Workshop: Marriage and Migration in Asia

19 April, 2007, Hanoi

RCGAD and ARENA

 

Transition to a new perspective:

 from passive victims to diverse agent subject

     

                                                                                Jiyoung LeeAn

                                                      ARENA Programme Officer

19 April, 2007

 

Issues of Concern

 

Marriage-migrant women face diverse social discrimination and violence on the basis of gender, race and class both before and after marriage in receiving countries. Contrary to their expectations, their social economic status in receiving countries does not improve in most cases. The mainstreaming approaches to these problems so far have been mainly treating them as passive victims and beneficiaries of social welfare.

 

In the process of marriage arrangement, in particular, many of the women are exposed to inhumane commercialized marriages which include human right violations and human-trafficking factors such as receiving false information regarding their future spouses, and/or illegal physical abuses such as confinement, and un-payable debt, etc. In addition, the women are also scored by their race, appearance and age by marriage brokers and male customers. One aspect that must be regulated at the national and international level is commercialized marriage brokerage.

 

After marriage, they face all the familiar problems – domestic violence, racial discrimination, language barriers, and failure to communicate, leading to serious family disputes as well as social discrimination. Gendered immigration laws also make them vulnerable. In most countries, marriage migrant women have to keep their marriage for a certain number of years until they gain full residential rights. During that period, many women are exposed to all kinds of violence and discrimination; most of them keep silent for fear of deportation. Also, the complicated conditions for naturalization put women in an insecure situation because they can only achieve their civil right as wives of men.

 

Human trafficking issue needs careful consideration. While one cannot deny that marriage migration today seems to demonstrate an implication of human trafficking, especially in the Asian reality of women’s trafficking, to what extent human trafficking is involved in marriage migration requires thorough and careful investigation. It might be easy for us to name them in general as passive victims of human trafficking and regard them as people who need protection, but this perspective easily leads us to exclude them as the “other,” and not to accept them as equal members of society. Also some may easily overlook that they are performing as workers, political actors and cultural mediators in the society.

 

In this light, I would like to stress today that we need to situate them as dignified individuals, therefore agent subjects, not always as passive victims. Doing this will allow us possibilities to reconceptualise marriage migrants as new type of active citizens, and their status as a new citizenship. Increasingly it is being recognized that the construction of woman as victim is damaging to them both politically and psychologically. (Ruth Lister, 1997) And in reality, this reconceptualisation is emerging as a movement by the women themselves.

 

I believe this is the time when we turn our eyes to a step forward; by asking how we define women’s agency as subjects of change, in what context, how we can help improve their agency, and ultimately, what kind of emancipatory citizenship we can imagine and work for.

 

How do we define and empower women’s agency?

 

Understanding marriage migrant women differently from mere victims does not mean that women should be regarded as active individual citizens, or “agents” in every situation. Their agency needs to be qualified by contextualizing their specific experiences. Long well summarizes the various levels and extents of agency. Following Long, we need to contextualize women migrants’ experience to show to what extent they are victims and agents. (Long(1992), cited in Nicola Piper and Mina Roces(2003)) At the same time, as the distinction between victimhood and agency is obscure in reality, we need to be clear in what particular context we define agency and how this agency and citizenship can constitute each other.

 

First, most marriage migrant women in receiving countries become more positive and active agents through social networks. Community-based networks and social groups based on the same ethnicity play an important role in empowering these women. It leads to the transformation of victimhood to subject agency through the process of learning how to solve common problems.

In Taiwan, marriage migrant women themselves founded Trans-Asia Sisters Association, Taiwan(TASAT) and have participated in Alliance for Human Rights Legislation for Immigrants and Migrants(AHRLM) against the Taiwanese government’s immigration policy in collaboration with local Taiwan women. In Korea, the first network of marriage-migrant women from China was founded for advocating their political rights.

 

Moreover, through social networks, they can become involved in economic sector. According to a survey by the Korean health minister, 60% of marriage migrant women are working in economic sectors and 93% of unemployed marriage migrant women want to work.

 

According to Kim, Jungsun(2007)’s study of marriage migration from the Philippines to Korea, marriage migrant women also have the potential of becoming active agent between two or more communities of receiving and sending countries. Access to services and commodities across national boundaries could be an important way. For example, women migrants sell Pilipino food to immigrant workers or make a small business to import and sell some goods from the Philippines. The business using transnational networks as a form of social resources, which the immigrants can have, is economically transnational from the bottom (grass roots); it gives an alternative way of escaping from a low-wage and long-term labour for some immigrants. Portes (1999) and his collaborators pointed out that in the past the immigrants’ economical success and social status depended on the entrance to the society of a receiving countries and fast acculturation, but it is now influenced by a strong social network across national boundaries. If active networks exist through which they can transgress social, informational and cultural borders more freely, their role can be further explored and expanded.

 

However, it has also limitations. So far, these migrant women have been situated in gendered specific areas; traditionally regarded as women’ work like domestic work, care labour, or service work. They do not have much choice to select their jobs. Women can not immigrate if they are not in a specific category of society called “Job ghettos for women.” In Korea, they are positioned as brides to Korean men, sex workers or as domestic workers(Kim, Hyunmee, 2007). Within the discriminatory socio-economic structures of receiving countries, most women are restricted from getting into the economic market and succeeding in it. Diverse barriers like discrimination based on their gender and race restrict them from entering to the market and place them in gendered specific areas.

