VIETNAMESE BRIDES AND MARRIAGE MIGRATION TO SINGAPORE

PROLOGUE
Bèo dạt, mây trôi, chốn xa xôi
Anh ơi, em vẫn đợi vẫn chờ
(Like floating duckweed amidst fleeting clouds,
Far and far away,
My love, I am still holding on)
(Vietnamese folk song)

The first encounter
On a summer’s day in May 2007, I stepped into the ―paradise of matchmaking
agencies‖ at Golden Mile Tower (GMT) next to Singapore’s ―Little Thailand‖ for the
first time. Holding a piece of paper with both the address of ―Vietnamese wives’
club‖ and the directions to get there by bus,1 I walked through the main entrance of
the old mall. I still remember the suffocating atmosphere inside GMT as I tried to
make my way through the dark and narrow escalator of the mall. This escalator is
typical of escalators found in older, dying out shopping malls located in the heartland
neighborhoods of Singapore.2 The smell was the first thing that hit me, promising
something unpleasant in exchange. Even as it was extremely hot outside, I was
shivering as I looked around, bewildered, trying to locate the club. I suppose it was
the popular image of these matchmaking agencies as sites for displaying young
Vietnamese girls as sex workers for the consumption of Singaporean men (Today, 14
March 2005) that made me particularly uneasy. More precisely, being a young
Vietnamese woman myself, I was petrified by the thought of being mistaken for a
Vietnamese bride, to be looked down upon as a sexually immoral and materialistic
woman ―selling‖ herself abroad as a ―foreign bride.‖ I wanted to distinguish myself, a
1

I heard of this particular matchmaking agency through the article ―Welcome to the Vietnamese
wives’ club‖, Her World, November 2006, pp. 145-147.
2
See Chapter 2.

1


professional woman, from the brides who are commonly regarded as young,
uneducated girls who come over Singapore to ―hunt‖ for husbands. It is undeniable
that I was struggling to overcome my sense of ―self‖ as a professional researcher as I
proceeded to my field site longing to understand the real lives of the women who are
socially stigmatized as ―Vietnamese brides.‖

It was my very first, fleeting encounter, more than four years ago, with five
Vietnamese brides and their boss in an anonymous matchmaking agency at GMT
inspired me to work on this topic. I did not, on that occasion, find the particular
agency whose address was on that slip of paper, but I nonetheless overcame my
trepidation and walked into one such office. Although at the time I could barely speak
to the Vietnamese bride-wannabes under the watchful eye of their ―boss,‖ this first
encounter tremendously challenged my previous stereotypes of these Vietnamese
women. Like a lost traveler coming across an oasis in the desert, I found myself
unexpectedly fascinated by the transnational journeys that Vietnamese brides make
from the rural Mekong Delta to cosmopolitan Singapore, and by their struggle to
survive in Singapore after securing their marriages.
In the end, I was quite surprised to find quite a few commonalities between
―myself‖ and ―them.‖ This was perhaps the precious gift of doing anthropology, as for
me, working with my research subjects is not simply a part of my job but it is indeed a
way of life.
Vietnamese brides in Singapore
Since the 1990s, a regular cohort of Vietnamese women migrants commonly
known as ―Vietnamese brides,‖ mostly from the Mekong Delta in Vietnam, have been
settling in Singapore through marriage with local men arranged by commercial

2


matchmaking agencies. The Vietnamese Embassy in Singapore estimated that, in
2004, more than 300 Vietnamese brides arrived in Singapore (The Straits Times, 4
March 2005). It is entirely possible that the actual statistics are higher than what has
been estimated by the Vietnamese Embassy: one matchmaking agency specializing in
Vietnamese brides, Mr. Cupid International Matchmakers, reported that it
successfully paired 360 Vietnamese women with Singaporean men (The New Paper,
4

September

2005).

While

updated

statistics

of

Singaporean-Vietnamese

intermarriages are not readily available in Singapore, the situation in Taiwan and
South Korea is different. In these countries, in response to the rise of intermarriages
between local men and foreign brides, social organizations and government
institutions have conducted several large-scale surveys on the marital lives of the
couples and the demographical patterns of the new migrants.3

When I first embarked on this research, I was frequently confronted by the
question of why I choose to study Vietnamese-Singaporean intermarriages in
particular and whether there were really enough Vietnamese brides in Singapore to
warrant such a study. It has been a simple yet difficult question for me to answer.
Looking at the statistics of Vietnamese brides in Singapore, it may not seem to be a
significant number: 300 Vietnamese brides out of 753, 400 nonresidents in 2004 or
that number out of 1.25 million in 2010 (Singapore Department of Statistics 2007 &
2010). These low numbers would not attract the attention of most academic scholars,
or the Singapore government for that matter. However, Vietnamese brides are
definitely becoming a cultural phenomenon in Singapore, and to date there is a lack of
meaningful research on the topic. I was also motivated to bridge the gap between the
literature of intermarriages between Vietnamese women and Asian men. Even though
3

See Bibliography for a list of reports on Vietnamese brides in Taiwan and South Korea.

