Chasing Fate & Fortune in the Borderland: Cross-Border Marriage & Migration at the Malaysian-Thai Frontier

Abstract

This article examines the feminization of migration at the Malaysian-Thai frontier through the lens of cross-border marriages between Malaysian men and Thai women (predominantly of Malay ethnicity). Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the Malaysian city of Kota Bharu, Kelantan, it explores the migration process as a hopeful endeavor in seeking “fortune” in several senses of the word: employment and economic prospects (Mal. rezeki), and opportunities for marriage (Mal. jodoh, or “fated union”). Second, it illustrates how Thai women’s reported use of magical means such as love magic and sorcery in their search for jodoh and rezeki inspires both fear and desire among Malays. Thai women’s seductive and supernatural prowess, I argue, constitutes a crucial but understudied capital for navigating a precarious labor and marriage market where their employability and (sexual) desirability overlap, allowing them to subvert existing narratives of female cross-border marriage migrants as victims of precarity.