a market that is foundational to Viettel Group?s plan for foreign direct investment. Its reasoning to pick emerging markets in Africa and around the world is strategic. According to Viettel Group?s CEO, Brigadier General Nguy?n M?nh H?ng, Viettel began to invest in foreign markets 20 years later than other businesses, and as a result, all the ?delicious? places had been eaten up and only ?the ?bones? remained, referring to the emerging markets in Africa where telecommunications coverage was still only between 20-60 percent (Tu?n Phong, 2015). 111 Vietnam and Mozambique have been plunged into the global capitalist market and where anti-imperial rhetoric of the socialist past had made way for global value-added production chains and the desperation for the increasingly limited ?frontier? markets to enter and profit from. The structure of global racial capitalism is such that economic development can only occur through the exploitation of countries poorer than yourselves. What it produces is a structural pitting of South versus South, an inherent tension fracturing the phenomenon of South-South cooperation. Renewal of the Education Expert Exchange Program The time period 2007-2008 was also when Mozambique?s MINEDH sent a delegation to Vietnam and once again proposed inviting Vietnamese education experts to work in Mozambique. This resulted in the signing of a new Protocol on Education Cooperation in 2008, which was later renewed in 2014. Indeed, from the perspective of Mozambicans, 2009?rather than the 1980s?marked the beginning of the expert exchange program. According to a government official in MINEDH, Talking about the operation between Mozambique and Vietnam, I can say that it is a program that started on 2009 because on 2008 both countries signed the Protocol that showed the many activities that the specialists or experts try to do now. Memos in 2010 and 2011 suggested that in this second phase of cooperation, MINEDH had wanted to request 13 education experts. However, in total, 12 Vietnamese education experts were sent to Mozambique between 2009-2021. This was a consistent theme with both health and education expert exchange: not enough 112 people went over compared to the request from Mozambique. In the health sector, although Mozambique had requested 100 health experts, only about 12 had started their mission by 2012. As explained by the Vietnamese Embassy, because most of Mozambique?s request for health experts were in less common specialties in Vietnam as well, the salary (USD 1,500/month) was not attractive enough. As for education experts, Vietnam would like for them to become proficient in Portuguese before being sent over to Mozambique in order to ensure a high standard of work (Embassy of Vietnam in Mozambique, 2010a). The first mission in this second phase of education cooperation comprised of three experts who moved to Mozambique in 2009. In 2011, the next round of five teachers arrived, followed by a third group of four people in 2015. Each of their postings generally lasted about 3 years, though several experts managed to get a contract extension. The person with the longest tenure worked in Mozambique for nine years. A couple others left Mozambique to switch assignments to work in Angola. Three of the experts worked directly in the MINEDH to assist in science curriculum development, while the others were dispatched as science teachers to high schools and vocational training schools around Mozambique. These numbers point to a very small-scale program of assistance, but if we take into account the proportion of foreign experts hired directly by the Mozambican government, Vietnamese experts comprise a sizable percentage. An internal memo in 2014 discussed that Mozambique was planning to hire 25 foreign education specialists, five of which would be permanent positions for Cuban experts. In this same year, the records show that MINEDH hired four Vietnamese education experts 113 and extended the contract of one more, meaning that Vietnamese experts made up about a fifth of the hiring quota for that year. However, by 2021, only one Vietnamese education expert remains contracted with MINEDH. One reason is that the 2014 Protocol on Education Cooperation had expired after five years, and due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, government representatives had not been able to meet to renew this protocol. As this is an inter- governmental program of cooperation, without the legal framework of the Protocol being in active status, no additional experts can be hired. A second possible reason is economic difficulties and budget shortage in Mozambique to hire foreign experts. Because the experts are directly contracted to work with MINEDH, the Mozambican government is also responsible for their salaries as well as accommodation stipends. As an inter-governmental program, it can also stumble into bureaucratic blocks. For example, in 2018, when the Mozambican government re-assigned vocational training from MINEDH to the Ministry of Science and Technology, three teachers could not renew their contracts because the Ministry of Science and Technology was not a signatory to the Education Protocol. My conversations with the experts and a MINEDH official suggested that Mozambican partners were considering a plan to hire more Vietnamese experts, but there was still no concrete detail on how many experts they wanted to hire and in which fields. The future of the program is in flux (see also chapter 7). Notably, in this same period of 2009-2021, Vietnam has only received one Mozambican expert in return. This expert taught Portuguese at an university in Hanoi 114 for a short period of time. There is a clear imbalance in the number of experts sent and received by each side: 12 versus 1. Other Education Cooperation Activities While this dissertation is centered on expert exchange, another significant aspect of the Protocol on Education Cooperation is student exchange. In the original 2008 Protocol, it was agreed that every year Vietnam would accept five students from Mozambique and send five students in return to Mozambique, all with full scholarships offered by the receiving government. The 2014 Protocol doubled this figure to 10 scholarships annually for each side. By 2014, 16 Mozambique students were pursuing full-time studies in Vietnam in bachelor?s and master?s programs in fields such as agriculture, agro-engineering, veterinary medicine, and chemical engineering. Meanwhile, 25 Vietnamese students majoring in Portuguese had been sent on an one-year exchange program at the Universidade Pedag?gica in Maputo. In addition, Vietnam has provided many short-term trainings to students majoring in agriculture at the Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, as well as military officers, military doctors, police officers, and FRELIMO party cadres. Interestingly, in the mid-2010s, perhaps inspired by the success of the Movitel joint venture in telecommunications, the two governments also explored similar ideas in the education sector, particularly in textbook publishing. Clause 2, Article 4 of the 2014 Protocol says, ?Both Parties shall consider the possibility of cooperation opportunities in areas of textbook compilation, exchange of school equipment and other interests for implementation under this Protocol.? In 2016, Hanoi Printing JSC won a World Bank procurement contract on textbook publishing for MINEDH. 115 MINEDH then proposed that the Hanoi Printing company would help build a new printing factory in Mozambique. Negotiation proceeded to the stage where a memorandum of understanding had been drafted for the Ministers of Education in both countries to sign; however, after a leadership change in MINEDH, the most active proponent of this venture left the ministry and the project fell through. Beyond this failed textbook publishing project, however, there have always been seeds of interest in a public-private partnership in education with Movitel, a key player in Vietnamese-Mozambican relations since 2010. Already around 2015, Movitel had established relations with MINEDH through projects to open 12 computer labs in provincial high schools, provide data package discounts to teachers all over the country of 35USD/month, provide free education text messages to 5 million accounts, and establish an online education program in English to students from grade 6-10. According to a note from the Embassy after a meeting with the Minister of Education in Mozambique, In our June 5 meeting, the Minister expressed satisfaction with the strengthening of cooperation between our two countries in the past year, especially with how we continued to send 04 education experts and 06 students to Mozambique in accordance with the Protocol. The Minister especially thanked the Embassy?s and Movitel?s (joint venture with Viettel Group) proposal to sign an agreement of cooperation between Movitel and the education sector, in which Movitel would become a strategic partner of MINEDH in promoting education outreach in Mozambique. 116 As Mozambique?s education stakeholders shift their focus to enhancing science and technology in education (as will be discussed in Chapter 7), Movitel is and will be an attractive partner. Ironically, in this South-South cooperation rooted in socialist solidarity, one can also see signs of a convergence with the trend of public- private partnership around the world, not just in education but in international development aid as a whole. The power structure of Vietnam-Mozambique expert exchange Division of decision-making The Vietnam-Mozambique expert exchange program, though more accurately Vietnam?s program of sending experts to Mozambique given the actual flow of experts, is clearly different from what a typical ?development program? and ?development expert? would be in Western donor aid. Its nature as an inter- governmental bilateral cooperation program provides a unique power structure and mechanisms through which technical assistance activities take place. This power structure stems from the mutually agreed Protocol signed by the two governments which lies at the core of expert cooperation. The Protocol constitutes the legal boundaries for the experts? lives and work, the legitimacy of their presence, and the responsibilities they must take in their mission as experts. Each expert?s contract would begin by referring to the Protocol as the legal foundation. For most of my participants, they also begin describing their professional roles and responsibilities by referring to the Protocol. In the words of one expert, ?Yes, about the story of how I came here to work? I went according to the 117 Protocol signed between the two countries, between the Ministries of Education in Mozambique and Vietnam. I came here under the invitation of our partner.?14 As an inter-governmental program, Vietnamese experts are directly hired to work under Mozambique?s MINEDH rather than a Vietnamese-established donor agency. In each field of technical assistance, there is a center located in Vietnam that is officially in charge of managing technical experts sent abroad?in education, this was formerly the Center for Expert and Technical Cooperation with External Countries (CEPECE) and now is a department in MOET. However, they are only in charge of recruiting potential experts, providing language training, supporting the candidates? application processes, and coordinating with ministry partners in Mozambique to ensure the smooth running of the expert exchange program in accordance with the Protocol. It is the Mozambican ministries that are in control of hiring, firing, job assignment, contract extension, as well as the management of the experts? work duties. In the example given earlier, when vocational training was shifted from MINEDH to the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Mozambican side decided to not renew three experts? contracts. When the experts? contracts expire and they would like to request an extension, this process also requires the review and approval from their Mozambican higher-ups. If there was continued demand for this expert?s assistance, the contract would be renewed; if not, the partners would send a 14 One very interesting discursive pattern I noticed among the experts is how they consistently use the Vietnamese word b?n, which can be translated as ?friend? or ?partner?, to refer to the Mozambican side. They could have used other Vietnamese third-person pronouns; unlike the way that English defaults to the generic ?they/them?, Vietnamese has a variety of options that convey different levels of respect with regard to the people they are referring to. The consistent usage of ?friend? by most Vietnamese people in Mozambique to refer to local people when they talk to me?with exceptions in casual encounters of hanging out?seems to be a deliberate sign of respect. 118 new list of expertise sub-fields they would like to request. This structure where Mozambican stakeholders hold the decision-making power is a clear deviation from the typical power (im)balance between the ?donor? and ?recipient? in a development cooperation program. In addition, as mentioned above, the Mozambican side has significant agency in determining the specific fields and areas in which they would like to request technical assistance. Indeed, according to the Protocol signed by the two governments, the Vietnamese side is obligated to ?select and recruit specialists that meet requirements of the Mozambican Party? (Clause 13 ?Obligations of the Vietnamese Party). Vietnam has always been clear in official discourse that with technical assistance being a key part of the inter-governmental relations, ?Vietnam is ready to continue sending technical experts in health and education to work in the Republic of Mozambique according to the numbers requested by the Government of Mozambique? (Socialist Republic of Vietnam & Republic of Mozambique, 2009). Indeed, the Mozambican side always makes specific requests as to how many experts with which skills they would like to hire. Sometimes they were also proactive in reminding the Vietnamese side of what it had committed to, such as at one meeting in 2007 when they reminded Hanoi of its commitment to send nine experts over to evaluate Mozambique?s agricultural productivity and five additional experts to provide trainings on agricultural techniques (Vietnam-Mozambique Inter- governmental Committee, 2009). In this meeting, the Mozambican Minister of Science and Technology even expressed that he would like Vietnam to send an expert to act as his personal advisor in science and technology. In the health sector, in 2010 119 Mozambique requested 100 doctors in anesthesiology, obstetrics, otolaryngology, urology, orthopedics, pediatrics, gastroenterology, acupuncture, and traditional medicine. In education, during the negotiation before renewing the Protocol, Mozambique proposed that Vietnam would send education experts in new sub-fields including science-technology research, teacher training, vocational training, general education, planning sciences, statistics, and human resources management. Salary and Compensation While the Mozambican side lays out the detail of the technical assistance they would request, the main consideration from the Vietnamese side tends to be the livelihood of the experts, of which salary is a key issue. This reflects how, from a certain perspective, expert exchange is still a labor export program based on the supply and demand of technical expertise and necessitates fair compensation. Prior to the resigning of the Education Protocol in 2014, the biggest request from the Vietnamese government during the negotiation process was to increase the salary scale for the experts by USD1,000/month for each tier of experts? qualification level. Negotiation over salary raises ongoing since 2012 and actually could not be resolved even at the 2014 re-signing of the Protocol; the revised salary table had to be included as an addendum in 2015 (see Table 1). According to an Embassy memo, the reason for the salary increase request was that prior to 2015, the salaries of Vietnamese experts in Mozambique were lower than the average rate in the region in comparison to experts working in Angola and, especially, Euro-American experts working in Mozambique. From the Mozambican side too, considerations of salary increases had to take into account the relative remuneration levels for experts from other countries. 120 In a memo from MINEDH to the Embassy of Vietnam explaining the difficulties of increasing the salary for Vietnamese experts, MINEDH expressed, The salary level within the Bilateral Technical Assistance program of MINEDH is jointly determined by many different government agencies and must follow general state regulations. MINEDH has many technical assistance programs with many countries and any changes in contracts with experts, including the salary table, must be evaluated in relation to other countries. This is a necessary step in the process to make changes to the salary table. In other words, there is an explicit situating of Vietnamese experts on a global labor market of specialists in this cooperation program. This negotiation speaks to the reality of a racialized global economy of experts that Vietnam-Mozambique expert cooperation is still embedded in, with salary as an indication of the relative value and position of Vietnamese technical experts within it. 121 Table 2 Monthly Salary of Vietnamese Education Experts in Mozambique Qualifications Pre-2015 Post-2015 General education and vocational schools Experts with Ph.D. degree USD 1,800 USD 2,400 Experts with Master?s degree USD 1,600 USD 2,200 Experts with Bachelor?s degree of right majors USD 1,500 USD 2,000 with teaching jobs Professional secondary school technicians or USD 1,250 USD 1,600 equivalent Higher education institutions Experts with Ph.D. degree USD 2,300 N/A Experts with Master?s degree USD 2,000 N/A Experts with Bachelor?s degree with at least 5 USD 1,800 N/A years teaching experience This salary level is just comparable to the average income in Vietnam; in 2015, gross national income per capita was already USD1,970/month. Notably, it is also not at the level of high compensation one usually expects for experts working within the traditional development aid system. What this means is that this opportunity can be attractive to some but also not worth the sacrifice and costs of living away from home for many others. Indeed, in the early days, one of the barriers identified by the Vietnamese government was that the ?low? salaries for experts relative to the costs of uprooting to a new environment made it difficult to attract specialists to Mozambique. Chapter 6 will delve into the more specific calculation of the experts who did choose to take on this mission. 122 The cost of expert cooperation is therefore a major issue, perhaps even the main difficulty constraining the expansion of this program. The Embassy of Vietnam acknowledged in a memo, At the moment, the difficulty in promoting cooperation between the two countries is funding. We have the ability to provide experts, technical assistance, training, knowledge, and experience-sharing. Our partner very much needs our help but neither do they have the budget to pay for it. In many cases, the partner side assumes that we have the ability to fund, aid, sponsor, and invest? in paying the salaries for experts, or sponsoring training courses of PhDs, Master?s, experts, and professional technicians. (Embassy of Vietnam in Mozambique, 2010a) In the past, there have been times when the salary was held back and not paid to the experts in time. For example, all the salaries of education experts in 2012?totaling USD25,178?did not get processed until 2014 when these experts finished their contracts. Such is the undeniable material difficulty of South-South cooperation. The state discourse attempts to respond by invoking the moral value of this ?mission? to assist traditional friends. For example, a memo proposed that in order to expand technical cooperation, ?[We] should build a policy framework to encourage and incentivize [experts] to go to Mozambique like guaranteeing government tenure, allowing them to also earn full domestic salary, increase their salary and bonuses, and frame going to African countries as an expert like a rotating short-term mission? (Embassy of Vietnam in Mozambique, 2010). It is interesting how moral 123 responsibility and the language of the ?mission? is invoked to balance the scale with economic remuneration. This reflects the multidimensionality of rationales under expert cooperation. Beyond the official sense of friendship and diplomatic relations, the desire to engage in mutual assistance, even the instrumental benefits to the state in the current phase of global capitalism, the state is also aware that individual material benefits matter and are legitimate rationale for Vietnamese who choose to become experts. Who Assists? Earlier I had noted the imbalance of which side receives and which side sends experts in this cooperation program; while 12 Vietnamese education experts had been sent to work in Mozambique in 2009-2021, only 1 Mozambican expert had been gone to work in Vietnam. This too constitutes a structural dimension of the Vietnamese- Mozambican expert cooperation program?a structure of inequality. It speaks to a taken-for-grantedness that only the Vietnamese side is imagined as being in the position of sending experts. Notably, this stark division of responsibilities is built into the Protocol itself. For example, in the 2014 Protocol on Cooperation in the field of Education and Training, the Vietnamese side?s responsibilities are laid out as follows, The Vietnamese Party shall send education specialists to the Republic of Mozambique to collaborate in areas of technical and scientific research, teacher training, technical and vocational education, general education, planning, statistics and human resource management. 124 In contrast, The Mozambican Party shall send Mozambican teachers to the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam to teach Portuguese language. What this means is that built into the Protocol is the taken-for-granted assumption that ?the Vietnamese Party sends specialists and Mozambican Party sends teachers,? which is in fact the literal wording in Clause 3, Article 2 of the Protocol. The terms of the Protocol set the boundaries for what is possible in this program of cooperation. In this case, we can see the boundaries set around what is wanted from each side that, if read between the lines, reflects the broader imaginary of what each side is assumed to be capable of doing. While Vietnam is assumed to have the capacity to send technical experts with the skills in the listed areas, Mozambique is assumed and expected to only send teachers to teach Portuguese. It is as if there was no expertise or experience that the Mozambican side can impart to the Vietnamese, as if there was nothing that Vietnam could learn from Mozambique.15 Though this is meant to be a mutual cooperation, Vietnam is consistently presented as being ahead and having the expertise to help. There are several other places in official discourses that position the Vietnamese side as being at a higher level of development. For example, the 2007 Agreement on Agricultural Cooperation opens with the acknowledgement, 15 In the case of student exchange as well, it is noticeable how the Mozambican side sends students over to Vietnam to receive full-time training in a wide variety of fields, and indeed many have received Master?s and Bachelor?s degrees in fields of high demand and need in Mozambique such as chemical engineering, veterinary medicine, and agriculture. On the other hand, the Vietnamese side only sends students over for short-term language training in Portuguese. It points to an implicit stance that the Mozambican education system has nothing to offer Vietnamese students. 125 a) The country of Mozambique, especially in the region of the Zambezi river delta, holds a lot of potential for the development of agriculture-husbandry; b) The Vietnamese government is highly developed in agricultural production; c) The Mozambican government wishes to promote developing the agricultural potential of their country, especially in the Zambezi river delta This sets up a relationship where Mozambique is the frontier of development, while Vietnam, being ?highly developed,? is much further ahead and in a position to help. Other examples of Mozambican state discourse that positions Vietnam as a capable, more developed partner, includes an occasion when Mozambican President Armando E. Ghebuza visited Vietnam in 2009 and said in a meeting, We are extremely impressed with the huge accomplishments that the Vietnamese people have been able to achieve in economic reform and development, especially the marvelous results you have seen in agriculture such as rice cultivation, cash crop planting, rural development. We want to cooperate with Vietnam in all areas, with priority in agriculture, health, and education. These examples reveal the ways in which both Vietnam and Mozambique are pulled into and evaluated within the same linear teleology of development that has captured global consciousness, one whose benchmark for success mostly lies in economic productivity. They may be both developing countries?the Global South, in 126 other words?but even this Global South is also broken into hierarchies. However, though this division of responsibilities in who provides assistance is currently a major structural element of the Vietnamese-Mozambican expert cooperation program, it does not necessarily go unnoticed. Chapter 7 will discuss how this power structure has been questioned, challenged, and negotiated by Mozambican partners and Vietnamese experts (see chapter 7). Discussion Expert cooperation between Vietnam and Mozambique is an inter- governmental exchange program born out of the spirit of leftist and non-aligned solidarity in the immediate period of post-independence in the 20th century. To that end, official state narratives of the program continue to highlight discourses of traditional friendship, equality, and mutual interests that lie at the basis of the cooperation. In a recent discussion of the future of higher education cooperation between the two countries, a Vietnamese official brought up history as a compelling motivation for promoting closer relationship, And you know that in Vietnam our universities want to diversify? They want to welcome foreign students and especially for those from Mozambique, they love the Mozambique people because Vietnamese and Mozambique people are fairly traditional friends. We know you from before. We know from your struggle and you are the one who deserve the higher priority and attentions. 127 Such concrete example of conversations and negotiations taking place on the ground reveals how official discourses are not just dead words ascribed onto legal documents; rather, they are living narratives that continue to frame and influence the stories and decisions of actors who will shape cooperation in the future. In this case, it speaks to how the official history of cooperation, the sense of postcolonial Third World solidarity, continues to tie together the partnership between Vietnam and Mozambique even as the nature of cooperation undergoes fundamental change to align with contemporary global conditions. This official discourse of mutuality and moral responsibility coexists with the material reality that there have always been strategic benefits to providing technical assistance. In the past, it provided a much- needed source of income for the Vietnamese government in desperate economic times. In the present, technical cooperation aligns with the broader expansion of relations in order to exploit the potential of frontier markets and advance in the global capitalist world system. In this cooperation, Vietnam is not a donor in the traditional sense; it mostly provides technical assistance rather than funding. The power balance here between the two sides of the partnership is significantly different from traditional aid relationships. Here, it is the ?beneficiary? who holds the power to hire and fire, to determine where they want help in, as well as the control of money, which arguably is the determining source of inequality in traditional aid where donors control development because they control the purse strings. On the other hand, the fact that there is still a clear ?recipient? in place in this relationship reflects an unequal division of responsibilities where only one side is imagined as being in the position to assist. 128 The scale of this program is exceptionally minor in terms of both quantity and impact, compared to not just traditional development aid but even programs of technical assistance from other Global South countries, namely Cuba?s program. However, examining the Periphery is also essential if we want to understand the Core?in this case, the master narrative of development and modernity as a whole. What we find with the state discourse of Vietnamese-Mozambican cooperation is not a challenge but more a convergence to the same master narrative. Even though this is a case of two developing countries in the Global South partnering with each other, in the spirit of mutuality and equality, the overarching goal that they pursue is the same ?end goal? of Western development teleology. In this pursuit, both countries have also positioned themselves on the same teleological hierarchy?one that I would explicitly describe as a racial hierarchy in later chapters. This program is an alternative in development, not an alternative to development. This chapter has sketched an initial perspective guide of the various material and discursive structures overlaid over Vietnamese experts? lives in Mozambique, from the official discourse of bilateral cooperation and friendship to the structural demands of development under global capitalism. The state narrative offers a guiding map for the way that the experts would make sense of and in turn narrate their experience. Against this official narrative of the state, individual experts? lives unfold, bend, push, transform, surpass, and become intertwined, constructing a complex bricolage that is the lived experience of being a Vietnamese expert in Mozambique. Chapter 6 begins to describe this entanglement on the ground. 129 Chapter 6. The Expert The Expert was deep in their recollection of the early years of expert cooperation. ?Back around the ?90s, there were only 3-4 Vietnamese education experts here. But at its peak, there must have been 100. That is because back then, they did not have teachers at all! At that time, these countries had just escaped slavery, Black people really did not have anything. Because their mode of slavery was absolute, unlike in Vietnam, even though we also had just escaped from slavery but in our country, not everyone was enslaved. We also had some, but there were other people who were able to receive an education and become professionals. As for here, because of racial discrimination, everyone was oppressed.? I was taken aback by the sudden sense of outrage in their words. It was clear that their imagination of the situation in newly-independent African countries was fragmentary and full of misconceptions, captured by what Mills (2021) calls a ?planetary consciousness? that simplifies and reduces Black experience to slavery. There was also an interesting note of Vietnamese exceptionalism, a self-separation from Blackness. Yet looking beyond the verity of what they said, the outrage in their voice expressed their honest sentiment of sympathy with the colonial and racist oppression that Mozambicans and other Black peoples of Africa had gone through. I thought, Ah, this sounds like they too are motivated by a sense of moral responsibility to help other victims of past injustice. So I questioned, ?Is that why you decided to come over here?? The Expert paused. Then they told their truths, ?If we are being honest, then when my colleagues or I go on these missions, we don?t actually have such lofty 130 objectives. The main objective to go as expert is to save our own family?s economic situation.? The next section of this chapter will unfold in the Expert?s voice as they told me narratives from their experience of ?i chuy?n gia?literally translated as ?going as expert?, which is how the experts refer to their mission abroad. Whether men or women, young or old, the experts had quite similar journeys, and this experience is presented chronologically from their first-person point of view. Towards the end of the chapter, we will return to the cafe, where the Expert and I discuss the current moment of their life in Mozambique. The chapter ends with a small discussion section. ??????? The Expert?s Story The ?80s - To Save Oneself and One?s Family In the latter part of the ?80s, our country was in such dire straits, to the point that many teachers and doctors had to find ways to go work as experts in Africa to save themselves and their families. For many of us, it was a matter of life and death to ??i chuy?n gia?. We went in order to save ourselves and our family. I want to tell you a little bit of our stories back then so that you can know and appreciate the contribution of those who had paved the way for this successful program of cooperation, thanks to which hundreds of thousands of families in our country were able to escape poverty, while our partner countries were also able to receive effective assistance. 