IF SHAKIRA, a Colombian pop star, marries her boyfriend, the Spanish national footballer Gerard Piqué, the only unusual things about it would be that she is even more famous than he is and ten years older. Otherwise, theirs would be just a celebrity example of one of the world’s biggest social trends: the rise of international marriages—that is, involving couples of different nationalities. A hundred years ago, such alliances were confined to the elite of the elite. When Randolph Churchill married Jennie Jerome of New York, it seemed as if they had stepped from the pages of a Henry James novel: brash, spirited American heiress peps up the declining fortunes of Britain’s aristocracy. Now, such alliances have become almost commonplace. To confine examples to politicians only: the French president Nicolas Sarkozy is married to the Italian-born Carla Bruni and his prime minister Fran??ois Fillon has a Welsh wife, Penelope Clarke. Nelson Mandela is married to Gra??a Machel (from Mozambique). Denmark’s newprime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt is married to a Briton, Stephen Kinnock. And two leading ladies of Asian countries, Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar and India’s Sonia Gandhi, are both widows from international marriages. In rich countries alone such unions number at least 10m.
试想哥伦比亚流行明星夏奇拉和她的男朋友西班牙国脚Gerard Piqué结婚了，唯一引人关注之事就只是她比她丈夫更有名气，她丈夫比他小十岁这两件事。他们的结合其实只是一个当今社会最大趋势之一的名人案例。什么趋势呢？那就是跨国婚姻的崛起，既包含了两个不同国籍的夫妇的婚姻。一百年前，这样的婚姻只限定在精英与精英之间的联姻。Randolph Churchill 和 Jennie Jerome的婚姻，就像是从Henry James的小说走出的现实故事：自以为是、年轻气盛的美国年轻女继承人让英国没落的贵族在资产财富上重新振兴。现在这样的婚姻已经是司空见惯的事了。单单就政治家而言，就有很多例子:法国总统萨科奇，他的夫人Carla Bruni就是意大利生的，法国总理Fran??ois Fillon有一个威尔士夫人Penelope Clarke，纳尔逊曼德拉娶了来自莫桑比克的夫人Gra??a Machel，丹麦新的总理Helle Thorning-Schmidt也娶了外籍的英国的妻子Stephen Kinnock，还有两个亚洲国家女领导人缅甸的昂山素季和印度的索尼娅??甘地，她们都是跨国婚姻的遗孀。就只发达国家，跨国结婚的夫妇至少有一千万。
International marriages matter partly because they reflect—and result from—globalisation. As people holiday or study abroad, or migrate to live and work, the visitors meet and marry locals. Their unions are symbols of cultural integration, and battlefields for conflicts over integration. Few things help immigrants come to terms with their new country more than becoming part of a local family. Though the offspring of such unions may struggle with the barriers of prejudice, at their best international marriages reduce intolerance directly themselves, and indirectly through their progeny.
跨国婚姻之所以重要，部分原因是因为它不仅符合并且就是全球化浪潮的产物。人们在国外度假，到异域留学，在别国生活或工作，这些拜访的客人遇见了心上人，然后和当地人喜结连理。他们的结合象征着文化的融合，也充满了文化融合过程中的摩擦。比起成为当地家庭的一分子，他们更多的感触是接受移民国家时的无助无奈。也许他们的后代会与由于偏见产生的隔阂抗争，但这些跨国情侣会以最佳的方式宽容忍让，或是直接通过自身的努力，或是通过他们的后代。
The mists over marriage
笼罩婚姻的乌云
So it is all the more disappointing that until recently so little has been known about these unions. Records are patchy. Some countries do not collect annual information about the citizenship of couples. Official figures may say nothing about a marriage if it takes place abroad (for example in the country of the immigrant spouse).
