Search

For many countries, irregular immigration usually engenders adverse public reaction and restrictionist policies. However, public attitudes often vary and looser policies have been adopted at certain times and for certain reasons. The purpose of this paper is to explore the phenomenon of undocumented, transnational marriages in the Sino-Vietnamese border areas of China, and to explain why many undocumented immigrants are treated leniently and/ or have not been deported. Research reveals that this could be due to female immigrants considerably relieving the marriage market crisis along China's border. Thus, unauthorized border crossing continues despite prohibition and de facto marriage is prevalent and uncontrollable. China and Vietnam have yet to establish a bilateral cooperation to address the problematic aspects of this phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early twentieth-century China, as with other post-imperial states, faced the challenge of creating a nation encompassing different social groups and cultures. How to identify ethnic groups living in the borderlands and generate nationwide social cohesion became a fundamental question that concerned multiple intellectual communities. This article traces the formation of two approaches to ethnicity—ethnology and sociology—at that time. These two approaches, configuring "ethnic differences" in dissimilar ways, were received differently by the public. In the end, the ethnological approach prevailed and the sociological approach was marginalized. This outcome exemplifies a possible hierarchy of knowledge, but also involves the politics of knowledge. This article shows that the disparate visions of "ethnic others" were produced by intellectuals differently positioned within the social context of post-imperial China. The positionalities of these disciplines explain much of their intellectual alignment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]