3


the number of Vietnamese brides in Singapore appears minimal in comparison, the
topic itself deserves special attention from social researchers, especially from
Vietnamese researchers like me.
There have nevertheless been some vital earlier studies related to this topic
(Ng 2005; Yeoh 2006; AWARE 2006). Besides, in 2009, during my affiliation with
the NUS Department of Southeast Asian Studies as a Master’s Candidate, a group of
feminist researchers from the Asia Research Institute (ARI) launched a project to
document intermarriages between Singaporean men and foreign brides from China,
Malaysia and Vietnam. The ARI research team organized several conferences in 2010
and 2011 to present their preliminary findings.4 This project signaled a great change
of public perception towards the topic of Vietnamese brides in Singapore. The

completion of this project by end of 2011 coincided with the completion of my
Master’s thesis and urged me to rethink how I could contribute to studies of marriage
migration by investigating the case of Vietnamese brides in Singapore.
Despite having been neglected by other scholars, this topic is absolutely
relevant in several ways, beginning with the political-geographical relationship
between Vietnam and Singapore. Given that economic disparities are the main ―pull‖
factors for international migration, this new pattern of migration – migration for
marriage within Southeast Asian region – suggests that Singapore is catching up with
the more powerful East Asian and Middle East countries that used to be the major
receiving countries for migrant workers and brides from Vietnam. Clearly, Singapore
is gradually emerging as a new ideal destination for Vietnamese migrant women who

4

For details on these conferences, please refer to the website www.ari.nus.edu.sg.

4


aim primarily to be wives of local men, as opposed to being typical migrant workers. 5
Moreover, the ASEAN Framework Agreement on Visa Exemption between Vietnam
and other members of ASEAN, which allows Southeast Asians to travel and remain in
other countries within the region for up to two weeks without obtaining a visa,6 now
fosters transnational movement between Vietnam and Singapore. Not surprisingly, it
is also now more difficult for authorities in these two countries to control the flows of
migrants. The line also appears to be blurred between Vietnamese female migrants
who migrate to find husbands through matchmaking agencies and those who migrate
to work as entertainers and sex workers. Vietnamese brides are often stereotyped as
sex workers when they try to enter Singapore using a tourist visa. This unfortunate
characteristic of migration flows from Vietnam to Singapore adds some colour to the

situation of Vietnamese brides in Singapore because of its underlying social
implications and consequences.
This study is additionally relevant in that there are specific differences
between Singapore and other East Asian countries in terms of how the adaptation
process of Vietnamese brides is facilitated once they marry their local husbands. It is
these differences that make the case of Singapore more interesting. On the one hand,
Singapore is known for its ―multiculturalism‖ policy and its dependence on migrants
to maintain and grow the national economy. Singapore is widely regarded as an openminded and tolerant society that easily accepts new migrants. This sharply contrasts to
the case of Taiwan or South Korea, which purport to be ethnically homogeneous. Not
surprisingly, immigrants to these countries often face social and racial discrimination

5

There are, however, many Vietnamese women who temporarily migrate to Singapore to work as sex
workers in Geylang and Joo Chiat. However, this group is rarely considered as ―migrant workers‖ due
to their short-time migration and their illegal working status in Singapore.
6
See Article 1, ASEAN Framework Agreement on Visa Exemption, Kuala Lumpur, 25 July 2006
(www.asean.org/18570.htm retrieved on 14 April 2012).

5


from the host society. Singapore also contrasts with Taiwan and South Korea in that it
has no significant agricultural or rural sector. This means that Vietnamese brides in
Singapore are not expected to work in the fields and live in the remote villages, unlike
the typical scenario for foreign brides in Taiwan and South Korea. Since many
Vietnamese brides marry abroad specifically to escape the difficulties of rural life in
Vietnam, it is easy to see why the image of Singapore as a model of nation-city feeds
their imaginations. These urban expectations predictably relate to the increase in

