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Abstract
Globalization and increased mobilities have multiplied cross-border transactions not only in the economic sphere but have also a major impact on human relationships of intimacy. This can be seen in the increased volume of differently mediated forms of international marriage, not just straddling ‘east’ and ‘west’, but within Asia and across different ethnicities and nationalities. International marriage raises a host of social issues for countries of origin and destination, including challenges relating to the citizenship status and rights of the marriage migrant. This paper examines the negotiation of citizenship rights in the case of commercially matched marriage migrants – namely Vietnamese women who marry Singaporean men and migrate to Singapore as ‘foreign brides’. While they are folded into the ‘family’ – what is often thought of as the basic building block of the nation in Asian societies – they are not necessarily accorded full incorporation into the ‘nation’ despite Singapore's claims to multiculturalism. This is particularly salient at a point when cross-nationality, cross-ethnicity marriages between Singapore citizens and non-citizens are on the increase, accounting for over a third of marriages registered in Singapore in recent years. Vietnamese women who marry Singaporeans are positioned within the nation-state's citizenship regime as dependents of Singaporean men, having to rely on the legitimacy of the marriage relationship as well as the whims of their husbands in negotiating their rights vis-à-vis the Singapore state. Drawing on interviews and ethnographic work with 20 Vietnamese women who are commercially matched marriage migrants, the paper first focuses on the vulnerable positions these women find themselves, particularly given difficulties in forging their own support networks as well as weaknesses of the civil society sector in what has been called an ‘illiberal democracy’ characterized by a political culture of ‘non-resistance’. The paper then goes on to examine the way they negotiate rights to residency/citizenship, work and children within webs of asymmetrical power relations within the family and the nation-state. We draw on our findings to show that citizenship is ‘a terrain of struggle’ within a multicultural nation-state shaped by social ideologies of gender, race and class and negotiated on an everyday basis within spheres of family intimacy.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful for research funding support (Grant No: T208A4103: State boundaries, cultural politics and gender negotiations in international marriages in Malaysia and Singapore) from the Ministry of Education, Singapore.
Notes
1. Toyota, “Editorial Introduction,” 2.
2. Constable, Cross-border Marriages.
3. Toyota, “Editorial Introduction,” 2.
4. Soysal, Limits of Citizenship.
5. Turner, “Citizenship.”
6. Ibid., 47.
7. Ibid., 48.
8. Stasiulis and Bakan, “Negotiating Citizenship.”
9. Wang and Bélanger, “Taiwanizing Female Immigrant Spouses,” 92.
10. Ibid., 92–3.
11. Wang, “Hidden Spaces.”
12. Wang and Bélanger, “Taiwanizing Female Immigrant Spouses,” 98.
13. Turner's (“Citizenship,” 49) more optimistic reading of this same point suggests that reclaiming the nexus between citizenship and marriage/family will bring into sharper focus migrant women's voices in debates about citizenship such that their rights and claims can no longer be dismissed in existing frameworks of citizenship.
14. Hsia, “Foreign Brides.”
15. Ibid, 17.
16. Werbner and Yuval-Davis, “Introduction.”
17. Hsia, “Foreign Brides,” 41.
18. Suzuki, “Between Two Shores,” 465.
19. Shen, “Crossing the Taiwan Strait,” 22.
20. Levitt and Glick-Schiller, “Conceptualising Simultaneity,” 595–629.
21. Benjamin, “The Cultural Logic of Singapore's Multiculturalism;” Siddique, “Singaporean Identity.”
22. National Population Secretariat, Population in Brief 2009.
23. See Straughan, Chan, and Jones, “From Population Control to Fertility Promotion.”
24. Koh, “Global Flows of Foreign Talents.”
25. See Yeoh, “Bifurcated Labor.”
26. See Toh, “Helpline Getting More Calls.” According to Ngoo, there were 1.25 million transient workers as at June 2009, out of a total population of about five million in Singapore.
27. Sassen, “Globalization or Denationalization?” 12.
28. See Wong, “Written Answer to Parliamentary Question” and Wong, “DPM's Speech.”
29. Lee, “PM Lee's National Day Rally Speech.”
30. Hsia, “Foreign Brides.”
31. Foreign spouses tend to be mainly from Asia: in 2009, 97% of non-citizen brides and 66.7% of non-citizen grooms were of Asian origin (National Population Secretariat, Population in Brief 2010).
