dc.description.abstract | This thesis investigates transnational marriages in a case of Thai wives in Taiwan Hakka community in the south of Taoyuan, research with depth interviews and participant observation for understanding the status of cultural adaptation of Thai wives after married in Taiwan, the results are as follows:
1. Thai wives’ family backgrounds are important to this research because they indicate Thai women’s social class background which affects their living in Taiwan so that it leads to many variety problems. Thus, this also shows the cultural differences between the Taiwan and Thailand. This report divides Thai wives into two categories; Chinese-Thais and pure-Thais. Chinese-Thais’ families are reported as a middle social class in Thailand which have a good quality of life. Most of the Chinese-Thais engage in trade business as entrepreneurs in the city, and in the rural region they become landlords, so their economic statuses are often found to be better than the pure-Thais which most of them are agriculturists. But some of pure-Thais families also found being government employees in which their education and economic status are higher than the agricultural families. As a report from participants with agricultural family background, they increase their economic status by moving to the city and working after they graduated from high school. Their original family background, education and work experience affect them as basis to the reason of why they choose to have transnational marriages.
2. Unlike other studies as always research about transnational marriages in Taiwan with Southeast Asia by marriage bureau, this research focus on freely transnational marriage which is based on free love and free feeling without marriage bureau involved or get a blind marriage. How a couple meet each other is the result from the population movement which globalization is its cause, whether they meet by the woman migration, man migration or both of them, these are the opportunity to understand the main factors how they considered to get a transnational marriage. This study shows the most of Thai women willingly to marry to Taiwanese men because they think of them as they having good appearance and behavior, which cause some of Thai women from polygamous family that would like to have their married life being the monogamy think this can be solved by getting a marriage with Taiwanese.
3. In the perspective of globalization and the marriage marketing, women will choose only to marry to high social-class men known as “marrying up”. This cause many of Taiwanese men become unable to afford to marry to Taiwanese women, so they try out with marriage bureau to find them some medium social-class women in rural part of Southeast Asia becoming their wife. This also means that they think of the Southeast Asia women always try to get a border-cross marriage to have them married up as in the economic concept of marriage marketing. However, this study report none of participants get married up as Taiwanese think of because most of them have no marriage gradient, in example of a couple with pure-Thai women are working in the same factory as their husband. Beside some of Chinese-Thai women are reported to have their educational and family background better than her husband.
4. Some of Taiwan people have the wrong image of Thai wives, because they have their negative information from some of the media broadcast, this information including of; poor family, poor education, not reliable and having bad appearance. By this study researched in an industrial zone in the southern Taoyuan which there is a lot of Thai workers. They are found by Taiwanese that they always go to a pub for drink on holidays, get drunk that also make some trouble to the others, resulting in uncomfortable and unsafe feeling to Taiwan people and cause them to have their negative attitudes on all of Thai people. They think of all Thai people as savages and not civilized, so Thai wives who are innocents also get some of misunderstanding. With these negative always cause Thai wives harder to adapt their living in Taiwan.
5. This study shows how married Thai-women-To-Taiwanese between pure-Thais and Chinese-Thais differently adapted their cultural living style in Taiwan. Chinese-Thai women grew up with their mandarin Chinese taught, so they can communicate to Taiwanese which give them more advantage to adaptation in their living and finding jobs, also they already known some of Chinese cultural ceremonies before in addition to their advantage. However, they are very sensitive to ethnic discrimination especially when calling them “Thai bride” because they think that their ancestors are Chinese as same as Taiwanese’s ancestors which is the only problem for their living adaptation. Pure-Thai women are reported to have problem in communication, even some of them already worked in Taiwan for a several years because they always have someone to interpret for them so their language skill does not increase properly as they should be for their living in Taiwan, thus, this become more and more problem after they married to Taiwanese, they need to understand Mandarin-Chinese, also Min-nan and Hakka in addition. Furthermore, with the differences of pure-Thai and Taiwanese cultural religion faiths and ceremonies, their adaption to this differences also come in terms of religion for living with Taiwanese husband. By the way, they are less affected by ethnic discrimination because they understand their differences to Taiwanese, yet, they always make friends with Thais and Southeast Asia people, so they do not mind.
6. Taiwan is a multicultural sociality, the researcher focus on the city of South of Taoyuan, They discovered that most married couples become to be the Hakka community. The married couples were influenced by the Hakka culture such as the husband will lead his wife so the man will be like the powerful leader of the family. The wife who married into Hakka family need to adjust herself to be underneath her husband also to change the role of herself from a woman to be a wife, daughter-in-low and mother. The fact which the researcher can find is Thai wife who is from a farmer family can adjust herself to be with the Hakka family as well because they have the similar way of life compared to Hakka family like a assiduous and economical people. We can say that Thai wife is supported by the Hakka culture which is a part of adjustment in the culture for her new life in Taiwan. On the other hand. Thai-Chinese who is rich and has a good life quality in the hometown cannot adapt to the role of Hakka women who need to work hard and change herself many ways to be underneath the man’s power, so it turns out that the Hakka Culture push and take effect to cultural adjustment hardly to the new life.
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