Fifteen years ago, when I started studying the international dating industry, few people took the subject seriously. The term "mail-order bride" was treated as a punch line -- something outdated, associated with lonely men and poor women who migrated from Eastern Europe, Asia or other places to meet their new husbands in the United States.
But I've seen firsthand how ideas about gender, intimacy and global mobility have shifted. In 2025, a man going abroad to look for love might call himself a "passport bro" -- and celebrate his lifestyle on TikTok.
This new generation of young men may have rebranded international dating, but they reflect an age-old theme. Social and economic changes shape how people negotiate love and labor across borders, as I explore in my 2025 book, Economies of Gender. In a chaotic world, some men and women turn to traditional gender roles as a source of seeming stability -- and that often leads them abroad.
Old industry, new look
The term "mail-order bride" dates back to the 19th century, when so-called frontier brides advertised themselves in newspapers to single men in the American West. After the Civil War, when large numbers of men had died on the East Coast, some women saw migrating to the frontier to marry someone sight unseen as a way to secure stability. That narrative still lingers today in Western novels and films.
