The Making and Unmaking of Marital Boundaries: A Global Approach to Marital Assimilation

• In Event: 598 - Section on Asia and Asian America Roundtable Session.
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 03. Race and Assimilation

Abstract

Premising people choose their spouse from the pool of “us,” this paper examines the effect of historical colonialism on marital assimilation among children of immigrants in the U.S. Although the literature has shown that second generation members’ partner preferences are different and hierarchical, it dose not fully explain why and how specific ethnic and racial groups are grouped as the marriageable. In this paper, I use an innovative conceptual framework—marital boundary-making—to examine the processual and cognitive dimensions of marital assimilation. I ask how immigrant parents and their children draw their marital boundaries along racial, ethnic, and national lines, how historical colonialism shapes their making of social boundaries, and how their boundary work reproduces gender inequality. Empirically, this paper draws data from in-depth interviews with the parents and children of Taiwanese immigrant families in San Diego. The analysis reveals that although the parents and children are similar in their perceptions of who are marriageable, the parents tend to underline the desirability of “the democratic us” due to the influence of Japanese colonialism and American militarism on the development of nationalization in Taiwan. It further uncovers that when the marital boundary is crossed and generational conflicts arise, gender plays a more important role in the maintenance of family ties.

Author

• Yuching Julia Cheng, State University of New York-Albany