The politics of intimacy: Chinese women's marriage migration to South Korea

This is a research on Chinese women’s marriage migration to South Korea. I explore this topic by adopting the perspective of politics of intimacy. It aims to find out how the broad political and economic transformations in China and South Korea structure this migration flow and how the operation of transnational matchmaking as a business shapes marriage relationship. In addition, how Chinese women negotiate their intimate life and adapt to Korean society. I highlight the issue of intimacy in Chinese women’s marriage migration. Capitalist development and the change of economic structure in China and South Korea generate potential migrants, and the gendered mobility structure shaped by South Korean immigration policies particularly favors women’s marriage migration. Transnational matchmaking, organized on market principles, provides a means for brides and grooms to know each other. However, it also contributes to generating a marriage relationship without emotional basis, which contradicts with the discourse of love. Economic political forces and the operation of matchmaking as a business shape it is particularly difficult for Chinese women to build up a marriage relationship structured around love and emotion. However, in a situation that love and emotion are considered as the basis of “modern” marriage, a relationship without it has to be dealt with. I thus discuss their negotiation of intimacy in both premarital and marital relationships. In premarital intimacy, the discourse of love is manipulated by marriage brokers on behalf of men in a way that entraps women. After marriage, as both parties only barely know each other, the version of companionship they negotiate is different from that in other marriages and is often manifested in the issues of money and reproduction. However, both money management and reproduction are sites of power struggle between men and women. Men tend to use money to control women, and they press women to bear a child. However, when women are not sure about the relationship, they are usually reluctant to do so. Despite that women possess certain emotional power; in general they are in a weak position. Thus, they use the weapons of the weak, secret, non-confrontational methods to deal with the reproductive pressure. I thus demonstrate that intimacy is not negotiated by women and men of equal standing, but existing gender conventions are played out in the process of negotiation. Overall, I argue that it is important to discuss the issue of intimacy in transnational marriage as this is a perspective to avoid conflating women’s marriage migration with labor migration and reveal the emotional and human aspect of their marriage and experience.published_or_final_versionSociologyDoctoralDoctor of Philosoph