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- Convenor:
-
Masako Kudo
(Kyoto Women's University)
- Chair:
-
Glenda Roberts
(Waseda University)
- Discussant:
-
Eleonore Kofman
(Middlesex University)
- Location:
- 301 B
- Start time:
- 16 May, 2014 at
Time zone: Asia/Tokyo
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
This panel will address the diversity of cross-border marriages in Asia and how the lives of the women in such marriages have been transformed in terms of their family relationships and work, as well as their positions within their immediate localities, the state and in transnational space.
Long Abstract:
Two decades have passed since the increase in the number of cross-border marriages in Asia; the lives of the women in such marriages have been transformed in terms of their family relationships and work, as well as their positions within their immediate localities, the state and in transnational space. The panel aims to examine the complex ways in which the intimacies formed through global encounters may intersect with the dynamics of social ties developed outside domestic spheres. These women's experiences are likely both to differ between individuals and to shift over time, depending upon numerous factors including citizenship and socio-economic circumstances. The panel will explore how intimacies and power relationships at the micro level may intertwine with various elements of wider society, including immigration laws, and the formal and informal support networks available to women facing the contradictions and predicaments that unfold as their life cycle progresses. The panel will also discuss the ways in which existing gender and family norms embedded in the law and various social provisions shape the positions and experiences of women in cross-border marriages, and how the women themselves respond to their given circumstances and negotiate their positions within family and society.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Daniel Nehring (Pusan National University) Xiying Wang (Beijing Normal University)
Paper short abstract:
We explore Chinese middle-class women's experiences of transnational intimate relationships. Our participants experienced companionate relationship grounded in love, personal affinity, and mutual support. However, they encountered a number of problems particular to transnational couples.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores young Chinese middle-class women's experiences of transnational intimate relationships with Western men. Intimate encounters between young, highly educated, highly mobile professionals of different national and cultural backgrounds have received comparatively little attention in recent research. In particular, among this social group, there is little research on the ways in which intimate encounters are bound up with the socio-economic structures that encourage, facilitate or complicate transnational mobility. Our paper addresses these issues.
Our argument is based on 30 life story interviews conducted in Beijing in 2012. Most of the participants were Chinese-Western couples who, at the time of the interview, were engaged in a long-term dating or marital relationship.
We begin our argument by exploring the feelings and motivations that underpin participants' intimate lives. They experienced the relationship with their partners primarily as a companionate relationship grounded in love, personal affinity, and mutual support. However, in their everyday lives, they encountered issues particular to transnational couples. Living arrangements, relationships with parents-in-law, and childcare re-grounded our participants' intimate lives in the socio-cultural setting of Beijing and entailed difficult processes of transcultural adaptation and conflict. Building lasting relationships, they had to negotiate the constraints imposed on transnational couples by migration policies, labour markets, and social services, both in China and in their partners' countries of origin.
Sunhee Lee (Tohoku University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper considers the mobility of marriage migrant women who are married to Japanese men in northeastern Japan and how such mobility is perceived by the local communities. Through this discussion, the paper examines the emergence of a "transnational community" formed by marriage migrant women.
Paper long abstract:
This paper considers the high mobility of marriage migrant women observed in northeastern Japan. In rural areas of the Northeast, in order to solve the problems of shortages of brides and successors to households, international matchmaking marriage became common from the mid-1980s onward.
However, the divorce rate of international matchmaking marriages is high, as many women divorce their husbands and leave the region to escape their roles as "brides". In this context, the "runaway brides" discourse has emerged and become firmly established among the people of the regions in question. Marriage migrant women are seen by the locals as unable to get used to their husband and his family, and run away in many cases. This local perception has constrained marriage migrants' mobility to a considerable extent.
However, for marriage migrant women, mobility is inevitable. This is because they need to cross national boundaries in order to fulfill their familial roles both within their families in law and their own families. In some cases, mobility has also become a life strategy. Migrant women try to solve the problems with which they are confronted within the host society by taking advantage of the ability to move across national boundaries. This paper examines the mobility of married migrant women and how the receiving communities perceive such mobility through case studies in the rural areas of the Northeast of Japan. In doing so, the paper also sheds light on the emerging transnational communities formed by marriage migrant women within the region.
Sachi Takaya (University of Tokyo)
Paper short abstract:
This study qualitatively explores how Filipino women married to Japanese husbands living in Japan exert influence as mediators in transnational civil societies. Specifically, it examines the Okayama Kurashiki Pilipino Circle (OKPC), a group based in the country’s Okayama prefecture.
Paper long abstract:
Studies concerning international marriage in Asia have primarily investigated women's agency with regard to the workforce or the balance of power between wives and their husbands. Unlike those before it, this study qualitatively explores how Filipino women married to Japanese husbands living in Japan exert influence as mediators in transnational civil societies. Specifically, it examines the Okayama Kurashiki Pilipino Circle (OKPC), a group based in the country's Okayama prefecture.
The OKPC was established over a decade ago to provide these women with mutual support and to promote their children's awareness of both Filipino and Japanese heritage. Through their activities, the OKPC strives to overcome the stigmatization and discrimination imposed upon their children and themselves in Japanese society.
In the late-2000s, the OKPC expanded its focus and joined forces with a locally based international non-governmental organization (INGO) to provide emergency relief following a series of natural disasters in the Philippines. The women collaborated with families residing in the Philippines to assist and enrich the INGO's programs and activities.
This case demonstrates that through family networks, as well as with knowledge and experience in both cultures, Filipino women can underpin a transnational civil society and subsequently increase their status and their children's.
Hsiao-Chuan Hsia (Shih Hsin University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper argues that im/migrants also have prejudices against other ethnicities and nationalities. It is in the process of being transformed from an isolated “foreign bride” to an active “immigrant activist,” the marriage migrants’ sense of “self” broadens and develops multicultural subjectivity.
Paper long abstract:
A phenomenon of marriage migration in East Asia has generated concerns and discussion about "multiculturalism" in these host countries whose ideology of incorporation is based on blood. Much discussion has been focused on how these host societies deal with the influx of im/migrants with different cultural backgrounds. The underlying assumption behind this discussion is that only the citizens of the host countries have to learn to be multiculturalistic whereas the im/migrants automatically embrace multiculturalism.
Based on the author's long term praxis-oriented research on marriage migrants issues since 1995, this paper argues that im/migrants also have prejudices against other ethnicities and nationalities. It is in the process of being transformed from an isolated "foreign bride" to an active "immigrant activist," the marriage migrants' sense of "self" broadens as their views of their social world expands, from the nuclear family to the community of marriage migrants, to the global community of im/migrants and the general marginalized mass. This process of transformation from a "personal subject" to "communal subject " and then "historical subject" is also a process of the making of the marriage migrants' multicultural subjectivity.