Page 368 - Handbooks of Applied Linguistics Communication Competence Language and Communication Problems Practical Solutions

346 Ingrid Piller

ing system of capitalism and patriarchy which depends upon gendered unpaid
work for social and human reproduction. Consequently, the gap is being filled
by migrant wives and mothers. Like prostitution travel, romance travel is im-
mensely gendered: men from industrialized nations go on “romance tours” to
choose an overseas bride, while women from underdeveloped nations migrate
to join their overseas husbands and take up residency with them. A “romance
tour” is a form of package tourism where a mail-order bride agency organizes
for a client to meet a number of available women in a given destination with the
aim of marriage. The package typically includes airfare and hotel, arranged
meetings with individual women or parties with a number of women, marriage
contracts and legal assistance, and wedding arrangements. “Cherry Blossoms”,
a US-based international marriage agency, for instance, offers romance tours to
Shenzhen (China), Lima (Peru), Cebu City (Philippines), Bangkok (Thailand),
and Ho Chi Min City (Vietnam), where the agency introduces the client to five
women per day for a period of up to seven days “or as needed if you do not need
so many. Most of our men go for at least two weeks so once they have time to get
to know some of the women they have met better before returning home”.
“Cherry Blossoms” claims on their website that over 90% of the men who use
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their tour services get engaged and then marry within a year of their tour. In-
stead of or along with individual introductions, agencies also organize “socials”
for the men to attend along with a number of local women seeking marriage.
The male–female ratio in some such socials is 12:2,000 (O’Rourke 2002). In-
deed, many of the clients who provide testimonies about their experience with
the US-based agency “Russian Brides” gush about the wide selection, as this
correspondent: “I picked four that I liked the best, Sveta, Maria, Natasha, and
Nadia. I had a wonderful time with all four. It was hard to choose between them.
In the week I spent in Moscow, I had more dates and fun than I’ve had in the past
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ten years with American women”. Romance tours, as well as the mail-order
bride industry more generally, have been enormously facilitated, if not enabled,
by the internet, and it is to this medium that I will now turn.

5. Increased international data flow

It is not only increased international travel that has resulted in the tremendous
increase in cross-cultural intimate relationships, but also increased international
data flow, using such technologies as the Internet. Today, virtual meetings are as
common as physical meetings. My students, who are in their 20s often tell me
stories of how they met their partners online, or that they are conducting virtual
relationships, with only very limited actual physical encounters – something I,
in my late 30s, still find remarkable. The internet has removed some, even if not
all, of the constraints of space on love. It is in this space that dating and match-