Higher Education Learning Experiences Among Vietnamese Immigrant Women in Taiwan

Embracing the instrumental value of education

All the women emphasized the importance of pursuing education in Vietnamese society. Learning to value education was rooted in these women’s early socialization in their homeland. In Vietnam, because Confucian culture emphasizes learning, education has been valued as the key to individuals’ upward social mobility and symbolizes achievement in society. In the 1970s, when most of the immigrant women grew up, most people in Vietnam were economically disadvantaged and had to lift themselves out of poverty by obtaining an education. Therefore, these women’s parents typically held strong aspirations for their children to obtain as much education as possible, sometimes at great sacrifice. However, because of the central role of men as heads of the family in the patriarchal Vietnamese society, women’s education held less value within families than men’s education. As Carol noted,

Like most of the Vietnamese, my parents believed that obtaining an education was the only way to find room at the top of the society. Initially, they only supported my brothers in continuing education because my family was too poor, and they preferred sons to daughters. However, my brothers quit studying, so instead my parents encouraged me to study further. To pay my university tuition, my father even sold my family’s only valuable asset, a motorcycle.

The credentialism of Taiwanese society also supported these Vietnamese women in embracing the value of education. Jessica felt that “credentialism is prevalent in Taiwanese society. The Taiwanese place excessive emphasis on individuals’ diplomas, particularly a university degree, in giving jobs.” Therefore, the overemphasis in both their homeland and their host country on the instrumental value of education, particularly a university diploma, motivated these Vietnamese immigrant women to seek continuous higher education in Taiwan.

Struggling with Taiwanese prejudice

The participants all felt that they were materialized and stigmatized in Taiwanese society because of their transnational marriages and nationality. “In Taiwan, the media usually portray immigrant women as illiterates from poor countries, victims of domestic violence, and even ‘runaway brides with their husbands’ money,’” Doris said angrily. “Some of my neighbors even forbid their children to play with my daughter. Even my child’s schoolteacher doubts my ability to raise children just because of my marriage immigrant status,” Flora noted.

Because women within Vietnamese families receive the same encouragement as men to seek employment to support the household economy (Tang & Wang, 2011) and because a shortage of income within their Taiwanese families was highly stressful, most of the women pursued jobs after migrating to Taiwan. However, most of them felt discriminated against in Taiwanese workplaces. Due to the social stigma against marriage immigrants and the lack of recognition of immigrant womens foreign credentials, these highly educated, skilled female immigrants often found low-paying, entry-level jobs with exploitative remuneration. Carol noted,

Despite having been a high school teacher in Vietnam with a Vietnamese bachelor’s degree, in Taiwan, I could only work as a factory worker or a breakfast stand assistant, with long working hours and a poor salary. In workplaces, both employers and coworkers treated me in unfair ways. . . . Once, one employer lost a wallet, and he directly asked me to go to the police office to confess stealing the wallet without searching for any evidence just because I was the only foreign worker in the factory.

Thus, like other participants, Graced noted,

I decided to pursue continuous higher education in Taiwan and then obtained academic degrees as a means of avoiding being a target of discrimination in daily life and the workplace and further altering the negative perceptions of Taiwanese toward immigrant women.

Playing expected motherhood roles

Both Vietnamese and Taiwanese societies expect married women to be able to provide their children with good care, which is usually evaluated by the children’s educational and occupational achievement. Higher education in Taiwan could give these women the socially acceptable status of a “highly educated” person, which would legitimize them in the eyes of their children and reduce their feelings of inadequacy (Flannery, 2000). As Amy noted,

I worried that I could not educate my children in Taiwan well with my limited Taiwanese literacy. . . . I hope my children will feel proud of me rather than being ashamed of me because of my marriage immigrant status.

Therefore, these immigrant women decided to pursue Taiwanese higher education to develop the cultural capital to fulfill the expected role of a good mother.

Permission or support from husbands

In Taiwanese society, the socioculturally expected role for marriage with immigrant women from countries with less-developed economies than Taiwan includes being a subservient wife and responsible mother (Tsai et al., 2011); many Taiwanese husbands tend to limit immigrant brides to certain social contacts and disapprove of immigrant women’s further learning. Both Carol’s and Kim’s less-educated husbands held stereotyped beliefs regarding immigrant women’s learning, and initially, they strongly opposed their wives’ furthering of their learning. Carol noted,

However, with my persistence in learning and negotiation with my husband, finally, he reluctantly permitted my enrollment in a graduate school based on my promise to manage the household well, take good care of the family, and contribute to the household economy while studying.

