Transnational Marriage and Partner Migration: Constellations of Security, Citizenship, and Rights 9781978816749

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Transnational Marriage and Partner Migration

The Politics of Marriage and Gender: Global Issues in Local Contexts Series Editor: Péter Berta The Politics of Marriage and Gender: Global Issues in Local Contexts series from Rutgers University Press fills a gap in research by examining the politics of marriage and related practices, ideologies, and interpretations, and addresses the key question of how the politics of marriage has affected social, cultural, and po­liti­cal pro­cesses, relations, and bound­aries. The series looks at the complex relationships between the politics of marriage and gender, ethnic, national, religious, racial, and class identities, and analyzes how ­these relationships contribute to the development and management of social and po­liti­cal differences, inequalities, and conflicts. Joanne Payton, Honor and the Po­liti­cal Economy of Marriage: Vio­lence against ­Women in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq Rama Srinivasan, Courting Desire: Litigating for Love in North India Hui Liu, Corinne Reczek, and Lindsey Wilkinson, eds., Marriage and Health: The Well-­Being of Same-­Sex C ­ ouples Sara Smith, Intimate Geopolitics: Love, Territory, and the ­Future on India’s Northern Threshold Rebecca Joubin, Mediating the Uprising: Narratives of Gender and Marriage in Syrian Tele­vi­sion Drama Raksha Pande, Learning to Love: Arranged Marriages and the British Indian Diaspora Asha L. Abeyasekera, Making the Right Choice: Narratives of Marriage in Sri Lanka Natasha Carver, Marriage, Gender, and Refugee Migration: Spousal Relationships among Somali Muslims in the United Kingdom Yafa Shanneik and Annelies Moors, eds., Global Dynamics of Shi‘a Marriages: Religion, Gender, and Belonging Anna-­Maria Walter, Intimate Connections: Love and Marriage in Pakistan’s High Mountains Viktoriya Kim, Nelia G. Balgoa, and Beverley Anne Yamamoto, The Politics of International Marriage in Japan Anne-­Marie D’Aoust, ed., Transnational Marriage and Partner Migration: Constellations of Security, Citizenship, and Rights

Transnational Marriage and Partner Migration Constellations of Security, Citizenship, and Rights

EDI T ED BY A N N E -­M A R I E D ’A O U S T

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW BRUNSWICK, CAMDEN, AND NEWARK, NEW JERSEY, AND LONDON

 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-­IN-­P UBLICATION DATA

Names: Aoust, Anne-­Marie D’, editor. Title: Transnational marriage and partner migration: constellations of security, citizenship, and rights / edited by Anne-­Marie D’Aoust. Description: New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2022. | Series: Politics of marriage and gender: global issues in local contexts | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021015674 | ISBN 9781978816701 (paperback) | ISBN 9781978816718 (hardback) | ISBN 9781978816725 (epub) | ISBN 9781978816732 (mobi) | ISBN 9781978816749 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Intercountry marriage. | Transnationalism. | Citizenship. | Emigration and immigration—­Political aspects. Classification: LCC HQ1032 .T74 2022 | DDC 306.84/5—­dc23 LC rec­ord available at https://­lccn​.­loc​.­gov​/­2021015674 A British Cataloging-­in-­P ublication rec­ord for this book is available from the British Library. This collection copyright © 2022 by Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey Individual chapters copyright © 2022 in the names of their authors All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. References to internet websites (URLs) ­were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Rutgers University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared. The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—­Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. www​.­r utgersuniversitypress​.­org Manufactured in the United States of Amer­i­ca

CON T EN T S

Series Foreword by Péter Berta

ix

Introduction: Thinking in Constellations: Marriage and Partner Migration in Relation to Security, Citizenship, and Rights

1

ANNE-­M ARIE D’AOUST

PA RT ONE

Policing Rights and Belonging: Histories and Legacies of Marriage Migration Management

1

The Odd ­Couple: Gender, Securitization, Eu­ro­pe­anization, and Marriages of Con­ve­nience in Dutch ­Family Migration Policies (1930–2020)

31

BETTY DE HART

2

“A Necessary Evil”? The Problematization of F­ amily Migration in French Parliamentary Debates on ­Family Migration, 1974–1993

49

SASKIA BONJOUR AND MASSILIA OURABAH



3

“All the Time, Hard Time”: Narrative, Agency, and History in the Sinse Taryeong of Korean Marriage Mi­grants JI-­Y EON YUH

67

v i Contents

PA RT T WO

Intersectional Effects of Con­temporary Marriage and Partner Migration Management: Stratification of Rights 4

What Do States Regulate When They Regulate Spousal Migration? A Study of France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Denmark

87

HELENA WRAY



5

“I’m Not a Bad Guy, I Swear”: Analyzing Emotion Work and Negotiations of Criminality and Masculinity in Vietnamese-­Canadian Men’s Participation in “Fake Wedding” Arrangements

106

GRACE K. TRAN

6

Moral Economies of ­Family Reunification in the Trump Era: Translating Natu­ral Affiliation, Autonomy, and Stability Arguments into Constitutional Rights

125

KERRY ABRAMS AND DANIEL PHAM

PA RT THR EE

Navigating the Security State: ­Couples and State Bureaucracies

7

Negotiating Trust and Suspicion: ­L awyers as Actors in the Moral Po­liti­cal Economy of Marriage Migration Management in Canada

153

ANNE-­M ARIE D’AOUST

8

Intimacy Brokers: The Fragile Bound­aries of Activism for Heterosexual and Same-­Sex Binational ­Couples in France

171

LAURA ODASSO AND MANUELA SALCEDO ROBLEDO

9

He Said, She Said: The Complexity of Oral Relationship Narratives as Written Factual Evidence in Belgian Marriage Fraud Investigations MIEKE VANDENBROUCKE

189

Contents

vii

PA RT FOUR

Challenging Neoliberal Affective Regimes: Care, Work, and Economy 10

“I ­Don’t Even Know Where My Heart Is Anymore”: Mi­grant Bachelors and Immigrant Wives Lost in Time, Space, and Im/mobility

207

PARDIS MAHDAVI

11

Intimate Citizens: Filipina Mi­grant Hostesses in Japan

225

RHACEL SALAZAR PARREÑAS

12

Same-­Sex Marriage against the Deportation State

240

EITHNE LUIBHÉID

13

Epilogue: Love Triangle: Nation, Spouse, Citizen AUDREY MACKLIN

Acknowl­edgments

275

Notes on Contributors

279

Index

285

259

SE R I E S F O R E WO R D

The politics of marriage (and divorce) is an often-­used strategic tool in vari­ous social, cultural, economic, and po­liti­cal identity proj­ects as well as in symbolic conflicts among ethnic, national, or religious communities. Despite having multiple strategic applicabilities, pervasiveness in everyday life, and huge significance in performing and managing identities, the politics of marriage is surprisingly underrepresented both in the international book publishing market and in the social sciences. The Politics of Marriage and Gender: Global Issues in Local Contexts is a series from Rutgers University Press examining the politics of marriage as a phenomenon embedded in and intensely interacting with much broader social, cultural, economic, and po­liti­cal pro­cesses and practices such as globalization; transnationalization; international migration; h ­ uman trafficking; vertical social mobility; the creation of symbolic bound­ a ries among ethnic populations, nations, religious denominations, or classes; ­family formation; or strug­gles for ­women’s and ­children’s rights. The series primarily aims to analyze practices, ideologies, and interpretations related to the politics of marriage and to outline the dynamics and diversity of relatedness—­interplay and interdependence, for instance—­between the politics of marriage and the broader pro­cesses and practices mentioned above. In other words, most books in the series devote special attention to how the politics of marriage and t­hese pro­cesses and practices mutually shape and explain each other. The series concentrates on, among other ­things, the complex relationships between the politics of marriage and gender, ethnic, national, religious, racial, and class identities globally and examines how ­these relationships contribute to the development and management of social, cultural, and po­liti­cal differences, inequalities, and conflicts. The series seeks to publish single-­authored books and edited volumes that develop a gap-­filling and thought-­provoking critical perspective, that are well balanced between a high degree of theoretical sophistication and empirical richness and that cross or rethink disciplinary, methodological, or theoretical bound­aries. The thematic scope of the series is intentionally left broad to encourage creative submissions that fit within the perspectives outlined above. ix

x

S E R I E S F O R E WO R D

Among the potential topics closely connected with the prob­lem sensitivity of the series are “honor”-­based vio­lence; arranged (forced, child, e ­ tc.) marriage; transnational marriage markets, migration, and brokerage; intersections of marriage and religion/class/race; the politics of agency and power within marriage; reconfiguration of f­ amily: same-­sex marriage/­union; the politics of love, intimacy, and desire; marriage and multicultural families; the (religious, ­legal, ­etc.) politics of divorce; the c ­ auses, forms, and consequences of polygamy in con­ temporary socie­ties; sport marriage; and refusing marriage. Transnational Marriage and Partner Migration is a fascinating account of how intersectional relationships among marriage, transnational migration, security, citizenship, and rights have developed in vari­ous countries across the globe as well as how and why t­ hese relationships may play a prominent role in governmental-­level policy-­and decision-­making pro­cesses. Offering a global comparative perspective, the volume seeks answers for questions such as how— in public po­liti­cal discourses as well as in policy-­and lawmaking contexts—­ transnational marriage migration is constructed and framed as a risky pro­cess having potential security dangers; as a consequence, who should be controlled, and made the object of surveillance, and to what extent and in which ways; and fi­nally, how the changing conceptualizations of potential security dangers or risks associated with transnational marriage and partner migration affect a ­ ctual policies as well as rights and access to citizenship. The chapters reveal in a convincing and insightful way how diverse the repertoire of strategies, techniques, and tactics used in the politicization of marriage and partner migration is and critically examine the under­lying po­liti­cal and bureaucratic concerns over emotions, intimacies, attachments, and senses of belonging. Péter Berta University College London School of Slavonic and East Eu­ro­pean Studies

Transnational Marriage and Partner Migration

Introduction Thinking in Constellations: Marriage and Partner Migration in Relation to Security, Citizenship, and Rights A NN E-­M A R I E D’AO U S T

“Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. Every­one has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country” (United Nations 1948). With Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of H ­ uman Rights (UDHR) proclaimed by the United Nations (U.N.) General Assembly on December 10, 1948, a breakthrough was set to ensure freedom of movement for men and w ­ omen the world over. From 1946 to 1948, the famous U.N. Commission on ­Human Rights was chaired by Eleanor Roo­se­velt (depicted in Figure I.1 below at the Third Session of the Commission in 1948). The Commission had managed to get the UDHR drafted and proclaimed in u ­ nder two years. But in the midst of a brewing Cold War, it was neither the plight of millions of wandering subjects escaping the destructive fires of World War II, nor the recent creation of the state of Israel, nor the escalation of vio­ lence in Kashmir that led to this l­ egal milestone in h ­ uman rights history. It was the apparently small, mundane issue of providing exit visas for more or less a thousand Soviet wives of foreign husbands that garnered attention in the nascent field of ­human rights.1 Article 13 came as the direct result of the sustained refusal by the Soviet state to provide exit visas for Soviet wives of diplomatic staff and military men from the Western bloc. Already in August 1948, the New York Times had noted that the thorny issue of “Rus­sian wives” “threaten[ed] to bog the U.N. Council,” the same way it had “tied up the h ­ uman rights committee for two and a half weeks” in the midst of its work on drafting a declaration of h ­ uman rights.2 Indeed, in May 1948, the U.N. Soviet delegate, Aleksei  P. Pavlov, had insisted that the f­uture declaration of ­human rights should stipulate that emigration must be subject to the laws of the country of origins. This position led to a common front between the United States, ­Great Britain, and Chile, whose representatives claimed that the Soviet government’s “refusal of permission to [let Rus­sian wives of foreign citizens] 1

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FIGUR E I.1  ​Eleanor Roo­se­velt at the meeting of the third session of the Commission

on ­Human Rights, 1948.

leave the country was a violation of a basic ­human right.” 3 “The committee [working on the declaration of ­human rights] then agreed,” the New York Times simply noted, “to include in the f­ uture declaration a proviso that ‘every­one is entitled to freedom of movement within the borders of each state’ and that ‘every­one has the right to leave any country,’ including his own.” 4 Unmoved by this challenge, the Soviet delegate explained to the U.N. Economic and Social Council that the refusal sometimes to let the Rus­sian wives of foreigners leave the country was based solely on national security concerns: “Foreigners send their nationals in to recruit agents, especially among our ­women,” he explained. “In some cases . . . ​the Government must refuse permission to wives to go home with their husbands for security reasons.” 5 In September 1948, the United States announced that it would support an International Court of Justice ruling on “­whether the Soviet Union has the right to deny exit to Rus­sian ­women married to foreigners.” 6 The issue ultimately culminated in a U.N. General Assembly meeting on April 25, 1949. The meeting ended in the adoption of Resolution 285 (III) A-­B, holding that “the refusal of the Soviet Union to allow Rus­sian wives to join their husbands abroad was a violation of the United Nation Charter” (United Nations General Assembly 1949).

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To anyone who has paid attention to con­temporary debates surrounding marriage migration or f­ amily reunification more generally in the past twenty years, the defense mobilized against the Soviet state may sound oddly familiar. The Soviet delegate’s objections to ­family reunification pro­cesses on the grounds that in other countries Soviet wives would be “subject to . . . ​exploitation as ‘kitchen slaves’ ” certainly echo con­temporary discourses about ­women immigrants being trapped by “traditions,” incompatible with their newfound home country’s lifestyle and national values.7 British condemnations of Soviet policy as “sadism and nationalism gone mad,” as cutting across “the instinctive disposition of men and w ­ omen to fall in love, to marry and to make a home together,” strike a chord too.8 But this time, the emotional pleas do not emanate solely from state officials: they have been reclaimed by several nongovernmental organ­ izations (NGOs) and politicians alike to condemn the restrictive policies of the United Kingdom and the United States, among ­others, to impose restrictions on family reunification. ­ ­ These restrictions run from minimum income requirements up to detention practices. We could easily dismiss this forgotten “small” history of Soviet wives as a curious oddity, a funny artifact of a Cold War long gone by. Or we could exert our feminist curiosity (Enloe 2004) and try to tease out what this incident reveals about intimate geopolitics (Barabantseva, Mhurchú, and Peterson 2021; Turner and Espinoza 2021), about the intermingling of affairs of the state and affairs of the heart (Carruthers 2009, 40), when it comes to marriage and partner migration. That the ­whole debate took place as the UDHR was being drafted was no small feat. If anything, the story captures the innate tension it creates between the normative idea of “a right” to ­family life as an individual, transnational ­human right and the state’s sovereign prerogative in managing its borders. Indeed, a fundamental clash occurs between the demo­cratic princi­ple that citizens and permanent residents have the right to marry the person of their choice and the sovereignty princi­ple that states must provide security and manage migration.9 “Marriage migration,” summarizes Natasha Carver, “subverts the State’s (patriarchal) presumption that it holds the prerogative over entry, since the aspiring immigrant is chosen by the individual sponsor rather than selected through criteria laid down by the state” (2016, 2767). The story is also a sobering reminder that the increased politicization of marriage and partner migration for the past twenty years, and noted in several countries across the globe, is hardly new. Speaking of colonial empires, the historian Ann Laura Stoler famously explained that “the state’s concern over sentiment, the state’s assessment of the intensity of ‘feelings,’ ‘attachments,’ and senses of belonging—­that prompted loyalties to race over ­family, or f­ amily over state—­were not meta­phors . . . ​but instrumental as ‘dense transfer points of power’ ” (2004, 7). The study of colonial rule hence revealed just how central a

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­legal system clearly defining domestic roles and their incumbent rights (concubines, mistresses, wives, prostitutes, e ­ tc.) was in creating racial and po­liti­cal hierarchies that tied in with mobility (Wells 2019; Turner 2017; McClintock 1995; McClintock, Mufti, and Shohat 1997). Likewise, the study of immigration and ­family reunification in the United States is closely tied to racism against Asian populations and the challenge posed by war brides of American soldiers returning from Japan and South ­Korea in the aftermath of the Second World War (Yamamoto 2019; Yamin 2012; Wolgin and Bloemraad 2010). It is also well documented that marriage has been instrumental in trying to regulate relations between Whites and Afro-­A mericans (Lublin 2005; Moran 2001). Canadian, Australian, and American nation-­building pro­ cesses also hinged on monogamous marriage being imposed as a po­liti­cal institution on Native Americans and First Nations to access land and property (Rademaker 2017; Car­ter 2008; Ellinghaus 2006; Cott 2002). To be sure, such state concerns are not the appanage of colonial or totalitarian states alone: they are indistinguishable from the state itself (Peterson 2020). What all t­ hese examples show, along with the chapters in this volume, is that when it comes to spouse and partner migration, issues of security, citizenship, and rights are deployed and mobilized now as they w ­ ere then: it is their configurations, their understandings, and their targets that shift.

Looking at Marriage and Partner Migration u ­ nder the Prism of Security, Citizenship, and Rights This collection investigates the ways marriage and partner migration have become the object of intense state scrutiny and the site of sustained po­liti­cal interventions in several states (Groes and Fernandez 2018; Friedman and Mahdavi 2015; Charsley 2012).10 As the adoption of the U.N. Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration in 2018 testified, security has become a privileged framework through which policy makers and decision makers assess migration pro­cesses (e.g., Bourbeau 2015; De Genova 2017; Walters 2010). However, security is ­here theorized, enacted, and practiced as a management of risks rather than a response to a specific, direct threat (e.g., Aradau 2016; Burgess 2014; Rasmussen 2004; Bigo 2002). Throughout the book, we argue that the focus on marriage and partner migration should be analyzed as part of a governmentality pro­cess in which specific relations and their expected emotional manifestations become qualitative grounds for po­liti­cal participation, control, and exclusion. This theoretical framework raises crucial questions: Which forms of attachments (­toward the f­amily, the nation, or specific individuals) have become framed as a prob­ lem or risk to be managed? How do such preoccupations translate into ­actual policies, and with what consequences for ­those affected by them, in terms of rights and access to citizenship? This pro­ cess is closely linked to security

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apparatuses and the ordered circulation of p ­ eople and goods (Foucault 2007, 110): Who should be controlled and made the object of surveillance? Who is deemed risky and why? In other words, the issue becomes who or what raises suspicion about potential security dangers or risks—­and what can be done about it to control and police them.

Thinking in Constellations: A Multidisciplinary and Relational Approach As the contributions in this collection reveal, marriage and partner migration conjures several, often competing, understandings of what security is, who and what it targets, and what it substantially entails. Securitization pro­cesses range from seeking physical safety to mitigating the risks of separation (e.g., Zentgraf and Chinchilla 2012), from securing a financial and emotional f­ uture for one’s ­family (Cole and Groes 2016; Constable 2005), to protecting the welfare state (e.g., Eggebø 2010), from enforcing integration (Spencer and Charsley 2016), to defending national borders (Friedman 2010) and preventing trafficking (e.g., ­Piper 1999). This collection distinguishes itself with its multidisciplinary focus and its relational approach to marriage and partner migration, one that pays attention to the unfolding dynamics between a constellation formed by the three key concepts of security, citizenship, and rights. This approach enables us to take head on one of the challenges of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary work, namely, finding a common language to discuss similar issues, as some concepts echo differently from one discipline to another. For instance, the l­egal technicalities associated with terms such as rights can often elude po­liti­cal scientists or sociologists. Similarly, for ­lawyers the word security might conjure specters of militarization and national security, whereas for scholars in critical security studies it might invoke an array of practices ranging from survival to mundane surveillance practices of mobility management on the part of bureaucrats and policy makers. Yet, from an anthropologist’s perspective on ­family migration, what security means and entails greatly differs from one place to another and even from one agent and actor to another. Mobility itself can be seen as a h ­ ouse­hold risk management strategy to secure a better f­uture. When binational c ­ ouples forced to live apart contest restrictive immigration legislation and demonstrate in the street claiming “a right to love,” their action does not mobilize and build on the same notion of rights and security invoked by ­lawyers. The latter may claim that the state enjoys prerogatives to put conditions on ­family reunification to protect the public and the immigration system. We argue that all ­these discourses and practices mobilize and constitute diverse constellations of security-­citizenship-­r ights. They are deployed to dif­fer­ent ends, and they are uniquely experienced by a wide range of actors.

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Walter Benjamin’s (1998) use of the term constellation quickly appealed to all the volume’s contributors as a helpful working meta­phor to make sense of what each of us could see, coming from dif­fer­ent disciplinary backgrounds, while still mobilizing the same vocabulary. Thinking about the relations between the site of security, citizenship, and rights analyzed as a specific constellation offers the advantage of considering how t­ hese concepts relate to one another. Even more, it draws attention to the ways that the relations between the concepts also hinge on someone’s embodied gaze. Two conclusions stem from ­these observations. First, from a multidisciplinary perspective, constellation proves a useful meta­phor to capture a relational approach between concepts without taking any of them for granted. A relational approach problematizes the relationships among ­ oing so allows the three terms, none of which is stable in terms of meaning.11 D for the study of dif­fer­ent dynamics and spaces created by relations between ­people, objects, and places. It implies that the vari­ous terms studied are not predetermined concepts assumed to have any preestablished essence to be tested. Instead, they are taken as sites that “derive their meaning, significance, and identity from the (changing) functional roles they play within [a] transaction [with other sites]. The latter, seen as a dynamic, unfolding pro­cess, becomes the primary unit of analy­sis, rather than the constituent ele­ments themselves” (Emirbayer 1997, 287). We are interested in the changing shape of the meaning of the relationship between security, citizenship, and rights that emerges in marriage and partner migration practices. What kind of recognition such relationships validate or preclude is what is at stake ­here as well. Second, and perhaps more significantly, the idea of constellations of rights, citizenship, and security reflects our epistemological commitment to our object of study. The idea of constellation is meaningful b ­ ecause it specifically hangs on a viewer’s gazing standpoint, without being reduced to it. Despite apparencies of fixity, stars have their own motions: they are constantly in movement, but not in chaotic ways. ­B ehind an apparent stillness, constellations change slowly, but surely, over time. Some w ­ ill become unrecognizable ten thousand years from now. This change translates the movement that cannot be seen yet still happens and is being experienced; the “fixity” of the relationships between concepts such as citizenship and rights might seem evident, yet movement occurs between them, in­de­pen­dently of the viewer’s perception. But to be recognized as such, constellations also depend on their relationship with the viewer. Constellations make sense in the “relation of the individual objects to each other and to the viewer; and [they] can be grasped only instantaneously and only from a specific viewer’s standpoint” (Sahraoui and Sauter 2018, x). As the contributors stand in their respective disciplinary field, their standpoint has analytical implications that influence what is being observed, what is being seen (or not), and through what lenses. It is their own embodied gaze that contributes in making the constellation what it is, coming from a specific embodied

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standpoint. For instance, the stars of the Big Dipper form a dif­fer­ent pattern on Earth than they would in space; how the grouping is perceived depends on where one stands and at what time of year. Star constellations have long evolved over time and place. Some constellations w ­ ere seen and recognized only by some cultures, whereas ­others ­were known but named differently. Thinking about the relations between the site of security, citizenship, and rights analyzed as a specific constellation allows us to see them as related to one another, but also how such relations are seen and established from someone’s own embodied (and disciplinary) perspective. As a result, all the contributors to this volume share the view that no universal, totalizing claim can be made as to what the exact relationship is between security, citizenship, and rights in relation to marriage and partner migration; no one takes for granted the very categories they are working with. How ­these dimensions ­matter, and come to ­matter, for whom, cannot be dissociated from the viewpoint from which the relationship is being assessed. It is thus no won­der that, despite coming from dif­fer­ent disciplinary perspectives, all contributions engage in issues of race, gender, sexuality, and class, to name but a few identity markers, that come to m ­ atter when thinking about partner and spousal migration. Whereas issues of gender and race have traditionally been at the forefront of analyses of marriage and partner migration policies (e.g., Turner 2015; Wray 2011; Muller Myrdhal 2010), the stratification of rights of marriage and partner migration management is now increasingly linked to class and socioeconomic status, and an intersectional analy­sis of ­these policies (Gash and Yamin 2019; Kofman 2018) is needed to better account for them. For some privileged ­couples, marriage migration is only one form of flexible citizenship (Ong 1999) among the dif­fer­ent options offered to them (marrying in one’s own country, marrying in a partner’s country, marrying in a third country, e ­ tc.). For o ­ thers, marriage can become a way to build and create a sense of community across continents, when citizenship and belonging have become jeopardized by war (Maunaguru 2019). Thinking in constellation enables us to pre­sent dif­fer­ent configurations of what each of us sees when we think about security, citizenship, and rights in relation to marriage and partner migration, without assuming ­others see the same ­thing we do. Fi­nally, and perhaps more importantly, the idea of looking at the key sites of security, citizenship, and rights as a constellation in relation to marriage and partner migration also recognizes that the movement in the relationship between t­ hese terms must also translate in a necessary movement in our ways of thinking about them.

A Governmental Understanding of Security and a Plural Take on Citizenship Several scholarly accounts of migration pro­cesses that go beyond marriage and partner migration point to the fact that deeper inquiries into constellations of

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security, rights, and citizenship make sense in a governmental understanding of the phenomenon. “Governmentality,” summarizes Didier Fassin, “includes the institutions, procedures, actions, and reflections that have populations as object. It exceeds the issue of sovereignty and complicates the question of control. It relates the power and administration of the state to the subjugation and subjectivation of individuals. It relies on po­liti­cal economy and policing technologies” (2011, 214). When it comes to immigration, we should account for the fact that this ordering pro­cess is also underpinned by moral-­political investments that need to be investigated (Fassin 2011, 221; on the governmentality of marriage and partner migration, see Bissenbakker 2019; D’Aoust 2013, 2018a). As a result, not only are contributors to the volume attuned to bureaucratic pro­cesses and policies that (re)produce and hang on specific relations of power, but they also interrogate or acknowledge the “production, circulation and appropriation of norms and values, sensibilities and emotions that account for how it is treated at a given moment, both in the public sphere and in private actions ” (Fassin and Kobelinsky 2012, 447). Without necessarily resorting to a strict governmental analy­sis as an overarching theoretical framework, each contribution highlights dif­fer­ent power relations at play in the constellations formed by the key ele­ments of security, citizenship, and rights and ponders the ordering pro­cess they create or entail. Each of the contributors was thus asked to reflect on the ways this constellation takes shape in their respective study and how values, emotions, or affect come to ­matter.12 This engagement with affect and emotions warrants an impor­tant precision. ­These two concepts are not synonyms, and mobilizing one term or the other certainly suggests dif­fer­ent orientations and interests, especially when it comes to the role that bodies and intentionality play in social relations (Schmitz and Ahmed 2014). To be sure, both terms have been much debated across disciplines, notably history (Gammerl, Nielsen, and Pernau 2019; Pernau 2019), sociology (Clough and Halley 2007), and feminist and queer theory (Gregg and Seigworth 2010; Ahmed 2004). They raise several issues, particularly from a multidisciplinary perspective. Privileging one term over the other involves taking a stand on epistemological and ontological issues that cannot be easily resolved among researchers coming from vari­ous backgrounds. Two remain unavoidable: the need to discuss how affect should be conceived as a social and biological force, or not, and the need to clarify what is the relationship between affect and the body (e.g., is affect an individually experienced, pre-­social intensity, or is it an intersubjective experience affecting the body from the outside?). While not all contributors share the same positions on t­ hese two crucial dimensions, all are committed to the idea that legislations, security discourses, and l­egal procedures affecting marriage migration management are “anything but indifferent: [they are] full of passion and norms, of feelings and ste­reo­t ypes” (Fassin 2005, 366). All the contributors share the idea that the very constellation of

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citizenship, security, and rights is imbued with emotional components. All share the notion that emotions cannot be uncoupled from relations of power that characterize and permeate the social field; yet they highlight this concept by using the very theoretical background and vocabulary proper to their discipline to clarify what that entails for the constellation they bring to light, be it moral economies, affective governmentality, affect, or emotions. Whichever term contributors in this volume mobilize, they still localize it inside the framework of governmentality described above. ­Doing so enables them to examine how emotions and rationality intermingle in ways that put the body at the center of analy­sis. Our concern with security and the management of an ordered circulation of ­people raises po­liti­cal and l­ egal questions of vari­ous ­orders, making the links between citizenship and rights unavoidable. Indeed, all rights claims t­ oday are based on citizenship (Arendt [1951] 1973). But as scholars of citizenship studies appreciate, citizenship is not l­ imited to questions pertaining to the acquisition of a formal l­egal status. As the booming lit­er­a­ture on ­family migration has shown, an increase in more selective—­rather than simply restrictive—­policies regarding marriage and partner migration has created a “heterogeneity of non-­ citizen statuses” (Schweitzer 2015, 2133). A complex stratification of rights ensues, reflecting regimes of deservingness (Kristol and Dahinden 2020; Bonjour and Block 2016; Bonjour and de Hart 2013), rather than a dichotomous regime of citizens and denizens. Inside each of ­these l­egal regimes, ele­ments affecting the recognition of who is a partner or not, and who can be granted which rights, include (but are not l­ imited to) the relationship’s status (cohabitees, long-­term partners, registered partners, fiancés, spouses, e ­ tc.); sexual orientations (heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, queer, ­etc.); the enactment of f­ree movement rights (or not) as Eu­ro­pean Union (EU) citizens; and formal status as citizens, residents, or third-­country nationals. If we add to ­these criteria other markers of belonging such as religion, ethnic background, f­ amily ties between ­family reunification applicants (such as second-­degree cousins), education degree, or socioeconomic status, we quickly see that concerns over citizenship and civic stratification cannot be distinguished from security regimes over marriage and partner mi­grants’ mobility practices (see the extensive lit­er­a­ture reviews done by Bonjour and Block 2016; Bonjour and Kraler 2015; Kraler 2010; Schweitzer 2015). We can look at the question of security and citizenship as one linked to the security or lack thereof resulting from the acquisition of a ­legal status. We can also look at it from a wide array of a ­ ngles, including how concerns over securing “the nation” involve controlling the identity and practices of who can enter, and ­under what status, to restrain who belongs (Charsley et al. 2020; D’Aoust 2018b; Kim 2018; Horsti and Pellander 2015). Feminist and queer scholars have also called our attention to the importance of sexual citizenship (see Bonjour and de Hart 2021; Richardson 2018; Bell and Binnie 2000). Incidentally, we can refuse any formal, l­egal understanding of citizenship and rather be interested

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in the way marriage and partner mi­grants actively “make” their citizenship, their belonging (legally or not), pos­si­ble—­what authors such as Engin F. Isin (2008) have called “acts of citizenship.” (For examples on how this approach f­ avors an emphasis on the mi­grants’ agency in the context of f­amily reunification, see Odasso 2021; Scheel and Gutekunst 2019; Dyck 2018). Lest we forget, in spite of the state’s securitizing practices, ­people actively resist ­these, notably redeploying them to unexpected ends to play on the tensions cross-­border marriages involve. Transnational marriages to Jews entrapped in Nazi Germany and Austria (Messinger 2012, 2018; Stoltzfus 1996) or undocumented mi­grants in Eu­rope and the United States are only some examples of what Maïté Maskens (2017) labels “humanitarian marriages.” Rhacel Salazar Parreñas’s chapter (this volume) on the marriage relations of transgender hostesses is one such fascinating example of the complexity and creativity involved in securing one’s relationship, one’s l­egal status, and one’s self in spite of institutional and l­egal constraints. Pardis Mahdavi’s chapter (this volume), in contrast, poignantly documents how formal citizenship can be pos­si­ble and yet leave individuals insecure about their ­f uture owing to the absence of feelings of belonging or home.

Policing Rights and Belonging: Histories and Legacies of Marriage Migration Management The recent surge in scholarship on ­family reunification and marriage migration in Eu­rope seems to stem from new laws that have led to intense public debates and ­legal challenges (e.g., the cousins law in Denmark [Rytter 2012], the increase in the minimum age for marriage or the minimum income requirement in the United Kingdom, and debates over “fake paternities” [paternités de papier] and “gray marriages” [mariages gris] in France). But such policies did not suddenly emerge: in their respective work, Betty de Hart (2014) and Helena Wray (2011) note that con­temporary Eu­ro­pean migration law and national legislations do not necessarily entail a radical break from the colonial past. Several analyses spanning across fields as varied as law, history, and feminist and queer theory (Abrams 2012; Luibhéid 2002, 2008; de Hart 2014; Stoler 1995; Cott 2002; Pascoe 2009; Car­ter 2008) have long demonstrated how the policing of sexuality has been central to state concerns and cannot be dislodged from race and the politics of nationhood and citizenship. Far from being a mere private decision, marriage involves community claims, which can be welcomed or resisted by the state. State concerns and policies might historically have differed from current ones, but establishing and securing a certain order—­especially a racial one—­ seems to be a constant. Which social and po­liti­cal ­orders did some c ­ ouples challenge? Betty de Hart, in her chapter, examines how the category of “marriage of con­ve­nience” has ­historically shifted in the twentieth c ­ entury to serve Dutch nation-­building

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purposes. Through l­egal and discourse analy­sis, she documents which l­egal provisions made pos­si­ble the regulation of marriage and citizenship and which ­were enforced or not. But state policies are always met by resilience and re­sis­ tance. Saskia Bonjour and Massilia Ourabah, in their chapter, engage in a short historical exercise to trace the development of ­family and gender norms in French parliamentary debates about f­ amily migration from the 1970s u ­ ntil the 1990s. This look at past parliamentary debates illustrates how the relation between security, citizenship, and rights is mobilized to normalize and reinforce certain forms of intimacies and conceptions of the ­family, with the aim to police belonging inside the French state. Ji-­Yeon Yuh’s contribution challenges conventional historical narratives about the marriages of picture brides at the turn of the twentieth c ­ entury and the war brides of the 1940s and 1950s. The w ­ omen ­were often “caught between empires” (the United States, Japan, or China), and their narratives, in the genre of sinse taryeong (a Korean form of storytelling), give us a glimpse of the meanings they attach to their migration journey.