131 To tell you the truth about our economy back then, H?ng ?, your generation would probably never be able to imagine our country from 1980 to 1995.16 Let me tell you, our country Vietnam is supposed to be an agricultural country, but we did not even have enough rice to eat. Each public official, blue-collar, or white-collar worker could only exchange 3kg with our stamps. Or, say at my workplace, if one day they have some undershirt or a few meters of fabric to distribute, then oh my goodness, we had to draw lots and fought with each other to be able to get some. That?s why back then, we thought simply that if we were able to go as experts, at least our incomes would improve a bit. Back then, education experts would get around USD100-120 a month, and you know that USD120 was enough to buy an entire Honda 50 motorcycle? that?s enough to feed an entire family! Two of those motorcycles would be enough to buy a plot of land. Two months of salary already enough to buy a plot of land! Many people did not leave after the typical two-year length of contract either. Especially in Angola, many kept staying and working as experts, while building up a business on the side. By 2000, former Vietnamese experts still in Angola could take home an average of about USD1,000/month. That was a dream income for Vietnamese people at that time. For the average expert though, for a mission of about two to three years, after taking out the government?s cut, then each person could take home almost USD2,000 in total. It was the government?s rule that each month, the expert would only receive 16 In many places, I will keep instances when the experts addressed me by name as ?H?ng ?? (??? is a Vietnamese suffix to name when we address each other to soften our tone) to maintain the spirit of dialogue and story-telling of my data collection process, in which the fact that these stories were told to me, rather than any other person, also matters a lot. For example, in this passage, we can see how my younger age and generation (as a person born in the mid-1990s) led the expert to decide what details to emphasize in their story. 132 about USD100 in the salaries paid by the Partner (usually over USD1,000). Our experts were determined to never touch that ?hard? USD100 for our daily spending. Part of our salaries were paid in local currencies; we used that to cover our daily expenses. It was such a meager amount that the government didn?t take a percentage from it either. When we converted it to US dollars in the black market, it would not even reach USD10. You asked why I brought up the motorcycle earlier? The experts would only receive all of our salaries at the end of our mission when the Embassy conducted the final settlement. The Partner country paid our salaries straight to the Embassy?s account, you see. And most of us used this money in the Embassy?s account to buy secondhand Japanese motorcycles to ship home and sell them there. Oh, some of us didn?t have experience at all, so we lost a lot of money in these motorcycle-buying attempts. One person ordered eight and lost all eight! But like I told you, you may think that?s such a low income, but it was already so much higher compared to inside Vietnam. Back then, as long as it was not in central Hanoi, going once on a mission, perhaps selling two used motorcycles afterward, that was enough to buy some land, even a house. That?s why one leader in the Ministry once blurted out something that hurt the experts? feelings a lot, ?First the trader, second the expert!? [Nh?t con phe, nh? chuy?n gia].17 17 This comment is talking about how both traders and experts were the main people involved in illicit trading in the shadow economy in the ?80s. The term ?con phe? is a derogatory term for traders at that time when commerce was still ideologically a social evil. Thus, it was definitely a sign of disrespect to place experts on the same scale of immoral practice and insinuate that the experts were just driven by profits and greed. 133 The government?s cut of the expert salaries meant that we had to be quite careful with our spending and saving. But you know the saying in Vietnam, if the top has their strategies, then the bottom has our counter-strategies [tr?n c? k? s?ch, d??i c? ??i s?ch]. One of my friends was quite close to the Minister of Education in Angola, so he often made trips to ?visit his Minister friend? but it was actually to make some ?minor? economic improvements for himself. I said ?minor,? but it was already equal to the annual salary of our high-level officials back then, about USD600. But he didn?t want to pay the percentage back to the government, so he used the law quite ?creatively?: he would quit just when his three months of working was almost up, and so was not considered an official expert. Some people were desperate enough to ?parachute? into the country to beg for a position as expert without having gone through the proper application procedure. My friend who used to work in Angola once told me this story. One time, he was visiting the Ambassador and saw a strange old man sitting in the room. He was quite tall but stick thin, his faded purple suit wrinkled and smeared. His green tie was also wrinkled, even his face too, full of the wrinkles of hardship. The Ambassador said to that man, ?Uncle, you cannot come here like this. First of all, you don?t have the paperwork from the Ministry of Education to assign you here. Secondly, you arrived in the middle of the school year, so we cannot do anything. We have to wait until the end of the year to negotiate new teaching positions for the next year. You have to go home!?18 Then, something happened that was beyond anyone?s imagination. This man walked to the middle of the room and kneeled down in front of the Ambassador, 18 In Vietnam, ?uncle? can be used to refer to older men even if one has no blood relation. 134 even kowtowing to him. ?Your Excellency, I know I really should not have come here this way, but I have no other choice! Mr. Nguyen took pity on me so he paid for my flight here. That?s why, I came here. And now that I?ve actually reached this country, then either I get to work, or I will die here, I cannot go home!? This man was eventually able to become a French teacher in a rural school. After, our Angolan friends said that he was an exceptional French teacher! When he had to leave at the end of his mission, everyone from the administrators to the students all missed him. We have always wished that his family members, perhaps his children or grandchildren, can one day listen to this story and learn about what their father, their grandfather, once did to live and work in that far distant African land. You ask if it was so competitive to become experts in those days. Well, it was not competitive, but it was extremely difficult for the average person to apply. In reality, not that many people applied, and as long as we passed the language exams, we could go. But the thing is, to have both the language proficiency and the subject matter expertise to go teach abroad was not easy at all. That?s why the experts back then mainly started out as lecturers at prestigious universities in our country, such as Hanoi University of Technology, Hanoi University of Civil Engineering, Hanoi General University. Experts were usually professionals on the older side, most of us proficient in French to some degree. Even those of us who went to the Lusophone countries, we had to present our Niveau C (advanced proficiency) certificate in French to sign up for the Portuguese language courses. It was most difficult to apply to Algeria or Congo, because their currencies were backed by the Franc so the portion of salaries paid in local currencies could be converted to more US dollars. 135 We went there to teach in many subjects. In the natural sciences, we taught Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Natural Geography? In technology, there were Civil Engineering, Architecture, Planning, Electrical Engineering, Electronics, Computer Science, Agriculture, Economics, and Health. In the social sciences and humanities, we taught Psychology, Educational Studies, French, English, even History! Perhaps with the exception of Literature, Portuguese, or Sociology? our experts taught it all! And? to tell you the truth, back then as university professors, our salaries were already good enough compared to the blue collar workers. If they got 20-25 Vietnam ??ng, then we must have gotten double of that. And all the daily struggles that the blue collar workers went through, in theory, we teachers should have been able to bear them as well. But you know, all of us, to be honest with you, we all came back from studying abroad ourselves. We had been students in the Soviet Union, or in Cuba, and our abilities to withstand hardships were not as good as the people back home. That?s why many of us were desperate to go. And that is despite all the horror stories we were already hearing from colleagues abroad; you know, even in my university back then, a professor in the Electronics department died after one year due to yellow fever. Then another colleague in my own department, he went to Algeria and was killed by Islamist extremists? so there were a lot of incidents, many people were scared of course. But we worked hard to study French and Portuguese to go anyways; there was no other way. I myself went through all of that preparation in the mid-80s. I finished studying French, and then a bit of Portuguese. But then my child was so young, so I 136 decided not to go. I did not expect that the call for experts would again find its way to my desk, so many years later. It must be fate. Preparation CEPECE had just distributed a new open call for registration in the Portuguese language training course and to join the candidate pool to become experts in Angola and Mozambique. They would send it to different universities and education departments, they also advertised it in the newspapers as well. Some people would join the language course because their workplace had assigned them to go, they would continue to keep their original work affiliation; others would find out about the program and register for it as independent candidates. In general, not a lot of people know about this program; most people who actually ended up enrolling tend to have acquaintances who had gone previously as experts. Actually, in the health sector, I have heard from colleagues that hospitals would hide these calls for experts from their employees, because they were afraid that too many doctors would sign up for the program and there would be a significant brain drain. The education pool of experts does not seem to be as competitive. 137 Figure 2. Sample Translated Call for Applicants to Become Education Experts in Angola and Mozambique When I saw this call, I had just retired. This was a chance I had missed out once in the ?80s. I had to raise my children until they were grown. But now that it?s 2010, they are adults, so that desire to go as an expert was once again burning inside me. To tell you the truth, after 30 years of teaching at this university, when I retired, I 138 still had nothing. I had nothing in my hands, no assets to speak of. Yes, that is why I once again decided to ?i chuy?n gia. To tell you the truth, there was no lofty moral goal. I did not have any ambition? any? how to put it, any sense of a grand mission to address injustice, but like I said, the main goal that my friends and I had when we went was mainly to take care of our family?s economic needs. So I reached out to the Center and signed up for the language class. We were a very diverse group of people, men and women, old and young all mixed in there. If in the old days of expert exchange, most of the experts were intellectuals working in Hanoi who had been educated abroad, then in the new phase of cooperation, many are younger people, perhaps in their 30s, who were working in the provinces and have never lived abroad. Going as an expert would be a life-changing experience for them. The young woman who sat next to me, for example, taught biology in a high school in a province adjacent to Hanoi. Her school happened to have another teacher who once went on an expert mission, so now she jumped at the thrill of this rare opportunity. She told me, ?At that time I just thought it would be so interesting, what an interesting chance. In the past, my knowledge about Africa only came from watching movies, like you know that one, The Gods Must Be Crazy, or documentaries about wildlife. So at that time, my impression of Africa was this place so natural, it?s full of possibilities to explore nature, so I was very curious and wanted to go.? Indeed, most of us knew nothing about the place that we possibly would be moving to. Mozambique, Angola, or Africa as a whole?all were just vague words in our mind. Especially in the early 2010s, there was virtually no information available about these countries. At most, we would find Wikipedia articles with the general 139 information about the population, the weather, or the language. Even now, if you search online, you can see how little information there is. There is the YouTube channel called ?Vietnamese Agriculture in Africa,? or recently, we have a new translated book about the history of Africa, but it is still near impossible to find specific information about Mozambique.19,20 Some people shared with me that their friends, family, children, nobody wanted to let them go. Even my family members did so. Everyone always thought that Africa is something so horrible. But I just said, ?Alright, let?s consider this as a trip to gain a new life experience.? Many value this opportunity to go abroad as an expert because of the significant change it would bring to their livelihood. If you think about teachers with our not-so-high salaries, or even doctors in the rural provinces, many of us would be at a stagnant stage in our career. There is a Vietnamese saying, these people ?have no door? [kh?ng c? c?a] at home to move forward, and if there was no opportunity to advance further, then maybe becoming an expert would be a good alternative path to get ahead. I once met a young man who quit his tenure job at a hospital to apply to go as an independent candidate. That?s quite rare to take such a risk. Not a lot of people do so because they are too afraid to leave the government tenure system. This allowed him to avoid the 8 percent of his salary that would have to go back to the Vietnamese 19 The YouTube channel ?Vietnamese Agriculture in Africa? is quite popular with 980,000 subscribers and almost 300 videos sharing the experience of Vietnamese youth volunteers in Angola as they help local farmers grow crops or build new houses. Interestingly, the group of people behind this channel calls themselves ?Team Africa.? 20 The book is The fortunes of Africa: A 5000-year history of wealth, greed, and endeavor by Martin Meredith. 140 Ministry of Health and his original workplace. But he was motivated by the dream of earning some more to give his family a better life, and then perhaps one day opening up a private office at home. He dreamed of being able to provide free treatment for the poor, the elderly, and young children in his hometown?but all that required having a solid economic base first. He planned to not only work as a doctor in Mozambique or Angola, but also open a business on the side. In our language course, people often spread stories about experts in Angola who had been able to build up a sizable fortune from side businesses. There is a Mrs. Huong who was once an excellent high school chemistry teacher in Luanda who then opened up a successful ice cream business, a Mr. Bui who became one of the main suppliers in photography lab equipment in that entire region of Africa, or a pair of education experts who had worked until their 80s who were earning six figures a year just from renting out market stalls. We had heard that for some people, going to Angola as experts was just to legalize their presence; once they were there, they just had to open something like a photocopy shop, let Black people manage it, and that was already enough to earn USD7,000/month. It is sensitive but it?s also the reality that going as expert can be quite lucrative. But then there are people who are also genuinely interested in the professional development side of becoming an expert. There was another woman in my language course who once confided in me that actually, her family was quite supportive of her going. ?Because actually, in our field of education, in order to go abroad? if it?s for teaching and not for other purposes like research, then it is extremely difficult. Our country really does not have a lot of those opportunities. That is why? everyone 141 encouraged me to try learning the language first and see, just try your best to go and see what it is like? So I also thought to myself, okay, if I have learned the language, then I am determined to go.? Other women also told me that the reason for their persistence to finish the Portuguese language course was because they wanted to learn new things and gain new experiences from this opportunity to live and work abroad. One would say, ?I want to compare the education systems between Vietnam and Mozambique to see what is different? I also want to see if there is anything useful I can bring back with me to help my career in the future.? Indeed, that young biology teacher I talked about just now, if she had not gone as an expert, maybe she would have been a teacher her whole life; but then after she went abroad and got the opportunity to work with our partner?s Ministry, she now has policy-making skills and experience that can help her get a policy job once she returns home in the future.21 Even for retired people like me, we also wanted that sense of professional development too. I have a lot of friends who told me that after retirement, they truly felt a shock. Especially if they stopped working, stopped any professional activities, then they felt that they were deteriorating very quickly. If we stop using our brain, then it would also become aged. I realized that now that my children were grown, so if I retired and did nothing then life would be quite boring. If I still have all of my 21 The gender politics in Vietnamese schools is such that it can be quite difficult for teachers, especially women teachers, without social connections to the ?right? higher-ups to get a promotion. The most realistic top position that a woman teacher can get through merit is to become the head teacher of their subject matter, which would give them more of a deciding voice when teachers come together to discuss and change the curriculum of their subject. More senior administrative positions in the schools, let alone in the local education departments, would require a lot of connections and money. Unfortunately, not a lot of research has been done in this area. 142 knowledge and skills, I have good health, good expertise, then I should continue working.22 Whatever the motivations, the passion to pursue their goals enabled these specialists to stick through the year-long language-learning course until they reached advanced proficiency, good enough to teach Portuguese in higher education in Vietnam. Not everyone could reach that finishing point. For example, my Portuguese class began with 37 people, but by the end there were only 12 people who graduated from the course. From then, it was not an automatic process to become an expert either. First, you had to submit an application to our partner ministries in Mozambique and Angola. If they accept your application, then you would take another language exam. This includes an oral component where you would be individually interviewed by the Ambassador of Angola in Vietnam, and he would determine whether your language skill is good enough to pass. Only once you pass this final exam can you prepare your flight and visa paperwork. Furthermore, you also have to finish the language course at the right time, when there are slots open for new experts to arrive and our partner countries happen to be in need of your particular field of expertise. Many people finish their language course and then just leave it there, like it was just an opportunity to learn a new skill, because the other countries had no need for their expertise at that moment. You can see from their requests that they are very specific about the fields they want; for example, one year they may want a chemistry teacher, another year they may want someone in biology. 22 Up until 2021, the retirement age in Vietnam was 55 for women and 60 for men. 143 So it?s not accurate to say that I decided to become an expert; throughout this process, there were multiple stages where I was selected to go. So it?s really fate. It?s a combination of elements: first, some luck; second, a choice on my part; and third, I had to pass through several exams and selection processes. Only then could I go. Oh my, my daughters, when they learned that I was really going, they kept crying and crying, they did not want me to go. I could only tell them I was determined, because, well, I have spent all that time in that language course anyway, so now I want to go and experience. I said, ?I want to go over there to learn, to experience.? Yes, I thought that I have lived up until this point, I have experienced everything, all the joy and bitterness of life, so no matter how difficult the conditions are over there, I would be able to stand it. I want to see how much hardship I can bear in life? (laugh). Yeah, that would still be an experience. The main thing is the experience. I knew that coming here to work as an expert would not be easy. I had heard a bit from the other experts who went before me. I had heard that most of us would be sent to remote provinces, where the transportation is still not good. But even so, I really did not expect things would be this difficult, not to this extent. Arrival When I first stepped down from the plane? all the way from the transit airport in Doha to here, seeing all just one skin color is already a bit? (The Expert?s voice trailed off). Then when I stepped into the airport, I wanted to stand there and cry. I never imagined an airport could be so? tiny, then oh goodness! It was 144 impossible to imagine. How scary. Even now when I think back, I can still feel the fear of that first day. But then, from that first step I took on Mozambican soil, from our partner?s side, they sent someone from their international cooperation department to the airport to welcome us. They took us back to a hotel and covered all of our accommodation while we waited for the official assignment to our new workplace. Yes, to send someone to the airport, greeting us by name, then taking us all the way back to the hotel, which also had very good conditions?it made me realize that our partner country is extremely hospitable and thoughtful. They probably wanted to give us a period of time to get used to the language as well as the culture here. The degree of welcome from the Mozambican partners made me feel like? like there was no reason that I should give up. They were very considerate, very open. They really take responsibility for us. I had heard that in the first group of experts sent over, there was a teacher in a rural school who almost went blind from cataracts, a complication from his diabetes, and MINEDH even assigned an official to go to Salamanga, where he worked, to accompany him all the way back to Vietnam. The only thing is the long time it took to process the paperwork. We waited in the hotel for two months. During those two months, we did not have to do anything either, just waited for their ministry to finish the paperwork and logistics before we can head to our posting. The ministry arranged everything, from housing and so on. Basically, from the partner?s side, they did everything possible to ensure we would have good living conditions. But those two months, they felt so long. We kept talking about how come at home the paperwork is so quick, so simple, yet why is it so slow 145 here! Extremely slow? Later on, I would realize that people here always work in a ?leisurely? manner, so everything would take a long time. But if I have moved here to work, then I will just have to accept that. During our stay in the hotel, we had nothing else to do but to throw ourselves into language preparation. It was two months of just lying in bed and looking over our textbooks and notes, reviewing conversational dialogues, preparing for how to integrate into our new work environment once we get assigned. We all missed home a lot. One of us left behind two young sons, another had a daughter who was still a toddler. It?s difficult to be apart from family, but we just have to bear it if we have made the decision to come here. That is why most of us would only want to stay for two, maybe three missions at most. One colleague told me that he had to go home when his sons became teenagers; he was worried if there was no father?s presence at that point. I missed my family, but I did not dare to tell them. You know, my daughter, sometimes when I called her, she just heard my voice going ?A-lo? and she already burst out crying. I thought something had happened, I would ask, ?Oh, what happened? What?s wrong?? But she just said, ?I just miss you, Mom.? Oh goodness, so many times like that. It?s because in the past, I really indulged her, spoiled her, that?s why she?s now like that. Because back when I was at home, every night before my daughters go to sleep, they would come into my bedroom and we would have our girl?s chat. Now that I?m gone, they suddenly feel empty. I had to scold them, ?Right now you can still see me everyday, you can still talk to me, if you have anything you can still discuss with me, then why do you have to miss me? If you keep being like 146 this, you will make me too restless to focus on my work.? Then later, my mom, their grandmother, also had to tell them, ?From now on you cannot keep calling and crying in front of your mom like that, you should not keep worrying her.? She?s a bit better now, she doesn?t dare to cry in front of my face anymore (Laugh). But sometimes she still pressures me to go home. A few months ago, she told me she dreamed that I had returned home, so she cried so much. I asked her, ?If you dreamed that I was home, shouldn?t you feel happy, why did you cry?? ?Because I miss you so much.? It?s just that it?s so far away. So far, to the point that you cannot even think about how the distance is so dreadful. Even though I know how many kilometers there are, I had looked all of that up, as well as the weather, the culture, the geography, I had prepared everything, but by the time I got here, oh God, it?s so far, without an end in sight. We can?t even tell home is in which direction? In our first month, the first two or three months, the women in our group even jokingly talked about going home! We joked, hey, what if we just go home, break the contract. We just thought? it was so distressing. It was too difficult. 147 Figure 3 Distance to Hanoi carved into the front of the local ph? restaurant In that period, it was actually our family members who reassured us, no matter if they had had misgivings beforehand or not. Especially for us women. Yes, both my side of the family and my husband?s side supported me, they did not? Yes. Actually it was my husband?s side, my in-laws, who encouraged the most, ?Alright, you 148 should try your best to do good work, you can rest assured over there, you don?t have to worry about anything at home.? Yes. Thankfully my husband is also someone who is caring and hard-working, he was able to even step into my role as a mom. They really are my ?strong rear support? [h?u ph??ng v?ng ch?c]. Where the Vietnamese experts get assigned is completely up to the Mozambican government. In our group that arrived that year, one of us was told to stay in Maputo to work at the Ministry, and the others, including me, were sent to work in vocational schools in the provinces. So after two months in the hotel, the paperwork was done, the partner?s side bought all of our necessary supplies, and finally, we moved down to our new school. Tears Became the Broth for My Rice My school was 60 kilometers away from Maputo. See that bridge, before it was built, you had to use the ferry to cross over to the other side. 60 kilometers away. So? if life in the city is vibrant to this extent, then down there? was terrible to the same extent. When we got to the house, it was very narrow. They assigned three of us to the same house, even though usually each teacher would get an entire house to themselves. Then when we went inside, we discovered that there was no pot! You know, the partner said that they had prepared everything necessary for daily living, but because over here, they don?t cook the same way we do, so? And you know how they eat with forks and knives here, while we use chopsticks! Oh no, the chopsticks? (laugh)? who would ever think of bringing chopsticks from home to here? We 149 didn?t know. And back then, none of us knew about the Chinese supermarket yet. (Laugh). My goodness, when we came down here, we wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. Only by 9PM did we finish making our first meal. There was no clean water. My God. When we twisted the tap open, the water was as cloudy as our Red River!23 Oh my God! When I ate that first bowl of rice, my tears started falling into the bowl. That entire night, none of us could sleep. We kept thinking, ?What will tomorrow be like?? From then on, for that entire first year, every morning and every night, it felt like we were always crying our eyes out. Each night we cried. Each morning we cried. It just felt like in front of us was an endless darkness. We were eating rice where the broth is our tears [?n c?m chan n??c m?t].24 To get drinkable water, we had to buy alum powder from the market and stir it in the water, and then we used the purified water after the sediment had collected at the bottom of the barrel. The sediment must have been as thick as 5, 10 centimeters! It was just pitch black at the bottom. We even ran out of containers to purify the water in. We kept waiting for rain, each time it rained we would collect the rainwater to use. Yes. It was very difficult, very laboring. That was why each time we went up to Maputo, or the Embassy or Movitel came down to visit us, they would always bring 23 The Red River and its delta is the main river delta feeding northern Vietnam?s agriculture sector. It was named ?red? because of the color of silt transported in the water. 24 Vietnamese meals always have a bowl of broth in addition to other dishes of meat and vegetables, and people typically eat rice with the broth to finish their meal. My participant used an expression that plays with this custom to express the feeling when life is too hard but one must still bear it in silence. 