失望的是，直至近期这样的婚姻组合才引起人们关注。各国的婚姻记录都对这种形式一知半解的。有些国家每年收集有关这类夫妻的公民身份的信息。官方公布的数字对在国外登记的婚姻可能只字未提（比如在本国移民夫妻）。
Defining what counts as international is tricky too. A wedding of a local man and a foreign-born bride is easy. But the marriage of two foreigners in a third country sometimes counts and sometimes doesn’t. Trickiest of all is how to treat the marriage of a second-generation immigrant who has citizenship of a host country (say, the child of a Moroccan in France or a Mexican in America). If such a person marries a native Frenchwoman or an American, that usually does not count as international, even though it is an alliance across ethnic lines. Perversely, if he marries a girl from his parents’ country of origin, that does count as international—but this is not a marriage across an ethnic divide and may indicate isolation not assimilation.
怎样的婚姻才算作跨国的呢？这也需要慎重定义。当地的男子和出生在国外的女孩结婚的情况简单，肯定算作是。但两个外国人在第三个国家结婚却是有时或许是，或许不是。最具技术性的是一个已经有了所在国绿卡的移民的下一代的婚姻（比如，法国籍摩洛哥人的后代或美国籍墨西哥人的后代）。如果这样的身份人和当地的法国人结婚，和美国人结婚，这样的通常就不算作是跨国的，即使仍然跨越了民族种族。偏偏如果他娶了来自家乡的女孩却算作是跨国，但不跨民族种族，这意味着移民后是被孤立，还是同化。
Belatedly, answers to these questions of scale and definition are coming, chiefly thanks to the efforts of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP), a professional association of demographers, and, especially, of Doo-Sub Kim, a professor at Hanyang University in Seoul who chairs its panel on cross-border marriages. Global figures remain sketchy, but marriage patterns in Asia and Europe, at least, are becoming clearer. Some tentative, often surprising, conclusions are emerging.
最终，回答完这一系列问题，跨国婚姻的定义姗姗来迟。这主要归功于一个专业的人口统计组织，International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP)，尤其是担任跨国婚姻研究专家组主席的首尔汉阳大学的Doo-Sub Kim教授，全球的数据很粗略，但至少亚洲和欧洲的婚姻组合的模式逐渐清晰。暂时的研究结论已经浮出水面，带给了人们惊喜。
Asia is the part of the world where cross-border marriages have been rising most consistently. According to Gavin Jones of the National University of Singapore, 5% of marriages in Japan in 2008-09 included a foreign spouse (with four times as many foreign wives as husbands). Before 1980, the share had been below 1%. In South Korea, over 10% of marriages included a foreigner in 2010, up from 3.5% in 2000. In both countries, the share of cross-border marriages seems to have stabilised lately, perhaps as a result of the global economic slowdown. The country with the biggest share of such unions is Taiwan, where 13% of wives in 2009 were foreigners, about the same level as in 1998, but a big fall from the peak in 2003, when 28% of all weddings involved a foreign-born wife. Chinese citizens are not considered foreigners in Taiwan and if you include marriages in which they are one of the spouses, the proportion is still higher. International marriages have played a significant role in modifying the ethnic homogeneity of all these East Asian countries.
在世界上，亚洲是一个跨国婚姻现象一直都在持续攀升的地区。根据新加坡国立大学的Gavin Jones的研究，2008至2009年间日本5%的婚姻都是日本人和外国人的组合（外国媳妇是外国丈夫的四倍）。1980年以前，这种情况的概率低于1%。在韩国，这个数字从2000的3.5%上升到2010年的10%以上。近期，在这两个国家跨国婚姻的现象趋于稳定，这也许是全球经济衰退的原因造成的。这种现象最常见的地区台湾，13%的新娘是外国人，和1998年持平，但比起2003年的峰值28%，下降了很多。中国大陆的公民在台湾不被认作外国人，否则，如果加上这种情况，结婚双方一方是大陆的，比例将更高。在改变东亚国家的种族单一性上，跨国婚姻扮演了十分重要的角色。
International marriages are common in much of Europe, too. Calculations by Giampaolo Lanzieri, an Italian demographer, show that in France the proportion of international marriage rose from about 10% in 1996 to 16% in 2009. In Germany, the rise is a little lower, from 11.3% in 1990 to 13.7% in 2010. Some smaller countries have much higher levels. Nearly half the marriages in Switzerland are international ones, up from a third in 1990. Around one in five marriages in Sweden, Belgium and Austria involves a foreign partner.
