This book analyzes new configurations of marriage, immigration, and sovereignty emerging in an increasingly mobile Asia where Cold War legacies continue to shape contemporary political struggles over sovereignty and citizenship. Focused on marital immigration from China to Taiwan, the book documents how Taiwanese bureaucrats and policymakers produce much-desired sovereignty effects through regulating Chinese spouses’ migration trajectory and managing the threat of similarity they represent. Through tracing parallels between the predicaments of marital immigrants from China and Taiwanese state ... More

This book analyzes new configurations of marriage, immigration, and sovereignty emerging in an increasingly mobile Asia where Cold War legacies continue to shape contemporary political struggles over sovereignty and citizenship. Focused on marital immigration from China to Taiwan, the book documents how Taiwanese bureaucrats and policymakers produce much-desired sovereignty effects through regulating Chinese spouses’ migration trajectory and managing the threat of similarity they represent. Through tracing parallels between the predicaments of marital immigrants from China and Taiwanese state actors, the book examines the tensions that arise when similarity becomes the starting point from which states craft legal and regulatory remedies to de facto sovereignty. It argues that this group of exceptional immigrants has become necessary to Taiwan’s fragile integrity as a recognized nation-state, and it shows how intimate attachments and affective investments infuse the governmental practices that regulate immigration and produce citizenship and sovereignty. The book exposes the social, political, and subjective consequences of life on the margins of citizenship and sovereignty.