 

Secondly, local activism is important to empower their agency. Parry notes how collective action can boost self confidence as individuals(this has been particularly true of women) come to see themselves as political actors and effective citizens. For many women, involvement in community organisations or social movements can be more personally fruitful than engagement in formal politics which is often more alienating than empowering(Ruth Lister, 1997) Therefore, women’s participation in civic work can in fact be a way of performing citizenship. Also this composed citizenship potentially empower women’s agency and broadens their choices.

 

For example, Filipino women married to Australian men in Mount Isa, Rockhampton and Yeppoon perform folk dances during the towns’ festivals. Furthermore, they also do volunteer work for the Catholic Church and other civic organizations. While these activities could be interpreted as part of their strategies for coping in isolated towns and remote areas such activities also have to be seen as positive contributions of the towns’ cultural and social life. “These community engagements” in which migrants contribute to their host societies are an important aspect in the discussion revolving around citizenship(Nicola Piper and Mina Roces, 2003).

 

Third, we can empower agency through women’s own perspectives. In receiving countries, most marriage migrant women are identified as wives and mothers, rather than as individuals – situated as wives and mothers with prejudice and the effects of the commercialized marriage. They are usually treated as a tool for domestic work and reproduction.

 

Many marriage migrant women decide to get married, not only for economic reasons, but also for the desire to have new equal relationship in the family. Many of them have a strong desire to make a change and improve their status in society. However, in reality, many of them are forced to take traditional women’s role and are exposed to many kinds of discrimination based on gender and race.

 

I would like to highlight that these women are dignified individual citizens and should be recognized as such. This is not yet acknowledged in much of the public discourse about them, apart from recognising them as mothers, wives, and workers. Feminist engagement with citizenship debates has tended to focus on the gendered nature of access to economic, social, civil and political rights associated with citizenship. Feminists, in particular, have levelled critiques against the patriarchal nature of multicultural policies imposed on marriage migrant women. It supports male leadership and the persistence of traditional values. Feminists have questioned who is empowered to interpret and impose cultural norms. State and other institutions may accept cultural norms that communities have transplanted form home society such as the conduct of women in private and public, without any real consideration(Hsiao, Chuan Hsia, 2005)

 

In addition, recognizing women as individuals, not as wives or mothers, is important for people who have crossed the boundary of normality or normal families like divorced women. In most migrant women communities, women who have so-called “happy families” are centered and their roles as wives and mothers are emphasized. It means women themselves internalize patriarchal family system and make boundaries to other women across the family system. Therefore, constituting agency should go with developing a women’s perspective beyond patriarchal system.

 

Conclusion

 

We addressed the topic from various discrimination and ill-treatment. In addition, I have highlighted the topic of migrant women’s agency, or the women becoming fully dignified and active citizens, by saying that such an agency is constructed through social networks, participation of civic work, raising women’s own consciousness, and how relationships in social network affect women’s agency in the process.

 

This process cannot be done by women’s efforts alone. Many changes in their status including revision of discriminative immigration laws, often occur via NGO advocacy work, self organization of the migrant women and the cooperation of local women. However, the issue of substantive citizenship still remains(Hsiao, Chuan Hsia). As citizenship rights are not static but always open to interpretation and renegotiation(Ruth Lister, 1997), citizenship as the expression of agency can contribute to the recasting of women as political actors. But this will depend on how different concerned groups address and engage in the issue.

 

This is the time we set the network of marriage migrant women in local/regional/international levels. In order to address complex problems such as marriage brokerage, domestic violence and the need for alternative citizenship, we need to build a regional cooperation that will generate more deliberative attention as well as deep and comprehensive measures. As the matter is regional and international, as well as domestic, actions through regional cooperation may prove effective and crucial in supporting domestic groups in addressing relevant issues.

 

Finally, I would like to finish by introducing ARENA’s programme on marriage migrant women.

The programme, titled “Three-year cooperation among marriage-migrant groups for new citizenship of marriage-migrant women in Asia”, will facilitate developing regional network of migrant women and activists in sending and receiving countries through activists-researchers workshop, joint investigation of the situation, and organizing international forums. The programme aims to set up a regional network for addressing this issue and bridging activists with researchers. Through such a network, it is expected that concerned groups can launch joint actions, formulate common policies and agenda and respond to the problem both in each society and international organizations.

 

Thank you.

 

<Reference Lists>

 

Kim, Hyunmee, Asian Women Migrant: Myth and Realities, Paper presented at the 9th WFFIS International Forum, titled “Empire, Globalization, and Asian Women’s Migration”, April 10, 2007.

Kim, Jungsun, The Politics of Belonging of Women Migrants around the Experience of a Community, Paper presented at the 9th WFFIS International Forum, titled “Empire, Globalization, and Asian Women’s Migration”, April 10, 2007.

Hsiao-chuan Hsia, Prospects and Impasse of Multicultural citizenship in Globalization Era: The Case of Immigrants Movement in Taiwan, Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Marriott Hotel, Loews Philadelphia Hotel, Philadelphia, PA, Aug 12, 2005.

Melody Lu, Commercially Arranged Marriage Migration: Case Studies of Cross-border Marriages, Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 2005.

Nicola Piper and Mina Roces, Wife or Worker? Asian women and Migration, New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003.

Ruth Lister. Citizenship: Feminist Perspectives. Macmillan press LTD., 1997.