Cross-Border Marriage

Over the past three decades, scholars have paid greater attention to the intensification and complex interconnectivity of local and global processes. Anthropological studies of cross-border marriages, migrant domestic workers, and sex workers have burgeoned, demonstrating growing scholarly interest in how social relations have become evermore geographically dispersed, impersonal, mediated by and implicated in broader political-economic or capitalist processes. At the same time, intimate and personal relations—especially those linked to households and domestic units, the primary units associated with reproductive labor—have become more explicitly commodified, linked to commodities and to commodified global processes (i.e., bought or sold; packaged and advertised; fetishized, commercialized, or objectified; consumed;
assigned values and prices) and linked in many cases to transnational mobility and migration, presenting new ethnographic challenges and opportunities. This review highlights contemporary anthropological and ethnographic studies of the transnational commodification of intimacy
and intimate relations, related debates, themes, and ethnographic challenges.

Based on annual data by national/foreign citizenship from official statistics, the paper analyses the latest trends of international and mixed marriages and divorces in a large number of European countries. This provides as well a broad overview of the social distances between nationals and foreigners across Europe in the first decade of the new century, particularly relevant in a geographical area in which migration has become the most important component of demographic change and it is expected to continue playing an important role in the coming years. Further, for those countries belonging to the European Union, the study takes into account the stocks of foreigners and compares indicators based on mixed marriages to two datasets of indicators which are currently proposed to the attention of policy-makers to measure the integration of the immigrants.

This paper is concerned with the incidence of domestic violence among women in cross-border marriage, and uses Taiwan as a case study to illustrate some issues that make migrant women vulnerable to violence in the home. Throughout, we use the example of Taiwan to describe a gendered form of migration that is now a global phenomenon, and we use the phrase 'women in cross-border marriage' to identify women whose migration to Taiwan has been facilitated by marriage to Taiwanese citizens.We also look at the intersection between domestic violence and cross-border marriage migration, and discuss how the experiences of domestic violence for migrant women may differ from the experiences of women in general. We consider the experience of migration as a risk factor for domestic violence and, finally, consider some issues for services working with women in cross-border marriage and look at some of the ways Taiwan has developed services to meet the needs of migrant women.

"The Criminalization of Immigration: Contexts and Consequences explores these competing narratives and the consequences of criminalizing immigration in the United States and abroad. It examines the impact of national, state, and local legislation on the psychosocial well being of immigrants. The book explores key ways in which immigration is criminalized, and examines how the problematization of immigration becomes a political tool. The first chapters of the book explore the criminalization of immigration through the lens of pacification and the theater of cruelty. In both chapters, the authors seek to understand the process of “othering” members of the immigrant population to exact social control and to mollify the public. These front chapters set the tone for remainder of the book. They provide the impetus for why states have enacted, or have attempted to enact state level immigration laws that make it nearly impossible for the undocumented to live within the boundaries of these states. In section two, three U.S. states are highlighted: Arizona, Alabama, and Indiana. While the chapters on Arizona and Alabama summarize key aspects of state laws, author Sujey Vega highlights the life of one undocumented immigrant as she navigates life in the Heartland.

The book then turns its focus to the criminalization of immigration in a socio-political context. Here, four chapters provide explorations of the criminalization of immigration on labor standards enforcement, immigrant detention, the right wing perspective in the United States and in Europe, and white supremacy. Labor standards impact the rate by which undocumented immigrants are paid, which in turn impacts their health and safety within and outside the workplace, protections from workplace discrimination, and collective activity protections. The criminalization of immigration erodes many of the workplace and labor protections that we have come to view as essential. Similarly, the privatization of corrections has influenced the incarceration and detention of many undocumented immigrants and has even influenced the very laws described in section two of this book. If not for the possibility of profiting off of the detention of the undocumented, many of immigration related laws would not have come to fruition.

The next section of the book provides a transnational and international context to the criminalization of immigration. With chapters focusing on human rights violations, the transnational dimensions of Mexican migration, the making of the Maras, and the criminalization of immigration in the United Kingdom, these chapters ask the reader to examine the criminalization of immigration from a broader perspective. The reader learns how national issues become international and, likewise how international immigration issues influence national policy.

The final chapters of the book put the human face on the criminalization of immigration. Each chapter represents a case study of a specific aspect of the criminalization of immigration. They approach the issue from the viewpoint of a day laborer, an undocumented woman who has become a victim of domestic violence, a child whose parents are undocumented, and a detention officer who wrestles with his decisions to continue his job. Regardless of which chapters one reads, the raw emotion felt by placing oneself in each context is overwhelming.

