跨国婚姻大势所趋:德国先生娶法国太太,英美小姐嫁西班牙丈夫_BEC初级作文

跨国婚姻大势所趋:德国先生娶法国太太,英美小姐嫁西班牙丈夫

For their part, the young women, often from poor areas of China and Vietnam, are looking for economic opportunities. Marriage with a man from a richer country is seen as a means of advancement and a way of helping their families at home. In Asia, it seems, cross-border unions are products of distorted local marriage markets; in Europe, they are results of gaps in labour markets that encourage migration. In both parts of the world, diasporas play a role: as immigrants settle down they encourage friends and family from back home to follow in their footsteps.

站在那些年轻女子的角度，她们多数来自中国和越南的贫困地区，到富裕的地区寻找财富。她们把和当地的男子结婚视为自身发展的一种方式，帮助家乡亲人的一种方式。这样看来，跨国婚姻在亚洲是当地不平衡的婚姻市场的产物，而在欧洲则源于劳动力市场的短缺而发展壮大的移民潮。在这两大地区亚洲和欧美，大规模的移民潮都起着一定作用：一些已经定居的移民鼓励着朋友和亲人跟随他们的脚步，离开家乡去远方。

Hard noses, not soft hearts

Many Asian men also seem to be looking abroad for wives in the hope that immigrant women will bear them more children. This indeed happens in Europe and America: the fertility rate of new immigrants is higher than average, though it reverts to the local mean within a few years. So at first, migration adds to the birth rate. Strangely, this higher initial fertility does not seem to happen in Asia, or at least not in South Korea. According to Kwang-hee Jun of Chungnam National University, non-naturalised immigrant women have on average just 1.08 children—even fewer than native Koreans, whose average is 1.79.