Agency and Citizenship in Cross-border Marriages

Dr Lucy Williams

Lecturer

The European Centre for the study of Migration and Social Care

The School of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Research

University of Kent

Canterbury

Kent

CT2 7LZ

L.A.Williams@kent.ac.uk

01227 823092 (direct line)

01227 763674 (fax)

01843 845672 (home)

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Agency and Citizenship in Cross-border Marriages

This paper discusses the role of marriage in facilitating the crossing of international

borders and the subsequent effects of cross-border marriage on notions of citizenship.

Cross-border marriage is understood as potentially both a strategy to facilitate

migration and a strategy that requires migration and, once in the destination country,

migrant spouses face highly individual challenges and opportunities that shape their

formal and informal citizenship. Using examples drawn from ethnographic studies of

cross-border marriages contracted within ethnic communities and marriages

contracted between ethnic groupings I will discuss some of the opportunities for

citizenship experienced by female migrant spouses and use of the notion of ‘agency’

to help understand the significance of these marriages to the individuals involved.

Key words: cross-border marriage, migration, citizenship, transnationalism

Introduction

The study of citizenship “recognises that the specific location of people in society –

their group’s membership and categorical definition by gender, nationality religion,

ethnicity, ‘race’, ability, age or life-cycle stage – mediates the construction of their

citizenship as ‘different’ and thus determines their access to entitlements and their

capacity to exercise agency.” (Werbner and Yuval-Davis 1999:5) The women whose

experience is discussed in this paper are clearly identified as ‘different’ by the

majority populations they live amongst and also by the political and legal institutions

that govern their rights to participate and enjoy the social and economic benefits of

their country of settlement. Some may live in families and communities that are also

perceived of as ‘different’ by the majority and, through their personal communities,

may experience a sense of citizenship in their domestic lives that is more meaningful

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than in their public lives. Others may be perceived as ‘different’ even in their private

world and yet others, may be assumed to be part of social groups they live within but

themselves feel alien to. Lister (1997:6 following Giddens) writes that “… the study

of citizenship has to involve both agency and structural constraints and the interplay

between the two” - in this paper I discuss this interplay emphasising the everyday

ways in which cross-border spouses find ways to express agency despite the structural

constraints which contribute to their marginalisation, limit their freedom and

emphasise their relative powerlessness. In this way, I argue that the expression of

agency is in itself a form of citizenship.

I will start my discussion by arguing, with Joppke (1999), Castles and Davidson

(2000), Schuster and Solomos (2002) among others, that global migration and the rise

of transnational communities has challenged traditional assumptions of citizenship as

a status entirely dependent on legal membership of a State entity. I acknowledge,

however, the continuing importance of the State as a site for negotiating citizenship

and identity and recognise the State as the most powerful entity in the negotiation of

civic identity. In recent years trans- or post-national forms of citizenship have not

replaced State citizenship, rather we have seen increasing control of national

boundaries and concern for the perceived loss of national identity has restricted access

to full citizenship rights for migrants. At the same time, the demand for dual or

multiple nationality from migrants and ‘global citizens’ has not decreased and it

remains the case that it is in relation to the State, that alternative identities are forged

– be they transnational or cultural identities or family or personal identities.

Citizenship theory is often understood as being concerned with democracy and with

the extension of civic and political rights to the marginalised of society even while the

State may use its power to confer citizenship to turn “… supposedly ‘disloyal’ or

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‘troublesome’ minorities into ‘good citizens’” (Kymlicka and Norman 2000:11).

Bosniak (1998) similarly argues that the relationship between the theory of citizenship

and policy debates is problematic. She writes that “… the current fetishization and

devaluation of the figure of the alien” (1998:31), has fed into conceptions of national

projects that encourage the exclusion of aliens from citizenship despite a rhetoric of

inclusivity. Citizenship of aliens “would require us to confront the nationalist

premises that underlie most uses of the term citizenship.” (Bosniak 1998:32 italics in

the original) Similarly for Sharma, “Concepts of citizenship … are the ideological

cement that holds the repressive power of State practices in place. In regard to the

construction of ‘trafficked victims,’ citizenship ‘quietly borrows’ from the fictive

community of the nation in order to restructure the labour market.” (2003:62)

