ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the experience of Filipina women who migrated on spousal visas to Anglo-Australian men, a topic that has predominated research agendas regarding Filipino migration to Australia. It re-examines the 'mail order bride' stereotype - a label popularised in the 1980s and 1990s at the height of international correspondence relationships between Australian men and Filipina women. The 'mail order bride' is shamed for bringing together the conflicting spheres of love/economics, private/public, personal/politics. Beyond Orientalising discourse, the 'mail order bride' stigma serves to regulate wider modes of intimacy and love that are connected to socially constructed ideals about marriage - an institution fundamental to the maintenance of an enlightened and 'civilised' modern society. The idea of 'marriage for migration' needs to be reconceptualised to take into account that some women 'migrate for marriage' in order to overhaul the notions that migration is reducible to economic motives or that marriage is a repressive institution offering limited agency.
