Husband-to-wife sexual coercion in cross-border marriage: A relationship power perspective

Abstract

Despite the proliferation of literature on cross-border marriages, most previous studies have focused on the vulnerability of female marriage migrants due to their immigrant status; few have examined the role of husbands’ power motive in their well-being. To fill this gap, this study investigates the roles of household power structure and the husband’s power motive in husband-to-wife sexual coercion in cross-border marriages in Hong Kong. We hypothesize that as men in cross-border marriages are often socially disadvantaged and stigmatized in the public discourse, they may attempt to use sexual coercion as a form of compensatory masculinity to reclaim power in the private sphere. Using couple-level data from a representative sample in Hong Kong (N = 871 couples), the results show that cross-border couples have a higher risk of husband-to-wife sexual coercion and that couple power dynamics fully mediate the difference in the prevalence of sexual coercion in local and cross-border marriages. These suggest that men’s high power motive and perpetration of sexual violence are intimately related. Future studies should pay attention to the disadvantaged background and negative labels applied to the men in cross-border marriage when studying the well-being of female marriage migrants and couple dynamics in cross-border marriage migration.