Schuster and Solomos (2002:47) remind us of the position of ‘non-citizens’ in debates

about the nature of citizenship while Kymlicka and Norman reflect that the process of

participation has value in itself and minority ‘voices’ can be heard in the “…

processes of deliberation and opinion formation that precede voting” as well as in the

voting itself (Kymlicka and Norman 2000:9). Such limited and passive participation is

a devalued form of citizenship and one that depends to a large extent on the

willingness of the powerful to hear minority voices. It inevitably means that the more

palatable messages from minorities will be heard at the expense of more radical and

perhaps more authentic ones. National policies aimed at controlling or ‘managing’

migration have led to the restriction, and often removal, of the rights of certain

migrant groups and have resulted in an under-class of marginalised and vulnerable

migrants whose only access to the benefits of citizenship is through their social,

cultural and informal communities and networks. The marginalisation of many

would-be citizens, living as denizens and margizens, has led them to adopt subversive

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tactics to promote their interests and some of these hidden ways to establish

citizenship will be explored below.

Cross-border marriage migration

Family migration, defined as migration to reunite families and to allow new family

groups to be established, represents a significant, and highly gendered, migration flow

around the world. As other avenues of migration have narrowed, family migration

streams remain open for some. In this paper, I am concerned with marriages that take

place across national boundaries and which result in one partner having a different

legal citizenship from the other, at least in the short term. These marriages may be

made within existing family and social networks - joining partners already linked by

kin or other social group ( for example within South Asian communities see Ballard

2004, Gardner 2006, Kalpagam 2005, Shaw and Charsely 2006). Cross-border

marriages that involve migration may also be contracted between individuals who

have no previous ethnic, religious or cultural connection but who meet and decide to

marry with or without the involvement of their families (Johnson 2007, Lu 2005,

Suzuki 2005 and Wang 2007). Marriages both within and between communities may

be contracted after long periods of engagement, or courtship, or after the briefest of

introductions and the marriage partners may have more or less say in the arrangement

of their marriage which they may have actively chosen or have been effectively

forced into. I argue that marriages across borders are essentially the same migration

phenomenon whether they are made within ethnic or other communities or are made

between individuals with no prior connection and argue that instead of categorising

marriages by the social networks connecting spouses, marriages should be compared

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through the degree of agency the potential partners exhibit in the contracting of

marriage and in married life thenceforth. Just as families and social groups can and do

force women into marriage across national boundaries so marriage brokers, traffickers

and others may coerce women to marry virtual strangers abroad. In both cases force

may be overt but force may also be more subtle if women feel they have no viable

alternative to accepting the marriage proposed.

Violence and abuse in the contracting and the lived experience of marriage happens

within families as well as outside them and, in arguing for a more nuanced analysis of

marriages, I hope to counter stereotypes that see traditions of arranged marriage as

either a cultural practice to be accepted uncritically or to be vilified as evidence of

cultural backwardness. The degree of agency potential spouses have in the contracting

of marriages and in their subsequent lives is dependent on numerous individual and

environmental factors which include knowledge and information. The degree of such

knowledge and information, and the level of on-going social support that will be

experienced post-marriage and migration, is unrelated to how the marriage was

contracted. The agency of a new bride and her capacity to continue to act positively

and meaningfully after marriage may be a separate issue from the degree of agency

she might have exerted during the negotiation of the marriage. I argue that citizenship

is inextricably linked with agency as without freedom and the capacity to make

choices about one’s own life, and by extension the lives’ of others, then one cannot

consent to formal citizenship or gain informal citizenship by participating in the life

of a community, however defined. Cross-border marriages are often the target of

suspicion and women entering countries as the spouse of a citizen are often

stereotyped as either the powerless victims of male oppression or as calculating and

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manipulative (Robinson 1996). The reality of these marriages is, of course, far more

complex and while some women and men are indeed the victims of oppressive and

discriminatory traditional practice, others find freedom and self-determination by

marrying in culturally significant ways inside or outside their cultural or social group.

To challenge stereotypes further, the following section will consider some of the

possible meanings placed upon marriage by those who marry across national

boundaries.

The motivations for cross-border marriage

Cross-border marriage may be seen as the result of two different strategies –

migration for the purpose of marriage or marriage for the purpose of migration.

