Gender, Power and Subjectivity: Divorce of Chinese Migrant Women within a Transnational Marriage in Switzerland

Abstract

Based on an empirical qualitative study, this article focuses on the life stories of three Chinese migrant women who have managed households with Swiss men, to demonstrate how they arrived at the point of divorce and how they reacted to social structures. This article also highlights that Sino-Swiss marriage-divorce is a transnational institution where different kinds of power relations intersect; the phenomenon of divorce in transnational marriages between migrants and local citizens is not so much a private affair, but rather a multidimensional social and political event in which immigration policies are involved. By analyzing both domestic and social violence encountered by Chinese women within transnational marriages in Switzerland, this article analyzes how different power relations such as gender, nationality and socio-economic class status determine the unequal positions of migrant women in claiming their rights during the divorce procedure. It examines how they react as subjects during the whole marital breakdown process with their Swiss husbands, both in terms of oppression and resistance. It argues that women within transnational marriages reconfigure their role and empower by subjectivizing within the intersection of different kinds of power relations.