IMISCOE 12th Annual Conference
Panel "Cross-border marriages: between transnationalization and politicization"
Organizers: Prof. Janine Dahinden, Joëlle Moret and Shpresa Jashari, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland
Send your abstract of max 300 words before January 10 2015
Marriage is one of those practices that increasingly occur in transnational spaces.
For the past few years, there has been a growing interest among social scientists to analyse the motivations, practices and constraints inherent in this form of transnationalisation. At the same time, cross-border marriage has become an important topic in immigration countries, particularly when it involves migrants from non-European countries. Overall, a politicization and ethnicisation can be observed that trigger debates about "forced marriages," violence against migrant women, sham marriages or cross-border marriages as entry tickets for immigration. Many States have implemented new laws aiming at regulating those marriages, sometimes putting at stake liberal values of modern democracies.
In this panel, we aim at understanding the interrelated mechanisms leading to crossborder marriages, defined as the union between partners who did not live in the same nation-state before getting married. The panel should be an opportunity to gain answers to highly politicized questions - answers that go beyond simplistic explanations (of culture, ethnicity, religion or sexism within migrant communities) and that bring to light the complex processes of this form of transnationalisation as well as its constraining and conflictual dimensions.
We invite contributions discussing cross-border marriages in theoretical, methodological or empirical ways, focussing on transnational aspects of marriages and/or on the effects of the politicisation of such marriages. Topics may include, but are not limited to:
- The roles of modern liberal democracies in framing issues of cross-border marriages
- The influence of legal and political contexts (for instance restrictive migration regimes) in shaping migrants’ and their children’s strategies of marriage and partner choice
- The roles of transnational networks and subjectivities in cross-border marriages
- The production and circulation of (perhaps conflicting) representations about love, marriage, ethnicity, religion, gender and family, and their impact on cross-border marriages