Hsiao-Chuan Hsia

Hsiao-Chuan Hsia is a professor at the Graduate Institute for Social Transformation Studies, Shih Hsin University, and an activist scholar striving for the advancement of the marriage migrants’ movement. 

She initiated the Chinese literacy programmes for marriage migrants in 1995, leading to the establishment of TransAsia Sisters Association, Taiwan (TASAT) in 2003, and co-founded the Alliance for the Human Rights Legislation for Immigrants and Migrants (AHRLIM), which has successfully campaigned for reforms of immigration policies and laws in Taiwan. 

Hsia is also active in international organisations for immigrants and migrants, such as co-founding the Alliance of Marriage Migrants’ Organizations for Rights and Empowerment (AMMORE) and serving as the member of the international coordinating body of the International Migrants Alliance (IMA) and APWLD.

APWLD interviewed Hsia in December 2020 and below is her story.

Fostering marriage migrants’ rights movement

In 1990, upon completing a BA in Sociology at the National Taiwan University, I moved to the United States to pursue advanced degrees, eventually graduating with a PhD in Sociology from the University of Florida in 1997.

At the centre of my academic interests and activism lies marriage migration, which is another significant form of forced migration whereby women from poorer countries migrate to richer countries through cross-border marriages. Inspired by my field research on marriage migration from Southeast Asia, I started the Chinese literacy programme for marriage migrants in 1995 to not only tackle the issue of isolation from mainstream society facing marriage migrants, but also create a space for them to share their thoughts, discuss their issues and, most importantly, form a network of their own, which would hopefully lead to collective action. 

After becoming literate in Chinese, our marriage migrant students went on to promote their cultures across Taiwan, talk about issues surrounding their community, and initiate campaigns for migrants’ rights at regional, national, and even international levels. After eight years, the programme developed into a national organisation: TransAsia Sisters Association, Taiwan (TASAT). Recognising the importance of change at the legislative and policy level, in the same year, TASAT co-founded the Alliance for Human Rights Legislation for Immigrants and Migrants (AHRLIM). One of AHRLIM’s advocacy achievements is that, in 2007, the Amendments of Immigration Act was passed.Under capitalist globalisation, marriage migration is a form of global forced migration. Thus, TASAT strives to forge solidarity with international, regional, and national alliances and build cross-movement collaborations. To this end, TASAT co-founded the Alliance of Marriage Migrants’ Organizations for Rights and Empowerment (AMMORE) together with other regional and international organisations and works with other marginalised groups, such as indigenous people and homeless people.

Connecting with APWLD

I first became involved with APWLD when I visited members in the Philippines to find placement providers for my students. I ended up taking part in an APWLD event for indigenous people. 

Between 1997 and 2006, there were other occasions where I was in contact with either APWLD or its members. The composition of APWLD’s members, mainly grassroots organisations from Asia and the Pacific, is interesting and appealing to me.

In 2009, APWLD invited me as a Programme Organising Committee (POC) member for my work in raising the then highly marginalised marriage migration issue. One of the reasons I accepted APWLD’s offer was that we both recognised that marriage migrant issues were not just localised in Taiwan, but that they were pervasive and growing internationally, and we were on the same mission to make marriage migrants visible. 

From 2012, I served as a member of the Regional Council, the highest decision-making body of APWLD for nearly 5 years. My initial motive for joining the ReC was that I saw it as a learning opportunity—learning APWLD’s operation style through internal and external meetings and reports. My learning experience made me impressed with the rigour with which APWLD conducted meetings. I also found the workshop with which APWLD members locate and analyse 5-year strategic planning very effective. I brought the experience back to Taiwan for TASAT.

In my experience, the top obstacle to forging international solidarity through APWLD is that grassroots organisations are focused on their domestic work and often can’t spare much time to form the needed international and regional coalition. To me, one of APWLD’s most impressive characteristics is that it is by and for grassroots and at the same time, it forges global vision and global cooperation. 

The two features should be coordinated. To address this difficulty, I have suggested a solution to APWLD: a seasoned and designated programme officer that could efficiently coordinate international multi-organisational cooperation and execute members’ discussion and resolutions.

