Drawing on the case of Taiwan, one of the major destinations for marriage migrants in Asia, this article examines how the host state utilizes shifting discursive frames for Southeast Asian immigrants and their children to establish the regime of marital citizenship and achieve the project of nation building. I characterise the earlier regime as ‘reproductive assimilation’, which aimed to manage the potential risk that immigrant motherhood brings to ‘population quality’ through assimilation-oriented projects of monitoring childbirth and childrearing. The recent turn toward the ‘New Southbound Policy’ shifts the cultural frame toward ‘neoliberal multiculturalism’ by reframing the ethnic difference of the ‘new second generation’ as a market asset for globalised national development. © 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Taiwan Marriage migration Assimilation multiculturalism maternal citizenship marital citizenship immigrant motherhood

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