SOAS, University of London (The School of Oriental and African Studies)

Citizens from Outside: Immigrant Women's Exercising Voting Rights in the Private and Public Spheres in Taiwan

Abstract:

Over the past two decades, Taiwan has become a major destination for marriage immigrant women from China and Southeast Asia. Out of 420,801 Mainland Chinese and foreign women who marry men in Taiwan and subsequently reside in Taiwan, 187,297 of them have acquired citizenship by the end of 2011, occupying 1 per cent of the number of the total eligible voters as of January 2012. In spite of their marginal number, the immigrant-turned citizens found themselves attracting steady attention during election campaign. Against this increasing attention, there are limited numbers of studies looking at how the immigrant women exercise their citizenship. This study aims to fill this void by looking at how immigrant women exercise their citizenship in the private and public domain.

This study argues that there is an unexplored terrain underneath the conventional thinking that the voting preferences of immigrant women are influenced by their husbands. Grounded on ethnographic findings, this study finds that immigrant women used their ballot as the ‘weapon of the weak’ in the private family domain to resist the pressure of the dominant Taiwanese in-laws who attempted to dictate their voting preferences. Either covertly resisting or overtly rebelling against such pressure, immigrant women won themselves an occasional victory or a short-lived relief from suppression. In the public sphere, immigrant women are seen as targets for mobilisation by political parties as well as individual politicians. Some of immigrant women were thus aspired to independently found and manage their autonomous self-help organisations.

These findings show that counting turnout is insufficient to understand the political and social life of immigrant-turned citizens. Focusing on the different modes of participation, as well as agency and empowerment gained in their daily life, will render contextual knowledge about how they play the role of citizen in relation to the family members and political actors. Knowledge of this often overlooked aspect of their life will further refine our understanding of their integration.

About the Speaker: 

Isabelle Cheng is a PhD candidate at the Department of Politics and International Studies. Her research focuses on the change of national identity of marriage immigrant women in Taiwan. Her research examines the impact of migration experiences on the change of national identity, and investigates how the citizenship legislation of the receiving state evolved to serve the purpose of nation-building and the integration of immigrant women.