Vietnamese brides focusing on Singapore. I have captured the spirit of these
aspirations in the title of my study.
In exploring the life stories of Vietnamese women who have married
Singaporean men through commercial matchmaking agencies and personal networks,
I seek to address four issues I consider the most salient to this phenomenon. First, I
am concerned with the motivations for marriage migration of women from the
Mekong Delta in Southern Vietnam within the context of globalization. Second, I
analyse how social stereotypes and cultural differences influence the adaptation
process of Vietnamese brides in their new host society. Third, through the joint
struggle of Vietnamese brides and their Singaporean husbands to culturally
accommodate with each other, I attempt to show how the lived experience of
intercultural marriage shapes the perceptions of individual stakeholders with regard to
love, marriage, and culture. Finally, I seek to contextualize this research within the
literature of Vietnamese boat people in order to explore how it might contribute to our
understanding of the broader phenomenon of the Vietnamese diaspora.
Thesis argument
In this research, I argue that understanding transnational intermarriage
between brides from relatively poor economies and grooms from relatively rich ones

6


must begin with an informed perspective that looks beyond an oversimplified view of
presumably materialistic women escaping poverty at home to seek a more
comfortable or even ―luxurious‖ life abroad. Money and high living standard do not
offer a complete answer and human agency should not be overlooked. This research
suggests that the emerging intermarriages between Vietnamese brides from Mekong
Delta and Singaporean men are an institutionalized form of transnational marriage
migration inspired by gendered aspirations for socio-economic mobility, and an everstrong sense of filial piety as much as economic incentives.
Intermarriage through a matchmaking agency is not merely an instrument for

Vietnamese girls to break out of their poverty for a ticket to social mobility in a First
World country. Even though economic incentives are often cited as the primary
motivation of Vietnamese brides to engage in intermarriages, we cannot neglect the
many other possible factors at play. In fact, marriage migration to Singapore does not
automatically offer these Vietnamese brides a comfortable life, especially if they
cannot overcome the tough process of adaptation. As such, it is insufficient to rely
solely on economic incentives with regard to the aspirations of Mekong Delta girls. I
will argue that marriage migration by Vietnamese brides is motivated by a
combination of personal aspirations for financial affluence, a modern lifestyle
overseas, and self-fulfillment on the one hand, and by broader changes in economic
circumstances in the era of globalization.
The dynamics of non-economic incentives of Vietnamese brides’ marriage
migration is closely linked to their marital lives in their new urban environment. The
transnational journey from the Mekong Delta to Singapore not only gives them access
to a lucrative labor market and a relatively cosmopolitan life, it also channels them
towards a new process of cultural adaptation and soul searching in a foreign country.

7


Through this process, they must learn to integrate themselves into unfamiliar social
structures and pursue ―happiness‖ within the context of their intermarriages. By
inviting these foreign men into their lives, Vietnamese brides gain much more than
monetary rewards such as bride dowries or remittances. Intermarriage, as a human
journey and social institution, has become a platform for Vietnamese brides to
experience a mutual exchange of emotions, culturally sensitive appreciation,
knowledge, and love. Marriage to Singaporean men also transforms these Vietnamese
women physically and spiritually, in terms of their social skills and mindsets, to their
perceptions of love. Intermarriages with Singapore men therefore engender for
Vietnamese brides the process of crafting a new self-identity.

Existing literature on international migration has examined similar
motivations of young girls from developing countries to more economically
developed ones. It is therefore important to clarify how Vietnamese brides are distinct
from other Vietnamese women who engage in wage labour migration. First and
foremost, marriage migration is permanent in nature, unlike wage labour migration
which is typically temporary in nature. Vietnamese brides are more specifically
migrant wives, daughter in-laws, and mothers. Their migration and process of
adaptation in the host society is much more complex because it involves the prospect
of permanent settlement and lifelong intimacy. This is especially so in the context of
the Chinese-influenced cultures in Singapore and Vietnam, where marriage is
regarded as an important institution for individuals and for society at large. Second,
most of intermarriages between Vietnamese brides and Singaporean grooms are
arranged marriages. In this kind of marriage, the process of getting to know their
spouses, for both brides and grooms, does not take place until after they marry and
settle down in Singapore. Studies of arranged marriages in other Southeast Asian

8


countries also note the differences of ―love marriages‖ and ―arranged marriages,‖ for
example, ―(arranged) marriages are thought of a process, a transition from rather
formal or even potentially hostile exchanges first, of words then of food and finally of
sexuality. While in a marriage sought equally by both partners, these stages blend
smoothly into one another, in an arranged marriage, the transition is much less easy‖
(Cannell, 1999: 42). Foreign brides therefore require considerably more time and
effort to adapt culturally and emotionally to their new life and new living
environment, when compared to a temporary migrant labourer. With this research, I
attempt to bring to light this aspect of commercially arranged marriage migration by
compiling life stories of Vietnamese brides regarding their experiences and
perspectives prior to and after marrying their Singaporean.

