Marriage Migration, Intercultural Families and Global Intimacies

✍ Scribed by Kathryn Robinson

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2024
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 131
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book brings an innovative study of marriage migration in Australia, offering new insights into issues of intimacy and authenticity online. In doing so, it delivers on five main objectives: exploring emotional attachment and personal life in global spaces; interrogating stereotypes and their pervasive influence on personal relations; analysing attitudes and social practice within the institution of marriage; investigating immigration policy, marriage, and citizens’ rights; theorizing gender and class relations in the current global order. The analysis moves between ‘online’ and ‘offline’ social relations and processes, with comparative data enabling a critical framing of the data on marriage relationships developed online.

This important contribution places contemporary forms of transcultural marriage and marriage brokering in a historical context of ‘marriage’ in the ‘Anglosphere’ tradition, and in particular historical forms of marriage migration in settler colonial and now multicultural Australia―including histories of colonial era ‘bride ships’ and post WW2 ‘proxy brides’ from southern Europe.

✦ Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Contents
About the Author
Chapter 1: Introduction: Transnational Cross-Cultural Marriage in Australia’s Multicultural Society
Introduction
The Genesis of the ‘Mail-Order Bride’ Stereotype
Histories of Mediated Marriages
What Is Marriage?
Marriage and Moral Panics
End of Patriarchalism?
Stereotypes
Stereotypes and Stigma
What Are the New Forms of Family Created Through International Marriages?
Where Did the Stereotypes Come from?
New Patterns of Transnational Courtship
Conclusion
Works Cited
Chapter 2: Histories of Spousal Migration
Introduction: Migration for Marriage
Female Migration in the Early White Settler Colony
Origins of the White Settler Colony
Disruption of Families
Women Convicts
Marriage
Free Settlement and Bride Migration
Assisted Passage Schemes for Women in the Nineteenth Century
Non-British Free Migration in the Nineteenth Century
Post-World War 2
Proxy Marriage
Asian Migration
Spousal Migration in the ‘Mail-Order Bride’ Era (Post 1980s)
‘Mail-Order Bride’
Immigration Policy, Economics and Rights of Social Citizenship
Migration and Family Care
Combatting Abuse of Vulnerable Women
Welfare, the Family and Immigration Policy
Critical Role of the Family in Welfare Provision
Conclusion
Works Cited
Chapter 3: ‘An Ocean of Fishes’: Negotiating Love Online
Finding Intimacy, Reconfiguring Gender Relations in a Virtual World
Is the Internet Another Place? Is It Something Altogether Novel?
The Internet as a Space of ‘Community’?
KASAL: Online Intimacy and Courtship/Transnational Cross-Cultural Relationships
Favourite Narratives, Stories and Tropes
How Do People Meet?
The ‘Spark’
Communication and Getting to Know One another
The Internet Compared with Other Ways of Dating
Checking for Authenticity
Some Kinds of Interpersonal Interactions Are Enhanced by Technologies
What About Stereotypes?
Marriage, Trust and Intimacy
The Greencard: Immigration as a Form of Capital
Cultural Differences
The Ring
Conclusion
Works Cited
Chapter 4: Creating Intercultural Families
Introduction
Meet the Families
Trevor and Alma: The ‘Snail Mail’ Generation
Negotiating Gender Roles
Maria and Roy: Matchmaking
Matchmaking
Family Caring
Ongoing Responsibility for Family Members Overseas
John and Medina: Meeting Via an Internet ‘Asian Bride’ Site
Financial ‘Motives’: Opportunity to Earn Money to Support the Education of Their Children
June and John: Online Courtship After Matchmaking by a Friend
Demographics—Limited Opportunities to Marry
What Else Do Do the Case Studies Reveal–Motives/Intentions/Opportunities/Satisfactions?
Ideals of Family Life
Stereotypes
Seeking ‘Autonomy’ to Pursue Their Own Lives; Adventures in Identity
Engaging Multiculturalism
Negative Stereotypes and Communication
‘Quasi-Kin/Affinal’ Networks
‘Third Culture’ Children
Impacts of Immigration Regimes
Indonesian-Australian families
Religion
Similarities in Experience with Filipino-Australian Families
Immigration Issues
Racism and Stereotypes
Conclusion
Works Cited
Conclusion: Global Intimacy, Marriage and Mediated Courtship
Appendix: Methodology
Ethics and Confidentiality
Brief Description of Research Sites
Index