150 those 5-gallon jugs of water as presents. Each time was about 20 or 30 of those jugs. It was very hard. Another difficulty was that if we wanted to go up to the capital, then we had to use the bus, kind of like the market bus at home. Thankfully back then there was no COVID yet, if there was COVID, we probably would never have dared to go on there. If the bus capacity was 15 people, then at least 25 must have been packed on there. Before the bridge was built, to cross from that side of the river over to this side, we had to use the ferry, so it must have taken? from the time we lined up at the market to wait for the bus, if it was 9-10 AM, then we would only get to the city by 3- 4 in the afternoon. And that?s only a 60-kilometer distance. Oh, and that is only if the ferry schedule worked out well. If not, there were days when it took us until 7 PM to reach here, sometimes even midnight. One time the car even flipped over! Oh, those bus drives? (Laugh). Yes, because the roads were very slippery, they had not been paved yet, just dirt roads. We always had to walk out in rainboots. Oh God, it was so difficult! Even now when I want to return to the old school to visit it, I?d still feel a bit scared (Laugh). The school was very bare-boned. It did not have a lot of equipment at all, just the basics so that students could study there. Yes, the conditions were terrible to that extent. In that initial period, I was completely shocked. Oh, how could it be so impoverished? How could it be so backward? How could it be so difficult? ? Only then did I feel that our Vietnam, actually, is still a place that is quite wonderful? It was not like our country. Even if you go to the poorest regions in Vietnam, such as M?o V?c, H? Giang, Tuy?n Quang, and so on, life there would still feel? bright. But over here, it was just a muted color 151 of gloom. The younger experts, they would talk about how life here is ?the burial of youth??because even if the economic conditions are better than what laborers exported to Japan or South Korea experience, the personal life is non-existent.25 I cried everyday! Everyday. First was because I was missing home, but also, it felt like? like I was isolated. There was no? socialization, with anyone? There were days when the rain was so hard, the electricity ran out, then oh! There was no way to contact anyone, as if we were stuck in our Spratly and Paracel Islands back home. We could not contact anyone at all. There were times when the electricity was out for two days, and so for those two days, we had no idea what was happening in the outside world. I remember one time, in the city, the Embassy spread the news that there was violent unrest or something, the Vietnamese community should be vigilant and protect themselves? but then when people tried to call us, they had no idea where us three education experts were. It?s because the Internet was so unstable. Each week, we had to go buy a new data card, the type that you scratch. Back then, we had not been able to make contact with the Movitel company yet. There were no other Vietnamese living down there either. It was like we were stranded on an island. Then after that, the Embassy would start to visit, or they would invite us to special events organized by the Embassy, that was how we started to know people at Movitel. Only then did Movitel start helping us 25 It is notable that the experts would compare themselves with Vietnamese labor export workers to other countries who are typically low-skilled workers. It points to an implicit situating of their presence in the (racialized) global economy of labor export, no matter whether they are high-skilled or low- skilled workers. 152 with a new Internet line to use. If not, we would have had to keep buying data cards everyday from the market? It?s scary? that period, after I described it to you just now, I still get goosebumps. Look at my arms. Yes. It was a period drenched in tears. But I just thought to myself, I had made the decision to come over here, so I must continue with my work? It?s funny because the other experts also came from well-off families [nh? c? ?i?u ki?n]. Everyone who came over here, they are all? (Laugh) people with privilege. Yet suddenly we all came to a country where? wow, we really chose to make our own lives more difficult. Especially there is another older lady in our group, she cried her heart out because her husband actually used to work in? some ministry, or maybe an embassy somewhere, I don?t remember. So she should have known? (Laugh). She was so shocked, she kept saying, ?Oh God, why is life so unfair to me.? Then she said she would never return to this country ever again. After a year, I requested our partner to reassign me because they were not fulfilling my need for adequate living conditions and other needs. They accepted my request and reassigned me. That was when I moved to work with the Ministry in Maputo.26 26 I must make a note here that this is the only outright fictional element I came up with in order to smooth the composite narrative. In reality, although the education experts may be transferred between different schools, there was no case where people transferred from working in schools to working in the Ministry (unless they changed mission post from Mozambique to Angola, or vice versa, and in so doing changed their contract terms as well). This research participant was able to change to a different school in another location that did provide better accommodation. 153 Work Responsibilities At MINEDH, Vietnamese education experts would mainly work in the Secondary Education department which is in charge of the curriculum for grades 7- 12. This department has about 27 people, and it is divided into three units, one on History and Social Sciences, one on the Natural Sciences, and the last one on Technology. The Technology subject includes mechanical drawing, surveying, descriptive geometry, so on, these were all classes related to engineering. I worked in that unit, so I was able to draw on the 30 years of experience I had teaching the same thing back at my university. Other previous Vietnamese colleagues could work as a specialist in Chemistry or Biology. Each of us would work in a team with a local colleague, yes, one foreign expert and one local would form a team. Working at the Ministry was actually not too busy. Mainly, we would go down to the schools and assess if their curriculum and teaching met the Ministry requirements, if they needed any support. We would also go down to the provinces, particularly to the local departments, to see if they were working according to MINEDH standards. Often, we would also organize training sessions on how to use new equipment or tools, or maybe organize science fairs. Before, our trips down to the schools could have been as frequent as every other week, but recently, it is about 3-5 trips to the provinces every year. Mostly we would be working according to the annual plan that the Ministry set out. During the planning stage, of course we could also participate in this process and propose new ideas to our partner. For example, Vietnamese experts had suggested initiatives such as holding scholastic competitions for gifted students, 154 professional development for teachers on pedagogies and laboratory techniques, organizing science fairs, etc. Actually, when I was still teaching at the vocational school, it was more stressful. There were no lesson plans, I had to prepare all the lesson plans from scratch. When I arrived, there was an old curriculum that must have been in use for? who knows how long, people just kept passing it on, and I just had to follow that curriculum. If I felt that there were things I could bring from Vietnam, then it was just to add onto this curriculum. Preparing the lesson plans was extremely difficult. Here, our friends tend to just lecture. It is rare for them to even write on the board. As for the students, they also rarely take notes, I don?t quite know what they do in class either. There would be things from home that I tried to apply here, such as using PowerPoint presentations or bringing in models and samples. Then the partners would be very surprised, they would ask, ?Why do you need to use that? We don?t use that here, we don?t teach like that.? But then they would also adopt it. If they find that the things we do are interesting and good, then they will do it too. As for students, their academic levels were very low, so it was indeed a difficult task to transmit not just knowledge but also academic habits and motivation to them. It felt like? like Vietnam 20, 30 years ago. We experts were to bring our knowledge and experience from Vietnam to help, but we also respected the local people. So whatever their curriculum contained, we would only supplement it with interesting things from home as a bonus. Yes. Mainly, we just followed their custom. From what they had, we built on it. We did not impose our expertise from home onto what they had. It would not be suitable to 155 the local context either. For example? over here, they want to grow corn and rice, but our partner still lacks a lot of knowledge on rice cultivation. We have that knowledge, so theoretically we can teach and help them apply that knowledge. But because our partner does not have the foundation? the cultural foundation of being a rice-cultivating people [n?n v?n h?a l?a n??c], then even if we want to apply the same thing, it would be difficult. Even if we wanted to transfer that knowledge to our partner. Even if we say, okay let?s go out to the field and plant a new rice crop, they don?t have the fields with the right soil for us to apply. Plus, there is a serious lack of water. Yet all the plants that we grow at home require a lot of water. Yes, they just don?t have enough water here. That?s why our students, every afternoon, at 5PM, they would have to go very far away to carry the water back, bucket by bucket, to water that giant field. By the time one corner was watered enough, the other corner had already dried out. Vietnamese experts at the school helped out with the school?s farms a lot. Actually, most of our lessons were applied lessons in the field. There were only a few in-class theory lessons, the rest of the time, we were in the field. Yes, that school still had to have their own farm to be self-sufficient. So all the products that the students and teachers cultivated and harvested were to feed the boarding students of the school. Very rarely would we be able to sell part of our harvests, at most it would be the chicken eggs? sometimes we would be able to sell a brood of hens to replace with a new one? If we had any leftover fresh produce that we couldn?t eat it all, then we would sell to the petty traders. But it was very rare. The school was generally very poor. 156 The Importance of Language To do our work effectively as experts, the most important factor is the language. As for the rest, such as technical expertise, I am confident that Vietnamese teachers can all do it. Even our experts who had just graduated from universities, I fully believe that they would face no issues with regard to their technical competencies. Yes, the biggest difficulty we faced in our work is the language. Regarding the language, of course we had all attended the language training at home before coming here, but it could only get us to a certain point. Once we?re here, our colleagues also use the local languages as well.27 And Portuguese is a very difficult language. It?s so difficult that if you don?t? use it daily, your skill would definitely deteriorate. When I first got here, I was definitely bewildered by many things? thankfully our partners helped me a lot. You know, after one year of language training, I had gotten to level D, meaning that I was good enough to teach Portuguese at university level in Vietnam. I even graduated in the top 2 of my language class. Yet when I got here, I was still dizzy in the first three months. In those first three months, at most I could understand only 30-40 percent. Then three months later, it got to 70-80 percent. It was most difficult for those who were assigned to work in the Ministry, because then you had to attend meetings and the topics of discussion were constantly changing. It was actually 27 While Portuguese is the official and most widely spoken language in Mozambique (spoken by 47.3% of all Mozambicans aged 5 and older), 43 languages in total are used in the country. Other popular languages include Swahili, Makhuwa, Sena, Ndau, and Tswa-Ronga (Tsonga). 157 easier for people who came over to teach, because they only need to prepare their lesson plans then follow them. In our group, at first, only one lady who had previously worked as an expert in Angola had the courage to speak up in meetings. As for me and the others who were new, our skills were just at the basic communication level; if we prepared very hard before classes, then we could express and transfer the knowledge we wanted our students to gain. But if you told us to go out and socialize, or participate in some special events, it was extremely difficult. I was embarrassed to even greet people. It? the language that was coming out of my mouth just did not sound the same as the one from my colleague. I remember despairing to myself, ?Oh God! What do I do now! How do I teach now...? Personally, I think? perhaps it is not the best thing to say, but I really have to say that for Vietnamese people, our skills to learn foreign languages are not very good. Because I have studied in the Soviet Union, when I was studying Russian, I could tell that among all the international students, Vietnamese people were the slowest at picking up the language. And now, with Portuguese, it?s again us who seem to have the hardest time. I can tell you honestly that I have worked with experts from Russia, Kazakhstan, or Bulgaria, so on, they speak Portuguese like it?s their mother tongue?even if they were just living here for a year. But as for us, we would never reach that level just from living here for one year. And because of that language barrier, it was hard to integrate into the local community. Learning their culture and customs was not an issue; it took us at most 6 months, maybe 9 months, and we could already get used to their cultural practices. But there was still a sense of extreme isolation, especially back at the school. There 158 was no? socialization. We just stayed there. During the weekends, all the students would head back home, even the other teachers too. So it was just the three Vietnamese experts back at the school, with the security guard. It felt very isolating. We had friends, of course, but it was not to the level of fully assimilating into their communities. No, no? Perhaps it?s something intrinsic to the Vietnamese identity. H?ng ?, you studied in the U.S., you have seen it too, Vietnamese people often just cluster together right? Even when Vietnamese diaspora returns home to Vietnam, for example people who studied abroad in the U.S., they would also just hang out with each other. Maybe that?s a cultural essence, but it also was a barrier against becoming fluent in the language. I think with other cultural groups, they can integrate very quickly, because they are open with their words and communications. Whereas Vietnamese people tend to be? shy. And we live too far apart from the community. Even the experts now, you can see how often it?s a group of 3-4 Vietnamese people all living in the same house; once their workday is over, they just go home and hang out with each other. How can we improve our Portuguese then? It?s too easy to fall into a routine. Go to work from 7 to noon, go home to eat lunch and rest, then head back to work at 2 PM. Then in the evening, return home at 5 to cook, eat, then shut our bedroom door and go to sleep. Just like that, three years can pass by and an expert contract is over. Just like that. ??????? 159 Resilience (Back to the expert and me at the caf?) ?Yes, so that?s my life here. If you have any questions, just ask.? After finishing this long monologue, the Expert looked at me almost shyly, perhaps from having just poured their heart out with such honesty. It took me awhile to find the right words. ?If things were so difficult for you, why did you decide to stay?? What I was thinking was: What was the source of strength that enabled you to make it through! The Expert laughed. They said that they had gotten used to life here. There are things they have come to love, actually. ?Especially the weather. The weather here is wonderful. Yes, even though this is Africa, but the weather is cool, it is not harsh like in Vietnam. In Vietnam, when it?s cold it?s a freezer, when it?s hot it?s a furnace. But here, it always feels like autumn; whether it?s summer or winter, the temperate is always around 28 degrees [Celsius]. Even if the sun is out, people just have to find a tree with some shade and they can have a nice nap anywhere. I just have to open my window and the ocean breeze is already cooling my room, no need for even a fan. Yes, the weather here is so nice because there are few factories, so the air feels very clean, it is not polluted like in Hanoi. Actually, after so many years here, I just have to think about going back to Vietnam and I already get scared, H?ng ?.? ?And the food too, they?re very hygienic here. Like the fruits, when you enter the supermarket, you can see all these fruits so round and shiny, right? These fruits are all imported from South Africa. They were grown according to European 160 standards, so when I eat them I don?t have to worry about food safety and can just enjoy them. The seafood here is also very fresh.? The Expert added, drawing on basically the two most common complaints that Vietnamese people have about life in Vietnam: the polluted and harsh climate and the lack of food safety.28 The weather and the food may seem like very simple, mundane reasons for wanting to stay in this foreign country. Yet, that these basic material comforts of life are anchors for their continued stay in Mozambique is a reminder how these ?simple? things in life are not in fact ?simple? for a large portion of people around the world. When these simple comforts of material life had been out of reach for most of their lives, they become valued beyond many other things. Experts who could live in the city indeed have a more comfortable life compared to those working in the rural provinces. In the health sector, Vietnamese doctors who come to work as experts would try to negotiate for an assignment in Maputo. But even if life in the city was more accommodating, not everything was rosy. The reason we were sitting in this fancy caf? in the first place was because the Expert?s house had had a blackout?I was originally supposed to come over for lunch. The Expert told me that the Ministry was behind on paying their electricity bills, this happened sometimes. It never got as bad as around 2012 when Vietnamese experts? salaries were backpaid for years, so as the Expert whispered to me, ?You just have to understand and sympathize with our partner?s situation, the situation is often 28 In a previous study I conducted on Vietnamese?s cultural consciousness of global citizenship, the air pollution and lack of food safety also came up as two main ?push? factors behind a lot of people?s reasons for wanting to move abroad. 161 out of their control as well.? There was a deep sense of understanding that the Mozambican partners were often in financial difficulties, especially after Western aid was reduced around 2014 due to concern over government corruption. The Expert continued that actually, the collegiality at work was another major reason behind their decision to stay in Mozambique. ?In the work environment over here, all my colleagues are very friendly and enthusiastic. They know that we as foreigners who have come here will definitely face different issues, and they are always willing to help. When I go down to the schools, the teachers and students are also friendly. They would care about my wellbeing, give me encouragement, and share their knowledge and tips with me. Even if I do not talk much? they still give me a lot of respect.? ?You know, actually, the people of Africa, they are actually extremely nice.? The Expert used the words ?hi?n l?m? which simultaneously captured a sense of gentleness, kindness, but can also be meekness. ?Of course, there are petty crimes here, but it?s from poverty. The gap between rich and poor here is just too ridiculous. You know, I make this much here as an expert, but the average Mozambican?s salary is 10 times less, it?s so unjust.? The Expert continued musing about Mozambican society. ?I honestly have to say that I feel they live in a more peaceful way compared to Vietnamese. There is no such thing as the cursing, arguing, or even fighting each other on the streets that you can see in Vietnam. In the many years I have lived here, it has been so rare to see conflicts in the street. It?s mostly just when people get into traffic incidents, and even so, they resolve it peacefully. They just exchange contact information and promise to 162 meet at the police station. But they don?t launch into each other and start a knife fight like in Vietnam, H?ng ?.? This was quite an exaggerated perspective of life in Vietnam, but it perhaps emphasized how much time the Expert had lived in Mozambique that exceptional cases of violence in Vietnam had become imprinted as the ?normal? in their consciousness of home. Which brought us back to the conversation of the Expert?s decision to stay in Mozambique. They had extended their contract once already and were pondering a second extension. I asked, ?As a woman, especially with how Vietnamese women often have to bear the responsibilities?? The Expert continued my words immediately, ?Take care of your family, yes.? ?Do you ever feel the implicit pressure that you have to go home, back to your family?? ?Ah, then I have to say this. The sense of responsibility is always already within me. That role and responsibility of being a mother, a wife, is always within me. I always repeat inside my head that I? am doing this for my family.? The Expert smiled. ?I am still a family person. The thought that ?I have to stay here? or make a major sacrifice to stay in this country forever never occurred to me. I know that this is not my harbor. Yes. So the reason I decided to go work as an expert is? only to have this new experience. I wanted to gain new knowledge, and I have. So right now, I just consider this period as? a time for me to relax a bit. Then I will go home.? 163 The Expert continued, ?It?s because my children are all grown, everything at home is also at the stage where we don?t need more. My family also does all that they can so I don?t have to worry here, they are my strong rear.? They brought up the ?strong rear? again, emphasizing the importance of family as both a motivation and a supportive base. ?Of course, I also feel a sense of guilt? restlessness. When I?m not home, of course there would be an effect on my children to not have their mother there to care for them. Yes. But thankfully, now the technology is there, everyday we can talk to each other, I can continue to give them advice. So it helps a bit. But of course, I always want to return to my family.? Even so, she added that when her current contract was up, she would need to consider her family circumstances before deciding whether to extend. ?If my daughters continue to be happy and support my work, then I will keep working. But if they get married, start having babies, and need Mom home to help, then I will have to stay home.? The Expert paused a bit, then added. ?You know, at my age, I have experienced a lot of turbulence in life. Other than missing home and my family, there is no major issue [with life here] anymore.? ?If you have to go home now, you would probably feel a bit reluctant, right?? I asked. ?Yes. I would miss this country a lot.? 164 Discussion Struggle and Sacrifice It is notable that the major themes in the first-person composite narrative had to do with the difficulties, struggles, and sacrifices in their experience as an expert. This included the struggle of leaving family behind, the poor living conditions, the sense of isolation, particularly with the language barrier as a main challenge for both their professional and personal lives in Mozambique. One possible reason that these stories of struggle were shared more freely is that the experts could have been used to telling these stories to their friends and colleagues. For example, the tale of the lack of clean water was often shared and reshared among the Vietnamese diaspora; I had actually heard it from other people before hearing the first-hand account from the person who experienced it. Their colleagues shared it in a much more dramatic tone compared to the person who underwent it, ?You must imagine, for the experts who went to teach in [province], when they opened the taps, the water that flowed out was just murky, pitch black. That water could only be used in the toilet. You should just imagine the Red River back home, it was exactly like that. It was so difficult, they had to buy water in order to drink, to cook.? However, it should be pointed out that these stories were not shared as complaints about the ways the experts were treated or demands for better living conditions that the experts assumed they deserved. Most of the times, there was nothing in the experts that suggested a presumption that they were entitled to particularly living standards. Rather, these were merely descriptions of the particular difficulties they had to deal with?and eventually managed to deal with just fine. 165 Even when a participant pointed out that most Vietnamese people who came here as experts were privileged to some extent, it was to describe the level of shock that many experts felt and how they were not used to this situation. These recollections of past difficulties could be considered as animated stories to bring excitement to a social gathering, especially given how many of them were actually shared in a nostalgic tone. Another possible dynamic is that the stories that my research participants shared most freely are not just recollections of the past, but also reflections of how they see themselves, the value of their work, and the things most important to them. Consequently, the themes of struggle and sacrifice reflect a fundamental sense of identity for the experts: they were people who could and would bear these hardships. They have chosen this path themselves and would continue to bear with it, especially when motivated by a better future for their families and for themselves. This aligned with previous anthropological research on contemporary Vietnamese identities and society, especially Vietnamese women, which has underscored the centrality of ?sacrifice? as a sociocultural value (Shohet, 2013). ?i chuy?n gia here, to the experts, is a particular way of enacting that cultural identity within the boundary of the opportunities that have become available in their life paths. Vietnamese experts accepted these struggles and sacrifices in exchange for individual instrumentalist reasons, rather than the ?need to help? (Malkki, 2015) the Global South that prevails in Western international development and humanitarian aid. Indeed, the experts in this study rarely brought up moral discourses of helping the poor or disadvantaged in Mozambique (or Angola, or other parts of the world) as the 166 motivation behind their work. When confronted with the explicit question of, ?Why did you become an expert??, the rationales that they would share are always individualistic? ?individualistic? in the Vietnamese sense which cannot be extricated from their family. If a savior mentality exists here, it is to save themselves and their families, rather than to be saviors of strangers abroad. Particularly back in the 1980s, ?i chuy?n gia was seen as one of the few paths available ?to save myself and my family.? Even now, though there was no longer the same sense of desperation attached to going abroad due to Vietnam?s rising social and economic standards, some experts continued to carry an entrepreneurship mentality. Someone once shared with me quite frankly that after they arrived here, they had become consumed with ideas for starting their own business. No matter the emphasis that official state discourses place on Third World (socialist) solidarity and being there to help a partner in need (see Chapter 5), the experts? actual narratives reveal that they have their own thoughts, reasoning, and agency. This is not necessarily an either-or situation; it is more the case that different rationales and understanding of their roles as experts are intertwined. It is why the experts would always begin even their personal stories with the official discourse. Without a doubt, the official state discourse of solidarity, particularly the sense that they were here on a ?mission??with its moral implications?also holds an important place in their mind as a framing for their work. As a consequence, the economic dimension of working as an expert could be quite a sensitive topic, as if admitting these entrepreneurial desires or activities would somehow defile the act of being an expert. Some experts did not talk about their side 167 activities in our recorded interviews at all, even if we would chat about them when we were informally hanging out. At the end of an interview, one expert vaguely advised me to think carefully about whether certain things should be included in my research or not; the implication was to think about things that could cast a bad light on Vietnamese people as a whole. It was only when I explained that I was not here to judge or evaluate this program, that I fully respected all the sacrifices that the experts made for all reasons, that this person seemed to be relieved and said, I think one good thing about our nation, is that we are always ready to fight for our lives, right? [HL: Right]. If it is for our family, for the wellbeing of our family, then it is not a bad thing. This suggests how there is still some moral sense in how the experts approach their roles, or at least, there is a recognition of the moral official framing of the program that they must navigate. A possible tension could have been that trading and commerce were culturally maligned activities in both the traditional Confucian times and the socialist eras in Vietnam, so there is an additional hesitance to admit it when they are supposed to be here for solidarity (see Leshkowich, 2014). It speaks to how life in Vietnam requires people to come to hold multiple truths and present multiple faces to the world in order to survive and thrive. This is why in Chapter 5, I described this dynamic as an entanglement of reasonings where the state narrative is a guiding map that the experts both live within and transcend beyond. 