Using Taiwan as an example of immigrant suffering in many parts of the world, the author uses the idea of immigrant doubleness to identify social mechanisms that enable transnational marital migration and that dissimulate the “double absence” experiences of Vietnamese female marriage migrants in Taiwan and Vietnam. I find that phong trào (trend), triggered by remittances sent via marriage migrants and intergenerational family contracts, and its consequence of collective illusions provide the most important mechanisms in Taiwanese-Vietnamese match-made marriages. Further, linguistic challenges, discontent regarding expectations of intimacy, incivil attention, and negative transnationalism exacerbate the suffering experiences of Vietnamese marriage migrants. This essay attempts to transform a social problem-oriented inquiry that centers on the adaption of marital immigrants into a sociological question focused on the social causes of immigrant suffering.

Keywords: Taiwan-Vietnam marriage, double absence, social suffering, intimate discontents, negative transnationalism

10.6786/TJS.201906_(65).0002