2019
Statelessness & Citizenship Review
1(1)
it was superseded by South Korea. 52 International marriage migration to Taiwan
was thus the first ‘wave’. 53 While both trends peaked and began to level off
around 2010, women continue to migrate through marriage to both destinations.
Although statistics vary according to sources, in 2012 the International
Organization for Migration estimated that 142,424 Vietnamese women had
married South Korean men between 2002 (455 marriages) and 2010 (35,355
marriages). 54 In the year 2012 the Vietnamese government estimated that around
40,000 Vietnamese women had moved to South Korea. 55 By 2015, the total
number of Vietnamese women who had married Taiwanese or South Korean men
and migrated abroad was quoted to be as high as 170,000. 56
In more recent years, mainland China has increasingly become another popular
destination for marriage migration as well. From Vietnam, this has historically
been a cross-border issue between Vietnam’s northern region and China’s
southernmost provinces, Guang Xi and Yunnan. 57 Driven by a female deficit in
China, data collected in 2005 documented a trend involving unusually high
numbers of women from Vietnam’s northern provinces being trafficked into China
for marriage. 58 However, women from the Mekong Delta have also been recorded
as migrating through marriage to mainland China in recent years. This trajectory
of marriage migration remains under-researched, and statistics remain
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
Danièle Bélanger, ‘Contribution of Women Marriage Migrants to Their Families of Origin in
Rural Vietnam’ (Conference Paper, International Union for the Scientific Study of Population
XXVI International Population Conference, 30 September 2009); Hee-Kang Kim, ‘Marriage
Migration between South Korea and Vietnam: A Gender Perspective’ (2012) 36(3) Asian
Perspective 531. This shift reflected both Taiwan’s harsh nationality laws which left
thousands of marriage migrants stateless, as well as changes to South Korea’s visa system
which gave work rights to the Vietnamese wives: Kneebone, ‘Transnational Marriage
Migrants and Nationality’ (n 9).
Hong-Zen Wang and Shu-Ming Chang, ‘The Commodification of International Marriages:
Cross-Border Marriage Business in Taiwan and Viet Nam’ (2002) 40(6) International
Migration 93.
Jung-Eun Oh et al, Migration Profile of the Republic of Korea (Report, International
Organization
for
Migration,
January
2012)
<http://publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/mp_korea.pdf>.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs Viet Nam, Review of Vietnamese Migration Abroad (Review
Report,
May
2012)
19
(‘Vietnamese
Migration
Abroad’)
<http://www.un.org.vn/en/publications/doc_details/387-review-of-vietnamese-migrationabroad.html>.
Trần Thị Thu Lương, ‘Một số vấn đề xẫ hội và văn hóa trong việc xây dựng nông thôn mới ở
Đồng bằng Sông Cửu Long nhìn từ hiện tượng phụ nữ nông thôn lấy chồng nước ngoài. Tạp
chí phát triển Khoa học và công nghệ’ [A Number of Social and Cultural Issues in the
Construction of New Rural Areas in the Mekong Delta Viewed from the Phenomenon of
Rural Women Married Abroad] (2012) 15(2) Journal of Science and Technology
Development 31, 31–47, cited in Susan Kneebone and Nguyen Anh Minh,‘International
Marriage Migration: Researching on Bi-Racial Children in Divorced Families: A Case Study
in Vietnamese Mekong Delta’(Draft Paper, University of Melbourne). A copy of this paper is
on file with the authors.
Le Bach Duong, Danièle Bélanger and Khuat Thu Hong, ‘Transnational Migration, Marriage
and Trafficking at the China–Vietnam Border’ in Isabelle Attane and Christophe Guilmoto
(eds), Watering the Neighbours Garden: The Growing Demographic Female Deficit in Asia
(Committee for International Cooperation in National Research and Demography 2007) 393,
393; Susan Kneebone et al, Survivors of Trafficking from North Vietnam: Psychological and
Social Consequences (Report, SHARE, February 2015).
Duong, Bélanger and Hong (n 57).
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