32. National Population Secretariat, Population in Brief 2010, http://www.nps.gov.sg/files/news/Population%20in%20Brief%202010.pdf (accessed 12 October 2010).
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid.
35. Hussain, “More Older Men Seeking Foreign Brides.”
36. An average of about 8,500 Singapore PRs became Singapore citizens annually over the past 10 years (Wong, “Written Answer to Parliamentary Question”).
37. Chua, “Multiculturalism in Singapore.”
38. Lackey, “Door Shuts on Flat Applicant of ‘Other’ Race.”
39. Kor, “Double-barrelled Race Option.”
40. Quoted in “Little Impact on Ethnic-based Policies: PM Lee; New Move is ‘a liberalisation, not a revolution,” The Straits Times, 16 January 2010.
41. Hussain, “Ethnic-based Policies.”
42. There are as yet no official figures showing how many people have changed their race as a result of this new policy. In terms of newborns, Singapore's Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) revealed that some 16% mixed-heritage babies had double-barreled races on their official documents between January 2011 and June 2012 (“No Need to Amend IC, Say Some Mixed-Race S'poreans,” The Straits Times, 4 September 2012).
43. Hsia, “Foreign Brides.”
44. Chua, Communitarian Ideology and Democracy in Singapore, 205–209.
45. There are strict rules governing the registration and activities of migrant labor organizations. All registered organizations are expressly prohibited from engaging in ‘political activities.’ In addition, foreign-based NGOs face considerable difficulties becoming formally registered in Singapore while formal organizations run by migrant workers themselves do not exist (Piper, “Migrant Worker Activism,” 10–11).
46. Piper, “Migrant Worker Activism,” 365.
47. Yeoh and Annadhurai, “Civil Society Action.”
48. In a diametrically opposite direction, migrant women from the Asian region admitted into the nation as work permit holders (i.e. as foreign domestic workers) are prohibited under the marriage restriction policy from becoming wives of Singaporean men.
49. Yeoh and Huang, “Foreign Domestic Workers.”
50. AWARE, “Beyond ‘Happily Ever After’.”
51. Yeoh, “Bifurcated Labor.”
52. In contrast, Tan (“A Union of Gender Equality,” 74) has argued that relatively smaller proportion of international marriages involving Singaporean women and foreign husbands has galvanized significant policy changes: ‘pragmatic considerations of demographic necessity, the political economy of international migration, talent augmentation, the growing popularity of international marriages, and the larger political and economic realities of a globalizing world’ have led the way in the shedding of patriarchal assumptions and the adoption of a more gender-neutral citizenship regime.
53. We draw upon findings from our project entitled ‘State boundaries, cultural politics and gender negotiations in international marriages in Malaysia and Singapore.’ A major component of this study focuses on Vietnamese women who married Singaporean men through commercial matchmaking agencies. Study participants were identified in various ways. We met some of the couples through commercial matchmaking agencies, the owners of which had granted us interviews and were amenable to us meeting with some of their clients, but attempts to snowball from these initial leads were unsuccessful most of the time. We found that the social stigma attached to commercial matchmaking contributed greatly to the difficulties in snowballing. The primary route by which we were able to get to know Vietnamese marriage migrants was through thrice-weekly English classes that we conducted for 11 months, from December 2008 through October 2009. The English classes were specifically designed for Vietnamese women who have had only primary education, and very little prior exposure to English. The classes drew participants through word of mouth among the social networks of Vietnamese marriage migrants; but because they were held in the afternoons, those who could not attend due to work, childcare, or other commitments were systematically excluded. Individual attendance was generally irregular, and some of those whose afternoons were tied up with other commitments managed to attend on the odd days when they were relieved of their duties. The classes offered a platform for the Vietnamese marriage migrants to meet and socialize, and we were also able to reach out to a wider network of Vietnamese marriage migrants through picnics, barbecues and other social events which the class participants organized. The class attendees were informed of our research project, but we made it clear that class attendance does not necessarily mean that they have to participate in the project (indeed, there were many class attendees who were not project participants). Detailed notes were made from interviews or prolonged chats with individuals who consented to participating in the research project, while general observational notes were made from the classes and various social interactions that we had with the women.
54. Rattana and Thompson, “Thai Wives.”
55. Glick-Schiller et al., “Pathways of Migrant Incorporation in Germany;” Yeoh, “Observations on Transnational Urbanism.”
56. Glick-Schiller et al., “Pathways of Migrant Incorporation in Germany.”