Norms of Integration and Strategies of
Escape: Daily Life of Female Migrant Spouses in Taiwan
Table of Contents
2.1 What a Should a
Taiwanese Daughter-in-law Be ?
2.2 Same Appearance,
Different Meanings
2.3 Where the
Powerful Cannot See
4.1 Manipulating
“Intimate Relations”
4.2 Paradoxical Role
of “Mother”
4.3 The Last Resort
– Returning to Vietnam
4.4 Escaping Outward
and Inward
4.5 Escaping into
Vietnamese Community
4.5.2 Classmates
in the “Counseling Course for Foreign Brides”
The number of female migrant spouses from Southeast Asia and China to Taiwan has increased significantly during the past decade. Table 1 shows that about one out of ten newlywed couples in Taiwan are transnational, excluding those involving “Chinese brides”[1] who are not officially considered as foreigners. If they were counted, the proportion could be as high as one fifth.[2]
The fast increase of female marriage migrants is not a natural process. Commercial agencies mediating between brides and grooms play an important role. Taking Vietnam as an example, Taiwanese men pay around US$8000 to join a one-week matchmaking tour organized by an agency. During this trip in Vietnam, they will meet as many girls as they want, choose one, and hold the wedding ceremony. All legal process will be done later by the agency. About two months later, the “Vietnamese bride” can move to Taiwan. These marriages are described by Taiwanese researchers as “commodified transnational marriages” (Hsia, 2000; Wang and Chang, 2003).
The phenomenon of “foreign brides” has attracted much attention and is becoming a hot topic in the media. They are often represented as vain girls getting married for money, not for love, thus their marriages are deemed to fail. On the other side, some kindhearted people not agreeing with the defamation try to prove that there are “good foreign brides” and the couples are actually satisfied with their marriages. Both of the opinions turn the social issue into a personal one and fail to see the structural forces that impel the phenomenon.
Some people have a more structural point of view and consider “foreign brides” as double victims of Patriarchy and Capitalism together. In a Chinese patriarchy society, a married woman should play the role of daughter-in-law, i.e. to serve the husband’s family. It is undoubtedly oppressive. Since more and more Taiwanese women refuse to play this role, Taiwanese men use their economic power to marry girls from poorer countries. Those who hold this viewpoint infer that these migrant spouses are doubly squeezed because they are third-world-country women as well as daughters-in-law in an alien society.
However, all these viewpoints emphasize the “unusual” part of the commodification of marriage without examining its actual influences on micro-power relations. In this paper, therefore, we put stress on how the commodification element of marriages affects the social relations inside family after these “foreign brides” move to Taiwan. Two aspects of interaction will be discussed here: how the husbands’ families ask female migrant spouses to be integrated into Taiwanese society, and how these women use various strategies to escape social controls. Through intensive fieldwork, we find out that although female migrant spouses are placed in a relatively weak social position partly because of the commodification element, it can in turn reshape the relations inside family, which helps them to develop strategies of escaping social controls.
To limit the variables
to the minimum, our research studies female migrant spouses from one single
country----Vietnam, for “Vietnamese brides” constitute the biggest proportion
of all “foreign brides” (see Table 2[3]).
The data for our study came from three sources: First, one of the authors
joined a matchmaking tour organized by a mediating agency to Ho Chi Minh City,
Vietnam. Second, the same author participated in a “Counseling Course for
Foreign Brides”[4] in order to
observe the interactions between the “Vietnamese brides”.. After the end of the
term, the author remained in contact with 7 of them. This allows us to observe
their behavior outside of their families and to understand their “hidden
transcript”. Third, a survey using in-depth interviews was undertaken in July
1999 to learn about the daily life of 55 female Vietnamese migrant spouses.