在欧洲的大部分地区，跨国婚姻也是常见的。意大利人口学家Giampaolo Lanzieri计算得出，法国跨国婚姻在所有婚姻中的比率从1990年的10%上升到2009年的10%。德国的上升幅度略低从1990年的11.3%到2010年的13.7%，一些小国的比例高得多。瑞士将近一半婚姻都是跨国的，比1990年的数字上升三分之一。在瑞典、比利时、奥地利大约五分之一的婚姻的一方是外国人。
The Mamma Mia factor
The rate seems to be rising fastest in Mediterranean countries: in Spain and Italy, cross-border marriages accounted for less than 5% of the total in 1995; by 2009, the share had reached 14% in Italy and 22% in Spain. Cyprus is a special case: no less than three-quarters of marriages there in 2009 were international (up from half in 1995). But that is because Venus’s birthplace has a thriving wedding-and-honeymoon market. Many couples from abroad wed there.
在地中海国家中，这个比例似乎是增长最快的：在西班牙和意大利，1995年跨国婚姻只占总数的5%，到了2009年，意大利这个比例上升到14%，而西班牙则上升到22%。塞浦路斯则是个特殊的个案：2009年至少四分之三的婚姻都是跨国组合（1995年的数字是二分之一）。其原因是诞生了维纳斯的地方也滋生了一个蓬勃发展的举行婚礼和度蜜月目的地的甜蜜市场。许多别国的情侣会在那登记结婚。
Such figures are based on wedding records. Another way of getting at the trends is census micro-data (ie, from detailed samples collected as part of the census). These have a wider coverage, are extremely precise, and go back decades, which is helpful. On the other hand, many countries do not provide them. Researchers from the Centre for Demographic Studies (Barcelona) and the Minnesota Population Centre have for the first time trawled through the censuses of more than 50 countries in every continent for people aged 25-39. In general, they find that cross-border marriages are rising in most places, but the most significant fact is the big difference between levels in rich and developing ones.
一些数据是基于婚礼记录。另一个搞清楚这个趋势的方法是靠人口普查的微观数据（即收集的部分人口普查的有具体细节的样本）。这些的覆盖面更广，非常精确，并且能得到有用的历史数据。另一方面，很多国家不提供这样的信息。位于巴塞罗那的人口研究中心以及明尼苏达州人口中心的研究员们第一次查阅了所有大洲五十多个国家的处于25到39的人口普查数据。大体上，他们发现跨国婚姻现象在很多地方都持续上升，但是最有意义的发现是发达国家和发展中国家之间的水平上的巨大差距。
In most developing countries, the share of men married to foreign women was less than 2% in 2000 (0.7% in Ghana and Bolivia; 0.2% in Colombia and the Philippines; 3.3% in South Africa). In contrast, three rich countries—America, Britain and France—account for half the total in the sample. America alone has a third. Because it is so large, though, the share of international marriage remains low: only 4.6% of Americans were married to a foreigner in 2010, up from 2.4% in 1970.
在大多数发展中国家，2000年时，本国男子与外国籍女子结婚的概率还低于2%（加纳0.7%；玻利维亚0.7;哥伦比亚0.2%；菲律宾0.2%;南非0.2%）。对比之下，三个发达国家—美国、英国、法国，样本中一半的跨国婚姻都来自于这三个国家。仅美国就占据样本中的三分之一。但是人口太多的原因，致使跨国婚姻的比例仍然很低：2010只有4.6%的美国人选择了跨国婚姻，1970年这个数据是2.4%。
Albert Esteve of the Autonomous University of Barcelona reckons that the total number of cross-border marriages among 25-39-year-olds in his sample was about 12m in 2000. The sample excludes several countries with large numbers of such unions—Japan, Taiwan, Australia and Canada—so the grand total is certainly higher, probably 15m, possibly more. Compared with the very roughly 500m marriages within that age group round the world, 15m may not seem like much. But it is more than it used to be and, in some countries—senders and recipients of foreign spouses alike—the growth in cross-border marriages is having a significant social impact.
