FDI is regarded as a key catalyst for new labor flow in a migration system (Jones and Findlay, 1998). The link between investment and labor flow is explained as follows:
“the functional role of such links in migration is that they enhance transportation and communication systems as well as interpersonal information transfer . . . when international economic linkages involve countries of very different development levels, they are likely to stimulate unbalanced transfers—small numbers of the highly skilled in one direction, and large numbers of semi- and unskilled in the other” (pp. 95–96).
Is this explanation applicable to cross-border marriage? In order for two people marry, a marriage market is required. By marriage market, I mean a pool of men and women who have potential to marry. How an international marriage market between two countries is formed is worth exploring. The literature on cross-border marriage in Taiwan highlighted FDI as a reference point from which to explore the reasons for the surge in marriages between Taiwanese men and Vietnamese women (Wang and Chang, 2002; Hsia 2004). Wang and Chang (2002) suggested that “the globalized capital investment indirectly catalyzed the development of the international marriage market” (p. 95). Hsia (2004) has argued that the economic interdependence between Taiwan and Southeast Asia contributed to the increase in marriage migration by applying a world-system approach to international migration. Hsia (2004) also
attempted to show the linkage between FDI and marriage migration by laying out four types of marriage brokerage by Taiwanese investors and staff persons in Southeast Asia, transnational married couples, commercial marriage brokerage companies and
Southeast Asian women who work in Taiwan, and noted that the first three are
relevant to the FDI. Hsia’s (2004) typology of brokers is useful, and indeed all of these types exist in the case of cross-border marriage in Korea. However, she did not
account for how much each of these contributes to the full range of cross-border marriages. It is difficult to obtain accurate data to do so. However, it seems that marriages between Korean investors and staff persons in Vietnam and Vietnamese female workers occupy a relatively small proportion of cross-border marriages, judging from my interview with the brokers. Marriages through commercial arrangement or a migrants’ network seem more prominent practices.
I reviewed the data on Korean direct investment in Vietnam. According to the Statistical Yearbook of Vietnam 2005, Taiwan and Korea are the first and second largest investors in Vietnam in terms of numbers of investment projects (p. 96). Figure 6.7 shows a correlation between the FDI and the number of cross-border marriages between Vietnam and Korea. The investment began around 1992 when Korea and Vietnam established diplomatic relations. According to the Korea Trade–Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) (2007), 58% of the investment has taken place since 2002. According to a KOTRA survey in Ho Chi Minh City, 68.2% of Korean investors engage in manufacturing sectors, and 65.5% invest in Southern Vietnam. This is relevant in the sense that the majority of Vietnamese marriage migrants are from Southern Vietnam. However, more layers of explanation are required in order to explain whether there is any kind of causal relationship between FDI and cross-border marriages.
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9000 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 Year A m o u n t ( M il lio n U S $ ) FDI Spouse Visa
Figure 6.7 Amount of Korean FDI to Vietnam and the number of spouse visas. (Source: KOTRA and Korean Consulate in Ho Chi Minh City)
Hsia (2004) suggested a direct relation between FDI and marriage migration. I considered the possibility that Korean investors and staff persons are involved in cross-border marriage. For example, early investment from Korea to Vietnam was concentrated on labor-intensive light industry, which attracts female labor. While working in a factory, Vietnamese women may have married Korean co-workers or been introduced through them to other Koreans. The brokers with whom I spoke were skeptical about this possibility, however. According to one of the Korean brokers in Vietnam, while there were some instances in which Korean managers married
Vietnamese women or introduced Vietnamese women to their acquaintances, this has happened only relatively recently, after marriage between Korean men and
Vietnamese women had become increasingly popular through marriage brokerage agencies in Korea. In addition, none of the Vietnamese women I interviewed married through this process; most of them married through marriage brokerage agencies. According to the National Survey on Multicultural Families in 2009, 66.4% of Vietnamese marriage migrants answered that they married through the commercial marriage brokerage agency (Kim et al, 2010). If cross-border marriage between Korea
and Vietnam is predominantly arranged by marriage brokerage agencies, the question may be whether there is any relationship between the marriage brokerage industry and FDI. Another broker, who identified himself as on the frontier of the international marriage market between Korea and Vietnam, hinted at this possibility, noting that he had gone to an industrial area where women workers reside in order to find a potential pool of candidates when he started his cross-border marriage brokerage business. While FDI may not influence cross-border marriage directly, high female population density caused by industrialization may play a role in generating a potential pool of candidates and by creating a venue for information to circulate and networks of marriage migrants to develop. The relationship between FDI and cross-border marriage is thus rather indirect. As exchanges between Korea and Vietnam have increased, business or personal networks have become established and, based on those networks, other cultural and economic exchanges—including labor migration or marriage migration have emerged. Migration agencies have played a role in this process.