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Mobility across the Taiwan Strait has intensified since the border was opened in 1987. The cross-border social, cultural and economic exchanges, however, have remained closely embedded in the nationalistic logic specific to cross-Strait relations. Employing a state-centered approach and building on a comparative analysis of the interaction between Beijing and two groups of cross-Strait migrants (mainland spouses in Taiwan, and Taiwanese investors in China), this paper examines the various ways in which a state may still exert influence over migrant communities in a context of increased mobility and exchanges. This paper argues that the nation-state may still shape migrants’ experiences, particularly when sending and receiving governments have unresolved disputes. Under these conditions, state actors may use migrant communities to achieve their nationalistic goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses how Taiwanese overseas investment creates an ethnic Chinese skilled labor market in Asia. Low costs, no language barrier, and the cultural "lived Taiwan experience" are the benefits. Through three different channels--internal corporate transfer, social networks, and placement agencies--skilled labor from the People's Republic is mobilized to work overseas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hukou is one of the enduring institutions that defines social citizenship of residents/immigrants in mainland China. Whilst much discussion has focused on the Chinese case, relatively little attention has been paid to the system in Taiwan, to say nothing of a comparison between the two. This article seeks to enrich the discussion of the two hukou systems in terms of their functions in determining the access of cross-strait immigrants to social benefits in the respective host countries. Drawing on the 'credibility thesis', the analytical locus is placed on the continuity and change of institutional functions underlying the apparent persistence of institutional forms. When granting/withholding immigrants access to local social benefits, hukou systems fulfil several functions: firstly, a symbolic dimension, in which immigrants from both sides are (artificially) regarded as citizens of a divided nation rather than two separate countries; secondly, a substantial dimension that defines the scope and extent of social benefit entitlements granted to the immigrants in question; and finally, a management dimension that allows room for considerable administrative discretion in terms of adaptation to various circumstances arising from the unsettled state of cross-strait relations. Often times, realisation of these various functions is compounded by conflicts in identity politics, with repercussions for the generosity/rigidity of social inclusion for cross-strait immigrants. Evidence underpinning the theoretical elaboration stems from the analysis of legal documents regulating the social rights of immigrants in mainland China and Taiwan, supplemented by historical traces of the politics of cross-strait migration. The final findings should shed light on the facilitative/restrictive mechanisms of the hukou regulations in mainland China and Taiwan, highlighting the puzzling phenomenon that both hukou systems are gaining increasing significance in steering the cross-strait migration at a time when their functions in regulating domestic migration are changing, if not waning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Family reunification has become a widely recognized means to move across borders in the contemporary world. As a migration strategy, family reunification redefines the relationship of kinship to nation, diversifying the ‘national family’ and its gendered role expectations. This article uses cross-border marriages between Chinese and Taiwanese to interrogate how immigration affects the experiences of men who migrate through or in conjunction with marriage, integrating scales of family, citizenship, and nation in an analysis of migrant masculinity. Migrant husbands describe their disempowerment as male providers and citizens through the patrilineal and patrilocal kinship language of having ‘married out.’ The article examines the salience of this kinship model for immigrant husbands seeking to redefine their relationship to patrilineal gender privileges and secure citizenship status. How do men who migrate through marriage negotiate gendered kinship principles that may work to their benefit in their home country but undermine their status once they migrate? How does the experience of migrating as a kin-dependent threaten men’s self-image as family providers? By investigating these challenges to hegemonic masculinity, the article asks how migration reconfigures the gendered foundations of family formation by undermining kinship-based models of normative masculinity and creating a gender crisis for some migrant husbands. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]