This multidisciplinary collection investigates the ways in which marriage and partner migration processes have become the object of state scrutiny, and the site of sustained political interventions in several states around the world. Covering cases as varied as the United States, Canada, Japan, Iran, France, Belgium or the Netherlands, among others, contributors reveal how marriage and partner migration have become battlegrounds for political participation, control, and exclusion. Which forms of attachments (towards the family, the nation, or specific individuals) have become framed as risks to be managed? How do such preoccupations translate into policies? With what consequences for those affected by them, in terms of rights and access to citizenship? The book answers these questions by analyzing the interplay between issues of security, citizenship and rights from the perspectives of migrants and policymakers, but also from actors who negotiate encounters with the state, such as lawyers, non-governmental organizations, and translators.

Marriages spanning borders are not a new phenomenon, but occur with increasing frequency and contribute substantially to international mobility and transnational engagement. Perhaps because such migration has often been treated as ‘secondary’ to labor migration, marriage has until recent years been a neglected field in migration studies. In contemporary Europe, transnational marriages have become an increasingly focal issue for immigration regimes, for whom these border-crossing family formations represent a significant challenge. This timely volume brings together work from Europe and beyond, addressing the issue of transnational marriage from a range of perspectives (including legal frameworks, processes of integration, and gendered dynamics), presenting substantial new empirical material, and taking a fresh look at key concepts in this area.

This book provides the first sustained empirical evidence on the relationships between marriage migration and processes of integration, focusing on two of the largest British ethnic minority groups involved in these kinds of transnational marriages – Pakistani Muslims and Indian Sikhs. In Britain, and across Europe, concern has been increasingly expressed over the implications of marriage-related migration for integration. Children and grandchildren of former immigrants marrying partners from their ancestral ‘homelands’ is often presented as problematic in forming a 'first generation in every generation,’ and inhibiting processes of individual and group integration, impeding socio-economic participation and cultural change. As a result, immigration restrictions have been justified on the grounds of promoting integration, despite limited evidence. Marriage Migration and Integration provides much needed new grounding for both academic and policy debates. This book draws on both quantitative and qualitative data to compare transnational ‘homeland’ marriages with intra-ethnic marriages within the UK. Using a distinctive holistic model of integration, the authors examine processes in multiple interacting domains, such as employment, education, social networks, extended family living, gender relations and belonging. It will be of use to students and scholars across sociology, social anthropology, and social policy with a focus on migration, integration, family studies, gender, and ethnic studies, as well as policy-makers and service providers in the UK and across Europe.

The popular imagination of marriage migration has been influenced by stories of marriage of convenience, of forced marriage, trafficking and of so-called mail-order brides. This book presents a uniquely global view of an expanding field that challenges these and other stereotypes of cross-border marriage.

This book uniquely focuses on the role of family law in transnational marriages. The author demonstrates how family law is of critical importance in understanding transnational family life. Based on extensive field research in Morocco, Egypt and the Netherlands, the book examines how, during marriage and divorce, transnational families deal with the interactions of two different legal systems. Sportel studies the interactions of European and Islamic family law, addressing its interconnections with migration and everyday life, within the context of highly politicised debates on gender, Islam, migration and the family. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of family sociology, migration and diaspora studies, transnational families, family law, and sociology of law.

This multi-sited ethnography provides a rich account of the costs of global neoliberal economic policy for families in the global south. With a focus on Senegalese migrants in Europe and their wives who are left behind, Hannaford illustrates how new understandings of intimacy, gender, and class are forged in a culture of migration.

"Asian Cross-border Marriage Migration: Demographic Patterns and Social Issues is an interdisciplinary and comparative study on the rapid increase of the intra-Asia flow of cross-border marriage migration. This book contains in-depth research conducted by scholars in the fields of demography, sociology, anthropology and pedagogy, including demographic studies based on large-scale surveys on migration and marital patterns as well as micro case studies on migrants%7Bu2019%7D liv%7Bu00AD%7Ding experiences and strategies. Together these papers examine and challenge the existing assumptions in the immigration policies and popular discourse and lay the foundation for further comparative research." -- Back cover.