Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.3 International and Domestic Research on Marriage Migration
2.3.3 Marriage Migration in Taiwan
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married men are self-determined movers and married women join with their husbands in making the decision to migrate.
• Both women and men with higher educational levels are self-determined movers while those with lower educational levels are directed to move by family members.
• Decision-makers of migration were affected by almost all capital (human, social, and financial) and demographic attributes, but especially social capital.
• social capital and human capital including gender and marital status are good predictors for the participation in decision making.
• Men move alone while women move with others.
• Men and single women move solitarily while married women move with others.
• Both men and women with social connections move alone.
• Men, regardless of type of relations at destination, move alone while women with kin relations move alone and those with non-kin relations move with others.
From the aforementioned description, making decision to migrate is interrelated with the marital status, gender, and kinship.
2.3.3 Marriage Migration in Taiwan
As Hsu (2009) noted that new immigrants after being settled in Taiwan often find themselves encounter difficulties and unfair treatments in terms of social welfare, culture adaptation, working environment, job hunting opportunities, and language barrier. Those make them less comparable and more disadvantage in host society. It implies that the status of marriage migrants contradicts to their originally embraced hope for better opportunity and potential improvement of economic plights of their
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Due to the recently growing international marriage migration in Taiwan, the trend has spurred extensive irregular migration, including human trafficking and smuggling. In the past several decades, Taiwan is gradually becoming a major point of attraction to the women involving with the international marriage migration.
With regards to the women-centered traits of marriage migrants in the globe, Taiwan is not an exception at all. According to the statistic data of MOI collected in 2009, it is obviously reflects this phenomenon (Table 2-6). From the data showed on that table, the numbers of yearly women marriage migrants maintain more that ten times of that of men migrants as foreign spouses in the past three years. It indicates that women constitute the dominant parts of foreign spouses and become the main source of marriage migrants in Taiwan.
The newly released statistics shows that the number of registered newlyweds of international marriage mounts to nearly 25,000 couples occupying about twenty percent (18.03%) of the total in the year of 2006; whereas, the number of brides from foreign countries, especially from Southeast Asia and Mainland China, are 22,000 which are more than 80 percent of the total foreign spouses in Taiwan in Taiwan..13
Table 2-6: Number of Foreign Spouses by Gender — Sep. 30, 2009
Unit: person gender 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 Sep.
2009
Note: The number of foreign spouses from Mainland China is not included in this table.
Source: National Immigration Agency (2009), The Monthly Statistics of the Number of the Foreign Spouses.
13 Statistics from Dept. of Statistics, Ministry of Interior at http://www.moi.gov.tw/stat/week.aspx.
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That implies female foreign spouses in a single year may immigrate to Taiwan with an astonishing amount equaling almost 0.1% of Taiwan’s total population in the very near future.14
Moreover, the total number of foreign spouses has reached over 420 thousand in 2009, wherein near 20 percent of foreign spouses possess the Chinese Nationality.
In addition, according to the statistics of MOI (2009), the number of foreign spouses is over 420 thousand till November of 2009 (Table 2-7). From this point of view, there are 2 foreign spouses among 100 people living in Taiwan; moreover, the number of foreign spouses maintains accumulating by a stable speed. As a result, foreign spouses have drawn attraction and aroused unceasing concerns from social, economic, cultural dimensions and etc.
Table 2-7: Number of Foreign Spouses Attaining Citizenship
Unit: person Foreign Spouses
Subtotal Naturalization Overseas-Chinese Residence year Total
No. Male Female No. Male Female No. Male Female
2004
Note: The total number of the foreign spouses here includes the foreign spouses from Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau.
Source: National Immigration Agency (2009), The Monthly Statistics of the Number of the Foreign Spouses.
14 The notion of foreign spouse here refers to distinguishing spouses from foreign countries from natives.
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From historic point of view, Taiwan has long been a migration destination through its development. Moreover, transnational marriage as a pattern of cross-border migration is not a novelty in Taiwan (Cheng, 2008). As the researchers indicated that the formation of transnational marriages had experience a long process.
At the very first period transnational marriage were mainly from studying abroad, emigration or jobs; from the late 1970s to the early 1980s, some overseas Chinese arranged partners for the veterans. At the midst of 1980s, along with Taiwanese Businessmen invested in South-east Asia, more and more single males on the edge of marriage market married foreign spouses on the basis of breed, especially those from Thailand and Philippines.
Foreign spouse and new female immigrant influx started from the 1990’s, females from Southeast Asian countries married Taiwan’s males so that arouse a heated wave of transnational marriages (Ye, 2006). That is what Cheng (2008) declared the three waves of marriage immigrants occurred and occurring through different periods of economic and social development in Taiwan.
