Managing risk, making a match: brokers and the management of mobility in international marriage

Abstract

In the last decade, while scholarly work on international marriages within East and Southeast Asia has increased, the role and significance of marriage brokers in facilitating this form of transnational mobility has been given little attention. This is a particularly obvious gap in knowledge in the Asian context, as migration is largely mediated by brokers who play a strategic role in navigating the complex systems of regulation involved in the increasingly formalised regime of transnational migration. Situating our focus on marriage brokers provides a critical vantage point for unpacking the ‘black box’ of migration research whereby scrutiny is placed on the broader infrastructure that makes mobility possible, whilst illuminating the micro-geographies of emotion and power involved in the interactions between marriage brokers and their clients. Drawing on qualitative interviews with commercial matchmaking agencies and their Vietnamese female clients and Singaporean male clients, this paper analyses how marriage brokers manage risk in mediating the ‘gamble’ of international marriages, through techniques and practices of screening and selection, affective strategies of negotiation and persuasion, as well as by appropriating cultural conceptualisations of ‘fate’ as a way of managing clients’ expectations.