Teasing apart these motivations is difficult, if not impossible and decisions to marry

across international borders result from individual combinations of personal

aspirations, local circumstances, community expectation, opportunity and any number

of other factors. Those who opt for marriage as a means of migration are prepared to

tie their future, at least in the short term, to a foreign partner in the hope that it will

earn them the chance to achieve their aspirations. Migrating to marry, however, may

involve less risk where connections are already in place and where the move involves

little separation from known norms and networks. Crossing national borders to marry,

for whatever reason, results in the non-citizen spouse entering a phase of uncertain

legal status that can be likened to the state of liminality proposed by van Gennep

(1960). This period of liminality may be short-lived, for example while paperwork is

completed and legal rights acquired, but for many the acquisition of these rights is a

protracted process taking place alongside the more difficult process of evolving from

a foreigner to a full and participating citizen.

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After rights to remain are secured and migrant brides have legal rights to enter, reside,

work and enjoy full health and social benefits1, they may still face barriers to full and

equal social participation and citizenship even as they find themselves at the very

heart of every society – in the centre of its families. Eleonore Kofman has written that

“It (the family) is not only the catalyst for a new citizenship, but also the crucible of

multiple belongings” (2004:248). Families are the basic building block of every

community so it could be expected that migrants who move within extended families

would find participation in society easier than migrants who enter as individuals. All

cross-border spouses enter social groups that have established structures and

hierarchies that may seem alien but even once they have become familiar with the

expectations of their family’s members, their role vis-à-vis wider society may be no

more settled. Families are both private and public sites and while they have their own

logics and behaviours, they are influenced by both their private histories and the

histories of their wider social context. Plummer notes that “Families for all their

privacies, are structured through laws and politics: they are the site for the

reproduction of gender relations and indeed the patterning of power relations between

adults and children.” (Plummer 2003:70) The style of power and gender relations

reproduced will greatly affect the opportunities for a migrating spouse to participate in

society and to transform a liminal state into an active and incorporated one.

Cross-border marriage and transnationalism

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Migrants entering on marriage visas face significant obstacles to accessing rights as citizens. Many
countries effectively bind couples together by requiring that they remain married for a fixed period
(two years in the UK, at least three years in Taiwan) or forfeit their right of residence. As of 2005,
Dutch law, for example, requires sponsors of migrant spouses to earn 120% of the minimum wage
(Herman 2006) and some countries set a minimum age for women immigrating for the purpose of
marriage (currently 24 years old in Denmark).

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Many cross-border marriage migrants moving into communities that are to some

extent culturally familiar may be said to be moving within transnational social spaces

and their migration may be part of a wider, on-going, transnational project (Vertovec

1999). As Faist (2000) has described, transnational communities maintain links for

different purposes and cross-border marriage within some transnational groups places

different expectations of their member than others. Spouses marrying within extended

families, for example, may experience a far greater sense of continuity than may be

the case for spouses marrying within a transnational community that shares a common

cultural identity and history rather than day-to-day experience. Peter Kivisto

(2001:572) has argued for a recognition of the role transnational communities play in

the acculturation of migrants into receiving countries and transnational communities

can, not only introduce newcomers to the systems and mechanisms of daily life, but

also offer them a way of participating in a transnational space that values their

experience. Transnational communities may be conservative in outlook and

Goldring’s (2001) observations on their reinforcement of traditional gender roles will

be discussed further below.

Cross-border marriages, then, are made within transnational communities – that is

within communities that have a transnational reach and which maintain and actively

promote elements of a common cultural, traditional or religious heritage. Cross-border

marriages also occur between communities facilitated by transnational links that make

the match and help integrate spouses in resettlement countries. Cross-border

marriages are common in much of East Asia - between (moslty male) citizens of

South Korea, Japan and Taiwan, and women from Vietnam, Indonesia and the

Philippines among others. In these marriages there is usually little shared cultural or

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other identity and spouses may have very little in common with the families they

enter. Many cross-border marriages are contracted between groups with historical and

ethnic links, for example women from the Korean minority in China marrying South

Korean men or Vietnamese women of Chinese descent marrying Taiwanese men, but

while these links may provide some sense of commonality, they may not be close

enough to allow for shared language or cultural expression to ease the integration of

new brides. In cases of intra-cultural marriage, when the new bride knows little of the

society she will join, the family’s role in the introduction of the spouse to her new life

is crucial but may be motivated by ensuring she becomes the sort of wife her in-laws

want her to be (Williams and Yu 2006, Wang 2007). Nascent transnational

communities may still be able to offer some support to new spouses however, and

networks of other cross-border wives have been shown to be instrumental in the

integration process (Wang 2007). The degree to which cross-border spouses have

access to supportive transnational groups depends on a number of factors including

the history of the country as a migration destination; the potential for peer support

from other marriage migrants; traditions of multiculturalism and insitutional support

for newcomers in the country of immigration. Many migrant spouses do not feel

adequately supported in their attempts to adapt to their new life in a foreign country

and many experience isolation and problems in establishing an identity and a

meaningful form of citizenship (Ito 2005, Wang 2007).

