Over the last two decades, total immigration to the UK has doubled. Significant immigration from Asia and other non-European countries has continued year-on-year over the last four or five decades, with much of this characterised by permanent settlement through marriage and family ties. Rates of integration in some communities may have been undermined by high levels of transnational marriageâwith subsequent generations being joined by a foreign-born partner, creating a âfirst generation in every generationâ phenomenon⊠(The Casey Review 2016: 61)
Anxiety over the power of family ties to perpetuate immigration flows is a prominent feature of contemporary British and wider European migration discourse. Since the last decade of the twentieth century, the political spotlight has focused on particular forms of spousal immigration and increasingly shines through a lens of problematic integration. Strong sociological traditions view intermarriage as a marker of migrant or ethnic assimilation (Alba and Golden 1986) and benchmark of integration (Birrell and Healy 2000: 38; Beck-Gernsheim 2007: 272; Schinkel 2011: 101). In contrast to many expectations, however, significant proportions of the Europe-born children and grandchildren of earlier labour migrants have continued to marry partners from their parentsâ or grandparentsâ country of origin, rather than members of the ethnic majority or even co-ethnics raised in their country of birth (Beck-Gernsheim 2007; Wray 2011). Whilst in parts of East Asia, commercially brokered inter-ethnic transnational marriages take place on a significant scale and are considered to present challenges for integration, in Europe and the UK it is the âhomelandâ marriages of ethnic minority populations which have attracted particular attention. Such transnational marriages are increasingly presented by British and continental European policy makers, and some academics, as an impediment to integration not only of the migrant spouse but of their partner and future offspring (Ăelikaksoy et al. 2006; Gedalof 2007; Van Kerckem et al. 2013; Scholten et al. 2012; Thapar-Bjökert and Boveri 2014). These representations have material impact on spousal immigration and on citizens whose family relationships cross international borders, as across Europe integration concerns are increasingly used to justify tightening of spousal immigration policies (Bonjour 2010; Bonjour and Kraler 2015).
Despite often-limited empirical evidence, scholars and commentators have suggested several mechanisms by which ethnic minority transnational marriages may hinder integration. âWe know little about how transnational marriages affect ongoing social relations of the second generation partnerâ acknowledge Alba and Foner in their 2015 review of integration in Europe and North America âbut it is likely that in a good many cases they limit, and even reduce, interactions with those in the mainstreamâ (p. 212). Endogamous transnational marriages in particular, suggests Philip Wood (2018), reinforce social boundaries, inhibiting inter-ethnic interaction.2 Language barriers may inhibit employment opportunities for migrant spouses (Cameron 2006) with impacts for familiesâ socio-economic prospects. Traditional gendered relations of power and divisions of labour may also be exacerbated, with immigrant brides ill-equipped for European expectations of domestic and labour market equality (Timmerman 2006) whilst limited language skills and education leave them dependent on their husband and in-laws (Scholten et al. 2012). This type of marriage could also demonstrate and support strong overseas bonds, facilitating âtransnational social controlâ (Timmerman 2006) and an orientation towards the âhomelandâ rather than the âhostâ society. In sum, then, such marriages have been viewed as âimporting povertyâ (Cryer in The Economist 2009) and as drawing generations born in Europe back into inward-looking ethnic communities whose integration as a group is hindered by the economic and cultural consequences of the âimmigration super-highwayâ of marriage (The Economist 2009, cf. Migration Watch 2004, 2005). The underlying logic of such arguments is that continual âreplenishment through family reunionâ (Heath 2014: 3), or the arrival of a âfirst generation in every generationâ (Goodhart 2013), undermines processes of incorporation into the host society, at best creating only âsegmented assimilationâ (Zhou 1997; Crul and Vermeulen 2003). Some such assertions are based on research on particular contexts of marriage migration (e.g. Timmerman 2006), whilst others are less firmly grounded in empirical evidenceâJoppke, for example, who lists transnational marriage among his âcauses of disadvantageâ for British Pakistani Muslims, describes the educational consequences of growing up in such households as âobviousâ (2009: 459â461).
As we will see in Chapter 3, empirical research on the relationships between spousal immigration and integration is limited and has produced varying results. Indeed, given the diversity of local and national contexts and the ethnic, religious and socio-economic variation in marriage migrants and their spouses, relationships between marriage migration and integration are likely to themselves exhibit diversity (cf. Rodriguez-Garcia 2015; Home Office 2011; Charsley et al. 2012). In addition, the available research is characterised by differing understandings of integration. The contentious nature of the concept has also played a role in limiting the parameters of research on the topicâstudies have tended to treat integration either as an empirical phenomenon suitable for quantitative measurement through a limited number of key indicators or as a discourse to be critiqued. What is often missing is a critical engagement with the empirical bases for the arguments surrounding relationships between marriage migration and integration processes .
In this book, we explore these issues, drawing on fresh evidence from a mixed methods research project on âMarriage Migration and Integrationâ which was designed to provide new data on the relationships between ethnic minority transnational marriage and integration in the UK, focusing on two of the largest British ethnic minority groups involvedâPakistani Muslims and Indian Sikhs.
In this introductory chapter, we explore dominant political discourses which represent certain types of marriage migration as a challenge to integration (the academic evidence for these claims is examined in Chapter 3). We start with the wider European context in which ethnic minority transnational marriages are increasingly framed as an integration problem, before moving on to discuss British policy and political discourse. An increasingly key aspect of British discourses has been the framing of such marriages as belonging in the past, rather than in modern, egalitarian Britain. Following this account of politicised representations of ethnic minority transnational marriage, we introduce the âMarriage Migration and Integrationâ study in more detail. The chapter ends with a brief overview of the structure and arguments to be developed over the subsequent chapters of the book.
Ethnic Minority Transnational Marriages Framed as an Integration Problem
The family is at once a social construct, a conceptual entity, a moral order, and a set of real social and cultural practices. Its investigation requires examining both the trope of the family (including implicit or explicit definitions offered by informants, policymakers included), and the relationships (moral and practical) which it is thought to entail. (Grillo 2008: 19)
Since the 1990s, and amid a wider critique of multiculturalism (Okin 1999; Joppke 2004), associations between ethnic minority transnational marriages and problematic integration have been gaining s...