From bargaining to alliance with patriarchy: The role of Taiwanese husbands in marriage migrants’ civic organisations in Taiwan

Abstract

This paper, by looking at the role of Taiwanese citizens in civic organisations for marriage migrants, explores how women’s agency and negotiation occur not only against masculine dominance within patriarchal family arrangements, but also in alliance with it, when oppression is located somewhere beyond the family. In contrast to literature that depicts marriage migration as a women’s and migrants’ issue, this paper explores the role of Taiwanese citizens (often husbands in cross-border marriages) in shaping the evolution of the phenomenon in both the private and public spheres. The aim of this paper is to fill a gap in empirical literature on marriage migration in Taiwan and East Asia, as well as contribute to feminist debates on women’s agency in the context of masculine dominance. Building on ethnographic data collected through fieldwork in Taiwan, including in-depth interviews and participant observation within civil society organisations for marriage migrants, this paper reveals how Taiwanese male citizens and Chinese female migrants responded to the challenges brought by their decision to engage in cross-border unions by creating a new narrative that could explain their condition of shared oppression and by developing joint actions to address the structural discrimination they faced as cross-border couples in Taiwan.