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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Shenghai He, John Eade
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5526/2015.05.008
Inner Mongolia University, China; University of Roehampton, UK
Since the 1960s, social integration theorists have considered intermarriage to be an effective tool for promoting social solidarity. However, from a demographic perspective, unequal marriage exchange between groups can create social division and conflict. This Chinese study is a contribution to these debates. This paper explores the issue in the context of a rural minority community in Rightqi, Inner Mongolia, taking social statistical methods and anthropological in-depth interview methods to investigate intermarriage between Mongolian and Han. The paper shows that the number of Han males married to Mongolian women is far greater than the number of Mongolian males marrying Han women. Most Han people live in urban areas, while Mongolians predominantly reside in pastoral areas and there has been a significant trend for girls from the pastoral areas to marry urban males. Since the proportion of males to females in China has been increasing, the competition between men over female partners has intensified, leading to urban males recruiting partners from the countryside. As a result, young men from minorities in the rural areas are finding it increasingly difficult to marry and this generates a lot of social problems.
Intermarriage, marital deprivation, ethnic relationship, minority areas
Sociology Study, May 2015, Vol. 5, No. 5, 403-414
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