Marriageable Us and Undesirable Them: Asian Immigrants’ Marital Boundaries and the American Racial Divide

Abstract

A growing number of intermarriage researchers are investigating parental influences on their children’s marital relationships, but no one has yet examined the effect of the intermarriage statuses of immigrant parents. In this paper I look at how Asian immigrant parents’ own marital decisions shape their understanding of their children’s marriageability and race in the U.S. I introduce an analytical framework that I call ‘marital boundary-making’ to show how differences between ‘marriageable us’ and ‘undesirable them’ are perceived by individuals in different family positions. I use data from 35 interviews with Taiwan-origin immigrant parents residing in San Diego to show how structural assimilation does not necessarily lead to white desirability, even among immigrants who have collectively achieved high socioeconomic status. I found that while the intermarried parents described a color-blind type of marital boundary that plays down race, the coethnic parents expressed a preference hierarchy with Taiwanese at the top. Neither group expressed a strong preference for whites. Further, even though the parents’ marriageable perceptions were inconsistent, their undesirable interpretations were identical—evidence of a black/non-black racial divide. The findings challenge the assumption commonly found in immigration studies that intermarriage with whites represents a form of social mobility