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Global Householding
The Global Householding project arises from the observation that the formation of households - a social process common to all societies in the world - is increasingly reliant on international transactions and movement of people. Demographic transitions toward below replacement fertility in high income countries, implicit choices made by women and men to develop careers instead of marrying or having children, high costs of living in home countries after retirement, and many other factors are leading to household formation transcending the boundaries of nation-states. This occurs at all life cycle stages, as exemplified by rising levels of international adoption of children, sending of 'parachute kids' to establish roots in new (higher income) countries for subsequent family migration, marriages brokered by 'mail order' bride agencies, the demand for foreign household helpers as nannies, and the movement of retired couples from higher to lower income countries as a strategy to stretch fixed incomes. The importance of global householding is manifested by recent data showing that international migrant remittances to households in their home countries totaled $82 billion in 2002 - a sum far greater than the $56 billion total distributed through foreign aid in same year.
The research takes a neutral stand on the merits of household globalization, seeing this as a universal social desire and allowing for felicitous as well as undesirable outcomes. By framing the research as global householding, the project acts as an umbrella for a number of sub-themes, such as migration for marriage or the migration of seniors and provision of health services for them in destination countries, each of which can be explored and brought together for fuller understandings of the globalization of household formation. In explicitly raising issues of immigration procedures and protection of human rights, a major dimension of all research is the governance of migration and migrant household welfare in both migrant sending and receiving countries.
The initial focus of this research will be on international marriages in Pacific Asia, with specific attention to Vietnamese women migrating for marriage to men in Taiwan, Singapore, and Japan.
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