巴塞罗那自治大学的Albert Esteve认为在他选择的样本中25到39的跨国婚姻的总数2000年大约是一千二百万。这个样本除去了日本、台湾、澳大利亚、加拿大的庞大数据，那么真正的总数必然更高，也许有一千五百万，更多也有可能。与这个世界上该年龄组五亿的夫妇相比，一千五百万似乎并不多。但是比以前多了很多，并且在一些国家婚嫁往来的增多正在深刻影响着社会。
Everywhere, cross-border marriage rises with migration, but more slowly. According to Mr Esteve’s figures, the correlation is roughly one international marriage for every two new migrants. That would seem to mean that half of new migrants are marrying into their host society and the other half (presumably) into their own communities. So a surge in immigration usually leads to only a more modest rise in cross-border marriages; the process is slower and more complex.
每时每处，跨国婚姻都随着移民的增加而增加，但是比移民增长速度慢。根据Esteve先生的数据，这之间的关联大约是每两个新移民中有一个会选择跨国婚姻。这似乎意味着一半的新移民都融入了所在移民国，另一半留在了自己的原来的集体中。所以移民潮通常导致的只是跨国婚姻的更平稳的增长；这个融入的进程更慢也更复杂。
Research into four European countries by Suzana Koelet of the Free University of Brussels and others confirms that international marriages have not risen as much as one might have expected in Europe. On her calculations, rates of marriages with a person from another European Union country have been flat in Belgium and the Netherlands since 2000 and shown only a modest rise in Spain. Marriage rates between Swiss and EU citizens have also not budged. True, marriages with foreigners have increased sharply in Spain—but that was because of a spurt of marriages with non-EU citizens: Spain had huge immigration flows from Latin America during the 1990s and 2000s. By implication, the closer integration that the EU is supposed to be bringing about seems to be having no discernible impact on the marriage choices of Dutch, Belgian and Spanish citizens.
布鲁塞尔自由大学的Suzana Koelet等人对欧洲四国的研究结果证实国际婚姻在欧洲的发展状况并不是大家想象中的一夜暴涨，朝夕之间增长至此。根据她其他的计算结果，在比利时和荷兰，婚姻中一方来自欧盟其他成员国的增长情况并不景气，而在西班牙只呈现小幅整张。瑞士人和欧盟公民的结婚几率也并未改变。在西班牙，跨国婚姻虽然大幅增长，但是却不是欧盟成员国公民的功劳：上世纪末和这个世纪初，1990到2010年间，规模浩大的的拉美移民潮涌入西班牙。这才是真正的原因。这意味着，加入欧盟而带来的进一步社会融合似乎对荷兰、比利时和西班牙的婚姻选择没有明显的影响。
Why not? For part of the explanation, Ms Koelet points to the intriguing marriage patterns of the Swiss. The country has one of the highest rates of international marriage in the world (surpassed only by Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Cyprus). But the Swiss “marry out” in particular ways. The German-speaking Swiss marry largely neighbouring Germans; the Francophone Swiss marry the French; Italian-speakers marry Italians.It is the same with Belgians: Flemish-speakers tend to marry Dutch partners, Walloons marry French people. Language, it appears, remains a persistent barrier to international marriage in Europe and the spread of English as a second language does not seem to have changed that.