In presenting my respondents’ narratives, I interweave particular metaphors
grounded in Vietnamese literature such as floating duckweed and fleeting clouds to
structure my main chapters. These metaphors are associated with the fate of women in
pre-modern Vietnamese society, which corresponds to the pervading feminist
approaches to the issue of Vietnamese brides but in a more nuanced and culturally
appropriate manner. The metaphors of floating duckweed and fleeting clouds are
inspired by the geographical and cultural landscapes of ―miền Tây,‖ the homeland of
many of these Vietnamese brides. For “miền Tây” women and for Southeast Asians
generally, life is like a river, and the interconnection between duckweed and river is
akin to the responses of ―miền Tây‖ women to the currents of transnational marriage
migration. Rather than fighting against the current, “miền Tây” women see
themselves as actively adapting themselves to the flows, like duckweed, and
searching for natural channels of mobility. Within these channels of mobility,
intermarriage is perceived as the most convenient entry point for “miền Tây” women.

9


In choosing intermarriage, “miền Tây” women become duckweed floating along to
transnational currents in a lifelong journey to their promised land.
Grounding the conceptualization framework: Key concepts in studies of
intermarriage
Transnational marriage migration has been a major topic in the literature of
migration. This section addresses four key concepts that address the issues I
introduced above: gender strategy, emotional labour, agency, and state regulations. In
the final part of this section, I also discuss the conceptualization of ―cultural
encounters‖ and explore its relevance to my study.
Gender strategy
Gender (or more specifically, women) is generally considered the main subject
in marriage migration studies. Historically, migration studies have referred to women

as ―dependent migrants‖ who migrate primarily to join their husbands for ―family
reunification‖ (Boyd & Grieco 2003; Zlotnik 2003; Morokvasic 1984). However,
more recently, studies on marriage migrant women have been more inclined to speak
of flows of ―foreign brides‖ (Kim 2008; Yang & Lu 2009; Wang & Hsiao 2009).
They analyse why unmarried women from poorer countries migrate to richer
countries in Asia to marry local men who, by local standards, appear socially
disadvantaged in that they have difficulty finding wives in their own country through
the mediation of matchmaking agencies.
Gender strategy becomes a broadly relevant concept to this study for two
reasons. First, it acknowledges that, in the era of globalization, women may have
some advantages over men in terms of their ability to migrate overseas simply by
engaging in intermarriage. This reflects the supply and demand aspect of the

10


international marriage market. On the one hand, it is the ―male marriage squeeze‖
(Hugo & Nguyen 2004) in developed countries that demands them to import foreign
brides from less developed countries. On the other hand, for uneducated women from
less developed countries, marriage is perhaps the only legal way to migrate and settle
down in a foreign country (Tseng 2009). Accordingly, there is a gendered selective
process taking place in marriage migration in which women occupy the more
advantaged position. The concept of gender strategy is employed here to compare the
opportunities and constraints of globalization experienced by women and men in the
course of international marriage migration.
Second, gender strategy is linked to the expectations imposed by rural families
on migrant daughters and sons with regard to their duty to financially support the
household members left behind. Classical theories of migration refer to a ―family
strategy of migration‖ (Harbison, 1981:231) in which a household will send out an
individual member to migrate so that he or she may contribute to financially

household income, through remittances. To maximize the chance of receiving
remittances, the family unit therefore has to decide whether women or men, daughters
or sons, should be encouraged and invested to migrate (Chant 1992). In Southeast
Asia, daughters are more likely to shoulder the task of providing financial support to
their families because they are ―brought up to the sense of duty or moral obligation to
earn money to repay the care and protection given to them by their parents‖ (Lim,
1998:12). In the matter of foreign brides in Southeast Asia, the household might be
more willing to let young women migrate for marriage if they are seen as being
potentially more reliable with regard to sending remittances back home. Conversely,
women might be more willing to migrate in exchange for monetary rewards for the
purpose of supplementing their families’ income. Studies on women’s intra-national

11


and international migration, for both working and marrying, such as those by Mills
(1999) and by Piper and Roses (2003), have provided important case studies in
support of this hypothesis.
In this study, I ―localize‖ the concept of gender strategy in terms of the sociocultural backgrounds of my respondents. I argue that the socio-cultural contexts of the
Mekong Delta play an important role in shaping the perception of young Vietnamese
young as being not only forever indebted to their parents but also as being
adventurous yet sacrificial women who have to leave home and find husbands abroad
in order to provide for her immediate family back home.
Questions of gender strategy can be better understood through the comparison
of two alternating flows of migration taking place in the South: out-migration by
women to marry foreigners and the return migration by overseas Vietnamese men to
marry local Vietnamese women. For example, marriage migration by young girls
from the Mekong Delta is inspired by their admiration for Singapore, the only ―First
World‖ country in Southeast Asia. This journey indirectly fulfills their aspirations of
being ―modern women.‖ Marriage migration by returning overseas Vietnamese men,

on the other hand, affirms and re-affirms their masculinity through marrying and
providing for an idealized submissive and feminine local woman, the type of women
who would be difficult for them to find outside of Vietnam.
Emotional labour
The term ―emotional labour‖ refers to work done that incorporates feelings as
part of paid employment, originating from Hochschild’s (1983) research on women
working as airline stewardesses in America. In her research, she suggests that women
tend to choose jobs that involve emotional labour as ―women more than men are more
aware about the personal costs of a job‖ (Hochschild, 1983:11). Hochschild later

