Marriages that involve the migration of at least one of the spouses challenge two intersecting facets of the politics of belonging: the making of the 'good and legitimate citizens' and the 'acceptable family'. In Europe, cross-border marriages have been the target of increasing state controls, an issue of public concern and the object of scholarly research. The study of cross-border marriages and the ways these marriages are framed is inevitably affected by states' concerns and priorities. There is a need for a reflexive assessment of how the categories employed by state institutions and agents have impacted the study of cross-border marriages. The introduction to this Special Issue analyses what is at stake in the regulation of cross-border marriages and how European states use particular categories (e.g. 'sham', 'forced' and 'mixed' marriages) to differentiate between acceptable and nonacceptable marriages. When researchers use these categories unreflexively, they risk reproducing nation-centred epistemologies and reinforcing state-informed hierarchies and forms of exclusion. We suggest ways to avoid these pitfalls: differentiating between categories of analysis and categories of practice, adopting methodologies that do not mirror nation-states' logic and engaging with general social theory outside migration studies. The empirical contributions of the Special Issue offer new insights into a timely topic.

In the name of women's protection, Dutch immigration authorities police cross-border marriages differentiating between acceptable and non-acceptable forms of marriage (e.g. 'forced', 'sham', 'arranged'). The categorisation of marriages between 'sham' and 'genuine' derives from the assumption that interest and love are and should be unconnected. Nevertheless, love and interest are closely entwined and their consideration as separate is not only misleading but affects the exchanges that take place within marriage and, therefore, has particular implications for spouses, especially for women. The ethnographic analysis of marriages between unauthorised African male migrants and (non-Dutch) EU female citizens, often suspected by immigration authorities of being 'sham', demonstrate the complex articulation of love and interest and the consequences of neglecting this entanglementboth for the spouses and scholars. The cases show that romantic love is not a panacea for unequal gender relations and may place women in a disadvantaged positionall the more so because the norms of love are gendered and construe self-sacrifice as more fundamental in women's manifestations of love than that of men's.

Although kinship has long since been established as a topic in migration research, migration scholars often lacked an analytical concept of kinship and relied on their own ethnocentric understandings and legal definitions. Reconciling insights from the anthropology of kinship and migration studies, we outline how a new theorization of kinship could be suitable and helpful for the study of migration and mobility. First, we need a conceptualization that accounts for kinship’s flexible and dynamic character in changing settings. Second, it is imperative to pay close attention to the intricate ways kinship interrelates with state politics. Lastly, an analytical notion of kinship should take into account that kinship relations can also have negative implications for the persons concerned. Articles in this Special Issue are attentive to these caveats and approach through the prism of kinship different issues of migration and mobility.

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