Intersectional Effects of Con­temporary Marriage and Partner Migration Management: Stratification of Rights ­Legal regimes and legislation are part of and produce relations of power. They establish frameworks for the (im)pos­si­ble and (im)permissible. Yet, how they are deployed and enacted is dif­fer­ent from one setting to another; it is also one t­ hing to adopt policies and another to see them enforced. Scholars have argued that marriage and partner migration in the Eu­ro­pean context is best understood in a framework that emphasizes the stratification of rights, rather than the mere denying or possession of rights (Block and Bonjour 2013; Bonjour and Block 2016; Bonjour and Kraler 2015; Kraler 2010; Kofman 2002). Mobility or lack thereof can also activate or deny rights: a Eu­ro­pean activating her right to ­f ree movement and residing in another Eu­ro­pean country can be re­united with a non-­European spouse, whereas another Eu­ro­pean who has not activated that right can be prevented from reuniting with a non-­European spouse in her own country (see Wray, Kofman, and Simic 2021; Staver 2013). The regulation and policing of marriage and partner migration often reproduces dichotomies between love and interests, between f­amily and l­abor, and between men and ­women. This division between f­ amily and l­abor was notably historically enshrined in the United Kingdom’s “primary purpose rule,” which required non-­British spouses to prove that their marriage’s “primary purpose” was not to win a right of residence (Wray 2011, 2015a, and 2015b). We can thus ponder ­whether right stratification is a deliberate po­liti­cal strategy to achieve certain ends or ­whether it is the unexpected result of specific practices and legislation. Examining marriage and partner migration policies in four countries (­Great Britain, Denmark, France, and the United States), Helena Wray, in her

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chapter, claims that their reach and impacts go well beyond the l­ imited sphere of spousal and partner migration. Marriage and partner migration, she argues, enables social normative controls other­w ise impossible to apply in other forms of migration: in the name of security (such as protecting the welfare state), it establishes the contours of a “deserving” ­family life and models of marriage, intimacy, and citizenship, using criteria that are also associated with l­ abor. Grace K. Tran, in her chapter, focuses on the narratives of two Vietnamese-­ Canadian men engaged in “fake wedding arrangements” and documents how the men rely on strategies of performativity and documentation to circumvent the securitization of marriage migration in Canada. She forces us to take a step back from received ideas about real/fraudulent relationships. Giving voice to men engaged in such relationships, she challenges us to rethink what fraudulent relationships consist of and what they entail. Her chapter highlights the complexity under­lying Vietnamese-­Canadian participants’ decision to partake in “fake weddings” and how surprisingly emotionally complicated ­these relationships are. ­Going beyond the s­ imple dichotomy between love and interest, she concludes, is more necessary than ever, as “scholars in the field of migration studies still lack the analytical insight and vocabulary to translate ­these very complex relations that involve both interest and money, but also more conflicted feelings and emotions like love and philanthropic duty that can exist, coincide, and cohere in nonlinear fashions” (Tran, this volume, 122–123). Looking at marriage and partner migration policies in the United States, Kerry Abrams and Daniel Pham also follow Wray in holding that marriage and partner migration is linked to exceptional normative controls over issues of belonging. In the wake of media outrage over policies targeting f­ amily reunification in the name of security ­under Donald J. Trump’s administration, their chapter carefully considers how moral-­based claims to ­family reunification could be transformed into l­egal ones. Litigants and l­ awyers use the moral language of ­family reunification to make ­legal claims, some of which sound a constitutional right to ­family reunification, some ­others used to bolster constitutional claims. They note that such normative issues can blur the line between constitutional claims and ­legal claims. In so ­doing, Abrams and Pham provide a careful analy­sis of the difficulties advocates face when invoking constitutional rights to challenge state action that keeps families apart in the United States, even beyond the Trump administration.

Navigating the Security State: ­Couples and State Bureaucracies The governmentality of marriage and partner migration management, we claim, involves the creation of a deviant, suspicious population, one that threatens the i­magined bounded community. In line with that, the role of emotions and morality inside bureaucratic structures has led to intense debates and rich

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scholarship, especially in orga­n izational studies pertaining to civil servants involved at dif­fer­ent stages of immigration pro­cesses (Scheel and Gutekunst 2019; Satzewich 2015; Infantino 2014; Maskens 2013, Eggebø 2013a, 2013b; Lavanchy 2013). A moral po­liti­cal economy of marriage and partner migration examines how specific emotions are related to vari­ous structures of power that connect with, yet go beyond, interpersonal interactions or orga­nizational bureaucratic structures. Such bureaucratic pro­cesses often occur before rights claims are formulated, and they create spaces where intimacy and nearness between individuals and state power (through its agents) are experienced and deeply felt. This represents a paradox, as the intimacy between spouses and bureaucrats is experienced in the absence of mutual trust, usually a prerequisite for intimate sharing between individuals. What ­matters ­here is how specific norms or affects become an integral part of judgment formation in the distribution of trust and mistrust. A po­liti­cal economy of suspicion around marriage and partner mi­grants notably takes the body as a site of truth and power. The body can bear witness to state vio­lence and practices: who is being targeted and why can be based on physical, racialized markers. A site of truth, the materialization of “a convincing relationship” becomes tied to bodies being together and the convincing aspect of their affective atmospheres (Scheel and Gutekunst 2019; Fassin and Salcedo Robledo 2015; D’Aoust 2018a, 2014, and 2013). Such emotional marking and readability can occur only when bodies are situated and understood in wider relations of power that intersect with narratives about what the state and the nation are and who they should comprise. What roles do immigration officers, street-­level bureaucrats, l­ awyers, or marriage brokers (to name but a few actors) play in the moral po­liti­cal economy of suspicion surrounding marriage and partner mi­grants? How are dif­fer­ent bodies assessed by dif­fer­ent actors? Which strategies do mi­grants employ to benefit from such moral po­liti­cal orderings or to challenge them? All the collaborators in this next part of the volume rely on interviews or participant-­observation work to examine how vari­ous actors beyond street-­level bureaucrats play a role in enacting specific constellations of security, citizenship, and rights. In my chapter, I examine how ­lawyers partake in a moral po­liti­cal economy of suspicion when it comes to spousal and partner reunification pro­ cesses in Montreal, Canada. Even as they seek to help ­couples re­unite, I claim, ­lawyers engage in a distribution of trust and risk while pro­cessing their clients’ files. Laura Odasso and Manuela Salcedo Robledo, in their chapter, examine the role of the “marriage broker” played by two associations defending spousal and partner reunification in France, Ardhis and the Amoureux au ban public. The dynamics and the strategies implemented by ­these associations to reach their goals, based on rights claims, result in impor­tant contradictions owing to constant negotiations with a state apparatus that treats c ­ ouples with suspicion. Mieke Vandenbroucke’s chapter documents the key role translators play in

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Belgium in materializing the narratives that become grounds for trust or suspicion when bureaucrats examine spousal and partner claims for reunification. Vandenbroucke examines how the very chaotic, and often unintelligible, content negotiated between the spouse/partner, translators, and bureaucrats gets erased and transformed into an authoritative relationship narrative that fits the bureaucratic requirements of accuracy, facticity, and spatiotemporal coherence and ends up affecting the possibility of ­legal claims or status. The messiness in the creation of “facts” about relationships must be acknowledged, she argues, as this has a dramatic impact on how claims for reunification are examined and how the spouses’ rights are recognized or not.

Challenging Neoliberal Affective Regimes: Care, Work, and Economy But even when dealing with the thorny issue of security, the governmentality of marriage and partner migration implies more than bureaucratization and a policing of intimacy. It has an emotional side and component, which has been identified as central to work and neoliberalism (Groes and Fernandez 2018; Parreñas, Thai, and Silvey 2016; Illouz 2007; Povinelli 2006). Historians of emotions have also documented how emotions are not distinct from rational thought: they are embedded in social relations, and they are thus also part of relations of power (Scheer 2012). The care economy highlights how marriage and partner migration cannot be studied in­de­pen­dently from ­labor migration and po­liti­cal economy: if anything, it is central to social reproduction and necessary for the production economy (Kofman 2012). Recent work in migration studies, more broadly, has emphasized how issues of emotions, love, care, marriageability, work, security, and economy should be thought of in relation to one another as opposed to being distinct spheres of experience (Yamaura 2020; Andrikopoulos and Duyvendak 2020; Groes and Fernandez 2018; Cole and Groes 2016). Marriage and partner mi­ grants have dif­ fer­ ent embodied experiences of, and encounters with, state power. Drawing on fieldwork in Japan with Ira­nian im/ migrants living in and around the Tokyo metropolitan area, Pardis Mahdavi’s contribution chronicles the recent trajectories of married and single men and ­women who reflect on their trajectories. While migratory strategies seem to follow a gendered pattern in which w ­ omen migrate formally as wives and men most often occupy informal positions as workers, their experiences are contoured by the intersections of gender, race, foreignness, and patriarchy. Anchored in an Ira­nian grocery store in the ­middle of Tokyo, Mahdavi’s chapter teases out the complexities of migration through the lens of individuals who feel a sense of affective immobility paradoxically concomitant with socioeconomic mobility: “The mind and heart can move in antithetical directions to physical and social

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mobilities,” she remarks, “made even more complex by the relationships mi­grants have to states and state regimes” (Mahdavi, this volume, 208). Rhacel Salazar Parreñas also tackles the problematic dichotomy between love and interest that permeates the Western understanding of marriage and that frames some relationships as morally suspect from the start. In her contribution, Parreñas examines how issues of love, care, and money relate to, and cannot be untangled from, issues of security, citizenship, and rights when it comes to Filipina mi­grants marrying Japa­nese citizens. Parreñas describes vari­ ous couplings of both cisgender and transgender hostesses working in Japan and questions the binary separating of pragmatic and emotional reasons for marriage (e.g., strategic-­driven or emotional-­driven marriage). Giving voice to several trans Filipinas justifying their decisions to marry, Parreñas highlights how their decision was based on vari­ous security and economic concerns, ranging from physical safety to emotional support. Their stories, she concludes, remind us that embracing multiple notions of love is one way of “queering” marriage, as it expands our vision of legitimate cross-­border partnerships. Policing marriage and partner migration, and expectations of what they should look like, is only one manifestation among o ­ thers of the state’s security apparatus aimed at restricting mobility through a litany of procedures. Po­liti­cal discourses on marriage and partner migration often conjure up fears of so-­called chain migration that build into security discourses: this fear is built on an implicit broader po­liti­cal, economic, and social ordering of the world. How do ­people navigate separations resulting from the increased security state? In her power­f ul chapter, Eithne Luibhéid enjoins us to consider how deportation acts as the necessary, and unchallenged, other side to state-­controlled mobility and belonging. She looks specifically at the United States and its migration policies to show us how imperialist, racist, cap­i­tal­ist, and heteropatriarchal relations of power permeate marriage and partner migration policies and partake in the American security state. Building on queer theory, Luibhéid argues that logics of incorporation and deportation operate in tandem to co-­construct differential possibilities for mi­grants and their spouses/partners. She shows that t­ hese logics reproduce not only citizen/migrant distinctions and inequalities but also inequalities of rights and security among the citizenry—as evidenced by citizens whose mi­grant spouse/partner gets deported. T ­ hese inequalities are reproduced despite the state’s insistence that immigration controls necessarily underpin rights and security for the citizenry. Audrey Macklin, in her concluding remarks to the volume, reminds us that, even though the dif­fer­ent cases covered ­here engage with marriage and partner migration, we should not lose sight of the vio­lence entailed in the immigration pro­cess itself and what it says about the limits of the state’s protection afforded by citizenship. The state as a security provider, even for its own citizenry, should

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always be questioned: “The regulation of marriage migration . . . ​tells us about what the state would do to citizens—­and to which citizens—if it could dictate who among the citizenry could marry and bear c ­ hildren. . . . ​­Whether classified as workers, as kin, or as refugees, immigration regimes are in the business of obstructing or facilitating the admission of pre­sent and ­f uture parents” (Macklin, this volume, 271).

Outside the Comfort Zone Ultimately, looking at dif­fer­ent constellations of security, citizenship, and rights pushed us into new territories, further complicating our initial constellation; it led us to unexpectedly think about time (Macklin), about space (Mahdavi), about love (Parreñas), about stories, and why not only what you say but also how you say it (Yuh, Vandenbroucke) ­matters. Throughout the book, we aimed to ­favor relationality not only between the very concepts of security, citizenships, and rights we mobilized but also among ourselves as scholars. While so d ­ oing, we sought to encourage the sometimes unexpected meeting of dif­fer­ent worlds inhabited and lived by other scholars interested in marriage and partner migration. This curiosity and this opening to ­others entailed for all collaborators a humbling pro­cess of recognition of knowing subjects, both in who and what was being examined (marriage and partner migration, as lived and experienced by partners, bureaucrats, ­lawyers, ­etc.) and in who was analyzing it. Coming from alien disciplinary backgrounds, we strove to move one another and readers outside of their comfort zone, be it academic, temporal, or geographic. While most contributors did not frame their essays in queer theory, it would be fair to say that the end result of their analyses is certainly a queering, a rendering strange, of the very concepts that led us to this proj­ect in the first place, be it love, marriage, citizenship, security, or rights. We are aware that by purposively anchoring this book in a relational approach rather than a common disciplinary background—or even a selected geographic area of focus—­our proj­ect may necessarily leave some readers unsatisfied. We cannot do justice to all the intricacies and complexities of each case covered in the volume, especially from a historical perspective. For instance, ­there is a vast lit­er­a­ture on issues pertaining to marriage migration in the United Kingdom alone (Turner 2015; Wray 2011), as well as in Germany, France, or the Netherlands (Bonjour 2016; Guerry 2013; de Hart 2014; Block 2012). Historians have also well documented dif­fer­ent ­faces of marriage migration in the United States and its colonies (Zug 2016; Abrams 2007), and narrowed it to some specific communities as well (Boehm 2012; Pallares 2015), providing us with rich material to better nuance and understand a complex phenomenon. Furthermore, work on marriage and partner migration in Scandinavia (Jeholm and Bissenbakker 2019; Eggebø 2013a, 2013b; Rytter 2010), Latin Amer­i­ca and the Ca­rib­bean (Fernandez

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2010; Daigle 2015; Brennan 2004), Southeast Asia (Yeung and Mu 2020; Fresnoza-­ Flot and Ricordeau 2017; Freeman 2017), and East and West Africa (Groes 2018; Cole and Groes 2016), to name but a few examples not featured herein, has also inspired us to question further issues of sex, emotions, citizenship, and security. Similarly, migration pro­cesses involve a wide array of actors, and ­those discussed herein are certainly not exhaustive too. Many ­others could have been included as well, such as diasporas and ­family expatriates already abroad (Cole and Groes 2016), brokers (Yeoh, Chee, and Baey 2017; Bélanger 2016), or social networks or digital communities. Still, we hope that by gesturing whenever we could to the relevant lit­er­a­ture and other pos­si­ble lines of inquiry, we lead to further discussions and f­ uture inclusions in treating the issue from dif­fer­ent vantage points. ­There is certainly more to learn from other voices not featured in this volume; our framing provides but a glimpse of contrasting histories, po­liti­cal ­battles, and issues. That notwithstanding, we believe that our range of case studies allows us to make a broader argument about how similar concerns over the thorny issue of belonging can play out over time or place when it comes to marriage and partner migration; the ways security and risk permeate discourses on marriage and partner migration, and how they play out differently for the actors involved; and how a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary dialogue on the issue of marriage and partner migration can lead to new knowledge and perspectives on the ­matter. Even though we have narrowed our focus on marriage and partner migration, other forms of f­ amily reunification are hinted at in the chapters and would warrant more curiosity in regard to issues of security, citizenship, and rights. Readers might want to ask: Where are the ­children (Beier 2017, 2020; Schrover 2021; Hiitola and Pellander 2019)? C ­ hildren—­often products of love and artifacts of relationships—do not appear at the forefront, though they often play a central role in triggering movements across jurisdictions. Do our understandings of security, citizenship, and rights change when we think of marriage and partner mi­grants as ­mothers and f­ athers—­and, if so, why? How are pregnant bodies securitized (Constable 2020; Luibhéid and Chávez 2020; Luibhéid 2013)? What strategies or per­for­mances can sponsors adopt to successfully re­unite with their loved ones (Block 2021; Scheel and Gutekunst 2019)? Must such strategies differ when it comes to transgender subjects (Josephson 2016) or queer or same-­sex ­couples (Chauvin et  al. 2021; Fassin and Salcedo Robledo 2015; Luibhéid and Cantú 2005)? How do we explain that being involved in a same-­sex relationship is seen as a line several mi­grants are not willing to cross, even for the sake of

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securing ­legal status (Andrikopoulos 2021)? What does an intersectional analy­ sis show about the ways men experience marriage and partner migration, when they are usually expected to move for economic needs (Gash and Yamin 2019; Leutloff-­Grandits 2021; Fernandez 2018; Friedman 2017; Charsley and Liversage 2015; Wray 2015b)? Where are the grandparents (Pellander 2018)? How come cousins, aunts, and ­uncles get to be part of f­ amily migration in some countries but not in ­others, and how did that come to be? Is the ­family reunification pro­cess involving grandparents in Canada tied to the economy of care, as they are expected to provide childcare ser­v ices other­w ise too expensive in most Canadian provinces? And many more questions could be asked. As I write t­ hese lines, we are caught in the midst of the global COVID-19 pandemic. ­Couples separated by the numerous and quickly evolving border control mea­sures put in place to contain the virus face new challenges and uncertainties; privileged citizens suddenly experience the power of the state for the first time, as their relationships are deemed not serious enough to justify entry into Canada or the United States (Dunham 2020; CBC News 2020). The ­whole world is anxiously looking at the unfolding of Brexit and patiently waits to get through the COVID-19 pandemic with several approved vaccines. Hopes for a new agenda of international cooperation are high as Joseph  R. Biden’s presidency aims to review the United States’ immigration agenda, including the detention of ­children and families, and do differently than his pre­de­ces­sor (BBC News 2021). As news that illegal sterilization practices targeting Latina w ­ omen in a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center shocked the world in September 2020 (Paul 2020), Macklin’s remarks about how immigration regimes are all about the f­ uture, about what the nation w ­ ill look like, and about “obstructing or facilitating the admission of pre­sent and ­future parents” (Macklin, this volume, p. 271) could not be more chillingly accurate.13 The uncertainties of what Brexit ­will bring to c ­ ouples and families also leave open pos­si­ble radical changes in f­amily reunification pro­cesses in the United Kingdom and Eu­rope dif­fer­ent from the ones analyzed in this volume. ­There is thus no reason for our feminist curiosity to lay still a ­ fter reading our accounts. As you turn the last page of this collection, we hope we leave you questioning more and queering more what it means to be secure, what it means to be a citizen, and what it means to have rights. In times where we turn to each other to love, to care, and to be—­and feel—­ safe, such critical engagements make the difference, now more than ever. NOTES

1. Tensions over the issue of exit visas ­rose to the point that the Department of State Bulletin soberly noted in its yearly review on January 2, 1949, right a ­ fter the adoption of the UDHR in December 1948, that “the conflict in the field of ­human rights between the Soviet bloc and the demo­cratic countries was brought out dramatically in the Sixth Committee of the General Assembly” (Simsarian 1949, 22), as the Chilean delegate,

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backed by the United States and G ­ reat Britain, managed to include the issue of stranded Soviet wives on the agenda of the fall General Assembly meeting of 1948. The Soviets’ attitude, the Chilean delegate claimed, was in violation of the U.N. Charter and of “fundamental ­human rights.” “Soviet in U.N. Protest on Charge on Wives,” New York Times, June 25, 1948. I want to thank Olivier Barsalou, who was the first to point out this intriguing “Soviet wives” episode to me, briefly mentioned in Carruthers (2009, 40–44). For a detailed account, see D’Aoust and Barsalou 2021. 2. “Soviet Wives Held for State Security,” New York Times, August 21, 1948. 3. “Moscow’s Detention of Wives Hit in U.N.,” New York Times, May 18, 1948. 4. “Moscow’s Detention of Wives.” 5. “Soviet Wives Held for State Security.” 6. “U.S. Backs Court Inquiry into Rus­sian Wives Case,” New York Times, September 27, 1948. 7. T.  J. Hamilton, “U.N. Finds Rus­sians Violating Charter by Curb on Wives,” New York Times, April 26, 1949. 8. “Soviet Gives 18 Noes to Britain on Wives,” New York Times, June  3, 1948; Hamilton, “U.N. Finds Rus­sians Violating Charter.” 9. In Canada, for example, “permanent resident” refers to “someone who has been given permanent resident status by immigrating to Canada, but is not a Canadian citizen.” Permanent residents are “not allowed to vote or run for po­liti­cal office” or to “hold some jobs that need a high-­level security clearance” (Government of Canada 2019). 10. Our focus on security, citizenship, and rights necessarily involves a methodological concern and engagement with the state. Marriage migration and partner migration are used herein following a state-­sanctioned logic to refer to a f­amily reunification pro­ cess where the spouse or partner of a mi­grant “is a national or long-­term resident” of a country and “where the relationship is the basis of the entry rights” (Wray 2011, 1). Despite the fact that the term marriage migration has become mainstreamed in the lit­er­a­ture (D’Aoust 2018b), it has been aptly pointed out that the term should be replaced with the more accurate partner migration, which encompasses a broader range of relationships without privileging marriage and heterocentrism (Ahlstedt 2016, 52–60). We choose to keep both terms ­here, as the former draws our attention to the centrality of marriage as a key institution that can provide specific rights and enable some forms of mobilities for heterosexual (and, in some countries, same-­sex) ­couples. The latter, by contrast, does justice to the multiplicity of forms of intimacies and intimate relationships mi­grants experience, which can be state sanctioned (e.g., fiancé) or not (e.g., polyamorous relationships) when it comes to transnational mobility. Our concern (and working) with the state, along with our use of marriage migration and partner migration to speak of cross-­border relationships, nonetheless brings its own challenges and limitations, including the one of reproducing state-­sanctioned immigration forms and categories, even while being critical of them (for a refined and insightful reflection on the tension between criticizing state policies and categories and reproducing them, see Moret, Andrikopoulos, and Dahinden 2021). As a result, our discussion on constellations should be taken seriously as a significant methodological and epistemological stand, not simply as a working meta­phor. 11. As Michel Foucault explained: “Problematization d ­ oesn’t mean the repre­sen­ta­tion of a pre-­existent object, nor the creation through discourse of an object that d ­ oesn’t exist. It’s the set of discursive or nondiscursive practices that makes something enter into the play of the true and false, and constitutes it as an object for thought (­whether

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1 The Odd C ­ ouple Gender, Securitization, Eu­ro­pe­anization, and Marriages of Con­ve­nience in Dutch F­ amily Migration Policies (1930–2020) B E T T Y D E H A RT

In recent years, policies on marriages of con­ve­nience in relation to f­ amily migration have attracted growing academic attention (Bonjour and de Hart 2013; Charsley and Benson 2012; D’Aoust 2013; Eggebø 2013; Friedman 2010; Lavanchy 2014; Messinger 2013; Mühleisen, Rø­thing, and Svendsen 2012). Marriages of con­ ve­nience, t­ hese authors argue, are considered a threat ­because they are seen as endangering the moral order in which love and sex are central techniques of inclusion and exclusion in regulating marriage migration and thus determine who gets in and who belongs (Abrams 2007; D’Aoust 2013; Luibhéid 2002). In other words, policies on marriages of con­ve­nience can be understood as a form of “moral gatekeeping” (Wray 2006). This multidisciplinary scholarship offers a critical lens on the norms, implicit or other­wise, that inform the policies on marriage migration. However, this lit­er­a­ture has focused mainly on the first two de­cades of the twenty-­first ­century, suggesting that state policies on marriages of con­ve­nience are a fairly recent phenomenon and can be tied to notions of security, modernity, and liberalism (D’Aoust 2013). This chapter, by contrast, traces the roots of ­these policies back to the interbellum period of the twentieth ­century, arguing that ­family migration has always been seen as a threat to the nation and that marriage has never been considered a private m ­ atter—­especially in the case of ­women. Marriages of con­ve­nience consequently came to be framed as a threat de­cades before the 1980s, which is when the securitization of migration policies in Eu­rope is claimed to have started (Huysmans 2000). However, although the problematization of marriages of con­ve­n ience as a threat to the nation has remained constant, its framing has shifted over time. While marriages of con­ ve­nience ­were in the past framed as a threat to the moral core and economic well-­being of the nation, they have more recently (specifically since 2006) been framed as a danger to national sovereignty in the context of the Eu­ro­pe­anization 31

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of migration policies. By linking gender and nation, securitization and Eu­ro­pe­ anization (Haahr and Walters 2004), this contribution sets out to demonstrate how the state has tried to regain control by centralizing, digitalizing, and systematizing the enforcement practices pertaining to marriages of con­ve­nience in a Eu­ro­pean Union (EU) context, in which it feared losing control over migration to “Brussels.” A constant trope in the construction of marriages of con­ve­nience is that of the “odd ­couple,” a c ­ ouple deviating from the “­family of a normal kind.” The “odd ­couple” helps to determine which families “belong”: which families love, marry, have sex, and parent “properly” and which do not (Bonjour and Ourabah, this volume; Wray, this volume). This “odd c ­ ouple” is based on gendered, racialized, and class norms relating to physical appearance and notions of how partners should match (Lavanchy 2014). Using an intersectional approach (Crenshaw 1990) allows exploration of how such norms interact in order to frame shifting categories of “ethnically mixed c ­ ouples” in par­tic­u­lar as “odd.” Thus, the framing of marriages of con­ve­nience serves not only to keep “outsider” mi­grants out but also to turn “insider” citizens into outsiders without a legitimate claim to marriage and ­family. Empirically, this contribution focuses on debates on marriages of con­ve­ nience in the Netherlands, which is currently one of the front-­r unners in developing restrictive policies on ­family migration (Bonjour and de Hart 2013) and which has also played an active role in setting the agenda for and shaping the Eu­ro­pe­anization of f­ amily migration policies (Bonjour and Vink 2013). The contribution is based on an constructivist analy­sis of parliamentary and media debates covering specific time periods: the 1930s, 1980s, and 1990s and the years since 2006. In each of ­these periods of increased attention, marriages of con­ve­ nience ­were linked to larger social issues of moral decline, economic crisis, or weakened national sovereignty. The material was collected through digital searches of government publications and newspapers, using the search terms schijnhuwelijk and schijnhuwelijken (i.e., marriage[s] of con­ve­nience).1 This contribution limits itself to heterosexual c ­ouples ­ because, although same-­ sex ­couples in the Netherlands have had ­family reunification rights since the early 1970s, they have never been the target of suspicion for the reason that such ­couples are less prone to evoke the traditional patriarchal ste­reo­t ypes that immigration authorities associate with cultural and national outsiderness (Chauvin et al. 2021). The contribution is structured as follows. A ­ fter presenting the theoretical framework linking gender and nation, securitization and Eu­ro­pe­a nization, I move on to the main discourses pertaining to how marriages of con­ve­n ience came to be framed as a prob­lem of moral decline, economic crisis, and national sovereignty. The focus in the following section is on characteristics attributed to male and female and to mi­ grant and citizen partners in marriages of



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con­ve­nience, thus demonstrating the centrality of categories of gender, ethnicity/race, and class in the way such partners are constructed as an “odd c ­ ouple.” This trope of the odd c ­ ouple explains how material practices have developed over time: the policies introduced to combat marriages of con­ve­nience, and the enforcement practices aimed at monitoring and surveillance of partners in marriage migration, are discussed in the last section. The conclusion argues that although the construct of marriages of con­ve­nience as a tool for controlling migration is nothing new, the securitization and Eu­ro­pe­anization of migration have had legitimizing effects that make this construct difficult to challenge.

All about (Securing) the State: Gender, Securitization, and Migration in a Eu­ro­pean Context The lit­er­a­ture on the securitization of migration addresses the question of what kind of order is seen as “being ­under attack” or “threatened” by marriage and partner migration to the point that t­hese issues may be framed as a prob­lem needing to be tackled and addressed by the state. This lit­er­a­ture starts from the assumption that it was the frame of marriages of con­ve­nience that turned partner and marriage migration into a “state” prob­lem, instead of a private issue, that has to be addressed by mobilizing the security apparatus for monitoring and surveilling ­couples (D’Aoust 2013). As Laura Sjoberg (2016) argues, gender hierarchy plays an impor­tant and per­ sis­tent role in defining and distributing security, and this certainly applies to ­family migration policies. Historically, marriage and partner migration w ­ ere never seen as a “private” decision—­especially in the case of ­women. As sex, marriage, and the ­family are all central to the nation—­w ithout them, t­ here is no nation—­who married whom and who bedded whom ­were not left to chance (Stoler 2001; Yuval-­Davis [1997] 2008). The history of migration and citizenship demonstrates that the state has always defined its relationship with citizens through marriage and reproduction. As a result, ­women, in par­tic­u­lar, faced the consequences of making “private” choices, such as marrying and establishing ­family life with a mi­grant, and w ­ ere at risk of losing their citizenship, home, and nation as a result (Bredbenner 1998; Cott 1998; de Hart 2006). Consequently, discourses on the “marriage of con­ve­nience” as a way for the state to regulate ­family and marriage migration have always been highly gendered. W ­ omen offering men access to the nation through marriage ­were seen as a threat in that they would bring the “wrong” mi­grant men in. As gender equality norms reduced the options for removing w ­ omen’s citizenship as a means of regulating such threats (Knop 2001), the construct of marriages of con­ve­nience became an increasingly impor­tant way to surveil w ­ omen’s choice of partner. Hence, it was not the securitization of migration in the 1980s that gave rise to the marriage of con­ ve­ nience: its construction dates back much ­ earlier.

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However, the question remains as to how and why the frame of the “marriage of con­ve­nience” became relevant in specific historical contexts. Gendered, racialized, and class categories have interacted to construct par­tic­u­lar (mixed) marriages and partnerships as being “of con­ve­nience” and par­tic­u­lar partners in such marriages as e ­ ither “victims” or “perpetrators.” It is also crucial to understand how the securitization of migration policies has gone hand in hand with the Eu­ro­pe­anization of migration policies. The latter has definitely contributed to the securitization of migration, with the conceptualization of migration as a security concern having become dominant in Eu­ ro­ pean countries (Huysmans 2000). In this multilevel context of policy development, national enforcement practices ­were translated into EU directives such as the Union Citizens Directive and the ­Family Reunification Directive (de Hart 2017a), to which member states could seek reference in order to introduce and legitimize policies on marriages of con­ve­nience. At the same time, EU law defined ­family migration as a fundamental right for both EU citizens and third-­ country nationals (i.e., mi­grants from outside the EU). In this way, EU law restricted member states’ scope to control marriage migration, and member states started, in turn, to feel threatened not only by migration itself but also by Eu­ro­pean migration policy. The construct of marriages of con­ve­nience has thus served as a strategy for states seeking to maintain room for maneuver. Another aspect of Eu­ro­pe­a nization has been the Union’s expansion to the east, thus transforming Eastern Eu­ro­pe­ans from external into internal movers (Favell and Nebe 2009) and granting them the same rights to freedom of movement as other Union citizens. Migration by t­ hese new EU citizens has subsequently been countered by new forms of securitization and racialization (Fox, Morosanu, and Szilassy 2012), which have also had an impact on enforcement practices for marriages of con­ve­nience. Linking gender and nation, securitization and Eu­ro­pe­anization serves as a means to explore continuity and change in discourses on marriages of con­ve­ nience: continuity in that marriages of con­ve­nience continue to be linked to gendered and racialized categories, and change as reflected in the new vigor with which states have started to monitor and surveil marriage partners.

An Evolving Threat: Marriage Migration, Moral Decline, Economic Crisis, and National Sovereignty Moral Decline: Prostitution and the Sanctity of Marriage ­Until the early twentieth ­century, Dutch migration policies ­were relatively liberal and rarely enforced. Legislation was mainly intended to send the message that the state had the right to control migration, but generally had l­ittle effect (Schrover et al. 2009). This changed with the outbreak of the First World War and, subsequently, the economic crisis of 1929. In this period, Germans formed



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the largest group of mi­grants to the Netherlands, with numerous German w ­ omen working as maids in Dutch h ­ ouse­holds. The sexual autonomy of ­these single, “loose” ­women was heavi­ly surveilled by Dutch authorities, who kept rec­ords on their moral be­hav­ior (Henkes 1995). A ­ fter Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 and Jewish refugees started fleeing Germany, most Eu­ro­pean countries, including the Netherlands, responded by introducing restrictive migration mea­sures, treating ­these refugees as undesirable, illegal aliens to be turned away at the border and expelled (Van Eijl 2012, 171). It was against this background of po­liti­cal tension and economic crisis that the “marriage of con­ve­nience” started popping up in po­liti­cal and media debates. Such marriages ­were framed as an issue of moral decline, demonstrating the decreasing importance of marriage and religion as the major “organic links” in Dutch society. Prostitution, and trafficking of ­women and girls, served to further demonstrate this “moral decline.” Thus, the discursive construct of marriages of con­ ve­ nience brought together the “sanctity of marriage” and the dangers of uncontrolled female migration and prostitution. This was illustrated by the numerous media reports at the time on the suspected marriage of con­ve­ nience between a Polish ­woman and a Dutch magician that had automatically transformed this Polish w ­ oman into a Dutch citizen. Although this was not explic­itly mentioned, both partners w ­ ere likely to have been of Jewish descent, thus confirming Irene Messinger’s (2017) claim that state surveillance of marriages of con­ve­n ience was, in real­ity, an effort to control Jewish migration. Although the c ­ ouple filed for divorce ten days a ­ fter their marriage, the court refused the divorce ­because it considered the marriage to be a sham. Commentators expressed some sympathy t­ oward the Polish w ­ oman, whom they considered to be a “decent” young w ­ oman with a well-­paid job, in other words, not a prostitute. However, they feared that other mi­grant w ­ omen marrying Dutch men ­were not so “decent,” thus resulting in, as the minister of justice put it, the “profanation of marriage” by quick divorces and by prostitutes and pimps obtaining Dutch citizenship.2 The link between marriages of con­ve­n ience and moral decline remained strong even ­after the Second World War, when the idea of marriage as an institution holding society together gradually started to wane. From 1964 on, w ­ omen no longer automatically gained or lost citizenship through marriage. In 1971, no-­fault divorce was introduced, and cohabitation without marriage became increasingly common. Nevertheless, numerous media reports continued to frame marriages of con­ve­nience as involving female mi­grant prostitutes, who ­were now depicted as victims of ­human trafficking rather than as immoral ­women.3 This is illustrated by Adek, an eighteen-­year-­old Indonesian ­woman, who made the headlines in 1987. She was forced into a marriage of con­ve­nience and into prostitution. ­After reporting her situation to the police, she was threatened with deportation. Ultimately, however, following media attention and the

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support provided by a nongovernmental organ­ization (NGO) working on female trafficking, she was granted a temporary residence permit.4 Marriage of con­ve­nience continued to be framed as a moral issue up ­until the 1990s, albeit in a dif­fer­ent manner. The Bogus Marriages Prevention Act (Wet voorkoming schijnhuwelijken) of 1994 (discussed in more detail below) defined such marriages as a threat to public order. This occurred within the context of a “new moral order” (Van Walsum 2008, 75), in which the state redefined its relationship with its citizens and emphasized individual rather than collective responsibility. The state reduced its responsibility for the welfare state while at the same time expanding control practices into the lives of individual citizens. Against this background, marriages of con­ve­n ience ­were discursively constructed as being morally reprehensible and as a form of fraud undermining the Dutch welfare state.