12


develops the idea of women as the main providers of emotional labour in her studies
concerning the migration of nannies, maids, and sex workers from Third World
countries to developed ones. She proposes that ―emotional labour‖ in the form of love
and care is like gold that it can be commodified and transferred to the developed
countries for profit (Hochschild 2002). ―Emotional labour‖ (as opposed to ―physical
labour‖) is typically identified with women’s labour, and therefore creates greater
opportunities for women in employment requiring love, care, and emotion.
Hochschild’s idea of women’s ―emotional work‖ in turn has inspired studies of
marriage migration. For instance, Faier’s (2007) study of Filipina bar hostesses posits
that Filipina women are required to ―sell their emotions‖ to get repayment as favor
and love from Japanese men. Instead of questioning whether these women also treat
their husbands like customers by managing their true feelings and emotion, she shows
how these Filipinas’ professions of love ―serve to construct themselves as
cosmopolitan, modern and moral women to counteract the stigma of their occupation‖
(Faier 2007). In my view, the most significant contribution of Faier’s work is that she
skillfully illustrates the transition of love and care as ―emotional labour‖ in public
spaces to love and care as part of their intimate feelings in domestic spaces.

The term ―emotional labour‖ is also relevant in studies of intermarriage as it
seeks to understand how communication takes place between a husband and wife in
such private spaces as their matrimonial home. ―Emotional labour,‖ however, should
not be employed to equate entertainers with brides. This is not to say that such brides
perform ―emotional labour‖ solely, or even primarily, for monetary exchange. In fact,
they consciously perform emotional labour in order to receive their husbands’
protection, in terms of legal status, financial support, and emotional support. Since
marriage involves intimacy, we can also assume that bridal migrants manage their

13


emotions to maintain the balance of their intermarriage relationship. Given that many
such marriages originate as a type of arranged marriage, as such, the brides (and
husbands) must actively negotiate and manage their emotions as they undergo the
process of learning to love their new partners. Therefore, monetary exchange or
financial security is just one part of the marriage package, and not its primary
characteristic.
Agency
Since the type of intermarriage I discuss in this research are mostly mediated
through commercial matchmaking agencies, it is worthwhile to bring into play the
subject of agency and structure. The predominant depiction of ―foreign brides,‖
primarily put forward by feminist scholars and the mass media, is that they are
trafficked by matchmaking agencies and their male clients (Truong 1996; Yamazaki
1987; Park 1996). This tendency leads to the perception that ―foreign brides‖ are
helplessly victimized and that they have no agency in terms of making key decisions
with regard to marriage migration. However, in her excellent review of recent studies
on the ―commodification of intimacy,‖ Constable (2009: 56) suggests that
―ethnographic researchers provided numerous examples of migrant women’s
activism, their subtle or explicit protests and their resistance and agency within the

context of structural factors that limit the opportunities and often disempowers foreign
brides, migrant domestic workers, and sex workers.‖
I find this discussion on agency useful specifically for the cultural context of
the protagonists in my stories. As defined by Parker (2005:4), ―agency is the action of
the individual who seeks to escape the constraints of society, and is often taken as free
will.‖ Parker’s definition locates agency in relation to structure (i.e., the constraints of
society) and calls for an action of ―escape.‖ In this study, however, I do not place as

14


much emphasis on the societal emancipation aspect of women’s agency. Rather, I
focus on whether women are capable of taking action in accordance with their needs
and the manner in which they negotiate their unique circumstances to exercise their
own form of agency.
As a socio-cultural concept, the notion of agency is further explored in this
research through a detailed analysis of the pre-departure negotiation process among
various family members of Vietnamese brides and the negotiation of the likely
conflict of interest between the bride’s extant role as a dutiful daughter (vis-à-vis the
natal family) and her future role as wife and daughter-in-law (vis-à-vis her new family
in Singapore).7
State regulations
As intermarriage involves marriage and international migration, it is vital to
discuss the role of the state in both the sending and receiving countries. State
intervention, specifically through each country’s immigration laws and citizenship
regimes, provides a macro framework for analysing the dynamics of matchmaking
and marriage migration. Studies of state regulations, mostly from the destination
countries, cover three main issues: state discourses on intermarriage and foreign
brides, the influence of state regulations on cultural adaptation by foreign brides, and
the international diplomatic relationship between sending and receiving countries.

