Abstract
Transnational marriage migration powerfully captures how migration – a demographic and social phenomenon – is highly contentious and gendered. Marriage migration generates intense controversy, visible in the many representations of marriage migrants in public discourse that reflect polarized stereotypes imbued with distinct gender messages. Sensationalist media accounts commonly portray women marriage migrants as abusing migration policies through fake marriages, or as helpless victims of trafficking. These dramatic depictions rarely capture how uneven economic development, demographic pressures, unprecedented ease of communication across vast differences, and accelerated international migration intersect in the arena of marriage in complex and highly gendered ways. In reality, there is a great deal of (gendered) diversity in the causes, consequences, and experiences that are captured under the broad umbrella of ‘marriage migration.’ To shed light on the complex articulations between gender, marriage, and migration in a globalized world, the present chapter outlines theoretical and empirical perspectives on transnational marriage migration, with an emphasis on marriage migration within Asia (Vietnam to South Korea and Taiwan) and to North America (Canada).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Aguilar, D., & Lacsamana, A. (2004). Women and globalization. Amherst: Prometheus Books.
Anderson, M. J. (1993). A license to abuse: The impact of conditional status on female migrants. The Yale Law Journal, 102(6), 1401–1430.
Angeles, L. C., & Sunanta, S. (2009). Demanding daughter duty. Critical Asian Studies, 41(4), 549–574.
Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Arnold, F., Kishor, S., & Roy, T. K. (2002). Sex-selective abortions in India. Population and Development Review, 28(4), 759–785.
Ballard, R. (1990). Migration and kinship: The differential effect of marriage rules on the processes of Punjabi migration to Britain. In C. Clarke, C. Peach, & S. Vertovek (Eds.), South Asians overseas: Contexts and communities (pp. 219–249). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bélanger, D. (2007). The house and the classroom: Vietnamese immigrant spouses in South Korea and Taiwan. Population and Society, 3(1), 39–59.
Bélanger, D. (2010). Marriages with foreign women in East Asia: Bride trafficking or voluntary migration? Population and Societies, 469, 1–4. (July-August 2010).
Bélanger, D. (2016a). Beyond the brokers: Local marriage migration industries of rural Vietnam. Positions, 24(1), 71–96.
Bélanger, D. (2016b). Marriage migration, single men, and social reproduction in migrants’ communities of origin in Vietnam. Critical Asian Studies, 48(4), 494–510.
Bélanger, D., & Tran, L. G. (2011). The impact of transnational migration on gender and marriage in sending communities of Vietnam. Current Sociology, 59(1), 59–77.
Bélanger, D., & Khuat, O. T. H. (2009). Second trimester abortions and sex selection of children in northern urban Vietnam. Population Studies, 63(2), 163–171.
Bélanger, D., & Nguyen, V. T. (2015). Mobilités, stratégies familiales et transformations du marché matrimonial au Vietnam. Autrepart, 2(74–75), 47–65.
Bélanger, D., & Wang, H. Z. (2012). Transnationalism from below: Evidence from Vietnam-Taiwan cross-border marriages. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 21(3), 291–316.
Bélanger, D., Lee, H. K., & Wang, H. Z. (2010). Ethnic diversity and statistics in East Asia: ‘Foreign brides’ surveys in Taiwan and South Korea. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 33(6), 1108–1130.
Bélanger, D., Tran, L. G., & Duong, L. B. (2011). Marriage migrants as emigrants: Remittances of marriage migrant women from Vietnam to their natal families. Asian Population Studies, 7(2), 89–105.
Bélanger, D., Hong, K. T., & Linh, T. G. (2013). Transnational marriages between Vietnamese women and Asian men in Vietnamese online media. Journal of Vietnamese Studies, 8(2), 81–114.
Bielski, Z. (2009). I do…and I’m gone. The globe and mail. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/article1138892.ece. Accessed 26 Oct 2010.
Birrell, B. (1995). Spouse migration to Australia. People and Place, 3(1), 9–16.
Boyd, M. (1997). Migration policy, female dependency, and family membership: Canada and Germany. In P. M. Evans & G. R. Wekerle (Eds.), Women and the Canadian welfare state: Challenges and change (pp. 142–169). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Boyd, M., & Norris, D. (2001). Who are the “Canadians”? Changing census responses 1986–1996. Canadian Ethnic Studies, 33(1), 1–24.
Boyle, P., Halfacree, K., & Robinson, V. (1998). Exploring contemporary migration. New York: Addison Wesley Longman Ltd..
Brennan, D. (2003). Selling sex for visas: Sex tourism as a stepping-stone to international migration. In A. R. Hochschild & B. Ehrenreich (Eds.), Global woman: Nannies, maids, and sex workers in the new economy (pp. 154–168). New York: Metropolitan Books.
