Criminalization of forced marriage in Europe: A qualitative comparative analysis

Abstract

This article examines the causes of criminalization of forced marriage in European countries. The first part of the article locates the debate on forced marriage within the wider discourse of immigration, national identity, and women’s rights. The second part uses qualitative comparative analysis to analyze 29 European nations, 20 of which criminalized forced marriage. Our findings indicate that criminalization of forced marriage emerges out of a complex set of conditions and the causal recipes differ for early (before 2013) and late adopters (after 2013) of the policy of criminalization. For nations in which criminalization policy was adopted before 2013, the intermingling of world cultural, feminist, and right-wing policies is the main causal mechanism. For the late adopters, a similar causal path fails to emerge indicating that criminalization became normative in European policy environment. In other words, late adopters simply mimic others.

Forced marriage as a lived experience: Victims’ voices

“…(V 4)In this sense, the views of the interviewees reflect those from previous academic studies that warn against the use of criminal justice alone to combat the issue of forced marriage. This can place the victim in the double bind of being forced to report their own family of origin in order to obtain legal protection, and also having to submit to the dictates of Orientalism or racial discrimination (Askola, 2018; Ebeturk and Cowart, 2017; Gill and Anitha, 2011b; Igareda, 2017; Love et al, 2018; Patton, 2018; Sabbe et al, 2014; Sapoznik Evans, 2017; Torres, 2015; Villacampa, 2018).…”

“…In spite of the limitations of this study due to the small size of the sample, the testimonies of the victims themselves lead us to conclude that an effective approach to forced marriage must treat the practice as a form of gender-based violence, rather than as a question that is only related to the cultural communities in which the women are integrated; however, the relevance of their origins in explaining this type of victimisation must be acknowledged. The official response to forced marriage must not, therefore, be limited to criminalisation of the practice, as Orientalist views have advocated (Ebeturk and Cowart, 2017; Sabbe et al, 2014). Instead, a victim-centred approach made up of preventative measures and, above all, victim protection as well as prosecution, is crucial (Villacampa, 2018).…”

“…The legal approach to forced marriage taken by the majority of European countries, based on the aforementioned patronising ideas emanating from the West about the East, has been to criminalise it as a specific offence and to settle cases exclusively through the use of criminal justice (Ebeturk and Cowart, 2017; FRA, 2014; Gill and Anitha, 2011b; Sabbe et al, 2014), especially after the approval of the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence in 2011 (Istanbul Convention). Other measures have included raising the legal minimum age for marriage (Gangoli and Chantler, 2009; Hester et al, 2008) and preventing family reunification spouses under the age of 18 (Wijffelman, 2017).…”

“…In order to overcome the limits of policies that criminalise forced marriage, which are based on Orientalist perspectives focusing only on the cultural aspects of the practice, and which tend to alienate non-western cultures, such questions must be understood. This is also crucial in moving towards victim-centred strategies that address the practice as a form of gender-based violence requiring an intersectional approach (Anitha and Gill, 2009; Ebeturk and Cowart, 2017; Sabbe et al, 2014; Villacampa, 2018), not only because it has been shown how forced marriages can involve other forms of abuse (Swegman, 2016), but primarily because this type of victimisation is explained by different subordinate intersecting factors beyond gender, which need to be addressed in order to deal appropriately with victims.…”

Disentangling the migration-development nexus using QCA

“…Walbott's (2014) study focuses on citizenship and immigration in Western Europe and examines at why some countries facilitate access to national membership for immigrants while others permanently rely on restrictive policies. Ebeturk and Cowart (2017) contribution examines the causes of the criminalization of forced marriage in 29 European countries of which 20 have criminalised forced marriage.…”