Overall, The Criminalization of Immigration: Contexts and Consequences provides a complete examination of an issue that cuts through emotional value conflicts. It provides the facts and knowledge essential for a fair and balanced debate"

Sınır, sahip olduğu boyutlar, içerdiği anlamlar, taşıdığı işlevler, oluşturduğu yapılar ve neden olduğu değişimler açısından sosyolojik bir olgu olarak işlev görmektedir. Modern devletlerin egemenliklerini sembolize eden sınırları konu edinen bu çalışma, sınırları sosyolojinin bir inceleme nesnesi olarak ele almakta ve sınırlara yönelik sosyolojik bir bakış açısını ortaya koymaktadır. Türkiye-Gürcistan sınır bölgesinde yaşayanların sınırlarla ilgili nasıl bir bakış açısına sahip olduklarını ve gündelik yaşamda sınır aracılığıyla ne tür deneyimler oluşturduklarını anlamayı amaçlayan bu çalışmada, bir sınır bölgesi olan Hopa'ya odaklanılmaktadır. Çünkü Hopa, söz konusu coğrafyaya en yakın yer konumundadır, Gürcistan açısından bir sınır komşusudur, uluslararası ticaret yollarının kavşak noktasında yer almaktadır ve sınır nedeniyle meydana gelen sosyal, ekonomik, kültürel ve siyasal değişim ve dönüşüm süreçlerinin doğrudan etkilerini gösterdiği bir mekân olarak yer almaktadır. Hopa'da yaşayan 16 kişi ve Gürcistan'dan Hopa'ya çalışmak amacıyla göç eden 14 göçmen işçi olmak üzere toplamda 30 kişi ile nitel araştırma yöntemi kapsamında derinlemesine mülakatlar yapılmıştır. Yapılan alan araştırması sonucunda, sınırın sosyal ve kültürel değişme açısından bir anahtar işlevi gördüğü ortaya çıkmıştır. Modern devletin sınır anlayışı ile sınır bölgesinde yaşayanların sınırlar hakkındaki yaklaşımlarının kesişimi tespit edilmiştir. Sınır bölgesinde yaşayanlar açısından sınırın ekonomik dinamizmin motoru olduğu anlaşılmıştır. Bu bağlamda, ortaya çıkan bu sonuçlar, sınırın bir sosyolojik olgu olduğunu göstermektedir.

The conflict in families disputing child custody cases across international borders continues to grow worldwide resulting in an epidemic of parental abduction. Governments and international bodies continue to work toward creating effective solutions through cross border family mediation programs. Ensuring a voluntary process that does not culturally alienate or marginalize participants is a challenge that often creates ethical dilemmas that may go unnoticed, minimized or ignored. When an individual is marginalized or disenfranchised during any alternative dispute resolution process as a result of cultural dilemmas, inequitability is created. Cultural bias and ignorance limits or prevents creative exploration of problem solving strategies, forcing parties into predesigned agreements. In 2012, the Hague Bureau on Private International Law released the first publication on mediation standards and guide for cross border family mediation as an extension of international family law. Building on these efforts, this paper provides a look at how culture shapes identity and influences problem solving in a multicultural context through a review of the literature and actual case examples.

This article offers an integrative review of the literature on women's migration for domestic work and cross-border marriages in East and Southeast Asia. By bringing these two bodies of literature into dialogue, we illuminate the interconnected processes that shape two key forms of women's migration that are embedded in the reproduction of women's domesticity. We highlight structural analyses of the demographic and socio-economic shifts that propel women's migration while also attending to the affective dimension of migrant women's desires and duties and to the brokerages that mediate the migrant flow. We finally examine how migrant wives and domestic workers contest the boundary of citizenship as they claim their full personhood against divergent modes of control over their rights, bodies, and mobility. We conclude by pointing out concrete areas where the two sets of literature can enrich each other for future research on gender, labor, and migration.

When one talks about cross-border marriages between Vietnamese women and Chinese men in southern China, economic conditions and demography are often, if not always, emphasized to explain the frequency of such unions in modern history and, more specifically, in recent decades. However, many aspects of this phenomenon are rarely, if ever, considered, such as the way in which communities along each side of the Chinese-Vietnamese frontier view their neighbors; their degree of appreciation and understanding of one another; their representation of women, men, romance, and marriage; and the impact of these factors on the phenomenon of cross-community alliances, status, and individual choice. In addition, spouses' voices are not often heard, outside the framework of humantrafficking testimonies. From a human trafficking perspective, there is also a tendency to view cross-border marriages as unfortunate migration cases, or as a local "response" to social problems. The shortage of potential brides, for example, is often presumed to increase the trade in women in rural and border areas. During my field research on mixed-marriage couples on the Sino-Vietnamese border, I found the reality to be much more complex. I propose in this chapter a different approach to these international marriages through hearing how the women involved in them explained, in their own words, their experiences and life changes since leaving their original communities, whatever form that departure took.

The world is fast becoming a global village where national boundaries which had hitherto limited human interactions are fast disappearing. There is now integration among the countries and trade is moving from transactions in goods and commodities to include the commercialization of education, especially postsecondary school or higher education.

