Asian Mail-Order Brides, the Threat of Global Capitalism, and the Rescue of the U.S. Nation-State

Abstract

AMERICUS MITCHELL'S PROVOCATIVE ANALOGY reveals a great deal about the status of U.S. and Asian women in the global capitalist era. In three brief sentences, he succeeds in drawing on the backlash in the 1980s and 1990s against U.S. women who work outside the home, as well as on fears of Asia as an economic threat. Speaking specifically about the virtues of Asian mail-order brides, he also confirms the global capitalist vision of Asian women as automatons. Mitchell's comments suggest that a variety of competing systems are at work here: as white U.S. women con tinue to value themselves more highly, by putting themselves on a pedestal and by entering the workforce in greater numbers, U.S. men must necessarily move outside the nation's borders to locate new domes tic and sexual partners. International trade thus becomes intimately