Dr. Tseng Yu-chin received her PhD in Sociology from the University of Essex in 2015. Her academic background comprises Japanese literature, philosophy, politics, and sociology. She has research interests in migration studies, citizenship, theories of nationalism, gender, globalisation, and human rights theory.

Her doctoral thesis, “Becoming Taiwanese: the Citizenship Struggles and the Politics of Mainland Chinese Marriage Immigrants in Taiwan” employed a critical interdisciplinary approach to the issue of marriage immigrants from mainland China to Taiwan, looking at migrants’ collective actions and how these successfully led to amendments of citizenship regulations.

Her current research is aimed at providing sociological and ethnographic accounts of a type of “mixed marriage” in which the partners are from areas/countries that have a history of conflict with each other. More specifically, she examines the growing amount of Chinese-Taiwanese couples meeting through higher education in Taiwan, China and the UK. The increased mobility of higher education students has led to a new type of intimate relationship with former foes that stand in sharp contrast with existing social norms, institutional norms and images of community. Against the backdrop of the historical relationship between the two, this project examines the challenges of ideological rapprochement and identity negotiation in the conjugal life of Chinese-Taiwanese couples, using the concept of “cultural intimacy”. Such an endeavour will elucidate the contour of the mobility of higher education students and allow access to the complex ways in which intimate relationships, conflicting ideologies and gender interact to develop strategies in receiving societies. The research findings will provide valuable insights into intercultural ideological conflicts and resistance to social and cultural norms in ethnically or culturally heterogeneous societies.