168 The Gendered Narrative of Women Experts As mentioned above, not all the experts were immediately open about the economic dimension of their professional motivations, but what was even more notable was the gender difference in explaining their reasonings behind coming to Mozambique. For the men, they all talked about their work in the ?breadwinner? sense of making economic contribution to their families; even though it was still a sensitive topic, the men experts seemed more open to discussing it, as if it was still more palatable for men than women to hold and express such motivations. However, for the women participants in my study, the first reason they brought up to explain why they became experts all revolved around a sense of seeking adventure, seeking the unknown, seeking a new experience. One woman talked about wanting to explore a place they had not known much about before except in nature documentaries and the occasional movies. Another discussed wanting to gain new knowledge and seizing this chance to go abroad because it was a rare opportunity in her career in education. The last woman, already retired in Vietnam, took this opportunity to assert her continued capacity to work and contribute to society even after retirement, especially during a particular moment in life where her children were already grown but she was not yet burdened with the responsibilities of being a grandmother. Yet they all decided to take on this new challenge, stepping out of comfort zone, expanding their horizon, in a way that seemed very liberating and asserting of their independence and capabilities. It is possible that the economic dimension was also on the women?s mind given the central role of women as economic contributors in Vietnam. Even in the 169 rigid Confucian confine of the feudal period, women?s involvement in trading in the marketplace was essential to household survival, even if there was no contribution to families? prestige (Leshkowich, 2014). Since the independence revolution, the socialist policy emphasis on gender equality has further promoted women participation and advancement in the economy, though this is tempered by the state?s ongoing discourse that positions women as nurturers and caregivers (Drummond, 2004; Hoang, 2020). In Vietnam?s broad international labor export program as well, the government has adopted policies to promote the export of women labor abroad, particularly women from poorer provinces. A study by Phuong and colleagues (2020) found that the sociocultural climate in Vietnam was generally accepting of women?s decision to migrate abroad for work, especially married women. Thus, on a macro-level, it is not a taboo for Vietnamese women to migrate abroad for work, and it is a common enough to acknowledge that women can play an important role in the circulation of remittance and the economic wellbeing of families and the country. When the women experts in this study forewent bringing up these economic rationales for becoming an expert, instead framing this mission abroad as opportunities to expand their horizons, it highlights their agency and suggests that they did make this decision for themselves to enrich their careers and their life experience. Again, it is notable that a woman expert brought up how most experts, particularly the women, came from relatively well-off circumstances, with the implication that they did not need to make this sacrifice to work in Mozambique. Yet even as they seized this opportunity for themselves, family was always a constant reminder in their decision-making. No one imagined spending the rest of 170 their life away from home and family; they always knew there would be an end to their journey, and the main factor would be because their family, particularly children, needed them. It must be noted that it was not just the women but the men also felt the duty of family. Men experts would also sacrifice their career for their family. When the fictional character the Expert talked about giving up the initial chance to become an expert in the mid-80s because their child was too young, this was taken from the experience of a man. Another man also brought up the importance of returning home and being present as a father when his children became adolescents?the years he considered the most important in his children?s lives. Even if family is a core value for both men and women, what differs is that men experts are not subjected to the same social skepticism that women have to go through. That is, women experts face an additional burden of social questioning of why they decided to leave their family behind to come to Mozambique. This is revealed through my conversations with other members of the Vietnamese diaspora and their commentaries on the expert exchange program. Another woman?a trailing spouse of an expat?brought up that one of the things that struck her about this program was how many women there were. Her rough estimate was that the gender ratio must have been 4 women to 1 men. This calculation was thrown off by how the most recent group of Vietnamese experts was all women; in reality, women made up just under half of the experts sent to Mozambique. In Angola, where the community is larger and statistics would be more meaningful, women make up 1/3rd of the total expert population. No matter the percentage, the women experts must have stood out in the community, because as this community member said, ?To leave your husband 171 and children behind, it does not really follow Vietnamese sociocultural mores [thu?n phong m? t?c]. Especially to a place like Africa which most people tend to feel somewhat hesitant [ng?i ng?i] about.? When I wondered if there were any particular difficulties that only women experts would face, the community member chimed in immediately, ?You don?t even have to ask and you would still know.? ?What do you mean?? ?It?s the family pressure and burden from being a woman yet not being home, and how this burden is shifted to their husband?s and parents? shoulders.? Indeed, my women participants did discuss this. In contrast, from an outsider?s perspective, it seemed simply understandable that men would have to make this sacrifice and work abroad as the assumed family breadwinners, rather than something that invited questions. Everyday Experience of Living in a ?Contact Zone? At the beginning of this dissertation, I argued that these SSC encounters, beyond being a development program, were also encounters at the ?contact zone? or ?space of imperial encounters, the space in which peoples geographically and historically separated come into contact with each other and establish ongoing relations? (Pratt, 2008, p. 8). When Vietnamese experts entered this contact zone, they unsurprisingly needed a transition period to adjust to the language, culture, and work. Language in particular was perceived as the biggest difficulty for the experts. Even after the initial transition, however, Vietnamese experts?and the general Vietnamese diaspora in Mozambique?still largely kept to themselves, especially in terms of housing or weekly social gatherings. The Vietnamese community in Mozambique was very tight-knit. While their professional relationships with local 172 colleagues and people seemed amicable, there did not appear to be many close friendships. It would be a lie to say the Vietnamese experts do not see color; they do. That was the first thing that one of my participants noticed when they took their first step on Mozambican soil, after all, ?When I first stepped down from the plane? seeing all just one skin color is already a bit?? It was interesting that the Expert trailed off right after mentioning skin color. Such is the racial world we live in that they knew it would not be a politically correct course to keep talking about in a research interview, but it would come up unconsciously. There were also other passing remarks that where anti-blackness tropes circulated (chapter 7 will include more of these). It is not a color-neutral, race-neutral world. After all, the experts did bring with them to Mozambique a particular imaginary of Africa that was mostly constructed from Western perspectives, from nature documentaries reproducing a myth of the continent as ?wild? and stuck in the past, or the South African movie The Gods Must Be Crazy made in 1980 which had been critiqued for its racism and complicity with apartheid institutions (Nicholls, 2008). Yet there were moments when the experts spoke back against the common tropes. Hence, they would tell me things like, ?Actually, H?ng ?, the people here are very nice.? The ?actually? signified their desire to correct any misperception or undue fear I may have had about living in this community. The experts in my study also could recognize the structural reasons for many of the common ?issues? of the continent, such as tracing crime to structural inequalities or the general lack of economic development to colonialism and past slavery, rather than locating it as an 173 inherent fault of Black people. Not all development practitioners in the world demonstrate a similar understanding of these root structural causes. In Chapter 5, I discussed how this inter-governmental program of SSC, though supposed to be an alternative model of development, still has the development teleology as part of its supporting framework. This chapter begins to demonstrate how the structure?the grammar of development?also encroaches at the micro-level in the ways that Vietnamese experts view Mozambican colleagues and the situation in Mozambique as a whole. The traces of the global Western development aid system can be found in numerous places in this SSC. It can lie in the implicit taken-for- grantedness of Development ideologies in the experts? consciousness. When one expert described the Mozambican education system as ?It felt like? like Vietnam 20, 30 years ago,? this temporal comparison could only have entered the expert?s consciousness because it felt natural to place everyone on the same measurement tool. Beyond this ideological influence, however, there were also material traces of the global Western development aid system even in Vietnamese-Mozambican SSC, in particular, the role of the Western donor. It was interesting that the experts positioned themselves as if they were in the same weaker position with Mozambican colleagues, because ?It just? always depends on aid, mostly things happened thanks to aid.? Chapter 7 continues to explore the dynamics of structural inequalities in development aid that have been carried over to this SSC through bringing together both the official and individual levels of the program to discuss the impact and future of this cooperation program. 174 Chapter 7. Impact Evaluation 2020 marked the 45th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Mozambique and Vietnam. While previous diplomatic milestones had usually called for grand celebrations, COVID restrictions this year meant it could only be a small affair. Among the very selective list of invitees, the few representatives of the Vietnamese diaspora included mostly Movitel?s leadership and the delegation of Vietnamese experts?signaling the community stakeholders whose contribution to Mozambique-Vietnam cooperation was most highly valued. As was the norm at these official events, the banquet began with official remarks by officials from both governments. The Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs from Mozambique expressed the government?s satisfaction with the contribution Vietnam has made towards the development of Mozambique: We note with satisfaction Vietnam?s contribution to the socioeconomic development of Mozambique, through tripartite cooperation in technical assistance, training and capacity-building, technology transfer in several priority areas with emphasis on agriculture, defense and public securities, education and training, transportation and communications. In return, the Ambassador of Vietnam in Mozambique commented, Over the past 45 years, the relationship between Vietnam and Mozambique has gone a long way. The trust between the two governing Parties, the [Communist Party of Vietnam] and the FRELIMO, has always provided a solid foundation to facilitate the 175 comprehensive cooperation between the two countries, especially in economics, trade, and investment. These remarks are overwhelmingly positive and celebratory in an abstract sense, as is to be expected from official state discourses, especially those made at diplomatic functions. As a consequence, the ?satisfaction? expressed in the highest level of official rhetoric does not mean that stakeholders from both sides want the program to say the same. Even the Vietnamese ambassador conceded, ?We are proud to see the constant development of the bilateral friendship and cooperation between Vietnam and Mozambique, but what we have achieved so far is still very modest compared to the expectations and potentials of the two sides.? Further conversations with Mozambican partners in this education cooperation program, including officials from MINEDH as well as administrators and faculty from Universidade Pedag?gica (UP), reveal that they have their own vision of where they wish to take this program in the future. This chapter brings in the perspectives of stakeholders from both Mozambique and Vietnam, from high-level officials to individual experts, from government representatives to those in higher education, as they each express a diversity of perspectives on the value, impact, and desired future changes to this expert cooperation program. 176 Mozambique?s Perspective Why Vietnam? Vietnam?s achievement in science and development as a draw While official state discourses like to emphasize the traditional friendship and solidarity that has spanned decades between Vietnam and Mozambique, in reality, the vast geographical distance means that the citizens of both countries are essentially strangers with only the most cursory knowledge of each other. In a conversation with an official within MINEDH, he acknowledged the limited knowledge that Mozambicans have of Vietnam, In the beginning we didn?t know anything about Vietnam, yes. When we hear Vietnam, we remember some videos, some film that we watched on YouTube or by disk, like, the war between Vietnam and the United States, Vietnam and China, and other countries. On the other hand, with limited cross-border interactions and linkages, it is easy to focus on the basic statistics and broad picture of development that different countries would portray on the international stage. In this case, Mozambican people would often point to Vietnam?s rapid development as a distinctive feature and a factor behind the desire to strengthen cooperation. In the words of the same MINEDH official, [When] we understand more about Vietnam, and we realize that Vietnam is one country where there is a lot of investment, there are many factories, and? your country is developing very fast. Yeah, very fast. Faster than our country. You spent a very long time in war, but 177 you changed in a very short time, so you should be proud of your country. Vietnam?s level of development was also what attracted many Mozambican students to study in Vietnam and why the Mozambican government initiated many training programs with Vietnam in a number of fields, ranging from police training to party leadership. For a Mozambican student who received a Bachelor?s degree in Vietnam?and is now working for the Mozambican government, he highly valued the opportunity to study and learn from Vietnam, So it was a really good opportunity. Not for me only but for my country to share the culture, and also to exchange the technology, because Vietnam is a bit high in technology and also veterinarian medicine. I think you guys have developed very fast. In the Mozambican perspective, this development progress was associated specifically with Vietnam?s competency in the sciences. This perception of Vietnamese strength in science appears to have been drawn from the first group of experts sent in the mid-1980s who helped fill the crucial lack of science teachers in Mozambique at the time. In a meeting between representatives from MINEDH and the Ambassador of Vietnam to discuss the future of education cooperation between the two countries, the Minister herself brought up how Vietnam was very strong in the sciences, and she knew this from her own time teaching in a high school where there were many science teachers from Vietnam: 178 We are aware that Vietnam is very good in science and I recall that when I was teaching in [secondary school], some of these science teachers were coming from Vietnam, in biology, physics, chemistry and mathematics. So, we wish to see more advancements, improvements, in this area of science in our cooperation. Reflecting on the Mozambican education system, the Minister commented that ?we are facing some problems also in our education system, especially in science, that?s why many students prefer to go for the arts instead of science.? As a result, from MINEDH?s perspective of the upcoming revision of the protocol of education cooperation between the two countries, they would like to see Vietnam becoming even more involved and providing more impact in the natural sciences. Competency, intelligence, and professionalism Up until this point, the areas of expertise that Mozambique has requested Vietnamese assistance in have been areas where Mozambique can perceive clear Vietnamese strengths in. Agriculture as an emphasis is a clear case of this. Many Vietnamese education experts in fact come from an agricultural education background. In the words of the MINEDH official, Vietnamese teachers come here to help Mozambique teaching in some areas like agriculture because we know that Vietnam is the best [in that area], that Vietnam knows exactly what is necessary to improve, to help produce, to give people [enough] to eat. Likewise for the other experts who worked in secondary education, such as biology or chemistry, they were able to help Mozambique with writing many 179 curriculum materials that teachers would need to use in their jobs, such as applied exercises for the students. They also organized professional development seminars for the teachers. As the Ministry official said, ?They show exactly the good ways that the Mozambican teachers can use to do a good job.? In other words, there is agency and strategic thinking in Mozambique?s requests for technical assistance. They have tended to target agriculture and science where they perceive Vietnam as having better experience that can be shared with Mozambican people. With regard to the contribution that Vietnamese experts had made, officials in MINEDH appeared to be generally happy with the experience and good practice that Vietnamese experts had shared. This could be attributed to the fact that the Vietnamese individuals who were selected for these expert positions did have to demonstrate training and experience in their exact specialty areas. A representative from the Ministry commented that it was a good experience to work with the Vietnamese teachers because, [M]ost of them have a long experience [in the things] they teach us? You know, we are talking about people who have long experience in their jobs, [and] Mozambique took many things from working with this group. Their appreciation of what Mozambique had been able to take went beyond the specific deliverables that Vietnamese experts produced and encompassed the general professional habits displayed by this group of people. A Mozambican colleague who closely worked with several Vietnamese experts said that working with these specialists had changed many opinions they had: 180 Many things changed. For example, I learned that when there?s some problem? we have to respect time, we have to respect other people, we have to learn and share things that we know. These words suggest that one of the things that this Mozambican person appreciated about their Vietnamese colleagues was the general showing of respect as an approach to resolve potential issues or conflicts at work. There is also the interesting note about ?respecting time,? which this colleague elaborated on as the need for punctuality and following plans, such as following payment schedules (which had emerged as an issue for Vietnamese experts in previous chapters). For him, Vietnamese experts tend to be very determined to achieve their goals, and they create structured plans to pursue these goals. He added, When I compare different people that come here and work in Mozambique, I see that the [Vietnamese people] are different because they do things in the right way. In the right way, yes. They look for the time, they do things in a proper way. And they teach this to us. It?s good, it?s a good experience. It is interesting to see that part of the value and ?lessons learned? from Vietnamese experts had to do with ?professionalism,? such as setting goals, establishing timeline, setting and following clear plans. These are the ideal skills of modern bureaucracy and its obsession with technocratic rationalism (Inkeles & Smith, 1974). It is a reminder that these experts were here as development experts. As such, their work was still evaluated under the hegemonic vision of development as intertwined with (Western) modernity. Though this was a South-South cooperation, 181 the notion of technical assistance embedded within it still carried the spirit of Western ?capacity-building? that is ultimately about the standardization and universalization of a singular way of working and being?the ?proper way? in the words of the Mozambican. Kothari (2005) called the development expert a key agent ?involved in consolidating unilinear notions of modernising progress? (p. 425), and though her words were meant to critique UK development aid professionals, they seem equally applicable to the Vietnamese experts in this particular case. Yet to the Mozambican official, there is a distinct difference between the cooperation between developing countries as compared to traditional donors from developed countries. He expressed, ?Yeah, we are talking about the different, how can I say, friendship.? This went beyond the sense of ?friendship? between Mozambique and Vietnam that is part of the official state discourses; the Ministry official expanded that the difference lies in ?the responsibility.? In his perspective, what was distinctive about Mozambique-Vietnam cooperation was the responsibility shown by the Vietnamese experts in pinpointing issues and taking the initiative to solve them. It could have been very small but extremely practical solutions, such as the following anecdote about water, Yes, Vietnamese people are intelligent because they see exactly what is wrong, what is good, and try to help. Unfortunately, because you will not have a chance to see the place where Vietnamese people work at, you won?t hear the students? stories. Some students won?t forget the Vietnamese teachers. They share experiences like, for example, the A/C, they can use water from there, the water that is dropping [from 182 the A/C]. It?s not a waste at all for the Vietnamese people. They take advantage of it; they show how it?s possible to use that water differently. He continued to discuss how Vietnamese teachers shared with their schools different techniques and different materials to prepare agricultural fields for good production as examples of concrete problem-solving. In his words, ?Yes, Vietnamese people are intelligent because they see exactly what is wrong, what is good, and try to help.? There was still room for improvement in the program, of course. With regards to the experts sent over so far, different Ministry representatives brought up language proficiency as the main issue, ?[When] Vietnamese teachers come here, they have knowledge, but they need to practice. They need to practice, so they can use the language easier. That is the thing that I think we need to improve.? Beyond this, however, the Ministry was more interested in macro-level changes that need to be made to the entire program of education cooperation. Future Vision of Mozambique-Vietnam education cooperation Addressing the lopsidedness of cooperation In the second phase of education cooperation, from 2009 to present, while Mozambique has accepted 12 education experts from Vietnam, only 1 Mozambican expert has been sent in the reverse direction. In my interview with the MINEDH official who works closely with the cooperation program with Vietnam, he was very clear in pointing out this imbalance: 183 There is, however, one minus, one bad disadvantage, that the cooperation has been one way. The mobility so far has been one way? In order for the cooperation to be successful I think it has to be two-way, bidirectional. He referred back to the Protocol, ?But you know, the Protocol decided that both sides can exchange teachers.? As mentioned in Chapter 5, however, the Protocol mainly discussed the possibility of sending Mozambican teachers to Vietnam to teach Portuguese, rather than the more open list of possible responsibilities for Vietnamese experts. Even so, the Mozambican official pointed out what made sense for an exchange, ?If Mozambique is still receiving Vietnamese teachers, it is better for Vietnam to receive some teachers to share some experiences in Portuguese language. It?s necessary.? In addition, his suggestion for improving the program was not to just increase the quantity of experts but also to change the substance of cooperation. While he acknowledged that ?the Protocol, or the implementation, is good,? he also mentioned, ?I insist to say that we need to include in other areas, other areas that both sides can share. Because now we can see that we don?t need, for example, more teachers in certain areas.? This suggested a change in the kind of technical assistance that the Mozambican side thought would be valuable. While the previous era of expert cooperation sent a lot of experts who took on actual teaching duties in secondary schools and vocational schools due to the lack of qualified teachers in Mozambique, this change would better align with current trends in the contemporary Mozambican education system. 184 Consequently, the official also suggested that Vietnam should send more delegations to observe the current education situation in Mozambique to better prepare for the new Protocol and make sure cooperation activities are relevant and what is necessary to request assistance in. Likewise, it would be a good idea for more Mozambicans to go to Vietnam and observe what Vietnam had to share. In the words of the official, When someone doesn?t know exactly what?s going on, it?s not good. It?s not good. I think sometimes, this is the point that brings problems. Because if we try to make decisions on things that we don?t know clearly, we will get problems in the implementation. In emphasizing this need to share between the two countries, the Mozambican official also welcomed the Vietnamese side to propose areas that Mozambique could help with. He said, If Vietnam needs other things from Mozambique in education, it?s free to list other things that would be good? It?s good to share. You have this, I need this, and then both sides try to propose several issues to include in the protocol and then after, both sides will sit in the same place to discuss what is possible, how it is possible, where it is possible. These various ideas for improvement point to how the Mozambican side perceived this cooperation program as an exchange, and that both sides would have valuable things they can share with and learn from each other. While they generally 185 had positive words about the cooperation activities so far, particularly the work of the experts, they also clearly saw a need for the upcoming Protocol to adapt with changing times and contexts and include new areas of education cooperation. Indeed, in high-level negotiations between the ministries, MINEDH has also proposed enlarging the scope of cooperation to include new fields. New areas and partners of cooperation In a June 2021 meeting between the Mozambican Minister of Education, her selected colleagues, and the Ambassador of Vietnam for an initial discussion and planning of the new Protocol, MINEDH specifically requested three areas that they would like Vietnam?s assistance in: distance education, science education, and teacher development, particularly in STEM. These areas were brought up in the context of the many contemporary challenges that the Mozambican education system was facing. This included the immediate challenge of managing the COVID-19 pandemic in schools, but also the longer-term desire to improve science education and the quality of education as a whole, in ways that would be ?giving importance to the reality of Mozambique,? as emphasized by one Ministry representative at the meeting. The Ministry?s immediate requests were practical in asking if there was any possibility for Vietnam to provide tablets to Mozambique so that students could still access the Internet and do their schoolwork. Given the ongoing context of the pandemic, it was expected that distance education would be brought up first as a priority area. However, Mozambique also expressed a desire to see Vietnam becoming involved in furnishing secondary school science labs and the professional 186 development of Mozambican science teachers. Again, this linked back to the general perception that the Mozambican side had of Vietnam and Vietnamese education as being strong in the sciences. According to the Minister of Education, she wished cooperation would return to the spirit of what happened after Mozambique gained independence, ?focusing on upgrading the capacity of the people.? Rather than simply reproducing the terms of the Protocol and just adding specific areas of technical assistance, MINEDH also proposed carrying out cost-benefit analysis to see if they should send Mozambican specialists and teachers to train in Vietnam or accept Vietnamese experts coming to Mozambique for this teacher professional development. With the emphasis on distance education and STEM, it was natural that the joint Mozambican-Vietnamese telecommunications company Movitel would be brought up over the course of the discussion. In fact, in the past several years, Movitel has established partnerships with a number of ministries in Mozambique to support more effective use of ICTs in government services, including a project with the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Agriculture to deliver microfinance services for farmers in hard-to-reach areas. Both sides were very enthusiastic in exploring how Movitel can enter a new partnership with MINEDH. As the Ambassador proposed, he was personally willing to connect Ministry officials with the company, For the telecommunications support, for ICT and other kinds of training in Mozambique here, especially for the distance education training, I think that we can have another technical meeting with Movitel experts. Then we will discuss what kind of support Movitel 187 can help you? I can talk with Movitel so that the two sides can discuss in a technically specific manner of what kind of support you want. This kind of interest in pulling in Movitel, a private partner, into the traditional bilateral relationship in education aligns with the broader spread of PPPs in education policy-making and implementation around the world. Part of the diversification of partnership also included heightened interest for universities in Mozambique and Vietnam to work directly together rather than through the Protocol. The longstanding university stakeholder involved in the Protocol has been UP, one of Mozambique?s main universities. All Vietnamese students who had gone on the one-year exchange program to Mozambique had done their studies at UP. However, as part of their recent core strategy of internationalization, the university has been expressing interest in going beyond this and establishing direct partnerships with universities in Vietnam. This is part of their recent core strategy of internationalization. In a meeting with the President of UP and other representatives, the provost expressed their vision that partnering with universities and research institutes with Vietnam would bring a lot of beneficial knowledge and experience in economic development: [The university] has a lot of problems to adapt to that new era, the digital era, in terms of hosting students, connectivity, teaching programs? I think that is the challenge where I think that Vietnam can also play a very important role because you have done that very 188 successfully to bring the country into a new era, with Movitel and other companies? We also want to offer courses online, and for that one, I think we can work together. Another area I think could be interesting for Vietnam should-could be contemporary history. Contemporary history, particularly after the second world war? all of this studies on the way Vietnam developed despite all their stories that they have. So if I could, I would like to see those two areas that are very important to think more about it. Interestingly, Movitel was again brought up, indicating the importance that this telecommunications company plays in contemporary Mozambique-Vietnam relations. Certainly, it is a promising partner that is already situated in the country and a leader in the prized technology sector of the 21st century. Indeed, UP representatives revealed that they were working on a project with Movitel to establish a partnership program, beginning with the provision of laptop and other equipment exchange but could potentially extend to research cooperation, technology transfer, and professional training for UP students. However, UP was also interested in establishing cross-border partnerships with universities in Vietnam. One concrete proposal was that in addition to student exchange, they would begin to work on exchanges of lecturers of professors to share and collaborate on research, aligning with current practice in higher education institutions around the world. According to the President, while UP has long been embedded in international exchange programs through sending faculty and staff to be trained abroad, in countries such as Brazil, Germany, Portugal: 189 But I am quite confident that we are no longer in that phase, in that stage where you know, we just want to send. We need to have a strategic view of what we want to achieve. [Professor G.] keeps telling us that we can keep sending students, but if we don?t make the result into what we want to achieve, eventually we are not going to achieve any progress. UP leadership at the meeting expressed firm beliefs in the value of South- South cooperation. As one professor said, ?We need to reach out more to countries in the South? Traditionally our cooperation has been focusing on Europe, the old continent, a few in South America, a few in Africa. But we need to expand more.? One factor may be that most of faculty in this university?s administration were trained in Brazil and might have been influenced by the stronger current of decolonial thought in Latin America. In a previous interview reflecting on the influence of his Brazilian education on his perspectives, the President of the university himself has explicitly remarked on the coloniality of higher education in the Global North, There is a perception that European and American universities hold northern epistemologies and, consequently, would be the best in the world. This is not only an aberration, but a distortion in the way we understand the world. They are imposed theories, and they have been assumed as absolute truths. Brazil?s experience has allowed us to relativize this monstrosity and prove that it is also not only competitive but that it can also change and must improve. Brazil proves that southern epistemologies are of no less significance to the north and 190 that an academy can be directed to local interests and respond to local dynamics. This would mean the emancipation of an educational and liberatory project. (Gomes, 2018) With this desire to shift the paradigm in higher education, Asia was discussed as a place where the university was determined to expand its outreach. One professor noted, ?It?s a bit of paradox? In science, we cooperate more with Europe but in economic, culture, with Asia.? Another expressed that in their perspective, Asia has gone through the steps of economic development and can show the direction for the future, ?Oh, Asia has been there, the direction for the future, I mean the steps that Asia has done, Japan, Vietnam, India, Malaysia, all these things, the Tigers.? They acknowledged that it would be challenging to shift from Europe to Asia, but this shift should take place, [I]t?s going to be a paradigm shift from the Euro-centric view that has monopolized or has inspired our ways of action in academia to a different kind of ideological mindset. That?s worth exploring. I think it?s going to result in new ways of doing things and relying on ourselves than just expecting always from something that comes from abroad. And [Vietnam] has proven that you are able to rely on yourselves and to do things by yourselves. The message of self-reliance was strong. Even when discussing the potential partnership with Movitel, the university president articulated a clear vision that collaboration would not stop at donating laptops but would eventually allow them to 191 assemble and produce their own laptops, equipment, and technologies. This was a firm and bold vision of where the university and Mozambique would be in the future, ?