Studying marriage migration to Europe from below: informal practices of government, border struggles and multiple entanglements

Abstract

The growing importance of marriage as a migration strategy has been accompanied by the increased problematisation and regulation of marriages between binational couples. In this article we propose an analytical framework for the study of marriage migration that permits to transcend three tendencies and related limitations of the existing literature. While offering rich insights into marriage migration and its government, the existing body of literature as a whole is, nevertheless, characterised by an implementation gap bias, a control bias and a destination country bias. To counter these tendencies and related analytical limitations we propose a framework that ethnographically studies binational couples' embodied encounters with state authorities in countries of destination and citizenship with a particular focus on binational couples' struggles for visas, resident permits and a right to family life. This approach highlights how the regulation of marriage migration is constitutive of differentiations and discriminations along intersecting lines of class, race, gender, age, religion, sexual orientation and so forth. In brief, it allows to show how 'doing border' is intertwined with 'doing gender'. Illustrated through ethnographic research, we show that this methodology permits to expose three aspects of marriage migration that have not been sufficiently considered so far. These include the securitization of marriage migration 'from below' and the establishment of informal hierarchies of desirability through informal practices of government, binational couples' capacity to negotiate restrictive legislations and bureaucratic hurdles and, finally, the multiple entanglements of binational couples in the border and citizenship regimes of two or more nation-state orders.

Disentangling entangled mobilities: reflections on forms of knowledge production within migration studies

“…Similarly, transnational studies scholars reveal how a person's relocation to another place can be followed by frequent visits to their country of origin, and thus how migration can lead to new kinds of mobility (Carling, 2008;Levitt & Jaworsky, 2007). The literature on marriage migration (Beck-Gernsheim, 2011;Scheel & Gutekunst, 2019) reveals another example of how individuals' mobilities depend on and shape each other, and how they are embedded in mobility regimes. Such entanglements also concern forms of mobilities that are not commonly subsumed under 'migration studies'; for instance, Schaer, Jacot and Dahinden (2021) show that in the case of mobile early-career academics, other family members sometimes become mobile themselves to support their children or spouses with childcare or other practical and emotional needs-a phenomenon they refer to as 'satellite mobility' .…”

Navigating the European Migration Regime

“…Research has highlighted the gendered and racialised nature of street-level bureaucrats' decision-making (Scheel and Gutekunst, 2019). For instance, bureaucrats' assessments of binational couples who apply for family reunion are often fraught with suspicion towards foreigner men who are accused of only marrying to obtain residence permits while their female partners are in turn believed to need protection from such alleged abuse (Lavanchy, 2014;Gutekunst, 2016).…”

Reunion of International Couples in Formal and Informal Relationships during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

“…Nowadays, European migration prioritises (preferably intra-European) migration for high-skilled or essential labour supply over that associated with marriage and family formation (Brettell, 2017), often depicted as a burden for the social welfare of the receiving countries or a cause for 'ethnic separatism' (Bonjour & Block, 2016). Scheel & Gutekunst (2019) emphasise that migratory marriage containment is driven by a hierarchy of (gender, race, and class) desirability concerning who can integrate the nation. The definition of who constitutes the family and which relations deserve rights is still highly determined by the state.…”