ARENA’s Concerns for Marriage Migrants:

Kinhide Mushakoji and Jung-ok Lee

I wish to share with you the reasons and visions of ARENA for being especially concerned about the well-being and rights of the marriage migrants in Asia.

ARENA is a network of Asian action researchers in search of alternatives to the present neo-liberal globalization. We in ARENA are particularly concerned about the socio-economic, cultural and political sources of insecurity and discrimination faced by marriage migrants in Asia from the following observations.

The marriage migrants often experience patriarchal discrimination, shared by their societies of origin and of destination, on top of cultural conflicts caused by the different customs they are exposed to in their new homes. In this sense, ARENA considers that their cultural insecurity represents the most typical of the cultural challenge, all Asian intellectuals face, which is the need to find an endogenous path to human development, keeping the positive Asian cultural traditions, while engendering and transforming the patriarchal customs inherent in them. ARENA wants to initiate a process of dialogue with the marriage migrants, involving also their supporters in the sending and receiving countries.

There is also an urgent need to turn our attention to the multiple, structural factors at work in producing migration through marriage. General trend of women’s impoverishment in recent decades has been a great concern for many, especially in addressing global migration. But, when we consider impoverishment of women in neo-liberal globalization, we should not only think of it as an economic impoverishment, but also as cultural impoverishment. When cultural dimension is included, our understanding of marriage migration can be extended to the women's desire to find a new life. But, it is also very true that their desire cannot fulfilled as wished, because they can only migrate to another society when there are only certain job or roles that are often very much contrary to their wishes.

What patterns can we identify in marriage migration?

Firstly, the women migrants who migrate, taking marriage as a means to settle down in the countries of destination, are often victims of economic transactions, formal and informal, which commodify them and put them in a state of chronic socio-economic insecurity. They are taking part in the current feminized process of global migration, and some of them are even the objects of trafficking.

Secondly, the marriage migrants are often subjected to the violence implicated in patriarchy and racism and complicated by cultural dis- or ex-communication. It is the interplay of gender and race discrimination that lead to cases of domestic and social violence, making their married lives unsustainable and insecure. This is why the marriage migrants constitute a special category in migration.

Thirdly, ARENA believes that the marriage migrants have a special role to play in building a multi-cultural Asian community. Unfortunately, the socio-economic and cultural insecurity of the marriage migrants makes it difficult for them to play their specific role as cultural mediators linking their countries of origin with the countries they marry and settle into. Such difficulties need to be eliminated by the cooperation between the states and citizens in both their countries of origin and of destination.

On the complexity of the issue, we may further deepen our inquiry in the patterns by asking a few more questions. For examples;

1)     In what particular ways does the patriarchy system in a receiving country operate and affect marriage migrant women’s life? How do big age gap, low socio-economic status, and cultural hierarchy affect the power relation in family? 

2)      By what status, identity, and stereotypes are marriage migrant women perceived and treated in a receiving society? What are the particular socio-economic insecurity situations that they are exposed to? What are the key factors that the receiving societies need to address to improve the situation?

3)      To substantially guarantee security of marriage migrant women, how should immigration laws be revised in line with the universal human rights and fundamental freedoms, and how should we advocate for such a change?

4)      While multiculturalism is a common rhetoric among receiving countries, is the existing cultural hierarchy favouring various inequalities really compatible with multiculturalism. If not, does it not serve to justify the existing cultural hierarchy and assimilation policy? How do we resist to the government-level assimilation policy?

The patterns of insecurities and unresolved issues I have raised so far do not stand as individual one. They are inter-linked and inter-playing in a complex way. A compartmental or a narrow range of deliberation and policy choices will fall short of addressing the issue. This is why ARENA calls for a comprehensive, integrated, multi-layered and regional approach to this issue, and this is why we are gathered here, I believe. In this context that when we focus on how women are exploited by the international, commercialised marriage brokerage, we try to identify how different societies can regulate it differently but jointly at the same time.

Actions envisioning a fundamental change

The marriage migrants are, for ARENA, more than mere victims. They are potentially important agents of change, in Asia, who can bring about an alternative modernity to their respective countries of origin and destination, by developing cultural exchanges and multi-culturalism by mediating between their countries of origin and destination, and between the present and the future generations. Their present insecurity, if eliminated, can be transformed into new sources of hope for a more gender egalitarian modernity respectful of cultural traditions and national identities in the different countries of Asia. This is why ARENA wants to support the organization of cross-border networks of marriage migrants and of their supporters.

In this workshop, therefore, it would be interesting to raise the question of whether or not we could situate marriage migrant women as agent subject instead of passive victims. Is it valid to situate marriage migrant women as agent subject instead of passive victims, and under what conditions? What are the ways by which we could go beyond victimization of women? Can we identify if in reality there are already some initiatives taken by the women in this direction? If so, I think the agenda of empowerment of the women in marriage migration may become a priority for our joint efforts.

There is also very important subject of citizenship, especially new visions for future citizenship of the women in question. The current superficiality of various citizenship arrangements for marriage migrants poses a great challenge to us to think of substantial citizenship that go beyond race and gender discrimination. Newly envisioned, substantial citizenship include all the fundamental civil and political, economic, social and cultural rights. With our understanding of international human rights laws, I sincerely wish that this workshop can address this issue in depth.

In brief, ARENA wishes to invite you to exchange views and experience in order to develop a process of research, dialogue and network building of the marriage migrants. We hope that the concerned researchers and activists of Vietnam will support this ARENA initiative, and make this project the entry point into a process of joint action-research-and-research-action, beneficial not only to the marriage migrants but also to all women migrants. This will open new paths for cultural exchange towards the creation of a new Asian community. It will trigger-off a process in search of an alternative regional order without exploitative migration and without gender violence. Let us develop this process of an Asian Regional Exchange in search of New Alternatives beginning with this project supporting the marriage migrants in Asia.

Thank you.