China. It focuses on the commercial matchmaking practices between a transnational marriage agency in Tokyo and Dongyang in northeast China. Regardless of the participants' initial hesitation to engage in transnational matchmaking practices, I argue that it was the negotiation of local marital norms on a transnational scale that rendered participants marriageable to one another. Specifically, I demonstrate how the brokers and participants in these practices negotiated the cultural boundaries of marriageabilityby constructing and reproducing essentialized similarities and proximities-within local-global contexts. On the one hand, the Japanese men involved sought to frame Chinese prospects as "almost Japanese brides" so that their marriages would be "almost national endogamous marriages." The Chinese women, on the other hand, attempted to marry off and into a "proximate" community where many friends had already wed. By both relying on and stretching local marital values, they engaged in flexible imaginings of marital norms on a transnational scale while simultaneously reaffirming them at the local level. Ultimately, this article provides

This article problematises the discourses on commercially arranged marriages, commonly seen as a form of trafficking in women or mail-order brides (MOB), by focusing on a less discussed aspect of commercial marriage migrationnamely, the matchmaking and/or marriage brokerage operation. Drawing upon empirical studies of marriages between Taiwanese men and women from South-East Asia and the Peoples Republic of China, I look at the changing operations of the marriage brokerage industry, the relations between the actors involved prior to, during and after matchmaking and marriage, and the actors own perceptions of these operations. The main arguments are that: (a) the marriage brokers play a key role in motivating potential brides/ grooms to enter into international marriages and give shape to their preferences in mate choice; and (b) cross-border marriage migration has taken on a very traditional form, involving complex, localised social networks in which women play an active role. As a result, the brokering industry goes beyond mere commercial activities to involve the other types of social relations that are sustained throughout the marriage. Finally, I argue that (c) money transactions at the time of a wedding do not necessarily make women a traded commodity.

En este trabajo reviso la tesis de la nuclearización de la familia en el caso de Marruecos y de sus poblaciones que viven en un espacio transnacional. La transformación de la familia que se ha producido en Marruecos en el último tercio de siglo XX, derivada de las migraciones internas y externas, no reduce el peso de los lazos de parentesco a pesar de la emergencia de nuevas pautas de residencia. El crecimiento de hogares nucleares no equivale a la constitución de familias aisladas sino que tiene lugar bajo la influencia de los vínculos e interdependencias entre parientes, no solo en Marruecos sino también entre los emigrados a Europa. A partir de una revisión crítica de la literatura sobre el parentesco y la alianza magrebí y de casos etnográficos propios concluyo que los vínculos de proximidad inciden de manera importante en la circulación de personas y bienes, y en especial en los mecanismos de elección matrimonial.

Chinese wives use transnational marriages as a strategy to obtain care and security in old age. The state's population, welfare and immigration policies shape the veterans' care needs and rights. Middle-aged mainland Chinese women choose to migrate to provide security for themselves and better educational and economic opportunities for their children. I use Stafford's concept of 'cycles of yang' to explain why, despite state provision of care, family members prefer reciprocity of care and why they choose transnational marriage in preference to other forms of family formation. This framework blurs the distinction between caregivers and care receivers, and conceptualizes differential care needs as part of the life course. I use the concept of a care diamond to analyse how state policies, communal care and market forces together shape care relationships in transnational families and patterns of transnational mobility.

The paper addresses the recent and growing phenomenon of mixed sentimental
unions. It centers on heterosexual couples integrated by a Spanish man and a foreign
woman of Latin American or Slavic origin, wich are the predominant in Spain. The initial
hypothesis relates this phenomenon to transformations in the gender system in Spain,
and contextualizes it in the new global order, characterized by the increase and facility
for communication and mobility. Attention is drawn to the motivations expressed by the
social actors involved in these unions.

This paper explores the contradictions between national identity and gendered practices of statecraft and metanarratives such as Arab Unity and Islam as they pertain to gender and identity for northern Sudanese transmigrants in Cairo. Like most states of the Arab Middle East, Egypt grants citizenship by way of a patrilineal conceptualization of identity that draws upon Arab and Islamic cultural practices. Northern Sudanese, regarded as fellow Arab Muslims, have been included in Egyptian policies that transcend statecraft (such as preferential residential and educational policies based on the "brotherhood" of the two peoples of the Nile Valley), yet they are excluded from citizenship except through the practice of Sudanese women marrying Egyptian men.

Despite the possibility of real benefits of citizenship acquired through marriage of Egyptian nationals, Sudanese women living in Egypt do not seem to be pursuing this strategy. Recent negative changes in their legal status have focused attention on women as guardians not only of tradition but also of Sudanese citizenship. In this paper, I analyze Sudanese marriage practices in light of changes in Egyptian citizenship laws and residency regulations pertaining to Sudanese. This paper uses ethnographic data from fieldwork conducted between 1994 and 1997 among Sudanese living in Cairo, current research on Egyptian nationalism and citizenship practices, as well as archival data from research on the Egyptian regulatory environment for non-Egyptian immigrants and refugees.

In Western hegemonic discourses, cross-border marriages in which ethnic minority members, especially Muslims, take a partner from a ‘country of origin’ are framed as patriarchal and backward and women are portrayed as victims within such marriages. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, the article focuses on the marriages of men from rural Kosovo, who have moved to Austria or Germany because they married a woman from a ‘Kosovan’ background, and on the gender roles that are negotiated here.