­Labor Migration and Economic Crisis Over time, the above discourse on the “moral” dangers of marriages of con­ve­ nience was supplemented by a discourse on the economic threat they posed, specifically in the case of ­labor mi­grants from the Mediterranean area. The Netherlands had recruited t­hese mi­grant workers, mainly men, to alleviate Dutch industry’s l­ abor shortages in the 1950s and 1960s. This recruitment of foreign laborers, who w ­ ere referred to as “guest workers,” continued u ­ ntil the 1973 economic crisis. It was subsequently feared that marriages of con­ve­n ience between Dutch ­women and “guest workers” would serve as a loophole for gaining access to the Dutch ­labor market. The link to prostitution continued to be made, and now included female Dutch citizens, as illustrated by the words of the deputy minister of justice: “When a very young man meets a nice el­derly prostitute whom he marries at the moment he has to leave the country, I have some doubts.” 5 ­Later, in the “new moral order” of the 1990s, illegal migration was framed as a form of uncontrolled migration, endangering the welfare state. This resulted in extensive legislation designed to exclude illegalized mi­grants from the l­abor market, as well as from the health-­care and welfare systems (Van der Leun 2006). The previously mentioned Bogus Marriages Prevention Act 1994, which aimed to prevent marriages of con­ve­nience, was just one of the mea­sures restricting illegalized migration. The accompanying discourse on preventing abuse of the welfare system not only was of an economic and neoliberal nature (Van Walsum 2008, 52–53) but was also linked to moral arguments relating to the protecting of w ­ omen. Framing illegalized mi­grants as predominantly male, members of Parliament (MPs) depicted the 1994 act as being necessary to prevent the abuse of Dutch native and mi­grant w ­ omen who “fell for it” as a consequence of “recruitment practices,” or in “good faith,” naively believing the mi­grant husband who had only a residence permit in mind (Bonjour and de Hart 2013).6 Thus,



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marriages of con­ve­nience w ­ ere seen as endangering not only society as a w ­ hole but also w ­ omen in par­tic­u­lar.

Eu­rope as a Loophole ­After 2006, when EU Court of Justice decisions obliged the Netherlands to amend its restrictive ­family migration policies, the Dutch government realized that it had transferred part of its sovereignty to regulate migration to the Eu­ro­pean level. In response, politicians criticized t­ hese EU Court of Justice decisions as an obstacle to t­ hese restrictive national policies (Bonjour and Vink 2013). Against this background, marriages of con­ve­nience ­were framed as a tool in the hands of illegalized mi­grants who ­were using the “Eu­rope route” to avoid the Netherlands’ more restrictive national ­family migration policies, and the government stepped up its efforts to monitor such marriages.7 This framing of marriages of con­ve­nience within an EU law context occurred more or less si­mul­ta­neously with the geo­graph­i­cal expansion of the EU. Thus, the first mention of marriages of con­ve­nience involving Union citizens and third-­country nationals dates back to 1980, when the Eu­ro­pean Community was enlarged to include Spain, Greece, and Portugal as member states.8 This was ­later followed by the EU’s expansion eastward and the Dutch government’s announcement, in 2009, that it would take action against abuse of the “Eu­rope route” by ­couples in what w ­ ere considered to be marriages of con­ve­nience.9 Number games are an inherent part of the Eu­ro­pe­anization of migration law (Vollmer 2011) and crucial in showing how marriages of con­ve­nience are constructed as a threat endangering the nation: numbers are always “on the rise,” with alarmingly high estimates ­going hand in hand with a lack of hard statistics. As early as the interbellum of the twentieth ­century, newspapers reported the “high numbers of foreign ladies” who obtained Dutch citizenship through marriages of con­ve­n ience.10 ­L ater on, in the 1980s and 1990s, politicians and media estimated the percentages of marriages of con­ve­nience to vary between 30 ­percent and 80 ­percent, even though it was often unclear what t­ hese figures ­were a percentage of (de Hart 2003, 94–95).11 Meanwhile, during negotiations at an EU level, the Netherlands and certain other member states claimed the numbers of marriages of con­ve­nience to be “considerable and rising,” but ­were unable to pre­sent any statistics.12 Recent studies commissioned by the Dutch government ­were unable to substantiate t­ hese ­earlier claims, as evidenced in 2009, when the government concluded that research did not confirm the ­earlier presumptions that most of the Dutch citizens using the “Eu­rope route” ­were of mi­grant descent and involved in marriages of con­ve­nience.13 L ­ ater, in 2016, a study commissioned by the government found that no more than 2–4 ­percent (i.e., around one hundred ­couples each year) of all applications for f­amily reunification w ­ ere marriages of con­ve­ nience (Kulu-­Glasgow et al. 2016). But although ­these studies undermined the

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image of marriages of con­ve­nience constituting a sizable threat, the conclusion was still that enforcement practices needed to be stepped up.14 Before turning to t­ hese material practices of enforcement, however, I discuss below the characteristics attributed to citizen and mi­grant partners in marriages of con­ve­nience.

Discourses on Marriage Partners: Prostitutes, Illegal Aliens, and Gullible Sponsors Who exactly embodied the threats posed by marriages of con­ve­nience? The characteristics attributed to partners in alleged marriages of con­ve­nience have traditionally been based on intersecting categories of gender, race, and class. T ­ hese have shifted over time, ranging from female mi­grant prostitutes marrying Dutch men in the 1930s to male illegalized workers marrying Dutch w ­ omen in the 1980s and 1990s and to Eastern Eu­ro­pean ­women marrying Muslim men t­ oday.

Mi­g rant ­Women and Mi­g rant Men: Prostitutes and Roaming Aliens In the 1930s, as mentioned e ­ arlier, mi­grant w ­ omen in alleged marriages of con­ ve­nience ­were mainly framed as prostitutes. In this period’s prostitution policy, brothels and pimps w ­ ere criminalized but not the prostitutes themselves, who ­were seen as in need of redemption. In contrast, foreign ­women who acquired Dutch citizenship and intended to perform sex work w ­ ere considered immoral and a danger to society in need of expulsion. When in the 1980s and ­under the influence of feminism a distinction started being made between voluntary and forced prostitution, mi­grant w ­ omen ­were framed as victims of forced prostitution and in need of protection (Outshoorn 2012), as illustrated by the e ­ arlier mentioned story of Adek. An adverse discourse was that of the mi­grant ­woman manipulating her sexuality (Chock 1996) to obtain access to the Dutch nation. Dominican and Ghanaian w ­ omen, in par­tic­u­lar, w ­ ere mentioned in this re­spect, as exemplified by a newspaper report on Dominican prostitutes who, by getting married in the Dutch territory of Curaçao, immediately obtained a Dutch passport for themselves and their c ­ hildren and then got on a plane to Amsterdam to work in prostitution.15 While the repre­sen­ta­tion of mi­grant w ­ omen as passive victims rests on their lack of agency, the repre­sen­ta­tion of mi­grant men rests on their being perceived as perpetrators: oppressive, deceiving, and motivated by economic gain.16 As marriage tied w ­ omen but not men to the nation, mi­grant men w ­ ere consistently seen as not belonging. As “illegal aliens,” they ­were footloose, using marriage instrumentally to obtain a foothold in society. In the 1930s, t­ hese mi­grant men ­were reported as being poor and criminal and as not belonging to the Dutch “tribe” (Nederlandsche stam).17 In the 1980s and 1990s, by contrast, mi­grant men ­were largely absent from media reporting, which focused almost exclusively on the trafficking of mi­grant w ­ omen. In the po­liti­cal debate, however, mi­grant



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men w ­ ere portrayed as roaming, illegal aliens obtaining access to the nation and, as we have already seen, as perpetrators lying to and deceiving Dutch ­women who ­were genuinely in love.18 The latter portrayal rests on a discourse of the gullible Dutch sponsors.

Dutch W ­ omen and Men: Gullible Sponsors As demonstrated, while media attention focused on mi­grant w ­ omen and Dutch men as partners in marriages of con­ve­nience, the po­liti­cal debate rested on the assumption that most marriages ­were entered into between Dutch ­women and mi­grant men. As the deputy minister stated in 1980: “Most often it is Dutch ­women who marry an alien.” 19 ­These Dutch ­women ­were seen as “gullible sponsors,” a discourse that first came up in the 1970s and that has continued to this day. This idea of a gullible sponsor fits a more general discourse in which w ­ omen who transgress gender roles by entering a mixed marriage or relationship are seen as naive, uninformed, and of a lower-­class and immoral background (de Hart 2017c; Ryan 1999; Tabili 1996). They are in love and are abused, while the mi­grant husband’s only interest is in obtaining a residence permit. Dutch men have been largely absent from the media debates, even to this day. Despite extensive reporting on the trafficking of mi­grant w ­ omen, it remains largely unclear who ­these w ­ omen are trafficked by and who they are trafficked to. Occasionally, men who married a series of wives whom they then forced into prostitution or mediated marriages of con­ve­nience ­were specifically named, but mostly it was unspecified “gangs” that ­were held responsible.20 However, although the frame of the gullible sponsor applied mainly to Dutch ­women, Dutch men, too, ­were incidentally portrayed in this manner. In such stories, also known as mariage gris or bezness (Odasso 2021), the citizen sponsor falls madly in love and a quick marriage follows, which provides the mi­grant partner with access not only to the nation but also to the partner’s fortune. Some of t­ hese men established NGOs with the aim of protecting themselves and other victims of marriages of con­ve­n ience.21 In po­l iti­cal debates, however, Dutch native men ­were explic­itly excluded from the discourse of marriages of con­ve­n ience by their “mixed” relationships being portrayed as a logical consequence of globalization, in which “love knows no borders.” ­These debates show the reluctance to interfere with white male citizens’ privilege to choose marriage partners as they please, including mi­grant w ­ omen. As one MP asked rhetorically, “Of course we have to prevent marriages of con­ve­nience, but we are not g ­ oing to make it difficult for t­ hese ­people, are we? ” 22 Hence, their male right to have a home and a ­family in the Netherlands needed to be protected. In ­these situations, the Dutch partners ­were—­implicitly—­understood to be native, white citizens. This all changed, however, a ­ fter 2006, when marriages of con­ve­nience involving the Eu­rope route become associated with “Moroccans”

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and “Turks” (i.e., Dutch nationals of Moroccan or Turkish descent) as sponsors, on the one hand, and with Eastern Eu­ro­pean ­women with Turkish and other third-­country national partners, on the other hand. This testifies to the othering and racialization of t­ hese Dutch and Union citizens: although legally equal to other citizens, discursively they are constructed as non-­deserving, without a right to a home and a f­ amily.

The Odd C ­ ouple: Challenging Ste­reo­t ypes The media and po­liti­cal debates constructed the trope of the odd ­couple, that is, one resting on gendered, racialized, and class categories that turned the ­couple into a “deviant” mismatch. “Odd c ­ ouples” involving Dutch men and South American or Asian w ­ omen, or Dutch w ­ omen with African and Asian men, w ­ ere portrayed as deviant not only b ­ ecause of differences in age, language, and culture but also on the grounds of physical appearance and racialized notions of how partners should match (Lavanchy 2014). And it was this idea, based on “gut feeling,” that made them so easily recognizable, according to immigration officers: “How we know? That is ­simple: sometimes a man ­doesn’t remember his wife’s first name. Or her age. That’s strange. Or when a young guy with an older ­woman sits opposite you. That’s mostly not right. You also know that some nationalities do not match. A Turk with a Surinamese, for instance. That ­doesn’t work. That is like a poodle and a pit bull. T ­ hese cultures d ­ on’t easily go together.” 23 In another news report: “If an older w ­ oman with a boy of just over twenty appears at the bureau, it is obvious. But that i­ sn’t proof.” 24 However, the ste­reo­t ypes embodied in the “odd ­couple” did not remain unchallenged. Indeed, it was clear to every­one involved that enforcement practices ­were often based on ste­reo­t ypes and even discrimination, as a 1990 newspaper heading suggested: “Immigration Police Officially Have to Discriminate.” 25 From the 1980s onward, therefore, NGOs comprising mi­grants, mixed c ­ ouples, and immigration ­lawyers highlighted the risk of discrimination and arbitrari­ ouples who claimed to have been ness.26 Newspapers also reported the stories of c unjustly accused of a marriage of con­ve­nience.27 But even when portraying ­these individual stories, news reports still reproduced dominant discourses, confirming that marriage should be about love, and love only, and that scrutiny aimed at identifying marriages of con­ve­nience was a necessary tool of migration control. In 1980, a newspaper quoted a Dutch w ­ oman who was said to be “devastated” that her Pakistani husband had been expelled despite their marriage, and who claimed that it was “ridicu­lous” that they ­were ­under suspicion, but that she also knew that marriages of con­ve­n ience occurred.28 In another report, a Dutch man and his Thai girlfriend w ­ ere said to be “madly in love.” 29 Such stories presented t­ hese c ­ ouples as the exception to the rule. As one newspaper put it, “Marriage to a foreigner is not always fake,” thus implying that most of ­these marriages are.30



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The securitization and Eu­ro­pe­a nization of migration policies led to the informal ste­reo­t ypes and “gut feelings” described above becoming challenged less and less frequently. What is more, ­these informal ste­reo­t ypes and “gut feelings” ­were translated and formalized into legislation and policy guidelines, thus legitimizing them and creating the appearance of objectivity and neutrality. The trope of the gullible sponsor, for example, was incorporated into the Bogus Marriages Prevention Act 1994, which defined marriages of con­ ve­ nience as ­ those where “the intent of the spouses or one of them was not to fulfil the obligations connected to marriage by law, but to gain access to the Netherlands” (Article 1:71a Civil Code; emphasis mine). Two de­cades ­later, the odd ­couple trope was incorporated into the Eu­ro­pean Commission guidance on the Union Citizens Directive in the list of “indicative criteria” designed to aid member states in detecting marriages of con­ve­nience, while protecting the right to f­amily migration. The guidance suggests member states should take the following into account: The c ­ ouple have never met before the marriage; Inconsistent statements about personal details, circumstances of their meeting, or other impor­tant personal information; The c ­ ouple do not speak a language understood by both; Evidence of a sum of money or gifts handed over, not being a dowry in cultures where this is common practice; A history of abuse involving one or both spouses; Development of ­family life only ­after the expulsion order was ­adopted; Divorce shortly ­a fter the third-­country national acquires a residence permit.31 The ways in which media and po­liti­cal debates constructed marriages of con­ve­ nience as a threat had significant impact on legislative mea­sures and their enforcement.

Material Practices: Legislating, Monitoring, and Surveilling Marriages of Con­ve­nience Over the period ­under study, legislation focused on marriages of con­ve­nience between citizen w ­ omen and mi­grant men b ­ ecause legislators w ­ ere reluctant to interfere with citizen men’s right to a home and a ­family. Hence, the previously discussed debates in the 1930s did not result in any steps being taken against “professional grooms” marrying “foreign ladies.” 32 According to the minister of justice, the “remedy” of taking away the citizenship rights of Dutch men marrying mi­grant w ­ omen would be worse than the prob­lem at stake. Instead, therefore, l­ egal mea­sures focused on the reverse combination, with the result that, in

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1935, the privileged immigration status of mi­grant men who had a ­family and ­children with a (former) Dutch wife was abolished.33 This attitude persisted ­until more recent periods, with the first Aliens Circular, which introduced preventive checks on suspected c ­ ouples in 1975, only mentioning Dutch w ­ omen and mi­grant men and not the reverse combination.34 Even with the 1985 amendment of the Dutch Nationality Act, which abolished citizenship rights for mi­grant ­women marrying Dutch men and which, according to media reports, would put an end to trafficking of mi­grant ­women, the legislator had mi­grant men marrying Dutch ­women in mind. Although the growing importance of the princi­ple of gender equality demanded that men and w ­ omen should be treated equally in nationality law, granting mi­grant men the citizenship rights that mi­grant ­women had had for so many years (i.e., naturalization by unilateral declaration, ­free of charge) would, it was claimed, increase the number of marriages of con­ve­nience. Instead, therefore, a choice was made for “leveling down,” in other words, for taking away the privileged citizenship rights previously enjoyed by mi­grant ­women and replacing them by naturalization ­after three years of marriage to a Dutch national for men and w ­ omen alike. Hence, the discourse of protecting mi­grant ­women from trafficking resulted in legislation that made them lose citizenship rights, thus making them more dependent on their Dutch husbands. Furthermore, the effectiveness of t­ hese policy mea­sures was always in doubt. Legislation that was intended to put a stop to marriages of con­ve­nience proved to be in­effec­tive shortly a ­ fter its introduction. As the numbers kept rising, the state was seen to be “losing control” of migration.35 The Dutch Nationality Act 1985, which, it was said, would make marriages of con­ve­nience “pointless,” did not end trafficking of mi­grant w ­ omen. Indeed, less than two years ­after its introduction, newspapers reported that 40–50 ­percent of mi­grant female prostitutes ­were irregular and had been trafficked through marriages of con­ve­n ience.36 Although the Bogus Marriages Prevention Act 1994 extended preventive checks to e ­ very ­couple involving a mi­grant partner without a permanent residence permit, it proved to be highly in­effec­tive. And while the immigration police could advise against a marriage, and civil registrars could refuse to allow suspected ­couples to marry, this hardly ever happened in practice (Fonk, Van der Meer, and Oelen 1998; Holmes-­Wijnker, Grootscholte, and Bouwmeester 2004). Nevertheless, state authorities persisted in claiming that new and additional mea­sures and stricter enforcement ­were necessary. Enforcement practices have changed dramatically over time owing to the institutionalization of migration policy. ­Until 2000, migration control was largely in the hands of local migration offices that functioned as street-­level bureaucracies (Lipsky 2010), taking decisions based on face-­to-­face contact with ­couples. Consequently, enforcement varied from one locality to another, depending on local interests and the availability of resources and based on informal “gut feelings.” Newspapers reported on such diverse practices as civil servants informing



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the police about ­couples, questioning suspected ­couples’ minor ­children, and arrests and deportations of ex­pec­tant brides and grooms.37 In 1984, one such arrest of a Moroccan ­woman hours before her wedding to her Dutch partner attracted considerable media attention. In the ensuing court case, the Dutch authorities claimed the c ­ ouple could marry in Morocco or, if that was not pos­si­ble (­because Muslim ­women w ­ ere not allowed to marry non-­Muslim men in Morocco), somewhere e ­ lse. The court, however, ruled that the Dutch state had v ­ iolated the c ­ ouple’s right to marry (Article 12 of the Eu­ro­pean Convention on ­Human Rights).38 Nowadays, implementation of Dutch migration law has become centralized in the Immigration and Naturalization Ser­v ice (IND), which is responsible for pro­cessing ­family migration applications. The IND functions as a system-­level bureaucracy (Bovens and Zouridis 2002), based on a digitalized procedure, with face-­to-­face contact ­limited to a minimum and detailed work instructions for employees (Dörrenbächer 2018). Arresting brides is no longer common practice. Instead, enforcement practices have become systematized and objectified, involving pi­ lot studies, risk profiles, and long-­ term digital monitoring of ­couples.39 ­Couples are asked on a standard basis to provide proof of the nature of their relationship through WhatsApp messages, Skype talks, and photo­graphs. Suspicious c ­ ouples are subjected to separate interviews, lasting several hours, in an effort to identify “inconsistencies” in their statements on, for example, how they met, their wedding day, or even their sex life.40 The extensive case law demonstrates that most “suspicious c ­ ouples” consist of Eastern Eu­ro­pean w ­ omen and Muslim men, who are considered “odd” b ­ ecause of the “unlikely” combinations of nationalities, religions, and cultures (de Hart 2017b). In contrast to the past, ­these enforcement practices largely escape po­liti­cal and media attention. And, also contrary to the past, courts, too, seem largely uncritical of ­these IND practices, while ­couples are generally unsuccessful at challenging decisions stating their marriage to be a sham (de Hart 2017b). The indicative criteria referred to above provide justification for the IND and the court decisions and protect them from allegations of stereotyping and discrimination.41

Concluding Remarks This historical overview has demonstrated that while the discursive construction of marriages of con­ve­n ience is hardly a new phenomenon, the securitization and Eu­ro­pe­anization of migration law seen in recent years have had specific effects on the construction of such marriages. First, it has been demonstrated that when certain groups (specifically ­women and, more recently, Union citizens from Eastern Eu­rope) ­were included by being granted equal rights, this was accompanied by discursive exclusion through gendered and racialized categories that turned them into non-­deserving citizens. As Helena Wray notes elsewhere in this volume, the marriage of

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con­ve­nience must do a lot of control work where other means of restriction are not available. As a result, the increasing relevance of the ­human rights discourse (i.e., the right to privacy, the right to ­family life, and nondiscrimination) has had only a ­limited effect on ­these groups of “undeserving” citizens. Hence, the discursive construction of marriages of con­ve­n ience continues to rest on patriarchal notions in which citizen men, more so than ­women, have a right to a home and a ­family in the nation. Po­liti­cal and media debates, as well as enforcement practices and case law, demonstrate that it is mainly ­women (Dutch citizens and, ­later, Union citizens) whose choice of partner is subject to scrutiny. Second, the securitization and Eu­ro­pe­anization of migration law means that the trope of the odd ­couple—­a construction based on gendered, racialized, and class ste­reo­t ypes developed in informal enforcement practices—­has been legitimized by and incorporated into both national and Eu­ro­pean Union law. This has made it more difficult to question t­ hese ste­reo­t ypical understandings of marriages of con­ve­nience. And that, in turn, may at least partly account for the relative silence on the issue in po­liti­cal and media debates ­after 2006, while courts have also become less critical than in the 1980s and 1990s. Third, and fi­nally, the framing of marriages of con­ve­nience has been shown to be full of contradictions. On the one hand, suspected ­couples are claimed to be easily recognizable as “odd ­couples,” just by looking at them (Lavanchy 2014). On the other hand, however, it is consistently difficult to prove that such individuals have in fact entered into a marriage of con­ve­nience. Meanwhile, claims that marriages of con­ve­nience are a sizable phenomenon and always “on the rise” have never been substantiated by hard statistics. Thus, the efforts undertaken by the state regarding suspected marriages of con­ve­nience can be seen as reflecting a perceived need to control migration and, at the same time, the inability of the state to actually control migration or even to know, control, monitor, and surveil its citizens. Maybe ­these contradictions w ­ ill provide an opportunity to reopen the public, po­liti­cal, and ­legal debate on the h ­ uman rights implied in state practices on marriages of con­ve­nience. And, as this contribution has demonstrated, ­there is certainly enough reason to justify ­doing so. NOTES

1. The research for this contribution was made pos­si­ble by funding from the Eu­ro­pean Research Council (ERC) ­under the EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program ­under grant agreement No. 725238. My thanks to student assistant Rosa Vaalburg for her research of the media reports. 2. ­Unless other­wise noted, I have translated from Dutch to En­glish all quotations from Dutch sources in this chapter. “Eisch tot echtscheiding afgewezen, een Schijnhuwelijk is geen huwelijk, Het Vaderland, June  7, 1934; “Huwelijk gebruikt als noodhulp: Schijn en wezen,” De Telegraaf, July  22, 1934; “Schijnhuwelijken,” Algemeen Handelsblad, September 16, 1934; “Een merkwaardig arrest III,” De Tijd, April 25, 1935; “Een merkwaardig arrest



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IV,” De Tijd, April 26, 1935; “De begrooting van Justitie,” Het Vaderland, November 23, 1937; “Court Ruling: Court of The Hague,” Nederlandse Jurisprudentie, November 29, 1934, 402. 3. “Rotterdam vraagt meer recht voor buitenlandse vrouwen,” De Waarheid, May 16, 1983; “Schijnhuwelijken dekmantel voor grootscheepse vrouwenhandel,” De Telegraaf, June 11, 1983; “Politie klaagt over aanvoer vrouwen voor schijnhuwelijk,” NRC Handelsblad, December 18, 1984; “Enkele duizenden vrouwen verhandeld naar Nederland,” De Volkskrant, April  23, 1985; “Enkele duizenden buitenlandse vrouwen tot prostitutie geprest,” Trouw, April 23, 1985. 4. “Indonesische mag voorlopig in Nederland blijven,” De Volkskrant, January  24, 1987; “Indonesische mag voorlopig blijven,” Trouw, January  29, 1987; “Indonesisch meisje niet uitwijzen,” Het Parool, February 5, 1987. 5. Dutch Lower House (Tweede Kamer, hereafter TK) 1979–1980, 15649 OCV, January 28, 1980. 6. TK 1993–1994, 22488, plenary, October 14, 1993: 12–761; TK 2000–2001, December 12, 2000, appendix to TK proceedings, No. 383. “Poort naar de welvaart,” NRC Handelsblad, October 14, 2000. 7. A Dutch national who moves to another member state can bring a non-­EU partner into the country u ­ nder the more liberal conditions of the EU right to the freedom of movement. T ­ hese advantageous f­ amily reunification rights are retained on return to the Netherlands. 8. “Politiechefs: Dweilen met de kraan open,” Het Vrije Volk, January 15, 1980. 9. TK 2009–2010, 32175 (6): 4. “Het proj­ect consulaire huwelijken onder de loep,” INDcontext, no. 1 (2011): 6. 10. “Nederlandsche worden door schijnhuwelijk—­onze regering gaat tegenmaatregelen treffen,” De Banier, October 25, 1938. 11. “Schijnhuwelijken aan lopende band,” Het Vrije Volk, March 9, 1987; “Aantal schijnhuwelijken loopt de spuigaten uit,” De Telegraaf, October 25, 1991; “Het huwelijk als hulpmiddel,” Trouw, March 10, 1992. 12. Green paper on the right to ­family reunification of third-­country nationals living in the Eu­ro­pean Union (Directive 2003/86/EC), COM(2011) 735 final, p. 7. 13. TK 2009–2010, 32175 (6): 4. 14. TK 2015–2016, 32175 (62). 15. “Politie klaagt over aanvoer vrouwen voor schijnhuwelijk.” 16. “Vreemdelingenrecht: Het schijnhuwelijk blijft voorziening vragen,” De Telegraaf, May 1, 1935. 17. “Vreemdelingenrecht”; “Vreemdelingenplicht vóór vreemdelingenrecht!,” De Telegraaf, May 4, 1935. 18. TK 1993–1994, 22488, plenary, October 14, 1993: 12–761. 19. TK 1979–1980, 15649, OCV, January 28, 1980. 20. “Politie klaagt over aanvoer vrouwen voor schijnhuwelijk.” 21. “Prive-­stichting vangt slachtoffers op van bedrog door buitenlandse partners,” De Volkskrant, July 3, 1997. 22. TK 2009–2010, 32052, plenary, February 10, 2010: 53-4864; TK 2009–2010, 32052, plenary, February 10, 2010: 53-4863. 23. “De vreemdelingendienst moet ambtshalve discrimineren,” Algemeen Handelsblad, December 29, 1990.

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24. “Nog even snel repeteren waar het portretje van vader staat,” De Volkskrant, January 9, 1992. 25. “De vreemdelingendienst moet ambtshalve discrimineren.” 26. “Beneden Amsterdams peil,” De Waarheid, July 2, 1984; “Staatshuwelijk is zo vaak een fopspeen,” De Volkskrant, January 10, 1992. 27. “Schijnhuwelijk? Welnee, zeggen Tonko en Sanit,” De Telegraaf, May 8, 1984; “Getrouwd zijn zonder geldig paspoort geeft geen garantie,” Trouw, July 4, 1984. 28. “Ze zeggen dat het ’n schijnhuwelijk is,” Het Vrije Volk, January 4, 1980. 29. “Schijnhuwelijk?” 30. “Huwelijk met een buitenlander is niet altijd een schijnvertoning,” NRC Handelsblad, March 20, 1982. 31. COM(2009) 313 Final Communication from the Commission to the Eu­ro­pean Parliament and the Council, p. 16; Council of the Eu­ro­pean Union, April 23, 2012, 8714/1/12, REV 1, COM (2014) 604 final, September 26, 2014. 32. “Nederlandsche worden door schijnhuwelijk.” 33. Rijksbegrooting voor het dienstjaar 1938. 2. IV. 9, p. 24. 34. AJZ 4012/E2979-2A-294 Vc, July 7, 1975. 35. “Kosto gaat schijnhuwelijken onmogelijk maken,” De Volkskrant, November 4, 1991. 36. “Schijnhuwelijk nu zinloos,” De Telegraaf, January 5, 1985; “Schijnhuwelijk is nu minder aantrekkelijk,” Trouw, January  17, 1985; “Vrouwenhandel in Amsterdam,” Het Parool, March 23, 1987. 37. “Rechercheurs verhoren jongen van negen op school,” NRC Handelsblad, November 19, 1991; “Aangifte van schijnhuwelijken niet verplicht in Den Haag,” NRC Handelsblad, August 10, 1983. 38. “Marokkaanse mag trouwen,” Het Parool, July 3, 1984; “Marokkaanse moet in buitenland maar in het huwelijk treden,” De Volkskrant, June 30, 1984. 39. Adviescommissie Vreemdelingenzaken (ACVZ), Profileren en selecteren: Advies over het gebruik van profilering in de uitvoering van het vreemdelingenbeleid (The Hague: ACVZ, 2016). 40. “Schijnhuwelijk onder de loep: Dumpen na verblijfsvergunning verleden tijd,” De Telegraaf, October 22, 2008. 41. An exception: “Criteria IND zijn nogal subjectief,” De Volkskrant, June 15, 2014. REFERENCES

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2 “A Necessary Evil”? The Problematization of ­Family Migration in French Parliamentary Debates on ­Family Migration, 1974–1993 S A S K I A B ON J O U R A N D M A S S I L I A O U R A B A H

“L’immigration subie”: endured immigration. That is what f­amily migration was in the eyes of French president Nicolas Sarkozy. He pleaded for replacing ­family migration by ­labor migration, which he referred to as “l’immigration choisie”: chosen immigration.1 Sarkozy’s rhe­ toric was part of a widespread po­liti­cal problematization of f­amily migration in Eu­rope in the ­middle of the first de­cade of the 2000s, where politicians represented ­family migration not only as eco­nom­ically disadvantageous but also as a threat to national identities and values. Three de­cades e ­ arlier, French politicians likewise described ­family migration as a phenomenon for France to endure: Deputy Minister on Immigration Paul Dijoud talked about “un mal inevitable”: a necessary evil.2 In this chapter, we offer a brief genealogy of the problematization of f­amily migration in France, based on an analy­sis of 195 plenary debates and parliamentary questions from the period 1974–1993. In par­tic­u­lar, we examine when and how politicians mobilized gender and ­family norms to problematize the way mi­grants “do ­family.” Both po­liti­cal and scholarly discourses on ­family migration politics tend to focus on marriage migration, notably on policies targeting “fraudulent marriages” and “forced marriages.” In ­doing so, scholarship inadvertently contributes to equating “­family” with the straight, monogamous ­couple and their offspring. To avoid such naturalization of what “­family” is, this chapter starts with the question: How do politicians define what counts as ­family for the purpose of immigration? ­Family norms, intrinsically connected to gender and sexuality norms, are inevitably mobilized in the politics of ­family migration to determine which families “belong”: which families love, marry, have sex, and parent “properly” and which do not. Only relationships that are institutionally recognized as constituting “real” or “proper” ­family provide ground for f­amily migration rights. 49

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In this chapter, we argue that representing mi­grants as d ­ oing ­family “right” or “wrong” is a power­f ul way of placing mi­grants inside or outside of the national public, social, and cultural order. We show how conceptions of ­family and conceptions of nationhood intersected in parliamentary discourses to render transnational families as “outsiders” or “insiders” to the French nation, which in turn justified increasing or restricting their f­ amily migration rights.

Intersections of Intimacy and Belonging: Citizenship, Security, and Rights In exploring how the politics of belonging, membership, and citizenship inherent in ­family migration policies and debates relate to constructions of “security,” we draw on the work of Didier Fassin (2012, 112–113). Fassin argues that in Eu­ro­ pean public and po­liti­cal debates, migration is represented as a threefold threat. Mi­grants are perceived, first, as a threat to public security (mi­grants as terrorists and criminals); second, as a threat to social security (mi­grants as job thieves and welfare profiteers); and, third, as a threat to identity security (mi­grants as racial and religious ­O thers who undermine “the continuity of a White, Christian Eu­rope” (113). We build on Fassin to argue that the extent to which ­family mi­grants and their resident f­ amily members are seen to threaten or consolidate the public, social, or cultural national order determines the stratification of their ­family migration rights. Furthermore, we argue that all three types of constructions of (in)security are deeply gendered. Ste­reo­t ypes of terrorists, criminals, and rapists cling to single mi­grant men in par­tic­u­lar. Mi­grant w ­ omen are often expected to be h ­ ouse­w ives and therefore not to “contribute” to the national economy. Perhaps most importantly, constructions of the national cultural and identity order are deeply gendered. Feminist students of nationalism and empire have shown that collective identities and bound­aries—be they cultural, racial, or national—­are defined in deeply gendered ways, as gender and ­family norms are represented as “the ‘essence’ of cultures” (Yuval-­Davis [1997] 2008, 43–45, 67). T ­ hese politics of intimacy extend beyond notions of femininity and masculinity to what Ann Laura Stoler (2001, 829) defines as “intimate domains—­sex, sentiment, domestic arrangement, and child rearing.” From colonial times to the pre­sent day, defining who “We” are and how “We” are dif­fer­ent and better than “Them” inevitably involves reference to proper roles of men and ­women, proper dress, proper parenting, and proper loving (Hajjat 2012; Turner 2015). Thus, the politics of belonging are intrinsically connected to the politics of intimacy. Scholarship on the politics of ­family migration in Eu­rope has shown that since the ­middle of the first de­cade of the 2000s in par­tic­u­lar, transnational families have been represented in public and po­liti­cal discourse as a threat to the security of national identity and culture, b ­ ecause “they” do not do f­ amily, marriage, love, and parenting “right”—­like “we” do it (for an overview, see D’Aoust



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2018). Representing transnational families as a threat to the national cultural order (security) allows for excluding them from the i­ magined national community (citizenship), which justifies denying their claim to f­amily reunification (rights). As Laura Odasso and Manuela Salcedo Robledo (this volume, 172) put it, marriage migration is presented “as a breach that mi­grants exploit in order to enter the French nation, a form of simplified administrative regularization for irregular mi­grants already on the territory, a source of intercommunitarian closure—­due to binational but endogamous unions—­a nd a burden for social security.” Betty de Hart argues elsewhere in this volume, that “­family migration has always been seen as a threat to the nation” (31) not only since the ­middle of the first de­cade of the 2000s but at least since the early twentieth c ­ entury. In this chapter, we go further back in history so as to identify continuities and discontinuities in the discursive connections between security, citizenship, and rights in French f­ amily migration politics between 1974 and 1993.

