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Professor Gavin W. Jones dedicated an impressive 58-year career to extensive research on various aspects of population and development in Asia. As a seasoned consultant, he was pivotal in shaping population policies and programs in more than 10 Asian countries, impacting the region’s demographic landscape. Throughout his illustrious career, Gavin has left an indelible mark through his prolific publications, with 30 books, over 180 journal articles, and book chapters. His body of work covered various demographic subjects in the Asia-Pacific region, significantly contributing to our understanding of population dynamics in Southeast, South, and East Asia. His research has been instrumental in informing policy decisions in these regions by providing evidence-based recommendations. In addition to his consultancy and academic achievements, Gavin actively engaged in professional networks, fostering collaborations and facilitating knowledge exchange among fellow demographers and researchers. His commitment to mentorship has been invaluable, nurturing emerging demographers and supporting the next generation of population scholars in population and development. The present paper aims to delve into Professor Gavin W. Jones’s specific contributions to elucidate the intricate relationship between population and development, an area that inevitably intersects with other papers in this festschrift on marriage, fertility, and urbanization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, by looking at the role of Taiwanese citizens in civic organisations for marriage migrants, explores how women's agency and negotiation occur not only against masculine dominance within patriarchal family arrangements, but also in alliance with it, when oppression is located somewhere beyond the family. In contrast to literature that depicts marriage migration as a women's and migrants' issue, this paper explores the role of Taiwanese citizens (often husbands in cross‐border marriages) in shaping the evolution of the phenomenon in both the private and public spheres. The aim of this paper is to fill a gap in empirical literature on marriage migration in Taiwan and East Asia, as well as contribute to feminist debates on women's agency in the context of masculine dominance. Building on ethnographic data collected through fieldwork in Taiwan, including in‐depth interviews and participant observation within civil society organisations for marriage migrants, this paper reveals how Taiwanese male citizens and Chinese female migrants responded to the challenges brought by their decision to engage in cross‐border unions by creating a new narrative that could explain their condition of shared oppression and by developing joint actions to address the structural discrimination they faced as cross‐border couples in Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Postponement of first births is a key cause of declining fertility rates, especially in East Asia where recovery from delayed childbearing has been weak. This paper investigates achievement of ideal ages at marriage and first birth in Singapore using survey data on 657 married women aged 25–34. Almost 50 per cent marry within one year of their ideal age, but less than 30 per cent have their first child within six months of their ideal interval to first birth, with around 50 per cent waiting longer than ideal. The high proportion of women experiencing a longer-than-ideal first birth interval was observed across all age and educational groups. Regression results show that co-residence with a foreign domestic worker and paid leave entitlements are associated with higher probability of achieving their ideal first birth interval, whereas availability of parents/in-laws, husband's help and unpaid leave do not reduce time to childbearing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In comparison to other countries in East Asia in which a significant gender gap can be identified, Taiwan is reported to have an exceptionally high level of gender equality. However, Taiwan's fertility rate is notably low (1.05 in 2019), even among East Asian countries with declining fertility rates. Childbirth outside marriage is rare in Taiwan; hence, the marriage rate directly affects the number of newborn babies. This implies that Taiwan's gender equality index does not properly reflect the actual situation in society and that the situation may not be so different from in other East Asian countries. Namely, invisible forms of gender inequality may exist in Taiwan, and traditional gender roles may affect women's lives, including their willingness to start a family. To examine this proposition, semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 43 women aged 30–40 years old, with a focus on those with a basic university education or higher who are most likely to experience gender equality. Results show that Taiwanese women—especially highly educated women—enjoy superficially equal positions and avoid traditional contexts in order to protect their rights and avoid the gender roles associated with traditional families. Welfare that the state should be responsible for, such as childcare and nursing care, is supplied by women in the name of tradition, but the willingness of females to start a family is declining. Promoting family participation for males and supporting more comprehensive equality are two of the keys to increasing the marriage/fertility rate and closing the gap between public and private equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Births outside of marriage are comparatively rare in East Asia, but numbers appear to be rising. Such fertility tends to be concentrated among lower