到底是卫生什么呢？Ms Koelet做出了部分解释，指出瑞士的婚姻模式的特别之处。瑞士是世界上跨国婚姻率最高的国家之一（只低于列支敦士登、卢森堡、塞浦路斯）。但是这高的跨国婚姻率的原因却特别。说德语的瑞士人大部分和邻近的德国人结婚，说法语的瑞士人和法国人结婚说意大利语的和意大利人结婚。比利时的情况亦然：说弗林明语（荷兰方言的一种）的和荷兰人结婚，Walloons marry French people.在欧洲，语言似乎永远都是跨国婚姻的障碍，即使将英语作为第二语言传播，也没有改变这个现状。
Asia is different. In Europe and America, marriage tends to follow migration. In Asia, people marry to migrate. Marriages in South Korea, for example, are often arranged by a broker in an unromantic process that takes two or three days and costs the Korean groom $20,000-30,000. Similarly, Taiwan has many marriages between its male citizens and Vietnamese women. The growth began when Taiwanese companies started investing in Vietnam
异于欧洲和美洲，欧美地区的跨国婚姻是伴随移民而生，而亚洲，人们确是为了移民而选择跨国婚姻。拿韩国举例，婚姻经常由一个中间人导演，在两三天的时间内结束，新郎花费两三万美元，毫无爱情相遇这些浪漫的过程。无独有偶，在台湾，男子和越南女子的婚姻也是这样。这个增长始于台湾企业开始在越南投资。
Local men in such countries, Mr Jones argues from Singapore, look for foreign brides for two reasons. First because of the so-called “marriage strike” affecting some East Asian societies. In the richer countries of East and South-East Asia, like Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan, a third or more of local women are not marrying; and those who do wed late, at 31 or 32. This is causing some men to look to foreign shores for potential mates. The other reason—specific to a few Asian societies—is because a combination of traditional preference for sons and the availability of sex-selective abortion skewed the sex ratio at birth 20 years ago, leaving too few native-born women now. South Korea is an example. In 1990, it had 117 boys born for every 100 girls. Men are looking abroad to plug the gap in their local marriage market.
Mr Jones说，证据表明在这样的国家和地区，当地的男子娶外地的新娘，出于两个原因。首先是因为我们称之为“新娘罢工”的现象袭击着东亚社会。东亚和东南亚的富裕国家和地区，例如日本、新加坡、韩国、台湾，当地三分之一以上的适婚年龄的女子不结婚，或晚结婚31岁或32岁。这就导致了一些男士将目光投向海外，寻找合适的可能的伴侣。另一个原因是，在个别少数亚洲的国家，传统上的重男轻女加之20年前，无限制的人工选择性流产导致的出生性别比率倾斜而致使现在本国婚育年龄女子太少。例如韩国，1990年时，出生时男女比例为117比100.为了堵当地婚姻市场的窟窿，男人们只能转向海外。
For their part, the young women, often from poor areas of China and Vietnam, are looking for economic opportunities. Marriage with a man from a richer country is seen as a means of advancement and a way of helping their families at home. In Asia, it seems, cross-border unions are products of distorted local marriage markets; in Europe, they are results of gaps in labour markets that encourage migration. In both parts of the world, diasporas play a role: as immigrants settle down they encourage friends and family from back home to follow in their footsteps.
站在那些年轻女子的角度，她们多数来自中国和越南的贫困地区，到富裕的地区寻找财富。她们把和当地的男子结婚视为自身发展的一种方式，帮助家乡亲人的一种方式。这样看来，跨国婚姻在亚洲是当地不平衡的婚姻市场的产物，而在欧洲则源于劳动力市场的短缺而发展壮大的移民潮。在这两大地区亚洲和欧美，大规模的移民潮都起着一定作用：一些已经定居的移民鼓励着朋友和亲人跟随他们的脚步，离开家乡去远方。
Hard noses, not soft hearts
Many Asian men also seem to be looking abroad for wives in the hope that immigrant women will bear them more children. This indeed happens in Europe and America: the fertility rate of new immigrants is higher than average, though it reverts to the local mean within a few years. So at first, migration adds to the birth rate. Strangely, this higher initial fertility does not seem to happen in Asia, or at least not in South Korea. According to Kwang-hee Jun of Chungnam National University, non-naturalised immigrant women have on average just 1.08 children—even fewer than native Koreans, whose average is 1.79.