1974–1981: The Right to F ­ amily Migration? In the first three de­cades a ­ fter the Second World War, immigration to France consisted predominantly of ­labor and (post)colonial migration flows, which ­were inextricably intertwined. While formal ­labor recruitment procedures ­were in place as of 1946, most immigrants came through informal channels, at first mostly from Spain, Italy, and Portugal, ­later also from North African countries, in par­tic­u­lar from Algeria. Reunification with spouses and ­children was pos­si­ ble, provided the primary mi­grant had employment and suitable housing. In the 1970s, an estimated 85 ­percent of families entered France on a tourist visa and regularized their stay ­a fter arrival.3 The living conditions of immigrants in France during this period ­were extremely precarious, and their ­legal status was highly insecure. In 1974, 3.5 million foreigners ­were living on French territory, of whom 700,000 w ­ ere Algerians and an equal number w ­ ere Portuguese (Hollifield 1999, 61; Weil 2004, 90–111). Confronted with an unpre­ce­dented economic crisis and increasing unemployment rates, the center-­right government of newly elected president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing fundamentally changed the course of its immigration policies. On July 3, 1974, it issued an executive decision that suspended all ­labor immigration and ­family migration.4 While f­amily migration was barely discussed at all in Parliament in the 1960s, this 1974 circulaire opened up a series of discussions about the right to f­ amily migration. However, the opposition to the decree by left-­w ing parliamentarians, mi­grants’ rights associations, and emigration countries, as well as the practical difficulty of controlling ­family migration (Weil 2004, 133), led the government to revoke the ban in 1975 and to issue a more liberal executive decision in 1976 that specified the conditions for f­ amily migration.5 While the opposition to the 1974 ban argued that ­family migration was a

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right laid down in international law (Cohen 2014, 203), the government used a dif­fer­ent rhe­toric to justify the liberalization: ­family migration was defined as “un mal inévitable,” a “necessary evil.” 6 Paul Dijoud, Deputy Minister of Immigration, stated that the French government had thus far facilitated ­family reunification for ­ labor mi­ grants for “humanitarian, economic, demographic and social reasons.” 7 He described f­ amily migration as “the natu­ral extension of the immigration of workers” but also as a threat to the national social order, as it was “undeniably the cause of most social prob­lems created by the presence of a foreign population in France.” 8 Prohibition of f­ amily migration was perceived as eco­nom­ically and morally impossible, but ­family migration should be controlled and or­ga­nized. As Dijoud argued in Parliament: ­Family migration . . . ​is not encouraged, nor is it forbidden. It is not encouraged ­because we are aware of the painful consequences . . . ​especially when it is massive and uncontrolled. . . . ​Therefore, we merely do our best to or­ga­nize it, regulate it, and protect it, since it appears inevitable. We also do not forbid it ­because a liberal country with a dynamic tourist sector cannot close its borders to families coming to France for a ­couple of weeks but who, actually, decide to stay in our country. . . . ​­Family migration is . . . ​in a certain way, a necessary evil.9

In 1977, however, the government issued another decree, which restricted the right to ­family migration to accompanying ­family members who did not seek a work permit. More specifically, it meant that mi­grant w ­ omen coming to France through the f­ amily reunification procedure could not aspire to work, as the minister of l­abor explained: “French w ­ omen are the most affected by the current economic difficulties since they make up 60 ­percent of job seekers. It would therefore be inappropriate to admit more unemployed female workers. On the other hand, it is not forbidden for ­women who wish to do so to join their husbands in France, but then without the possibility for them to obtain a work permit.” 10 While this mea­sure is emblematic of a major shift in migration rationale—­ since it put an end to nearly three de­cades of ­labor migration as the privileged migration channel—it is also grounded in a highly gendered repre­sen­ta­tion of mi­grant families. De Hart (this volume, 36) describes how similarly gendered assumptions brought Dutch policy makers to raise obstacles to the immigration of mi­grant husbands, who ­were seen to use ­family reunification as a “loophole for gaining access to the Dutch l­ abor market.” In the French debates, the mi­grant ­woman is depicted as the perennial ­house­wife. This ste­reo­t ypical repre­sen­ta­tion of mi­grant ­women as passive and (eco­nom­ically) dependent on their husbands functioned as a self-­fulfilling prophecy, as the 1977 circulaire forced mi­grant ­women to conform to this image. As in many other Eu­ro­pean countries (Strasser et  al. 2009), f­amily migration policies in France ­were thus rooted in the



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traditional breadwinner model. Strikingly, t­hese gendered repre­ sen­ ta­ tions opened up a pathway to France for mi­grant w ­ omen in spite of overall restrictive migration policies: it is ­because mi­grant w ­ omen ­were perceived as ­house­w ives that they w ­ ere not seen as a threat to the national social order. This contrasts starkly with more recent policy approaches such as Sarkozy’s, where f­amily migration is restricted ­because it is perceived as eco­nom­ically unproductive. In the 1970s, ­family mi­grants w ­ ere admitted precisely ­because they ­were assumed (and obliged) not to engage in paid l­ abor. Moreover, this policy epitomizes an evident double standard between mi­grant w ­ omen and nonmigrant w ­ omen, as the 1970s witnessed an increasing number of ­women accessing an increasing number of ­labor markets (Majnoni d’Intignano 1999). As evident in the minister of ­labor’s statement above, however, emancipation via access to paid ­labor was thought relevant and desirable only for nonmigrant (white) w ­ omen—­not for mi­grant w ­ omen. The following quotation from a communist member of Parliament (MP) reflects this invisibility, as he formulates a dichotomy between female workers, on the one hand—­meaning female nonmigrant workers—­and mi­grant workers, on the other—­meaning mi­grant male workers: “A factory own­er . . . ​was dreaming this week in an economic newspaper of a female ­labor force that would replace mi­grants. ­Will you [the government] go that far?” 11 Thus, mi­ grant ­ women ­ were invisible both as ­ women—in debates about w ­ omen’s emancipation—­and as mi­grants—in debates about immigration. The quotation above also goes to show that gendered repre­sen­ta­tions of mi­grant families are shared across the po­liti­cal spectrum. Left-­w ing parliamentarians defending mi­grants’ rights rely on the same gendered tropes as politicians pleading for restriction, as evident in this intervention by a socialist MP: “How can we properly welcome families in which the ­mother, often poorly educated, from a foreign country and ill-adapted to urban life, cannot get access to the social ser­v ices that would at least allow her to become a proper head of ­house­hold [un véritable chef de famille], a proper ­mother [une véritable mère de famille]?” 12 Thus, mi­grant ­women ­were assumed to perform the very par­tic­u­lar role of ­house­w ife, within a breadwinner model that reflects traditional white middle-­ class ­family values and practices. The figure of the mi­grant ­woman is vis­i­ble only as a h ­ ouse­w ife and as a m ­ other, and the ­mother of many, as a center-­right MP argued: “­Today still, this should be reaffirmed, the decline in ­couples’ fertility curve would be even more acute and dramatic had it not been for mi­grants’ wives and d ­ aughters.” 13 The insistence on the superior fertility of mi­grant w ­ omen creates another double standard with French w ­ omen: while in the mid-1970s French w ­ omen w ­ ere fighting for reproductive rights (contraception and abortion), this fight was not deemed relevant for the mi­grant ­woman. This repre­sen­ta­tion of French white women as emancipated and mi­ ­ grant w ­ omen as traditional is typical of the

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intersection of gender with ethnicity and race in Eu­ro­pean migration politics (Roggeband and Verloo 2007). In this period, French politicians did not represent the gender and f­amily norms and practices of mi­grant families as problematic or deviant. The traditional male breadwinner / female nurturer model that was assumed to characterize mi­grant families may have been increasingly contested in the 1970s, but it was still valued and practiced widely in French society. The assumption that mi­grant families ­were traditional was therefore no ground to exclude them: to the contrary, as we have seen above, mi­grant ­women ­were admitted to France only ­because they w ­ ere assumed to be h ­ ouse­wives. T ­ here are almost no references to mi­grant families as nonconforming in parliamentary debates in the 1974–1981 period. The sole exception is a debate about mi­grants’ housing conditions in 1973, in which extended and polygamous families are defined as abnormal, that is, outside of the national norm: Right-­w ing MP: What exactly is meant, in article 1, by the words “­family environment” [cadre familial]? Is it the ­family in the restricted sense, as we understand it in our country, that is to say parents and ­children, or in a much wider sense? . . . Minister of l­ abor, employment, and population: Let us stick to the strict definition of the ­family, which is ­limited to lineal relatives. . . . Right-­w ing MP: What about polygamy? President of the Assembly: We are talking families of the normal kind. [Smiles.]14

The connection between ­family norms and nationhood is evident in this excerpt. The smiles ­after the president’s closing comment reflect how self-­evident the exclusion of polygamy from the national gender order was for French parliamentarians in 1973. However, the fact that polygamy is only smiled about and does not trigger any further discussion pre­sents a striking contrast with l­ater periods where, as we ­w ill show, nonnormative families (and polygamous families in par­tic­u­lar) are a recurring object of sharp problematization. In 1978, the Conseil d’Etat condemned the 1977 decree that prohibited mi­grant spouses from entering the l­abor market, on the ground that the government made exceeding use of its executive power. In what became a foundational ruling for French ­family migration policies, the Conseil d’Etat declared that mi­grants’ right to lead a normal f­amily life was a fundamental right.15 Henceforth, w ­ hether or not to grant the right to f­ amily migration was no longer subject to po­liti­cal discussion; l­ater discussions and legislations focused rather on stratifying that right.



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1981–1986: Liberal Moment In 1981, the Left won both the presidential and the legislative elections. With François Mitterrand as president and Pierre Mauroy as prime minister, the Left was in power in France for the first time since the Front populaire of 1936. The new government’s discourse was all about change and rupture with the past, based on the values of international solidarity and the fight against exploitation. The government immediately proceeded to significant liberal reforms of migration policy, including regularizations for all undocumented families living in France and a complete reopening of ­family reunification.16 Most notably, the ten-­ year residence was introduced, which ensured the right to live and work for a considerable period of time both to mi­grants and to their f­ amily. This was a milestone in French migration policies since it acknowledged the long-­term settlement of mi­grant families in France (Lochak 2014). However, ­these policies soon met with increasing re­sis­tance. Poor economic prospects and high levels of unemployment led to discontent and feelings of insecurity among increasing parts of the population, which was partly redirected at the immigrants’ presence. Furthermore, the early 1980s ­were the period of the “étés chauds” (hot summers), marked by unrest and violent incidents in the degraded suburbs of the larger cities with a high concentration of mi­grant population. In response, the left-­wing government opted for a more restrictive policy orientation, arguing that to integrate resident immigrants and to stop the rise in xenophobic public sentiment, the inflow of new mi­grants was to be controlled strictly. Stricter conditions on f­ amily migration ­were put in place, including the requirements of “offering the f­amily appropriate housing” and having “sufficient and stable resources.” 17 Nevertheless, the period from 1981 to 1986 is characterized overall by a more liberal policy approach to f­ amily migration. Parliamentary discourse on mi­grants in this period is highly ambivalent. On the one hand, t­ here are numerous mentions of le droit à la difference—­the right to be dif­fer­ent—­and diversity is often celebrated by left-­w ing parliamentarians, as in this statement by a socialist MP: “The goal in the long run is to enable the blending of all communities in the same national unity, provided that the cultural specificity [particularisme] of each community is respected.” 18 On the other hand, the early 1980s also witnessed the emergence of a growing anxiety about migration and Islam as a threat to the national identity order on the po­liti­cal right, as evidenced in a statement by a center-­r ight MP: “Our national identity must be protected. . . . ​That is why we reject any conception of a multiethnic or multireligious society, which would inexorably lead to the breakup of the national community, since our purpose is ultimately to defend our values and our culture.” 19 However, neither the defense of “national identity” nor the cele­bration of le droit à la difference is directly connected to ­family norms in this period, and

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problematization of the mi­grant ­family remains ­limited. On both sides of the po­liti­cal spectrum, the mi­grant ­family is still understood to be the traditional nuclear ­family. Overall, what characterizes migration debates in the 1981–1986 period most when it comes to the role of f­ amily norms is silence. This absence of debates on f­ amily norms is particularly noteworthy when it is compared to the surge of discussions in the following period. ­There are rare references to nonnormative families, notably polygamous families, but t­ hese are isolated provocations by the right-­ w ing opposition, which are successfully dismissed by government representatives as irrelevant to serious po­liti­cal debate and policy making, as t­ hese examples show: [Center-­right MP:] It is humanly laudable to allow ­family reunification, but have you considered the surge of pseudo parents [emphasis added] that we are witnessing lately? T ­ here is a fine line, Madam Minister, between good intentions and their pervasive effects.20 Minister of social affairs and national solidarity: ­Family reunification must be allowed when the working man, or the one who initiated the ­family reunification procedure, can provide decent housing to his f­ amily and allow them to live a decent life in France. . . . Right-­wing MP: Housing for how many wives, Madam Minister? One or two? Minister: Sir, I would like to remind you that when it comes to ­family reunification, the prob­lems that we encounter t­ oday are difficult prob­ lems. I ask from all of ­those who often have a passionate stance ­toward immigration to please be aware that this is about the life and dignity of four million men, w ­ omen and ­children.21

­Here we observe the nascent problematization of mi­grant ­family forms as fraudulent threats to the security of the national order. However, in contrast to l­ater periods, ­these problematizing discourses fell flat in the early 1980s, as the left-­ wing government brushed such comments aside. The early 1980s may have been a liberal moment, but still politicians did not accord much more consideration to mi­grant ­women than in the ­earlier period. From 1981 to 1986, mi­grant w ­ omen remained largely invisible in parliamentary debates. They are mentioned only in discussion on the prob­lem of the precarious residence status of mi­grant w ­ omen ­after divorce, where they are represented as vulnerable and submissive victims of husbands who “abandon” them. This is the first appearance of a trope that w ­ ill become ever more influential in the following years not only in French public debates on ­family migration but also elsewhere in north-­ western Eu­ ro­ pean public debates: the problematization of the mi­grant f­ amily as the locus of patriarchy, tradition, and oppression of ­women (Kraler and Kofman 2009, 4).



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1986–1993: The Problematization of F ­ amily Norms The aftermath of the 1986 legislative elections marks the most dramatic shift in parliamentary debates about ­family migration in the 1974–1993 period. The election of a right-­ w ing parliamentary majority engendered the cohabitation of socialist president François Mitterrand with a right-­w ing government led by Prime Minister Jacques Chirac. In ­these elections, the far-­right Front National (FN) obtained an unpre­ce­dented 10 ­percent of the votes and entered Parliament for the first time, based on a po­liti­cal campaign centered on the “immigration prob­lem” through a discourse that mixed Islamophobia and racism with extreme nationalism. The entrance of the FN on the po­liti­cal scene decisively influenced the electoral strategies and po­l iti­cal discourse of the traditional Right, which feared the loss of part of its electorate to the FN. The Right now began to use immigration as an electoral issue, at times even adopting and thereby legitimizing part of the FN’s discourse. As part of the FN vote came from the traditional left-­w ing electorate, even the Left appears to have felt it could not leave the mono­poly of anti-­immigrant discourse to FN president Jean-­Marie Le Pen. Thus, the “effet Le Pen” seems to have been a general shift to the right of the po­liti­cal discourse on immigration in France (Guiraudon 2000, 183–184; Naïr 1992, 64–70; Weil 2004). In this po­liti­cal context, the newly constituted government resolved to make a restrictive turn in migration policies and did so in 1986 with the first so-­called Loi Pasqua. The law was called a ­ fter Minister of the Interior Charles Pasqua, who approached migration as a security issue. Border controls w ­ ere strengthened and the competencies of the police ­were substantially enlarged, especially ­after the terrorist bombings in Paris in 1986. This securitization concerned not only the public order but also the cultural order, as French national identity and values ­were represented as threatened by immigration. In par­tic­u­lar, mi­grant ­family norms and values w ­ ere increasingly presented as incompatible with the French national (gender) order. This resulted in successive restrictive reforms of ­family migration policies, notably in the first and second Lois Pasqua of 1986 and 1993. For instance, the 1986 law diminished the security of residence rights of foreign youngsters raised in France, of foreign parents of French ­children, and of foreign spouses of French citizens (“Les nouvelles conditions d’entrée” 1989, 30–31). Notably, ­these reforms introduced criteria that specified what constitutes a “real” and “proper” ­family—so that “deviant” families could be kept out. For instance, to obtain the carte de résident or to be shielded from deportation, the 1986 Loi Pasqua introduced a one-­year period of marriage between a French citizen and his or her foreign spouse, as well as the condition that the spouses demonstrate une communauté de vie effective, or “effective cohabitation.” Similarly, the mi­grant parent of a French child would be granted residence rights only if he or she held parental authority or provided for the child (subvenir à ses besoins).

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At the discursive level, problematization of mi­grant f­ amily values and practices took a flight in the period of intense migration reform between 1986 and 1993. As the 1978 ruling of the Conseil d’Etat settled the debate on the question ­whether f­ amily migration should be allowed or not, the debate shifted to a new question in the late 1980s: What is a “proper” f­ amily? As the extracts from French parliamentary debates analyzed below illustrate, it is in this period that we can distinctly identify the emergence of the discourse on “dif­fer­ent” or “wrong” families, which has come to be dominant in France and in other Eu­ro­pean countries in l­ater periods (Odasso and Salcedo Robledo, this volume; Bonjour and Block 2016; D’Aoust 2018). A very explicit instance of the growing affirmation of f­amily norms is the Senate proposal to introduce the notion of a “normal f­ amily” in the 1993 bill. A socialist member of the Assemblée nationale explic­itly questioned the legitimacy of this state imposition of ­family norms: “What did our fellow senators mean? How is the ‘normal’ ­family defined? Is it the number of ­children, is it the presence of both parents, is it the absence of divorce? It is not about public order anymore but about a certain moral order that our fellow senators introduced in the law.” 22 The dramatic burst of discussion about f­ amily norms in this period focuses on two topics in par­tic­u­lar: sham marriages (or mariages blancs) and polygamy. Marital fraud was represented by center-­right MPs as a loophole in migration law, an easy way into the nation for mi­grants with no re­spect for the French l­ egal order: “How can an undocumented mi­grant, with just one word, regularize his situation? . . . ​Just by getting married. ­E very year thousands and thousands of ­people living in our country with no ­legal status regularize their situation through marriage: when they enter the city hall they are illegal aliens, they come out fifteen minutes l­ ater with a marriage certificate with which they can obtain a residency permit and which, ­a fter six months, allows them to apply for the French citizenship.” 23 Moreover, concerns about marriage fraud for migration purposes w ­ ere expressed in terms of a threat to the “institution of marriage,” represented as central to the French l­egal order and national identity: [Center-­right MP:] Several mea­sures aim, in this regard, to enforce re­spect for [à faire mieux respecter] the institution of marriage. For instance, article 21 limits the f­ amily reunification procedure to only one partner and his/her ­children, whereas articles 7 and 15 endow certain rights to the foreign husband of a French w ­ oman providing that the spouses cohabit effectively. It is this very concern for the preservation of the integrity of the matrimonial institution as it is conceived in the French legislation that grounds the mea­sures . . . ​which aim to prevent the cele­bration of a marriage in France whose goal is not a matrimonial u ­ nion.24



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Thus, the focus on fraudulent marriages allowed the po­liti­cal majority to represent mi­grants at once as a threat to the national ­legal order, gender order, and identity order. This met with objections from the left-­w ing opposition, with one socialist MP pointing out the suspicion surrounding mi­grants’ ­family life and the normative assumptions about what constitutes a “real” ­family: “You are concerned about marriages of con­ve­nience. All right. They happen less frequently than you say so too. Is it nonetheless a reason to increase the policing of families and to regard as real families [ foyers] only ­those who can heroically prove to be so?” 25 ­These discourses on fraudulent marriages rest on highly gendered tropes (cf. de Hart, this volume), the most common being about the ludicrousness of a marriage involving a young man and an older ­woman, as exemplified by this center-­ right MP : “When can we doubt the sincerity of someone asking you to celebrate a marriage? I’ll tell you: it is when a young twenty-­year-­old Sri Lankan man comes to you with a French w ­ oman who is sixty-­three!” 26 As perceptible in this intervention, the growing concern with marriages of con­ve­nience led to an increasing portrayal of mi­grant men as a threat not merely to mi­grant ­women but also to white French ­women, who are consistently ­imagined as vulnerable victims blinded by love, falling prey to manipulative mi­grant men (on similar discourses in the Netherlands, see de Hart, this volume; on recent iterations of this discourse in France, see Odasso and Salcedo Robledo, this volume). This is consistent with what has been identified as the “repre­sen­ta­tion of mi­grant men as . . . ​deceiving and motivated by material gain—­never by love” (Bonjour and de Hart 2013, 73; cf. Wray 2006; Carver 2016). The following excerpt, by a center-­right MP, is an even more striking example of this phenomenon: “­There are cases, and ­these are not rare, of a foreign man marrying a mentally ill French ­woman. It is then obvious that consent is not legitimate or informed. . . . ​It even happens that the ­woman divorces a ­couple of months ­later, before once again becoming the object—­the term is appropriate— of a new marriage with another foreign man. I know of at least one case where a ­woman did this three times.” 27 The alleged vulnerability of white French ­women in need of protection from the state ­here comes to symbolize the vulnerability of the national identity order and of the nation as a whole—­the security of which is to be ensured by a strong state imposing restrictive immigration policies. Besides marriages of con­ve­nience, polygamy was a key topic in migration debates from 1986 onward, as the excerpts below highlight, culminating in 1993 in the second Loi Pasqua, which was the first French immigration law to legislate—­and to rule out—­this matrimonial practice (Ferré 2001, 8). [Center-­r ight MP:] We should not accept the entire f­amily of the foreigners who ­w ill come. . . . ​Some men have three, four wives . . . ​a nd ten ­children, for whom social security w ­ ill have to pay.28

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[Center-­r ight MP:] The debate about polygamy has become polemical ­because of the unbridled immigration that we are experiencing. Now is the time to affirm our conception of marriage and to prevent polygamous marriages from having any effect in our country. The aim of this mea­ sure is not exclusion, but clarity, it is to declare “this is what we consider fundamental.” The laws of the Republic have to be respected by ­those who wish to s­ ettle ­here.29

While left-­w ing parliamentarians ­were vocally opposed to the restrictive mea­sures that targeted marriages of con­ve­nience, their discourse was far more ambiguous when it came to polygamy, as comments by a socialist MP demonstrate: “You are mistaken on the means of action. Not about every­thing, I conceded it. With regard to polygamy, ­there is an unacceptable judicial vacuum that would actually justify a piece of legislation in and of itself. We condemn polygamy, not in the name of a civilizational model or cultural hegemony, but ­because it is an infringement of w ­ omen’s universal rights. Similarly, it would be appropriate to tackle the issue of forced marriages.” 30 This last excerpt is quite representative of the attitude of socialist parliamentarians who intervene in the polygamy debate: while they do not always approve of the government’s proposed mea­sures to rule out polygamy, they share the view that this matrimonial practice is problematic. However, socialist MPs insist that their motivation for opposing polygamy is drastically dif­fer­ent from that of the Right: it is in the name of “­women’s rights” rather than in defense of a “moral” or a “civilizational” order. It should be noted, however, that the ­women’s rights argument is also frequently used by opponents of polygamy on the right. This is emblematic of the sort of po­liti­cal consensus across the po­liti­cal spectrum that the “othering” of marriage practices has often generated in Eu­ro­pean politics (Bonjour and de Hart 2013). It is also reminiscent of the gendered and racialized rescue narratives that historically served to justify Eu­ro­pean colonialism, summarized famously by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1988, 296) as “white men saving brown ­women from brown men” (cf. Bracke 2012). While mi­grant ­women are not much more vis­i­ble in ­these parliamentary debates than they ­were in ­earlier periods, a noteworthy phenomenon in the 1986–1993 debates, as exemplified below, is the mobilization of the figure of the mi­grant ­woman as part of this colonially inherited rescue narrative: [Far-­fight MP:] Are we ­going to legalize the excision of ­little girls and have the social security reimburse it just b ­ ecause it is a traditional custom in certain African countries? W ­ ill we stop having girls and boys together in schools just to please imams? 31 [Center-­r ight MP:] In par­tic­u­lar, young w ­ omen from mi­grant communities have ­great need of our help in order to feel comfortable in society.



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We need to get rid of a sexual discrimination which is not compatible with our princi­ples.32

However, the consensus against polygamy should be nuanced, as some socialist and communist MPs at times point out the po­liti­cal opportunism ­behind the prohibition of polygamy: [Socialist MP:] We have expressed our opposition to polygamy but, please! Let us stop this demonization that aims to show that ­these communities cannot be integrated!33 [Communist MP:] Oh, I hear some of you claim that mi­grants are coming with their three wives and numerous c ­ hildren and that we should act! I obviously do not deny that the issue of polygamy is judicially complex, but do not use it as a pretext. The mea­sures that you intend to pass ­w ill lead, in practice, to a ban on f­ amily migration.34

Notwithstanding such nuances, the consensus around the defense of “­women’s rights” against “foreign” f­ amily norms contributed to the assertion of “norms of gender equality and individual freedom . . . ​as crucial ele­ments of national identity” (Bonjour and de Hart 2013, 64). Thus, rescuing ­women is equated with rescuing the national social and identity order and, hence, with rescuing the nation. Debates about the “normality” of ­family life also address parenthood, as parliamentarians mobilized notions of what makes a “real” parent and dismissed “abnormal” filiations. For instance, center-­right MPs regularly mentioned “doubtful paternity” as an example of fraudulent migration practices.35 In contrast with the issue of polygamy, the left-­w ing opposition rejected this suspicion surrounding mi­grants’ parenthood unambiguously, as expressed by a socialist MP in 1986: “The biological f­ ather of a French child who recognized that child, may never exercise parental authority if the ­mother recognized the child, may be sick, unemployed and may therefore not provide for the child’s livelihood; but he may nevertheless legitimately care [avoir une affection légitime] about the child and should, consequently, be protected from potential deportation. You have not considered such cases. And yet ­these are not details. We are touching upon—­ and this is the case for the ­whole immigration question, this is what we should constantly be aware of—­the heart of ­people’s lives.” 36 In contrast with e ­ arlier periods, the late 1980s and early 1990s are marked by a recurring reaffirmation of national identity through the condemnation of polygamy and other “irregular” f­ amily norms, such as marriages not motivated by love or “abnormal” filiations. Saskia Bonjour and Betty de Hart (2013, 69) have analyzed similar po­liti­cal pro­cesses where the pre­sen­ta­tion of “marriage migration as the product of ‘deviant’ cultural practices legitimizes restrictive reform while offering politicians the opportunity to define and affirm [national]

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‘cultural codes’ and thereby—­ intentionally or unintentionally—to construct ‘bound­aries of belonging’ ” (Yuval-­Davis [1997] 2008, 48–49). We observe the emergence of this mechanism in French parliamentary debates from 1986 onward. As the excerpts below illustrate, ­family norms are increasingly equated with “French” “values,” “customs,” and “institutions”: [Center-­right MP:] How could we be against such mea­sures? Integration in a country involves re­spect ­toward the ways and customs of this country. Polygamy has never been part of our civilization. The role of the French legislation is not to encourage it, nor to sustain it.37 [Center-­right MP:] We [mayors] have been contrived—­other­wise we expose ourselves to ­legal prosecutions—to celebrate marriages that we knew, as you do, sir, did not exactly correspond to what the founding ­fathers of the Republic meant when they created this institution [of marriage].38 [Socialist MP:] We cannot accept in our home country [chez nous] to endure the consequences of foreign ­legal systems that create bonds of de­pen­ dency between an adult and a child that are actually very dif­fer­ent from the French conception of adoption.39 [Center-­r ight MP:] The North African community is still widely attached to a civilization that is not ours, and which is even very far from ours when it comes to many ­things that we consider essential, such as equality between the sexes or the conception of ­family life. Therefore, the unbridled increase of this population in some areas ­w ill always, above a certain level, lead to unsolvable issues.40

Thus, right-­w ing MPs represent mi­grant ­family practices not only as “deviant” from the national norm but as reflecting insurmountable cultural differences that represent a threat to the national identity order.

Conclusion In this chapter, we have shown through an analy­sis of French parliamentary debates how, from 1974 to 1993, ­family and gender norms s­ haped the interplay between constructions of citizenship, security, and rights in French parliamentary migration debates. The extent to which transnational families ­were represented as a threat to the national public, social, and identity order defined their inclusion or exclusion in the national ­imagined community, which in turn stratified their access to ­family migration rights. In the early 1970s and 1980s, mi­grant families w ­ ere assumed to function according to a  traditional breadwinner model. This did not result in their exclusion,



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however; to the contrary, it is b ­ ecause mi­grant w ­ omen w ­ ere assumed to be ­house­w ives and not job seekers threatening the social order that they w ­ ere admitted in the 1970s—­a nd effectively forced into the h ­ ouse­w ife role through a prohibition of engaging in paid work. The contrast between emancipatory discourses on white French ­women—­w ith regard both to paid l­abor and to childbearing—­a nd the traditional role ascribed to mi­grant ­women is striking in this period. It is also striking that the restrictive policies of the 1970s and the more liberal policies of the early 1980s ­were not underpinned by dif­fer­ent discourses on mi­ grant f­amily and gender norms and practices. The assumption that mi­grant families ­were traditional remained the same, as did the low level of problematization of mi­grants’ gender and ­family norms and practices. In the 1970s, restrictive policies w ­ ere justified with the argument that the number of immigrants overall was “out of control,” often coupled to a paternalist notion that regaining control over immigration was a prerequisite for the French state to be able to offer proper living conditions to immigrants in general and to enable mi­grant ­women to fulfill their attributed role of ­house­w ife and ­mother in par­ tic­ u­ lar. Even restriction-­ minded politicians did not feel the need to argue that ­there was anything “dif­fer­ent” or “wrong” about mi­grant families. In this period, mi­grants’ ­family practices w ­ ere not perceived as a threat to the national identity order. It is only in the late 1980s that we observe the emergence of the discourse that is so familiar to scholars of f­ amily migration politics in Eu­rope ­today: right-­ wing politicians began to represent the way immigrants “do” ­family as essentially dif­fer­ent from the “French” way—­which served to reaffirm French national identity order and to exclude immigrants and their descendants from that order. Besides the increasing electoral pressure from the far-­right Front National, a reason for the emergence of this discourse in the late 1980s may be the moral and ­legal entrenchment of the right to ­family migration in the previous de­cade: as the question ­whether to admit families was settled, politicians shifted their efforts to debating which kinds of families to admit. As scholarship has shown, ­there are obvious similarities between ­these discourses and colonial discourses aimed at proving the superiority of Eu­ro­pean civilization and the legitimacy of colonial rule by pointing to “backward” and “oppressive” gender and ­family practices of racialized ­others. However, our analy­ sis shows the importance of careful contextualization. Such discursive colonial heritage is not pre­sent above the surface everywhere and always. In French parliamentary debates, it dis­appeared below the surface in the 1970s and 1980s, to reemerge in the late 1980s when it served a par­tic­u­lar po­liti­cal purpose: to reassert the bound­aries of the French national order and the legitimacy of the French state in protecting that order.

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NOTES

1. Note that we have translated from French to En­glish all quotations used in this chapter coming from correspondence, official sources, and parliamentary debates. Assemblée nationale (hereafter AN), Commission des lois constitutionnelles, de la législation et de l’administration générale de la République, Compte rendu no. 7, July 25, 2007. 2. AN plenary, 3rd session, November 15, 1976, 8028. 3. Ministry of ­Labor, minutes of third meeting of ­Family Migration Working Group, February 6, 1975, Archives nationales (hereafter ArN) 19990260, no. 19. 4. Circulaire no. 11-74, July 9, 1974, and no. 9-74, July 5, 1974, ArN 19990260, no. 1. 5. Décret no. 76-383, April 29, 1976, ArN 19990260, no. 1. 6. AN plenary, 3rd session, November 15, 1976, 8028. 7. Our translation. Deputy Minister Paul Dijoud to President of National Immigration Office (ONI), January 9, 1975, ArN 19990260, no. 19. 8. Dijoud to President of ONI. 9. AN plenary, 3rd session, November 15, 1976, 8028. 10. AN plenary, 2nd session, October 26, 1977, 6644. 11. AN plenary, 3rd session, October 26, 1978, 6762. 12. AN plenary, October 9, 1974, 4915. 13. AN plenary, October 9, 1974, 4910. 14. AN plenary, May 9, 1973, 1091. 15. Conseil d’Etat, judgment no. 10097 10677 10679, December 8, 1978. 16. Law no. 81-973, October 29, 1981. 17. Décret no. 84-1080, December 4, 1984, ArN 19950232, no. 29. 18. AN plenary, 2nd session, June 28, 1984, 3845. 19. AN plenary, 1st session, June 6, 1985, 1504. 20. AN plenary, 2nd session, September 30, 1981, 1401. 21. AN plenary, 1st session, November 13, 1984, 5931. 22. AN plenary, 2nd session, July 13, 1993, 3282. 23. AN plenary, 1st session, December 9, 1992, 6794. 24. AN plenary, 1st session, June 16, 1993, 1671. 25. AN plenary, 1st session, November 13, 1984, 5931. 26. AN plenary, 1st session, May 30, 1991, 2449. 27. AN plenary, October 10, 1991, 4439. 28. AN plenary, 2nd session, June 3, 1991, 2696. 29. AN plenary, 3rd session, June 17, 1993, 1823. 30. AN plenary, 1st session, June 16, 1993, 1670. 31. AN plenary, 3rd session, July 9, 1986, 3095. 32. AN plenary, 2nd session, May 22, 1990, 1616. 33. AN plenary, 2nd session, June 16, 1993, 1690. 34. AN plenary, 2nd session, June 17, 1993, 1787. 35. AN plenary, 1st session, June 15, 1993, 1608; AN plenary, 1st session, June 16, 1993, 1676. 36. AN plenary, 1st session, July 19, 1986, 3105.