Regarding state discourses, researchers and social activists have long been
concerned with the fact that destination countries such as Taiwan and South Korea are
inclined to ―utilize women’s bodies to serve the goals of the states‖ (Freeman,
2005:85). On the one hand, some governments may consider international marriage
and the practice of importing foreign brides viable as a ―solution to low fertility rates
7

See Chapter 3.

15


and shortages of wives and reproductive labour‖ (Yang & Lu, 2009: 17). Government
authorities in the two countries mentioned above nonetheless also express their
societal anxieties over the sudden presence of ―foreign brides‖ in terms of ―biological
reproduction, social harmony and welfare system in the host societies‖ (Kung, 2009:
179-181). As a result, they promote various social programs that are designed to
assimilate this new group of migrants into the social structures of the host society
(Chang & Belanger 2006). However, there is a big gap between what the foreign
brides (as new migrants) and their children may need and what the state is willing to
provide, especially in such areas as access to education, healthcare, and citizenship
rights, with the latter posing the most acute problem. As reported by Sheu (2007),
Taiwan, like other East Asian countries, still continues a spousal sponsorship regime
in which the legal status of foreign brides is bound up with their husbands’ financial
and social standing. The foreign brides are therefore more legally vulnerable in that
the spousal sponsorship regime ―exacerbate(es) their unequal status within the
marriage, diminishing their dignity and degree of independence‖ (Côté et al. 2001).
Comparing state policies on Vietnamese brides between East Asian and
Southeast Asian allows policy-makers to gain a better understanding of why certain
policies are not effective in principle and how they could be modified to meet the

needs and expectations of new migrants. In doing so, both the sending and receiving
countries would be better enabled to regulate and benefit in a sustainable manner from
the flows of migrants.
Cultural encounter as a broader concept for studying intermarriage
The usefulness of the cultural encounter as a concept within this study is
inspired by Faier’s study (2009) of the Filipina wives of Japanese men in Central
Kiso, Japan. The term refers specifically to the ―coming together of different

16


discourses, genealogies of meaning, and forms of desire‖ (Faier, 2009: 1). However,
whereas Faier’s larger project concentrates on cultural encounters between individuals
and cultural groups in the context of international interactions between the Philippines
and Japan (with additional reference to the United States), I am more concerned with
the cultural encounters between Vietnamese brides and Singaporean grooms on a dayto-day basis. Specifically, I interpret “cultural encounters‖ as the interactions or
exchanges taking place between two actors or two cultures on the level of language,
custom, practice and value systems.
There are different platforms that facilitate cultural encounters such as
diplomatic relations, business relations, and of course, migration, and marriage.
Diplomatic relations and business relations are often used as platforms to promote
cultural encounters among different sets of actors on a macro-level, whether national
or international. These cultural encounters are not necessarily associated with
intensive interactions amongst individuals. In contrast, cultural encounters that take
place through migration and marriage normally involve intensive and micro-level
interactions between two sides.
Transnational marriage, or marriage migration, serves as one platform for
cultural encounters between the Vietnamese brides and Singaporean grooms. This
form of cultural encounter has two notable characteristics. First, both parties have to
be involved in this cultural interaction on a daily basis. As brides first enter their

marriages, they will likely face the problem of communication. Beyond this, if there
is a common language used to communicate with their husbands, there will remain
considerable differences in their culture and worldview that have to be dealt with.
In ―free choice‖ or ―love‖ marriages, brides and grooms usually have certain
amount of time to get to know each other culturally and socially before they begin

17


married life. In these marriages, therefore, the cultural encounter is first and foremost
a process of cultural accommodation. Regardless of where they go to live after the
wedding, both the bride and groom will have the opportunity to adapt to one another
before they get married. The situation is rather different in the case of commercially
arranged intermarriages. As Vietnamese wives living in Singapore, they have no
choice but to learn to live like a Singaporean from the very beginning of the
relationship. In this context, cultural encounters in commercially arranged marriages
appears on the surface to be a harsh, one-way process of assimilation. However, I
argue that, just as with ―free choice‖ marriages, transnational marriages negotiated
through matchmaking agencies are also a form of cultural encounter that involves a
mutual exchange, one in which the wife attempts to adapt to her husband’s way of life
in Singapore, and in return, the husband also learns to adapt to the Vietnamese ways
of his wife.
Reflexivity and positionality within this study
The concept of ―cultural encounter‖ is also crucial to understanding the
interactions between the ethnographer and the research subject. In other words, it
links to the issue of the researcher’s positionality in ethnographic studies. In this
section, I would like to discuss briefly the relevance of reflexivity in both
ethnography and feminist-oriented studies. Reflexivity refers to the ways in which
―the products of research are affected by the personnel and process of doing research‖
(Davies, 2008:4). Acknowledging the role of reflexivity in doing ethnography helps

the ethnographers to produce ―highly individually reflexive works‖ focusing on ―how
fieldwork affected the ethnographers‖ (Davies, 2008:16). As such, rather than staking
out a fixed positionality, I find it more analytically useful to acknowledge throughout
this study how my own experience of doing research on Vietnamese brides and

