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Cross-border migration for the purpose of marriage is on the rise, and at present it constitutes one of the most common forms of long-term international mobility in East Asia. This special issue of Cross-Currents analyzes marriage migration in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan as a subject of governance. The articles included here demonstrate that marriage migration has attracted considerable policy attention and public anxiety not because it is about “marriage” or “migration” per se, but because it is perceived to be inseparable from a wide range of other issues, such as sexual morality, family norms, national identity, and border security. In particular, the long-lasting social relationships marriage migration creates and the role of marriage migrants (the vast majority of whom are women) in rearing the next generation of the state’s sovereign subjects tie marriage migration to state security concerns. Popular anxieties about marriage migration are often based on projections into the future rather than observations about the present reality. On one hand, the fact that marriage migration is deeply embedded in myriad social institutions and relations that cannot be dealt with in isolation causes a projection-based mode of governance; on the other hand, it renders transnational marriage particularly hard to govern, which further exacerbates anxiety. But this should not be seen as a failure in public policy. The articles in this special issue argue that such projections, imaginations, and self-perpetuating anxieties are important parts of how nationhood is constructed in the current era. As such, marriage migration as a subject of governance provides us with a special angle to examine how politics works in subtle and sometimes invisible ways on local, national, and transnational levels.

The lifting of Martial Law in 1987 opened the gate for Taiwanese mainlanders to visit family members who remained in the People's Republic of China. During these homecoming trips, many a "cared-for veteran" married a middle-aged Chinese woman and thus eventually could develop a legal intimate relationship in Taiwan. Paradoxically, however, quite a few veteran husbands regard their mainland spouses as "Communist spies" and discipline them as such. Situated in the contemporary discursive context of Taiwanese nationalism, at the same time, mechanisms of border control, the Veteran Affairs Commission, and mass media, as well as representatives of certain political parties, often equate those mainland spouses with "life-long Red Guards"-that is, "national others by nature" within Taiwan that accordingly should be denied full citizenship rights. Based on ethnographical research of domestic violence cases occurring in the above-mentioned cross-strait marriages, this paper aims to answer the following two sets of questions: First, did life experiences during the Cultural Revolution indeed construct those mainland spouses' national identities and everyday-life practices in Taiwan? If so, how does such a form of identity-construction progress and take effect? And, second, how and why does the veteran husband regard his mainland wife to be a "Communist spy"? In addition, how has such a (mis)understanding come into formation in the post-1949 politico-historical contexts; and, has this conception been reinforced by present conditions of social welfare, as well as individuals' life stages? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]