Table 1. Statistics of foreign
spouses
|
Year |
According to household
registrations |
Percentage of Taiwanese
married to foreign nationals |
|||
|
Marriage registrations (couple) |
Foreign spouses (person) |
Male foreign spouses (person) |
Female foreign spouses (person) |
||
|
1998 |
145,976 |
10,413 |
1,788 |
8,625 |
7.13 |
|
1999 |
173,209 |
14,670 |
1,953 |
12,717 |
8.47 |
|
2000 |
181,642 |
21,339 |
2,277 |
19,062 |
11.75 |
|
2001 |
170,515 |
19,405 |
2,417 |
16,988 |
11.38 |
|
Jan-Jun 2002 |
88,331 |
9,605 |
1,202 |
8,403 |
10.87 |
Source: Dept. of Population Affairs Administration, Minister of Interior
Table
2. Number of visas issued for
spouses from Southeast Asia countries
|
Country |
1994 |
1995 |
1996 |
1997 |
1998 |
1999 |
2000 |
2001 |
|
Vietnam |
530 |
1969 |
4113 |
9060 |
4644 |
6790 |
12327 |
12340 |
|
Indonesia |
2247 |
2409 |
2950 |
2464 |
2331 |
3643 |
4381 |
3230 |
|
Malaysia |
55 |
86 |
73 |
96 |
102 |
106 |
65 |
-- |
|
Philippines |
1183 |
1757 |
2085 |
2128 |
544 |
603 |
487 |
377 |
|
Thailand and Burma |
870 |
1301 |
1973 |
2211 |
1173 |
1230 |
1259 |
1389 |
|
Cambodia |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
656 |
875 |
567 |
|
Total |
4899 |
7574 |
11212 |
16009 |
8879 |
13040 |
19397 |
17903 |
Source: Wang and Chang, 2003
In the traditional Taiwanese society, a married woman should play the role of daughter-in-law. It is enforced by very tight social and ideological controls that women can hardly escape. Undoubtedly, “Foreign brides” are expected by their husbands’ families to be good daughters-in-law as well. Moreover, the commodification of marriage would reinforce the oppression upon them. However, when we turn our eyes to the hidden transcript of these migrant spouses, we can see their constant struggle. Commodification of marriage turns the deep and dense social relationship into a shallow and loose one, yet it helps “foreign brides” to find chinks to escape controls.
In the traditional Taiwanese society, marriage is supposed to bind two families together, not the groom and the bride. Its main purpose is to “receive” a daughter-in-law for the husband’s family, which is regarded more important than to have a “wife” for the groom. Family is organized with the patriarchy lineage principle, and all relations are not as important as the paramount “parents-children” one. To have a male descendant is the responsibility of a married couple, to keep this lineage going on forever. Not having any male descendant is violation of filial piety, which is considered as most important virtue. Therefore, the role of “daughter-in-law” is to serve her parents-in-law and to have a male child.
Ancestor worship rites further enhance this social organization. A female is not worshipped in the natal family and must be listed on her husband’s family lineage to be worshipped when she dies. If she dies before she “marries out”, the natal family cannot put her name in the lineage. Her enshrined tablet must be put in the “Virgin Temple”, or the natal family has to find a man to marry her ritually so that the female’s soul can find a place to rest.
This family system with ideological control
blocks any possible exit for females. On the ritual level, a female not married
or “kicked out by her husband” will become a wandering soul after death. On the
social level, no matter how she is treated, she must be obedient to her
parents-in-law. The natal family should not interfere in the affairs between
“married out” daughter and her new family. Moreover, if the female does not
conform to the husband’s family, the natal family will be considered as bad
educator; so even the daughter come back to natal family to ask for help, they
are often told to stand the situation. Moreover, divorced
women are stigmatized and have difficulties in living in the society.
Getting married with a stranger through commercial agencies may sound odd for those who believe that marriage should build on love and mutual understanding. But in our fieldwork, men who marry “Vietnamese brides” always justify it by comparing their own marriages to arranged marriages. In the traditional Taiwanese society, parents decide marriage with the help of a matchmaker.. Young people have no say in their own marriage and often meet their husband or wife for the first time on the wedding day. Money and gifts are exchanged between the two families during the process and the matchmaker can also get HongBao, red envelops with money inside, from the groom’s side. For most of the men who marry “foreign brides”, the money paid and the strangeness with their wives are just like in arranged marriages.
