Feminized Migration: A Close Reading of “After a Long Time Away, a Foreign Land Becomes Home” by Labor Exchange Band of Taiwan, China

Ran, Jing

Sichuan Conservatory of Music

Abstract

This article takes as its object of study the song “After a Long Time Away, a Foreign Land Becomes Home” (􀀀日久他鄉是故鄉􀀀) from Taiwan’s Labor Exchange Band’s (交工樂隊) 2001 album The Night March of Chrysanthemum (􀀀菊花夜行軍􀀀). Focusing on the transnational marital migration experiences of Southeast Asian migrant brides represented in the song. This article introduces the concept of the “feminization of migration” from Stephen Castles and Mark J. Miller’s migration studies to denote forms of migration in globalized labor and marital flows that are predominantly female-led and are discursively framed through expectations of docility, emotionality, and caregiving. It discusses how this form of migration is represented intertextually within multiple texts. Specifically focusing on this song, the study analyzes how its musical language and lyrical text articulate narrative metaphors and intertextual relationships surrounding the transnational marital migration of these brides in Meinong. Second, the study juxtaposes the ethnographic documentary Migrant Brides in Meinong (􀀀外籍新娘在美濃􀀀) with the musical language of the song in order to examine the processes of localized adaptation experienced by the brides. Finally, drawing on transnational feminist critiques of globalization and the structural paradox they identify, namely the simultaneous critique yet dependence on globalization, this article examines how Labor Exchange Band employs the electric bass, the only electronic instrument in the song, as a symbolic marker of globalization. At the musical level, the bass embodies a deliberate contradiction: it functions as the low-register support for the choral sections while its auditory presence is intentionally subdued. Through this tension, the band deconstructs the supposedly binary opposition between localization and globalization as an either/or binary.

Image Credit: Photo provided by Professor Hsia Hsiao-Chuan (夏曉鵑); Image Source: Originally published in a feature report by TaiSounds (太報). URL: https://www.taisounds.com/news/content/119/38553