However, the other immigrant women reported that their motivation for enrolling in Taiwanese undergraduate or graduate study primarily originated from their husbands’ support and promise to take on household and childcare responsibilities. As Grace noted, “I’m so lucky! My husband, unlike other Taiwanese husbands, was less patriarchal and respected my decision to further my learning and expected me to become more integrated into Taiwanese society by obtaining an advanced education.”

Studying more diligently to demonstrate competence with resilience at the margins of the classroom

Initially, the intensive, advanced curriculum in higher education and its extensive terminology made it difficult for the participants, who had only basic Chinese proficiency, to understand the instruction and meet the professors’ requirements for assignments. Thus,

I studied different versions of textbooks I prepared for myself. . . . Regarding the assignments, initially, I always typed the reports helplessly because I really did not know how to start, even though I had read lots of documents. However, I just tried my best to type one word after another through my tears. To keep up with my peers and to maintain the status of the academic elite in which I had been situated in Vietnam, I studied so hard. (Grace)

Some of their classmates even deprecated these women’s academic capabilities and disapproved of the professors’ praise for their achievements.

A small number of graduate classmates discriminated against me, as an immigrant woman, and did not want to be in groups with me lest I would encumber their study. They believed that immigrant women from poor countries could not be as good as Taiwanese. (Ivy)

Thus, most of these women felt that as immigrant women, they had to continually study much more diligently than their Taiwanese counterparts to prove themselves competent to survive in Taiwanese higher education classrooms and maintain the academic elite status they had held in Vietnam.

Most of these women felt that few of the professors were sensitive to their particular living experiences and the delivery of instruction did not consider their cultural differences. Generally, these women received minimal support, receiving only verbal encouragement from the faculty. Most of the professors neither integrated the issues relevant to these women’s homeland or cultures into the curriculum nor invited these women to share their life experiences relative to the curriculum. Elva noted, “The professors in my department seldom explained special events in Taiwan to me. They seemed to think that I, as an immigrant in Taiwan, should have been familiar with everything in Taiwan.”

However, almost none of the participants felt marginalized by their instruction, and they accepted as a given that higher education instruction devoted little attention to their different experiences because they believed that they were competent to manage their learning and were resilient to the stressful experience of learning at the margins. As Doris emphasized,

Once we are admitted to a graduate program, we should be qualified to study without any special assistance regardless of our nationality. As graduate students, we should be competent and independent enough to handle the learning. I did not need others’ sympathy or support due to my immigrant status while learning. If professors had given me more support, I would have felt discriminated against.

Like most of the women, Hilary noted, “Sometimes in the margins, without professors’ excessive attention, I could find some resilience, and find a space to understand what was happening in class.”

Negotiating voice and identity

All the participants agreed that accommodating themselves to the class critiques and discussion was initially one of the greatest challenges in Taiwanese higher education institutions because of their different accent, their early schooling, their unfamiliarity with Taiwanese classroom culture, and their lack of understanding of professional instruction. Thus, in the beginning, the immigrant women were silent learners. Ivy noted, “Initially, I was reluctant to articulate my thoughts in class because my Vietnamese accent made it difficult for my peers and professors to understand my words, and it caused them to pay more attention to my immigrant woman status.” Additionally, these women’s early schooling experiences made them unlikely to consider speaking in class a vehicle for learning and led them to be passive learners in Taiwanese higher education classrooms, where active participation in discussion is usually valued.

In the Vietnamese university class, there was little teacher-student interaction. Teachers always emphasized students’ silently absorbing knowledge without speaking, which was viewed as a challenge to teachers’ authority. However, in Taiwanese graduate classes, the professors usually encourage the students to express their own opinions. (Jessica)

As Carol said,

Because initially I did not understand the new class culture of Taiwanese higher education, I tended to use silence as a strategy to protect myself. Writing papers became an important survival strategy for struggling in a classroom that privileged dialogue.

Thus, the participants used silence to work out nonverbal cues to negotiate the implicit culture and unstated norms of Taiwanese higher education classrooms.

