“Failing and Chasing Dreams” depicts the lives of Vietnamese women seeking a better life via marriage immigration to Taiwan and South Korea. In addition to being foreign daughter-in-laws with limited language proficiency, these women usually encounter negative stereotypes associated with commercially arranged marriages as well as the backward image that most people in these countries have of Vietnam. Drawing on over 100 life history interviews collected during multi-sited fieldwork between 2010 and 2018, Dr. Chang describes how these women navigate these challenges. These women’s integration trajectories provide snapshots of contemporary East Asian gender systems, family change, ethnic relations, and migration regimes.
Dr. Hsin-Chieh Chang is an assistant professor from Taiwan National University and has done extensive in-depth interviews with hundreds of the Vietnamese women who are "marriage migrants" to South Korea and Taiwan.