Abstract
Cross-border marriage has existed for centuries. It presents various stories across time and space. It is therefore not something new. The prolific studies of cross-border marriage in Taiwan nearly unanimously focus on the mainland Chinese and southeast Asian spouses. Although these studies use a variety of theories ranging from global political economy, to life adjustment, to the meso-model of institutions and social relations, cross-border marriage is categorically characteristically commodified. In this thesis I focus on an under-studied group, the Russian marriage migrants, and use a different approach that does not ontologically view cross-border marriage as commodified. More specifically, I use the anthropological concepts of hypergamy and hypogamy to analyze my ethnography of the Russian spouses’ life in Taiwan in three levels—personal, structural, and ethnic. In so doing, this thesis aims to contribute to our understanding of the Russian-Taiwanese marriage in terms of these women’s construction of self, in the context of international political economy, and with regard to the issues of cultural and skin-color differences. All the Russian women I interviewed met their Taiwanese husbands by themselves or through their social networks. There is no brokerage involved. Hypergamy and hypogamy vary in different levels. First, in the self-construction level, there are only the discrepancies between imaginations and realities, and their adjusting process to the married life as well as the new environment. Hypergamy and hypogamy do not exist in this level. Second, based on the difference in Gross Domestic Production (GDP) between Taiwan and Russia, one might expect to find attributes of hypergamy due to the economic motivation for an upward move on the international politico-economic structure. However, a nation’s economic situation does not equal to that of the individual, nor does the difference between nations apply to that between the conjugal relation. Furthermore, Taiwanese husbands and their Russian wives are similar on their education levels. Although husbands are the primary breadwinners, wives can make a living by themselves. With regards to culture and skin colors, according to the informants’ experience, the significance of skin colors in daily life connotes a cultural hierarchy between yellow and white, and it may lead to hypogamy. However, only a few cases attribute economical hypergamy or hypogamy to skin color. While national discrepancies do not equal to individual differences, skin colors are unchangeable. While we found some hypergamy and hypogamy at work on the politico-economic structure, there is actually no sign of hypergamy and hypogamy in Russian spouses’ daily life. We need more research and discussions to evaluate the significance of hypergamy and hypogamy.