Helle Rydström

This article explores class precarity among male heavy industrial shopfloor workers in northern Vietnam. It brings Vietnamese understandings of crisis into a dialogue with the anthropology of crisis, arguing a crisis framework offers a helpful analytical entry to exploring gendered class precarity. Striving to provide quality healthcare and education for their children in Vietnam's 'socialist-oriented market economy', men working in global industry are reconceptualising stereotypical images of the masculine male factory worker and the role of fathers. As they aspire to become part of Vietnam's affluent middle class, low-income workers muster resilience to mitigate and cope with enduring financial challenges. Any added crisis not only fuels but also exacerbates an economic 'latent crisis' underpinning daily life, like a smouldering ember that could ignite at any time.