Dealing with differences in intermarriage: the negotiation of power by Chinese migrant women in Switzerland

Abstract

ABSTRACT Drawing from in-depth interviews with Chinese migrant women who married European men in Switzerland, this article analyses cultural differences between Chinese migrant women and their western husbands in four aspects: language, lifestyle, family unity mentality and political vision. The cultural differences have reinforced an unequal power relationship between Western husbands and their Chinese wives. In the context of the dominant culture, which is shared by the local society and their European husbands, Chinese wives have been characterised as the ‘other’. However, by using strategies such as mobilising their original cultural values and doing ethnicity, they succeed in dealing with cultural differences and negotiating the power relations vis-à-vis their husbands. By employing a gender intersectional perspective, this article maintains that culture or ethnicity participates in the production of a hierarchy between spouses within intermarriage and asserts that doing culture and ethnicity can also be presented as technologies of power that promote foreign wives’ gender position.