“We’re dating after marriage”: transformative effects of performing intimacy in Vietnamese “marriage fraud” arrangements

Abstract

ABSTRACT Drawing on narratives of three Vietnamese women who agreed to participate in đám cưới giả (“fake wedding”) arrangements with Canadian citizens to enter Canada, this paper examines the paradoxical consequences of marriage migration policies. I introduce the concept of strategic intimacies to highlight the ways that Vietnamese women in these arrangements deliberately draw on social and economic capital to perform intimacy under manufactured settings to navigate securitized and racialized border regimes. Ironically, through deploying strategic intimacies catering to classed and gendered ideals of love and intimacy to present evidence of their “genuine” marriages, participants developed romantic attachments and pursued long-term relationships with their sponsors. I argue that, in trying to regulate migration, the state sets the conditions for and necessity of “marriage fraud”, blurring boundaries between what constitutes as “real” and “fake” for participants. This contribution prompts for a rethinking of the heteronormative and racialized practices of contemporary border regimes.