似乎很多亚洲丈夫倾向于海外妻子，还希望她们能生育更多的孩子。这样的情况确实也发生在欧洲和美洲：尽管经过几年的改善，生育率将会接近当地中游水平，但新移民的数据现在依然高于平均水平。所以起初，移民人口会提升出生率。但奇怪的是，在亚洲，移民起初发生的高于当地均值生育率的现象并未发生，或者，至少没有发生在韩国。根据Kwang-hee Jun of Chungnam National University，未能入籍的移民女子平均1.08个孩子，甚至比本国妇女1.79的平均水平还要低。
This finding was a shock and a puzzle. Why are immigrants in South Korea behaving so differently from those in Europe and America? One explanation may be that the age gaps between husbands and much younger wives discourage large families. Another is that in the past decade, about 60% of foreign brides have come from China, where the fertility rate is also low, especially among Chinese of Korean ethnicity. Jungho Kim of Ajou University also suggests poverty. Both spouses will usually work and may be unable to afford to bring up a child in a society where half of the cost of pre-school education comes from the household budget. Evidence for this comes from families with a Vietnamese-born bride: when they do have children, says Danièle Bélanger of the University of Western Ontario, they send some of them back to be raised for a few years by grandparents in Vietnam, where schooling is cheaper.
这个意外既是一个震惊，也是一个谜题。为何韩国移民的表现和欧美地区如此不同?一种推测的合理解释是丈夫和妻子年龄巨大差距阻止了家庭的壮大。另一个合理解释是在过去的十年间，60%的外国新娘都是中国人，中国的生育率也很低，尤其是中国朝鲜族的生育率。来自亚洲大学的Jungho Kim也提及了贫穷也是原因之一。通常，在韩国这个一半学前教育的费用都由家庭承担的国家，婚姻的双方都工作，这样，才能负担起一个孩子。加拿大西安大略大学的Danièle Bélanger举例说，和一个越南籍的女子结婚生了孩子后，他们会把一些孩子送回上学费用较低的越南，让父母抚养几年。
Victims or opportunists?
受害者还是投机者？
Marriage between girls from poor countries and older men from rich ones are controversial. As Sang-lim Lee of the International Organisation of Migration centre in Goyang says, when men pay the brides’ family “they tend to think they have bought a good. If it has a defect, they think they can send it back.”
但是，发生于贫穷地区的年轻女孩和富裕地区的大龄男子之间的婚姻却是饱受争议的了。正如Sang-lim Lee of the International Organisation of Migration centre in Goyang说，当给新娘家付了钱后，他们就会认为自己买了一个商品，要是有什么瑕疵或是意图逃走，还可以将他们退回。
It is certainly true that the men tend to be older, often much older. Doo-Sub Kim finds that Korean husbands are on average 17 years older than their Vietnamese-born brides. They usually have around three years’ more education as well. One fifth of Korean husbands have been married before. All this is very different from the typical pattern in native Korean marriages.
的确，丈夫的年龄太大了，比新娘年长许多。Doo-Sub Kim发现韩国丈夫平均比越南新娘大17岁。他们通常受过三年左右的教育，其中五分之一结过婚，完全有别于韩国本土的婚姻形式。
It is also true that some young women are victims of cruelty, neglect, physical abuse and trafficking. Women in strange countries are almost always vulnerable. A Vietnamese interpreter married to a Korean man complains that “if I run away here, my parents will be embarrassed in Vietnam.” That, she explains, would leave her unable to return home, but with “no place to go here”. The media in Vietnam tend to portray migrant brides either as victims of trafficking or people driven by desperate poverty to migrate. Children of international marriages in South Korea have more health problems than average. In Taiwan, they do less well at school—something that occurs in European countries, too.
