Marital Immigration and Graduated Citizenship: Post-Naturalization Restrictions on Mainland Chinese Spouses in Taiwan

As Taiwan seeks to establish itself as an independent polity in the international community, it simultaneously confronts the problem of how to integrate almost 300,000 marital immigrants from Mainland China. This most recent wave of marital immigration across the Taiwan Strait began in the early 1990s and reached its peak in 2003, stabilizing since then at roughly 10 percent of all marriages annually. Chinese marital immigrants in Taiwan face more onerous requirements for residency and citizenship than any other category of foreign spouse. In the years immediately following naturalization, moreover, they remain barred from civil service employment and have limited family reunification rights. This paper examines these post-naturalization inequalities in relation to 1) broader population concerns that encourage continued restrictions on Chinese immigration; and 2) struggles over how to define the scope of the Taiwanese family and nation. It asks whether, given this environment, Chinese marital immigrants can ever become full Taiwanese citizens, both in terms of juridical status and national incorporation. This question underscores a key tension in Taiwan's nation-building project: how to integrate immigrants who are racially, ethnically, and linguistically similar but who come tainted by longstanding political differences across the Taiwan Strait.