Brown, J. M. (2006). Global South Asians: Introducing the modern diaspora. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Castles, S. (2004). Why migration policies fail. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 27(2), 205–227.
Castles, S., & Miller, M. J. (2003). The age of migration: International population movements in the modern world (3rd ed.). Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan.
Chaudhuri, S., Morash, M., & Yingling, J. (2014). Marriage migration, patriarchal bargains, and wife abuse: A Study of South Asian women. Violence Against Women, 20(2), 141–161.
Cheng, C. M. C., & Choo, H. Y. (2015). Women’s migration for domestic work and cross-border marriage in East and Southeast Asia: Reproducing domesticity, contesting citizenship. Sociology Compass, 9(8), 654–667.
Chung, C., Kim, K., & Piper, N. (2016). Marriage migration in Southeast and East Asia revisited through a migration-development nexus lens. Critical Asian Studies, 48(4), 463–472.
Citizenship and Immigration Canada. (2015). Figures: Immigration overview – permanent residents 2014. http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/pdf/2014-Facts-Permanent.pdf. Accessed 11 Jan 2017.
Connelly, M. P., Li, T. M., MacDonald, M., & Parpart, J. L. (2000). Feminism and development: Theoretical perspectives. In J. L. Parpart, M. P. Connelly, & V. E. Barriteau (Eds.), Theoretical perspectives on gender and development (pp. 51–160). Ottawa: International Development Research Centre.
Constable, N. (2003). Romance on a global stage: Pen pals, virtual ethnography and ‘mail-order’ marriages. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Constable, N. (2005). Introduction: Cross-border marriages, gendered mobility, and global hypergamy. In N. Constable (Ed.), Cross-border marriages: Gender and mobility in transnational Asia (pp. 1–16). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Côté, A., Kerisit, M., & Côté, M.-L. (2001). Sponsorship… For better or for worse: The impact of sponsorship on the equality rights of immigrant women. Ottawa: Status of Women Canada.
Croes, H., & Hooimeijer, P. (2009). Gender and chain migration: The case of Aruba. Population, Space and Place, 16(2), 121–134.
Curtis, B. (1994). On the local construction of statistical knowledge: Making up the Census of the Canadas, 1861. Journal of Historical Sociology, 10(4), 416–434.
Curtis, B. (2002). The politics of population: State formation, statistics, and the Census of Canada, 1840–1875. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Das Gupta, T. (1995). Families of native peoples, immigrants, and people of colour. In N. Mandell & A. Duffy (Eds.), Canadian families: Diversity, conflict and change (pp. 141–174). Toronto: Harcourt Brace.
DHS Office of Immigration Statistisc (2016). Annual flow report: U.S. lawful permanent residents: 2014. https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/Lawful_Permanent_Residents_2014.pdf. Accessed 9 Jan 2017.
Fan, C. C., & Huang, Y. (1998). Waves of rural brides: Female marriage migration in China. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 88(2), 227–251.
Flynn, A. (2011). Constructing categories, imagining a Nation: A qualitative critical analysis of Canadian immigration discourse. The University of Western Ontario, unpublished PhD thesis.
Glick Schiller, N. (1999). Transmigrants and nation-states: Something old and something new in the U.S. immigrant experience. In C. Hirschman, J. DeWind, & P. Kasinitz (Eds.), Handbook of international migration: The American experience (pp. 94–119). New York: Russell Sage.
Glick Schiller, N., Basch, L., & Szanton Blanc, C. (1995). From immigrant to transmigrant: Theorizing transnational migration. Anthropological Quarterly, 68(1), 48–63.
Guarnizo, L. (1997). The emergence of a transnational social formation and the mirage of return migration among Dominican transmigrants. Identities, 4(2), 281–322.
Hondagneu-Sotelo, P. (2000). Feminism and migration. The Annals of the American Academy, 571(1), 107–120.
Hsia, H.-C. (2004). Internationalization of capital and the trade in Asian women: The case of “foreign brides” in Taiwan. In D. Aguilar & A. Lacsamana (Eds.), Women and globalization (pp. 181–229). Amherst: Prometheus Books.
Hsia, H.-C. (2007). Imaged and imagined threat to the nation: The media construction of the ‘foreign brides’ phenomenon’ as problems in Taiwan. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 8(1), 55–85.
Jones, G., & Shen, H. H. (2008). International marriage in East and Southeast Asia: Trends and research emphases. Citizenship Studies, 12(1), 9–25.
Junhong, C. (2001). Prenatal sex determination and sex-selective abortion in rural Central China. Population and Development Review, 27(2), 259–281.
Kabeer, N. (2002). Citizenship, affiliation and exclusion: Perspectives from the south. IDS Bulletin, 33(2), 1–15.
