Transnational masculinities In situ: Singaporean husbands and their international marriage experiences. Area 44 (1):76-82. (original) (raw)
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As international marriages continue to be on the rise around the world, and in East and Southeast Asia in particular, there is an increasing need for more focused studies on the phenomenon. While the extant literature has paid attention to the complex dynamics of marital intimacies through a 'gender-sensitive' lens, the experiences of men are still largely under-examined. This article considers the gendered and classed subjectivities of Singaporean husbands who have married Vietnamese wives and focuses on 'money' as a key vehicle through which the men are able to construct masculinities in the spaces of transnational marriage and family. We argue that these non-migrant men engage with transnational processes and practices strategically in order to reclaim respectable and honourable masculine status. In doing so, they dislodge themselves from the idiom of 'failed masculinity' commonly ascribed to men who seek foreign spouses, but at the same time reproduce dominant models of masculinity predicated on 'breadwinning' and 'providing'. This article draws on the narratives of 20 Singaporean Chinese men from a range of social backgrounds to demonstrate the endurance of money and economic potency in the performance of masculinities.
2014
As international marriages continue to be on the rise around the world, and in East and Southeast Asia in particular, there is an increasing need for more focused studies on the phenomenon. While the extant literature has paid attention to the complex dynamics of marital intimacies through a ‘gender-sensitive’ lens, the experiences of men are still largely under-examined. This article considers the gendered and classed subjectivities of Singaporean husbands who have married Vietnamese wives and focuses on ‘money’ as a key vehicle through which the men are able to construct masculinities in the spaces of transnational marriage and family. We argue that these non-migrant men engage with transnational processes and practices strategically in order to reclaim respectable and honourable masculine status. In doing so, they dislodge themselves from the idiom of ‘failed masculinity’ commonly ascribed to men who seek foreign spouses, but at the same time reproduce dominant models of masculinity predicated on ‘breadwinning’ and ‘providing’. This article draws on the narratives of 20 Singaporean Chinese men from a range of social backgrounds to demonstrate the endurance of money and economic potency in the performance of masculinities.
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Global migrations are often associated with, indeed motivated by, upward social mobility. However, the new mobilities paradigm emphasizes structural inequalities of migration mobilities that allow movement for some but mean stasis for others. This article studies the realities of marginalized marriage migrants engaged in the simultaneities of mobilities and immobilities, adopting resistant strategies against structures of social and regulatory oppression. We conducted qualitative interviews and ethnographic research with 33 Vietnamese foreign brides in Singapore. Applying an intersectionality framework reveals that, in response to multiple forms of spatial and social immobilities, the marriage migrants adopted essentialist identities at the intersection of ethnicity, gender, and class. Communication technologies, symbolic of new mobilities, were found to facilitate essentialist expression. The study reveals the complexity of intersectional marginalization and mediated essentialist s...
Negotiating Masculinity: Migrant Husbands and Cross-Border ‘Marrying-Up’
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This chapter examines how South Asian migrant husbands who are married to Korean women negotiate their masculinity and gender roles throughout their integration into the contemporary Korean family. In East Asia, migration scholars have researched the ‘feminization of migration’ (sex workers, domestic workers, and female marriage migration) to examine global systems of gender and racial inequality. However, scholars have paid very little attention to migrant husbands despite the increasing number of migrant husbands from low-income countries. Drawing upon ethnographic research on migrant husbands from Bangladesh and Nepal, this article argues that migrant husbands actively adapt and pursue new ways of understanding their gender roles – from traditional patriarchal to liberal urban-middle-class ideals. At the same time, however, they struggle between new and old gender roles in their nuclear Korean family and their extended families back in Bangladesh or Nepal. By addressing conceptions of ‘flexible and strategic masculinity,’ this article will highlight migrant husbands’ shifting gender roles and masculine identities in the new family environment, one in which the Korean wife holds greater economic and social influence. This article will contribute to expanding the discussion on gender and global migration by filling the gap between male migrants’ gender strategies and masculinities. This topic is rarely discussed in the study of migration in East Asia. This article also illustrates how global economic hierarchies in migration are intertwined with the locally specific gender strategies of male migrants.