Why are some of the cross-border marriages in Taiwan doing better than others? Identifying the factors that made a successful trans-cultural marriage

Michael Chen, National Chung Cheng University
Doris Lin, National Chung Cheng University

The Island of Taiwan has been swept by cross-border marriages over the past years. These marriages often met with tremendous social pressures, and such couples found their marriages on a lesser wedlock. Yet, contrary to the stereotype, some of the cross-border marriages were more successful than others. It is of academic interest and policy importance to find out the factors that contributed to a successful marriage. We recruited several seemingly successful marriages and conducted in-depth interviews on the couples; the qualitative data were than analyzed according to the procedures called “interpretative phenomenology analysis”. We found that, the reasons and the process for an international marriage were not different among most of the marriages. The secret to the marital success was in the attitude they posed toward their marriages and the way they managed the life after marriage, and the way they responded to the prejudice out there in the society.