Thai wives in Europe and European husbands in Thailand: how social locations shape their migration experiences and engagement with host societies

Kanchanachitra, Manasigan; Chuenglertsiri, Pattraporn

doi:10.1080/1369183x.2020.1711569

Cited by 11 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Even if they are not always aware of it, Western foreigners (mostly men) who move to Thailand for marriage, retirement, or lifestyle, have a relationship to the Thai countryside by proxy, when they engage with their wives and carers, who keep strong emotional and material bonds rooted in the village. Some men relocate to their partner's family's village defining themselves as 'providers' in a journey from 'sex tourist to son-in-law' (Thompson, Kitiarsa, and Smutkupt 2016), while others resist obligations towards extended families, and prefer to remain in tourist cities, while their partners remit back 'home' (see Kanchanachitra and Chuenglertsiri 2020). Life-style retirees inventing their personal new age 'paradise' by appropriating 'Thai-ness' for their individual gratification (see Scuzzarello), have few qualms about living in gated-communities that are plonked willy-nilly in the middle of (and thereby transforming) rural village communities.…”

Section: Reactions To Globalisation: States' Restrictive Immigration mentioning

confidence: 99%

Globalising Thailand through gendered ‘both-ways’ migration pathways with ‘the West’: cross-border connections between people, states, and places

Statham

Scuzzarello

Sunanta

et al. 2020

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

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This article explains why significant Thai-Western 'both-ways' migration pathways have evolved, grown and sustained over the last decades. It introduces a set of research contributions on transnational social relationships and cross-border connections between people that arise from the increasingly large-scale mobilities and migrations between Thailand and 'the West'countries from Europe, North America and Australia. While Thai and Western people's social relationships are usually studied as personal stories within a cross-border marriage migration perspective, we consider it necessary to see them as more than marriage migration. Specifically, we argue that the growing 'bothways' Thai-Western migration pathways can only be understood by reference to three features of globalisation processes specific to Thailand: first, cross-border connections and social networks generated by massive West-to-Thailand tourist mobilities that incentivise Western men to see living permanently with a Thai partner as 'realistic'; second, the radical transformations of Thai rural societies under conditions of economic development that produces 'surplus' mobile women; and third, the restrictive state immigration and citizenship regimes in the West and Thailand that leaves few pathways open for migration, other than by 'marriage'. In sum, Thailand's specific experience of globalisation is the explanatory backstory to the extraordinary prevalence of Thai-Western 'both-ways' migrations.

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Section: Reactions To Globalisation: States' Restrictive Immigration mentioning

confidence: 99%

Globalising Thailand through gendered ‘both-ways’ migration pathways with ‘the West’: cross-border connections between people, states, and places

Statham

Scuzzarello

Sunanta

et al. 2020

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

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“…It is thus argued that intersectional approaches in migration research are further enhanced by examining multiple social scales, including the local, the national, the transnational, and the intimate scale (Mahler et al ., 2015). Thai marriage migrants do not necessarily start from a weak status in Thai society as recently suggested by Statham (2020) and Kanchanachitra and Chuenglertsiri (2020) but rather originate from different socioeconomic classes. Our research shows that Thai migrants from rich families experience economic and occupational downward mobilities but simultaneously enjoy higher degrees of personal freedom and autonomy in their families and relationships.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 82%

“…Intersectional approaches also have the potential to resolve agency and structure without upholding cultural essentialism and to liberate migration research from bounded categories, ‘such as “ethnic community” and “marginalised subgroups”’ (Bürkner, 2012: 192). Kanchanachitra and Chuenglertsiri (2020) studied how social locations of cross‐border migrants shape their migration experiences and found that Thai wives in Europe often face discrimination and downward social mobility. Heyse (2010) deployed an intersectional framework to explore social categories and power relations shaping Russian marriage migrants’ notions of identity and representation.…”

Section: Marry Up and Marry Downmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender, class, and paradoxical mobilities of Thai marriage migrants in Austria

Butratana

Trupp

2020

Singap J Trop Geogr

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In this paper, we investigate whether marriage‐related migration promotes socioeconomic mobility and how class belonging and educational background affects Thai women's migration experience and socioeconomic mobility. Drawing on qualitative interviews, supported by a questionnaire survey with Thai women living in Austria and who are in a relationship with a Western male citizen, we seek to dismantle simplistic notions about hypergamy and question common assumption about marrying up or down in migration contexts. We compare socioeconomic indicators such as formal education, occupation, and income before and after the migration and analyse migrants’ experiences in Austria. The results show a complex picture of upward and downward socioeconomic mobilities. Two distinct scenarios of paradoxical mobilities have been identified. On the one hand, some migrants feel empowered (when experiencing economic downward mobility) as they enjoy the freedom of living in Austria, while on the other hand, those migrants experiencing upward mobility feel a loss of their personal autonomy.

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“…2 2 Western men are primarily a contextual reference point. For accounts of their lives, see Lafferty and Maher (2020) and Kanchanachitra and Chuenglertsiri (2020). …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, he explicitly refrained from discussing 'social' transnational flows of ideas, behaviours, identities and social capital; thus, his argument remained highly general and abstract, providing few clues of what 'transnational living' substantively means for people and places.2 Western men are primarily a contextual reference point. For accounts of their lives, seeLafferty and Maher (2020) andKanchanachitra and Chuenglertsiri (2020).3 See contributions toConstable (2005),Yang and Lu (2010) and Wei-Jun and Zheng (2020).4 Data analysis of Thai 2010 Census and household registrations (available on request) shows Western men are on average 15 years older than their partners, 60% are 50 years or older and 35% are 60 years or older.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Unintended transnationalism’: The challenging lives of Thai women who partner Western men

Statham

2020

Population Space and Place

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This article studies a specific form of transnational living that results from Thai–Western cross‐border marriage migration: Thai women's experiences of intercultural partnerships with a Western man. The study is explicitly from a Thai female partner's perspective. It unpacks women's experiences and perceptions of living this life from their own accounts. We refer to their experiences and perceptions of living this form of transnational life as unintended transnationalism, that is, that living a life defined by dependent gendered intercultural exchanges with a foreign man was a by‐product, not an aspiration of her strategy for a better life. Living ‘unintended transnationalism’ refers to how women negotiate the specific high challenges and sociocultural pressures arising from dependency on a foreign man, who largely decides where, when and how you live. Women face strong acculturation pressures to adapt to their husbands' Western cultural needs, on his terms, even when they share a home in Thailand—a process we define as imported assimilationism. The study shows how her experiences of transnational living are importantly shaped by her: access to rights, cultural differences with her partner, and positioning in social space and place in Thailand, over this life journey. It draws from 20 biographical interviews with women in partnerships (between 7 and 30 years) with Westerners, currently resident in Thailand. Overall, we find that living ‘unintended transnationalism’ is a challenging life, even for women who make significant material gains. It can lead to isolation, dissociation from family, and dissimilation from belonging in Thailand.

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Thai wives in Europe and European husbands in Thailand: how social locations shape their migration experiences and engagement with host societies

Cited by 11 publications

References 25 publications

Globalising Thailand through gendered ‘both-ways’ migration pathways with ‘the West’: cross-border connections between people, states, and places

Globalising Thailand through gendered ‘both-ways’ migration pathways with ‘the West’: cross-border connections between people, states, and places

Gender, class, and paradoxical mobilities of Thai marriage migrants in Austria

‘Unintended transnationalism’: The challenging lives of Thai women who partner Western men

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