Kertzer, D. I., & Arel, D. (2002). Census and identity: The politics of race, ethnicity, and language in National Censuses. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Khoo, S. E. (2001). The context of spouse migration to Australia. International Migration, 39(1), 111–132.
Kim, D. S. (2004). Missing girls in South Korea: Trends, levels and regional variations. Population (English edition), 59(6), 865–878.
King-O’Riain, R. C. (2007). Counting on the ‘Celtic tiger’: Adding ethnic census categories in the Republic of Ireland. Ethnicities, 7(4), 516–542.
Lauser, A. (2006). Philippine women on the move: A transnational perspective on marriage migration. Internationales Asienforum, 37(3–4), 321–337.
Lauser, A. (2008). Philippine women on the move: Marriage across borders. International Migration, 46(4), 85–110.
Lee, H. K. (2008). International marriage and the state in South Korea: Focusing on governmental policy. Citizenship Studies, 12(1), 107–123.
Lu, M. C. W. (2005). Commercially arranged marriage migration: Case studies on cross-border marriages in Taiwan. Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 12(2–3), 275–303.
Massey, D. S., Arango, J., Hugo, G., Kouaouci, A., Pellegrino, A., & Taylor, J. E. (1994). An evaluation of international migration theory: The North American case. Population and Development Review, 20(4), 699–751.
Mahler, S. J., & Pessar, P. R. (2001). Gendered Geographies of Power: Analyzing Gender Across Transnational Spaces. Identities, 7(4), 441-459.
McKay, D. (2003). Filipinas in Canada – Deskilling as a push toward marriage. In N. Piper & M. Roces (Eds.), Wife or worker? Asian women and migration (pp. 23–52). Lanham: Rowman & Littleman.
Merali, N. (2008). Theoretical frameworks for studying female marriage migrants. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 32(3), 281–289.
Merali, N. (2009). Experiences of South Asian brides entering Canada after recent changes to family sponsorship policies. Violence Against Women, 15(3), 321–339.
Nakamatsu, T. (2005). Complex power and diverse responses: Transnational marriage migration and women’s agency. In L. Parker (Ed.), The agency of women in Asia (pp. 158–181). Singapore: Marshall Cavesish International.
Narayan, U. (1995). “Male-order” brides: Immigrant women, domestic violence and immigration law. Hypatia, 10(1), 104–119.
Nobles, M. (2000). Shades of citizenship: Race and the census in modern politics. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Nobles, M. (2002). Racial categorization and censuses. In D. I. Kertzer & D. Arel (Eds.), Census and identity: The politics of race, ethnicity, and language in national censuses (pp. 43–70). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
O’Neil, P. (2015). Phoney marriages threaten immigration system, report warns. Vancouver Sun. http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Federal+report+warns+marriages+convenience+threat+immigration+system/10953202/story.html. Accessed 22 Feb 2012.
Onishi, N. (2007). Korean men use brokers to find wives in Vietnam. The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/22/world/asia/22brides.html. Accessed 22 Feb 2012.
Palriwala, R., & Uberoi, P. (2005). Marriage and migration in Asia: Gender issues. Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 12(5), v–xxix.
Palriwala, R., & Uberoi, P. (Eds.). (2008). Marriage, migration and gender. Los Angeles: Sage.
Park, C. B., & Cho, N. H. (1995). Consequences of son preference in a low-fertility society: Imbalance of the sex ratio at birth in Korea. Population and Development Review, 21(1), 59–84.
Parrenas, R. S. (2003). The care crisis in the Philippines: Children and transnational families in the new global economy. In B. Ehrenreich & A. R. Hochschild (Eds.), Global woman: Nannies, maids, and sex workers in the new economy (pp. 34–54). New York: Metropolitain Books.
Parrenas, R. S., Thai, H. C., & Silvey, R. (2016). Guest editors’ introduction intimate industries: Restructuring (Im)Material labor in Asia. Positions, 24(1), 1–15.
Piper, N. (1999). Labor migration, trafficking and international marriage: Female cross-border movements into Japan. Asian Journal of Women’s Studies, 5(2), 69–82.
Piper, N. (2003). Bridging gender, migration and governance: Theoretical possibilities in the Asian context. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 12(1–2), 21–48.
Piper, N., & Lee, S. (2016). Marriage migration, migrant precarity, and social reproduction in Asia: An overview. Critical Asian Studies, 48(4), 473–493.
Piper, N., & Roces, M. (2003). Introduction: Marriage and migration in an age of globalization. In N. Piper & M. Roces (Eds.), Wife or worker? Asian women and migration (pp. 1–21). Lanham: Rowman & Littleman.
Portes, A., Guarnizo, L. E., & Landolt, P. (1999). The Study of transnationalism: Pitfall and promise of an emergent research field. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 22(2), 217–237.