Taiwan, selected by the women marriage migrants from South-east Asian countries as the destination country, accepts immigrants proportionately mainly from transnational marriages. In consequence, the female foreign spouses constitute the major part of the body of the total marriage immigrants in Taiwan; therefore, the women marriage immigrants may lay much influence on our society, culture, economy, and politics and etc. In this study, all the concentration will be lay on the economic aspect. In Taiwan’s case, the proportion of female foreign spouses (potential women marriage immigrants) is over 90% of total international marriage couples (Table 2-8).
The international marriage among Taiwan and Southeast Asian Countries should be recognized as a part of the global female trade rather than a unique specific
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Table 2-8: Number of Foreign Spouses in Taiwan
nit: person U
Source: Ministry of the Interior (2008), The Yearly Statistic Report of Foreign Spouses.
phenomenon. However, Taiwan is a special case. The main immigrant influx is from transnational marriage and the source countries are chiefly Southeast Asian countries.
Above all, the immigrants in Taiwan are not only marriage-oriented but also Women-dominated; therefore, the women marriage immigrants from Southeast Asia, especially from Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and others, are the center of this research.
In the past, immigrants to Taiwan mainly from the mainland China, of same language and ethnicity, may easily adapt to Taiwan’s society. With regards to different cultural, ethnic and economical background, marriage immigrants through interracial marriage may struggle over adjustment to Taiwan’s society and face more obstacles for survival from discrimination from their family and the general public.
For instance, as Ke (2004) indicated that marriage immigrants are radically sensitive to the fame of no-good resulted from the mass media and they protect their dignity carefully while conceptualizing and internalizing this partial human relationship. They migrated here for better opportunities, life or promising future.
Now if their dreams come true? Whether they live really better than they were in their original countries? The author always bears these questions in mind.
The completion and a transnational marriage is the process of patience, endurance, and wiliness in each side of groom and bride. Most of these transnational marriages are guided and directed by matchmaking agencies that organize tours for
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prospective future grooms, assemble potential brides, match spouses, hold group weddings, and fulfill the paperwork for the subsequent bride’s emigration to her new husband’s country of residence (Wang, 2007). There are a lot of challenges and risk to take during the application process for the groom and bride embracing full hope of better future. However, such an exhausted affair will not be their obstacle to find a wife or husband through transnational marriage.
In recent years, the main sources of immigrants are from transnational marriage, especially the brokered marriage owing to lack of well-prepared mechanism, diversely-organized system and strictly-scrutinized procedure. The couples of transnational marriage tend to increase steadily since the open policy and matchmaking agencies associated with transnational marriage; however, it started to go downwards along with executing prior-interview policy ahead of marriage and entrance, which blocks tremendous pseudo marriages (Figure 2-1).
From this graph, a distinguishing truth is showed obviously that the number of female foreign spouses drop so sharply while there is no apparent change displayed on that of male foreign spouses. It implies the bogus marriage occurred more frequently among the transnational marriage between foreign women and native men.
0 10,000 20,000 30,000 40,000 50,000 60,000
2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008
Total Foreign Spouses Male Foreign Spouses Female Foreign Spouses
Figure 2-1: Number of Foreign Spouses in Taiwan — 2001 ~ 2008
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Moreover, comparatively speaking, the fertility willingness of marriage immigrants under the pressure of their husband and parents-in-law seems stronger (Ye, 2006) than that of native married women due to their own more serious hesitation and less willingness of pregnancy. To some degree, the growing birth rate of marriage migrants contributes to preventing the gradually declining national birth rate to drop sharply in the past few years (Figure 2-2).
As Ye (2006) indicated that the population structure of Taiwan has transformed dramatically in this decade due to soaring immigrants; moreover, the increase of international marriages has led to more women marriage migrants to flow into Taiwan’s society. In marriage market aspect, marriage migrants deem to make up for the bi-gender population gap in Taiwan and actually improve the shortage of brides, especially not only for the men in the rural areas but also for those in the urban areas.
The higher is the marriage rate of transnational marriage, the higher is the divorce rate of that. Nowadays, there have been more than 1,400 divorced transnational couples among near 410 thousand of foreign spouse amount. It implies that there are 28 divorced couples of every thousand transnational couples.
Heterogeneous couples’ divorce rate is two and a half times higher than that of
0 50,000 100,000 150,000 200,000 250,000 300,000 350,000
1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008
Total
of Native Mothers of Foreign Mothers
Figure 2-2: Number of Newborns by Mother’s Nation ― 1998 ~ 2008
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homogeneous couples, a brand new high for recent four years.15