Transnational Marriage Migration and the Negotiation of Precarious Pathways Beyond Partial Citizenship in Singapore

Abstract

While mixed marriage can act as a ‘facilitator of integration’ for migrants, feminist scholars have argued that in Asia, pathways to citizenship for marriage migrants are precariously ridden with negotiations around gender, ethnicity, nationality and class. In this context, the family sphere lies between the individual migrant and the state, and features as a strategic site where citizenship categories take effect on migrant lives on the one hand, and where citizenship claims are mediated, negotiated and contested on the other. Drawing on two ethnographic studies of Southeast Asian women marrying Singaporean men belonging to lower socioeconomic strata, we show how the host nation-state’s hierarchical control interacts with family processes in producing marriage migrants as partial citizens with limited rights to work, residency and citizenship. We also demonstrate how marriage migrants find leverage in negotiating the paradox of being responsible affinal subjects of the family and partial citizens of the nation-state.