The house and the classroom : Vietnamese immigrant spouses in South Korea and Taiwan

Abstract

This paper explores the lives of Vietnamese women who migrated to South Korea and Taiwan through international marriage. Based on narratives collected from immigrant women in 2006 about the process of marrying men from South Korea or Taiwan, the paper discusses how women who migrate through marriage experience vulnerabilities and exert agency. The paper also focuses on the lives of women in the two most important spaces they occupy following migration: the home and the classroom. Women’s experiences in their new families and in governmentrun language classes shed light on how these women are constructed by their families and by the Taiwanese and South Korean states. Immigrant women are generally located in the domestic sphere as wives, daughtersin-law and mothers, and in the classroom, where they learn the Korean or Chinese language and other skills, women tend to be infantilized, reflecting the states’ construction of these women as being inferior. The paper concludes that Taiwan and South Korea would benefit from acknowledging their increasing ethnic diversity, rather than trying to assimilate the immigrant women and erase differences. The rapidly increasing ethnic composition of Taiwan and South Korea, resulting mostly from marriage migration, is unique in current migration trends.