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37. AN plenary, 2nd session, June 16, 1993, 1688. 38. AN plenary, 3rd session, November 25, 1993, 6452. 39. “Chez nous” translates literally as “in our home.” AN plenary, 1st session, June 16, 1993, 1671. 40. AN plenary, 3rd session, July 9, 1986, 3096.

REFERENCES

Bonjour, S., and L. Block. 2016. “Ethnicizing Citizenship, Questioning Membership: Explaining the Decreasing ­Family Migration Rights of Citizens in Eu­rope.” Citizenship Studies 20 (6–7): 779–794. Bonjour, S., and B. de Hart. 2013. “A Proper Wife, a Proper Marriage: Constructions of ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ in Dutch ­Family Migration Policy.” Eu­ro­pean Journal of ­Women’s Studies 20 (1): 61–76. Bracke, S. 2012. “From ‘Saving ­Women’ to ‘Saving Gays’: Rescue Narratives and Their Dis/ continuities.” Eu­ro­pean Journal of W ­ omen’s Studies 19 (12): 237–252. Carver, N. 2016. “ ‘For Her Protection and Benefit’: The Regulation of Marriage-­Related Migration to the UK.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 39 (15): 2758–2776. Cohen, M. 2014. “Contradictions et exclusions dans la politique de regroupement familial en France (1945–1984).” Annales de démographie historique 128 (2): 187–213. D’Aoust, A.-­M. 2018. “­Family Migration and Membership.” In The Routledge Handbook of the Politics of Migration in Eu­rope, edited by A. Weinar, S. Bonjour, and L. Zhyznomirska, 179–189. London: Routledge. Fassin, D. 2012. Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Pre­sent. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ferré, N. 2001. “Quand la polygamie est entrée dans la loi.” Plein droit, no. 51: 8–9. Guiraudon, V. 2000. Les politiques d’immigration en Eu­rope: Allemagne, France, Pays-­Bas. Paris: L’Harmattan. Hajjat, A. 2012. Les frontières de l’“identité nationale”: L’injonction à l’assimilation en France métropolitaine et coloniale. Paris: La Découverte. Hollifield, J. F. 1999. “Ideas, Institutions and Civil Society: On the Limits of Immigration Control in France.” In The Mechanisms of Immigration Control: A Comparative Analy­sis of Eu­ro­pean Regulation Policies, edited by G. Brochmann and T. Hammar, 59–95. Oxford, UK: Berg. Kraler, A., and E. Kofman. 2009. ­Family Migration in Eu­rope: Policies vs. Real­ity. IMISCOE Policy Brief 16. Amsterdam: IMISCOE (International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion in Eu­rope). https://­ec​.­europa​.­eu​/­m igrant​-­integration​/­l ibrarydoc​/­imiscoe​ -­policy​-b ­ rief​-f­ amily​-­migration​-­in​-e ­ urope​-­policies​-­vs​-­reality. “Les nouvelles conditions d’entrée et de séjour des étrangers en France.” 1989. Hommes et migrations, no. 1125 (1): 29–32. Lochak, D. 2014. “Génèse idéologique d’une réforme.” Hommes et migrations, no. 1178: 23–29. Majnoni d’Intignano, B. 1999. Egalité entre femmes et hommes: Aspects économiques. Report for the Conseil d’analyse économique. Paris: La documentation française. Naïr, S. 1992. Le regard des vainqueurs: Les enjeux français de l’immigration. Paris: Bernard Grasset. Roggeband, C., and M. Verloo. 2007. “Dutch ­Women Are Liberated, Mi­grant W ­ omen Are a Prob­lem: The Evolution of Policy Frames on Gender and Migration in the Netherlands, 1995–2005.” Social Policy and Administration 41 (3): 271–288.

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Spivak, G. C. 1988. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by C. Nelson and L. Grossberg, 271–313. London: Macmillan. Stoler, A. L. 2001. “Tense and Tender Ties: The Politics of Comparison in North American History and (Post) Colonial Studies.” Journal of American History 88 (3): 829–865. Strasser, E., A. Kraler, S. Bonjour, and V. Bilger. 2009. “­Doing F ­ amily: Responses to the ­Constructions of ‘the Mi­grant F ­ amily’ across Eu­rope.” History of the F ­ amily 14 (2): 165–176. Turner, J. 2015. “The ­Family Migration Visa in the History of Marriage Restrictions: Postcolonial Relations and the UK Border.” British Journal of Politics and International Relations 17 (4): 623–643. Weil, P. 2004. La France et ses étrangers: L’aventure d’une politique de l’immigration de 1938 à nos jours. Paris: Gallimard. Wray, H. 2006. “An Ideal Husband? Marriages of Con­ve­n ience, Moral Gate-­Keeping and Immigration to the UK.” Eu­ro­pean Journal of Migration and Law 8 (3–4): 303–320. Yuval-­Davis, N. (1997) 2008. Gender and Nation. Politics and Culture. London: Sage.

3 “All the Time, Hard Time” Narrative, Agency, and History in the Sinse Taryeong of Korean Marriage Mi­g rants J I-­Y E ON Y U H

The field of migration studies, long characterized by a policy-­oriented focus on cross-­border movement of ­people, has also consistently seen calls for research that centers the voices of the mi­grants themselves. This per­sis­tent call for voice serves to highlight the subordinate position of mi­grants within the field, while also directing readers to fields like postcolonial studies, ethnic studies, and diaspora studies where centering the voices of marginalized p ­eople—­ such as mi­grants—is a key concern.1 The calls for listening to the voices of mi­grants has generally meant centering their views, experiences, and stories. Less attention has been paid, however, to how t­ hese are narrated and what that can tell us about voice, agency, and memory. This chapter interprets the oral history narratives of Korean marriage mi­grants for their narrative style and pre­sents their narratives as documents of history. It argues that this style, a traditional Korean form called sinse taryeong, goes beyond structuring narratives in a specific way: it is a reflection of the ­women’s sense of self as ­women who have overcome through sheer endurance. Marriage across borders has been an increasingly impor­tant mode of migration for Korean w ­ omen in the twentieth c ­ entury, one that is pervasive throughout the Korean diaspora. T ­ hese include Korean w ­ omen marrying immigrant Korean men or US soldiers and moving to Hawai‘i and the United States, Korean ­women from China marrying Korean men and moving to South K ­ orea, and Korean w ­ omen marrying Zainichi Korean men2 or Japa­nese men and moving to Japan. Unequal international relations among the countries involved as well as unequal gender and race relations have consistently created insecurities for ­these marriage mi­grants, ranging from undependable husbands to hostile host socie­ties to difficulties obtaining and exercising citizenship. T ­ hese insecurities largely stem from host society attitudes and treatment of foreigners, reflected not only in bureaucracies but also among in-­laws.

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Rather than focusing on how nation-­states manage marriage migration in their attempts to control their borders and mi­grant populations, this chapter seeks to highlight the experiences of ­women marriage mi­grants through close readings of life history narratives. To do so, I focus on two migration modes that have traditionally been seen as distinct historical phenomena: the short-­lived migration of Korean picture brides to Hawai‘i and the United States from 1910 to 1924 and the still-­ongoing migration of Korean military brides that began in the 1950s. A closer examination of the life stories of ­these ­women reveals not only startling similarities in their experiences but also commonalities in their memories and modes of narration that structure their sense of self and agency. This chapter also aims to reflect on the w ­ omen’s descriptions of their experiences and hardships and on the ways historians can approach such facts when considering the specific mode of storytelling the ­women privileged: the sinse taryeong.

Picture Brides and Military Brides: An Overview Picture brides and military brides are seen as distinct historical phenomena in part b ­ ecause the ­women come from very dif­fer­ent historical backgrounds. Picture brides came from a K ­ orea u ­ nder Japa­nese colonial rule, and their families ranged from poor to relatively well-­off and resided in cities and towns across the Korean peninsula. A few ­women came from wealthy, privileged families. Most had strong nationalist feelings, and some cited a dislike of living ­under Japa­nese rule as a reason for their interest in migration. In contrast, most military brides came from a South ­Korea ­under the dominance of the United States and firmly within a structure of national division. They ­were mostly from relatively low-­ income backgrounds and resided in areas close to U.S. military bases. Low levels of education compared to men are one commonality, but they also reflect differences in historical era. Like most Korean w ­ omen of their time, picture brides ­were illiterate or had rudimentary skills, and few had ever attended school. While most military brides w ­ ere literate, many had dropped out of high school or had only a m ­ iddle school education. Both groups of ­women entered the United States in an era when the entry of Asians was ­either severely curtailed or mostly banned.3 Picture brides encountered a racist and legally segregated United States, where anti-­A sian sentiment was ­running high. They ­were embraced by tiny Korean immigrant communities that ­were thirsty for the presence of w ­ omen and families, deeply anti-­Japanese and nationalist, already revolving around the church as the community center, and active on behalf of Korean in­de­pen­dence. Their migration was short-­lived and their numbers are very small, an estimated one thousand to Hawai‘i and another seven hundred or so to the U.S. West Coast between 1910 and 1924. Military brides, by comparison, number an estimated one hundred thousand or more since their first arrival in 1951, and new brides still enter each year.



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During the 1970s and 1980s, several thousand arrived annually. They have encountered an Amer­i­ca that remains racist, while ste­reo­t ypes about Asians morphed from “yellow peril vermin” to “model minority threat” (Okihiro [1994] 2014). They w ­ ere shunned, exploited, and pitied by growing Korean American communities that associated them with camptowns, prostitution, and shameful indebtedness and subordination to a foreign military. Still small and isolated in the 1950s and 1960s, Korean American communities became a well-­k nown presence in most metropolitan areas of the United States by the 1990s. T ­ hose communities w ­ ere consistently anticommunist, pro-­A merican, and wary of North K ­ orea even though many w ­ ere originally from the north before national division in 1945 complicated their ties (I. Kim 1981; Yoon 1997). Both groups of marriage mi­grants had profound effects on Korean immigrant communities. They caused an increase in numbers through the births of new generations of Korean Americans at a time when migration from Asia was restricted or prohibited and, owing to the f­ amily reunification provision of the 1965 immigration act, contributed to an increase in immigrants from ­Korea (Choi 2004). The arrival of picture brides profoundly changed Korean immigrant communities. They ­were the direct cause of a rise in the formation of families and a consequent increased urbanization as men left plantations seeking a better life for their families and of a rise in births and the formation of a second generation. Additionally, a high percentage of Korean Americans w ­ ere left at a young age with widowed ­mothers (due to the age gap between husband and wife) who ­were comparatively uneducated and had ­little fluency in En­glish. Of t­ hese consequences, the formation of a second generation born in the United States or Hawai‘i is particularly noteworthy. In 1910, t­here w ­ ere only 107 second-­ generation Korean Americans in Hawai‘i. In 1920, t­ here ­were 345 in the ten-­to-­ seventeen age-­group, and 39 ­percent of them lived in Honolulu (Houchins and Houchins 1974). Military brides began entering the United States in the 1950s, when Asians ­were still excluded from immigration. By the time immigration reforms w ­ ere instituted in 1965 and ­family reunification became a primary method for gaining permanent residency, they w ­ ere in a position to sponsor relatives. They did so in such numbers that an estimated 60 ­percent or more of Korean Americans who migrated a ­ fter 1965 can trace their migration to a military bride. They w ­ ere also pioneers in transracial marriage, having married white, black, Latino, and Jewish soldiers. Their c ­ hildren are among the earliest mixed-­race Asian Americans and are part of the demographic change that spurred mixed-­race advocacy and the inclusion of mixed race on the U.S. census. Despite ­these significant effects, both picture brides and military brides largely remain on the edges of Korean American collective memory, and few see their histories as connected. Instead, they are viewed through a gendered and racialized lens of marriage that defines them on the basis of their husbands.

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Pictures brides married men who had migrated as contract laborers for sugar plantations and ­were ­either still t­ here or had moved on to other manual ­labor, tenant farming, or shopkeeping. The husbands w ­ ere usually many years—­ sometimes decades—­older than the ­women, whose age ranged from the late teens to the mid­twenties. They came from Korean cities such as Inchon and Taegu, and most had been skilled or semiskilled urban laborers before becoming contract ­labor mi­grants. Their wives, the pictures brides, played impor­tant roles as the only w ­ omen in predominantly male immigrant communities, and their c ­ hildren became valued second-­generation Korean Americans. In the wake of vari­ous 1970s feminist movements, they have been held up as Korean American foremothers. In the same de­cades that a few Korean American feminists ­were beginning to valorize picture brides as foremothers, Korean American communities in general ­were shunning military brides. ­These ­women became well-­k nown but marginalized figures, ostracized b ­ ecause they had married non-­ Koreans. Their ­children w ­ ere stigmatized as mixed-­race. Their husbands w ­ ere young U.S. soldiers, mostly enlisted army men with minimal education. They came from small towns and rural areas in states such as Kentucky, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. A ­ fter military ser­v ice, some w ­ ere able to leverage skills learned in the military into civilian jobs, while ­others entered the ser­v ice industry or did manual l­ abor. As their wives, as divorced single m ­ others, or as w ­ omen remarried to other non-­Korean men, military brides ­were seen as peripheral, and not even the feminist movements saw them as foremothers or pioneers.

Telling One’s Woes: Life Narration in Sinse Taryeong Despite t­ hese differences, the oral history narratives of picture brides and military brides show profound similarities. Their stories center on the travails of immigrant life, marriage, work, and child-­rearing. They speak of their dreams as young ­women and of their disillusionments as they faced harsh realities. In par­tic­u­lar, they narrate their lives in similar styles that can be linked back to traditional Korean modes of storytelling called sinse taryeong. This storytelling mode originates in the folk song genre of taryeong. A taryeong is characterized by narrative lyr­ics and a specific pattern of beat and rhythm focused on the jungjung mori and jajin mori rhythms in Korean folk ­music. Folklorists believe taryeong originates in the ritual and spirit possession songs of shamanism, the indigenous religion of the Korean peninsula (Park 2020). Shamanist songs are still called taryeong and are sung by shamans to call for blessings, to lament sufferings and ask for restitution, to open communication with gods and spirits, and for other religious purposes during a variety of ceremonies that are now collectively called kut. By the time Buddhism and Confucianism entered the Korean peninsula, taryeong was no longer solely a



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shamanist form and instead was well established in the folk m ­ usic practices of ordinary ­people. Korean folk songs often reflected the sounds, sights, motions, and concerns of everyday life and ­labor, and thus farming, fishing, and ­family relations have been prominent themes in the lyr­ics. Sinse taryeong is a specific type of taryeong that centers on a lamentation of one’s woes. Sometime during the late nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, sinse taryeong also came to refer to a spoken conversation in which the speakers confide their suffering and distress. This mode of narration resonated with the historical circumstances of peasant rebellions, Japa­nese colonialism, wars, national division, extreme militarization, repressive national governments, and general social upheaval that has characterized the history of the Korean peninsula since the late 1800s. In the second half of the twentieth ­century, the concept of han—­ long-­standing, unresolved, and suppressed grievances that ­bubble up as resentment, outrage, and frustration—­also emerged as a prominent theme in Korean public and private discourse. Scholars in fields such as theology, psy­chol­ogy, and lit­er­a­ture have studied han as a psychological, emotional, or character trait specific to Koreans.4 While such a definition of han is problematic and requires much more nuanced discussion than is pos­si­ble ­here, sinse taryeong and han both have suffering and lamentation as primary themes, and both have become prominent motifs in Korean discourse.5 Sinse taryeong appears in three dif­fer­ent ways in the Korean culture of the twentieth and twenty-­first centuries. First, in traditional Korean performing arts, it is a specific genre of songs originating in pansori (a type of narrative musical theater performed by one singer and one accompanying drummer) and is defined by its musical characteristics. The extant pansori repertoire consists of a handful of well-­k nown folktales in which the main character suffers, demonstrates virtue and integrity, and is then rewarded. Thus most of the pansori tales include one or more sinse taryeong passages. Second, in traditional Korean folk songs, it is a type of lyric found in a variety of folk song genres, such as work songs, ritual songs, or popularly sung folk songs (Y. Kim 1997).6 In both of ­these artistic forms, sinse taryeong as narrative is distinguished by the recitation of woes and misfortunes that has befallen the “I” in the songs. This recitation is the essence of sinse taryeong’s third appearance as both motif and narrative mode woven through the everyday life and discourse of Koreans.7 Taryeong in general and sinse taryeong in par­tic­u­lar are acknowledged modes of conversation that Koreans both engage in and discuss. Koreans often refer to a conversation as a taryeong, meaning a repetitive complaint. “Oh, he was g ­ oing on with his usual taryeong about politics,” someone might say, or ­ ill also someone might ask, “Did she do her taryeong about her boss?” They w name a conversation a sinse taryeong, saying ­things like “Old ­people’s sinse taryeong is so predictable, but this past weekend I was ­really surprised at how much my grand­mother revealed about her life. Her sinse taryeong could be a

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book!” In ordinary conversations, a sinse taryeong could be restricted to a specific incident or theme, or it could cover wide swaths of a life.

Navigating Dreams and Realities: Agency in Sinse Taryeong While most scholars define sinse taryeong as a speaker’s telling of woes to elicit sympathy from the listener (Yoo 1990), my research reveals another aspect. For the w ­ omen who narrated their life stories in sinse taryeong mode, the tale of how they overcame or endured their woes is as impor­tant as the telling of the woes themselves. This is not l­ imited to my narrators. I see this quality in oral history narratives collected by the scholars Kyeyoung Park (1997), Chul-­In Yoo (1993), and Ramsay Liem (2003, 2005). Their narrators and mine often used sinse taryeong to tell their woes with a vigor that belied the severity of the tales. The marriage mi­grants in par­tic­u­lar used the opportunity to validate and make sense of their experiences, demonstrating their resilience and wisdom in ­handling all that life threw at them. Owing to this characteristic of sinse taryeong as practiced by t­ hese narrators, the sinse taryeong mode in life history narratives neatly sidesteps the academically contentious issue of agency. ­B ecause their sinse taryeong is both a lamentation of woes and a telling of how well the narrators weathered t­ hose woes, the narrative mode highlights personal negotiations between dreams and realities. ­These negotiations are taken for granted in the ­women’s narratives. While t­ here is triumph when they pursue their dreams and disappointment when real­ity interferes, the w ­ omen express no agonizing over w ­ hether or not they have agency. Instead, their narratives accept the simultaneity of individual w ­ ill and restrictions placed by circumstance.8 Migration studies lit­er­a­t ure on the topic of agency has mostly been concerned with the question of ­whether ­people migrated voluntarily (with agency) or involuntarily (without agency). This specific question of migration agency is a constant thread in the field, even when not an explicit focus, b ­ ecause it marks the naming of types of migration. Immigrants are assumed to have agency, for example, while refugees and asylum seekers do not. Although scholars delve into the nuances—by debating the degree of agency that mi­grants can exert when their migrations are coerced or by explicating the ­factors that pressure ­people into immigrating—­they remain concerned with figuring out how much agency mi­grants have or do not have.9 My narrators did not agonize over agency. They did not use Korean terms that could translate as “agency.” Instead, they talked about their circumstances and their be­hav­ior. Circumstances ­were beyond their control, but they ­were in charge of their be­hav­ior. Thus their narratives assumed two things to be true that many Western academics find incompatible: their own agency and fate.10 In the modern Korean cultural milieus experienced by my narrators, fate is about



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circumstances beyond their control, not about a predetermined life course. When they talk about fate, it is for t­ hings that they cannot control, such as an alcoholic husband or employment discrimination. But in their narratives, it is their desires and expectations that are crushed, not their w ­ ill. They keep on making decisions as they try to ­handle what “fate” has thrown at them. This narrative arc—­fate/life throws them curves, they h ­ andle it, but they suffer, and yet they come through it and find a way to gain satisfaction in their lives—is at the core of their sinse taryeong.

Sinse Taryeong as Lamentation The sinse taryeong mode of storytelling was more common among the picture brides and older military brides. Oral histories of military brides come from my personal collection of oral history interviews conducted in the eastern United States. The military brides ranged in age from the thirties to the eighties, with the youn­gest having migrated in the 1990s and the eldest in the 1950s and 1960s. Oral histories of picture brides are from Sonia Shinn Sunoo and Alice Y. Chai, who conducted interviews in the 1970s and 1980s. The picture brides at the time averaged seventy-­seven years in age, having migrated as young ­women in the 1910s.11 While sinse taryeong is often associated with older ­women, ­these are ­women who had been absent from ­Korea for de­cades and often had ­little contact with ­Korea during that time. For picture brides, sinse taryeong was prob­ably practiced within their immigrant communities. For military brides, however, sinse taryeong is more likely to be a remembered mode of expression, as they have often been isolated from ethnic kin. In e ­ ither case, their use of sinse taryeong speaks to the power of modes of expression seen and heard when young. Park Soon Ha’s lamentation, “No one in the world has suffered as much as I have,” encapsulates the essence of sinse taryeong in its assertion of extreme suffering. She came to Hawai‘i as a picture bride in 1918 at the age of sixteen. Her husband had claimed to be forty years old but was actually seventy-­five. She agonized over w ­ hether to go through with the marriage, but was convinced that she had to uphold her ­family honor. Additionally, she had nowhere e ­ lse to go. “When I first arrived in Hawaii, I suffered a lot and worked so hard. I had never seen so many mosquitoes in all my life. I had nothing, not even chopsticks or a bowl. . . . ​Oh, what a life of suffering.” (Sunoo 2002, 127). She became a w ­ idow at the age of twenty-­t wo, with three young c ­ hildren to care for. She then married a crippled but well-­off man and cared for him for five years ­until he, too, left her a ­w idow. For her, it was an economic decision, one that allowed her to provide for her c ­ hildren. Still, she lamented, “I guess no one in the world has suffered as much as I have” (Sunoo 2002, 128). Lee Ke-­Man came to Seattle in 1914 as a seventeen-­year-­old to marry a man eleven years her se­nior. She had heard of picture brides and was overjoyed when

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she became one. She found herself on a farm in Montana, bound to an alcoholic husband who squandered all their money. We became bankrupt ­because of his alcoholism. No ­matter how hard I strug­gled, . . . ​I ­couldn’t make ends meet. How could I? I ­couldn’t even make $8 a day ­after 10 long, backbreaking hours on the farm. . . . ​I recall my agonizing suffering alone with no one to help me raise the ­children. The routine chores on the farm still needed tending. Yet, I feel it was only ­because we lived on the farm that I was able to raise 10 ­children and managed to survive. . . . ​I tried in all ways to keep my husband and the ­family together. I ­really tried, and he kept me pregnant. ­Children kept coming, thus we had 10 in all. Yes, five boys and five girls. My life was full of woes. Many a time the ­children went hungry and without lunch to school. E ­ very week my husband took our truck to get groceries in Butte, Montana—­some 70 or 80 miles away. And the Blacks and ­others would steal the groceries off the truck while he was in Chinatown drinking. Next day, he would drive home with an empty truck. (Sunoo 2002, 183)

Mrs. Goldin, who came in 1972, narrated a convoluted tale of suffering. She was an orphan and tricked into militarized prostitution serving U.S. soldiers. She married a soldier who was one of her first customers, and they began married life on another U.S. base, in Okinawa. He turned out to be abusive, disappearing for days and leaving her alone and frightened. When he reappeared, he demanded food and beat her. As she told her story over multiple meetings, she repeated two phrases, “Maybe I was lucky” and “No one knows how much I suffered, no one.” She noted that she lived in a nice American-­style ­house with fancy appliances while residing with her husband, but she was constantly terrified both at being alone for days on end and at not knowing when he would appear or when he would beat her. They eventually had a son and moved to the United States, where she left him ­because of his vio­lence. She raised their son alone, but found herself unable to ­handle a teenage boy. He ran away to live with his ­father, and she has lived alone since then. When she repeats “Maybe I was lucky,” she is questioning the conventional wisdom that g ­ oing to Amer­i­ca is a stroke of luck, especially for a camptown ­woman like herself. Was she ­really lucky? Maybe not, given what she found in the United States.12 A similar questioning can be found in Lee Ke-­Man’s recitation of woes, as well as her description of the fellowship society for picture brides that she or­ga­ nized in Montana. “All we could do was listen to each other’s experiences as picture brides, married to men we had never known, and of our disillusionments in the New World. We felt f­ ree to express our deep secrets and felt a bond b ­ ecause



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of our mutual suffering. We w ­ ere determined to make the most of our miserable lives and attempt to make a better society for our youngsters” (Sunoo 2002, 185). ­These themes of suffering and endurance weave their way through nearly all the oral histories. Poverty and the unthinking cruelty of husbands are the two main ­causes, and both ­were pervasive. Few of the ­women spoke about riches or plenty. Even the small number of military brides who married financially stable husbands spoke of deprivation due to a lack of Korean ­things, especially food. Indeed, military brides’ discussion of food exemplifies sinse taryeong. All of them had a long list of complaints about food. Ms. Cho, who arrived in the United States by boat in 1951, had a particularly acute recitation of deprivation. “Food, Korean food, very very . . . ​I think about it, I dream about it, in my dreams t­ here is no Korean food, or I am eating Korean food, or Korean food appears, this is what I dream about. When I first came, what I survived on was, well, rice was, you know, but I survived on American pickle. And spaghetti, that’s what I survived on. It was terrible, I wanted so badly to eat [Korean] food, it was terrible. Oh, I suffered very very much.” 13 She learns to make do with soy sauce and dried chilies from a Chinese grocery store, even learning how to make an ersatz chili paste mimicking Korean gochujang.

Challenging Ste­reo­t ypes: Narrating Love Stories A key aspect of the ­women’s narratives is talking back to received ste­reo­t ypes about military brides and picture brides. Since many of t­ hose ste­reo­t ypes stem from assumptions about their marriages, their motivations for marrying are often central to their narratives. For military brides, that means emphasizing romantic love. For picture brides, it means emphasizing individual desires and rebellion. Military brides emphasize that their marriages ­were the result of falling in love, even as they discuss the practical aspects that led them to think favorably about g ­ oing to Amer­i­ca. Ms. Cho, who was among the eleven Korean w ­ omen who entered the United States in 1951 as wives of American citizens, talked about switching her aspirations from Japan to Amer­i­ca in 1945. Growing up in rural ­Korea with relatives, Ms. Cho keenly felt the inequities of her situation as an orphaned young w ­ oman in a poor, undeveloped country. I wanted to . . . ​get out . . . ​­Korea. Least I want to go live Japan. That was my dream. I want to least go to Japan to live. Fine. I ­don’t want to stay ­Korea b ­ ecause ­there is no f­ uture. Not much f­ uture. You know, a small country, [it] ­doesn’t have every­thing developed. Always other country take care of. I ­don’t know ­today how ­things are. But anyway my dream is I want to . . . ​move out, move out K ­ orea. Go foreign country. Japan, Amer­i­ca,

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­don’t ­matter. So I, I, that’s, that was my wish so, only way you can come to Amer­i­ca is you have to marry.14

Ms. Cho witnessed the entry of Americans into ­Korea in 1945 and saw that, as she put it, “they control every­thing.” She subsequently obtained a job working at the U.S. military commissary in Seoul. She spoke of this as a deliberate step in her plan to leave ­Korea for Amer­i­ca, for it placed her in proximity to American men. She was also aware, however, that marrying an American was no guarantee of entry into the United States, and she believed that this made marriage pointless. Why marry an American if you cannot follow him to Amer­ i­ca? It was only a series of lucky breaks, she declared, that brought her to the United States. ­Those breaks included following her man to Japan ­after they ­were separated, actually finding him ­there and marrying him, meeting an acquaintance who happened to work in the Korean embassy in Tokyo and was willing to expedite the necessary South Korean papers, and squeezing through the narrow win­dow of time that Congress had allowed for Asian military brides to obtain immigration visas.15 “All I know, I was very lucky. Each step by step, I was very lucky. Lucky to come over Seoul, lucky to I met the nurse, my best friend, she’s very very beautiful ­woman. And I was a lucky enough to meet nice young man, you know. I met and I come over Japan and got marry. Ah . . . ​every­thing was just like I planned. I got very fortunate, lucky.” 16 Ms. Cho’s narrative of leaving ­Korea and entering the United States is replete with her aspirations, disappointments about K ­ orea, plans for leaving, and the concrete steps she took to realize her dream. Marriage to an American comes across as a strategy, carefully planned and executed—­w ith the substantial help of luck—­despite serious roadblocks. Even as she repeats “lucky” numerous times, she also notes with satisfaction that “every­thing was just like I planned.” Yet when asked why she married, she responded with surprise. “Well, we, we, love each other. Of course, why, why anybody wants to marry?” Ms. Huh, who arrived in the United States with her soldier husband in 1991, a full forty years a ­ fter Ms. Cho, recalled that her husband had set out to marry an Asian w ­ oman. “­Because, well, my father-­in-­law retired as an officer in the Air Force, and so even though they d ­ idn’t live overseas, they lived in dif­fer­ent bases in the United States and they came in contact with many Asians. And so he had a good impression of them. And now that he was stationed at Osan, you know, well, ­there are many low-­quality p ­ eople t­ here and he wanted to meet educated ­people. He heard about our [En­glish] club, and so he started coming to our meetings and that’s how we met.” 17 To many Asian American ­women, a white man looking for an Asian ­woman is a man to avoid.18 But as a college student in 1980s Seoul, Ms. Huh knew nothing of such American racial dynamics. She spoke instead of how she found the man she met to be a caring person who placed g ­ reat emphasis on f­amily.



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Gradually, she says, she fell in love and had to admit that he was the one. They told their families and overcame their opposition. Her ­family worried about the stigma and the reputation of American soldiers for mistreating and abandoning their Asian wives. His ­family preferred a white daughter-­in-­law, but was not opposed as long as their son did not bring home a black ­woman. While ­these racial biases ­were foreign to Ms. Huh, she understood that as a Korean ­woman with an American soldier, she faced prejudice from both Koreans and Americans. Her narrative of a tentative and then serious courtship, the importance of ­family values and responsibility, and the gradual strengthening of mutual love and trust directly c ­ ounter the biases she anticipated and also experienced.

Challenging Ste­reo­t ypes: Narrating Rebellion The picture bride narratives are completely dif­fer­ent on the subject of love. Love is not a f­ actor in their arranged marriages. The marriage is a means to goals that the w ­ omen have set for themselves, even when t­ hose goals are as nebulous as a thirst for adventure. Like the military brides from the 1950s and 1960s, they speak of a ­Korea that is woefully backward, but then add the difficulties of an oppressive colonial rule. Growing up in colonial ­Korea, they remembered, meant being afraid of the Japa­nese and knowing that Koreans had lost their country. They ­were intrigued by stories about picture brides and fascinated by tales of Amer­i­ca as a wondrous land. In the words of Mrs. K., a Korean picture bride who left K ­ orea in search of better living conditions: “My parents w ­ ere very poor. One year, a heavy rain came, a flood; the crops all washed down. Oh it was a very hard time, you know.” She continued, “Always I heard Hawaii stories, that time. I thinking when I grow up I like g ­ oing Hawaii. Hawaii’s a f­ ree place, every­body living well. Hawaii had freedom, so if you like talk, you can talk; you like work, you can work. I wanted to come, so I sent my picture” (Chai 1979, 11). Mrs. K. did more than send her picture. She lied to her f­ amily and carried out all the necessary preparations, including obtaining a passport, in secret. “About two weeks before I have to leave, I tell my ­father and ­mother. My f­ ather was very angry. My ­mother was very sad, and my ­father only blame my ­mother, fighting, you know. But they ­can’t stop me. No, they ­can’t” (Chai 1979, 11). Mrs. K. left on a 4:30

A.M.

train, with only her weeping m ­ other to see her off. She noted

that she chose that time intentionally so that no one e ­ lse would see her leave. To the end, secrecy was her ally in thwarting familial authority and societal disapproval to get away successfully. She arrived in Pusan and took a small boat to Shimonoseki and then another boat to Hawai‘i. She was nineteen years old, and it was 1923. While Mrs. K. does not elaborate on her desire to become a picture bride, Lee Ke-­Man tells of being gripped with a burning desire. A matchmaker came to her h ­ ouse asking if her parents ­were interested in sending her as a picture

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bride. Her ­mother demurred and suggested the ­family’s maid. Lee was so envious of the maid and so e ­ ager to be a picture bride that she found the matchmaker. Lee admitted that she did not know what a picture bride was, only that becoming one meant getting married and ­going to Amer­i­ca. But it sounded so exciting that she simply had to pursue it. She became engaged to a man whose ­family lived over in the next village. Her ­family found out and was so opposed that they confined her to her room so that she could not leave. But Lee resisted. She told what she calls a “white lie” to be released, assuring her parents that she had given up the idea of becoming a picture bride. But once released, she gave them a “tongue-­lashing” and left for her fiancé’s f­ amily home, where she waited to leave for Amer­i­ca (Sunoo 2002, 180). For military brides, keenly aware of the social stigma attached to their marriages, love is a justification that locates their marriages within socially approved narratives of romance and pushes back against ste­reo­t ypes of military brides as gold diggers or prostitutes. Love also justifies marrying against their parents’ wishes. This was so even for the w ­ omen who w ­ ere remembering from the vantage point of old age and had experienced divorce, remarriage, and the varied disillusionments of life. Holding on to love as a key ­factor in their marriages was an impor­tant part of their self-­narration. For picture brides, however, remembering their younger selves and dreams of in­de­pen­dence is more impor­ tant. Their desire for adventure, education, and above all autonomy justifies their open rebellion against parents. For both military and picture brides, their choice of motifs in narrating how and why they married and became immigrants illustrates not only their sense of self but also the ways they resist the conventional narratives imposed on their experiences.