However, as these participants improved their Chinese proficiency, gained knowledge regarding the atmosphere of Taiwanese higher education classes, and acquired professional learning and as the Taiwanese media began to praise some of these women’s pursuit of higher education in Taiwan, their self-confidence and self-identity improved. These participants increasingly realized that their silence in class often caused them to be ignored in the learning process. Because of the power of voice in the demonstration of knowledge and competence, based on their stronger self-identity that was facilitated gradually, most of the participants continually drove themselves to negotiate the concept of voicing opinions in public to improve their visibility in class. As Belle noted,

In the learning process, the Taiwanese governor summoned me and commended me for furthering my graduate studies, and the mass media also reported on it, which made me feel honored and confident. . . . Although keeping silent in class made me less stressed, I realized that silence hampered my full participation in Taiwanese graduate study. Thus, I learned how to speak out in class so that I would be known by others and would know others more fully.

Additionally, some of the participants purposefully took courses or made presentations that were relevant to their transnational backgrounds and shared their experiences in class to facilitate the positive visibility of immigrant women and their home country. In turn, this process enhanced the immigrant women’s understanding of their homeland and enriched their cultural identity.

After getting used to the culture of Taiwanese graduate study, I became more confident and expected people to understand immigrant women and my homeland more. Thus, I made use of opportunities to present reports concerning my immigration experiences. . . . I intentionally took courses in which my background as an immigrant woman could be used as a reference point for discussion. For example, I took “Family and Marriage,” in which I shared my family experiences of transnational marriage, which were different from what the Taiwanese media portrayed. (Grace)

Struggling to play multiple, intensified roles

Most of the women believed that the support of their husbands facilitated their persistence in continuing their higher education. As Ivy noted, “Unlike chauvinistic Taiwanese men, my husband proactively provided support for me during my busy learning, including sharing the household and childcare responsibilities. He even encouraged me to concentrate more on studying.”

However, Carol and Kim were not so fortunate. Their husbands opposed their wives’ participation in graduate study because they worried that their wives would leave after becoming highly educated. As Carol noted,

Although my less-educated husband allowed me to apply for enrollment in graduate study, he became emotionally insecure and afraid that I would leave him because he thought that I became more independent and critical after working on a master’s degree. Thus, in addition to preparing for studying and maintaining the household, I had to continuously comfort my husband, which made me psychologically exhausted.

Regardless of their husbands’ support, during their participation in higher education in Taiwan, the participants all struggled to play well their socioculturally defined roles as good mothers, wives, learners, and workers according to their early socialization and schooling in Vietnam, their cultural identity, and their need for intellectual growth. Both Vietnamese and Taiwanese societies expect married women to care for their families as their primary responsibility. In Taiwan, marrying immigrant women from less economically developed countries is viewed as being destined to take good care of their families. Additionally, most of the participants felt obligated to take primary responsibility for domestic chores to repay their husbands’ support for their educational aspirations.

From what my mom did for the family, I have learned that a married woman had to take good care of the family and to be a subservient wife. . . . Despite being supported by my husband in furthering my education, my neighbors and Taiwanese friends usually reminded me to play the role of a responsible mother and good wife rather than a graduate student because I was an immigrant woman. (Amy)

The multiple, intensified roles of these women as wives, mothers, higher education learners, and workers created great distress for some of them. Most of the participants sacrificed their free time and, often, their health to fulfill their dual workday responsibilities inside and outside of the home. As Kim noted,

I felt like a candle burned at both ends. I always felt fatigued after a full day of work at home, school, and the workplace. Sometimes I felt guilty about being a mother and a graduate student because I did not meet the demands of both my family and graduate school.

To resolve the conflict between family obligations and educational aspirations, these women emphasized connecting or separating family and education. Because of their husbands’ support for their learning, some of the Vietnamese women, such as Belle and Grace, made connections by discussing their learning with their husbands, seeking further support from their husbands in the form of domestic tasks and emotional comfort, and incorporating their personal experiences into their academic learning. Because of their husbands’ or in-laws’ disapproval of their pursuit of further education, some of the women, such as Carol and Kim, created separation by ensuring that their education influenced their family life as little as possible. They fulfilled domestic responsibilities and avoided discussing their learning with their families.

It is notable that when these immigrant women were confronted with the stress of their learning and family life, they seldom discussed their problems with other members of the Vietnamese community in Taiwan. Most of the women were too busy to maintain contact with their ethnic community, and most of their Vietnamese friends could not understand their motivation for pursuing education. As Flora noted, “Most of my Vietnamese friends thought that immigrant women had to concentrate on working to earn money instead of furthering their education. They only cared about my salary rather than my learning.”