[W]e don?t want to receive any more. We want to produce it here.? Internationalization, in particular expanding partnership to new partners, particularly in the Global South, was seen as a promising path to establishing self-independence. There is an echo of the 20th century spirit of Third World solidarity where partnership and solidarity between former colonies were indeed meant to extricate newly-independent countries and peoples from dependence on the West/Global North. Overall, Mozambican partners of Vietnam generally expressed satisfaction with the results of collaboration so far, not just in the expert cooperation program but in all areas of education cooperation. However, they have also expressed a clear interest in expanding relations into non-traditional areas and forms of partnership. The desired future changes come directly from what the partners perceived as Mozambique?s current pressing needs, as voiced by themselves. The implication is that in this South-South partnership, ?mutual benefits? is not just empty rhetoric. Rather, both sides engage in conscious strategic thinking as to what they want and need, and they come together to negotiate a win-win situation. However, it should still be pointed out that in the end, these negotiations happen at the highest level of governments, and there is little space for the communities that are directly impacted to participate in the conversation. The ideas for future collaboration expressed in this chapter are what emerge when the Global South can drive its own agenda, but these needs are also quite familiar and 192 reminiscent of global trends in education reform: distance education (with the relation to ICT), STEM education, and bringing in private partners. Moreover, they stem from the perception that Vietnam would be a good partner because it has ?succeeded? in its development?in agriculture, economic development, or science and technology, which all happen to be traditional areas of ?success? in the Western hegemony of development. The question must be raised whether this elite-driven vision of development success would indeed bring about a good life for the common person, or whether progress in this form would be as destructive to real communities as has happened around the world. In this process where the future of Mozambique-Vietnam education cooperation is beginning to be shaped, what do the individual Vietnamese experts want? What are their perspectives on this program and how it should change? What do they think have been their impact on Mozambique?s education system, and what are their recommendations for education reforms? The rest of this chapter explores the perspectives of the practitioners involved by returning to the Expert. Vietnam?s Perspective Suggestion to Improve the Program Back at the banquet celebrating the 45th anniversary of Mozambique- Vietnamese diplomatic relations, I drifted over to where the Vietnamese experts were congregating in a corner. Today, both health and education experts had gathered here. They mostly kept to themselves rather than mingling with other local partners present at the party. 193 I shared with the Expert my research progress and the recent meetings I had had with Mozambican stakeholders. They acknowledged that they had heard the critique from Mozambican colleagues about the imbalance in the number of experts as well, ?Our partner?s side wants to have more Mozambican experts coming to Vietnam in the future. They would ask, if this is a cooperation, why is Vietnam sending so many experts over while only accepting one Mozambican teacher to teach Portuguese? But you know, when Vietnamese experts come to Mozambique, they learn Portuguese first, then they can come here and work in many areas, and they can accept the hardships here without difficulties. Whereas the Mozambican expert didn?t learn Vietnamese beforehand and might have experienced struggles there, and when they came back, they might have spread the words, deterring people from coming over.? From the Expert?s perspective, the most important change they wanted to see from the cooperation program was to extend the length of one mission from three years to five years in order to have more opportunities and knowledge of the local context to make an impact. ?Because if it remains three years like now, your first year, you?ve just arrived and barely know anything. Only in your second year would you start getting used to the work, but then it?s already your third year and you have to prepare to go home.? Indeed, most of the education experts only began to suggest and implement big initiatives in their second year onward. For example, one previous biology curriculum expert suggested preparing a common question bank of biology problem sets and exams, which secondary schools eventually adopted. Another expert wrote a 194 teacher?s manual in their subject that was also distributed to all schools, and they also designed training workshops surrounding this manual. A chemistry teacher took time to observe classrooms and lab time before realizing, ?It seems like our friends here are quite afraid of Chemistry, particularly of experiments, they seem afraid of fire and explosions.? As a result, this expert wrote out a guide for simple chemistry experiments that would produce pretty results in order to draw students? attention and make them realize the possible beauty of chemistry. It made sense that the experts would need time to adjust and learn about the education system in Mozambique before being able to identify particular gaps and propose concrete solutions to address them, similar to what the MINEDH official had commented about Vietnamese experts in general. Just as how the MINEDH official emphasized the importance of knowing the local contexts, the Expert acknowledged the same thing. Lack of familiarity with the realities of Mozambican schools and classrooms used to be an issue for the Expert. ?Back when I did not understand, did not have real-life experience about the specific conditions of teaching and learning in different regions around the country, whenever I came up with an idea, it would be planned according to just my experience and thoughts. However, by the time we head to the field, it would be clear that it would not be feasible to implement this idea. In these cases, I would have to change the plans according to the local contexts, or come up with different strategies. In general, each trip I make to the field is a new surprise and a new learning environment.? According to the Expert, Vietnamese education specialists were always respected by their Mozambican colleagues, and their contribution was also respected. 195 ?Overall, I would have to say, over the years I have worked here, I can see that they really respect us, H?ng ?. They really respect us. If the ideas we come up with are sound, then they really respect them, and they are receptive to these ideas. There is no such thing as them being conservative or disparaging our suggestions.? Perhaps with these words, the Expert was implicitly referencing the conservative style of decision- making in Vietnam where seniority generally takes precedent over good ideas as a contrast to the openness of Mozambican policy-makers and educators. The Expert commented that in general, they could see the people working education policy- making all wanted changes and reforms. But here, the Expert sighed, ?But you know, the thing is the culture and tradition. It?s not that I am criticizing it, or criticizing the people here are this and that. But culture, tradition, habits, they are very difficult to change, H?ng ?.? Evaluation of Issues in Mozambique Education I was startled. When ?culture? came up, I could have been attending a typical conference presentation pointing out the educational barriers in not just the abstract entity of ?Africa? but most of the Global South as well. The Vietnamese Expert?s analysis of the situation in Mozambique seemed to align with dominant perspectives in the education and development research-policy-practice world. I pressed further, ?Is that part of what you think are the biggest problems in Mozambique?s education system?? The Expert nodded. ?Let me tell you this story. Here, it?s absolutely normal for students to talk to each other in the middle of classes. Or? there are times when I am supervising an exam, it?s been going on for half an hour, then suddenly a student 196 walks in. And they are already in grade 12! I asked, ?Did you forget you have an exam?? They replied, ?No, I didn?t forget, but because I? at home, I haven?t eaten, I had to wait until my mom finished cooking before I can go.? It?s a final exam, if you arrive half an hour or an hour late, would you still call it a final exam? Yet this happens very frequently here. Teachers would miss classes? they are supposed to write in a common book on what they had taught, which students were absent, so on, but a lot of people don?t actually teach, they just make up things to write in the book.? ?Yes, that is the culture.? The Expert sighed again. ?To change it, I think it will not be a short time. In order to have a new generation who are disciplined in their work, even 10, 20 years would not be enough.? They made an interesting comparison to the role of culture in Vietnamese education. ?In Vietnam, even though the education system is also a mess, but at least it is saved by the strong belief in each and every family that their children must study well. It is not like that here. Many families still do not pay enough attention to their children?s education; they just leave them be. It?s not like Vietnamese parents who do everything to make sure that their children are academically successful.? From criticizing parental culture, the Expert continued with criticizing the teachers in Mozambique. ?Teacher responsibility here is not high yet, they don?t quite care about the quality of instruction. Once class is over, they just go home immediately. Actually, teacher salaries here can be quite good. Even teachers in their first year can already earn USD200-300 a month, whereas you know in Vietnam, that?s the salary for someone with ten years of experience. But I think in general, the teachers here are not as well-trained.? 197 ?For example, you know the way teachers write on the board here, one line would be tilted from the previous at a 45-degree angle!? The Expert?s tone sounded quite outraged upon remembering this. ?That?s not, not acceptable! Teachers should not be like that. Or how a lot of people have very bad handwriting. I myself have personally witnessed students causing chaos in the classroom, asking, ?Teacher, Teacher, what are you writing? Please write it again.? So many times like that.? One anecdote kept coming up: a story about the teachers? lack of math skills. ?Their mathematical abilities, actually not just the teachers but also the students over here, their math skills are extremely bad. When we are finalizing grades, for example, they would need to use a calculator to find out what is 60 percent of 10, they cannot do the calculation in their head like us. That is why, when we are finalizing and entering grades into the report cards, at my school, they always asked the Vietnamese experts to do it all. First, we can do it fast; second, we don?t need to use calculators, we just calculate mentally. They cannot do that, even the teachers don?t have that skill.? The Expert laughed and added, ?But there is something very interesting, which is this, in terms of debating or oral presentation skills, our friends are very good at that. They are very good at speaking and expressing themselves. It?s just the mathematical abilities where both students and teachers here are extremely bad at. That?s why I told you the other day that I am confident even a specialist with a Bachelor?s degree from Vietnam would have more technical expertise than Ph.D. graduates here.? 198 ?Oh, that?s interesting to hear about the teachers, I wonder why that is?? I responded. ?I wonder too? I guess you have to think back to how the teachers themselves learned when they were in school. Back then, they probably didn?t get a good education either. If you think about those documentaries or movies about education in Africa, you can see how they have to study under a tree. They don?t even have desks or chairs. And that is still the case in some parts here now.? The Expert showed me some of the photos they had taken when they conducted school visits in different rural areas. Some of these photos showed schools that had been destroyed by Cyclones Idai and Kenneth in 2019, one of the worst natural disasters and humanitarian crisis in Mozambique?s history. The two consecutive cyclones damaged around 3,500 classrooms, affecting around 335,000 students (UNICEF Mozambique, 2019). ?You can see in this photo, it has been months after the cyclones, yet the school still has no roof and no repair, all the classrooms have been ruined by the water. I saw in many places, students still had to sit inside a tarp, you know the UN emergency tarps, even several months after the cyclones. If in Vietnam, we can return to normal within one to two weeks, then it?s not like that here. Even months later, nothing would change, students would still have to study inside a tarp.? After showing me these photos, the Expert sighed. ?I know we talked about the culture, how the culture here doesn?t value education as much, but there is also the infrastructural issue behind the lack of educational outcomes. Think about it, if you don?t even have your own textbooks, how can you learn? Here, at the primary school level, the government has a policy to help students borrow textbooks at the 199 beginning of the school year?just like Vietnamese education back in 1980. This means that one student can borrow the math textbook, another can borrow the literature one, then they can exchange them with each other. Then there are also some textbook projects funded by the World Bank to provide books for students, but only in grade 1 and 2.? ?Or you can think about the class size. Each class here must have about 60 students. Why is the class size so big? Because they do not have enough teachers here. Actually, they train many teachers, but because the government budget is so low, they cannot afford the teacher salaries.? The Expert then drew a comparison to the current pandemic context. ?That?s why actually, in this COVID period, many teachers like that their classes are now only 20-25 students?because of social distancing, they have to divide up the classes. They hope that the government would come up with a policy to maintain this class size.? ?Another issue is the curriculum. When I talk about this, maybe you will find it funny. But? of course the curriculum here is very modern. It?s the Western curriculum, after all! But the African students here, their basic skills are still? quite k?m,? said the Expert, using the Vietnamese adjective that can at once mean being lesser, lacking, not as good, and incompetent. The curricula in Mozambique and Angola were still adapted from the curriculum in Portugal. ?That is why I have always thought, and I shared this suggestion with my colleagues too, that you have to create a new curriculum that is more appropriate, that is not as difficult. Because if the general level of knowledge is only at this level, if the country?s capitalism is still so weak, if you bring in subjects that are too advanced, the students will not be able to 200 take in the knowledge. The curriculum is still not yet appropriate to the local context.? The issues brought up here are quite common ?diagnoses? of educational issues in the international development in education world, particularly the blaming of teachers or the general culture as being deficient in some way. In making these critiques of Mozambican education, particularly the teachers and their pedagogies, Vietnamese education experts also tended to draw a reference to their own implicit cultural scripts of good teaching in Vietnam. For example, the teacher must have mental math skills; the teacher must be able to write neatly, if not beautifully. Though these were all teaching ideals specific to Vietnam and not common at all in many countries, the experts could not help but draw on them as assumed standards to judge Mozambican teachers, as well as students, as being generally k?m. Even so, their evaluation was not made from an absolutely superior position. Many times during our conversations, the experts would point out that education was not perfect in Vietnam either and that some of these issues also applied in Vietnam. In the Vietnamese experts? understanding of Mozambican educational issues, there is a clear recognition of structural and historical issues. If the quality of the education system decades ago was weak, how could you expect teachers of today to be well- educated? If money was lacking, whether to ensure sound infrastructure for learning or to pay enough teachers, how could education be good? 201 Quiet Pride As a consequence, when asked to reflect upon the impact of their work in Mozambique, the Expert was careful to point out how limited it was. ?The things I have been able to share with them are not much.? ?Of course, there are examples of things that our partners have adopted from us,? continued the Expert. ?For example, in areas like animal husbandry, they now know from Vietnam how to build better lodging to protect the animals better. There are techniques that they have tried out, agreed that the way we do it is good, so they ended up adopting it.? However, as the Expert shared, bigger initiatives and projects could not be carried out due to a lack of funding. ?When I was at the school, I also wanted to help our friends to improve their irrigation system, so that it?s an easier process to water the crops. But we would have to connect to a water channel from very far away. Well, then that would need money, and so? (Laugh). We had no idea from where to seek funding, how to do it, so it just stopped. We kept doing things the same way. And I don?t know until when would our partner be able to make a breakthrough forward. It just? always depends on aid, mostly things happened thanks to aid.? In the Expert?s experience, even though they were supposed to be here to help, there was often more a sense of helplessness. ?When I came here, I said I want to help them, but? then I don?t know what I can help with, what I should do. Even though I do really want to do a better job to help them. And our partners also want to learn a lot from us. That?s why I wanted to extend my contract, but?? 202 ?I told you already? at the beginning, I didn?t have any big mission in coming here, I didn?t have any grandiose thought,? said the Expert. ?The main reason why my colleagues and I came here, mainly, was to improve our family?s economic situation. But after many years here as an expert, I also think? there are many things we can be proud of.? ?Oh, what are they?? I asked. The Expert laughed. ?The thing I am most proud of is that I have been able to prove myself to my colleagues, that I have the knowledge? that I have a definite level of expertise? and I can pass things to my colleagues here that they would accept, that they would respect, that they can use in their work, and that they evaluate highly. This is my professional pride.? Even though Vietnamese experts were fully aware that the impact they had may have been able to make was just a pittance compared to all the problems local Mozambicans had to deal with, it still made them proud to have contributed practical ideas that Mozambican partners found useful. Interestingly, the Expert did not frame their impact and contribution in a sense of helping the general community here. The contribution that they were proud of had a very direct relational sense to the specific colleagues they worked with: that the Mozambican partners thought well of their contribution was the ultimate mark of professional achievement as an expert. In particular, it meant a lot to the Expert that they had been able to make this contribution in their partner?s language. ?I think we should be proud of the fact that Vietnamese people, hundreds of us from the ?80s to now, can come to different 203 countries and teach their children basic knowledge in the native language of that country, with no need for interpreters or translators, even though Vietnam itself is a very poor country?,? said the Expert. Although their reference to Portuguese as the native language in Mozambique was far from correct and reflected the ongoing coloniality of language policies in postcolonial times, the sentiment here was that Vietnamese experts should be proud they had all undergone that rigorous language training and were able to use that in their work. Moreover, it was a notable thing in itself that a poor country could have such a large group of intellectuals. ?To tell you the truth, I am very surprised at how a country this poor can have such a large group of intellectuals, and high-level intellectuals at that, not just average level. And, we can transfer knowledge to other nations using their own languages. This is something that I think not every nation can do.? The Expert thought back to their early days here and shared fondly, ?When I had just arrived in this country, when my colleagues realized I could speak Portuguese, they really liked it.? These words again pointed to the importance of the Mozambican partner?s perspectives, and that being liked, respected, and appreciated by Mozambican people was its own source of pride for the Expert. This extended to the Mozambican students? appreciation of their Vietnamese teacher. ?A second thing I am proud of is how, there are many students, when they return to the school many years after graduating, they are extremely happy to see me again. And they would say, thank you for teaching me.? 204 ?Some of them said, what I learned from you is how to work in a timely and disciplined way,? shared the Expert. ?Yes, they said something like that, even I was surprised. But, perhaps, that this is exactly the second thing I am proud of: I have been able to leave my partners an image of a person who is a conscientious and professional worker. They can see it, and they like me for it. That is also something to be proud of, right?? ?Absolutely.? The Pride of Women Experts For the women experts in particular, the impact of this experience was not restricted to their professional contribution alone; they were also deeply aware of how much this experience had impacted themselves as well. As an example, the Expert said, ?A last thing is, I am very proud of myself and my fortitude. Really, I have been really strong. This has been a big sacrifice?? ?When I got here? my skin was extremely white.29 My hair had not a single strand of white hair. My skin was very beautiful. My hair was very beautiful. Everything was well-groomed. But now?? She gestured to the skin on her arm and laugh. ?It?s? maybe it?s because of the water, or because I had too many things to worry about.? 29 The word to describe pale skin in Vietnamese is the same word as ?white.? In reverse, dark skin in Vietnamese would be literally translated as ?black? skin. Similar to the colorism in many other sociocultural contexts, a beauty ideal for Vietnamese women is to have skin as pale as possible. 205 The Expert paused, then she added, ?But in return? I can tell that I am now more mature. I am stronger. My family can be proud of me. I have been able to do something that nobody thought I would be able to do.? ?Oh really?? I asked. ?Yes! Because back at home, I really was a crybaby. I was so shy, I never told people what I wanted, I didn?t dare to speak in front of a crowd or even to talk much with people around me. Yes. But now, I can talk to people very openly? I have this feeling that whatever thought I have, I can say it. There is no further need to be reserved. I can make my own decision. Whereas back at home, there would be many things that I would need to rely on other people, I was overreliant. I thought, ah if this is not done today, I can just wait and see tomorrow. But here, I have learned to do everything and get everything done.? The Expert was very proud of how much she had grown. Despite the struggles here? the worries that made her hair go gray?she had endured through all of them and managed to assert her capabilities. In her narrative we could understand the meaning she had drawn from this experience. She had sacrificed certain ideals of Vietnamese femininity through beauty features such as white skin and dark hair in order to become a strong woman who was confident enough now to share herself with the world. Her pride did not come from some simplistic version of being ?freed? from some shackles of traditional Vietnamese gender roles and duties now that she was working abroad. Tellingly, she talked about how ?my family can be proud of me,? gesturing to the traditional cultural desire to bring pride to the family (Hoang, 2016). In addition, endurance and resilience are also ironically part of the cultural discourse 206 of the ideal Vietnamese woman (Shohet, 2013), and in enduring the struggles of life here, she was also performing an ideal femininity. Yet she did not come to Mozambique seeking an escape from the pressure and familial duties of being a modern Vietnamese woman, which was perhaps what many other Vietnamese implicitly thought of her and the other women experts. Her choice was not about negation but affirmation. She, like the other women experts who decided to embark on this journey, saw Mozambique as an opening, a chance to explore the world, and a rare opportunity for personal and professional development. Indeed, Mozambique fulfilled that dream for the women experts. And so, the Expert gave me, another Vietnamese young woman, the lesson she had learned from this experience. ?Just try it, just try. Like what people tend to say, the more you confront challenges, the more you realize how grown you are.? Why Vietnamese Experts? In the pause of the conversation, the Expert sipped their drink then laughed wryly. ?In the past, back in Vietnam, I used to think I was very good. I had gotten promoted to department head even though I was very young. Only after I came here did I realize how insignificant I am. Only a speck of dust in this world.? Though the Expert had arrived here as part of a bilateral exchange between Mozambique and Vietnam, in reality, they were also entering a world of experts from a variety of countries and backgrounds. In education, depending on different projects, they could be collaborating with experts from Portugal, Cuba, France, a few from Japan, as well as Peace Corps volunteers from the U.S. In the health sector, they 207 could be working with doctors from China, North Korea, but particularly Cuba. Cuban experts were the largest group. As the Expert said, ?You can say that Cubans have ?spilled their blood? for Mozambique, that is why they always give the highest priority to Cuban experts. Right now, there are about 100 of them working in education.? As the Expert situated Vietnamese experts within this global community, I took the opportunity to ask the question that had been on my mind. ?You know, I have been thinking about this a lot. Why does Mozambique invite Vietnamese experts over here? Why Vietnamese experts specifically? What do we offer?? ?Why do they hire Vietnamese experts? Mozambique does so mainly because of demand from international actors. The salaries for experts used to be paid by a third side,? The Expert replied with yet another surprising facet of this exchange program. ?In the early 2010s, there was an education aid fund from the UN that helped Mozambique cover the salaries for foreign experts. Their demand was that this aid money had to be used to cover experts? salaries specifically. So the condition for disbursement was that you have to show the pay stubs that you have paid to foreign experts. But since 2014, the UN had cut that funding. Besides, the fund only partially paid for the experts? salaries, the rest was still covered by the Government.? I noticed that the Expert had changed the verb they use to describe the relationship between the Mozambican government and Vietnamese experts. Up until now, their description of this program had borrowed from the official discourse which portrays the experts as being ?sent? to another developing country to assist them, or that the government of this country has ?invited? the experts over to provide 208 assistance. Yet here, the Expert had slipped to the naked reality of this program that in fact, the experts were ?hired? by the Mozambican government. In other words, expert cooperation was a labor import/export program of high-skilled workers that had to be situated