But are they really the same thing? In her research about women and family in rural Taiwan, Margery Wolf said,
“Traditional Taiwanese engagement and wedding ritual is so richly colorful that the foreign observer is often tempted to dwell on the ceremonies to the detriment of the topics that more closely concern the Taiwanese. The “social research” and negotiation that precede a conventional engagement are of much more interest to the Taiwanese observer. The ceremony simply signifies their successful completion. In Taiwanese terms a wedding ceremony is not an act by which two people are united as a married couple, but an announcement to the ancestors and to the numerous friends and relatives invited to feast that the family has taken a daughter-in-law, the first step to extending itself yet another generation.” (1972: 105-106)
Traditionally, marriage is so important
that both sides have to know the social background of the other family in
detail, therefore there is a lot of “social research” to inquire about each
other. Compared to this, the commodified marriage is arranged by
profit-oriented agencies, and the groom chooses a female to marry by appearance.
Also, the money paid to the mediating agency is often compared with traditional betrothal money, and is regarded as the same. However, the social logic behind these two money flows is totally different. Traditional marriage in Taiwan demands the groom to give a lump sum of money, which is not unilaterally decided by the groom family, but negotiated between the two sides, with the help of a “go-between” matchmaker who connects the two families. The bride family also has the obligation to give dowry when the daughter marries. It is a take-and-give exchange system. In other words, it is a credit-debit relation, and the receipt of a gift is a liability for the taker, who must pay the gift giver back.. Through these back-and-forth gifts exchanges, the social relations are maintained (Wang and Chang, 2003; Mauss, 1990).
In a commodified transnational marriage, however, the money spent by the groom is not for gift- exchanging purpose. Money is given to a mediating agency, and the bride family that just takes what the agency gives has no say in this process. Normally the Vietnamese family gets only US$1,000, while the groom pays at least US$7,000 (Wang, 2002 #88: 106). In addition, we do not see any dowry to “pay back”, which obviously shows that this marriage is not a credit-debit exchange system.
Therefore, though having a similar appearance, the depth of social relationship in the traditional marriage and the commodified transnational marriage are very different. To implement the former deepens social relationship, while in the latter the two parties remain strange to each other. Paradoxically, just because the relationship between “foreign brides” and their husbands’ families is so shallow, they can develop strategies to escape social controls that encircle all Taiwanese daughters-in-law more easily.
People who concern about the lives of “foreign brides” in Taiwan often construct them as victims of commodification and traditional customs oppression. This “victim image” is based on two assumptions: First, “foreign brides” are here to be Taiwanese daughters-in-law; it inevitably evokes the pity image of traditional daughter-in-law. Second, since they are “bought” by the Taiwanese groom to serve the family, they will be considered as “goods” and treated without respect.
However, would “foreign brides” passively accept their position? Scott (1990) has pointed out that we have to observe the “infrapolitics” of the subordinated so that we can understand their hidden transcript, which together with the public transcript makes the full picture of power relations. Following this, female migrant spouses” open interactions with their families may not be the whole story. Only by knowing their hidden transcript, i.e. what they bear in mind, what they share with other “foreign brides” …etc. can we understand the real power relations. In our fieldwork, we found out that instead of unconditionally accepting the role of being good daughter-in-law, “Vietnamese brides” develop their strategies of escaping social controls in where the powerful cannot see. They have more space for hidden transcript than Taiwanese women because the commodified starting point of their marriage has loosened social relationship.
Women in Taiwan are not easy to exit their oppressive position because they are snared in very tight social and ideological controls. But these controls are not fully applicable on female migrant spouses, because the brides” families are far away in Vietnam, and do not put any pressure on them to stand unbearable conditions. Nor do they have an extensive social network in Taiwan to push them to conform to the social norms. The commodified marriage entails a new kind of relationship between a female migrant partner and her family in Taiwan. Under these different circumstances, female migrant spouses are “de-embedded” from the Taiwanese society, which gives them more chances to develop strategies of escape.
Following we will demonstrate, through
fieldwork data, how Taiwanese families try to put “foreign brides” under
control (norms of integration), and how these migrants develop different
strategies, in where the powerful cannot see, to escape these social norms.