Autonomy: A Hidden Motif Autonomy—­called freedom or in­de­pen­dence by the w ­ omen—is a frequent motif in the life narratives of both military and picture brides. For military brides, freedom is the consequence that justifies their choice to marry American soldiers, and they frequently contrasted their lives with ­those of South Korean h ­ ouse­wives presumed to be suffocating ­under patriarchy. When asked what is the best ­thing about coming to Amer­i­ca, for example, Ms. Cho replies, “Freedom!” She and other picture brides are referring to freedom from conventional Korean norms and the ability to shape one’s own life. ­Whether they have it or not is immaterial; what m ­ atters is that they insist that they do. Picture brides rarely insisted that they have had anything close to resembling freedom. Instead, despite their stories of rebelling against families to become picture brides, their narratives usually foregrounded seemingly traditional roles as wives and ­mothers. As w ­ omen who often faced ­bitter disappointment when they encountered the real­ity of Amer­i­ca, endured their newfound



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circumstances, and w ­ ere embraced by the tiny Korean immigrant communities of the early twentieth ­century, picture brides spent their entire lives in ­these gendered roles. Their stories of autonomy, therefore, are buried in specific stories about making specific decisions. As the feminist scholar Alice Y. Chai (1988) observes, the ­women talk about their roles in conventional terms while describing be­hav­ior that transgressed gender norms. This autonomy is sometimes difficult to discern owing to a tendency in the lit­er­a­ture to elevate their lives as foremothers.19 The picture brides are cast as brave and strong w ­ omen who broke f­ ree of their tradition-­bound, patriarchal society to pursue their dreams and who then made the most of bad situations and became stalwart m ­ others who did every­thing pos­si­ble for their c ­ hildren. It is a familiar narrative that depends on the tropes of a backward ­Korea and a modern Amer­i­ca. In that context, the picture brides figure as modern young ­women held back by an oppressive, patriarchal ­Korea and who seek the West as a place of liberation. That place of liberation then morphs into a new place of oppression, this time economic and racial. The West does not figure as a place of gender oppression; that is reserved for Korean culture, which travels with the Korean mi­grants to the West. Tropes of rebellious youth and proper motherhood also make an appearance. The picture brides’ ultimate satisfaction comes from the success of their ­children. Thus the West is reinstated as a place of liberation, and the picture brides are brought full circle from rebellious young w ­ omen seeking their own satisfaction to mature w ­ omen sacrificing for their c ­ hildren. Consider Mrs.  Yoon, who unabashedly regrets her migration to the United States and describes the shift in focus from aspirations for herself to aspirations for her c ­ hildren and grandchildren. Although she is the one who first narrates the shift, the interviewer helps her along with a follow-up question about “the best time” in her life. While that question could have been intended to elicit a response about the comfort and joys of a relaxed old age, Mrs. Yoon instead takes the opportunity to discuss the material achievements of her c ­ hildren and grandchildren. Q:  ​Mrs. Yoon, A:  ​Every

do you regret coming to Amer­i­ca?

day, ­every day. I have been unable to carry out my purpose for an edu-

cation. My husband, who h ­ asn’t had an education, has not been a good provider. So I felt I came for nothing! . . . ​I had the mistaken notion that I could do better ­here. I thought I’d be able to do as I pleased; a naïve attitude. So I cast aside my desires and in raising a f­amily I was determined to see that they had the opportunities I missed. Q:  ​Has

the best time in your life been ­after the c ­ hildren have grown up and

completed their education? A:  ​­After

that, their marriages, the getting homes of their own. I am satisfied

with their lives, and I feel a fulfillment of part of my goals. My grand­daughter

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and husband have bought their home. My grand­son married and bought a home, and when I see all this, I have nothing but happiness. (Sunoo 2002, 103–104) Mrs. Yoon herself is partially disabled as a result of two falls that fractured her legs. The fractures required metal inserts to bind the bones, and she uses two canes to walk. Walking too much ­causes pain, she notes, and then continues: “I exist due to being put together with metal threads.” Thus the question about “the best time of your life” both misses the point and prompts Mrs. Yoon to discuss the accomplishments of her descendants in creating stable, prosperous lives. The narrative swiftly turns from Mrs. Yoon’s b ­ itter regret over her life in Amer­i­ca to her satisfaction with the way her ­children and grandchildren have prospered. While not all picture brides so freely expressed regret, the majority discussed the shock of real­ity, the strug­gle to set aside their dreams, and the deliberate shift to pouring their energies into their c ­ hildren. In contrast, military brides did not express regret over their choice to marry a U.S. soldier and immigrate. Only one suggested that it was not a wise choice. Yet few of the ­women enjoyed conventionally successful lives. Most of the military brides interviewed ­were divorced from their first husbands, some had remarried, and some ­were living alone. Although about a third owned their own homes, some ­were barely getting by, and most—­including homeowners—­made do with low incomes. Most still strug­gled with En­glish and thus had ­limited conversations with their English-­speaking, American-­raised c ­ hildren. Only a very few mentioned the well-­ being and prosperity of their ­children as recompense for their own thwarted dreams. Cultural differences remained points of conflict for many ­women, who generally yielded to their husbands and ­children to minimize conflict. Only a few ­were realizing dreams of education. Yet the overwhelming majority of military brides pointed to their own experiences of in­de­pen­dence as sources of satisfaction. In Amer­i­ca, they said, they found freedom. While acknowledging that they had not expected to suffer as much as they had, they also refused regret and focused on their own inner feelings of pride for overcoming obstacles and making lives for themselves.

Conclusion In the end, sinse taryeong as narrative mode offered both picture brides and military brides a way to talk about their sufferings while also pointing to their eventual success in creating lives for themselves. Like Grace K. Tran’s narrators (this volume), the Korean wives explic­itly challenge received understandings about their motivations for marriage and what that says about who they are. While each of Tran’s narrators insists that he is “not a bad guy” for engaging in



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contract marriages, picture brides insist they are not submissive ­women and military brides insist they are not grasping gold diggers. Like the Ira­nian wives of Japa­nese men in Pardis Mahdavi’s chapter (this volume), ­these Korean ­women also narrate the ­trials of married life in a foreign country as well as the relief of escape from a troubled homeland. Through the sinse taryeong mode, the Korean ­women narrate their motivations and actions to shape personal histories in which they are the heroes of their own lives despite often wretched circumstances.20 The mode reveals their views of themselves as navigating the vicissitudes of life, chasing dreams, finding new ones to pursue when disillusioned, and overcoming simply by enduring. It highlights the suppleness of their self-­image as ­women both constrained by circumstances and shaping their own lives, as well as their ongoing ties to Korean modes of self-­expression. Paying attention to ­these narrative voices deepens our understanding of migration by focusing on lived experience and memories. But are their narratives history or memory? Is that dichotomy valid? The discipline of history has largely sidelined oral history in ­favor of text documents as sources of historical fact. Oral history is categorized as memory or personal narrative that offers individual perspectives rather than factual, historical data. Yet without the oral history narratives of picture brides and military brides (or contract marriage spouses or Ira­nian wives of Japa­nese men), we would have ­little factual data about their histories. We would not know how they met and married their husbands, what they faced in their immigrant and married lives, what roles they took on in their communities, how they negotiated laws and policies, and a myriad other historical facts. When we relegate their narratives to the realm of memory and downplay their factual content, we limit the histories we can know and thus fatally restrict our understanding of the h ­ uman experience across time and space. Although I have focused ­here on how the women shape and pre­ ­ sent themselves through the narrative mode of sinse taryeong, their narratives depend on the realities of their experiences. In their oral narratives, they are interpreting their own histories. Lack of external verification of their experiences is a limitation of the extant archives rather than a limitation of their narratives. Their experiences, as narrated by them, constitute historical fact, and their oral interviews form an archive vital to history. Thus an impor­tant way of reading this chapter is to see the historical content essential to the narrative analy­sis.

NOTES

1. Calls for mi­grant voices in migration studies are nearly as long-­standing as the field itself. Other fields have been centering the voices of mi­grants for quite some time. A recent example is Neha Vora’s Impossible Citizens: Dubai’s Indian Diaspora (2013). Willem Schinkel, in a devastating critique of the field, notes the lack of mi­grant voices as a key failing in “Migration Studies: An Imposition” (2019).

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2. The term Zainichi Korean refers to ethnic Koreans who are permanent residents of Japan. Most are two to four generations removed from their immigrant forebears. 3. The United States began restricting migration from Asia with the 1875 Page Act and banned it altogether in 1924. Asian migration in significant numbers did not resume ­until the late 1960s. 4. Most of the lit­er­a­ture comes from theology (e.g., G.  J.-­S. Kim 2013; A.  S. Park 1993; Chung 1990). 5. Suffering and unresolved grievance are common h ­ uman experiences, and thus the concept of han and its expression among Koreans needs to be historicized rather than simply labeled a Korean trait. Historians of K ­ orea, however, do not study han and rarely refer to it. 6. Sinse taryeong is a common subject of analy­sis for Korean lit­er­a­ture and folklore scholars, especially t­hose based in Korean academic circles, as exemplified by Kim Yun-­ hee (2012). 7. Chul-­In Yoo (1990) describes sinse taryeong as a primary mode of life story narration for Koreans. My added description of it as a motif comes from my own lived experience and research hearing Koreans in multiple locations (South K ­ orea, China, Japan, the United States) make regular reference to sinse taryeong in their daily conversations. 8. Minjeong Kim (2013) offers a succinct discussion of the scholarly debate on agency. 9. The migration studies debate over agency is exemplified in an article simply titled “When Is Migration Voluntary?” (Ottonelli and Torresi 2013). The question of agency has been significant in many other fields, of course, and scholars such as Stephan Fuchs (2001) have offered theoretical approaches that place agency in conversation with other ­factors. 10. Western academics have a long history of viewing Asian cultures as fatalistic—­ characterized by a belief that the course of one’s life is predetermined and thus out of one’s control, but this view of Asian cultures has been revealed by scholars as a bias influenced by imperialism and racialism. Edward W. Said is perhaps the most well-­ known critic of Western ways of “knowing” Asia, and the influence of his seminal 1978 book Orientalism cannot be overstated (Said 2003). His influence can be seen in works such as the edited anthology by Rob Wilson and Arif Dirlik (1995). 11. Edited transcripts of the interviews ­were published by Sunoo (2002) and Chai (1979). This chapter’s title quotation—­“All the time, hard time”—­comes from Woo Myong-­ Won (Sunoo 2002, 75), a Korean picture bride whose interview is excerpted in Sunoo’s book. A few of the interview recordings are held in the Korean-­A merican Oral History Proj­ect Collection, 1971–1979, at the University of California, Los Angeles. The military bride interviews ­were the basis for a monograph (Yuh 2002) and remain in my possession. 12. From narrator L, December 1993 and July 1995 interviews in author’s possession. 13. From narrator N, November 1996 interview in author’s possession. 14. From narrator N, November 1996 interview in author’s possession. 15. Asian Exclusion refers to a series of laws and court decisions that prohibited vari­ous types of Asians (unmarried or “immoral” w ­ omen, laborers, Chinese, e ­ tc.) from entering the United States from 1875 to 1952. T ­ hese laws effectively prohibited U.S. soldiers from bringing home their Japa­nese, Chinese, and Korean wives during the 1940s and early 1950s. U ­ nder pressure from soldiers, Congress passed a series of exemptions that provided short time periods during which so-­called Asian war brides could gain entry to the United States.



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16. From narrator N, November 1996 interview in author’s possession 17. From narrator Q, October 1995 and March 1996 interviews in author’s possession. 18. Yellow fever and Asian fetish refer to white desire for Asians. That desire is historically rooted in Eu­ro­pean colonization of Asian countries and the use of local w ­ omen as temporary live-in girlfriends or as prostitutes by white Eu­ro­pean men. It is canonized in the 1904 opera Madama Butterfly; the Hollywood movies Japa­nese War Bride, from 1952, and The World of Suzie Wong, from 1960: and the 1989 musical Miss Saigon. In con­ temporary usage, the terms refer to a racism-­inflected preference for dating Asians, combined with ste­reo­t ypical views of Asian ­women as exotic, hyperfeminine, docile, catering to male demands, sexually available, innately attracted to white men, and self-­sacrificing. While heterosexual yellow fever is better known and documented, ­there is also a growing body of scholarship on the gay white male preference for Asian males. Yellow fever and Asian fetish have been widely studied by scholars in the social sciences and the humanities (Zheng 2016; Uchida 1998; Zhou and Bryant 2016; Mukkamala and Suyemoto 2018). 19. Although Chai (1988) specifically highlights their in­de­pen­dence, she also extensively discusses their importance as foremothers. 20. With apologies to Linda Gordon (1988).

REFERENCES

Chai, A. Y. 1979. “ ‘Mrs. K’: Oral History of a Korean Picture Bride.” ­Women’s Studies Newsletter 7 (4): 10–13. —­—— ­ . 1988. “­Women’s History in Public: ‘Picture Brides’ of Hawaii.” ­Women’s Studies Quarterly 16 (1–2): 51–62. Choi, A. S. 2004. “ ‘Hawaii Has Been My Amer­i­ca’: Generation, Gender, and Korean Immigrant Experience in Hawai‘i before World War II.” American Studies 45 (3): 139–155. Chung, H. K. 1990. Strug­gle to Be the Sun Again: Introducing Asian ­Women’s Theology. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Fuchs, Stephan. 2001. “Beyond Agency.” So­cio­log­i­cal Theory 19 (1): 24–40. Gordon, L. 1988. Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of ­Family Vio­lence; Boston, 1880–1960. New York: Viking. Houchins, L., and C.-­S. Houchins. 1974. “The Korean Experience in Amer­i­ca, 1903–1924.” Pacific Historical Review 43 (4): 548–575. Kim, G. J.-­S. 2013. “Colonialism, Han and Eco-­Theology.” Scriptura 111 (1): 376–384. Kim, I. 1981. New Urban Immigrants: The Korean Community in New York. Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ ton University Press. Kim, Y. 1997. “Sinse Taryeong.” In Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Culture. Acad­emy of Korean Studies. Accessed March 31, 2020. http://­encykorea​.­a ks​.­ac​.­k r​/­Contents​/­Item​/­E0033115. Kim Y.-­H. 2012. “The Ballad (Sinse Taryeong) of Chosun P ­ eople’s Sorrow in Dong Yu Gam Hung Lok of the 1920s and Its Significance.” Society for Korean Language and Literary Research 40 (2): 197–216. Liem, R. 2003. “History, Trauma, and Identity: The Legacy of the Korean War for Korean Americans.” Amerasia Journal 29 (3): 111–130. —­—— ­ . 2005. “ ‘So I’ve Gone around in Circles . . .’: Living the Korean War.” Amerasia Journal 31 (3): 157–177. Minjeong K. 2013. “Weaving ­Women’s Agency into Repre­sen­ta­tions of Marriage Mi­grants: Narrative Strategies with Reflective Practice.” Asian Journal of W ­ omen’s Studies 19 (3): 7–41.

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Mukkamala, S., and K. L. Suyemoto. 2018. “Racialized Sexism / Sexualized Racism: A Multimethod Study of Intersectional Experiences of Discrimination for Asian American ­Women.” Asian American Journal of Psy­chol­ogy 9 (1): 32–46. Okihiro, G. Y. (1994) 2014. Margins and Mainstreams: Asians in American History and Culture. With a foreword by M.-­H. Jung. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Ottonelli, V., and T. Torresi. 2013. “When Is Migration Voluntary?” International Migration Review 47 (4): 783–813. Park, A. S. 1993. The Wounded Heart of God: The Asian Concept of Han and the Christian Doctrine of Sin. Nashville: Abingdon. Park, Kyeyoung. 1997. The Korean American Dream: Immigrants and Small Business in New York City. Anthropology of Con­temporary Issues. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Park, Kyeongsu. 2020. “Taryeong.” In Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Culture. National Folk Museum of K ­ orea. Accessed March 31, 2020. https://­folkency​.n ­ fm​.­go​.­k r​/­k r​/­topic​/d ­ etail​ /­1020​.­Said, E. W. 2003. Orientalism. 25th anniversary ed., with a new preface by the author. New York: Vintage Books. Schinkel, W. 2019. “Migration Studies: An Imposition.” Comparative Migration Studies 7 (1). https://­doi​.o ­ rg​/1­ 0​.­1186​/­s40878​-­019​-0 ­ 136​-­4 . Sunoo, S. S. 2002. Korean Picture Brides: 1903–1920; A Collection of Oral Histories. Philadelphia: Xlibris. Uchida, A. 1998. “The Orientalization of Asian ­Women in Amer­i­ca.” ­Women’s Studies International Forum 21 (2): 161–174. Vora, N. 2013. Impossible Citizens: Dubai’s Indian Diaspora. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Wilson, R., and A. Dirlik, eds.1995. Asia/Pacific as Space of Cultural Production. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Yoo, C.-­I. 1990. “Research Notes: Life History and Sinsetareong, Prob­lems on Data and Text.” Korean Cultural Anthropology 22: 301–308. —­—— ­ . 1993. “Life Histories of Two Korean W ­ omen Who Marry American GIs.” PhD diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-­Champaign. Yoon, I.-­J. 1997. On My Own: Korean Businesses and Race Relations in Amer­i­ca. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Yuh, J.-­Y. 2002. Beyond the Shadow of Camptown: Korean Military Brides in Amer­i­ca. Nation of Newcomers. New York: New York University Press. Zheng, R. 2016. “Why Yellow Fever I­ sn’t Flattering: A Case against Racial Fetishes.” Journal of the American Philosophical Association 2 (3): 400–419. Zhou, Y., and P. Bryant. 2016. “Lotus Blossom or Dragon Lady: A Content Analy­sis of ‘Asian ­Women’ Online Pornography.” Sexuality and Culture: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly 20 (4): 1083–1100.

4 What Do States Regulate When They Regulate Spousal Migration? A Study of France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Denmark H E L E N A W R AY

What do controls over spousal migration do beyond ensuring that rights to ­family reunification are not abused?1 This chapter shows that immigration laws in the United Kingdom, France, Denmark, and the United States increasingly select marriage mi­grants instrumentally irrespective of affective or other claims for entry. Further, ­because spousal migration uniquely flows from the choice of a citizen or resident, spousal migration controls can impose norms as to the intimate life of the ­couple or their personal characteristics (e.g., ­whether they live together, their age, and their financial standing) that would be unacceptable outside the immigration context but which leech into the wider social context.2 As global travel and thus transnational relationships have become a normal part of life for millions, spousal migration has moved further into the mainstream of national life, enhancing the reach and power of this normativity. While controls cannot regulate ­these ­matters for the w ­ hole population, they may frame discussion of what constitutes an acceptable ­family life or a good citizen. The regulation of marriage migration has become central to shaping and securing the nation beyond immigration considerations. This chapter argues that spousal migration controls act upon three overlapping social domains. First, they reinforce immigration controls generally, ensuring that mi­grants perceived as less desirable are excluded. Second, they promote certain conceptions of marriage and intimacy, and, third, they contribute to the construction of models of citizenship. The chapter begins by showing that the difficulties involved in regulating migration mean that controls often appear contradictory but that opportunities emerge from ­these contradictions. It then discusses how marriage migration controls may extend their reach, using examples from the four countries u ­ nder discussion, that is, the United Kingdom, France, Denmark and the United States. They ­ were chosen ­ because of 87

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crosscutting similarities and differences. The Eu­ro­pean states have legislated on spousal immigration more extensively than the United States, although not in identical ways. France and the United Kingdom share a major imperial history, but Denmark did not have a significant empire, and the United States emerged as a settler society. Fi­nally, the ­legal regimes in Denmark, the United States, and France are subject to constitutional norms unlike in the United Kingdom, where fundamental rights depend on the common law and ordinary legislation. Only one aspect of the U.S. system is discussed ­here, namely, its regulation of sham marriages. Despite its relatively sketchy treatment ­here, the inclusion of the United States is justified as highlighting how differently marriage migration resonates, even in states other­wise preoccupied with immigration. The United States has historically encouraged f­ amily migration and remains less preoccupied than many Eu­ro­pean states with minimizing cultural difference through immigration controls; Donald J. Trump’s administration’s “disdain” for ­family migration seemed to be expressed primarily through economic conditions (see Macklin, in this volume). The United States can also limit some spousal migration through the quota system. Supranational and constitutional laws have a negligible impact on domestic proceedings, so that the types of reasoning familiar to Eu­ro­pean ­lawyers have ­little purchase (see Abrams and Pham, in this volume). While the U.S. immigration system is complex and contested, controls over marriage migration seem to be less instrumentalized than in the Eu­ro­pean states, supporting the suggestion made in the chapter’s conclusion that the multiplicity of pressures on Eu­ro­pean states is material to its complexity.3

The Regulation of Spousal Immigration as a Prob­lem and an Opportunity Immigration control is central to the narrative, functioning, and security of modern states that remain the principal actor in the creation and implementation of control, through which an extraordinary accumulation of powers and technologies may be legitimized (Bigo 2002, S66–67). However, the quantity of legislation in the past forty years suggests both that immigration is resistant to regulation and that regulation creates a momentum u ­ nder which new restrictions rapidly become normal and routine, necessitating still more controls (­Castles 2004, 205). In the four countries discussed h ­ ere, the rate of legislative change began to accelerate in the 1970s (the United States), 1980s (France and the United Kingdom), and 1990s (Denmark), and the quantity of law is remarkable. For example, Denmark’s government legislated just on mi­grant integration in 1999, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2015, and 2018. Changes have mostly been in the direction of tighter controls. Public hostility ­toward immigration has increased over this period, and remaining passive was not seen as an option for



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governments; levels of trust in politicians are connected to their management of migration (Andreescu 2011, 62; McLaren 2012). However, legislation often seems to address repeatedly the same (perceived) prob­lem, that too many of the wrong type of mi­grants gain entry. The politics of immigration restrict the range of legitimate and feasible policy responses, and implementation may be hindered by multiple pressures including from state bureaucracies, civil society, and constitutional or supranational ­legal norms (Bonjour 2011, 90–94). Apparently in­effec­tive policies may thus represent the best means available of balancing competing interests and pressures, and governments may deliberately fudge irreconcilable tensions through apparently inconsistent policies (Boswell 2007, 93; C ­ astles 2004, 214–215). Spousal immigration involves a claim by a citizen or resident, making it especially problematic. For many years, this feature was invisible as, in all four countries discussed h ­ ere, married w ­ omen took their husband’s nationality, and binational families had no l­ egal existence.4 Even a ­ fter nationality laws changed, marriages between citizens and aliens w ­ ere sufficiently unusual that they did not require much regulation. When it became apparent in the Eu­ro­pean states discussed ­here that mi­grant workers w ­ ere to be permanent residents and ­future citizens, f­amily reunification remained desirable for containing male mi­grant sexuality, and as a ­limited, onetime phenomenon; it was assumed that ­future generations would marry in-­country (Bonjour and Kraler 2015, 1409; Wray 2011, chap. 3). In the United States, spousal migration was also seen as the natu­ral consequence of ­labor migration (Abrams 2013, 10–12). The regulation of spousal migration therefore, to the extent it existed at all, stood apart from mainstream immigration control. The heavy lifting in terms of exclusion and se­lection was done elsewhere. This conceptual separation between ­labor and marriage migration was unsustainable, particularly within Western and Northern Eu­rope. Not all workers ­were male and not all spouses ­were female and eco­nom­ically inactive (Kofman 2004). As ­labor migration routes closed, husbands, in par­tic­u­lar, ­were suspected of exploiting the ­family route. As mi­grants’ ­children grew up, some chose partners in the ancestral country of origin, and spousal migration became an apparently self-­perpetuating stream. Even worse, this was a conscious choice, seen as reinforcing oppressive gender, sexual, and ­family norms and bearing on expensive welfare regimes and public ser­v ices. Globalization increased mobility both outward, as citizens traveled abroad and met foreign spouses, and inward, with large increases, from the late 1980s on, in irregular mi­grants and asylum seekers who formed relationships with citizens and claimed residence rights. As the consensus around welfare and the availability of low-­skilled work declined, spousal migration came to be seen as a channel of entry for ­those who might contribute ­little but risked reproducing poverty, educational underachievement, and welfare dependence in succeeding generations.

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­There is thus a gap between government priorities and citizens’ expectations of living in their own home with their spouse, which cannot be satisfactorily bridged only through the language of economic contribution and cultural similarity. As Audrey Macklin (this volume) discusses, t­ here cannot be too g ­ reat an incongruity between policy aims and government claims to be “­family friendly.” In liberal states, government legitimacy derives from its vis­i­ble adherence to values such as nondiscrimination and justice, and ­these may be further entrenched by constitutional norms or, in the case of the Eu­ro­pean states discussed ­here, supranational law. The effects of ­human rights and Eu­ro­pean Union (EU) ­free movement law on Eu­ro­pean citizens and their ­family members have been well documented, but the relationship goes beyond the vertical imposition of legally binding norms. In France, the constitutional commitment to ­family life, seen as a way to meet the obligations in Article 8 of the Eu­ro­pean Convention on H ­ uman Rights, represents a stronger commitment than required by the Article 8 jurisprudence (Bonjour 2010, 313–314). In the United Kingdom, domestic courts ­were, for a period, active in developing a domestic Article 8 jurisprudence (Wray 2013). Throughout the EU, the F ­ amily Reunification Directive has ­shaped national systems beyond its strict requirements, becoming a de facto floor for citizens (Wray, Agoston, and Hutton 2014). More indirectly still, the relative powerlessness of states in re­spect of EU ­free movement has made the effectiveness of national immigration control correspondingly more significant. F ­ amily migration has historically been less contested in the United States, although it is still prominent and controversial, and policy reflects the fraught politics of immigration. Long-­term residents, for instance, who have committed minor criminal offenses, sometimes many years previously, can be deported irrespective of the effect on citizen ­family members, a policy that has attracted wide criticism (Meng 2015). All governments must perform a multifaceted balancing act in which security interests are reconciled with citizens’ rights-­based claims. In practice, most states, even if they aim to minimize immigration, permit some spousal migration, but expansive controls that permit significant state intervention over private ­matters are deemed to be in the public interest and are relatively immune from judicial and even legislative scrutiny.5 Concerns about the vulnerable subject (to forced marriage, emotional exploitation, or gender in­equality) and the exploitative or inassimilable mi­grant (entering sham marriages, claiming welfare) mean that controls can be configured innovatively. ­These opportunities partially compensate for the obligations on states in re­spect of such mi­grants, and, by rejecting some citizens’ marital choices, a message can also be sent to the wider population, w ­ hether generally or sections of it, when a more direct attack would be criticized as unfair or discriminatory. Rights-­based constraints should not be overstated; they are often not strong in formal terms and are implemented in ways that give government some



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leeway. The Eu­ro­pean Court of Justice has rigorously enforced EU ­free movement but has been more flexible on the F ­ amily Reunification Directive, approving, for example, some pre-­entry integration mea­sures.6 The Eu­ro­pean Court of ­Human Rights awards a wide margin of appreciation in Article 8 immigration cases. Eu­ro­pean states must frame controls and practice within supranational norms, but if they do so successfully, and they often can, they retain considerable freedom of maneuver while ensuring legitimacy. In this context, and particularly in Eu­rope, complex or confusing policies may serve ends that cannot be overtly avowed or incidental effects are tolerated or endorsed ­because they reflect widely shared values.

The Securitization of Marriage Migration Controls For the past twenty years, regulation of marriage migration in the three Eu­ro­ pean states has moved closer to ­labor migration control, with the advent of language and integration tests, enhanced financial criteria, and increased penalization of irregular mi­grants (Kofman 2018; Block 2015), turning admission into a prolonged and elaborate pro­cess of border crossing. This has been less evident in the United States, but the introduction of a two-­year conditional residency period, although moderate by Eu­ro­pean standards, reflects some increase in disquiet. States cannot openly treat spousal mi­grants as ­labor mi­grants. Their control must be justified on its own terms consistent with values of ­family unity and nondiscrimination. In consequence, regulation often focuses on apparent defects in the marriage or the parties, such as the lack of an intimate shared life or the mi­grant spouse’s poor language skills, rather than on the need to restrict immigration. Discursive slippage, by which a specific and ­limited concern becomes a generalized prob­lem that demands a generalized solution, means that policies which enable the se­lection of fewer or more educated and less culturally dif­fer­ent spouses are described as promoting integration, preventing forced or sham marriage, or protecting the welfare of ­children.7 This is often successful, even if the justifications are unconvincing on close examination. This slippage is exemplified by the implementation of language testing for spouses entering the United Kingdom. In 2010, the U.K. government introduced a pre-­entry language test for spouses and partners set at level A1 of the Common Eu­ro­pean Framework of Reference for Languages (the lowest mea­sur­able level) in speaking and listening (Council of Eu­rope 2020). The test had been proposed in 2007 by the previous government and postponed b ­ ecause of lack of tuition and testing centers but was implemented by a new government without t­ hese concerns being addressed. Implementation was against the background of an explicit drive to reduce immigration and increase selectivity (Green 2010). While the modest nature of the test preempted claims of ulterior motives, passing it

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was not straightforward in practice. Candidates often had to sit for a more advanced test or one that demanded En­glish literacy even though this was not officially required. ­There was also an inadequate supply of suitable tuition, with ­those in rural areas having par­tic­u­lar difficulties. ­There has been some improvement since then, but the need to find suitable tuition and testing means that financial and other resources are tested.8 In a ­legal challenge, applicants argued that the existence of a widespread language deficit in mi­grant spouses was unproved and that the low level of the test anyway made its benefits nugatory while the difficulties in taking and passing it created a formidable obstacle for some. The United Kingdom’s Supreme Court found that the benefits w ­ ere modest, but the test was lawful if implemented flexibly so as to protect the ­family life of ­those unable to pass it.9 Even so, the proven benefits w ­ ere meager, while the po­liti­cal context and mode of implementation suggested a wider gatekeeping function (Blackledge 2016; Shohamy 2009). A control impetus can also be seen in mea­sures against so-­called sham marriages. Betty de Hart (this volume) shows how states have long viewed the sham marriage as a threat to the nation. While the way that the threat is framed has changed over time, common features are racialized and gendered fears about corruption of the intimate sphere. Invoking ­these fears permits the designation of mi­grants as manipulative, opportunistic, or insufficiently committed, even when the common characteristics of a marriage—­cohabitation, sexual relationship, shared finances, and so on—­a re pre­sent. The label can be attached to almost any stigmatized marriage and enables immigration control considerations to be imported into the spousal migration domain (Wray 2015). This is demonstrated by mea­sures in France to control sham marriages. France has a history of relatively open immigration, and attempts to control ­family migration began only in the 1990s (see Bonjour and Ourabah, this volume). ­There is a constitutional right to ­family unity that is regarded as absolute for citizens.10 One consequence is that the French government ­will not refuse admission a ­ fter failure to meet pre-­entry integration conditions (Pascouau 2010, 177–182).11 In addition, nationals of Algeria and Tunisia benefit from bilateral agreements, and nationals of all Maghreb countries and some African states are subject to dif­fer­ent rules (GISTI 2011, 4–5). Unlike the other three countries considered h ­ ere, France is bound by the F ­ amily Reunification Directive. As the government could not implement stringent official controls, administrative and bureaucratic obstacles w ­ ere introduced into almost e ­ very stage of the migration pro­cess in the name of preventing sham marriages (for some sense of the impact of ­these, see Odasso and Salcedo Robledo, this volume). Between 1973 and 2011, the route to settlement and naturalization in France was tightened several times on the pretext of combating fraud. The concept of the mariage gris, or escroquerie sentimentale à but migratoire, which pre­sents the



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French citizen as the victim of unilateral deception, permits malign motives to be ascribed retrospectively, even ­after cohabitation and the birth of ­children.12 ­There is a par­tic­u­lar focus around the time of marriage, as the spouse of a French citizen may not be removed once the parties have married and lived together for three years, although official status may be refused, resulting in ­legal limbo.13 Controls include a compulsory premarriage interview whose official aim is to check freedom to marry and for a forced or sham marriage, but the contents are not regulated, and in­ de­ pen­ dent interpreters and representatives are not permitted (although an interpreter may be imposed). A suspected sham marriage w ­ ill be referred for investigation, and if this finds against the parties, it cannot proceed (GISTI 2011; 2009, 7). Reports describe how t­hese procedures are used to prevent marriages involving irregular mi­ grants on flimsy or improbable grounds. The courts have reversed refusals on the basis only of irregular status, conflicting minor details, or recent divorce from another irregular mi­grant (GISTI 2009, 12–17). Even if a sham marriage is not found, the investigation enables in-­country immigration control, a facet of control that has become increasingly impor­tant in recent times. ­There are numerous reports of mi­grants being detained before or on the wedding day, and, once expelled, return is difficult (GISTI 2009, 12–17). A French national marrying abroad must obtain a certificate of capacity to marry, which requires a similar interview to that conducted in France, with similar consequences. While marriage abroad cannot be prevented, failure to obtain the certificate is an obstacle to admission and status in France. Allegations of a sham marriage are also made a ­ fter marriage on application for a first or renewed residence permit, and a marriage may occasionally be forcibly annulled on grounds of fraud (GISTI 2009, 33–34). It seems that the sham marriage must do a lot of control work in France ­because other means of restriction are not available. In the United Kingdom, the sham marriage has also been significant. The postcolonial immigration of the 1950s and 1960s was largely controlled by the mid-1970s, but new pressures in the 1990s made irregular migration a symbolic issue of government competence. The ability to prevent marriages from taking place was critical, as rights ­after marriage are stronger ­under EU and h ­ uman rights law (Wray 2006). The government therefore turned to premarriage controls in the name of preventing sham marriages. Parliamentarians admitted that the first major attempt, the “certificates of approval” scheme implemented in 2005, was linked to inhibiting the exercise of post-­marriage rights (Wray 2006, 313–317). Almost all non–­ European Economic Area mi­grants without permanent status had to apply, at considerable cost, for permission to marry, which was routinely refused on the basis of immigration status. The scheme found­ered ­after adverse ­legal judgments found breaches of the Eu­ro­pean Convention on ­Human Rights Article 12, the right to marry and found a ­family, and Article 14, freedom from discrimination (due to exemption of Church of ­England marriages).14

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The Immigration Act 2014 created a new scheme that resembled the French model. Registrars refer all marriages involving non-­EU nonnationals without permanent status for pos­si­ble investigation. If it is concluded that a marriage is not sham, the wedding may proceed. However, the under­lying immigration control function is still evident. Immigration status is a major ­factor in deciding w ­ hether to investigate, and, even without a sham marriage finding, enforcement proceedings may ensue (Home Office 2015, 14). ­These had previously often been initiated during the wedding, leading to adverse publicity (Wray 2015). This has been reduced now that intervention happens before the ceremony and away from the public gaze. The sham marriage is a complex and culturally laden concept with ­little agreed content. True detection is time-­consuming and intrusive. In Denmark, the other Eu­ro­pean state discussed ­here, the issue has less salience, although marriage migration is a major policy concern. It seems likely that the success of other control methods have made it unnecessary. In both France and the United Kingdom, the primary concern seems to be not to detect fraud but to use the indeterminacy of the sham marriage to reassert sovereignty over admission and expulsion.

