by Van Minh Nguyen (Phd, ULB)

In Ho Chi Minh City, where over 7.3 million motorbikes dominate the streets, these vehicles function as more than transportation—they constitute mobile alternative spaces that challenge conventional public-private distinctions. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2018-2020, this presentation examines how young Vietnamese urbanites deploy motorbikes to navigate spatial constraints, perform intimacy, and assert urban citizenship. Through practices like đi vòng vòng (cruising without destination) and strategic parking that transforms sidewalks into social hubs, riders create ephemeral zones of autonomy within increasingly privatized urban landscapes. Employing concepts of “contingent invisibility” (Newton 2015) and “civil inattention” (Goffman 1963), I argue that motorbikes enable alternative publicness through embodied mobility rather than fixed location.

As state-led imaginaries of modern mobility rooted in car-centric development, and more recently HCMC’s first metro line, reconfigure urban life in ways that imperil motorbike culture, understanding these mobile social spaces becomes essential for theorizing alternative urbanisms beyond Western-centric paradigms of public space.

Tuesday 31st March 2026, from 2pm until 4pm

Room S.H3244
Building H3
ULB - Campus Solbosch

Free entrance