18


marriage migration to Singapore has transformed my own preconceived notions of
marriage, migration, and womanhood.
Adding to this discussion on the role of reflectivity in ethnography, feminist
researchers emphasize that reflexivity is a ―holistic process that takes place along all
stages of the research process from the formulation of the research problem to the
shifting positionalities of the researchers and participants through interpretation and
writing‖ (Hesse-Biber, 2007:496). In feminist-oriented studies, ―the research act
sometimes is viewed as an explicit attempt to reduce the distance between the woman
researcher and female subjects‖ (Fonow & Cook, 1991:3). The female researcher
seeks to examine lives of the research subjects at ―structural rapture moments‖ or
―click moments‖ where she can immerse herself into certain circumstances of her
respondents (Fonow & Cook 1991). By doing so, the female researcher can bring in
her own voice and biographies into her ethnographical work. Reflexivity can also help
researchers to explore ―how their theoretical positions and biographies shape what
they choose to be studied and the approach to study it‖ (Hesse-Biber, 2007:496). The
researcher, therefore, should question her own personal and cultural biases as she
collects data and produces ethnographies.
As for me, being a Vietnamese from the North (người miền Bắc) studying
women from the South (miền Nam), there were moments when I caught myself
engaging in stereotypes as I described Southern Vietnamese cultural models.
However, being a Vietnamese from the North (người miền Bắc) studying about both
women from the South (miền Nam) and about Singapore, I learned to come to terms

with my own identity and my own changing socio-cultural settings vis-à-vis both
Singapore and Southern Vietnam. In fact, along the way, I was surprised to uncover a
few more cultural issues beyond my original research concerns, issues that were

19


nonetheless relevant to the larger story of transnational marriage. The process of
putting my reflexive observations to paper and further weaving them into the thesis
was an interesting pedagogical experience for me, one that I hope my readers can
benefit from as well.
Research Methodology and Data Collection
I carried out my research utilizing a combination of library and archival
analyses, as well as field observations and ethnographic interviews. Library and
archival document analysis in this study drew from such primary sources as print
media (i.e., daily newspapers) and multimedia products such as films, drama series,
and talk shows, as well as online news media (i.e., Temasek Review, The Online
Citizens in Singapore), and promotional materials from various matchmaking
agencies (i.e., brochures, business cards, advertising banners, websites, etc.).
Secondary sources included academic studies and reports from governmental
institutions (i.e., Vietnam Association of Women Union, Singapore Registry of
Marriage (ROM), Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports (MCYS)
and various family service centres in Singapore), NGOs and matchmaking agencies.
I employed both qualitative and quantitative methods in my field observations
and ethnographic interviews. In particular, I conducted in-depth interviews with my
respondents to record their life stories and whenever possible, also conducted focus
group discussions to generate additional responses. I used the ―snowball‖ sampling
method, based on my existing personal networks, to locate respondents. As this
method notably limited my research sample by excluding former Vietnamese brides
who had divorced or returned to Vietnam during my research period, I also opted to

undertake fieldwork beyond Singapore, traveling to Vietnam to locate additional
respondents to mitigate the sample bias. I began my short-term fieldwork in

20


Singapore in June 2010, conducting research until September 2010, then moved to
Southern Vietnam, where I conducted interviews from October to November 2010.
While in Singapore, my two main sources for recruiting respondents were
through Archdiocesan Commission for the Pastoral Care of Migrants & Itinerant
People (ACMI), where I do volunteer work, and through the Vietnam Brides
International Matchmaker (VBIM) in Orchard Plaza. I also contacted through email
and subsequently interviewed several social workers in Singapore – mainly from the
Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE) and the Hougang Family
Service Centre. In total, I conducted in-depth interviews with ten Vietnamese brides,
three Singaporean grooms, three matchmakers, three social workers, one researcher
and one movie director in Singapore. Whilst I conducted formal interviews with the
social workers, matchmakers, the researcher and the movie director, I used an
unstructured interview framework when talking to the Vietnamese-Singaporean
couples. In my interviews with Vietnamese-Singaporean couples, and during
observations of their interactions at home, I relied on the less invasive procedure of
using written field notes (instead of audio or video recordings) in order to facilitate
the sharing of potentially sensitive personal details that might not have been
forthcoming otherwise. Their identities have also been changed in this study in order
to protect their privacy. In some cases, I was able to conduct extended interviews and
repeat interviews to record their life stories in greater detail.
Through the mediation of my respondents in Singapore, I was also able to
contact their family members in Vietnam and conduct field visits in Vietnam, together
with the Singapore-based respondent. I stayed with two families of Vietnamese brides
in Cần Thơ and Tây Ninh, with one family in Đồng Tháp, and one family in Ho Chi

