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Cross-cultural communication in intimate relationships 343

as in the Australian case. Clearly, ideologies that consider intermarriage the norm
are the exception globally. Even if ideology is implicit in practice, assumptions
about intermarriage as exceptional may continue to exist simultaneously. Gibbs
and Delaney (2004) provide an example: after having reported on the demo-
graphic findings regarding increased intermarriage in Australia, the authors go
on to note with a certain air of surprise that “it appears that intermarriage is well-
received”. The interview excerpts with partners in cross-cultural relationships
that follow clearly indicate that the interview question was regarding any
negative experiences, and are summed up as follows: “The Herald talked to a
dozen couples who said they experienced negligible racism in Sydney. They
searched in vain to find examples of a hostile look or whispered taunt”.
Therefore, in the following I will concentrate on cross-cultural intimate
communication in contexts where intermarriage is exceptional and/or regarded
as exceptional (usually both).

3. Cross-cultural intimate relationships and globalization

In 1960, 19,458 German citizens married a non-citizen in a state-registered cer-
emony in Germany. By 1995, that number had risen to 50,686 (Statistisches
Bundesamt 1997: 22). An even steeper increase can be observed in Japan: in
1965, 3,500 marriages between a Japanese citizen and a non-citizen were regis-
tered. By 1997, that number had risen to 27,000 (Radford and Tsutsumi 2004).
The figures for the USA provide the same picture of an increase in international
marriages: in 1992, 128,396 immigrants were admitted as spouses of US
citizens. Ten years later, in 2002, 294,798 spouses of US citizens were ad-
1
mitted. These three examples must suffice to prove the point that international
marriages have, on a world-wide scale, increased enormously over the past dec-
ades. Furthermore, it must be borne in mind that marriage is only one form of an
intimate cross-cultural relationship: it is difficult, if not impossible, to provide
statistics on intimate relationships other than those sanctioned by the state. Inti-
mate cross-cultural relationships not included in the marriage statistics take
many different forms, and would, inter alia, include gay and lesbian couples,
cohabitation and de facto relationships, and short-term relationships. Statistics
that can be considered indicators of these types of relationships further confirm
the finding of a tremendous increase in intimate cross-cultural relationships in
recent decades. For instance, an indicator would be the figures of women who
enter a country on an “entertainer visa” in countries where such a visa class
exists, as it does in Japan. In the 1990s around 60,000 “entertainers” annually
entered Japan from the Philippines (Radford and Tsutsumi 2004) to work in
bars, cabarets and nightclubs, in other words to provide some form of “intimate
labor”, be it sexual or non-sexual companionship.