From Taiwan Dream to Everyday Resilience: Temporal Trajectories of Vietnamese Marriage Migrant Women in Taiwan

ABSTRACT Marriage migration from Vietnam to Taiwan has often been portrayed in static terms of integration or failure, overlooking how women adapt to ruptures across time. This study applies resilience theory to examine how 27 Vietnamese marriage migrant women confronted disappointment and developed coping strategies within transnational marriages. Drawing on in‐depth interviews, the findings reveal that Vietnamese marriage migrant women endured disillusionments such as domestic violence, neglect, and isolation but actively recalibrated their lives through spirituality practices, small‐scale entrepreneurship and investments in children's education. By situating these practices within a resilience framework, the study highlights how adaptation is not a linear recovery but an iterative process shaped by agency, family obligations and cross‐border ties. Through this perspective, the study shows how aspiration, rupture and recalibration recur across the life course, leading to different rather than converging trajectories. The study extends resilience theory into the domain of marriage migration, contributes to feminist and transnational scholarship by foregrounding everyday agency, and carries policy implications for supporting migrant women beyond early settlement stages.