Controlling Intimacy and Marriage Security is concerned not only with economic and physical safety but also with identity and culture. The priority now awarded to personal autonomy in relationships between citizens means that immigration control provides a rare opportunity to articulate expectations about marriage beyond the l­egal minimums for validity. The price of seeking the admission of a nonnational partner is scrutiny that does not occur and would not be tolerated elsewhere (on the significance of a sexual relationship to Canadian decisions, see, e.g., Challborn and Harder 2019). ­There is an extensive lit­er­a­t ure examining how this places relationships on a shifting hierarchy, reflecting wider national, racial, and gender hierarchies (Block 2015; Wray 2011; Schmidt 2011). Less discussed is how it resonates for the wider population, effectively delineating the template of an ideal relationship. Ac­cep­tance or rejection in immigration law is a power­f ul official judgment that reflects on mi­grants, their citizen spouses, and, indirectly, their f­ amily, associates, and beyond. The failure u ­ ntil 2013 of U.S. immigration law to recognize same-­sex relationships caused gay and lesbian U.S. citizens in binational relationships to feel exiled both literally and figuratively, leading to sustained campaigning in the wider lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community (Klekowski von Koppenfels and Williams 2015). British families of South Asian descent experienced personal rejection when their ­family norms ­were dismissed by the immigration system in the 1970s–1990s (Menski 1999). To an extent, therefore, immigration controls over marriage regulate, in



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the word’s other sense of “calibrate,” relationships among the wider population, providing a standard against which they can be mea­sured. This may be an accidental side effect or an attempt to steer sections of the population to a preferred model. Both t­ hese aspects are illustrated h ­ ere through the contrasting examples of the United States and Denmark. ­Family migration is the “cornerstone” of modern U.S. immigration policy, but t­ here has been huge concern about sham marriage (Abrams 2013, 15). Evidence to Congress, l­ater shown to be exaggerated, that 30 ­percent of all marriages involving immigration w ­ ere fraudulent enabled passage of the 1986 marriage fraud amendments. Despite this lack of convincing evidence, the necessity of such mea­sures is now widely accepted, and they can be expansively applied (Chetrit 2012, 712). Applicants must show a “valid and subsisting marriage” on initial application, and if marriages occurred less than two years previously, residence is conditional for the first two years, being revocable if the marriage was “entered into for the purpose of procuring . . . ​admission as an immigrant.” 15 The marriage is tested again a ­ fter two years when an application is made for unconditional residence.16 The test of the “purpose” of the marriage is broad and may be applied to ­those building a life together but who had an immigration motive for their marriage (Abrams 2012). Par­tic­u­lar kinds of evidence of a genuine marriage, such as joint property and financial rec­ords, are commonly expected, and ­factors likely to trigger investigation include age disparities, absence of a common language, lack of awareness of the marriage among ­family and friends, marriage between ­family friends, arrangement by a third party, absence of post-­marriage cohabitation, and “unusual” cultural characteristics (Chetrit 2012, 725). Once a marriage is ­under investigation, avoiding a fraud finding requires “a traditionally palatable marriage . . . ​an antiquated standard that even most Americans t­ oday would not meet” (Chetrit 2012, 709, 723). A specialist website advises that, in the eyes of the U.S. government, “the ‘normal’ married c ­ ouple has a fair amount in common. They share a language and religion. They live together and do t­ hings together, like take vacations, celebrate impor­tant events, birthdays, and holidays, join clubs or gyms, and have sex and ­children. Typical ­couples also combine financial and other aspects of their lives ­after marriage. They demonstrate their trust in one another by sharing bank and credit card accounts and owner­ship of property, such as cars and ­houses. They celebrate each ­others’ birthdays and meet each o ­ thers’ families” (Bray 2020). Interviews may be held together or separately, answers to detailed questions ­w ill be compared and the parties challenged on discrepancies. It is easy to see how ­couples who are unobservant of minor details about their joint life may fail. Suspect be­hav­iors include “extreme ner­vous­ness” and even an attorney’s intervention (Chetrit 2012, 726). Reports of interviews suggest cultural assumptions about how spouses interact and intimate questioning. Unannounced spot-­checks

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may also be made at homes, and social networking sites may be monitored (Chetrit 2012, 720–721). ­These intrusive and unreliable techniques have been associated with false findings, while an outmoded view of ­family life means that unconventional ­couples are at par­tic­u­lar risk and ­there is the temptation to manufacture the approved conditions (Chetrit 2012, 721–722, 726–732; Abrams 2007, 1691–1692). Immigration through marriage is seen to bring significant benefits (Abrams 2013, 15–16, 24–25), and f­ amily migration became subject to more scrutiny u ­ nder the Trump regime (Abrams and Pham, this volume). With the bound­a ries between a genuine and sham marriage so difficult to discern, detecting fraud can rapidly become a question of the “quality” of the marriage, potentially excluding the aty­pi­cal, culturally dif­fer­ent, and naive as well as or instead of the fraudulent. The immigration authorities endorse social anxiety about the instrumentalization of marriage by promoting a par­tic­u­lar version of a “true” marriage and the ideal is a “pure relationship,” founded on equality, intimacy, and Eu­ro­pean values of modernity and individualism (D’Aoust 2013, 112). This is reinforced through self-­policing and conscious per­for­mance by applicants themselves (Longo 2018; Scheel and Gutekunst 2019). Immigration laws thus absorb and amplify norms that frame public understanding of what marriage should be. U.S. marriage fraud investigations ­were not designed with this function in mind, but it is a consequence of the routine application of subjective standards. In contrast, marriage migration controls in Denmark have a clearer disciplinary motive as regards Denmark’s Muslim population as a w ­ hole, even if this has not been explic­itly stated. Previously culturally and ethnically homogeneous, Denmark expected the ­children of postwar ­labor mi­grants to marry in-­country and did not anticipate permanent family-­based migration (Schmidt 2011, 258). Denmark shares the Scandinavian notion of equality as an “­imagined sameness,” which can easily transform into a “civic nationalism” conflating democracy and equality with Danish culture (Mouritsen et al. 2009, 24–26). ­These combined with anxiety about welfare reliance, given Denmark’s expansive system and regulated l­abor market, so that culturally dissimilar, specifically Muslim, immigration became associated with oppressive values, low-­skilled workers, large families, and welfare de­pen­dency (Ersbøll 2015, 109–112; Mouritsen et al. 2009, 11–15; Schmidt 2011, 258). The result has been a never-­ending debate about “integration” tantamount to a demand for assimilation and a public discourse that implies or asserts cultural superiority. Enlightened, morally rigorous values are contrasted with the presumed moral relativism of multiculturalism, a binary that stigmatizes an entire culture and has been ­adopted by mainstream and even left-­w ing politicians as well as the Far Right (Mouritsen et al. 2009, 19–28). The result is a set of immigration controls that, from the mid-1980s onward, have made Denmark



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among the most restrictive countries in the world for spousal migration. ­These aim to discipline the Muslim population into adopting marriage patterns that more closely resemble t­ hose of the majority, regulation that is other­w ise difficult in a liberal state and which sends a power­f ul message beyond the immigration sphere. Three mea­sures in par­tic­u­lar have challenged dif­fer­ent norms of ­family life: (1) the age requirement; (2) the “combined attachment” condition that was removed in 2018; and (3) the “rule of presumption” in consanguineous marriages. The effective minimum age for both entry and sponsorship has been twenty-­four since 2002, the highest in Eu­rope. The average age of marriage in Denmark is over thirty (although ethnic majority c ­ ouples often cohabit without marrying), and this minimum mainly affects Denmark’s ethnic minorities. The “combined attachment” requirement obliged parties to show that their combined connection to Denmark was greater than to another country, a criterion that principally trapped ­those with an immigration background, requiring that they subsume any prior attachments in the ser­vice of the Danish state (Bissenbakker 2019). An exemption for t­ hose who had lived in Denmark or held Danish citizenship for more than twenty-­six years, assisting older Danes and t­hose who lived abroad, was found by the ­Grand Chamber of the Eu­ro­pean Court of ­Human Rights to discriminate by ethnic origin.17 In consequence, with some reluctance, the attachment requirement itself was removed from Danish law in 2018 and replaced by a new range of onerous individual conditions (New to Denmark 2018). Fi­nally, the “rule of presumption” treats all marriages involving relatives as forced, and the spouse w ­ ill normally be refused, particularly where t­ here is l­ ittle prior contact (i.e., the majority). The rule is unrelated to the ge­ne­tic risks of first-­cousin marriages, as it extends to t­ hose sharing a common great-­great-­ grandparent. While, in theory, ­there is not an absolute ban, in practice it is almost impossible to persuade an immigration officer that a consanguineous marriage is voluntary, although appeals sometimes succeed. The evidential basis for the presumption is thin, and coercion is inferred from the circumstances of the marriage (Liversage and Rytter 2015). ­These mea­sures have affected young ethnic minority Danes far more than other groups. They go to the heart of practices in ­those groups that conflict with majority Danish norms: young, transnational, arranged, consanguineous marriages. T ­ here is ­little doubt that this was the intention, and it is also pos­si­ble that Danish Muslims have responded. While some have sought to avoid the laws, usually by moving to another Eu­ro­pean state, ­there is also evidence that marriage patterns have changed. Fewer international marriages are taking place, and ­there is a trend t­ oward lower rates and a higher age of marriage among young ­people with ethnic minority backgrounds (although rising levels of education may also be a ­factor; Liversage and Ottesen 2014; see also Eggebø and Brekke 2019).

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Modeling Citizenship Marriage migration controls have been shown ­here to shed light on whose admission is desirable and which marriages are acceptable from the perspective of national governments. In so d ­ oing, controls both protect and proj­ect a version of membership. Garbi Schmidt (2011, 272) observes of Denmark that “whom one marries has . . . ​also become a practice defining who you are as a citizen.” Marriage has repercussions for relations between state and citizen, and, as with marriage and intimacy, migration controls enable governments to articulate with relative freedom their preferred version of this relationship. Spousal mi­grants are usually permanent and share responsibility for raising the next generation of citizens. Their regulation thus contributes to nation building, and it is both the mi­grant and the citizen who are regulated. To live with their spouse, citizens must meet conditions and norms that apply only in that context. As controls have become more stratified, so implicitly has the citizen spouse’s belonging, revealing much about how governments conceive citizenship generally. Spousal migration controls in the United Kingdom have become more intrusive and normative during the past fifteen years. In 2009, the L ­ abour government legislated for but did not implement a prescribed “path to citizenship” for spouses, but this unwieldy scheme of “civic nationalism” did not survive the 2010 change of government.18 Subsequent controls are even more telling. From 2010 on, the United Kingdom’s government aimed not only to reduce “net migration” but also to be more selective, to have “better ­family migration.” 19 New mea­sures have been wide-­ranging and include questions of “suitability,” financial standing, English-­language competence, and showing a “genuine” marriage. The route to a permanent status has become longer and more difficult than before. Critiques have often focused on the gender and ethnic dimensions of control for citizen sponsors, but the new model citizen is also an economic agent (Block 2015; Kofman 2018). The most significant and controversial of current U.K. rules is the requirement for the sponsor to have e ­ ither an income of at least £18,600 per annum (more if ­children are also sponsored) or significant financial capital.20 The policy was justified as preventing recourse to welfare, but ­there is no substantive evidence to support this claim, and it is likely to be counterproductive ­because single ­people, parents in par­tic­u­lar, are more likely than ­couples to need support (Wray et al. 2015, 75–80). The suspicion that the main focus is elsewhere is strengthened by the exclusion of support from third parties except for substantial long-­term capital transfers.21 Small regular financial contributions that relatives on modest incomes might make are not counted. This was ­because: “We want the sponsor or the ­couple to demonstrate sufficient, in­de­pen­dent financial standing, with adequate resources u ­ nder their own control not somebody ­else’s” (Home Office 2012, 20).



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In effect, financial self-­ sufficiency must derive from the ­ couple’s own resources and not through membership of a collective unit. This individualistic perspective rejects not only the extended ­family common in some communities but also the intergenerational support that many parents give their adult ­children. The requirement that both mi­grant and sponsor be f­ree from the taint of de­pen­dency reflects the reemergence in recent years of a contractarian view of citizenship, vis­i­ble also in welfare reforms, which see membership rights as contingent on the citizen’s own positive commitment to economic self-­sufficiency (Larkin 2014). Such a perspective both discounts noneconomic contributions and ignores the differential impact of a single mea­sure. A salary of £18,600 may be attainable for many in the United Kingdom’s prosperous regions but impossible for ­those not so situated, irrespective of their diligence (Wray et al. 2015, 59–64), exemplifying the argument made by Eleonore Kofman (2018) and o ­ thers that class is an underanalyzed dimension of ­family migration controls. However, class is h ­ ere assessed only through financial standing, a reckoning that is even more brutal than the “­human capital citizenship” posited by Antje Ellermann (2020). Citizens h ­ ere are conceptualized as autonomous economic agents, the “neoliberal citizens” for whom in­equality is a structural feature of their existence (Hindess 2002). They must bear the consequences of their eco­nom­ically weak position, and the state is not required to facilitate their ­family life. Disclaimers of responsibility t­ oward t­ hose who marry overseas partners “unwisely” are not new but previously applied overwhelmingly to the United Kingdom’s ethnic minorities (Wray 2011). The income requirement cuts across traditional demarcations and applies to a wide cross-­section of the population. U ­ ntil the government was forced to make minor concessions by the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court, the only partial exemptions ­were for disabled adults or carers and, in very ­limited circumstances, the parents of minor ­children.22 It reflects government’s willingness to tolerate chronically disadvantaged and disenfranchised citizens ­toward whom t­ here is no duty of mitigation. Controls in France, in contrast, conceive the relationship between citizen and state differently, with a focus, since the late 1980s, on cultural assimilation and national identity (Bonjour and Ourabah, this volume). On application for a visa, spouses ­under sixty-­five are tested on their oral and written French and their knowledge of “republican values” such as gender equality, laïcité, and re­spect for rights. If ­either component is failed, they must follow ­f ree courses in the country of origin, followed by a reevaluation. If still unsuccessful, entry is not further delayed u ­ nless it is determined that the sponsor does not adhere to the “essential princi­ples that . . . ​ govern ­family in France.” 23 ­ These include monogamy, gender equality and re­spect for the physical integrity of c ­ hildren, freedom of marriage, education, and ethnic and religious difference (GISTI 2012, 14–15).

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Since 2007, spousal mi­grants without preexisting French education must enter an integration contract on arrival.24 This requires participation in and satisfactory completion of language courses, if needed, and civic education. Entering the contract is a precondition for renewal of residence permits, and compliance is monitored locally by mayors (INTEC 2010; Pascouau 2010, 163–172). Obtaining a long-­term residence card is conditional on integration, assessed with regard to adherence to republican values, language knowledge, and completion of the integration contract. While ­there have been no reports of refusals of long residence on this basis, the same is not true for naturalization (INTEC 2010, 15). A 2005 circular permitted refusal if ­family or personal conduct contradicted French values, but, u ­ ntil 2008, refusals based on personal conduct such as wearing a veil or head­scarf ­were not upheld (Bertossi and Hajjat 2013, 33; INTEC 2010, 3). In that year, in the Mme M case, the Conseil d’Etat upheld the naturalization refusal of a Muslim w ­ oman ­because her “radical” practice of Islam (wearing a niqab and relative seclusion) was incompatible with French values, notably gender equality (Mullally 2011, 40–41). Since then, reasons for refusal have included “incorrect” responses to questions about headscarves, separate swimming sessions for w ­ omen or w ­ hether a wife should travel without her husband, polygamy or public statements hostile to laïcité (GISTI 2012, 1–2, 36–37). The French integration pro­cess for spouses, from admission to naturalization, has become a way to promote and defend republican, secular values (Bertossi and Hajjat 2013, 32), implying a dif­fer­ent relationship between citizen and state to that in the United Kingdom. Although both states impose financial criteria and language and knowledge tests, the emphasis differs. The French model reflects values of republican universalism, membership of a po­liti­cal community, and adherence to a set of common state-­sanctioned values. Prior commitment to ­these values is required before the emotional relationship between the parties can be valorized. The British approach reflects precisely the opposite, the absence of such a tradition combined with a hierarchical po­liti­cal structure, resulting in a thinner, monetarized concept of membership. The state is largely indifferent to questions of emotional attachment provided material conditions are met.25 In this way, the approaches t­oward spousal mi­grants discussed ­here are connected to broader ideological commitments directed at all citizens. Neoliberal  U.K. governments have embraced the “precarious” citizen as they have the “precarious” mi­grant. France has put in place prohibitions on religious symbols and forms of dress associated with observant Islam (Mullally 2011). The immigration pro­cess offers an exaggerated version of each citizenship model, ­going further than is pos­si­ble for citizens not liable to increased regulation through marrying a foreigner. The rules on marriage are revealing about each government’s ideal conception of citizenship while suggesting ­these are contested in the mainstream of



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national life, so that it is more easily expressed at the less power­ful margins. Even so, the blurring of bound­aries between mi­grant and citizen in spousal migration means that it has a deeper resonance than most mea­sures aimed at mi­grants and may also engender more sustained internal opposition.

Conclusion The regulation of spousal migration often appears overinclusive, disproportionate, or in­effec­tive, but it can still do many ­things, and it may be to governments’ advantage that ­these are not always easily discernible. By focusing, however unconvincingly, on the presumed deficits of the parties or of the marriage, governments can pre­sent immigration controls as motivated by concerns about integration, familial abuse, or fraud. They may thereby defeat countervailing values such as ­ family unity, nondiscrimination, and the interests of ­ children. Spousal migration controls also provide an arena in which governments can articulate, deliberately or other­wise, normative expectations that it cannot apply to the wider population, revealing how governments might prefer, if they w ­ ere ­f ree to do so, to regulate both intimate relationships and relationships between the citizen and the state. The Eu­ro­pean states discussed ­here have accepted substantial ­family migration with some reluctance and are governed by ­human rights and EU ­legal norms. The analy­sis suggests that additional purposes lie ­behind the stated objectives. The analy­sis of U.S. marriage fraud controls suggests that their wider normativity is a by-­product rather than a central but semi-­covert purpose. It seems that the need to make spousal migration controls do more than might normally be expected of them is less pronounced. It is plausible, although this cannot be pursued ­here, that this is connected to the dif­fer­ent place that immigration occupies in the construction of U.S. national identity and to the United States’ freedom from obligations u ­ nder supranational l­egal norms. The regulation of marriage migration has become a major issue b ­ ecause it both is difficult and invokes wider concerns about who belongs, how they belong, and the bound­a ries of state power over the intimate lives of citizens and mi­grants. Policies, even if they seem fluid, complex, and contradictory, speak eloquently to t­ hese concerns ­under scrutiny. The regulation of spousal migration becomes, on this view, a prism through which the questions of security, citizenship, and rights explored in this volume are refracted.

Acknowl­edgments The investigation of national regimes was funded by the Nuffield Foundation. The information in this chapter was last updated in March 2021.

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NOTES

1. Spousal migration is migration where a relationship with a citizen or long-­term resident founds the claim to enter or remain. 2. Long-­term residents usually have similar but not always identical rights to sponsor spouses. 3. This chapter was drafted when the United Kingdom was still a member of the Eu­ro­ pean Union (EU) and revised during the transitional period, when EU rules still applied within the United Kingdom, although on a dif­fer­ent l­egal basis. The f­uture relationship with the EU remains uncertain, but it is unlikely that the ­f ree movement rules discussed ­here w ­ ill be retained. 4. On the United States, see Abrams (2013); on Denmark, see Ersbøll (2015, 8–16); on France, see Bertossi and Hajjat (2013, 7–12); on the United Kingdom, see Wray (2011, chap. 2). 5. For example, ­under the U.S. plenary power doctrine, immigration laws are subject only to l­imited judicial review; see Martin (2015). U.K. immigration rules are subject to only ­limited legislative scrutiny (Immigration Act 1971, § 3(4)). 6. Case C-153/14, Minister van Buitenlandse Zaken v. K, [2016] 1 CMLR 9; Case C-578/08, Chakroun v. Minister van Buitenlandse Zaken, [2010] 3 CMLR 5. 7. On pre-­entry tests, see Block (2015). 8. An expert report on ­these prob­lems (available from the author) was submitted to the court and discussed in the final judgment; see R (on the application of Ali and Bibi) v. SSHD, [2015] UKSC 68. 9. Ali and Bibi; see Blackledge (2016) on w ­ hether t­ here is even a minor benefit. 10. Préambule de la Constitution du 27 octobre 1946, para. 10, part of le bloc de constitutionnalité; see GISTI (2012, 5). 11. CESEDA Article L.211-2-1. 12. Mariage gris, or “gray marriage,” designates a marriage where only one party is aware of the fraud. Escroquerie sentimentale à but migratoire translates roughly as “emotional fraud for the purposes of migration.” 13. CESEDA Article L.431-2. On controls in France, see GISTI (2009). 14. Baiai v. SSHD, [2008] UKHL 53; O’Donoghue v United Kingdom, (2011) 53 EHRR 1. 15. U.S.C.A. para. 1186a(b)(1). 16. U.S.C.A. para. 1186a(a), (d) (1). 17. Biao v. Denmark (Application no. 38590/10), May 24, 2016. 18. Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009, §§ 39–41. See also Van Houdt, Suvarierol, and Schinkel (2011). 19. Parliamentary statement by Damian Green MP, Minister for Immigration, H.C. Deb. W.S., July 13, 2011, col. 21W.S. 20. H.C. 395, Appendixes FM and FM-­SE. A salary of £18,600 per annum was 124 ­percent of the minimum wage from April 2016 paid for forty hours per week, fifty-­t wo weeks per year, and 147 ­percent of the minimum wage when implemented in 2012. 21. A sponsor with no income may rely on £62,500 capital held in an approved bank account for at least six months before the application (H.C. 395, Appendix FM, para. E-­ECP.3.1). 22. H.C. 395, Appendix FM, paras. E-­ECP.3.3 and EX.1; MM v. SSHD, [2017] UKSC 10. 23. Article L.411-5.



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24. CESEDA para. L.314-2; see also Pascouau (2010, 177–182). 25. On France, see Lefebvre (2003) and, on the United Kingdom, see Everson (2003).

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Mouritsen, P., S. Lex, L. Lindekilde and T. V. Olsen. 2009. Immigration, Integration and the Politics of Cultural Diversity in Denmark: Po­liti­cal Discourse and ­Legal, Po­liti­cal and Educational Challenges; Integrated Country Report. Aarhus: A Eu­ro­pean Approach to Multicultural Citizenship: L ­ egal, Po­liti­cal and Educational Challenges (EMILIE), University of Aarhus. Mullally, S. 2011. “Civic Integration, Gender Equality and the Veil.” Modern Law Review 74 (1): 27–56. New to Denmark. 2018. “New Rules for ­Family Reunification of Spouses Come into Effect.” Accessed October 5, 2020. https://­w ww​.n ­ yidanmark​.­dk​/­en​-G ­ B​/N ­ ews​-­Front​-­Page​/­2018​ /­07​/­New​-­r ules​-­for​-f­ amily​-r­ eunification​-­of​-­spouses​-­come​-­into​-e ­ ffect. Pascouau, Y. 2010. “Integration Mea­sures in France: An Evolving Pro­cess between Integration and Migration Issues.” In A Re-­definition of Belonging: Language and Integration Tests in Eu­rope, edited by R. V. Oers, E. Ersbøll, and D. Kostakopoulou, 153–183. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff. Scheel, S., and M. Gutekunst. 2019. “Studying Marriage Migration to Eu­rope from Below: Informal Practices of Government, Border Strug­gles and Multiple Entanglements.” Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 26 (6): 847–867. Schmidt, G. 2011. “Law and Identity: Transnational Arranged Marriages and the Bound­aries of Danishness.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 37 (2): 257–275. Shohamy, E. 2009. “Language Tests for Immigrants: Why Language? Why Tests? Why Citizenship?” In Discourses on Language and Integration: Critical Perspectives on Language Testing Regimes in Eu­rope, edited by G. Hogan-­Brun, C. Mar-­Molinero, and P. Stevenson, 45–60. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Van Houdt, F., S. Suvarierol, and W. Schinkel. 2011. “Neoliberal Communitarian Citizenship: Current Trends t­ owards ‘Earned Citizenship’ in the United Kingdom, France and the Netherlands.” International Sociology 26 (3): 408–432. Wray, H. 2006. “An Ideal Husband? Marriages of Con­ve­n ience, Moral Gate-­Keeping and Immigration to the UK.” Eu­ro­pean Journal of Migration and Law 8 (3–4): 303–320. —­—­—. 2011. Regulating Marriage Migration into the UK: A Stranger in the Home. Farnham, UK: Ashgate. —­—— ­ . 2013. “Greater than the Sum of Their Parts: UK Supreme Court Decisions on F ­ amily Migration.” Public Law 4 (4): 838–860. —­—— ­ . 2015. “The ‘Pure’ Relationship, Sham Marriages and Immigration Control.” In Marriage Rites and Rights, edited by J. Miles, P. Mody, and R. Probert, 141–165. Oxford, UK: Hart Publishing. Wray, H., A. Agoston, and J. Hutton. 2014. “A F ­ amily Resemblance? The Regulation of Marriage Migration in Eu­rope.” Eu­ro­pean Journal of Migration and Law 16 (2): 209–247. Wray, H., S. Grant, E. Kofman, and C. Peel. 2015. ­Family Friendly? The Impact on C ­ hildren of the F ­ amily Migration Rules: A Review of the Financial Requirements. London: Office of the ­Children’s Commissioner for E ­ ngland.

5 “I’m Not a Bad Guy, I Swear” Analyzing Emotion Work and Negotiations of Criminality and Masculinity in Vietnamese-­C anadian Men’s Participation in “Fake Wedding” Arrangements G R AC E K . T R A N

Hovering near the ­counter while waiting for our coffees, Danny and I witness a young barista-­in-­training rebuked by his man­ag­er for churning out drinks too slowly.1 Frazzled, the barista drops the coffee in his hand and spills a cannister of hot milk across his jeans. Without a word, Danny hands the barista napkins, then reaches into his pocket and withdraws a large bill, which he slips into the barista’s tip jar before we accept our coffees and take our seats. Danny begins our interview by leaning over to tell me, his voice firm: “The first ­thing you need to know about me is that I’m not a bad guy, I swear.” Insisting that he is a good person as the first ­thing I should know about him is impor­ tant to Danny, as he is well aware that I am interviewing him b ­ ecause I had identified him as a man who had entered into a dam cuoi gia (DCG) arrangement—­ loosely translated as “fake wedding” arrangements in Viet­nam­ese.2 As I soon discovered in my fieldwork, Danny’s self-­proclamation of not being “a bad guy” was a proclamation that all ten of my interviewees shared—­one even refused to meet with me ­unless I promised him beforehand that I would be open to the possibility that what he did “was not entirely bad” and that he is “actually a good person.” While the Canadian government may view them as “marriage fraudsters,” and the public may regard them as “criminals” or “immigration scammers,” the men who entered into DCG arrangements preemptively resisted and challenged t­ hese perceptions and labels even before my interviews with them formally began. In this chapter, I unpack the narratives of two Vietnamese-­Canadian men to document how they rely on strategies of performativity and documentation to circumvent the securitization of marriage migration as it is enacted and reinforced by immigration officials and the Canadian state. Through the juxtaposition and comparison of narratives from two very dif­fer­ent DCG male participants, 106



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Thanh and Danny, I aim to shed light on how love, marriage, and intimacy are constructed, negotiated, sustained, and reproduced along and past state borders during an era of intensified border control and strict citizenship requirements. Building on the impor­tant work by scholars studying the transformative effects of immigration law on immigrants seeking to naturalize their status (Menjívar and Lakhani 2016), I explore the ways that undergoing immigration pro­cesses can have transformative effects on citizens as sponsors in transnational marriages. I argue that before, during, and even long a ­ fter undergoing the spousal sponsorship application pro­cess as sponsors, Vietnamese-­Canadian men’s interactions with a voy­eur­is­tic immigration system trigger persisting and complex transformative effects that they must negotiate in the relationships they enter into ­after their DCG arrangement has tran­spired. Challenging assumptions about love and money that permeate discussions of marriage and partner migration, this chapter aims to dismantle the belief that marriage fraud arrangements are “no strings attached” deals that are solely eco­nom­ically motivated, with no additional conditions or obligations imposed once the male sponsor successfully brings his “spouse” over to Canada and files for divorce. Instead, I suggest that the narratives of Danny and Thanh, and their experiences with the Canadian immigration system, show how much unexpected emotional work and ­labor (Hochschild 1983) are involved in DCG arrangements. Their stories highlight how ­these men engage with social and extralegal pro­ cesses that produce mutable notions of what constitutes “real,” “au­ then­ tic” marriages, which they then apply to their own lives, thus adding to rather than clarifying the ambiguity of what states qualify as “marriage fraud.” This chapter draws from material included in my larger research proj­ect, which pre­sents the first detailed study of how immigrants pre­sent themselves to Canadian state authorities when regularizing their l­egal status through marriage (Tran 2021). The interviews discussed ­here w ­ ere conducted in both En­glish and Viet­nam­ese. My interviews are also supplemented by participant observation and ethnographic work, stemming from my sixteen months working at a Canadian immigration law and consulting firm as a ­legal assistant. I recruited in­for­mants for my proj­ect through my ties and volunteer work with community organ­i zations in the Vietnamese-­Canadian community. My sample is ­limited and does not seek or claim to be representative of all individuals who have participated in what the Canadian and U.S. governments would consider “marriage fraud.” Despite ­these limitations, the data collected from my interviews reveal striking patterns and complexities between in­for­mants that shed light on how male sponsors in DCG arrangements may interact with the Canadian government through spousal sponsorship application pro­ cesses. In­ for­ mants w ­ ere asked about their lives before, during, and ­after their DCG arrangements. My discussion is centered on the narratives of two Vietnamese-­Canadian men, Danny and Thanh, who willingly and knowingly participated in DCG

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arrangements as sponsors. Both ­were recruited as interviewees through snowball sampling. I met with them separately on several occasions; as both had busy work schedules, they permitted me to accompany them as they completed errands for their jobs and everyday life, from deliveries to groceries and gift shopping during the holidays. This enabled me to develop a rapport with them, and they ­were also willing to provide me with documents to verify and corroborate their accounts of participation in DCG, including the forms that they submitted to the Canadian government in their respective spousal sponsorship applications. ­B ecause my analy­sis focuses on the perspectives of Danny and Thanh as sponsors, and does not include the participation or perspectives of their sponsored Viet­nam­ese “spouses,” who are not participants in my study, my discussion relies on the narratives of t­ hose on the sponsoring end of DCG arrangements. In the first part of this chapter, I provide an overview of extant con­temporary marriage and partner migration scholarship and discuss anti–­marriage fraud efforts in the Canadian context; I then situate my own empirical work in this body of lit­er­a­ture by narrowing my focus to the life stories of Thanh and Danny. By focusing on the narratives of seemingly opposite men who both participated in what the Canadian government would consider “marriage fraud,” I explore the moral justifications that they draw on to rationalize their participation in DCG arrangements. While d ­ oing so, I unpack the common “no strings attached” meta­ phor that both interviewees draw on to convey DCG arrangements as enticingly low-­risk, high-­reward opportunities that guarantee them seemingly “easy” ways to make money with ­little to no emotional work required. From ­there, I outline and discuss vari­ous strategies that they a ­ dopted and employed to persuade immigration ­lawyers and officers that their relationships are indeed “real” and how ­these strategies informed their own approaches to marriage and relationships. This focus on specific practices and narratives allows me to examine not only the ways marriage migration is governed and regulated along gendered, classed, and racialized lines but also how ­those involved navigate ­these lines.

