Disentangling Gender and Ethnicity in Ethnic Intermarriage

The transnationalisation of intimacy: family relations and changes in an age of global mobility and digital media

“…Migration legislation and policies on citizenship and social welfare tend to treat migrants as productive subjects and limit their access to essential family rights (Brandhorst, 2020;Merla et al, 2020). For instance, migrants often have limited rights to reunite with their family members in the host countries, and their rights to form a family through pathways such as unmarried cohabitation, marriage, and adoption are closely scrutinised and censored by their host countries (Hu, 2016;Papademetriou & Sumption, 2011). Migration policies may also limit the temporary visit or settlement of migrants' left-behind family members (Baldassar et al, 2007;Brandhorst, 2020).…”

“…Although digital technologies facilitate the maintenance of a sense of familyhood, such digitally mediated familial intimacy can also reinforce stringent familial norms and gendered expectations despite physical separation (Cabalquinto, 2018b;Hu, 2016;Madianou & Miller, 2012;Parreñas, 2015). For instance, digital connectivity has created distinct 'transnational mothering' and 'transnational fathering' practices (Parreñas, 2001(Parreñas, , 2008.…”

“…20 Nevertheless, there is also some evidence that transnational migration provides a creative solution for people to lift anchor from familial norms imposed at their places of origin (Sassen, 2003). In his research on Chinese-Western intermarriage, Hu (2016) finds that transnational migration enabled some professional Chinese women to evade social pressure imposed by the stigma of 'leftover women', which vilifies their socioeconomic achievements and singlehood. In this case, transnational migration provides the women with a viable way to individualise their choice of whether and when to marry.…”

Gender discrimination in societal and familial realms: Understanding agency among Chinese marriage migrant women in Switzerland

“…Previous research on Chinese-European interethnic couples (and families) (Lieber and Lévy, 2011; Hu, 2016; Wang, 2017) have analyzed the gender identity and transformation of family norms. In her study of Chinese-European interethnic marriages in Paris, Wang (2017) analyzed how Chinese men and women with French spouses live with the gendered transformation of family and matrimonial norms in an international migration context, while the research of Lieber and Lévy (2011) examined how women from Northern China developed strategies to marry French men to guarantee their legal status and to get better work or higher pay in France.…”

“…For migrant women, marriage was considered as the most effective way for them to deal with their precarious legal and economic position (Lieber and Lévy, 2011). For Chinese-British interethnic families, Hu (2016) emphasized that marriage migration has become the second major channel for the creation of Chinese-British families in the UK. Hu was the first researcher who analyzed the ethnic and gender identities of Chinese women during the processes of migration and marriage in the UK.…”