within a global labor market. In this global labor market of technical experts, the comparative advantage that Vietnamese experts offered, at least in the perspective of the experts themselves, was exactly the central aspect of their identities that they kept highlighting?their ability to endure. ?Vietnamese experts are good because they are cheap. Vietnamese people can endure hardships. Vietnamese people can live anywhere.? The Expert told me an anecdote of when the salaries of Vietnamese experts used to be covered by a German fund?and, to emphasize the overwhelming informality of the development aid system despite its veneer of being systematic, this was because at the time, the director of the German fund had a Vietnamese wife. For example, in their contract, they could add a conditionality that each month Mozambique must spend USD7,500/month on foreign experts. In this case, if Mozambique managed to only pay the expert USD1,000/month, or at most USD3,000/month if including housing and utilities, then they can get the rest. ?But why would there be a condition that you must hire foreign experts?? I asked. ?Because they don?t believe the people here. For example, the school at [province] that Canada poured money into, they helped build everything, even the trash can would be part of the Canadian expenses.? This was the same vocational 209 school that many Vietnamese experts taught at, the school where the water that flowed out was as dark as the Red River in Vietnam. The Expert could not help but comment on the water again. ?You won?t be able to imagine the water there. When we turn the tap, the water is murky, pitch black. We had to buy bottled water to use for drinking and cooking. Actually, that school was built by the Canadians, so at first, the water infrastructure was pretty good. But then only a few years later, it was all broken, because the local friends here don?t know how to maintain it.? After getting sidetracked by this anecdote of the unsustainability of a development intervention, the Expert remembered the trash can again. ?So in a meeting between a Canadian lady and us, she had to wave the receipt. ?You see, one trash can and they dared to tell me it?s 1,500, how is that acceptable?? This is why they don?t trust and they want to force the hiring of foreign experts.? ?So, from the Mozambican perspective, if you hire experts from Cuba and Vietnam, the cost is tolerable, they are hardworking and can bear with hardship,? summarized the Expert. ?Whereas in contrast, Western experts demand salaries and standards of living that are too high. When the aid money is only available for USD7,000/month, if they hire Cuban and Vietnamese experts, the leftover amount would be higher.? ?The salaries of Cuban experts are even lower than for Vietnamese experts.? The Expert continued, their words again emphasizing the cost-benefit calculation of the expert labor market operating here. ?Moreover, they have to transfer it back to their government first. For example, if their official salary is USD1,000/month, first they have to transfer it to their embassy?s account, only then would the government 210 divide it up among the experts. They eventually get about USD150/month. But Cuban experts are extremely happy here too. Coming here is like heaven to them, because life is so difficult in Cuba. At the end of their mission, everyone must carry sacks and sacks of goods home to trade.? This was the same mechanism as the Vietnamese expert labor exchange program in the ?80s. However, Vietnamese experts no longer work under these conditions; they receive their salaries directly from their ministries. In fact, the previous salary delay for experts in 2016 happened because the Ministry thought it would be the same procedure as for Cuban experts and mistakenly sent the money to the Vietnamese Embassy. Was this an indictment of Mozambican side?s greed for pocketing the difference? Not really, because this was how aid worked everywhere. A couple of the experts had worked with foreign aid projects and development practitioners themselves back when they were in Vietnam; they knew the hidden mechanisms of aid distribution and redistribution. For example, if it was a project with the World Bank or UNDP, while their contract may say they were giving you USD10, the implicit understanding was that seven of those dollars must go towards paying their own foreign experts. If they could not hire someone from their own country, they would hire another foreign expert. Only in the worst-case scenario where no one was available would they hire a local expert. Everyone figures out how to game the system to maximize their own benefits. It must be noted that I could not get a corroboration of this claim that Global North sources partially funded the Vietnamese experts? salaries from the Mozambican stakeholders I interviewed. There is a possibility my participants had given an 211 incorrect account or perhaps exaggerated this. However, setting aside the question of whether this claim was true or false, it seems significant that this was how Vietnamese experts made meaning of their presence and work in Mozambique: that they were hired because they were ?cheap? and could withstand difficult living circumstances. ?Cheap? Labor - Cheap Expertise? A few weeks later, the Expert surprised me by following up on this conversation over a long email. As I read it, I could tell why they felt an email was necessary. It was a reflection of their sense of responsibility and commitment to this role as a Vietnamese expert in Mozambique, as well as perhaps a lifelong amount of experience and wisdom: Firstly, I have to assert that the expert program has made a large contribution to elevating the image of Vietnamese people on the world stage. This large contribution has been acknowledged and appreciated by our partner countries? governments themselves. However, everything has to follow its logical development. In my personal perspective, our expert program in the fields of health, education, and agriculture is entering its final days. This is a pity, but we still have to confront the truth in order to draw lessons for the future generations. According to the Expert, from 1965 to 2000 Vietnam had benefited from hundreds of thousand students educated and trained and East European countries and consequently was able to have a group of intellectuals no less capable than the 212 average East European professional at the time. From the 1980s to early 2000s, many African countries had a severe lack of teachers and lecturers spanning from secondary to higher education. They were very happy to accept many well-trained educators from Vietnam to fulfill this gap. It was a simple matter of supply and demand. However, in recent years, the local educators in these African countries who have been educated abroad are beginning to return home to contribute to their countries. ?They have the native language and the sociocultural knowledge, of course they can quickly replace the role of Vietnamese experts,? commented the Expert. Indeed, I have heard from other participants the praise of local partners?even if these remarks tended to be made in a surprise-laden tone. For example, one person told me, ?Actually, within the Mozambique?s Ministry of Education, almost all the government officials had been trained abroad. From England, the U.S., to Portugal, Brazil. Their competency is very advanced.? Another person commented, ?Perhaps the average person here is still so-so, but when you meet people at a certain level, they are highly capable.? At the same time, from the perspectives of many older participants?experts and non-experts alike, recent Vietnamese experts are not as highly trained as the ones of the previous generation that went in the ?80s and ?90s. Many experts are recent graduates and lacking in pedagogical experience and technical expertise; some display a lack of discipline in their work and lives. For example, in Angola, the Ministry of Education had had to prematurely break the contract of several experts that could not fulfill our partner?s professional demands. 213 The Expert wrote, ?If we look at it from an analytical lens, we mainly send experts in education and health. These are areas where African countries had a severe shortage of human resources after gaining independence.? In other words, these were also areas of demand for only a temporary period of immediate post-conflict reconstruction in these countries. On the contrary, ?In sectors that require high skills, modern technologies, and good management experience like machine engineering, automation, urban development, or oil and gas extraction, we do not have any experts.? I had once asked the Expert, ?How come Vietnam can send experts to other countries yet still have to invite many more foreign experts to work in Vietnam?? Here, the Expert answered my question. ?We have to look at the overall situation with humility and a willingness to learn. The situation of the expert program is, in my opinion, a reflection of the general situation in our own country as well. We are missing technical experts in fields that demand advanced skills and specialties, or even fields of mass production that still demand meticulousness and refinement.? Another expert had also told me once that they appreciated working with Western foreign experts because they had a proper methodology and an overarching framework. They believed that Vietnamese people in general still lacked this ability, ?Vietnamese people lack the vision.? The vision here could encompass both a long- term and systematic analysis perspective necessary for policy reforms and development. It was essentialized as something missing in Vietnamese people, even Vietnamese experts, while inherently present in experts from the Global North. 214 In reality, this is likely a function of the structural inequality embedded in development aid. Not everyone can access these managerial and leadership positions in the aid system in order to showcase their vision in the first place. As scholarship has shown, access to these leadership positions is often a matter of race and gender rather than some lacking capabilities of local practitioners from the Global South (Crewe & Fernando, 2006). According to Kothari (2005), expertise like ?systematic analysis? are culturally and racially constructed by (white) development professionals as technical skills that were universally applicable and rightful justification for these aid workers to ?move unproblematically between and within countries? and apply them to any and all problems and contexts (p. 436). ?[The value of technical knowledge is predetermined by its source and the social context from which it emerges? (p. 429). By virtue of certain experts? origins or (racial) identities, technical expertise is assumed to be inherent within their bodies that they then carry across borders. Meanwhile, other experts who did not possess the same implicit endorsement of their national or racial or gender identities?or all at once?can succumb to the internalized colonialism that they were not qualified enough, not capable enough. Indeed, this dynamic explains why the Expert came to feel the quiet pride in ?[proving] myself to my colleagues, that I have the knowledge? that I have a definite level of expertise?? (p. 203). Their skin color was not enough as a guarantee of their expertise. In other words, Vietnamese experts self-situated themselves not just as Vietnamese experts in Mozambique but also as Vietnamese experts within a global expert labor market. Their narrative to make meaning of this position makes it clear 215 that this is also a racialized global labor market. They see themselves as ?cheap? labor, and in a racial economy lens, ?cheap? is also relegated to non-white bodies. In their meta-analysis of the program too, by pointing out that the experts sent so far had been to fulfill a crucial but temporary labor shortage, it was like the assistance provided was just actual bodies as teachers and doctors?the raw materials?rather than the higher-order cognitive skills and expertise endowed within like traditional development experts (Kothari, 2005). If they were ?cheap? labor, then the ?product?? their expertise and ultimately their contribution to development?would also be cheap and eventually unnecessary once societies approached a certain stage of development, which perhaps both Vietnam and Mozambique had reached. Discussion Evaluation of development interventions and projects often focuses on quantitative indicators of progress and outcomes. This typical process of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) has been critiqued for being dehumanizing and part of the coloniality of development that elevates Western epistemologies over other ways of knowing (Chilisa et al., 2016). In contrast, the impact of this Mozambican- Vietnamese expert exchange program is evaluated relationally. Indeed, how do you truly evaluate the value of a teacher or a mid-level Ministry worker? To the Vietnamese experts, more important than measuring their impact was what the Mozambican colleagues thought of the contribution. Rather than engaging in an objective impact evaluation of the results removed from the opinions of local stakeholders, the central indicator of ?impact? here was whether the local partners 216 found the ideas and experience shared relevant enough to apply in their communities. This went beyond seeing ?local knowledge? as an additive component in emerging trends of participatory M&E; it is fundamentally a different power structure of who can evaluate? It would be the local Mozambican stakeholders. The Vietnamese experts were here to help, not to save the world. Their frame to make meaning of their contribution was not an abstract idea of humanity or society, but rather the specific people they were working with. Even if these ideas were extremely minor, the experts still felt the quiet pride that they had been able to demonstrate their professional abilities and gaining the respect of local colleagues. For teachers in particular, it is also the joy from meeting students again years later and realizing that they are remembered. In Meera Sabaratnam?s (2017) study on state-building development interventions in Mozambique, the scholar noticed that Western donors and aid practitioners tended to display ?a constant desire for protagonismo,? meaning a dramatic self-perception of themselves as the central characters of development: This pervaded the way in which agreements were made, the demands for innovation and claims to be innovative, an insistence on conducting their own new studies in a field despite the existence of the same or very similar ones from other organisations or from the government itself, the desire for meetings to happen always at the ministerial level rather than with lower level officials, the detailed and time consuming reporting and signoff requirements, even for small 217 organisations and small amounts of resource, and the demand for results to be immediately reported and available. (pp. 79-80) In contrast, Vietnamese experts do not see themselves as protagonists. There are instances where they portray themselves in the same powerless situation as Mozambican partners in the face of lack of funding. Moreover, they are well aware of their position in the global expert labor market: they perceived themselves as ?cheap? labor to help African partners through a temporary human resources shortage. Indeed, this Mozambican-Vietnamese expert collaboration is still situated within the global development aid system. This chapter began and ended with the question of ?Why Vietnamese experts?? explored from both Mozambican and Vietnamese perspectives. Taken together, these perspectives align into one story of Mozambique wanting the human capital to develop and finding Vietnam to be a good and affordable source of technical expertise and experience to make these initial steps of economic development, especially considering Vietnam?s ?success? according to traditional development indicators. The expert exchange is still embedded within the hegemonic human capital theory of development. Even the Vietnamese experts? contributions that are highly valued by local Mozambican partners include the habits of work called ?professional? which is in fact coded for the Western modern way of working. In addition, the price of the Vietnamese experts is calculated relative to the global expert labor economy. The experts? self-narrative is that within the global racialized labor hierarchy, they are here because they can live in difficult circumstances. It aligns with what they perceive as the essence of Vietnamese 218 identity: they are people who can endure and survive the struggle. When the experts articulate this ability to endure, they make no reference to the Third World sense of solidarity in the struggle. It is a wry observation of the world as it currently is, but not a call for revolution, because they have internalized much of the master narrative of their inferior skills. This reflects how racial capitalism functions by maintaining the divisions between racial groups (Chakravartty & Silva, 2012; Issar, 2021; Melamed, 2015). Mozambique and Vietnam are currently in the process of negotiating the future of their education cooperation program. Mozambican partners are assertive in wanting changes to the program that would make cooperation more equal and relevant with the changing needs and realities in Mozambique. Perhaps it is as the Expert predicts, that this is the twilight of the Vietnamese-Mozambican expert exchange component of education cooperation. It is likely that future cooperation will converge with global trends of education and development, including the emphasis on technology transfer and STEM investment as well as the centering of public-private partnerships. The two big questions now are: (1) Will this future vision remain simply rhetoric or will real actors carry it forward? and (2) Will it be able to recognize and carry forward the aspects of South-South cooperation that subvert traditional problematics of development aid? 219 Chapter 8. The Racial Grammar of Development It was another Sunday morning. This time, I bumped into the Expert and a group of other Vietnamese expats at the only ph? restaurant in town. Yes, no matter how tiny the Vietnamese diasporic community in Maputo was, we had our local ph? restaurant. This group had just returned from their weekly run along the beach. Mornings, especially weekend mornings, in this restaurant were always akin to the Vietnamese social club. Sometimes, it would feel like the entire Vietnamese community in Maputo was there. Spend one day in the restaurant and you would be able to grasp the social dynamics within the entire Vietnamese community: who belonged to which social group, who was dating whom, who was doing business with each other. Actually, in the corner, I could see the President of UP I had just met the other day talking with a Movitel director over coffee; I hoped their negotiation was going well. Everyone greeted each other enthusiastically, and soon two tables were pushed together to form a long one that would fit the dozen of us. Not five minutes later, the chef and waitress were already coming out with our usual orders in their hands, the distinctive aromatics of ph? mixing with the fish sauce caramel of grilled pork vermicelli. One person laughed and told the chef apologetically, ?We have to say sorry to you for suddenly descending in a hungry horde and making you so busy in the morning!? The chef waved it away. ?I don?t actually feel busy though?? She sat down with us at the table too, as did her husband, the co-owner. ?It?s because I know how 220 to manage my time. I already have my routine laid out in proper steps. I know the order I must do things to maximize my efficiency.? Her husband nodded and told us a story, ?You know our restaurant is very popular with the locals here. There was this Mozambican customer who was so surprised, he was in total disbelief, by how quick the dishes came out here. He asked if this restaurant just made everything beforehand and just heated it up in the microwave!? His wife jumped in then. ?Yes, so I told him, here I will allow you to stand in my kitchen and watch me make everything from scratch.? ?It?s because they are used to how long it would take in other restaurants here,? continued the husband to nods and murmurs of agreement from the rest of the table. ?At best it would take, what, 40 minutes, even an hour, before the food come out. While here, we can make sure that your first dish come out just five minutes after you sit down.? One person remarked, ?Oh, I wonder why. How k?m.? Again, the word ?k?m? appeared with all its ambiguity of what the speaker had meant: incompetency, weak, lesser, or all at once. ?Just look at how they move about. Even when the restaurant is full, they don?t feel the need to hurry to the customers at all.? Another jumped in. ?Whereas back in Vietnam, you just have to step one foot into a restaurant, you?ve barely sat down, and already the servers are running all over the place to get you your hot towel, bowl and utensils, tea and water, and so on.? 221 ?But that is also an interesting thing about them. What need is there to rush. Even if we have to wait a bit, it?s not like we would die.? Over the course of this dissertation, the reader has likely stopped in your track several times at the racist remarks, both veiled and explicit, peppering the Expert?s narratives. Racial microaggressions creep into their daily life, the ways they make sense of what they observe and experience, and then the stories they would communicate to others about this life. Previous chapters let these remarks go without comment to reflect exactly how these comments are treated in the actual lived experience of Vietnamese experts in Mozambique: unquestioned, unremarked, unchallenged. This reflects the mundaneness and taken-for-granted nature of these racialized reading and retelling of the world, so mundane that they never are explicitly questioned or even discussed. The purpose of this chapter is to return to these passing ?innocuous? remarks that are in fact not innocuous at all. The centering of race in this chapter underscores the pervasiveness of this invisible grammar that Vietnamese experts use to make meaning of their life, as well as how this grammar is connected to the larger systematic pattern of global antiblackness. They call up other deficit-laden discourses associating Black folks with ?slowness,? ?simplicity,? ?crime,? or ?lack of intelligence.? Yet there is also a general determination to refuse to acknowledge that racism exists at all. This is part of the current dominant global racial formation that on the one hand pretends the world has progressed from racism while on the other hand propagates more insidious forms of cultural racism and liberal racism (see Chapter 3). Especially considering how their presence and lived experience in Mozambique is 222 ultimately due to the structure of development aid, they cannot escape the racial hierarchy of superiority-inferiority built into the development imaginary. Scripts of Everyday Experience Slow The most common complaint I heard while in Mozambique was probably how slow it was. The slowness of service at a restaurant was one. The slowness of bureaucracy in processing paperwork, job assignment, or any request of the experts was another. At the grocery store, the lines to check out typically crisscrossed through half of the entire store, a situation not helped by COVID social distancing. One time, after having been in line for almost 45 minutes, we could see that just ahead, the cashier was suddenly standing up to go somewhere else, presumably to check on a product?s price for the customer ahead of us. My companion stared at the cashier?s languid pace and blurted out, ?The people here are really strange. Don?t they feel the pressure to move more quickly, what with all these people waiting in line!? Even during my flight from Maputo back to Hanoi, transiting in Doha, the discourse of ?slow? caught up to me. As I was standing with a group of Vietnamese waiting for the airport staff to process our tickets, someone behind impatiently complained, ?I thought only Black people are slow, didn?t know White people are like that too!? 223 Someone in the Vietnamese diaspora once joked with me, ?We have a saying, ?The Swiss invented watches, the Mozambicans invented time.?? For most Vietnamese people living there, the languid and drawn-out pace of life in Mozambique as if there was all the time in the world was generally an annoyance, especially when compared to the extremely fast and busy way of working in Vietnam. Arguably, this temporal mismatch was not just a cultural difference but one with a decidedly racial bias against this refusal to comply with the hyperspeed of modern life. The racialization can be seen in the invoking of common assumptions by the person at the airport, with Blacks being pitted against Whites as well as against an implicit racialized image of Asians as extremely fast, efficient, and industrious (Bui, 2015; Chen, 2012). Of course, most Vietnamese people ended up just accepting the slowness with resignation; as the Expert said, ?But if I have moved here to work, then I will just have to accept that? (see Chapter 6, p. 143). Even so, it was clear which temporal pace was more valued in the typical Vietnamese?s perspective. In the clash between the watch of modernity and the time(lessness) of unmodernity, the watch was superior. The temporal mismatch extends to the broader commentaries on how much Mozambique ?lags? behind even Vietnam in development. ?It felt like? like Vietnam 20, 30 years ago,? was a common sentiment I heard, whether to describe the Soviet- style apartment blocks breaking down around us in the city or the education system?s infrastructural, supplies, and quality issues, as previously explored in chapters 6 and 7. Maputo in particular bears a strong resemblance to the coastal city of H?i Ph?ng in Vietnam, both featuring uniform low-rise apartment blocks in the trademark Soviet 224 modernist architecture style hiding behind the spectacular scarlet flowers and fern- like leaves of royal poinciana trees. When Vietnamese community members drove me sightseeing around Maputo, it was usually a tour laden with these remarks of nostalgia, as if we were driving back to the past of Vietnam. Sometimes, I think they deliberately wanted to shock me with the poverty. One weekend, I met up with a Vietnamese friend at an Italian restaurant situated on the rooftop of a brand new shopping mall right next to the beach?an experience so typical of the expat lifestyle, like we lived on a veranda far removed from the actual reality of Maputo. After gorging on a brick oven pizza and a smoked salmon cheese plate, my friend enthusiastically dragged me to go see the city?s fish market, because ?How can you never have been to the fish market!? It was easy to see why Vietnamese people liked to drag visitors to this fish market. Although it was barely a kilometer off from the richest part of the city, it was a traditional fish market with peddlers selling freshly caught fishes in buckets by the road, surrounded by huts and half-built houses where even the roofs were still missing. ?The image of Africa in its full authenticity? must be how Vietnamese people filtered this scenery through their mind. My friend exclaimed, ?You must be surprised there is a place looking like this even in the middle of their capital city, right!? The geographic mismatch added to the temporal mismatch, all contributing to the skewed perception of Mozambique as being out of place, out of time. Simple I was at the ph? restaurant again, this time having a meal with a Vietnamese owner of a shop chain in another province who had just come up to Maputo for a few 225 weeks. In the middle of small talk, someone asked if the lady was fine with leaving her business alone for such a long time. She waved it off, her local employees could manage it fine. ?But you know, at first, they really couldn?t do anything!? The shop owner suddenly commented. ?Oh yes oh yes,? agreed another Vietnamese person at the dinner who also owned his own business. ?Actually, the people here are very honest and simple- hearted. They are not sly like Vietnamese people. Vietnamese people would cheat you out of everything.? ?It?s only after the locals work with me for awhile that they become wily. But the new ones are all still non [inexperienced].? ?So actually, Vietnamese people are corrupting the locals here!? The table erupted in laughter. There was a lot of ?actually? discourses in the Vietnamese community in Mozambique. ?Actually, the people here are very honest and simple-hearted.? Or as the Expert told me, ?Actually, the people of Africa, they are actually extremely nice.? What they meant was: Actually, you should be surprised, it is not like what you thought. The single word ?actually? in these utterances is tasked with calling up all the implicit narratives and stereotypical myths one may have heard about Mozambique, Africa, and/or Black people before the rest of the sentence can dispel them as untrue. The utility of the single word ?actually? is that it erases the need to actually wade into the messiness of racist stereotypes. The conversation can move immediately to the 226 positiveness of intercultural learning about the Other without doing the hard work of condemning or even questioning why the racist myths had circulated in the first place. No one would have to feel the discomfort of having believed in them. These commentaries that Mozambicans are honest and simple-hearted may seem like praises until they become linked to incompetence at work and being ?simple? shifts to its other meaning. A Movitel technical staff was there at the dinner too, and the conversation evolved to complaints about how the local employees could not learn the new technologies. According to the original plan, the Vietnamese workers at Movitel were only supposed to be there for a couple of years in order to transfer the technology to the local partners. However, from the very beginning, this plan had been upended because the gap in technical competency was too high. Someone else jumped in with their own anecdote. ?For example, back in Vietnam, if I assigned work to my assistant then they can do it from A to Z. Even if they don?t know something yet, I only have to teach them once and they would be able to remember everything. Whereas the people here, they just nod, nod, and then won?t do anything. There?s really something about how they work. Even the most minor things like booking a flight, even after doing it 1,000 times there would still be something wrong. After they finish a task, I would have to double check it, or else there would be a problem. But they don?t dare to ask me, they don?t dare to admit that they don?t know how to do it. I don?t know why their work style is not good like that, while Vietnamese people, or Asian people as a whole, we can do things very quickly.? 