As Capitalist globalisation intensifies, East Asian Countries, including Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, are facing the increasing influx of marriage migrants, who become parts of the families of the nationals. These marriage migrants and the children of the transnational marriages pose great challenges to the traditional ideology of incorporation in these East Asian countries based on the principle of jus sanguinis, inclusive of people who can claim a common ancestral origin, real or imagined, and somewhat exclusive of people who do not share that commonality.
From the perspectives of social movements, though the concept of multicultural citizenship can be easily co-opted, it can still be used as effective framing strategy to make the historically very exclusionary model of citizenship more inclusive. However, the legitimacy of the social movements to advance the rights of the immigrants should be based on the subjectivity of the marriage migrants, who can speak for themselves, rather than depend on the local activists. This remains a challenge to national activists who are concerned about the rights of im/migrants.
Professor Hsiao-Chuan Hsia
Hsiao-Chuan Hsia is Professor and Director at the Graduate Institute for Social Transformation Studies at Shih Hsin University in Taiwan. As the first scholar studying marriage migration issues in Taiwan, her publications analyse issues of immigrants, migrant workers, citizenship, multiculturalism, empowerment and social movements. Hsia is also an activist striving for the empowerment of immigrant women and the making of an immigrant-migrant movement in Taiwan.
Professor Hsia was a Keynote Speaker at The Asian Conference on Asian Studies 2104 (ACAS2014) and The Asian Conference on Cultural Studies 2014 (ACCS2014) in Osaka, Japan.
