“We’re dating after marriage”: transformative effects of performing intimacy in Vietnamese “marriage fraud” arrangements

ABSTRACT

Drawing on narratives of three Vietnamese women who agreed to participate in đám cưới giả (“fake wedding”) arrangements with Canadian citizens to enter Canada, this paper examines the paradoxical consequences of marriage migration policies. I introduce the concept of strategic intimacies to highlight the ways that Vietnamese women in these arrangements deliberately draw on social and economic capital to perform intimacy under manufactured settings to navigate securitized and racialized border regimes. Ironically, through deploying strategic intimacies catering to classed and gendered ideals of love and intimacy to present evidence of their “genuine” marriages, participants developed romantic attachments and pursued long-term relationships with their sponsors. I argue that, in trying to regulate migration, the state sets the conditions for and necessity of “marriage fraud”, blurring boundaries between what constitutes as “real” and “fake” for participants. This contribution prompts for a rethinking of the heteronormative and racialized practices of contemporary border regimes.

KEYWORDS:

• Marriage migration
• borders
• intimacy
• Canada
• Vietnam
• marriage fraud

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to the courageous women in this article who trusted me enough to share their nuanced cross-border stories in detail with me. This paper would not have been possible without them, nor the expertise and unwavering support of Dr Neda Maghbouleh, Dr Juan Pedroza, Dr Naveen Minai, Dr Alex Lee, and Laila Omar, all of whom were incredibly generous with their time and rich insights. I would also like to thank the faculty members and my cohort at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies, who encouraged me throughout this research and writing process, as well as the anonymous peer reviewers at Ethnic and Racial Studies for their engaged and thoughtful feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The term commonly used to denote marriage fraud in Vietnam, đám cưới giả, combines the words đám cưới (“wedding”) with giả (“fake”), thus translating to “fake wedding” in English.