Life in Taiwan is not like what these “Vietnamese brides” imagined before they got married. There are many Taiwanese investors and managers working in Vietnam (Wang, 2002 #7), and their living standard, there, is much higher than Vietnamese people. Many Vietnamese girls who are married to Taiwanese men expected to have a better level of life and to send money back to their parents. However, they often find out, as soon as they arrive in Taiwan, that their husbands’ life is not like what they imagined. Most of the men who marry “Vietnamese brides” belong to lower to middle strata in the Taiwanese society (Wang, 2002 #88: 101). A lot of conflicts are caused by financial problems. Many families complain that “Vietnamese brides” always ask for money for their own use or to remit to Vietnam. Many “Vietnamese brides”, who cannot stand that everything they do should be scrutinized by the family, will finally propose to go to work, in order to gain more freedom and financial power, but this is often followed by quarrels.
A reason why these female migrant spouses are not allowed to go to work is the need of a full-time housewife, i.e. a daughter-in-law who takes care of all the domestic works, including childcare and eldercare. Our survey shows that, not counting children, the family of these female migrants average 3.7 persons, which is about one person more than the common Taiwanese family. It means that most female migrants live with their husbands and their husbands’ parents. Eldercare is an important task for these women. For example, A-Cao was a hairdresser in Vietnam, but could not find a job there. She had dreamed to work in Taiwan after getting married, but she learned that her obligation is to take care of her aged mother-in-law. It is impossible for her to work.
Also, going to work would “expose” these “Vietnamese brides” to the Taiwanese society, which would make them more difficult to control. As Mr. Zhou told us:
“ My wife often complains the family life is boring, and would like to find a job. In my opinion, she cannot get a good job; the pay must be very low since she is Vietnamese, especially in this period of economic recession. If so, why should she bother to get a job? Also, she might be cheated, you know, Vietnamese people are very pure, the Taiwanese society is too complicated for them.”
Ling
also reported that:
“Once I found a waitress job in a restaurant. My husband took me to work
on the first day, but then he saw many boys working there, he said “Quit it!
Let’s go home!” Then he took me home.”
The
relationship described by Mr. Zhou is like a paternal relationship, which the
husband is like a father to protect his “daughter”.. Because the Vietnamese
migrant partner is new to the society, the husband’s family can confine her in
the name of “protection”, while the actual reason is the “adultery-phobia”[5],
as Ling demonstrated us. In order to have more control over their wives, many
husbands tend to isolate them from contacts with other people and make them
lose survival skills in the alien society. Since these female migrants are
forbidden to work, and their housework has no financial reward, they have to
depend on their husbands’ support, which brings a vicious circle forcing them
to conform to their husbands’ wishes for financial purpose.
On the other side, Vietnamese migrant
spouses do not just accept these constraints without sensing their positions.
Instead, they are very clear about their required role of being a
daughter-in-law, which is often heard in their conversations. A-Cao
reported that her Mother-in-law always calls her Sinpu (“daughter-in-law”
in HoLo[6]) instead of
her name. This constantly reminds her that she is here because her husband’s
family needs a daughter-in-law.
Once, during a Mandarin lesson in the
“Counseling Course for Foreign Brides”, the teacher asked these female migrant
spouses “What do you do after
dinner?” the replies were “Watch TV” or “Go to bed”. The
teacher was surprised and said: “Don’t you have housework to do? You are so
lucky. I have to do a lot of housework after dinner.” One informant, A-Hui,
replied without hesitation “we are here to be daughters-in-law, how could it
be possible we don’t need to do housework?”
This consciousness means that the migrant
spouses know what they are required to be without sharing the ideology.
Strategies of escape emerge in where chinks of ideological controls can be
found.
In Taiwan, women are often taught that in marriage “what cannot be cured must be endured”. However, “Vietnamese brides”, de-embedded from the Taiwanese society, are not so submissive. Knowing their importance to the family, they always try to utilize their resources to find a way out of social controls imposed upon them.
Family is often considered as a coherent unit while being analyzed. But in fact, it is constituted of various relations, e.g., husband-wife, parents-children, mother-daughter-in-law. Therefore, we should not oppose the “foreign brides” to their families, assuming that the family as a whole is an oppressive place for them. Actually, the relationship with the husband can be very different from that with other family members. The “Vietnamese brides” realize that the relationship with the husband could be life-long, while that with the mother-in-law is only temporary. Under this condition, there is room to manipulate these different relations.
A: What do you do when your husband goes
to work at day?