What APWLD can do for the feminist movement in Taiwan

I have been feeling a deep sense of crisis in recent years. This is because, first of all, I believe that waging war will likely be adopted by capitalist regimes as a ‘solution’ for their internal issues that are innate to capitalism. Secondly, in recent years especially, I have seen the rise of militarism in Taiwan in the form of the quasi-war rhetoric. As a result, activists are being suppressed, and kept from their activism, because the rhetoric dictates that in the face of war, everyone should set their causes aside and join forces to be ready for the enemy. Given the current political environment in Taiwan, I especially value the importance of APWLD’s GFMP (Globalisation, Fundamentalism, Militarism and Patriarchy) analysis. 

At present, Taiwan’s feminist movement focuses on identity politics and orients towards liberalism. Organisations in Taiwan want to connect with APWLD but not only for solidarity. For example, they want to join the UN, but Taiwan is not recognised as a country, so they cannot attend UN conferences. They want to take part in the UN through APWLD and gain more international attention and recognition. This relates to the Taiwan-China competition. I remember an instance when Taiwan organisations attended the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) through APWLD. I was conflicted because I knew their motives. Usually, Taiwan’s civil society organisations have this unspoken or spoken demand: I take part in a movement to join the UN. Social issues and activism are of secondary importance. 

Going back to promoting APWLD’s GFMP analytical framework, I think it is important that we keep doing that because it raises awareness and only then will people know the significance of solidarity activities like the Women’s Global Strike. It helps the public see women as an important link in production, possessing the power to counter capital. 

Only with analysis do people see why the global strike is useful, at the very least for its symbolic import. Without the framework, for example, in Taiwan, when we talk about anti-trade, we mean anti-trade with China, and we are happy to sign trade agreements with other countries. Even the women’s movement organisations either think new trade deals are irrelevant to their work, or they are happy about it. I think, without an analysis of issues, at least in Taiwan’s movement development, everything will remain superficial.

In addition, it has been my long-standing belief that a subregional network, preferably one that connects members who share a common language, must be established. I have interpreted for grassroots participants at international meetings and am well aware of the dilemma facing organisations like APWLD: grassroots activists, which make up the majority of APWLD’s membership, by definition are unlikely to have a good command of English that is required in participation and comprehension during international meetings and training. 

While hiring interpreters might alleviate the problem to some degree, other issues—such as the added budget for interpreters that grassroots organisations may not be able to afford—emerge. I, with uttermost enthusiasm, call for the establishment of such networks. Currently, I am on the APWLD committee for the East Asian subregional network and hope the new five-year strategic planning could address this issue. 

Cultivating the next generation

Again, our context is that Taiwan is being trapped in Taiwan-China nationalist politics. Anti-China has become the centre of any young activists’ career focus, and this even affects how they view the world. This is troublesome, because while they may be well-equipped in terms of skills, they can be blind to the capitalist regimes by being caught up in nationalist politics. They would think capitalism exists only in the past and has nothing to do with them because it doesn’t enter their vision. I think training the younger generation will be hampered by nationalist politics—not just in the women’s movement but in Taiwan’s overall development. If it is not the biggest difficulty, it at least is the most urgent one.

In Taiwan, participation is narrowly perceived as one-person-one-vote or universal suffrage. They identify a country as progressive if its government officials are democratically elected. This is a very one-sided judgement. 

Such thinking results in avoidance of the grassroots movement because it won’t help them get elected, or in instrumentalisation of the grassroots when they do get involved. They will appear to be engaged with the grassroots movement, but are only using the grassroots as a stepping stone, and won’t stay for long. Soon after joining, they will feel frustrated because grassroots organisations deal with many seemingly trivial issues like grassroots people’s emotions and bread-and-butter. On the one hand, many young people don’t usually have the patience, on the other hand, temptations abound. 

Even at my age, I am enticed by government positions. The worst part is being enticed not with high pay, but with accomplishing your missions. You will be told that what you are doing is not making much progress, it is too slow, you are being a fool, and your mission will only be completed if you work in the government. But in reality, individuals entering government will only be assimilated into the bureaucracy; only the power of a group of people has the potential to change the system.

Therefore, I believe that the training of trainers (TOT) model is important, and APWLD can do more to support it in Taiwan. We need to sow more than we need. We train a hundred people, perhaps only retaining two. We cannot fall into the quick-fix trap and expect a speedy solution. An old Chinese saying goes, “It takes ten years to grow trees but a hundred years to nurture people.” This is especially true for grassroots organisations to cultivate the next generations.