事实确实是一些年轻女孩成为了家庭暴力的受害者，承受身体上的虐待，处于社会忽视的边缘，加上交通上的不便，处境悲惨。偏远地区的妇女几乎毫无反抗之力。一个越南女人充满怨恨地亲口对我们“我要是逃跑，会让我在越南的父母蒙羞的。”她的回答解释了她不能回家的原因，当然也没有别的容身之所。越南当地的媒体更愿意把她们描述为落后交通的牺牲品或是为了摆脱可怕的贫困而走上移民之路的新娘。相对于平均水平，跨国组合的婚姻结晶的身体问题更多一些。在台湾或是欧洲，在学校这样的孩子都表现欠佳。
Yet this is not the dominant pattern, still less the sole one. International marriages often seem to work for the couple involved—at least if the longevity of their union is any guide. And they seem to have social benefits, as well as costs, for both receiving and sending countries.
这仍然不是主要类型，更不是唯一类型。跨国婚姻似乎对于婚姻双方来说是行得通的，至少从维持的时间上就可以得出些端倪。无论是新娘“输出国”还是“输入国”，都在尝到甜头的同时，付出了代价。
Though the gap in background, age and education between spouses in international marriages is greater than in those between compatriots, it does not seem to affect these unions’ durability. Doo-Sub Kim plotted the time that cross-border marriages have lasted in South Korea against the couples’ ages and educational backgrounds. Amazingly, the bigger the difference, the longer the marriage. It is hard to know why this should be. Maybe those who marry foreigners invest more in their marriages. Or maybe younger, poorer wives find it harder to leave.
尽管婚姻双方在背景、年龄、受教育水平上都有巨大的区别，非同胞可比，但这似乎并没有影响到婚姻的长长久久。Doo-Sub Kim绘制出了关于跨国婚姻的持续年限与夫妻双方的年龄、教育背景之间的关系的图。令人吃惊的是，双方差异越大，婚姻越是维持长久。原因我们不知，也许是投入婚姻的精力更多吧，又或是那些年轻又贫穷的妻子们觉得离开不易吧。
Vietnamese girls are seen in much of Asia as the paradigm of the submissive foreign bride. But a study of their role in Taiwan by Ms Bélanger shows that many are married to men whose companies trade with Vietnam—and they are vital to the companies’ future. As one man told her, revealingly: “I have six trusted subordinates. One is my wife. One is her younger sister. They will not betray me.” Remittances to their families help keep the practice alive in Vietnam, even though many young men there dislike it and say they have been driven out of their villages by the shortage of brides and forced to migrate to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Similarly, marriage abroad is seen as so desirable by the Punjabi diaspora that the press in Punjab is full of advertisements offering to arrange marriages abroad.
亚洲大部分地区都把越南女孩视为恭顺的外籍新娘。但是Bélanger先生关于台湾地区的越南媳妇的研究表明，那些娶了越南媳妇的男人们多数都在越南做生意，联姻对公司的未来至关重要。一个男士向其透露，“我有六个值得信赖的下属，其中我老婆和她的妹妹就不会背叛我。”把生意交给家里人对生意的持续兴隆有好处，就算很多当地适婚男子不喜欢这种状况，声称新娘的短缺将他们去赶出了家园，被迫移居到Hanoi或胡志明市。同样，聚居在旁遮普省(印度、巴基斯坦的)的犹太人迫切希望和外国人结婚，以至于媒体上充斥着跨国婚姻的广告，安排提供相外国亲的机会。
Not all international marriages in Asia are those of poor brides in rich lands. In a “reverse migration” Japanese women from rich Tokyo have married into poor peasant families in South-East Asia—especially in Bali and Thailand—and settled down to live a more “authentic” rural life, perhaps as a way of escaping the strictness of Japanese family life. That same impulse may well be behind the surprising growth in the numbers of Japanese women married to Africans in Japan (probably as many as 3,300 in all). As one wife told Djamila Schans of Maastricht University, “I had doubts marrying a foreigner but he waited for me at the station every day. Sometimes even with flowers! A Japanese man would never do such a thing.”
