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

IF SHAKIRA, a Colombian pop star, marries her boyfriend, the Spanish national footballer Gerard Piqué, the only unusual things about it would be that she is even more famous than he is and ten years older. Otherwise, theirs would be just a celebrity example of one of the world’s biggest social trends: the rise of international marriages—that is, involving couples of different nationalities. A hundred years ago, such alliances were confined to the elite of the elite. When Randolph Churchill married Jennie Jerome of New York, it seemed as if they had stepped from the pages of a Henry James novel: brash, spirited American heiress peps up the declining fortunes of Britain’s aristocracy. Now, such alliances have become almost commonplace. To confine examples to politicians only: the French president Nicolas Sarkozy is married to the Italian-born Carla Bruni and his prime minister Fran??ois Fillon has a Welsh wife, Penelope Clarke. Nelson Mandela is married to Gra??a Machel (from Mozambique). Denmark’s newprime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt is married to a Briton, Stephen Kinnock. And two leading ladies of Asian countries, Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar and India’s Sonia Gandhi, are both widows from international marriages. In rich countries alone such unions number at least 10m.
试想哥伦比亚流行明星夏奇拉和她的男朋友西班牙国脚Gerard Piqué结婚了，唯一引人关注之事就只是她比她丈夫更有名气，她丈夫比他小十岁这两件事。他们的结合其实只是一个当今社会最大趋势之一的名人案例。什么趋势呢？那就是跨国婚姻的崛起，既包含了两个不同国籍的夫妇的婚姻。一百年前，这样的婚姻只限定在精英与精英之间的联姻。Randolph Churchill 和 Jennie Jerome的婚姻，就像是从Henry James的小说走出的现实故事：自以为是、年轻气盛的美国年轻女继承人让英国没落的贵族在资产财富上重新振兴。现在这样的婚姻已经是司空见惯的事了。单单就政治家而言，就有很多例子:法国总统萨科奇，他的夫人Carla Bruni就是意大利生的，法国总理Fran??ois Fillon有一个威尔士夫人Penelope Clarke，纳尔逊曼德拉娶了来自莫桑比克的夫人Gra??a Machel，丹麦新的总理Helle Thorning-Schmidt也娶了外籍的英国的妻子Stephen Kinnock，还有两个亚洲国家女领导人缅甸的昂山素季和印度的索尼娅??甘地，她们都是跨国婚姻的遗孀。就只发达国家，跨国结婚的夫妇至少有一千万。
International marriages matter partly because they reflect—and result from—globalisation. As people holiday or study abroad, or migrate to live and work, the visitors meet and marry locals. Their unions are symbols of cultural integration, and battlefields for conflicts over integration. Few things help immigrants come to terms with their new country more than becoming part of a local family. Though the offspring of such unions may struggle with the barriers of prejudice, at their best international marriages reduce intolerance directly themselves, and indirectly through their progeny.
跨国婚姻之所以重要，部分原因是因为它不仅符合并且就是全球化浪潮的产物。人们在国外度假，到异域留学，在别国生活或工作，这些拜访的客人遇见了心上人，然后和当地人喜结连理。他们的结合象征着文化的融合，也充满了文化融合过程中的摩擦。比起成为当地家庭的一分子，他们更多的感触是接受移民国家时的无助无奈。也许他们的后代会与由于偏见产生的隔阂抗争，但这些跨国情侣会以最佳的方式宽容忍让，或是直接通过自身的努力，或是通过他们的后代。