Cross-border Marriage and Citizenship

In the next part of this paper I will consider cross-border marriage in the light of

notions of citizenship and in doing this, start from the assumption that most, if not all

cross-border marriage migrants will spend at least the first years of their lives in their

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new country in a state of liminality. I draw on van Gennep’s concept of liminality to

describe the state of living between forms of incorporation – where the subject is

disconnected from one way of life but not yet incorporated into a new one. The

concept of liminality has been employed to inform understandings of the lives of

migrants in general (Williams 2006) and by writers describing the experience of

cross-border marriage migrants living with their new spouses who have yet to become

fully incorporated and accepted in their new homes (Wang 2007; Williams and Yu

2006). Life in states of liminality makes citizenship, as described by Marshall’s

classic definition of citizenship, impossible if citizenship is “a status bestowed on

those who are full members of the community.” (1950:28-29) Marshall assumes

citizens hold full legal status and rights to participate in the political as well as

economic life of the country. By this definition, cross-border marriage migrants have

clearly limited rights to citizenship. Citizenship, according to Ruth Lister is about

practice as well as status (1997) so in discussion of liminal subjects, in this case cross-

border marriage migrants, citizenship must be a negotiation of process, as status is

often denied or is only a future possibility. Informal citizenship, argues Linda

McDowell, carries “ … an assumption of moral worth in which de facto as opposed to

de jure rights of citizenship are defined as open to those who are deserving or who are

capable of acting responsibly.” (McDowell 1999:150 italics in the original).

Citizenship can be understood as “… a term that signifies belonging to and

participation in a group or a community” (Plummer 2003: 50) so citizenship can be

drawn from a community sense of shared historical and/or social belonging whether

or not that fits the national myth of the country of settlement. Citizenship, above all, is

about being ‘in place’ however that place is defined and as such migration can lead to

people feeling more or less ‘in place’ even as they travel. Moving from a place of

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origin where one has nationality but no freedom to express one’s cultural or social

identity, to a second country where legal citizenship has not been established, may

nevertheless confer citizenship if a personal sense of freedom or belonging is

established.

Scholars have recognised that citizenship is a status generally bestowed on women by

men (Anderson 2000, Lister 1997), either directly, through the attainment of

economic or political value in ways recognised by masculine authority, or indirectly

through association, for example as a wife, daughter or mother. Migrants may not be

citizens in Marshall’s sense of being both contributors to and beneficiaries of the State

but, especially those who place themselves within transnational communities, may

experience a strong sense of citizenship even as they are deliberately excluded from

the everyday life of the State. Citizenship for cross-border marriage migrants takes on

different forms depending on immigration status, ethnicity, religious affiliation, class,

professional status let alone personal circumstances but in considering the types of

citizenship open to cross-border migrants, it is important to remember that citizenship,

especially legal citizenship, is generally linked to an individual’s capacity for

‘productive labour’ (van Walsum and Spijkerboer 2007). Rights to family reunion

within the EU, for example, are in place to eliminate “obstacles to the mobility of the

worker” (Community law cited by Ackers 2004:375) and are “derived” and not free-

standing. In practice this means that entrants must show they will not be a “burden on

the public purse …” (Ackers 2004:377). Forms of temporary and conditional entry

not only block citizenship but also emphasise the provisional nature of entry (Kofman

2005:456). Rights can be removed at the whim of the State and, as well as this being a

disincentive for migrants to establish a home for themselves, it also throws doubt on

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the loyalty of migrants who are often accused of lacking commitment and willingness

to integrate. So even while there has been a trend towards understanding citizenship

as “…based more on personhood than membership of a national and bounded political

community” (Kofman 2005:454), there has been a simultaneous resurgence of the

nation-state as an exclusionary device, especially in industrialised countries, through

increased control over migration and a retreat from multiculturalism (Kofman 2005).

