ABSTRACT
Migrant labor in Asia is an appropriate lens through which to view the growth and expansion of precarious jobs. Precarity has been around in much of Southeast Asia long before the term was made fashionable. Drawn from a sample of labor/marriage migrants predominantly from Indonesia and the Philippines, this chapter argues that the situation of labor migrants and their subsequent marriages to citizens of host countries determine their abilities with which to navigate two situations of precarity: the temporary labor market and the longer-term marital union that is sanctioned by the host country. International marriages in the past revolved around the mail-order bride industry or the commonly referred matchmaking sites and commercial marriage brokers, which arrange, facilitate, and ensure that these social encounters will blossom into a love that will end up in marriage. The neglect in analyzing marriage migration, E. Kofman notes, is due to the perceived secondary importance of marriage migration to labor migration.
