Determining ‘truth’ at the border: immigration interviews, Chinese marital migrants, and Taiwan's sovereignty dilemmas
2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 14; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/13621021003594817
ISSN1469-3593
Autores Tópico(s)Diaspora, migration, transnational identity
ResumoAbstract As Taiwan transitions from an immigrant-sending to an immigrant-receiving country, it struggles to build an immigration bureaucracy while its status as a sovereign nation-state is not recognized by much of the international community. Taiwan's largest immigrant group, marital migrants from China, are perceived as posing the greatest challenges to border control due to longstanding political tensions between the two countries and governmental and societal suspicions about Chinese spouses' marital motives. Based on research conducted with immigration officials and during immigration interviews at the border, this article interrogates the status of 'truth' in official efforts to determine definitively immigrants' marital intentions. It analyzes such truth demands in relation to Taiwan's anxieties about its national standing and the ability of an immigration bureaucracy to generate 'sovereignty effects'. Keywords: immigrantbordersgenderlegitimacystatepractice Acknowledgements Research for this article was conducted in 2007–2008 and in the summer of 2009 with funding from the National Science Foundation (grant #BCS-0612679), the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange. I am grateful to the Institute of Ethnology at Academia Sinica for sponsoring my stay in Taiwan and to the many Taiwan government officials and bureaucrats who generously shared their time, thoughts, and experiences with me. I sincerely hope that this article contributes to bridging gaps between official governmental concerns and immigrants' own aspirations in Taiwan. Earlier versions were presented to the Department of Anthropology at National Taiwan University, the Sociology Institute at National Tsinghua University, the Department of Anthropology at the University of Oslo, and the Department of Anthropology and the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale University. I thank the organizers and audiences at those venues for insightful questions and comments that helped me clarify my arguments. I am indebted to Li Zhang, Brenda Weber, and Gardner Bovingdon for invaluable feedback on previous drafts. The three anonymous reviewers for the journal provided very helpful comments and suggestions that have made this a much stronger article. I, of course, remain responsible for any errors or inadequacies. Notes 1. The ROC lost its UN seat in 1971. The only major international body of which Taiwan is a full member is the World Trade Organization. In May 2009 China agreed to grant Taiwan observer status at the WHO's annual assembly under the name Chinese Taipei. 2. Most foreign spouses come from within Asia, especially Vietnam, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Macau, Thailand, the Philippines, Cambodia, Japan, and South Korea (in descending order). The total for all foreign spouses combined was 139,248 as of the end of 2008. Available from: http://www.immigration.gov.tw/aspcode/9712/ .doc [Accessed 5 February 2009]. 3. Other Mainland Chinese eligible for naturalization would be those with a direct lineal tie to a Taiwanese citizen (typically a parent or a child) or a spouse from a pre-1949 marriage. Channels of appeal exist for exceptional cases and a small number of Mainland Chinese have obtained residency rights on those grounds. 4. All official communications take place between technically non-governmental bodies, and citizens who travel between Taiwan and China do so not on their passports but on special travel documents that sidestep the sovereignty question. 5. In Taiwan, the very status of the airport as an international border is open to debate, especially since July 2008 when direct flights to the Mainland began. In addition to the two international airports, two 'domestic' airports now also handle direct Mainland flights. This blurred distinction between domestic and international borders has encouraged some Taiwanese to oppose direct air links. Only in June 2009 were Chinese spouses permitted to fly directly on their first visit and the numbers are still small due to the greater expense. 6. Mainland Chinese had been regulated by the Entry/Exit Immigration Police (ru chu jing guanli ju), a unit within the National Police Agency. 7. Airport interview, 13 June 2008. 8. The Internet discussion board, Mainland Spouse and Family Discussion Forum (dalu pei'ou jiating luntan) is a popular site where Chinese and Taiwanese spouses compare interview experiences and seek information and advice. Participants reinforce the state's truth regime through repeated injunctions to speak truthfully and through reaffirming their own participation in 'real' marriages. Available from: http://www.ccff.idv.tw/forum/cmps_index.php. 9. All personal names used in this article are pseudonyms. Interview, 4 February 2008. 10. Prior to the establishment of the NIA, interviews were conducted under the auspices of the Entry/Exit Immigration Police, but interviewers were drawn on an ad hoc basis from different government agencies. 11. Prior to August 2009, Chinese spouses were not permitted to work legally in Taiwan until they received a residence permit (typically two years from first entry), and some did not qualify for a work permit until six years after first arrival. 12. Mr Zhang and his superior then mimed for me the appearance of a sex worker, drawing their hands up their legs in an exaggerated fashion to demonstrate the height of the slit in her skirt and sweeping their hands across their chests to portray a revealing neckline. This example confirms Salter's concerns about a border regime of bodily confession whereby 'the body comes to testify or confess for the subject without the consent or even perhaps knowledge of the subject' (2006, p. 185). 13. Limited or no courtship experiences do not automatically disqualify couples, however. Interviewers claimed they could not discriminate against couples who had met through marriage brokers or matchmakers (especially given how accepted such practices were in the past), but they simultaneously viewed such arrangements with suspicion. 14. As a senior bureaucrat described to me during an interview at the airport, 'if the [Taiwan spouse's] income is normal, work is normal, family is normal, then the chance of [the marriage] being fake is very small. Actually, the content of the interview itself isn't that important' (interview, 22 Feb. 2008). 'Normality' is clearly what counts here, but what constitutes normality remains unquestioned and unspoken. Pratt identifies a similar appeal to instinct and shared knowledge in Canadian government refusals to define terrorism (2005, p. 155). 15. The rooms are equipped with a computer and video and audio recorders. The white walls are unadorned except for a photocopy or two of newspaper articles documenting the dangers of sex work or domestic violence that potentially await Chinese women in Taiwan. 16. Unlike the standard 'tale' feared by US officers evaluating asylum cases, Taiwanese interviewers view conformity to established norms positively (Coutin Citation2001, Shuman and Bohmer Citation2004). 17. These norms emphasize material exchanges, timing, and place: interviewers expect couples to know the details of bridewealth (how much money, what currency and denomination, what kind of jewellery, how it was presented, when and where), wedding banquets (the time and location, the number of tables, who attended, whether alcohol was served), and the sending of support funds (the amount, frequency, and method of transfer). Interviewers contended that all Chinese spouses were especially attuned to financial arrangements and hence should be able to recall with ease the specifics of monetary exchanges. 18. See Lan's discussion of an interview with a Vietnamese spouse at Taiwan's de facto consular office in Hanoi where the interviewer did request a performance of marital intimacy, even though the official also claimed not to take such expressions seriously (2008, p. 847) 19. The official had discovered this information by comparing the names of this woman's parents with those listed by the first wife on her immigration documents. These materials were available to him through the NIA's computer system. 20. See Chalfin (Citation2008) on the role of identification in border practices.
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