educational and socioeconomic groups which can entrench pre-existing inequalities in systems where such 'non-traditional' family forms are penalised. Most research in this area, however, has focused on the relationship between marriage and first birth. Using a large microdataset from Hong Kong, we explore the relationship between marriage and childbearing across the life-course. In particular, we examine the frequency of marriage between parities, and the various predictors of marrying (or not). Rather than 'life-long' cohabiters, we find roughly half of all couples who have a first birth outside of marriage do, in fact, marry before having their second child. The study concludes with some exploratory reasons for the apparently strong continuation of the relationship between marriage and childbearing in Hong Kong and in East Asia more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migrant political participation is a central challenge to many Western democracies. This article, by building on the case of marriage migrants' political participation in Taiwan, offers food for thought on East Asia, a region of the world that has been neglected in most academic debates on this theme. Applying "flat ontology" and drawing from a mixed methodology, involving content analysis of press releases published on political party websites and in-depth interviews with marriage migrants, this article offers a timely account of how migrant political integration and participation is a complex process. It depends not only on broader political opportunities, social, legal, cultural factors shaping political integration processes and individual political values, but also on the specificity of migrants' identities and subjectivities, including gender, perception of security, a migrant's family background, their parental status, life stage, and their perception of self in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article problematizes the modern construction of "love" in colonial and contemporary Taiwan and South Korea through historicizing the concept from the nineteenth century to the present. The conception of modern love in East Asia emerged during the late nineteenth century that coincided with the beginnings of civilization and nation-building discourses advocating as a strong mediator for the reconfiguration of social and intimate relationships. In the case of colonial Taiwan and Korea, the colonial governments and intellectuals constantly pivoted on "exceptions" - obscene sex, indecent behavior or illegitimate subjects - to justify their political legitimacy/hegemony to love that prescribed a normative social relationship. Fully embraced by colonial Taiwan and Korea, this mechanism was extended to their postwar regimes; that is, love is celebrated and worshiped without the recognition of its underlying ideology of discrimination and exclusion. I coin the term "love unconscious" to characterize the colonial legacies of love in the contemporary social movements in Taiwan and South Korea. Furthermore I examine how both religious groups and LGBTQ activism were stuck in the "love unconscious" with two cases of contested love: the definition of love in the dictionary, and the rhetoric of love in (anti-)same-sex marriage movements. This article argues that Taiwan and South Korea's LGBTQ and marriage movements are based neither on Western discourses nor inspiration, but are instead driven by the reality and legacy of colonial history. To envisage the decolonization of love is to deconstruct the love unconscious and reconsider the history of colonial love. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the 2006 Family Module of the East Asian Social Survey ( N = 3,096), this article examines associations of marital satisfaction with divisions of housework and gender ideology in four East Asian societies: urban China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Compared with Japanese and Korean married women and men, Chinese and Taiwanese spouses were more satisfied with their marriage and had more egalitarian divisions of housework, but simultaneously they held less egalitarian gender ideologies. Multivariate analyses showed that relative share of housework was negatively associated with marital satisfaction for Japanese and Korean men and for Korean and Taiwanese women. Egalitarian gender ideology was significantly associated with lower marital satisfaction only among Taiwanese women. In addition, the negative association between housework and marital satisfaction was more pronounced for Taiwanese women who espoused more egalitarian gender ideologies. The authors discuss how differences in macro-level social contexts explain these cross-society variations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trends toward later and less marriage and childbearing have been even more pronounced in East Asia than in the West. At the same time, many other features of East Asian families have changed very little. We review recent research on trends in a wide range of family behaviors in China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. We also draw upon a range of theoretical frameworks to argue that trends in marriage and fertility reflect tension between rapid social and economic changes and limited change in family expectations and obligations. We discuss how this tension may be contributing to growing socioeconomic differences in patterns of family formation. This focus on East Asia extends research on the second demographic transition in the West by describing how rapid decline in marriage and fertility rates can occur in the absence of major changes in family attitudes or rising individualism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]