在亚洲并不是所有的跨国婚姻都意味着生活在富饶土地上的贫穷新娘。在“反移民潮”中，来自日本的女人，离开东京，远嫁东南亚的小乡村，尤以巴里岛和泰国为甚，定居当地，过着“真正”的乡村生活，这也许是就是逃离日本严厉紧张的家长式生活的方法。同样的冲动也可见于数量惊人攀升的“日非”婚姻（大约总数为3300）。一个和非洲人成婚的日本新娘向Maastricht大学的Djamila Schans讲述，“我本对嫁给一个外国人持怀疑态度，但是当看到他每天都在车站等我，甚至有时拿着鲜花，我不再怀疑了！日本男人永远不会如此。”
Most demographic trends are irresistible forces. It is rare that government policy can make a big difference. But international marriage is sensitive to public policy. In the mid-2000s, Taiwan’s government, for example, took alarm at the number of foreign brides coming into the country. It did not slam the gates but started to wrap the marriage process in licensing and permits, insisting on better treatment of immigrant women. This reduced the number of foreign brides by more than half between 2003 and 2010. Malaysia also maintains an array of secular and religious permits which foreigners must get not only for marriage, but also for residence and work. It seems effective: less than 2% of all Malaysian marriages involve a foreigner, against almost 40% in neighbouring Singapore.
人口的大潮无法阻挡，政府政策总是收效甚微。但跨国婚姻却对政策敏感。例如，21世纪的第一个十年的中期，台湾政府向境外新娘的数量发出警告。这项政策并没有直接“砰”的一声关上跨国婚姻的门，但是开始将此类婚姻“保护”在发放证件环节，并坚持用更体贴的方式对待移民妇女。这样，2003至2010年间的境外新娘数量降低了一半。马来西亚也设置了一连串的宗教的和非宗教的许可，不仅包括婚姻，更针对居住权和就业工作。结果似乎有效：相较邻国新加坡几近40%的数字，马来西亚仅有不到2%的婚姻属于跨国婚姻。
Governments impose restrictions in the belief that cross-border marriages can destabilise their societies. Sometimes, their fears are understandable. In Taiwan, the share of international marriages doubled in five years. But such rapid change is highly unusual. By and large, marriage between people of different nationalities has grown more slowly than immigration. In the past few years, the increase in marriage has slowed further, probably reflecting global economic problems.
政府强行管制，是因为坚信跨国婚姻不利于社会稳定。有时候看，这种担忧是可以理解的。台湾地区这类婚姻所占比重五年内翻番，引起的变化是极不简单的。总的来说，其增速慢于移民增速。近几年，其增幅减速，大概也反映了全球经济问题。
International marriages are often attacked as exploitative, because they typically take place between an older richer man and a younger, less well-educated woman from a poor country. Terrible examples of abuse do exist. Yet the evidence suggests that international marriages often last longer than average and that migrant wives come to play important roles in their husband’s host country.
跨国婚姻总是背着剥削的骂名，之所以这样的原因就是它总发生在一个年迈的富人和一个生于贫国的缺乏良好教育的女人之间。极端的虐待的例子的确存在，但证据却表明此类婚姻历时更久，也表明了移民了的女人在其丈夫所在国渐渐扮演着重要角色。
Marriage remains, for the most part, an institution that promotes economic improvement and personal happiness. It also tends to boost social assimilation—the main exception being when a second-generation immigrant weds a girl from a village his parents had left long before. Over the next few years, international marriage is likely to continue its quiet upward crawl. Governments should protect its victims—but not prevent the process.
大多数国家中，婚姻始终是促进经济发展、提升个人幸福的一种制度。现在也趋于促进社会同化，唯一的逆势的例外就表现在移民的第二代和一个来自其父母远离已久之处的女孩结婚。以后的几年内，可能跨国婚姻的步伐依旧平缓而向上，政府要做的不是阻碍其进程，而是想办法保护这过程中的受害者。