Citizenship in cross-border marriage – ethnographic case studies

To illustrate some of the ideas of transnationalism, liminality and migrant citizenship

discussed above, I will use three published, ethnographic accounts of cross-border

marriage to discuss how models of citizenship may play out for migrant brides. It is

hoped that by using examples from the real lives of women some general conclusions

can be drawn. The following case studies are taken from three separate pieces of

primary research and describe different styles of cross-border marriage.

Alison Shaw and Katherine Charsley’s (2006) research with transnational Pakistani

communities in Pakistan and in the UK presents important qualitative data that

demonstrates the role of emotional ties in Pakistani transnational communities in

underpinning many cross-border marriages contracted within the community. Shaw

and Charsley (2006) contrast prevalent, but stereotypical, images of Pakistani

communities forcing marriage on mismatched and unwilling couples with empirical

evidence which shows families taking care to find matches that are acceptable to the

potential spouses and which reflect the heterogeneous socio-economic nature of

families living in Pakistan and the UK. The families making the matches in Shaw and

Charsley’s work employ the traditional concept of rishtas which emphasises both

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“strategic advantage and the emotional aspects of marrying” (Shaw and Charsley

2006:407 italics in the original). In this transnational community, marriage has a

particular significance as an important way of maintaining and re-affirming kinship

ties stretched and threatened by distance and infrequent contact. A prime purpose of

any marriage is to maximise socio-economic advantage and in this example the

attainment of full, legal citizenship is an important resource to share within the group.

The promise, then, of formal citizenship, obtained through marriage and bringing with

it opportunities for employment, education, movement and much else, is an incentive

for arranging cross-border marriages. This form of citizenship is, however, only one

type of citizenship potentially available to these migrants. Marriage within

community rewards partners with new forms of community citizenship by conferring

on them full membership of the broader community as adults. In classic

anthropological style, these marriages are rites of passage that end the period of

liminality between childhood and incorporation into the adult world. Intercommunity

marriages, in Shaw and Charsley’s study are further valued for enhancing

transnational connections, maintaining family and social bonds and for reaffirming

cultural and historical ties. In many of the matches described by Shaw and Charsley,

the young people involved were presented with matches arranged by their parents but

reported being confident that they would not be forced to accept matches they were

not happy with. Taking part in a culturally sanctioned and traditional process gave

them a sense of ‘doing the right thing’, of behaving as dutiful children and of taking

their place in the adult world. Thus citizenship, as participation in the transnational

community, may be seen as of equal or greater importance than participation as a

British citizen.

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A different type of cross-border marriage is described by Maria Balzani (2006) in her

study of the Ahmadi Muslim community in the UK. This community is based on

religion rather than ethnicity or family ties but marriage has a similarly important role

in maintaining and developing a sense of community and transnational citizenship.

The Ahmadi sect, as described by Balzani, is South Asian in origin and encourages

transnational marriage as a means of strengthening and spreading the sect’s global

reach. It welcomes interethnic matches so long as both parties are Ahmadi followers.

Marriage, therefore, confers a transnational form of citizenship and also confirms a

continuing shared identity. Balzani describes how the lack of a kinship base to the

community means that single people have no family mechanism to make matches and

that the mosque undertook to “… arrange suitable marriages, or remarriages, and so

helped the new converts to find a place in the Ahmadi social network. ” (Balzani

2006:348) Put in other terms, the mosque and its adherents took on the role of family

and a ‘religious citizenship’ provided a site for identity and social participation that

transcended ethnicity, national or cultural background. Similarly, the mosque

provided a site for the development of networks and of building the participatory

citizenship of its adherents through its use of volunteers which provided “a ready

network of acquaintances and social interactions …” for new migrants who could

“volunteer in a mosque and join an instantly recognizable organization with family

rituals and events.” (Balzani 2006:350) Balzani’s article gives examples of how the

sect and its institutions (chiefly its mosques) provide sites for citizenship practices for

its members. Cross-border marriage migrants, as in the Pakistani case above, brought

with them transferable skills and knowledge that were valued and which eased their

entry into life in their new country.

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The third case I refer to describes the situation of a group of cross-border marriage

migrants contracting inter-ethnic marriages. Hongzen Wang (2007) describes

strategies adopted by Vietnamese women married to Taiwanese men in Taiwan.

These women do not share language or culture with their husbands and have not

migrated as part of any established community. Their marriages have often been

facilitated by brokers who may or may not retain an interest in the success or failure

of the matches. Wang describes how many of these women live with their husband’s

families and may be expected to behave as ‘good’ daughters-in-law – that is behave as

their new families determine, often as domestic helpers to the family as a whole.