Ling: I stay in the room, studying
Mandarin or just watching TV. But my mother-in-law always comes to bother me,
checks what I am doing, and finds me things to do: clean the floor on my knees, or do laundry. She says that it
is because she is neat. That’s bullshit! When I just came to Taiwan, the house
was dirty everywhere. It’s me who cleaned it up!
A: What do you do when your husband
comes back from work?
Ling: Sometimes we watch TV in our room,
or sometimes we go out for a walk and do shopping. But most of the time we buy
nothing. When we return home, my mother-in-law always checks what we bring back
and inquires, “What did you buy again? How much money did you spend?” She just
wants to know how much money my husband spends on me.
A: So when your husband is home, your
mother-in-law also inquires everything about what you are doing?
Ling: No, she doesn’t dare. My husband
would tell her to leave us alone.
The private life of Ling is often interfered by her mother-in-law, but she is able to keep her privacy to a certain extent, through manipulation of the relationship with her husband. She told us that she doesn’t love her husband, but she does wait for him to come back from work everyday. Because only her husband can take her out of the house or keep the mother-in-law away from their room. That’s how she can get some temporary privacy. Therefore, doing shopping becomes an important activity for the female migrants. A-Cao said that her husband likes to go to the night market, and they always take the excuse of shopping daily necessities to escape the family. Whenever they return, her mother-in-law always complains, “you go out for such a long time. You must have been away for fun, not for shopping.”
Interestingly, since this kind of marriage
is bridged through a commodification process, which is different from a
traditional matched-social-status marriage, the husband’s own preference for a
likable wife is more important than the whole family’s interest to for a
matched-status wife. In this situation, though the mother-in-law often wants to
control the daughter-in-law, she also has to consider her
son’s feelings. For these female migrants, no matter they like their
husbands or not, at least they can escape into a more private social space when
they are alone with their husbands, to escape from the role of daughter-in-law
and enter that of wife and lover.
Traditionally a daughter-in-law can raise her status in the husband’s family through giving birth to a boy. However, for the “Vietnamese brides”, to have a baby will offer the husbands’ families another way to control their movements. Once they have a baby, they will not have any chance to go outside anymore. The whole family has a legitimate reason to ask the “mother” to stay at home and take care of the baby. In addition, the husband’s families have the commodification marriage in mind, and to reduce the chance of their “running-away”, they often ask the “Vietnamese bride” to have a baby as soon as she arrives in Taiwan.
But female migrants can still use different
strategies to control their own bodies. A-Fang, who expected to have a better
life in Taiwan, found out that her husband does not have a good income. After a long period of quarreling, her husband’s family
finally agreed to let her go to work. Her husband was 20 years older than her
and wanted a baby very much. But she
really didn’t want and always said to other “Vietnamese brides”: “ He wants
a baby so how does he plan to raise a baby without money?” Finally,
A-Fang got pregnant, but she went back to Vietnam to have a medical abortion
without letting her husband know. Her husband still believes that she lost the
baby by accident. Another girl, A-Hui, played dumb and told her husband: “I
just came to Taiwan and I know nothing. I can hardly take care of myself; how
can I take care of a new baby?”
After exhausting all means to avoid getting pregnant, the Vietnamese migrant spouses eventually have to give birth to a baby. The husbands’ families may want to use this to control them, but they can in turn threaten to breakup and take the baby back to Vietnam when they bargain. This threat works very well because losing a male descendent is unbearable for a Taiwanese family.
In summary, unlike Taiwanese women who need to consolidate their status in their husbands’ families through having a baby, the Vietnamese migrant spouses do not want to have children as shortly as their husbands expect. Even after having a baby, a female migrant spouse can have more say in her husband’s family, not because she brings a boy, but because she can use the child as a threat to escape from Taiwan and take the baby away.
We often heard the threat of “return to
Vietnam” in our fieldwork. One day, A-Quan did not appear in the class. A-Fang
said that A-Quan had a quarrel with her husband, and she is returning to
Vietnam. “Then how about her children” the
author asked seriously. After a few days, A-Quan showed up in the class again.
She said she had a quarrel with her husband, but about the threat to return to
Vietnam, she did not say anything.
