'Assisting you to become a local': NGOs and constructed foreign spouses in Eastern Taiwan. Issue 1 (2nd January 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Lin, Jun-Hua
• Is Part Of: Gender, place and culture. Volume 25:Issue 1(2018)
• Page Start: 118
• Page End: 133
• Publication Date: 2018-01-02
• Subjects: Empowerment -- foreign spouse -- gender role -- image -- NGO -- transnational marriage; Human geography -- Periodicals; Feminism -- Periodicals; Géographie féministe -- Périodiques; 305.305
• DOI: 10.1080/0966369X.2017.1395819
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0966-369X

Abstract

Abstract: As social and cultural contexts change and globalization spreads, the number of transnational-marriage migrants mainly from Southeast Asia has increased in Taiwan. Using institutional ethnography, this article investigates the roles of local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and projects aimed at helping foreign spouses to adapt to their new life. I mainly elaborate that NGOs emerge as important actors in assisting and empowering transnational spouses to 'become locals'. In empowerment projects, foreign spouses are given a voice to elaborate themselves. However, this article elaborates that these projects are a scheme of education to shape each such migrant into a proper 'Taiwanese wife/mother/daughter-in-law'. Also, these projects particularly promote 'exoticism' of migrants and become key sources of how local people understand the images of 'foreign spouses'. As a result, though NGOs play positive roles in empowering foreign spouses, we need to be aware that NGOs' efforts may ironically become a mechanism to strengthen transnational spouses' gender roles and cultural stereotypes.