Vietnamese brides, as brides from other Southeast Asian countries, are discriminated

against by some sections of Taiwanese society and are stereotyped as being poor,

poorly educated and of marrying for money rather than love. Wang argues that despite

their marginalised position they are still able achieve a form of citizenship. Wang

argues that it is their very liminality that allows them space and a limited form of

citizenship, away from their families and “unhinged from the scripted roles like

mother, father or daughter” (Wang 2007). For the Vietnamese brides in Taiwan, their

‘private space’ is to be found in the ‘public spaces’ of parks, squares, Vietnamese

restaurants and the government sponsored integration classes. Here they can find a

marginal form of citizenship and agency in spaces that are more Vietnamese than

Taiwanese. Further, the brides’ cultural and social separation can be turned to an

advantage as the fact that the brides have been effectively bought by their husbands

frees them from their own and local social norms, allowing them to threaten to leave

their husbands and behave in ways which would be sanctioned were they more

integrated into the mainstream of the community.

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This third form of ‘marginal citizenship’, insofar as it can be called citizenship, is

extremely precarious, but demonstrates that even in positions of weakness, some

migrants can exert leverage on the powerful and that there are channels of agency

down which power can be diverted. The women described in Wang’s study have to

remain three years in Taiwan before they can establish an independent right to stay in

the country and even though returning to Vietnam might be a theoretical option, they

may have strong reasons for not doing so, including the social conditions, poverty and

unemployment that propelled them to marry across international borders in the first

place. This degraded and marginal form of liminal citizenship may help these women

to build tenable lives in Taiwan until they can achieve some form of formal

citizenship to build their future aspirations upon.

In the three case studies considered here, spouses marrying across borders all face a

period of liminality while their residency status is made permanent and, while

marriage to a citizen may make the process easier than for other categories of migrant,

they will still face extended periods dependent on their partners for their financial

well-being and for their right to remain. Two of the three studies (the Pakistani and

Ahmadi groups) describe communities which can provide opportunities for new

migrant spouses to participate to a significant degree in the activities and life of the

community and within their communities at least, spouses can experience some of the

benefits of participative citizenship. In the third case study, of Vietnamese brides in

Taiwan, foreign spouses may have very limited opportunities to express any kind of

citizenship and, until they become legally and socially able to participate in

Taiwanese society, their most effective avenue for independent and autonomous

action may be through marginal, unofficial and often subversive networks.

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Discussion

A key point of debate underlying this paper is the question of whether people

experiencing states of liminality can ever be said to experience ‘citizenship’. Simon

Turner (1999) has described how young men in refugee camps were able to transgress

social roles and become powerful beyond their years by virtue of the liminality of

refugee camp life. In Turner’s study, liminal subjects gained power and influence

through their adaptability to a specific marginal environment – but surely they gained

a state far short of ‘citizenship’? There is a tendency for acts of resistance to be

romanticised and Wang (2007) warns us not to over-estimate the possibilities of

citizenship for marginalised groups, such as the Vietnamese women he describes who

may be able to display agency but only achieve a very degraded form citizenship.

Citizenship, as described by Lister (1997), is a process as much as an outcome and

women’s active participation in movements for political and social change may be

evidence of agency that is a step on the road to ‘citizenship’. Bridget Anderson’s

(2000) work on migrant domestic labour has shown how women are far from being

equally powerless and it is important to identify the nature of power relationships

between women as well as in relation to men. Just as it is important not to stereotype

all cross-border migrants as abused or abusive it is important not to assume that all

women whose marriages appear to make them vulnerable are equally powerless.