To say “I’ll return to Vietnam and never be back again” is effective in doing a gesture of threat. Taiwanese men are anxious about their Vietnamese wives going back to Vietnam without coming back. The female migrant spouses know very well that it will cost the husband’s family a lot if they really escape from Taiwan and return to Vietnam. The cost includes the money the husband has paid to the agency, the face lost in the neighborhood and the loss of a good domestic helper. Since the husband’s family relies very much on the female migrant partner, it becomes a weakness that she can manipulate.
In Taiwan, many people do not divorce even
when they have very unhappy marriages because it means to break all the social
relations between two families. But since the social relationship built by
commodification marriage is shallower, to break it is a less difficult choice.
A-Miao told us: “I move so far because of my husband, of course he should
treat me well. If he dares to beat me, I told him, I will return to Vietnam”.
Another day, A-Quan had a comment on the relationship: “we come such a long
way to marry Taiwanese, and if the husbands are bad, why not return home?”
We often condemn “commodification” considering it as a kind of evil that distorts the “normal” social relations. However, from the experience of these Vietnamese migrant spouses, the commodified marriage offers a rule that is different from the traditional one. Traditional Taiwanese daughters-in-law have to follow norms decided by the society even when their marriages are not successful; there is no exit to get out of the situation. But it is not the same for these migrant spouses. Because the commodification element loosens social relationship, it is easier for them to escape from unhappy marriages without bothering to consider the social norms in Taiwan.
The “Vietnamese brides” do not feel easy in the family and neighborhood where they are always supervised or gossiped. Only by escaping from these two circles can they feel free. A-Ling lives in Wanhua, very close to Ximending, a busy Taipei district for young people, and she always tries all her efforts to slip into this place. Once, one of the authors met her there, and was surprised by her familiarity with this area. When asked “where is it more comfortable for you”, A-Ling replied without hesitation “Outside of the family.” Therefore, going shopping, attending Mandarin lessons, or even secretly slipping out all helps the female migrants to temporally escape from the family.
If they are not able to get out of the family, they usually stay home and watch TV. Some are luckier; they can have a TV set in the room. During our research, whenever we asked: “what did you do today?” the replies were generally “Nothing, just watched TV.” Though the TV set is located in the family, watching TV still rescue them from annoyance of the family. It can be seen as a way to escape inward. For a while, our informants even kept on copying an ad script made for Hong Kong Tourism shown on TV “Buy and eat, buy and eat.” This is a way to escape from the uncomfortable family life, to learn more about Taiwan society, and to learn more about consumption.
Even though there are more than 50,000 female Vietnamese spouses in Taiwan, they do not yet have strong social networks. This is partly due to the strict limitations set by the husbands’ families. Taiwanese are anxious about all kinds of social networking organized by these migrant spouses, and they often stigmatize the gathering as “learning something bad from each other”. Mr. Liu said to us:
“ I got the feeling that they always
like to compare with each others. For example, they will compare how much money
they get when they got married. Or how much money they send to Vietnam. Then when she comes home she complains
that others got more. But how does she know if it’s true? Maybe they just boast
to show off.”
Upon this excuse, most Taiwanese husbands do not like their wives to join a Vietnamese social network. However, these women also develop some strategies to connect with each other.
Nearly all our informants have their own mobile phones, and they store all the phone numbers of their close friends. This is a conversation between A-Ling and the interviewer:
Ling: Whenever my friends called me, she
(mother-in-law) always asked them “who are you” “what do you want”, and
sometimes lied that I was not home, even I was next to her.
A: Why not have an extension line in
your room?
Ling: It’s not necessary. My husband
bought me a mobile, now my friends just call my mobile.
Quite often the mobile rang when the class
was in progress. The mobile owner would tell other people in class who was on
the phone, and then the whole situation became a mess, for everyone began to
guess what happened. Through this modern tech, they can know the situation of
each others, when do they leave for Vietnam, or when will they return to
Taipei. Even they do not meet often, they can have news from others through the
mobile connections.
Local governments in Taiwan now provide free courses for newly arrived female migrant spouses to help them to “assimilate” into the Taiwanese society. However, the curriculum designed is to discipline these migrants as a good daughter-in-law. For example, the teachers ask these migrant spouses to stand up and salute at the beginning of a lesson. Every student has a “home correspondence” notebook; the migrant spouses should let their husbands sign when they return home and get a stamp on it when they come to the lesson, so that the husbands can make sure they come to the lesson. There are also Holo lessons, but the text is not practical conversation, but the very complex naming of Taiwanese family system. In other words, this counseling course is not to empower “foreign brides”, but to train them to be good daughters-in-law, to cook good Taiwanese dishes, to worship the ancestors, to feed the baby and to learn CPR first aid.
