Partner Inequities Related to Immigration Fraud in South Asian International Arranged Marriages

Abstract

South Asian arranged marriage norms involve families identifying partners for their sons or daughters who are relatively equitable to their own children in age, socioeconomic status or caste, family background, and relationship history. This multiple case study investigated specific types of partner inequities or couple "mismatches" that have been implicated in cases of immigration fraud in international arranged marriages, where South Asian Canadians marry people from their home countries and are abandoned after foreign nationals obtain immigration rights. Interviews with 30 fraud victims and focus groups with 27 community insiders, including religious/community leaders, revealed three patterns related to immigration fraud: foreign partners "marrying up," "marrying down," or "marrying the unmarriageable" in their cultural worldviews. Implications for fraud prevention are discussed.

Im/mobility as a form of gender-based violence: the case of transnationally abandoned wives in India

“…Within these modern immigration regimes, parents, families, and communities seemingly accept the risks of transnational marriage which scales up inequalities between men and women, wife-takers and wife-givers, as well as the sponsoring and the sponsored spouse in the face of future potential to migrate (Charsley, 2007). These risks, faced by Indian marriage migrant women, encompass various forms of gender-based violence including marriage abandonment; these have been documented across various diasporic contexts in the UK (Bajpai, 2013), the US (Bhandari, 2024), Canada (Merali et al, 2015) and Australia (Vasil, 2023).…”