ABSTRACT
Transnational brides are just one segment of the 60 million female migrants of today. In the 1970s Western Europe and Australia were common destination countries for South-East Asian brides (Stoop 1994 ). In the 1980s and 1990s migration movements have diversifi ed to include women from Latin America, Mexico, China and the Philippines who travel to the USA, as well as women migrating from Eastern to Western Europe (Kojima 2001 : 199). Historically, women have always migrated. The apparent tendency of feminization in global migration can be explained both by the number of female migrants as well as by gender-specifi c reasons for migration. Based on ethnographic fi eld work among a group of Thai women and Danish men, this chapter aims to contribute new perspectives to the so-called mail order bride discourse, as well as to perceptions of transnational marriages between women from Thailand and European men.
