Motherhood, empowerment and contestation: the act of citizenship of vietnamese immigrant activists in the realm of the new southbound policy

Abstract

This paper focuses on how immigrant activists interact with the host state in socio-political spheres where they exercise their citizenship. Located in Taiwan's New Southbound Policy (NSP), this paper adopts the concept of 'act of citizenship' to analyse Vietnamese activists' interactions with the NSP. This paper finds that the NSP appropriated immigrant women's motherhood and family relationships in order to boost tourism and facilitate Southeast Asian language acquisition in the short term and to enhance Taiwan's relationship with Southeast Asia in the long run. In response, immigrant activists utilised the NSP to build their own capacity and to realise their acts of empowerment, compassion and contestation in the family and public domains. They not only improved individuals' wellbeing but also made the Taiwanese state accountable for gender bias and inequality. These findings offer a much needed gender perspective into immigrant activists' dialectical relationship with the migration state of Taiwan.

Social Media Use and Migrants’ Intersectional Positioning: A Case Study of Vietnamese Female Migrants

“…Tran-Mac's use of the Taiwanese government's funding to sustain her organisation and hire an assistant to boost their visibility is a strategy that makes the most out of her circumstances. This finding particularly echoes the results from Cheng's (2021) article on how Vietnamese immigrant activists navigate and utilise the available funding for the endorsement of SEA cultures to support and empower their community. As migrants or even children of migrants and ex-migrants, some VFMs find ways to construct their identities online in their own definitions and are even able to benefit financially from these online engagements.…”

“…The collected data further the understanding of different migrant groups' social media adoption, i.e., the VFMs to East Asia. Additionally, the article answers Huang's (2020, p. 78) call to extend scholarship beyond the "linear and one-way migration from less developed to more developed countries" and explore female migration in the South-South pattern, which has developed significantly lately (Cheng, 2021;Grillot, 2011).…”

“…Nowadays, Vietnamese women and Taiwanese men can meet organically in professional and educational settings, resulting in marriages of choice. The total number of VFMs in Taiwan, as of January 2021, is 155,942 (Ministry of Interior, 2021), and they remain the largest group of marriage migrants from SEA in Taiwan (Cheng, 2021). The second group of participants in this article includes VFMs who have married Taiwanese men and currently reside on the island.…”

“…Marriage migration from Vietnam to China and Taiwan is highly gendered (Bélanger & Wang, 2012;Blue Dragon, 2021;Cheng, 2021;Grillot, 2011); this female migration flow is crucially affected by gender structures, cultural systems, and national power relations between the countries: Certain Taiwanese men wish to marry women from a poorer country to feel "superior" (Bélanger & Wang, 2012) and similarly, numerous Chinese men seek wives who are submissive, docile, and obedient to maintain the gendered dynamics (Lhomme et al, 2021). Confucian tenets are deeply rooted in Vietnam (Vijeyarasa, 2010); these tenets are also highly appreciated in China and Taiwan.…”

“…These two groups of VFMs each hold distinctive social particularities, yet both undergo forms of oppression because of gender subordination, racial hierarchy, and class division, situated within particular social norms and local belief systems. Other studies have shown that power works to suppress female migrant groups through manifestations in policies (Bonjour & de Hart, 2013;Cheng, 2021), social and legal stigmas (Huang, 2020;Vijeyarasa, 2010), and female body commodification (Bélanger & Wang, 2012;Wang, 2010). The significance of intersectionality lies precisely in criticising how power works through multiple layers and affects collectivities and communities differently (Yuval-Davis, 2011).…”