227 This dismissal of local skills is endemic to the broader Vietnamese community in Mozambique. As outlined in Chapter 7, Vietnamese education experts also looked down upon the skills and abilities of local Mozambican people. Health experts, likewise, generally viewed the local doctors as k?m, or poor-skilled, because most of them did not know the more advanced techniques. A doctor once joked, ?Of course they have to keep renewing my contract, because people here do not know the procedures [that I do].? The niceness of Mozambicans are also only appreciated up until a certain point; the line one should not cross is interracial relationships. In the Vietnamese diaspora in Mozambique, interracial dating and marriages were very rare. They were remarkable enough?and not in a positive sense?that people would bring it up with me out of the blue. Such discussion could move from ?Look at the cute mixed babies? in one minute to an off-handed ?I don?t think I can ever date Black women? in the very next instance. One male participant in my study would ?tease? the women experts about how ?you?re so popular with c?c anh da ?en [Black men].? In the next breath, the man would comment, ?You know there are Vietnamese college students here on an exchange program? Some of them actually dare to have Black boyfriends.? These college girls were described as gh? which is a Vietnamese word with many possible interpretations. It can be about the boldness and formidability of the girls, but gh? can also be part of words that mean terrible, disgusting, monstrous. Even in the most generous interpretation, something about a Vietnamese woman entering into a romantic relationship with a Black man is seen as an act of boldness. This would only make sense if both the speaker and listener of this observation are aware of the 228 implicit racial narratives surrounding Black men, such as Black men being viewed as more physically threatening. This expert did not comment on what exactly was their perception of Black men. However, their next remarks made the implied meaning quite clear, ?But even though Vietnamese girls can date Black guys, the local women here wouldn?t look at us men at all. It?s because us Asian men are stereotyped as being weak and feminine. It?s so unfair, because we haven?t done anything wrong! Yet Black women still prefer white men over Asians, while Asian women are popular with everyone.? This was one of the very rare moments in my research when my participants brought up a discussion of race on their own initiative rather than as a response to my prompting. It shows that even if race is not centered in their narratives of life in Mozambique, they too are well-versed in these global scripts of race and gender. Racial Comparison One interesting note of these everyday racial discourses is the constant evocation of Vietnamese as a reference point. It reflects the dynamics of race and racialization as always a relational process: race makes no sense without another reference point, whether explicit or implicit, for comparison. This is because the modern racial system that we currently know is at its root a global taxonomy of human beings whose main function is to sort, compare, and rank according to the singular standard that is the White Man (Wynter, 2003). Within this global referential system, discourses such as those generalizing Vietnamese as ?sly? people that would eventually ?corrupt? the honest locals cannot 229 be read within an Asian-Black dichotomic frame alone. This self-denigrating portrait is interesting given how much it coincidentally?or perhaps not?aligns with the larger global context of how Asians have been racialized as dishonest cheaters, producers of counterfeit, contaminants and threats to the economic and national security of the West, or how Asian men are excessively feminized (Bonnett, 2002; Del Visco, 2019; Hanser, 2013; Law, 2012; Park, 2012; Siu & Chun, 2020). While the Asians as Model Minority is a highly salient trope, especially in the U.S., this Yellow Peril discourse is just as prevalent with even more historical longevity, dating back to the mid-nineteenth century when transnational conversations on the alleged threat of global migration of Asians began to emerge and continuing to present-day anti-Asian racism stemming from the COVID-19 global pandemic (Del Visco, 2019; Lee, 2007). These anti-Asian tropes and stereotypes abound in global, particularly Western, news, cinema, fiction, social media, and other forms of popular culture (Li & Nicholson Jr., 2021; Ono & Pham, 2009; Park, 2010; Roh et al., 2015). This is not to say that Vietnamese people drew this negative self-portrait because of some form of false consciousness, or in other words, that they have succumbed in whole to Western racial ideologies. The association of their identities with negative images such as sly cheaters may also be related to the moral anxieties arising from the post-socialist transition to a market economy in Vietnam. Leshkowich?s (2014) ethnography of Vietnamese women petty traders finds that one of the cultural essentialisms governing Vietnamese is that engaging in trade is immoral. In this society where agrarian and scholarly ways of living have been traditionally valorized, ?[Petty traders] are assumed to be self-interested and greedy, 230 resistant to the norms of morality and social order? (p. 5). Given that in Vietnam, traders tend to be women, this discourse has been used to reproduce the view of women as subordinate subjects in society. However, it seems reasonable that this essentialization of the Vietnamese identity would elicit moral dilemmas in the general community given how most people have been implicated in this profane activity of trade and commerce?even during the most socialist years in Vietnam, and even those supposed to be on moral missions like experts going to help fellow Third World countries (see Chapter 6). The current Vietnamese post-socialist transition to a ?market economy with a socialist orientation? may be perceived as an acquiescence to the true nature of Vietnamese as immoral subjects full of greed and self- interestedness rather than solidarity. With the way that socialist self-criticism continues to be built into the foundation of life as a mandatory exercise in school and at work, it is particularly difficult to extricate oneself from these moral anxieties as the burden of wrestling between tradition and modernity fall onto the individual Vietnamese. On the other hand, there is also ample evidence of contemporary Vietnamese fascination with exploring cultural portraits of Vietnamese specifically from the White gaze. One example is the interesting fascination with returning to French colonial writing about Vietnamese people and society.30 One of the bestselling books in Vietnam recently is The Psychology of the Annamite People originally published in 30 Only recently have people begun to question the rush to publish and consume these colonial writings. In a public scholarly roundtable in early 2022, Vietnamese historian V? ??c Li?m questioned whether it is right for Vietnamese to continue seeking out these historical records written and produced by colonial officers and administrators as a legitimate historical source (Nguy?n Th? H?nh & V? ??c Li?m, 2020). 231 1904 by Paul Giran, a French colonial administrator. From three years of observing the Annamite?the condescending French colonial name for Vietnamese?Giran concluded that Vietnamese people were weak in physique, poor in emotion, childish in mentality, cowards before power but also greedy for it, completely lacking in creativity, in addition to being ruthless and barbaric. Just from the popular book review platform Goodreads alone, most comments noted that they could feel the verity in some of these claims even today, even if they fully recognized the racist prejudice and imperial mission that the book was awashed in. As an example, one reviewer wrote, Culture, or something even more essential, the identity of a nation is formed through the thousand of years that said nation has been in existence. The stability of this process is much higher compared to the erratic changes in political (revolutions) or economic system (crises). When reading Paul Giran, at times we can realize, there are certain things belonging to the mentality of Vietnamese people that have not changed after 100 years. Of course, much of Paul Giran?s analyses have become obsolete compared to the research standards of modern science, moreover the prose is very racist, so Vietnamese readers ought to have an open mind in order to ?swallow? this book. (Ng?c Nam, 2019, italicized words were originally written in English) Indeed, Vietnamese today can also express just as scathing critiques of themselves as something that could have come from the pen of a colonial 232 administrator. One of my participants, again invoking the ?Actually? discourse, once shared with me, How Vietnamese people think about Africa is not correct. After I got here, I also realized that our beliefs are slightly biased. Whether their customs or cultures? there are many things that they are better at than us. Let me tell you an example. For example, how they eat and drink, it follows the culture of the Portuguese? So eating! They don?t eat like us Vietnamese. To tell you the truth, one time, I invited a few colleagues to my house and cooked for them. But? I still am not used to their culture, so when I served the food? I really learned from that experience? They would never pick up food from the same plate like us with our chopsticks. Never like that! And they will never pick their teeth while eating. They find it disgusting if we pick our teeth, and then put the toothpicks down on the table next to you, they are really disgusted. They are really afraid of that. They use their own plates and forks and knives. So in terms of eating culture, I think that is definitely better than us. Another thing is the culture of lining up? When Vietnamese experts get on the bus, even though the people on the bus haven?t gotten down yet, they already scrambled up there to try to get the seats. But Mozambicans would not be like that. They would wait until all the people on the bus had gotten out first. Then only when the driver says, please enter, only then people would line up, and they would let children and elders get on the bus first. There would never 233 be such a thing like skipping the line. Yes, that? I have to say, Vietnamese people perhaps would need several decades more before we can catch up to them. Again, this anecdote called up the racialization of Asian as unhygienic and disorderly. In a reversal of the usual Vietnamese?s discourse of Mozambicans as slow and lagging behind, this time it was Vietnamese people who would need ?several decades? in order to catch up to them. However, who exactly was Vietnamese people ?several decades? behind? From the very beginning of this narrative, it was already established that these Mozambican cultural habits and customs that were perceived as better were in fact ?the culture of the Portuguese.? This elevation of the West are numerous throughout the experts? narratives, as casually referenced as anti-Black tropes. The fruits are ?grown according to European standards, so when I eat them, I don?t have to worry about food safety and can just enjoy them? (p. 157). The curriculum is ?of course? ?very modern. It?s the Western curriculum, after all!? (p. 198). While Western experts approach their work with proper methodologies and an overarching systematic vision, ?Vietnamese people lack the vision? (p. 212). It should be noted that when Vietnamese use the term ?West? or ?Western,? it means white. In the end, as these various scripts of everyday experience engage in the implicit process of putting different races in relation with each other, they continue to be undergirded by notions of white supremacy. 234 The Invisible Pervasiveness of Racial Grammar From the spontaneous anecdotes, microaggressions, and side comments uttered in more mundane conversations, we can begin to outline the shape of the racial grammar that governs their beliefs, experience, and narratives to make sense of these life experiences. It is because spontaneity does not mean these utterances appeared out of thin air; they were produced from negotiation with already-existing narratives and structures. Though this narrative frame is invisible, it is pervasive and everywhere. In fact, it is specifically the spontaneity and randomness of these racist microaggressions that underscore just how pervasive this racialized worldview is. Viewing race as a grammar is a useful analytic because it points to how these racialized scripts become so commonsensical and taken for granted. These remarks can be scattered throughout everyday conversations because they function as connective threads to the world the listener already knows in order to make the narratives intelligible. For example, describing the curriculum as simply the ?Western curriculum? is already packed with meaning that the audience would fill in. In Gramsci?s connection of language to hegemony, people communicate by conforming to vocabulary, grammar, style and conventions that would best deliver their message to their audience and achieve the desired results (Ives, 2004). In this case, it is taken for granted that quick references to terms such as ?Western? or ?Africa? would be automatically meaningful. Again, the shortcut helps to avoid the messiness and discomfort that would arise from actually confronting whether these common- sensical narratives about race, progress, and modernity are right and just. Few people question whether grammar makes sense, after all; the only thing that matters is 235 whether you are using it ?properly? and ?correctly? and thus be a part of the communicative society. The ?Correct? Way to Speak About Race Most of the time, the working of grammar is invisible and unvocalized. Likewise, race, racism, and racialization are also often invisible and unvocalized. Its invisibility is built into the current narrative around racism itself which portrays racism as obsolete and no longer existing in ?civilized? contexts. The irony is that despite the fact that racism underwrites the very foundation of modernity, to be a progressive and ?modern? person is to have moved beyond racism. As several scholars have pointed out, this is one of the dynamics preventing serious engagement with racial analysis in much of academia (Bernasconi, 2012; Dik?tter, 2008). With the participants in this study too, it is clear that they think the ?correct? narrative is that racism does not exist. With the exception of the story surrounding the gendered dimension of Asian- Black interracial relationship, no participant took the initiative to narrate their experience with a racial lens. It was simply not a natural lens for them to tell their stories. When I posed questions of whether they had any memories of racist moments, the response was always an adamant ?no? and attempts to erase any possibility of racism. For instance, one expert said, Mozambican people respect Vietnamese people a lot. They respect Vietnamese and they do not show any gestures or attitudes that are dismissive of Vietnamese. They respect the opinions that Vietnamese experts contribute. 236 Another was also firm in her answer, No, I have never experienced racial discrimination! All the experts from our country who came here, no one has experienced racial discrimination. [The local people] all care and try to help us, they do not cause us any problems. Whether in daily life, or at work as well. If I don?t know this or that, they would tell us? that you should do it this way, or that way. They always tell us. Mozambican colleagues also assert that racism does not exist. In fact, one person misunderstood my question of whether they had observed any racism as whether any Mozambican had been racist towards the Vietnamese experts. They immediately responded, No, no, no! Here in Mozambique, I think that Mozambican people are good at welcoming someone and sharing with them. I had to clarify that I meant to ask if the Vietnamese experts were the ones engaging in racial discrimination. Again, the Mozambican colleague replied, ?No, no, no. They are friends.? From a conversation with a Mozambican student who had studied in Vietnam for many years, this person also denied ever being subjected to racism. Interestingly, he said, ?No, I never. I had some friends of mine telling me something? but for me, personally, I didn?t.? The implication that while his friends may have experienced racial discrimination, he himself never did; racism was something that happened to other people. Possibly, this student also experienced racism but did not want to say it to my face, another Vietnamese person. However, he did bring up other examples of 237 how he thought Vietnamese was friendly towards others, compared to the xenophobia he had perceived in other countries such as South Africa, India, or even Mozambique. In his words, A specific example, yes, I will compare between Vietnam and Mozambique. If you?re a foreigner in Vietnam, you can drive a motorbike or car. If you don?t have any problem, the police will not make any problem for you. [They] will not ask you for this and that. If you?re not involved in any accident, so it means you can go on your free way. But in Mozambique, it?s totally different. If you are a foreigner, Mozambicans look for foreigners to make his life difficult? I think we need to learn how to change it because it?s like, it pushes down our image from outside the country. As the norm of conversation is to not discuss race, when someone is in danger of straying from this, the invisibility can make itself felt. It is very telling that while a Vietnamese education expert was in the middle of a narrative about their initial travel to Mozambique, their story suddenly came to a pause after they realized what they had said, ?When I first stepped down from the plane? all the way from the transit airport in Doha to here, seeing all just one skin color is already a bit?? (p. 141). Their voice trailed off, which in fact made the slippage even more noticeable, even if this was let go without comment. The extent that they would acknowledge antiblack racial stereotypes, and only implicitly, is to correct possible racist misunderstandings I may have about Mozambique, Africa, and Black people. 238 One exception to this general atmosphere of racial harmony?though perhaps an exception that proves the rule?is when the experts bring up anecdotes of Chinese- Black racial antagonism. One time, while telling me of how their local colleagues were really fond of them, a doctor suddenly added, When I ask my colleagues, between China and Vietnam here, basically what do they think [about us]? And everyone still says they like Vietnamese people more than the Chinese. It was very interesting that this comparison was so salient in the expert?s mind that they would bring it up in their narrative. I followed up, ?Oh, did they say why?? ?Then I asked why, and I said China has helped this country a lot, for example building that new bridge over there,? said the Expert. ?Or their national stadium, that is also from Chinese aid. China has helped this place a lot. But for some reason, people?? The Expert chuckled. ?They did not say why, just that they felt like they liked Vietnamese more. How interesting, how strange.? To contextualize, many Vietnamese people continue to harbor significant anti- Chinese sentiment. Even in this small Vietnamese community in Mozambique, sometimes people would engage in quite gleeful gossip about how racist Chinese people were. One outlandish story I once heard from an expert was that in one Chinese-owned company, the Chinese managers would not allow the Mozambican employees to eat with them at the same cafeteria tables; rather, the Black people would be forced to eat on the floor. As this was only hearsay, it is possible this anecdote was not completely true or even made up. Yet when they engage in the act of telling these stories to other people, it seems akin to an implicit posturing that 239 Vietnamese people are better than Chinese people: we can better live with the local Mozambicans, so we are more progressive and civilized. It was only until the end of my fieldwork that the participant I had developed the closest relationship with would acknowledge: yes, Vietnamese people, including experts, can be racist too. They said, Our Vietnamese community is no exception. The number of Vietnamese people (including a few experts) who racially discriminate against Black people is not small. They do not feel uncomfortable when using slurs such as m?i ?en, b?n ?en, b?n nh? [variants of the N- word]. However, after a period of living and working with here, most would come to appreciate the innocence, sincerity, and kindness of most of the local. This person continued, The problem of discrimination, in my opinion, perhaps has this habitual aspect and is dependent on the awareness as well as education level of each individual. You can see that in countries such as France and Germany, there is very little problem with racism, but then in many countries such as Azerbaijan, Armenia, China, racism against African people is extremely serious. I myself, when I was younger and not yet exposed to many things, I also had thoughts about African people that are not like [how I think now]. It?s only after I have travelled a lot, come to learn more, and have the opportunity to live with African nations, that I no longer think like before. 240 This is emblematic of attempts to speak back against racism that is very typical of diversity and inclusion perspectives to anti-racist struggles. It mistakes that racism is only the consequence of individual misconceptions rather than a political system that is being continuously reproduced. It expects awareness-raising to be a good solution to racism. It assumes that getting people to live and work together would be enough for human beings to overcome historically durable barriers and become one happy multicultural community. Here, there is also a reassertion of the current global racial formation where racism is only something backward people do?hence the very mistaken belief this person has that there is ?very little problem with racism? in countries like France and Germany. The dynamic of racialization is such that even as the specificities of race and racism change over time, white supremacy continues to be taken for granted (Weiner, 2012). Constructing Blocks of Racial Grammar If it is difficult to speak about systemic racism in general because humanity has supposedly moved beyond racism, it is particularly hard to have this conversation with regards to Global South subjects like the Vietnamese. Much of the critical race scholarship is concentrated on the black-white binary in settings in the Global North, as if those who are oppressed cannot in turn oppress other people. However, a grammar is not exclusively used by any group. Those historically considered as the oppressed can also be complicit in reproducing hegemonic discourses about race, racialization, and racism. As a postcolonial context, of course there is a colonial legacy of racism in Vietnam. The enormous material difference in living standards during colonial times 241 taught Vietnamese to associate poverty and inferiority with certain racial identities and modernity with whiteness (Vann, 2007). Indeed, as Frantz Fanon wrote, When you examine at close quarters the colonial context, it is evident that what parcels out the world is to begin with the fact of belonging to or not belonging to a given race, a given species. In the colonies the economic substructure is also a superstructure. The cause is the consequence; you are rich because you are white, you are white because you are rich. (1961/2005, p. 40) Furthermore, the material world of colonialism and its discursive structure of the civilizing mission found resonance with aspects of the existing worldviews in Vietnam. In trying to think through how widespread racism is around the world, Dik?tter (2008) calls for an interactive approach that recognizes how globally-travelling racist belief systems are negotiated, appropriated, and transformed in different historical contexts. In other words, racialization is never an imposition of a completely novel belief system from elsewhere, but rather, there are likely elements already aligned with local thoughts that facilitate the adoption of a negotiated racial project. For instance, it may be possible to link Vietnamese racial consciousness to its history of expansionist thought in Vietnam in the 18th and 19th century. Historian Yu Insun (2009) pointed out that feudal Vietnam emulated the Chinese tributary system and tried to establish its own political order of being the central kingdom ruling over its smaller neighbors. One manifestation of this is how the 19th-century Nguy?n Dynasty in Vietnam pursued its own 242 aggressive colonial expansion and conquered art of what is now Cambodia to become a province of ??i Nam in the 1830s. This colonial conquest was justified by cultural rhetoric borrowed from Han China. According to Goscha?s (2016) study of records from the reign of Vietnamese Emperor Minh M?ng, Only superior Confucian culture and institutions could civilize the ?barbarian? (cao mien or man) Cambodians, [the Emperor] argued. As members of an East Asian Confucian world, the Vietnamese had a duty to introduce modern Sino-Vietnamese administrative institutions and civilization to Cambodia. The Nguyen would bring superior technology to better exploit the riches of this country. And long before the French had done so, the Vietnamese court had already portrayed the Khmers as ?lazy? and ?disorganized.? (p. 64) Post-independence socialism only brought an alternative version of modernity that still called on people to become the New Socialist Man (Duong & Phan, 2018). The two cores of modernity, rationalization and the quest for progress, remain central in Vietnam (Raffin, 2008). Modernity continues to be the connecting thread of Vietnamese history and sociopolitical context under the state-directed transition to a market economy that is increasingly governed by neoliberal logic. Various studies of contemporary Vietnam have commented on the proliferation of technical practices of rationalization, management, and neoliberal self-governance, with a significant push from international actors, that are justified on the basis of a collective pursuit of progress and modernity (Le & Duong, 2022). As Schwenkel and Leshkowich (2012) 243 argue, ?The Vietnamese government is generally receptive to neoliberal logics of accountability, enumeration, and quality that offer rational, scientific techniques to manage the population and inculcate values of self-management in service of state developmental goals? (p. 391). While these studies thus far have only explored this pursuit of modernity from a postcolonial lens that problematizes the ?Western? aspect of progress, there is a lot of analytical room for an explicitly racial perspective as well. It is very difficult to extricate the notion of progress from the global racial hierarchy that was established to make ?progress? a thinkable concept in the first place. Even as progressive discourses try to render racism as obsolete, discourses of progress allow for the comparison and ranking of different groups of human beings as inferior or superior to each other. The core rule of development is: ?Development is predicated on the assumption that some people and places are more developed than others and therefore those who are ?developed? have the knowledge and expertise to help those who are not? (Kothari, 2005, p. 427). If this is not racial, then theoretically anyone would be able to attain that position of having the knowledge and expertise to help those who are not yet developed. But from this case of Vietnamese experts in Mozambique, we can see the ambiguity of such a situation. Vietnamese experts? own self-evaluation is that they are not ?developed? enough, not to that extent (see Chapter 7). In the end, they are also valued not by the technical expertise they possess but rather the country of origin on their passport which somehow allows them to be ?cheaper? experts. This means that inversely, there are experts who are ?more 244 expensive?, or more explicitly, whose technical expertise is more worthy of the expenses. They were directly named as Western experts, So, from the Mozambican perspective, if you hire experts from Cuba and Vietnam, the cost is tolerable, they are hardworking and can bear with hardship. Whereas in contrast, Western experts demand salaries and standards of living that are too high. (p. 208) Vietnamese experts were using a master narrative of development, progress, and modernity to evaluate both themselves and local Mozambicans. Hence, they were ready to dismiss the skills of local people as lacking. They placed blame on the culture of not valuing education as one reason for education problems in Mozambique, echoing deficit-oriented ?culture of poverty? theories to explain Black achievement gaps (Weiner, 2012). Even when they acknowledge the exceptional cases of competent local people, the experts attribute it to their Western educational background, When I work at the Ministry, I can see that almost all of the Ministry officials had been educated abroad. They studied in the U.K., the U.S., and also Portugal, Brazil. Only a few studied domestically. Their competency level is very high. Their foreign language abilities are very good. I can see that their specialists are very competent. Likewise, Mozambicans also used the same Western standards of development and modernity to evaluate Vietnamese experts. It is interesting how the ?lessons learned? from this Vietnamese expert exchange program had to do with the rational professionalization of work, such as goal-setting and project management skills. 245 Both countries also aligned in their vision of development progress via the promotion of science and technology, which is a central area of interest for future cooperation between the two countries. Vietnam is seen as ahead of Mozambique in this area?in addition to its traditional strength in agriculture?and as such, it is assumed to be able to provide the expertise to help Mozambique reach the same level of progress. This is only possible if both countries are viewed from a single linear timeline of how development happens: from agrarian to techno-centric societies. This teleology of development underlying this expert exchange program is also reinforced by the structure of power underlying it, as explored in previous chapters. Steiner-Khamsi (2009) once remarked that most South-South cooperation are actually North-South-South, and this case was not an exception. It should be noted that Vietnam is not among the ?donors? of Mozambique, the G-19 group of 19 countries that fund between 55-60 percent of Mozambique?s annual government budget. Rather, Vietnam was part of a group of non-donor countries that have significant cooperation with Mozambique, alongside countries such as China, Russia, South Africa, Egypt, and Cuba, Brazil. As such, a lot of Vietnamese-Mozambican cooperation is embedded in trilateral cooperation schemes with funding coming from the Global North. This is also reflected in the Vietnamese experts? own perception that they are hired for their cheaper labor when considering the specialists available in the global labor market of expertise. But even if they were just cheap expert labor, the working of the implicit racial hierarchy in development aid produces the assumption that Vietnamese were still more capable than Mozambicans. The location of Vietnamese experts in this 246 racialized global labor market echoes the position of Asian groups elsewhere in racial capitalism, a position of an ?intermediary labor class between Black and White? (Cheng, 2013, p. 1). It manifests in the inequality of who can be the expert built into the very Protocol of this supposedly equal exchange. There is a stark contrast in the division of responsibilities between the two sides in this program, or in other words, the imaginary of who is capable of what. Only the Vietnamese side is imagined as being in the position of sending experts. These experts may not be ?as capable? as the White experts, but they still know enough to provide technical assistance, particularly in the area of capacity-building for Mozambicans. As the Expert once told me, It?s exactly because they are a lot less competent that our experts can be here, H?ng ?. If their management level is already high, then why would they hire us, right? It?s only because it?s still low that they would hire us. Discussion When Vietnamese experts?and other Vietnamese migrants?move to Mozambique, they are also entering a ?contact zone,? conceptualized by Mary Louise Pratt as social spaces where, disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination?such as colonialism and slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out across the globe today. (2008, p. 7) 247 In this contact zone, the cultural baggage they bring contains both a sense of similarity from being both postcolonial subjects as well as a structural instinct to distinguish themselves as different racial groups. From the very foundation of the expert exchange program, the position of ?similarity? as Global South subjects already situates both sides on the same measuring yardstick of Western development?both coming out of oppression, yes, but they should also now both strive to escape from poverty and pursue the end goal of development. Development becomes the shared discourse and ideology in order to make both sides intelligible to each other. The Expert emphasized the importance of speaking Portuguese as the bridge connecting the two peoples, but there was another language they were already speaking: the language of Development. Yet the language of Development also operates according to grammatical rules that divide people along a continuum of inferiority and superiority, one axis of which is based on racial identities. Kim and McCall (2012) write, A grammar is engaged with relations between different parts of speech, with their inflections and their integration in the sentence. It outlines the roles, functions, and relations of words according to established usage. (p. 9) The racial grammar of this South-South education cooperation also underlies the roles and relations of each side to each other and to the overarching project of development. It constructs the rules for who is assumed to more advanced and in possession of the capacity to help, and it reproduces antiblack racial discourses among the Vietnamese experts. Confined within the Development material and 248 ideological apparatus, their presence would only continue to be justified as long as their Black ?friends? continue to be undeveloped and unmodern. Perhaps Vietnamese experts continue to be invested in this grammar because it allows for their intelligibility and legibility in the world. Consenting to these racialized scripts of the world also means carving up a place where they belong in this world?even if this is just as cheap temporary ?labor? of providing some low-level technical expertise in an emergency context. It keeps the dream of achieving the material comfort of development still reachable. In general, and in their conscious moments when they want to address racism, the Vietnamese experts do signal a desire to counter racist prejudice about Mozambique, Black people, and Africa as a whole. However, their racial consciousness stops at viewing racism as individualized rather than structural. They are not conscious of the even more invisible structural racism they were perpetuating by virtue of being here as advocates of Development, a product of cultural imperialism and racism. If previous chapters have shown traces of the racial structures of this South-South encounter, this chapter demonstrates how quotidian racism is also wrapped up and entangled with the larger systemic racism. As racism is about structural over individual discrimination, it is not right to blame these individuals for holding these perspectives either?again, it is the cultural baggage they bring, it is a grammar of the only world they have ever known. Ignorance is not an excuse, it is just another mechanism of power of systemic racism, but neither do I want to reify some dismissive liberal discourse where lacking in this structural racial consciousness means they are lacking as human beings in general. I 249 recognize their well-meaning attempts to speak up and address racial stereotypes about Black folks. In pointing out where these attempts fall short, as well as the general evidence of racism I have observed, I am not condemning the individual participants in this study. I am condemning this world. 