Foreign Brides, Multiple Citizenship and the Immigrant Movement in Taiwan

Abstract

As capitalist globalization intensifies, recent discussion of citizenship has sought to decouple citizenship from its traditionally close association with the nation-state. Scholars have proposed “multicultural citizenship” and “multiple citizenship” as alternative concepts. The former is premised on the idea that the nation-state contains a degree of plurality that allows migrants to retain their cultural identity provided they adhere to the state's political norms. The latter underscores the need to separate citizenship from limiting cultural identities and loyalties, and argues that multiple citizenship and multicultural citizenship are incompatible. This paper agrees with the ideal of multiple citizenship and shows how multiculturalism can be co-opted without changing the substantive and formal rights of citizenship for immigrants. However, the author argues that the ideal of multiple citizenship and the concept of multicultural citizenship are not inherently incompatible. Based on the experience of empowering women who migrate to Taiwan through marriage, this paper illustrates how the concept of “multicultural citizenship” can be used as a narrative strategy to challenge Taiwan's exclusionary model of citizenship, paving the way to move towards the ideal of a more inclusive multiple citizenship.