ARENA and Women Migrant Human Rights Center of Korea will hold “2009 Regional School on Citizenship of Marriage Migrants”  on May 23-25 in Gapyeong, South Korea.

Based on this background, this 2009 Regional School will aim to look at different dimensions of citizenship for marriage migrants, locate the issue of marriage migration within broader frames such as democracy, citizenship and social movements, and map out the agendas of marriage migration needed for local/national/regional cooperation.

An international consortium of Civil Society Organisations comprised of LDC Watch, South Asia Alliance for Poverty Eradication (SAAPE), Asian Regional Exchange for New Alternatives (ARENA) and Korea Democratic Foundation (KDF) organised the Asia Regional Conference on Democracy, Development and Peace from 10-12 November 2008 in Kathmandu, Nepal. The objective of the conference was to contribute towards strengthening democracy, sustainable development and peace in Asia. The conference was attended mainly by the delegates from political parties, academia and civil society organisations from across the Asia-Pacific region. 

The proceedings of the conference have been recently published by the co-organizers. To read or download the proceedings please click on the url below  
http://www.rrn.org.np/resources/publications/asia_demo_proceedings09.pdf

The significant characteristic of the existing transnational marriage policy in Taiwan is divided along the lines of nationalities. Inhumane restrictions inbuilt into different laws and policies have affected various social-cultural aspects of marriage migrants' life, an example being 8 years of required time (recently revised to 6 years) for Mainland Chinese spouses to get their citizenships which is also double the period required than other foreign spouses. Such policy orientation is deeply embedded in the consciousness of nationalism. Furthermore, this policy orientation represents the discriminative condition of transnational marriages in contrast to the local ones, and these subtle policy barriers provide opportunities for the authority to examine and select the qualification of getting citizenship even after the marriage.
 
However, to go beyond the oppressions emanating from the legal structure, we need to acknowledge the need of unraveling the imbalanced government interventions which largely affect migrant families' life. At the same time, some of these policies on the surface appear to be benefiting the marriage migrants but in reality these policies drive them into a subordinate position vis-à-vis the Taiwanese. Similar to the socio-cultural contexts of South Korea, marriage migrants in Taiwan have long been shackled by implicit class discrimination based on the level of development in their countries of origins and of course, patriarchy. On the other hand, systematic oppressions have also provoked a series of responses from Taiwanese civil society and social movements. Through the process of participating in legislation, supervising policies, grass-root empowerment and street protests, the subjectivity of marriage migrants have emerged as different forms of struggles.
 
To meaningfully engage with these issues it is imperative that we locate them in a larger perspective of existing atmosphere of human insecurity; for example the struggles between prevalent economic crisis and economic rights of migrants, and the anxious relationship in the receiving family vis-à-vis the migrant spouses arising out of lack of trust, different norms and suspicions …etc. Therefore, I would like to share the experiences of marriage migration by addressing 1) the changing patterns of marriage migration policy in Taiwan; 2) the dialogue and discourse between government, civil groups and society during the negotiating process in acquiring citizenship.