国際結婚をめぐる諸問題

「境界線」上の家族

抄録

As a coordinator of the first session on kokusai kekkon (literally translated as “international marriage”), I will put forward here some of the fundamental issues concerning families on the “boundaries”. Comparing studies on kokusai kekkon with those on intermarriage in western countries, this paper reviews the former studies in the following order.
·What constitutes endogamy and exogamy for kokusai kekkon.
·A brief history of “nationality”, which is the main boundary of kokusai kekkon.Considering the relationship between kokusai kekkon and nationality, “cross-national marriage” can be seen as the most appropriate translation for kokusai kekkon.However, there are many other “boundaries” which form sub-categories of “cross-national marriage” such as “inter-racial marriage” and “intercultural marriage”. The use of these terms is, for the most part, dependent upon the perspective of the individual researher.
·Some problems concerning both intermarriage and sub-categories of kokusai kekkonstudies overlap. For example, many of these studies focus on “foreign wives” only.
This paper clarifies some issues relating to the complex topic of kokusai kekkon, especially from the aspect of “boundaries”. Nevertheless, it is apparent that some research structures of ‘family’ resulting from intermarriage and intramarriage are quite similar. It thus becomes obvious that full-fledged research through cooperation among researchers is sorely needed. Moreover, not only do we need structural-functional research but also research which takes an historical approach in order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the dynamics of kokusai kekkon.