Chinese Marriage Migrants in Beijing’s Cross-Strait Diplomacy

Abstract

The role of Chinese communities abroad has become increasingly significant in Beijing’s public diplomacy strategy. This is not only the case for Overseas Chinese communities, but also for people who migrate between China and Taiwan. This paper will explore how a group of Chinese migrant women, the mothers, wives and daughters-in-law of Taiwanese citizens, have become a target of Beijing in its cross-Strait diplomacy and how they have responded to Beijing’s initiatives. This paper gives a timely account of Beijing’s non-traditional diplomacy in the context of cross-Strait relations, as a constructed and gendered process.

Can the subaltern feel? An ethnography of migration, subalternity, and emotion

“…The organisation, seen as their natal home, a safe space where migrant women could find protection, information, practical help, also allowed women to understand that their personal plight were shared by others. Through the recognition that shared needs and experiences were also translated into mutual emotions, a powerful and emotional narrative of the injustice they were subjected to was gradually built and used to enact broader transformation (Momesso 2015b).…”

“I Vote so I am”: Marriage Migrants’ Political Participation in Taiwan

“…They have been involved in consultative committees within the main political parties and some have even founded their own independent political parties. Migrants from mainland China have also been targeted by Beijing as potential messengers of a unified China in Taiwan, nurturing the emergence of pro-unification political parties initiated by marriage migrants (Momesso, 2020b). Witnessing this transition from non-conventional to conventional political actions, in summer 2019 I spent three months in Taipei, where I focused my fieldwork on migrant voting preferences and behaviour.…”

“…Finally, it may be important to reflect on the fact that, since the second half of the 2010s, Beijing has also formalised a series of exchanges with marriage migrants from mainland China who were residing in Taiwan. In a phase in which this social group acquired strategic importance in Beijing's cross-Strait politics, new opportunities of transnational political participation have also emerged for migrants from mainland China, a matter that I have broadly discussed elsewhere (Momesso, 2020b).…”

“…Earlier scholarship explores their political participation by means of non-conventional political actions, such as protests, rallies, and petitions (Chang, 2004;Chao, 2006;Hsia, 2008;King, 2011;Momesso and Cheng, 2017). Yet, more recently, the literature has alerted us to formal practices of political engagement through electoral and party politics (Chen and Luo, 2014;Cheng, 2014;Cheng, 2016;Cheng and Fell, 2014;Cheng, Momesso and Fell, 2018;Momesso, 2020a). This scholarship, similarly to broader debates on migrant political participation in the Western world, focuses on social, economic, and legal factors in shaping marriage migrants' political integration and participation, such as acquisition of citizenship rights, class and ethnic background, transnational connections.…”