Number three in an occasional series of summaries of articles related to communication practices in Taiwan.
Cheng, H.-I. (2018) Relational citizenship: Examining Taiwanese membership development through immigrant framing in public discourses. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 11(2), 154-172, DOI: 10.1080/17513057.2018.1426778How are recent immigrant spouses in Taiwan discussed in public discourses? And, what cultural logic buttresses the constructions of newcomers’ belongingness in Taiwan? (p. 155)
She focuses on the portrayal of female immigrant spouses in print news media, but also conducted interviews with social workers and attended citizenship celebrations for immigrant spouses (p. 159).
Cheng develops her concept of relational citizenship by contrasting the traditional Western concept of citizenship that conceptualizes it in terms of legal rights that are theoretically (though not in practice) portrayed as universal with Donati's (1995; 2011) concept of "societal citizenship" that argues for "relational rights" of citizenship along with the more traditional Western legal rights. To Donati's conceptualization, Cheng adds more Taiwan-specific perspectives on relationships, drawing on the contrast between qing (情, described as "connective feelings" that have "traditionally served as the foundation for Chinese moral behavior" [p. 157]) and fa (法, "regulations and laws"). Noting that "Confucian societies aim to reach harmonious relations ... before employing regulations and laws," she observes that trying to balance these two approaches to "organizing societies ... remains a constant struggle for modern Chinese societies" (p. 157).
In the specific case of immigrant spouses, Cheng argues that foreign spouses (mostly female immigrants coming from China, Vietnam, and Indonesia to marry Taiwanese men) are primarily depicted in the news media in terms of their relationships to the Taiwanese people with whom they are associated (as wives, mothers, or daughters-in-law). Furthermore, she observes that at an Immigration Day celebration she attended, two Taiwanese speakers--a government official and an elementary school principal--described the contributions of the immigrant spouses in terms of their ability to reproduce. Cheng notes that both of the speakers--both women--jokingly lamented that they "cannot compete" with the immigrant spouses' reproductive powers (one speaker calls them an "army of reproduction" [shenglijun, 生力軍]), and she argues that such language "replicates the ethos of objectifying women citizens as reproduction machines," though she doesn't comment on the arguably racist connotations of casting the immigrant women in particular as "reproductive machines" (p. 161).
Cheng points out that relational citizenship in Taiwan means that citizenship for foreign spouses is also conditional. On the one hand, she cites the news story of a foreign spouse who despite overstaying her residency was able to keep her Alien Residence Certificate (which connotes permanent residency, a stage toward citizenship for the foreign spouses). The language of the article emphasizes the need of her four children for their mother (p. 163). On the other hand, she cites another story of a foreign spouse who lost her Taiwanese citizenship for having an extramarital affair. (Cheng notes that the foreign spouse wondered publicly why a government official didn't lose his citizenship for having an affair). The woman, says Cheng, "obviously was positioned in a further, more precarious, and lower hierarchical relation as a citizen compared to those of the male governmental official. ... The compounded effects of racialized nationalism and patriarchy, which controls women's body more stringently, complicated her Taiwanese identity" (p. 162).
These two examples hint at what Cheng later points about about how citizenship becomes "a moral matter": at one of the celebrations she attended, she observed immigrant spouses being praised for their filial piety and care for their families and their families' businesses. "In these public endorsements," she writes, "marital immigrants are expected to perform duties to satisfy their immediate and distant interdependent groups as a way to enhance their value" (the capitalist connotations of this are not lost on Cheng) (p. 164).
Cheng also points out, though, the possibilities for multicultural identities and relationships when she describes an immigrant mother and her daughter singing a Vietnamese song together" at a celebration. At these performances," she argues, the "local core value of being an 'ideal' female relational partner is tied to the progressive ideology of multiculturalism, demonstrated through Southeast Asian food stands, games with quizzes on various cultural traditions, and multilingual singing and dances onstage. The displayed relational citizenship reinforces Taiwan's image as a pluralistic society able to strengthen its long-cherished cultural values even within these multicultural families" (p. 165).
Cheng admits, however, that the multiculturalism celebrated in such activities can "depoliticize real differences derived from historical legacies and consequently mitigate political support for certain cultural communities" (p. 166) And citing other research (including a 2015 book by Todd Sandel), she concedes that relational citizenship does not mean that legal citizenship rights aren't important. She also concedes that there are questions about, for instance, "who should be making the efforts to relate to whom" (p. 167). But, she concludes, the concept of relational citizenship could be useful in helping to reimagine "interactions that occur between citizens and immigrants/migrants as [occurring between] interdependent and relational partners" (p. 167). This could help address the discourse around citizen-immigrant relations by emphasizing immigrants' relations with others, as in "immigrant mother," rather than individualistic legalistic identities like "undocumented immigrant" (p. 167).
The article served my purpose of getting a sense of how foreign spouses in Taiwan are portrayed in public discourse. One thing I didn't mention in my summary was Cheng's contrast between how foreign spouses are more often discussed in terms of qing, while foreign laborers (waiji laogong 外籍勞工) are portrayed in terms of fa--the foreign laborers don't have any rights to permanent residency or citizenship, and there doesn't seem to be any place for them in the concept of relational citizenship. This leads me to wonder, though, how relational citizenship can be applied in situations where the immigrant is not related to anyone--if they are not someone's parent or spouse, if they are not related to anyone in the country they have migrated to. It suggests to me that the concept or use of relational citizenship might be useful in some circumstances, such as with immigrant spouses in Taiwan (though even there it sounds a bit problematic), its range of application otherwise might be rather narrow.
[Update, 8/22/20: While Twitter-surfing I just saw a reference on Jonathan Sullivan's feed to this open-access article: "We want productive workers, not fertile women: The expediency of employing Southeast Asian caregivers in Taiwan," by Isabelle Cheng. It seems to address some of the problems with the "relational citizenship" model in Hsin-I Cheng's article. Isabelle Cheng writes in the abstract, "‘Bringing the state back in’ to its analysis, this article argues that this legislation is not only market‐driven but socio‐politically expedient in that it sanctions the continued employment of foreign caregivers as productive workers rather than as fertile women, while simultaneously casting them as the undesirable other. Taiwan thus becomes a ‘migration state’ with an open economy but a closed national community." I'll have to read this when I get a chance...]
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