Minh City (HCMC) to interview their family members and neighbors. I also visited

21


offices of the Women Union Association in HCMC, Cần Thơ, and Đồng Tháp
provinces to interview five Vietnamese social workers.
Thesis Originality
The issue of intermarriage has a significant socio-cultural impact in both
Singapore and Vietnam but studies on Vietnamese brides to date, including the ARI
team project, have focused only on the destination country of Singapore. My project
has gone beyond these previous studies by providing data from multiple sites in both
the sending and receiving countries. Given that Vietnamese wives do return to visit
their families and stay closely in touch with them, an appreciation of the panoramic
landscape of transnational love and marriage clearly necessitates a multi-sited
approach, in my view.
This study also required an investment in rapport-building, social familiarity,
and the cultivation of friendship and trust, given the extremely personal nature of the
data I collected about emotions and marital relationships. The protagonists in this
study, whether the Vietnamese women or the Singaporean men, would not have
confided their inner thoughts and feelings about their marriage, their dreams, etc., if
they did not see me as someone who could sympathize with their situations and
translate their experiences in an appropriate manner. Working on this issue therefore
became less about obtaining sufficient field material for fulfilling the requirements of
a Master’s thesis. It became, for me, about bringing the voices of these protagonists to
the forefront. It also changed my own understanding of the plight of the women who I
had initially perceived as mere victims of commodification. In the final analysis, it
was about not merely balancing but coming to terms with two kinds of sensitivities
inherent in field research: an empathy for my new friends and an objective

22


responsibility as a researcher.8 As such, I was able to appreciate the world of the
Vietnamese wives and their Singaporean husbands through ―tâm sự,‖ which in
Vietnamese means to connect with each other through a combination of confiding,
gossiping, confessing, and also through simple eye contact or gestures to convey
one’s emotions. In practical terms, it is an exchange of trust.
From the very beginning, I played with the idea of writing a life-story, using
one or two case studies to serve as the backbone of the story. Love, after all, cannot
and should not be reduced to mere statistics or independent and dependent variables.
It simply does not make human sense. An ethnographic study of everyday marital
lives of Vietnamese brides-Singaporean husbands demands a greater descriptive
indulgence, and less presumed fixity, with regard to a couple’s lived experiences, and
their homes, hometowns, villages, relationships and life encounters before and after
marriage and relocation to Singapore, as well as the hope and hard work involved in
their realization of an idealized life-long marriage.
Moreover, in my studies of the cultural exchanges and culturally embedded
perceptions of life philosophy, love, marriage and migration, I have been deeply
influenced by novels written by Vietnamese and Singaporean authors, and also by
related films and cultural metaphors in literature. I refer to these sources several times
in the chapters that follow, employed the aforementioned analogy of duckweed
floating on the surface of a river and clouds fleeting over the rainbow to portray the
transnational journeys of Vietnamese brides.
Each chapter opens and sometimes closes with a short paragraph from my
own personal field diary to expound on concepts and descriptions used in the different
chapters. Taking a leaf from Georges Condominas’s We Have Eaten the Forest: The
8

These conflicts, as Marcus (1995: 12) suggests, ―are resolved in being a sort of ethnographer-activist‖

or a ―circumstantial activist.‖

23


Story of a Montagnard village in the Central Highlands of Vietnam (1994), I have
also tried to made use of endnotes, footnotes and appendices to provide some
additional academic structure for this thesis without overwhelming the main narrative.
A Story in Chapters
This thesis is structured into five chapters: a prologue, three main chapters,
and an epilogue. The prologue relates how I discovered and approached this topic, my
aims and objectives for this study, and my efforts towards realizing these objectives.
The first main chapter weaves the story on my fieldwork in Vietnam, focusing on the
socioeconomic context of the Mekong Delta and of marriage migration through
matchmaking agencies. The second main chapter deals with the marital lives of
Vietnamese brides in Singapore and their struggle to adapt and to rediscover
themselves. The third main chapter is simply a ―conversation‖ about the plight of
these Vietnamese brides, written from the perspective of a Vietnamese woman, a
researcher, a friend, and an alien in a new town. Finally, the epilogue provides a quick
recollection of this interesting journey and what I learned from it.

24


Figure 1.Golden Mile Tower entrance

25