Local citizenship may offer opportunities for political mobilisation and community-

based action (Schuster and Solomos 2002) and Suzuki (2005) describes how Filipina

women married to Japanese men started self-help organisations that acted as a fillip

for women’s activism in Japan. Local community-based organisations are particularly

important in developing women’s participative citizenship as they reflect an arena of

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public life that may be more acceptable for women to take a lead in and which may

suit women’s skills and interests. Goldring’s study of transnational organisations

noted that State promotion of transnational community organisations “plays a key role

in gendering citizenship in transnational spaces” (2001:524) as these institutions tend

to promote the types of transnational organisations that effectively exclude women

and promote participation in a traditionally masculine manner. Goldring continues

“…masculine citizenship is privileged in these (transnational) spaces … women’s

citizenship is more likely to be practiced in the host country context.” (2001:524) A

distinction between masculine and feminine citizenship may be based on men’s use of

formal mechanisms (i.e. those State institutions that favour men) while women’s

citizenship may be based on informal groupings and networks. These informal

groupings – such as those described by Wang (2007) go unrecognised by the powerful

allowing them to continue their influence discreetly. Women’s participation, as

Goldring notes, may be “shaped by conformity to ‘traditional’ norms … focussing on

children and family, health and the local environment…” (2001:526) but may be no

less powerful for that. Women with caring responsibilities often by necessity develop

networks and Ito’s work with migrant women in Japan shows that although

opportunities were rare, public cultural events allowed women to meet “local officials

and notables” which raised the status of the women in the eyes of their in-laws and

earned them important social recognition (Ito 2005:64). Louise Ackers (1998) found

that women, by preference, tend to spread the burden of caring – and their

‘dependence’ – between male partners, the State, other females in their family or

social group, their wider family and the market. Migrant women with smaller social

networks and narrower forms of citizenship were obliged to depend on fewer of these

actors and had less opportunity to spread the burden of care and its attendant burden

19
of dependence. If isolated and marginal, women with caring responsibilities have a

great incentive to develop networks of support and may find different solutions to

common problems. Peter Kivisto (2001:568) reminds us of the different ‘affective

character’ of transnational spaces and of the importance of the trusting relationships

that are often a characteristic of transnational spaces (Williams 2006).

Transnational spaces are evolving spaces in which social norms are challenged,

reaffirmed and renegotiated to meet the demands of changing social and political

environments and “Transnational migrants forge their sense of identity and their

community, not out of a loss or mere replication, but as something that is at once new

and familiar – a bricolage constructed of cultural elements from both the homeland

and the receiving nation.” (Kivisto 2001:568 italics in original) Liminal spaces, are

spaces that are waiting to be ‘fixed’ and as such are spaces that lend themselves to

change and adaptation. Here the different stages of the life course can count, as while

younger people, perhaps starting out on their adult lives, may seize the opportunity

migration offers to cut links with the past and forge new identities and ways of life,

older generations may seek to re-establish a lost or an imagined past even across

distance. Stuart Hall cited in Alund (1999:156) describes contemporary identity as

“strategic and positional” and nowhere is this more true than for migrants seeking to

establish citizenship away from ‘home’.

Women may be seeking to attain (and retain) different forms of citizenship in both

their country of settlement and country of origin but citizenship may only be achieved

after a considerable length of time spent living with sometimes very compromised

rights. The compromised or degraded citizenship experienced by many marriage

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migrants mirrors the experience of migrants living on temporary visas or without

documentation across the world. They represent a significant minority whose labour

contributes to economies but who have little or no access to the safety nets of welfare

provision full, legal citizens can call upon - let alone have access to formal routes of

political representation. For women married to citizens, who are perhaps mothers of

citizens, their vulnerability may be all the greater as it is often assumed that being

positioned within families, and therefore at the ‘heart of society’, they would be

protected. Their position in the private, domestic, sphere means that if things go

wrong, they may suffer alone beyond the protection of the State. Studies have shown

that marriage affects the social status of women in many ways – perhaps increasing

their freedom when marriage marks the end of control by their birth family or

reducing it as their labour is transferred from their birth family to their husband’s

family.

For many women, being married is in itself a state to be desired and despite the

involvement of family and community, is a personal contract between two people

who may wish to raise children together. Marriage has many meanings in different

countries, cultures and religions not to mention in the minds of individuals. To learn

of what it means to marry across borders, whether it is a goal in itself or a means to

another end requires listening to and respecting the experience of women and men

who have experienced it. Similarly, the types of formal and informal citizenship that

result from marriage and from the processes along the way are complex, worthy of

careful study and have the potential to inform broader studies of the citizenship of

migrants. There is a clear need for further person-centred and person-sensitive

research based on the individual narratives of marriage migrants. Ken Plummer, urges

21
researchers to take on the role of listener as an essential way of understanding the

complexity of the experience of others and also of ourselves - “… we do have to learn

to listen to one another’s stories of how we make our way through the moral tangle of

today …” (2003:145) and this is as true in the study of cross-border marriage as in

any other field.

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