‘Oh to be in England’: the British Case Study

‘My passport is just my way out of here’. Mixed-immigration status families, immigration enforcement and the citizenship implications

“…The framing of women as lesser citizens is reflected in British immigration and nationality legislation, which historically has assumed women to be passive and emotional creatures who don't make decisions, are easily fooled, led by feelings and whose identity, nationality and loyalty derive from fathers and husbands (Wray 2012). Women in the UK could only reproduce the nation on behalf of their husbands (Klug 1989); they did not have independent national belonging and attachment to foreign partners cast further doubt over their allegiance. The Naturalisation Act 1844 denied women the right to confer their nationality to foreign spouses, even though foreign-born women marrying British men had automatic access to citizenship.…”

Birth, Belonging and Migrant Mothers: Narratives of Reproduction in Feminist Migration Studies

“…While this is a subject that can not be dealt with adequately here, much of the anxiety about migration is underpinned by an assumption that, in this case, collective identity – social stability and cohesion – requires clear boundaries drawn around a space of sameness, currently expressed in terms of ‘common values’ or ‘shared traditions’ (Gedalof, 2007). Indeed, many historic and current migration anxieties take reproduction as their stated or implied focus: the repeated fear of the ‘overly-fertile’ migrant woman who will ‘pollute’ the native stock (Klug, 1989; Kofman, 1997; Lentin, 2004; Luibheid, 2006); the concern that immigrant women become a vehicle for importing inappropriate and unacceptable family forms (Cheney, 1996); the contemporary focus in tabloid media and policy debates on ‘reproductive tourism’ and ‘uncontrolled migration's’ pressures on the social reproductive activities of health, housing and education services (Gedalof, 2007). Challenging the ways in which reproduction is theorized can also, therefore, feed into these policy debates.…”

Über den Gleichheitsmythos: Lesben und Schwule als Avantgarde emotionaler und sexueller Demokratisierung?

“…Solche Modernisierungs-und Universalisierungstheorien sind auf vielfältige Art kritisiert worden: Die Beschreibungen verschiedener geschichtlicher oder gar zivilisatorischer Entwicklungsstufen seien zutiefst westlich geprägt und implizit rassistisch. Dasselbe gelte für die evolutionistische Vision einer universalen Ausbreitung westlicher Werte, ökonomischer Formen, sozialer Errungenschaften und kultureller Praktiken (Kluge 1989;Finch und Summerfield 1999;Stacey 1996). Darüber hinaus basiere diese Darstellung auf einer Homogenisierung und Idealisierung heterosexueller Geschlechterbeziehungen in den westlichen Industrienationen.…”