Soon we found that they developed their own strategies to deal with this boring curriculum. When it was practical Mandarin language teaching, they studied hard. However, about the discipline of stand-up and salute, they just went through the motions. When practicing CPR training, only the one assigned to practice went out to do it, while others began to chat. When learning Holo, they just murmured with unclear pronunciation, at the same time passing notes to each other. The class became a bazaar to exchange Vietnamese VCD and cuisines.
This class becomes an important social
space for the migrant spouses. The husbands generally do not forbid their wives
to go to class, which is legitimate for any wife to go. Just like A-Cao told
her husband “do you want me to be a dummy?” When female migrants propose
to go to class, the family normally agrees. Since the husbands pick them up
immediately when the class is over, or they have to rush home to cook, it is
almost impossible to have a after-class gathering. The time in the class is the
only opportunity to make friends, so they all like to come to the class and to
exchange information with others.
This paper places the “commodified transnational marriage”, which is a globalization phenomenon, in a local context in order to explore how the commodification of marriage reshapes the social relations inside family, how these female migrant spouses position themselves and what strategies of escape they develop.
We first differentiate the “commodified marriage” from the traditional Taiwanese marriage. Then we expose the norms for female migrant spouses established by the Taiwanese family structure. Female migrant spouses are mainly, if not only, expected to become good daughter-in-laws. No matter what beautiful future they have dreamed of in Vietnam, to assimilate into the Taiwanese society now only means to play well the role of a good daughter-in-law, a good wife and a good mother.
Though disadvantaged, migrant spouses are still able to develop strategies to escape these norms of integration. From our point of view, although they have less support from social network, this “de-embedded” social condition in a way helps them to suffer less from social constraints and moral censure. Furthermore, since the relations between these Vietnamese spouses and their husbands’ families started with commodification, the Vietnamese spouses can in turn use the same logics of “exchange” and threaten to return to Vietnam when they are fighting against the unreasonable requirements from the husbands’ families.
Of course, when dealing with different requirements, they apply different strategies. For example, manipulating “intimate relations” to temporarily escape the role of daughter-in-law, delaying the time of getting pregnant so that they can terminate the marriage if it turns out to be too terrible, watching TV, going shopping and joining the Vietnamese community. All these strategies are employed to escape from the norms of integration established by the Taiwanese society.
The development of strategies illuminates one thing: migrant foreign spouses should not be merely constructed as passive victims, instead they should be understood as action subjects that are constantly fighting against the social conditions that are unfavorable to them. Otherwise we are just constructing another “others”.
Mandarin Literature
Wang, Hong-zen
2001
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[1] These female migrant spouses are called “foreign brides”, or by where they came from called “Vietnamese brides”, “Chinese brides”…etc. These terms have disdainful meanings, however, they are commonly accepted in Taiwan. In this paper, we add quotation marks when we have to use these terms.
[2] Because of the political situation between Taiwan and China, citizens of the People”s Republic of China are officially, though not actually, considered as people of Taiwan, R.O.C. Immigration affairs relating to them are therefore processed by the Mainland Affairs Council. The one-fifth ratio is derived from using the marriages registered by MAC, i.e., 145,900 at the end of October 2003.
[3] Though these statistics do not differentiate male and female spouses, these numbers can reflect the number of female migrant spouses because the overwhelming majority of Southeast Asian nationals married to Taiwanese are female.
[4] Most “foreign brides” don’t speak Mandarin when they arrive in Taiwan. They have difficulties communicating with their families and lack of living skills in the host society. Now local governments provide free “Counseling Courses for Foreign Brides”. The course is mainly Mandarin lessons and some knowledge that (the government thinks) a daughter-in-law should learn.
[5] Many husbands know very clear that their wives do not love them. 請加入年齡差距的調查。
[6] 75% of Taiwanese people belong to the Holo ethnic group. For historical reasons, Mandarin is the official language while most people”s mother tongue is Holo.