Rallu, J.-L., Piché, V., & Simon, P. (2006). Demography and ethnicity: An ambiguous relationship. In G. Casseli, J. Vallin, G. Wunsch, & D. Courgeau (Eds.), Demography: Analysis and synthesis (Vol. III, pp. 531–549). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Riley, N. (2004). China’s population: New trends and challenges. Population Bulletin, 59(2), 1–36.
Robinson, K. (2007). Marriage migration, gender transformations, and family values in the ‘global ecumene’. Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, 14(4), 483–497.
Schans, D. (2011). ‘Every successful African has a Japanese wife: Motivations for international marriage among Sub-Saharan African immigrants in Japan. International Union for the Scientific Study of Population Conference on Marriage migration in a global world. South Korea, Oct. 20–22, 2011.
Schiller, N. G. (1999). Citizens in transnational nation-states. The Asian experience. In K. Olds, P. Dicken, P. F. Kelly, L. Kong, & H. W. C. Yeung (Eds.), Globalisation and the Asia-Pacific: Contested territories (pp. 193–209). London: Routledge.
Scholte, J. A. (1997). Global capitalism and the State. International Affairs, 73(3), 427–452.
Schuerkens, U. (2005). Transnational migrations and social transformations: A theoretical perspective. Current Sociology, 53(4), 535–553.
Skeldon, R. (2000). Trends in international migration in the Asian and Pacific region. International Social Science Journal, 52(165), 369–382.
Tang, W. H. A., Bélanger, D., & Wang, H. Z. (2011). Politics of negotiation between Vietnamese wives and Taiwanese husbands. In T. W. Ngo & H. Z. Wang (Eds.), Politics of difference in Taiwan (pp. 134–150). London: Routledge.
Thai, H. C. (2005). Clashing dreams in the Vietnamese diaspora: Highly educated overseas brides and low-wage U.S. husbands. In N. Constable (Ed.), Cross-border marriages: Gender and mobility in transnational Asia (pp. 145–165). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Thobani, S. (1999). Sponsoring immigrant women’s inequalities. Canadian Woman Studies, 19(3), 11–16.
Thobani, S. (2000a). Closing ranks: Racism and sexism in Canada’s immigration policy. Race & Class, 42(1), 35–55.
Thobani, S. (2000b). Nationalizing Canadians: Bordering immigrant women in the late twentieth century. Canadian Journal of Women and Law, 12(2), 279–312.
Tolentino, R. B. (1996). Bodies, letters, catalogs: Filipinas in transnational space. Social Text 48, 14(3), 49–76.
Toyota, M. (2008). Editorial introduction: International marriage, rights, and the state in East and Southeast Asia. Citizenship Studies, 12(1), 1–7.
Toyota, M., & Thang, L.L. (2011). Reverse marriage migration: Japanese brides in Southeast Asia. International Union for the Scientific Study of Population Conference on Marriage migration in a global world. South Korea, Oct. 20–22, 2011.
Tsai, Y.-H., & Hsiao, M. H. (2006). The non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for foreign workers and foreign spouses in Taiwan: A portrayal. Asia Pacific Forum (Taipei), 32(1), 31.
Vukov, T. (2003). Imagining communities through immigration policies: Governmental regulation, media spectacles and the affective politics of national borders. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 6(3), 335–353.
Walton-Roberts, M. (2004a). Rescaling citizenship: Gendering Canadian immigration policy. Political Geography, 23(3), 265–281.
Walton-Roberts, M. (2004b). Transnational migration theory in population geography: Gendered practices in networks linking Canada and India. Population, Space and Place, 10(5), 361–373.
Wang, H. Z. (2007). Hidden spaces of resistance of the subordinated: Case studies from Vietnamese female migrant partners in Taiwan. International Migration Review, 41(3), 706–727.
Wang, H. Z., & Bélanger, D. (2008). Taiwanizing female immigrant spouses and materializing differential citizenship. Citizenship Studies, 12(1), 91–106.
Wang, H. Z., & Chang, S. M. (2002). The commodification of international marriages: Cross-border marriage business in Taiwan and Viet Nam. International Migration, 40(6), 93–114.
Yeoh, B. S., & Ramdas, K. (2014). Gender, migration, mobility and transnationalism. Gender, Place & Culture, 21(10), 1197–1213.
Yeoh, B. S., Chee, H. L., & Vu, T. K. D. (2014). Global householding and the negotiation of intimate labour in commercially-matched international marriages between Vietnamese women and Singaporean men. Geoforum, 51, 284–293.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer Science+Business Media B.V., part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bélanger, D., Flynn, A. (2018). Gender and Migration: Evidence from Transnational Marriage Migration. In: Riley, N., Brunson, J. (eds) International Handbook on Gender and Demographic Processes. International Handbooks of Population, vol 8. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1290-1_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1290-1_13
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-024-1288-8
Online ISBN: 978-94-024-1290-1
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)