Abstract
This paper elucidates that the Thai-Dutch couples uphold disparate ideas of family responsibilities such as inter-generational relations, family structure as well as relations between siblings. As a result of such differences, material contributions made by Thai wives to their natal kin are liable to cause their Dutch husband feelings of unease. It also examines how the Thai-Dutch couples adapt to, reflect on and negotiate different obligations to each other’s natal and conjugal families, leading to transformation of family relations. This paper suggests that to understand whether marriage migration will result in financial gain for the women’s natal family or not, family norms and gender issues have to be taken into account.
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Notes
- 1.
Two of the 45 Thai women had been in relationships with Dutch men before marrying their current partners. One of the women eventually married a Surinamese who had lived in the Netherlands for 30 years and was a naturalised Dutch citizen. The other woman started a relationship with a Norwegian man who had lived in the Netherlands for 7 years.
- 2.
This paper focuses on the second wave of Thai migration, from the late 1970s to the present.
- 3.
- 4.
These numbers include both the first and the second generation. According to the CBS (2015), the first generation refers to persons born abroad with at least one parent born abroad. The second generation encompasses persons born in the Netherlands with at least one parent born abroad. These statistics exclude Thais who have either become Dutch citizens and those who live illegally in the Netherlands.
- 5.
The parents’ low expectation of care from their son has also been influenced by the idea of gender and marriage practice in Thai society. The traditional practices in rural areas, especially in the north and the northeast, include the presumption that men sometimes would leave their parental home and travel to another village or city for months. While they were away from home, their financial support to the parents might be lessened or even discontinued. Moreover, the traditional practice of matrilocal residence, in which the man tended to move in with his wife’s family and contributed to his in-laws’ household, lessened his own parents’ expectations of material help from him. Even though the practice of matrilocal residence has declined and the rural–urban migration of both men and women is now very pronounced, the idea of a son who flees the nest and can less readily be approached for family tasks, compared with daughters, has persisted (Mills 1999; Whittaker 1999).
- 6.
The Dutch pension system consists of three pillars: (1) the universal old-age state pension (AOW), (2) the work-related pension and (3) the private commercial pension provision. The basic state pension (first pillar) is provided to all Dutch citizens at the age of 65 in the form of a flat-rate pension benefit which in principle guarantees 70 percent of the net minimum wage. Although there is no obligation for employers to make pension commitments to their employees, over 90 percent of those employed in the Netherlands participate in an occupational pension scheme. If the collective labour agreement lasts for 35–40 years, the total pension benefit will be around 70 percent of the final salary, including the first pillar benefit. The third pillar of the Dutch pension system consists of the individual pension provisions. These are obtained from insurance companies offering schemes for individual pension provisions. They can be obtained through annuity or endowment insurance (SZW 2010).
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Brown, P.S. (2016). Circulating Remittances: Cross-Border Negotiation of Family Values Among Thai Migrant Women and Their Dutch Husbands. In: Nowicka, M., Šerbedžija, V. (eds) Migration and Social Remittances in a Global Europe. Europe in a Global Context. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-60126-1_8
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