250 Chapter 9: Conclusion In seeking to address the entrenched inequities within international development aid, South-South cooperation (SSC) has often been offered up as a promising alternative. Such perspectives are rooted in simplistic assumptions that the main problem with aid is a lack of representation of those from the Global South, or in other words, a problem that can be fixed by diversity and inclusion initiatives rather than a complete dismantling of the current system of aid. From being first beneficiaries, then the people to blame for reproducing underdevelopment, now Global South subjects are additionally burdened by the fantasies of the White/Western/Northern international development aid apparatus to become saviors of themselves. This dissertation examines the case of Vietnamese-Mozambican education cooperation in order to disrupt the fantasies of SSC as a silver bullet for development. The narratives of the Vietnamese development experts in Mozambique act as a portal to their world where official discourses of solidarity come into friction with lived experience. At the lived experience level, this case of SSC between Vietnam and Mozambique is not an alternative to development; it is merely an alternative in development. For those who believe that South-South encounters easily beget global solidarity, this study finds that what people in this particular cross-cultural contact zone use to relate to each other, to render the Other intelligible, is still the racist master narrative of development and modernity as a whole. South-South cooperation in this case is also Asian-Black cooperation, and most importantly, it is still cooperation in pursuit of the hegemonic vision of Western development. 251 South-South Cooperation between Vietnam and Mozambique emerged in the 1980s outside of the Western-led international development aid system, though it was still a part of another worldwide project to pursue modernity: the socialist one. When Vietnamese experts are sent to Mozambique, they consider their work as a governmental mission guided by an abstract understanding of solidarity between Third World socialist and former socialist countries. The logic of this program is not the same as the logic of traditional aid. If Western aid is about development intervention, then the logic of this SSC is development assistance whereby knowledge and experience is shared but not imposed in order to facilitate the post-conflict reconstruction and development of society. The discourse of equality and mutual interest continues to be embedded into policy and diplomatic discourses at the highest level, such as the Protocol for cooperation and its evolution over the years. While the scale of the program has been significantly reduced since the 1980s, its structure as a bilateral inter-governmental program has been kept intact, especially the component of expert exchange as a core part of cooperation. The Vietnamese experts are hired on 3-year contracts for specific positions that the government of Mozambique determines based on their needs, and the Mozambican side also pays for their salaries and living costs. This structure where the experts are working directly for the host government rather than on behalf of a foreign donor is arguably the most significant difference between this program and the typical model of development aid. Different from the dependency that the beneficiaries typically experience, in this case, the Mozambican side always has the agency of ending an expert?s contract or 252 cutting the quantity of experts whenever they want. Because the salaries and costs are covered by Mozambique, it is logical that they would have this power as well as an equal position in negotiating the terms of cooperation and requesting exactly what they need. This points to how different the power balance can be if we address the fundamental question of who owns the money in international development aid. Rather than a typical international development aid project, it is perhaps more apt to compare the Vietnamese-Mozambican expert exchange to a high-skilled labor import program. The experts are hired by the Mozambican government because their skills and expertise are in demand, but crucially, they enter into a labor contract with the Mozambican side as employees on the same level as local ministry officers or teachers. Indeed, the experts also reveal the duality of this program in their smooth slippage between two framings of their work: they have been both ?invited? and ?hired.? This expert cooperation program is both based on friendship, assistance, and solidarity but also on economic calculations. One important thing to consider is that the root of Vietnamese-Mozambican expert exchange in the 1980s was embedded in the much more massive program of exporting Vietnamese workers abroad to socialist countries, with the export of about 300,000 laborers to places such as East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria (Alamgir, 2013; Dennis, 2007; L? V?n T?ng, 2003; Raffin, 2008). The association between ??i chuy?n gia? [going as expert] and economic opportunities, entrepreneurialism, and improving livelihoods has never truly faded. The accepted instrumentalist dimension of becoming an expert is also connected to how easily the Vietnamese experts position themselves within a larger racialized global labor system. Many believe that Mozambique only hires experts 253 from Vietnam because they are cheaper than other foreign experts, and that ?only Vietnamese people can stand the hardship [of living here].? Indeed, the main story that Vietnamese experts tell about themselves is the hardships they have endured and the sacrifices they have made, all for the economic wellbeing of their family. Sacrifice is the central way that the experts make meaning of their experience and identities. In addition, there is an interesting gendered aspect to how the experts frame their motivation for moving to Mozambique. The men are quite forthcoming that beyond the supposed official mission of solidarity, they are really only here for economic reasons because the pay is more than they would ever hope to earn in Vietnam. Many engage in side gigs, such as opening up a chain of photocopy shops. Women, on the other hand, all initially frame this opportunity as a chance to move beyond their comfort zone and experience something different; there is a certain sense of liberation of the self, of seeking personal and professional development. It is important to situate this with the perception of money-making as vulgar to some extent in contemporary Vietnamese society, a complex moral landscape where vestiges of Confucianism and socialist condemnation of entrepreneurialism paradoxically blend with new neoliberal norms of self-reliance and economic optimization (B?i H?i Thi?m, 2015; Nguyen, 2018; Trinh, 2022). In this context, the ideal Vietnamese woman is a virtuous ?moral subject? through ?their sacrifice for the collective good of the family and community, which is involved in the process of self-improvement through learning, producing and consuming? (Trinh, 2022, p. 3). The narratives of Vietnamese women experts in Mozambique emphasize this process 254 of self-improvement over the common and expected rationale of economic opportunities and wealth accumulation. This reflects the way that the women negotiate the moral appropriateness of their professional choice despite other society members? implicit condemnation of them for having left their husbands and children behind. No experts mentioned a moral discourse of wanting to help those in need as a consideration, much less a core motivation behind ??i chuy?n gia? [going as expert]. Of course, from the narratives shared in this dissertation, we can see that the experts also ponder about how to help Mozambican partners, particularly in ways that are locally appropriate, such as the anecdote of wanting to help with the irrigation system. It is interesting then that when they step back and comment on their entire journey and identity as an expert, this desire to help is almost brushed over and not self-perceived as a rationale for work in their minds. ?The need to help,? the sense of a moral compulsion to go abroad and do the good work of helping those less unfortunate (Heron, 2007; Malkki, 2015; Wu, 2022), is not a core dimension of their professional identities as experts. It is important to emphasize the significance of experts? economic motivations, as becoming an expert was truly a life-or-death matter in the socialist period before the 21st century. Even now, in some cases, becoming an expert can be the only way for certain people to make career advances, particularly for women. Yet are these economic motivations necessarily worse than a moral imperative as the rationale? Perhaps this is more equalizing in its own way. To assume the moral imperative to help strangers abroad is already to adopt certain self-narratives where 255 one is presumed to be capable enough to deliver that assistance. The Vietnamese experts in this program entered the field in a more humble manner. They acknowledge that they did not come with any illusion of grandeur but rather only want to contribute to the wellbeing of their families. There is no moral superiority in helping strangers over helping oneself and one?s family. Again, the Vietnamese experts are not here to ?intervene? but rather to ?assist.? They know they have the expertise to share, but this should not be imposed on the local partners. Their professional narrative is quiet, mundane, and humble?even the pride that they take in their contribution and achievement. For them, meaningful evaluation of their work comes from whether their local colleagues appreciate their contribution and find it practical, rather than from objective indicators of progress. This is another manifestation of the radically relational nature of this cooperation program. It is a reminder that a strength of SSC is the mutuality, including how it can enable economic survival and flourishing for both sides. Asian-Black However, the coming together of two Global South countries into a South- South cooperation does not automatically mean complete equality between the two sides. Despite the official rhetoric of solidarity, equality, and mutual benefits, the structure of the program still reproduces the assumption that only the Vietnamese side has the expertise to deliver to the Mozambican side, as evidenced by the imbalance in the number of experts sent by each side. While there have been many Vietnamese experts sent to work in Mozambique, only one Mozambican had been sent to Vietnam 256 to teach Portuguese. Of course, Mozambique also challenges this imbalance; as they emphasized repeatedly to me and to some of the experts I?ve talked to, ?It is supposed to be an exchange.? Perhaps there will be significant movement in the future towards a more truly equal exchange. Nevertheless, it is important to question why such an imbalance in this supposedly equal exchange emerged in the first place. It stems from the assumptions on the expertise and capabilities of both sides based on their supposed level of development. Similarly, a critical analysis of the implicit assumptions, the silence, and the spontaneous comments from the Vietnamese experts reveal how they continue to be governed by the hegemonic global racial ideology. Vietnamese experts in Mozambique, similar to others in the Vietnamese diaspora, appear to view themselves as better than most of the local people, and their daily conversations frequently use anti-black racial stereotypes. This is exacerbated by the fact that their experience in this contact zone with Mozambicans was still rooted in the racial imaginary of Western development. In this encounter, both sides are speaking to each other using the language of Development, and as such, they are both governed by its racial grammar. As the Vietnamese experts stumble along this process of coming to know and exist with the Black Other, there are moments that speak of their desire to challenge existing racial prejudice, as well as a partial consciousness of the structural dynamics of the current world system. Their own postcolonial history and the official rhetoric of Third World solidarity does seem to enable the experts to have a structural and historical awareness of the socioeconomic conditions in Mozambique. That is, the experts can explain the ?underdevelopment? they are seeing in Mozambique not 257 through any inherent deficiencies of the people here but rather their colonized past. They also seem insistent on portraying the people here as very friendly, as ?good people??probably to counter anti-Blackness tropes of criminality and violence that are very pervasive in Vietnam. Nevertheless, as Liu and Shange (2018) argue, ?Solidarity based on notions of shared suffering often creates a false equivalence between different experiences of racialized violence,? producing a solidarity that may be genuine but still ?thin? (p. 190). In other words, the discourse of Third World solidarity may paradoxically make one too quick to assume shared suffering and a position of equality while silencing critical reflection and dialogue about the differences in their historical and contemporary experiences of oppression. In particular, race and racism is not recognized at all as a lens to analyze their social relations and experience here. Racist microaggressions are common in the quotidian life in the Vietnamese diasporic community, including the experts, as revealed in complaints such as how Mozambicans are ?so slow.? Conversations with Vietnamese experts also reveal an implicit sense of being more capable and further ?ahead? on the teleology of development. For example, many adopt a deficit-oriented perspective on the Mozambican colleagues? lack of math skills as evidence of limited capacity. Expertise also appears to be tied to a technical, bureaucratic competency. Many experts critiqued Mozambican teachers for not setting out with a lesson plan and clear objectives for students to know. Even the MINEDH representative expressed that what he learned most and appreciated most from the Vietnamese experts were the importance of preparation, organization, and paying attention to detail. Why is it that the experts come up with the same ?diagnoses? of Mozambique?s 258 educational woes, such as culture of poverty, as the traditional development practitioners? Arguably, the convergence in analysis between the Vietnamese experts and traditional aid workers is connected to how well these common narratives align with tropes of antiblackness. Then, there are overarching comments about the country itself: ?Does it not feel like Vietnam of 30 years ago?? This reveals how ingrained the ?chronopolitics of development? are in the experts? worldviews, which refers to the assumption of unilinear progress embedded in development aid, only able to look ?ahead? in one direction from ?primitive? to ?civilized? states of living while erasing present and past injustices (Sriprakash et al., 2020). As Vietnamese and Mozambicans encounter each other in this cross-cultural contact zone, there has to be a way to make the Other intelligible. In this case, as the Vietnamese experts arrive with the mission of supporting Mozambican development, the sense of solidarity and common humanity is ironically achieved by drawing both themselves and the Other into an unilinear and racialized timeline of Development. In some sense, they are trapped in this timeline because seemingly, there exists no alternative in the world. However, there is also an agentic desire to pursue development and progress, the ?will to improve? in Tania Li?s (2007) words, that should not be discounted. This is also a manifestation of the postsocialist characteristic of this partnership. While postsocialist has often been used as a temporal marker, as an analytic of particular social dynamics, postsocialist is marked by the absolute discrediting of ?socialism as the last grand social utopia of a just world? (Koobak et al., 2021, p. 1). As both postsocialist spaces, and in the case of Vietnam in particular, 259 the experts? narratives of the hardship under the High Socialism period in the 1980s show how understandable it is to desire a break from the past as well as the absolute attachment to the Western vision of development. Moreover, the desire for progress was already built into socialism; Soviet-style socialism was the same project of mass utopia as Western capitalism, if not in even more accelerated form (Buck-Morss, 2000). Living in postsocialist contexts means having witnessed the pain of socialism, including its collapse and transformation into neoliberal capitalism, which can more deeply inscribe the false belief that There Is No Alternative (TINA) to Western development. At the most basic level, the one most resonating to the average person, development promises material comfort?especially in a global context where alternatives seem to not exist. This is not true; there are plenty of alternatives that people globally are engaging in, in a shared but also pluralistic struggle for a more just world. It is unfortunate that these struggles are largely invisible for now. Recommendations From this examination of Vietnamese-Mozambican education cooperation, including its strengths, weaknesses, and the differences from traditional aid projects, the following are various suggestions to fundamentally rework the normative aid system. ? Decision-making and agenda-setting power should belong to those who are normally considered the ?aid beneficiary.? This includes the power to determine their own needs, make their own requests, and come up with plans 260 on how to fulfill them, as well the power to hire, fire, and terminate experts and projects. ? The dynamics of who is working for whom in traditional aid should be reversed so that everyone is working for the ?aid beneficiary??and this beneficiary should be a participatory entity including the regular people directly impacted by development. This entails steps such as demanding language competency from the external experts (as a basic sign of respect for who they are working for). It also entails a fundamental transformation of monitoring and evaluation that not only changes who evaluates and who is evaluated, but also according to what standards and mechanisms. The process should not be just monitoring and evaluation of changes in the ?aid beneficiary? but also performance evaluation of the external ?donors? and ?experts? coming in. ? The outsiders coming in should recognize that their role is not as a protagonist but rather a sidekick in helping the local people to achieve what they need and want. In connection with the fundamental restructuring above, the foreign experts do not need to be the ones coming up with the ideas and proposals to implement; their skills and expertise do not need to be automatically centered and elevated over local knowledges; and the results of assistance should not be evaluated through their perspectives but rather through the lenses of the local stakeholders. ? Reframe assistance as reparation than a moral project of helping those in need, which entails an inherent superiority and capability to help. This would center 261 historical and structural reasons for current realities of ?underdevelopment? around the world, because without tackling past as well as present processes of global exploitation and oppression, it will be impossible for every person in this world to live with dignity. This should also entail changes to the funding of development so that it is no longer a voluntary system of the rich that only breeds dependency. There needs to be aggressive policies for reparations and systematic wealth distribution from the Global North to the Global South. ? Destigmatize dialogue around race, racism, and its tightly interwoven nature with the notion of expertise and development itself. Acknowledging the racial dimension and centering anti-racist approaches can be an important first step in addressing the inequities perpetuated by development. In addition, the interest of this study is not only to draw conclusions that are of interest to the North?even if I acknowledge how my frame of inquiry has always been implicitly influenced by a comparison to the normative Western aid apparatus. Still, it is important to draw conclusions of interest to the South too, in this case, the Vietnamese and Mozambican governments. While both sides have acknowledged the benefits that cooperation has brought, it is undeniable that the program is at a precipice. Perhaps if seen from normative perspectives of what ?development? and ?impact? look like, Vietnamese-Mozambican cooperation is too marginal. However, there have been definite contributions, and there is much to explore in the future of education cooperation between the two countries. The recommendations are as follows: 262 ? Cooperation should expand to include new areas of cooperation, new kinds of projects, and new actors. It should be open to flexible arrangements beyond what is established in the Protocol. ? More true exchange of experts and practitioners should be organized that encourage bi-directional learning from each other and exchanging lessons. Rather than being a model of one side ?learning from? the other, which means learning things already known by the other side, cooperation should focus on mutual learning with each other to discover new locally-appropriate knowledge that is not beholden to Western/Global North epistemologies or scripts of best practice. ? More long-term cooperation opportunities should be encouraged, such as increasing the contract length of experts or encouraging long-term study of Vietnamese students in Mozambique. This would allow for a deeper understanding of both contexts which would lead to more effective cooperation. ? Cooperation between universities and civil society groups should be particularly encouraged. University-level partnership through student and faculty exchanges are also promising avenues. There should also be opportunities for community groups to work together. This would enable exchanges of knowledge and experience between those with the most familiarity with how to improve the lives of the most disadvantaged. 263 ? Address information gaps about both contexts to eliminate racial stereotypes about each other, without which it would be impossible for the people to come together in true solidarity. Abolishing Development Most of the recommendations above may be dismissed as completely implausible. This is true. Because this dissertation critiques the fundamental core of aid as a modern endeavor and the system of White supremacy built into development as its racial grammar, it is difficult to advocate for anything less than a complete abolishing of development as we know it. It is beyond the scope of this dissertation to delve into decolonial visions of post-development and alternative approaches (see e.g., Amin, 2009; Escobar, 2018, 2020; Gibson-Graham & Dombroski, 2020; Hickel, 2021; A. Kothari et al., 2019; Roelvink et al., 2015). However, it is important to assert that they exist, many people around the world are actively reconstructing their communities in these radical ways, and we do not have to resign ourselves to the second-best options of reforms. Reforming development is not enough. ?Decolonizing? development, a concept rising in popularity, may not be enough either if it ends up being just a radically-sounding ?metaphor? for fixing the current apparatus (Tuck & Yang, 2012). In particular, this dissertation challenges one commonly proposed solution as part of decolonizing development?bringing the Global South to the table?through the case of expert exchange between Vietnam and Mozambique. 264 In the end, the exchange of experts between Vietnam and Mozambique is a state-led program of cooperation that may be witnessing its twilight days. While cooperation would likely be renewed, perhaps even strengthened, what we can predict is that such a state-led program of development will not be a site of radical transformation that many hope South-South cooperation would embody. ?Decoloniality is not a state-led task; it cannot be? (Mignolo, 2021, xi). From the narratives of Vietnamese experts in Mozambique, these practitioners from the Global South still enter this line of work in development assistance with the cultural baggage that is a racialized understanding of the world filtered via the imaginary, teleology, and hierarchy of development. While they may still carry the rhetoric of postcolonial friendship and solidarity with faint traces of the Asian-Black radical internationalism in the decolonization movement, what is even more taken-for-granted is their lived experience of being judged by the yardstick of Development as well as seeing how racialized others are judged. This racial grammar of development is enacted in the everyday, the narratives, and the structure of the program. This study also demonstrates how a postcolonial lens without explicitly centering race is not enough to examine development and its potential alternatives. As Baker and Koobak (2021) argue, it is important to be able to talk about race and racism rather than just coloniality and Eurocentrism because ?without having to contend with the vectors of violence and oppression that ?race? makes visible, the ?postcolonial? as a way of thinking? becomes very easy to co-opt in ways that still entrench racist and xenophobic cisheteronormative patriarchy? (p. 46). Beyond the racism internalized and reproduced through the program by the Vietnamese experts, it 265 is also reflected in their own racialized positioning and self-perception of their value as experts. In their own meaning-making of their professional experience, these experts are valued not just by the technical expertise they possess but also the country of origin on their passport which somehow allows them to be ?cheaper? experts. The implication is that inversely, there are experts who are assumed to be ?more expensive??whose technical expertise is more worthy. They were explicitly named as Western experts, where ?Western? is essentially synonymous for white. If race was not an essential dimension, this unequal differentiation of the expert value would not exist. Vietnamese experts would not implicitly situate themselves as a kind of intermediary class of expert labor between Black and White. This dissertation uses grammar as an analytic to help illuminate the racial project of Development and its consequences. Just as grammar provides the underlying structure and order for social encounters and human engagement in an invisible way, as taken-for-granted rules and assumptions are rarely remarked upon or even understood, so too does race operate here in structuring the narrative and experience of the participants in this exchange. More importantly, what does knowing the racial grammar allow us to do as a collective? You have to know the racial grammar in order to change it. You cannot let it remain invisible. You have to remark upon its illogicality, inconsistency, and obsolescence. At any particular moment in time, grammatical rules can seem fixed, proper, absolute. But they can be changed. As this study is a small narrative inquiry with additional restrictions on the data collected due to the COVID-19 situation, the findings likely have not presented the entire picture of this expert exchange program between Vietnam and 266 Mozambique. In particular, this study has not been able to examine in detail the initiatives and results the Vietnamese experts have achieved in Mozambique. It has also not been able to capture a lot of information on the experience of experts in the 1980s for a comparison with experts in the present day. What the participants in this study have revealed so far already suggests an interesting generation gap and contention between different groups of experts, and future research along this line can be illuminating for Vietnamese studies. It would also be interesting to study the student exchange component of Vietnamese-Mozambican program for a comparison of how both sides come to engage with the Other in a different structure where there is a lot more structured proximity. It is also hoped that the fascinating lifeworlds of Vietnamese experts in this study can inspire more future research that engage in- depth with development practitioners from the Global South, as well as those engaged in other South-South transnational solidarity movements. While the participants in this particular case of SSC have not been able to fully erase the cultural and racial barriers between them, it does not mean that other people have not been able to reach across the global racial line to construct a more just world. Perhaps the most significant lesson from this case is that solidarity between the oppressed is not a given. South-South cooperation is not inherently going to fix the world. 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