Lower Income Marriage Migrants and Domains of Integration in Singapore

Abstract

Drawing on the domains of integration, this paper illuminates the integration experiences of female marriage migrants from lower income cross-national families in Singapore. Through interviews with 38 cross-national families of the Singaporean-husband and foreign-wife pairing, we show how the integration of lower income marriage migrants in Singapore is experienced through the interrelated domains of the structural, social and cultural, while foregrounding the family as an added domain of interest. Although marriage to citizen-husbands create privileged pathways to citizenship rights and hence forms of integration, this is neither predictable nor unidirectional—family members play a crucial part in rendering support and at times, constraining female marriage migrants' integration. Contributing to wider debates on whether cross-border marriages are indicators, if not, facilitators of integration, this paper shows how female marriage migrants' integration in Singapore is highly relational and tied not only to the level of support and openness from their husbands, their interactions with other domains of integration are also dependent on the quality of relationships with extended family members.