“Marriage Fraud” in Context: An Intersectional Analy­sis One of the biggest challenges in discussing “marriage fraud” is that the term itself is problematic, as it reflects a state-­imposed view of what marriage is and should be like (D’Aoust 2013; Gaucher 2014, 2018). The Canadian government defines marriage fraud, alternatively referred to as “marriages of con­ve­nience,” as “any marriage or common-­law relationship whose sole purpose is to let the sponsored spouse or partner immigrate to Canada” (Immigration and Citizenship Canada 2020). Increasingly, marriage migration scholars have called for an analy­sis of marriage migration that transcends the “dichotomy of ‘sham’ and ‘genuine’ ” (Andrikopoulos 2021). I employ the term marriage fraud ­here ­because



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it is the one most commonly used by the Canadian government in parliamentary debates and in immigration legislation. However, I do so with an attentiveness to how the term marriage fraud obscures the fluidity and complexity of marriage and partner relationships, especially as they are experienced and as they unfold across borders. In 2012, Canada’s Conservative party, led by Stephen Harper, introduced a national anti–­marriage fraud campaign and a two-­year conditional permanent residency requirement for foreign-­born spouses of Canadians, insisting that this new policy would help to curb marriage fraud by separating bona fide marriages from other arrangements. In May 2015, a controversial training guide intended to assist Canadian immigration officials with detecting marriage fraud was leaked—­listing clues that officers should consider as signs of fraud.3 Clues included a lack of diamond rings, a smaller wedding that did not take place in a banquet hall, and an absence of physical displays of affection. While Justin Trudeau’s government overturned the Harper administration’s conditional permanent residency requirement in 2017, the public’s piqued attention to concerns surrounding marriage fraud remained. The fact that controlling for flows of migration is now a top priority for states (D’Aoust 2013), when it was once hardly considered a pressing issue (Torpey 2000; Hollifield 2004), reveals that migration has been discursively, materially, and semiotically constructed as a “self-­evident security prob­lem” (Walters 2010, 217). Marriage migration as a pathway to regularizing one’s citizenship status has become an object of intensified state scrutiny, one that relies heavi­ly and consequentially on ambiguous definitions and categories for admission (Wray 2015; Chetrit 2012; Eggebø 2013; Friedman 2015; Enriquez 2020). The ambiguity that characterizes what states qualify as “marriage fraud,” similar to state discourses surrounding “sham” marriages (Wray, this volume) and “marriages of con­ve­ nience” (Enriquez 2020), is deeply consequential, yet often inadvertently so. For instance, as demonstrated by Rhacel Salazar Parreñas (this volume), as same-­ sex marriages remain legally unrecognized in Japan, transgender hostesses must resort to marrying someone of the “opposite” sex in order to legitimize their claims to l­ egal residency. Individuals’ subtle manipulations of the law and reconfigurations of intimacy to meet eligibility requirements for ­legal admission and residency underscore Helena Wray’s astute observation (this volume) that concepts of fraudulent or “sham” marriages remain ambiguously defined ­because they enable states to articulate normative expectations for cross-­border relationships through spousal migration controls in the name of state security, which revolve around not only physical and fiscal security but also identity and cultural security. Historically speaking, however, the Canadian state’s regulation of cross-­border relationships has always been deeply entrenched in white settler colonial proj­ects that attempt to maintain a heteronormative white “Canadian” national identity (Dua 2007), rendering it even more imperative to examine

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how discussions around marriage migration intersect with articulations of gender, class, race, ethnicity, and culture (Constable 2005; Friedman 2015; Parreñas, Thai, and Silvey 2016; Gaucher 2018; Enriquez 2020). Anne-­Marie D’Aoust (this volume), in studying how immigration l­awyers make sense of their actions in the po­liti­cal moral economy of advising clients navigating formal, bureaucratic immigration pro­cesses, notes that it is the securitization of marriage and partner migration pro­ cesses that explains why bureaucracies place such a heavy burden of proof on applicants’ claims of “true” cross-­border love and relationships. Moreover, the securitization of marriage and partner migration reveals why immigration officials and bureaucratic pro­cesses are obsessed with the idea of “fraud,” especially as it pertains to marriage. Accompanying the increasing securitization of marriage migration, which vari­ ous authors document in their chapters in this volume (e.g., Helena Wray, Mieke Vandenbroucke, and Eithne Luibhéid), is the less documented development of entire industries—or “networks of complicity” (Sadiq 2009, 58), consisting of actors and agents who specialize in assisting individuals maneuver this securitization by strategically presenting non-­conjugal relationships in ways that appear credible in the eyes of immigration officers. In light of the Canada Border Ser­vices Agency identifying Vietnam as a “high risk” source country for marriage fraud,4 participants in DCG arrangements rely on DCG photog­raphers, marriage brokers, l­ awyers, con­sul­tants, and community members who work together to help participants pre­sent relationships that appear credible to the eyes and minds of Canadian state officials despite heightened scrutiny cast on spousal sponsorship applications. Such networks are crucial for ­couples to maneuver increasingly securitized state regulations by presenting relationships that appear legible and “secure” enough to warrant admission past state borders.

Thanh’s Story “Why did I do it?” Lighting his third cigarette in our interview, Thanh props himself against the brick wall outside of a Tim Hortons restaurant, pondering the question as he exhales. “Let me ask you a dif­fer­ent question: If you ­were like me—­ broke, single, and c ­ an’t find a l­egal job with good pay . . . ​why ­wouldn’t you?” Thanh and his immediate ­family ­were admitted to Canada as refugees in the late 1970s u ­ nder the generosity of private church sponsors. A ­ fter struggling to refine his English-­speaking skills, Thanh befriended members of a Viet­nam­ese gang in his neighborhood and dropped out of school. While his other siblings graduated, moved out, and established families of their own, Thanh was the only one who could not afford to move out of his parents’ home. He pursued an apprenticeship in jewelry making, a well-­regarded occupation for men in Vietnam, ­until he realized that it did not bear the same socioeconomic weight in



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Canada as it did back home: “I felt like a loser, even ­women did not re­spect me.” Thanh quickly became enmeshed in a cycle of late-­night drug dealing, consumption, and partying. By the time he reached his midthirties, he found himself addicted to cocaine and heroin and also in extreme debt. And so, when a Vietnamese-­Canadian ­woman approached Thanh during his contracted shift at a factory and asked if he would consider marrying her ­family friend, a twenty-­something-­year-­old girl in Vietnam, for C$50,000, Thanh’s decision was a “no-­ brainer”: “Man, why not? I was ­ going to help someone who wanted to be h ­ ere, get ­here. I was just lucky to be in Canada . . . ​a group of nice church ­people sponsored us. Other ­people, they are not so lucky. Plus, the system had never worked for me. It fucked me over so many goddamn times. Out of seven kids, I was my parents’ only failure. . . . ​I ­didn’t want to be a loser anymore. I wanted to make money, be debt-­free, have fun, travel, and then get out. . . . ​I had every­thing to gain, nothing to lose.” Thanh knew of other friends who had successfully executed DCG arrangements, although he had never actively pursued the idea. The w ­ oman assured him that the DCG arrangement was a “no strings attached” deal; she knew of a DCG “broker” who had helped to facilitate several DCG arrangements in the past. All travel and accommodation expenses would be paid for by the girl’s ­family, and all Thanh would be required to do was make at least two trips to Vietnam, take photo­graphs, appear at a staged wedding ceremony with the girl, and divorce her a few months a ­ fter sponsoring her to Canada as his wife. Thanh’s rationalization above challenges the assumption that individuals who enter into “fraudulent marriage” arrangements do so solely or even primarily for economic reasons. To complicate this assumption, feminist migration scholars have argued that a careful interrogation of the economic and cultural desires of ­those involved in the international marriage industry is needed for more fruitful analy­sis of how ­those desires intersect with the making and strengthening of geographic, cultural, social, and moral borders (Parreñas, Thai, and Silvey 2016; Yeoh, Lindquist, and Xiang 2012). Thanh’s narrative demonstrates how Thanh was able to erect and strengthen moral borders by likening his role as a sponsor in a DCG arrangement to a philanthropic act. Moreover, he was able to justify agreeing to an illegal arrangement through the conviction that entering into a DCG would enable him to leave what he considered an even less moral, illicit drug-­dealing industry. For Thanh, the opportunity to engage in a DCG seemed like a “win-­w in” situation, one that he readily agreed to as an indebted single man without any romantic ties and with ­limited formal education and minimal job prospects. In the course of his DCG arrangement, Thanh visited Vietnam three times; the first time, he flew t­ here for an all-­expenses-­paid trip to meet Mai, the young ­woman he was to “marry.” He stayed at a ­hotel close to the city center and met with her ­family, taking group pictures to document himself getting acquainted

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with Mai for the first time. The second time, Thanh’s DCG broker hired a photographer who took pictures of Thanh and Mai around the city, wearing dif­fer­ent outfits in more intimate poses, from holding hands to hugging and kissing, to mimic the courtship stages in a relationship. On the third visit, he and Mai staged a wedding and traditional Viet­nam­ese tea ceremony for their DCG. Before, in between, and ­after visits to Vietnam, Thanh recalls strategically calling Mai by telephone: Remember, this was over ten years ago, and cell phones ­didn’t exist then . . . ​other­w ise I guess I w ­ ould’ve had to text her like guys do now. So I’d call Mai on the phone each night and say, “Hey, how are you, how’s your mom,” t­ hings like that. ­She’d say, “Fine,” then I’d leave the phone faceup and go out with my buddies to a bar . . . ​meet some girls, what­ever. When I came home, I hung up the phone. I did this a c ­ ouple of times a week so that, on paper, it looked like Mai and I ­were talking for hours, like a real long-­distance ­couple.

To supplement the phone calls, Thanh also recalled, his DCG broker hired someone to draft letters and cards to Mai, as Thanh himself was not an eloquent writer—in En­glish or Viet­nam­ese. Thanh would then sign t­ hese cards before sending them off. All long-­distance calls and postage fees ­were reimbursed by Mai’s parents. In response to how he felt on the day of their staged wedding reception, Thanh recalled: Mai’s ­family w ­ asn’t very rich, but the DCG broker told us that the more expensive our wedding looked, the less the immigration officer would question us . . . ​­because it meant we ­were “real” enough to invest money into the wedding. I think they put almost all of their money into that wedding; they got Mai both an ao dai [traditional Viet­nam­ese gown] and a white wedding dress. About a hundred guests came and most knew it was fake. Every­one was singing, laughing, eating, cheering when we kissed for pictures . . . ​just like a real wedding. I’m not gonna lie, it was kind of nice? In Canada, I was just this jobless loser, but I had fun visiting Vietnam, ­because t­ here I’m a Viet Kieu [overseas Viet­nam­ese]. Canadian money gets you more than Viet­nam­ese money. Viet­nam­ese ­women want you, ­people re­spect you, and I’m helping this girl out by sponsoring her to Canada. Guests are shaking my hand, ­they’re thanking me, congratulating me, and it felt like I was actually ­doing something impor­tant for the community, too. I ­didn’t do it just for myself, you know—­I did it to help Mai out, too.

Thanh’s emphasis on his perceived elevated status in Vietnam as a Viet Kieu—­a man of Viet­nam­ese descent, residing overseas but returning to his country of origin, Vietnam—­allowed him to transcend his “loser” status in Canada,



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even if only momentarily. Even though the majority of wedding guests ­were aware that the relationship was not “real,” the re­spect and gratitude guests expressed to Thanh seemed genuine b ­ ecause they w ­ ere congratulating Thanh not only for undertaking a DCG arrangement but also for his ability to “help” Mai come to Canada, something that no other local Viet­nam­ese man could do. Through his participation in a staged wedding ceremony, Thanh experienced societal appraisal and an attachment to the local Viet­nam­ese community in Mai’s hometown, a sense of community and worth that he was not able to experience in Canada. Thanh’s acknowl­edgment of this reminds us that intimacy is rarely just about the c ­ ouple, a formal wedding ceremony, or a sexual relationship; rather, intimacy reinforces and reasserts a c ­ ouple’s ties to a broader community b ­ ecause members of that community regularly contribute to the ­couple’s success (Groes 2018). In Thanh’s case, the wedding ceremony and Thanh’s “relationship” to Mai expanded to the broader community of her hometown in Vietnam, as Thanh felt he owed something to Mai and her f­ amily as someone who was merely “lucky” to have obtained Canadian citizenship. Thanh’s comment also highlights how per­for­mances of marriage and intimacy under­lying DCG arrangements intersect with gender and also with class. Even among Viet­nam­ese families who typically cannot afford g ­ rand, ceremonial wedding cele­brations, wedding receptions and tea ceremonies in DCG arrangements are heavi­ly invested in for the sake of demonstrating to immigration officials that the c ­ ouple’s relationship is, indeed, “real” and “genuine.” This may include, for instance, the bride renting a white wedding dress in addition to a more traditional Viet­nam­ese ao dai. ­These well-­attended, outwardly festive wedding receptions publicly reinforce the fact that f­ amily members and friends are aware of the c ­ ouple’s relationship and that they also actively support it. Thus, not only does the performativity required of DCG arrangements require per­for­ mances of genuine love, marriage, and intimacy—it also requires a per­for­mance of what it means and looks like to be part of a “­middle class” in Vietnam, one deemed “safe” and assimilable enough to be admitted past Canadian borders. Thanh was also instructed by his DCG broker to rent fake diamond rings from a jeweler in the Viet­nam­ese community who was familiar with DCG arrangements. The intention for renting ­these rings was for Thanh and Mai to develop ring tans; should they be called for an interview by an immigration official, Thanh could purposely fiddle with his ring to reveal his tan, suggesting that he had worn the ring for a long period of time. The strategies employed by DCG participants highlights how DCG arrangements, despite paying tribute to Viet­nam­ese traditions, continue to take on and adapt to Westernized ideals of romantic love and marriage including the purposeful renting out of diamond rings and posed physical displays of affection in photo­graphs. Thanh’s DCG arrangement ultimately evaded government detection, and Mai arrived in Canada without any issues. Interestingly, while he was more than

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ready to file for a divorce upon a few months of Mai’s arrival, Thanh remembered how Mai wanted their DCG arrangement to go in a dif­fer­ent direction: One day, Mai came by my h ­ ouse . . . ​I was shocked b ­ ecause she was supposed to live with her relatives when she came to Canada. I asked her, “Hey man, what are you ­doing ­here? Why d ­ idn’t you tell me you w ­ ere coming?,” and she says, “Oh, well I have feelings for you, through all this I have gotten to know you. You are a good guy and handsome, and I want to see if this can be real. . . .” My first instinct was, ­you’ve got to be kidding me, man! I had no interest in her at all. I’m still g ­ oing out with my friends, partying, talking to girls . . . ​I ­don’t want no relationship! So I told her no, I’m not g ­ oing to date you for real, sorry, but we had a deal, no strings attached, but she told me she was lonely and that we had gotten to know each other so well, she might be a good wife. I told her again, no thank you. I had to ask her to leave.

For several weeks ­after their initial meeting, Mai proceeded to call Thanh, despite Thanh having made it clear that he had no “real” romantic interest in her. When her attempts to contact him eventually subsided, and their DCG broker informed Thanh that it was safe to file for divorce, Thanh readily did so. However, he recalls how “annoying” it was that Mai would try to contact him and how ner­vous he had been that she might jeopardize their entire situation by reporting him to authorities if he refused to enter into a real relationship with her. Thanh’s predicament reflects the complex contingencies of relationships and their inability to fit within state policies and frameworks for conjugal relationships. It also raises questions about how states o ­ ught to make sense of feelings and affect as they intersect with the regulation of borders and marriage and partner migration: if the Canadian and U.S. governments both define marriage fraud as any marriage entered into solely for citizenship purposes, how, then, ­ought they make sense of relationships that may have been entered into primarily for citizenship purposes but transformed into a relationship based on “romantic” love? If Thanh had returned Mai’s desire to pursue a “real,” romantic relationship, and if they had indeed moved in together and de­cided not to divorce, would their DCG arrangement still qualify as “marriage fraud,” or would it actually fall into the realm of what the state would consider a genuine and au­then­tic marriage? ­Here, we return to the overly economic and rationalist approach that immigration policies have tended t­ oward, which assume that mi­grants move ­because they want to improve their lives. It is much harder for states and policy makers to grasp that mi­grants are focused on money just as much as they are focused on other desires such as love, companionship, and a sense of belonging or that mi­grants can be motivated by a central decision that



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can easily be intercepted by other motivational ­factors (Groes 2018; Friedman 2015). In an odd twist of fate, Thanh developed romantic feelings for the w ­ oman who was responsible for introducing him to Mai in the first place: his DCG broker, Hien. Thanh explains how he became familiar with Hien through multiple visits in which she coached him on how to best collect and pre­sent “evidence” of a real, genuine relationship between himself and Mai to government officials. Thanh’s relationship with his DCG broker intensified as they spent several days and hours working on the sponsorship application and filling out paperwork together. He remembers with fondness the day that he asked Hien, ­after a year of dating, to marry him: I was happy when she said yes, of course, but so much pressure, man! She knew every­thing I had done for Mai . . . ​she saw the size of our fake wedding, the fake rings, every­thing. So of course, when we had a wedding, I had to make sure it was bigger and better than my dam cuoi gia. And when I bought her a ring, I had to save up—­because it’s not fair to Hien if my fake wife has a bigger diamond than my real wife, right? So I made sure to throw her a big wedding and invite all of my f­ amily and friends, more than my fake wedding—we had about one hundred and fifty p ­ eople at our wedding. I wanted to show Hien, you know, I’m not a bad guy just ­because I did DCG . . . ​I do know what it’s like to be a good husband, and I’ll be that for you.

The ways in which Thanh approaches his relationship to Hien are s­ haped and informed by what he learned was considered “good” and “worthy” husband be­hav­ior through his entanglement in a DCG arrangement. Thanh’s statement above suggests that, had he not been involved in a DCG arrangement, requiring the performativity of a g ­ rand, ceremonial cele­bration of love, t­ here is a possibility that he would not have purchased for his “real” wife as big a diamond ring or felt the pressure to throw an even larger wedding to rival the diamond ring and wedding that he gave his “fake” wife.

Danny’s Story As demonstrated above, the ability to perform what it looks like to be part of a “real” marriage, based on Westernized, middle-­class models of f­ amily, marriage, and intimacy, can help both parties on ­either end of a DCG reach their goals. However, not all DCG engagements result in a satisfactory ending for both parties. In seeming contrast to Thanh, Danny was born in Canada, enrolled in an engineering program at a reputable university, and in a committed three-­year relationship and had just celebrated his twenty-­first birthday when he was

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approached by a f­ amily friend, Bill, who asked Danny for a “­favor.” Bill was a close friend of Danny’s ­father, and he was well aware that Danny’s ­father had recently suffered from a heart attack and was struggling to support his f­ amily. Bill showed Danny pictures of his remaining niece in Vietnam. The niece, Hoa, was nineteen and desperately wanted to move to Canada for a better ­f uture—­could Danny help her? Bill assured Danny that he knew of a DCG con­ sul­tant who would oversee the entire pro­cess and that his niece’s parents ­were willing to pay Danny in return. Bill also reminded Danny of his f­ ather’s poor health condition and suggested that the paid amount—­“at least fifty thousand U.S. dollars”—­would be more than enough to support Danny’s ­father. As Danny repeatedly told me: “It ­wasn’t about the money. Well, it was and it ­wasn’t. I d ­ idn’t do it for the money—­I did it to help a girl from Vietnam out and also to support my dad a ­ fter his heart attack. When you take a poor kid from a slummy neighborhood who has dreams of being an engineer ­because he wants to help get his ­family out of that neighborhood, and ask him if ­he’ll do someone a quick ­favor for fifty thousand dollars, . . . ​all I can say is, Bill sure hit bingo with me.” Danny agreed to the DCG arrangement a ­ fter Bill promised him that it was a “no strings attached” deal that would result in Danny receiving full payment in cash once the Viet­nam­ese ­woman he “married” was admitted to Canada as his spouse. Like Thanh, DCG was presented to Danny as a little-­to-­no-­risk, high-­ rewards opportunity, requiring no emotional work, which rendered it all the more enticing. Both Danny and Thanh w ­ ere told that nothing more would be expected of them than simply to fly to Vietnam (Danny twice and Thanh three times), partake in a staged wedding ceremony, sign forms (filled out by an immigration ­lawyer or con­sul­tant who was already familiar with successfully presenting DCG arrangements on paper), and file for a divorce with their respective Viet­nam­ese “wife” a few months a ­ fter her arrival in Canada. As Bill was a f­ amily friend, Danny trusted him to help facilitate the arrangement on his own terms and did not press for half of the payment before he boarded his first flight to Vietnam to meet Bill’s niece. The one challenge that Danny experienced with the beginning stages of the DCG arrangement, other than taking time off from his studies and his bartending job, was his girlfriend, Tesia. Recalling his then-­girlfriend’s reaction to his decision to enter into a DCG arrangement, Danny noted: We definitely had a huge argument about it. She was like, “Are you crazy? You want me to be okay with you kissing, marrying another girl?” But Tesia, she’s Viet­nam­ese too, and in the Viet­nam­ese community, DCG is so normalized. So she d ­ idn’t approve of it, but she understood why I was ­doing it. I told her, if it ­doesn’t fall through, Bill says I still get paid half of the money . . . ​and if they do catch me, Bill says I’ll just get a slap on the



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wrist, but at least I tried to help this girl move to Canada. It’s a no-­strings-­ attached deal. . . . ​[Tesia] eventually said okay ­because she knew that if I did this, I’d be helping my dad. The one condition that she had was that she ­didn’t want to see any pictures of me kissing the other girl.

Danny’s second visit to Vietnam to meet Hoa proved to be more difficult, as it required ­actual engagements of physical intimacy and more one-­on-­one time with each other. At a DCG con­sul­tant’s suggestion, Bill hired a photographer who was also aware of the arrangement; the photographer led Danny and Hoa throughout parts of her hometown while taking photo­graphs of them kissing, hugging, and sharing food from street vendors, complemented with outfit changes in between to suggest that the photos had been taken on dif­fer­ent days. Danny remembers how uncomfortable it was to kiss Hoa and how he had to reassure Hoa that he had a girlfriend back home in Canada. ­A fter Danny’s first three-­week visit to Vietnam, Bill informed him that he would be required to compose text messages and send postcards and letters to Hoa. Any postage fees would be reimbursed by Bill, who acted on behalf of Hoa’s parents and immediate f­ amily. Danny recalls his frustration on learning about this additional obligation, which he had not been informed about before agreeing to the DCG arrangement: I was annoyed . . . ​like, my girlfriend’s already uncomfortable with me having to go and actually kiss another girl in our photos. Now ­you’re telling me that I have to communicate with this girl, too? It was bullshit. The time difference also made it even harder ­because the DCG broker said it looked more believable if Hoa and I chatted on WeChat.5 I thought Bill would just use my account and do it for me, but he ­didn’t. For months, I had to message Hoa at 2 P.M. her time ­every other day, which was the only time she was f­ ree to text. That’s like 2 A.M., my time. Between that, school, work, and Tesia, I was exhausted.

Danny was eventually dismissed from his bartending job ­because he had taken more than six weeks off from work in order to travel to Vietnam. As his multiple visits to Vietnam also resulted in jetlag, Danny strug­gled to maintain his grades in his engineering program and ultimately de­cided to take a semester off, with the promise to himself and Tesia that he would resume his studies ­after the DCG arrangement had tran­spired. Danny recalls his tea ceremony as particularly stressful ­because, contra traditional Viet­nam­ese tea ceremony requirements, his f­ ather was not pre­sent: At that time, even though I lived with my dad, I still h ­ adn’t brought up the fact that I was ­doing DCG, ­because Bill told me that my dad was embarrassed that I had to do it to support him. I also told Bill, if I am g ­ oing to do this ­thing, I ­don’t want to involve my dad in it, please leave him out of

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this . . . ​so the photographer they hired for our tea ceremony had to take pictures of Hoa and me pouring tea to Bill, who pretended to be my “dad.” Bill had to act as my dad, or ­else immigration officers might say, “Well if this is your wedding, and it’s so impor­tant, why ­didn’t your dad fly t­ here so you could pour him tea? Even if you ­don’t have a lot of money, ­wouldn’t it be impor­tant for him to be ­there for your wedding overseas?”

Bill’s purposeful staging of a traditional Viet­nam­ese tea ceremony, in which he posed as Danny’s ­father, demonstrates how, in addition to the per­for­mance of a Westernized, middle-­class marriage, t­ here is also a per­for­mance of “expected tradition” in DCG arrangements. DCG participants are very much aware that Viet­nam­ese marriages appear more “real” if they fit within a “traditional” framework; their active pre­sen­ta­tion of tea ceremonies with traditional Viet­nam­ese attire and f­ amily members attending reproduces a certain tradition/modernity dichotomy in addition to the dichotomy of real/fake marriages. By hiring a photographer and renting outfits specifically for tea ceremonies, actors in the DCG industry feed into immigration officials’ awareness of cultural differences and norms that are practiced by transnational ­couples, thus reinforcing understandings of love and intimacy as they intersect with class and gender and also cultural settings (Maskens 2018). On returning home, Danny was confronted by his f­ather, who had seen photos of Danny and Hoa’s wedding ceremony that Bill had strategically posted on Facebook. To Danny’s surprise, not only was his f­ather unaware of his participation in a DCG arrangement, but he was completely opposed to the arrangement: My dad told me to drop out of the DCG right away . . . ​he was furious with me and Bill. He kept saying, “­Don’t you know it’s illegal? It’s a crime!” I told him, “I thought you wanted this. Do you know how much less you’d have to work with 50K in your pocket? How much more you could focus on your health?” He told me it w ­ asn’t worth it and that no son of his would be a part of a DCG, that it ­wasn’t too late—­the wedding ­wasn’t recognized yet in Canada and I could just cut all ties with Bill. I told him that Bill had treated me well and that, now that I knew Hoa, it would be terrible if I just dropped out without helping her. She was a good person, she deserves to come to Canada. My dad ­didn’t care . . . ​and ­because I ­wouldn’t drop it, I was too far in at that point, he kicked me out of the h ­ ouse.

In addition to being disowned by his ­father, Danny’s relationship with Tesia also took a turn for the worse: Tesia called me when I came back, crying. She had seen the pictures that Bill had tagged me in, of Hoa and I [sic] kissing in the wedding ceremony and the p ­ eople cheering for us. When I showed up at her h ­ ouse, I told her,



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“Listen, you know it’s not real, right? I have no feelings for Hoa, I’m ­doing this for my dad and for us.” But Tesia said she just ­couldn’t do it anymore. She ­didn’t believe the photos ­were fake, that I d ­ idn’t have any feelings for Hoa, and wanted to break up.

Shortly afterward, Hoa failed her interview with the visa officer, as she was unable to recall impor­tant facts about her “relationship” with Danny. Bill refused to pay Danny any amount of money, insisting that it was Danny’s fault that the DCG arrangement had fallen through. Single, and without any support from his ­father, Danny eventually dropped out of his program ­because, without a job, he could not afford to pay the accumulating tuition fees. Bill never ended up compensating Danny for the plane tickets, the long-­distance calls to Hoa in Vietnam, or anything ­else that he promised. To this day, Danny remains estranged from his f­ ather; he is no longer on speaking terms with his ex-­girlfriend, Tesia.

Discussion Migration scholars have long noted that ­there exists a “marked lack of attention . . . ​ to subaltern masculinities” (Thai 2008, 8) in analyses of marriage migration flows, especially from Southeast Asia. Thanh’s and Danny’s narratives shed light on why Vietnamese-­Canadian men might choose to agree to a DCG arrangement in the first place and why such a proposition might be enticing to them. The interviewees’ motivations suggest that rationalizations for participating in DCG arrangements are not one-­dimensionally grounded in economic benefits, nor do they simply reflect t­hese men’s positions as Vietnamese-­ Canadians in financially strenuous situations. Rather, they reflect the interviewees’ positions as Vietnamese-­Canadian men who see it as their responsibility to serve as a pillar of support for their ­family. Central in both narratives is a constant renegotiation of what it means to be a man occupying a lower-­income bracket within the Vietnamese-­Canadian community and what one’s obligations to one’s immediate f­ amily and larger community are. Thanh’s and Danny’s decisions to participate in DCG arrangements are grounded in their ability not only to make money but also to reassert and reclaim their masculinity, to be more than a “kid from a slummy neighborhood” or a “loser” in the Vietnamese-­ Canadian community. In an increasingly securitized state with decreasing pathways for access to legalized status and naturalization, male DCG sponsors become valued “currencies” in ­these transactions. ­These men can then draw on their value as currencies to heighten their own moral and social standing within a community, as Thanh does, or to perform a “greater” good, such as taking care of one’s ­father, as Danny does. Each man’s decision to participate in a DCG arrangement re­oriented him from being a “loser” or a “poor kid from a slummy neighborhood” to a “savior”

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of Viet­nam­ese ­women or a “provider” for his f­amily, underscoring how gender “operates on the most interpersonal level across transnational spaces” (Thai 2008, 7). Interestingly, similar to how civil servants conducting marriage fraud investigations in Belgium engage in moral gatekeeping by casting moral judgments on the be­hav­ior and choices of applicants (Vandenbroucke, this volume), male participants in DCG arrangements also engage in a kind of moral streamlining by providing moral justifications for their participation that reject their engagement as simply money-­oriented, self-­serving, and illegal. Both interviewees also drew on similar strategies to document and pre­sent evidence of a “real” relationship to the Canadian government in order for their DCG partner to be admitted; in d ­ oing so, their participation in DCG not only challenges ideas of what it means to be in a real, au­then­tic relationship but, ironically, reinforces Westernized norms of conjugal relationships such as white wedding dresses, g ­ rand receptions, and diamond rings. At the same time, their engagement in DCG perpetuates perceptions of “tradition” and cultural norms in specific communities (Maskens 2018), as they engage in a performativity of expected cultural traditions such as tea ceremonies to prove the authenticity of their relationships. DCG brokers, agents, and participants not only challenge marriage as an institution that is knowable through their pre­sen­ta­tion of “fake” marriages to the Canadian government but also engage in a constitution of the DCG industry in which taking photos and purchasing diamond rings becomes the standard against which any and all relationships, including Viet­nam­ese ones, are held up against for scrutiny. In attempting to circumvent government surveillance for their DCG arrangements to be included and thus accepted in the Canadian state, then, DCG participants also contribute to and concretize cir­cuits of exclusion as they apply for spousal sponsorship applications, thus “obscur[ing] the economic, po­liti­cal, and social forces” that define what it means to be included in a nation-­state (Dua 2007, 446). Despite appearing to embrace a modern conception of love that is “­imagined to enable subjects to transcend social constraints and material realities,” which, in turn, “produc[es] autonomous, self-­governing subjects who are no longer constrained by status, class, e ­ tc.” (Luibhéid 2008, 299), modern nation-­states implicitly screen for and police transnational relationships on the basis of ­couples’ abilities to perform respectable middle-­class, Westernized ideals of citizenship, of which love and marriage are a cornerstone. If borders pre­sent “confrontational moments” in which individuals are asked to “declare” themselves and their intentions to the state (Hyndman and Mountz 2006, 454), then I argue that spousal sponsorship applications require transnational c ­ ouples to declare not only their relationships but also how Westernized, middle-­class, and, thus, “safe” their relationship is to an increasingly securitized state. On being asked if his DCG arrangement r­ eally was a “no strings attached” deal, as Danny was assured it would be, Danny laughed and replied: “Yeah, it’s



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no strings attached all right . . . ​just ropes.” Moreover, he lamented: “­Every time I date a girl now, I’m stuck in this awkward situation where I have to decide ­whether to hide the DCG from her or tell her up front what I did in the past. ­Either way, t­ here’s always that fear that she thinks I’m a bad guy or that I d ­ on’t take marriage seriously and that s­ he’ll leave me.” Danny’s answer reflects the unintended, unpredictable, and heavi­ly consequential “transformative effects” (Menjívar and Lakhani 2016, 1822) that immigration law and pro­cesses can have—on immigrants as well as citizens. ­These transformed understandings of self and relationships are not easily reversible and can leave long-­lasting imprints on the interviewees’ lives. This is exemplified both in Thanh’s discussion of how he chose to proceed with a “real” wedding and a “real” marriage to Hien to demonstrate his worth to her as a husband and in Danny’s assertion that he must constantly reaffirm or reassure the ­women he meets and dates that he is a good person, not a criminal, despite having agreed to participate in a DCG arrangement that would be deemed illegal according to Canadian immigration policy. Despite the dif­fer­ent outcomes of their DCG arrangements, both Danny’s and Thanh’s situations serve as a reminder that DCG arrangements are far from “no strings attached” deals that require ­little emotional work. Rather, DCG arrangements have the potential and power to shape the intimate lives of ­those who participate in them, not only informing their actions, decisions, and be­hav­ iors but also affecting sponsors’ relationships with ­others and their own understanding of themselves, as they thus “internalize their position vis-­à-­v is the law, becoming aware of who they are and who they need to become” (Menjívar and Lakhani 2016, 1819). In both Thanh’s and Danny’s cases, participating in DCG arrangements and undergoing the formal spousal sponsorship application pro­ cess reminded them of the positions that they occupied as less affluent Vietnamese-­Canadian men, while also shaping who they wanted to be: philanthropists helping less fortunate w ­ omen obtain Canadian citizenship, providers for their ­family, and, overall, individuals deemed “worthy” in the eyes of their community.

Conclusion Historically speaking, the field of migration studies has been primarily preoccupied with unpacking the economic ­ factors under­ lying migration. This approach, bordering on an “overtly eco­nom­ically deterministic” (Charsley 2018, viii) understanding of migratory flows and movements, overlooked the more nuanced ways that affect and emotion intertwine with individual decisions to move. Recent work by migration scholars has begun to challenge the idea that migration is deducible to economic interests, deeming this approach overly rationalist (Constable 2005; Charsley 2018; Andrikopoulos 2021).

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An intersectional analy­ sis of Thanh’s and Danny’s narratives reveals uncanny commonalities in the moral justifications that both draw on to make sense of their identities and obligations. Both cases challenge narratives of DCG arrangements as being solely motivated by money on the sponsor’s end and demonstrate how ­these men, in fact, must engage in deep emotional work, not only in their “fake” relationship (through letter writing, physical intimacies, and consistent communication with their “wives”) but also in their immediate communities and “real” relationships (with ­family members, prospective partners, spouses, and friends). By serving as sponsors in DCG arrangements, the interviewees also participated in the elevation of their own social statuses by providing Viet­nam­ese ­women with a pathway to citizenship that the ­women might not other­wise have access to, and, in ­doing so, the men thus become valued “currencies” in the global market. As this chapter demonstrates, security is played out in a very specific way in instances of DCG: the Canadian state frames the entire formal pro­cess of marriage migration, asserting that it aims to cut down on “marriage fraud” for the safety and security of itself and its citizens. At the same time, “networks of complicity” (Sadiq 2009, 58) are relied on by DCG participants to circumvent state securitization efforts in the name of philanthropic duty, and participants themselves then internalize what it means to be in a safe, legitimate relationship that is legible in the eyes of the state. The stories of Thanh and Danny also shed light on how love, marriage, and intimacy are constructed, negotiated, sustained, and reproduced along and past state borders during an era of intensified border control and increasingly strict citizenship requirements. By focusing on the narratives and experiences of two seemingly opposite DCG participants to document the experiences of ­those directly affected by the concept of “marriage fraud,” I aimed to challenge and dismantle the simplistic assumption that marriage fraud arrangements are “no strings attached” deals. Instead, through their experiences with the Canadian immigration system, the interviewees w ­ ere introduced to and engaged with social and extralegal pro­cesses that produced mutable notions of what constitutes “real,” “au­then­tic” marriages and what constitutes “marriage fraud,” which they then internalized and applied to their own lives. By centering the analy­sis on affect, emotions, and state securitization, this chapter participates in the more recent focus of scholarly migration work by highlighting the complexity under­lying DCG participants’ decisions, motivations, and actions in said arrangements and how they intersect with understandings of class, gender, race, ethnicity, culture, and class. In ­doing so, it demonstrates that we as scholars in the field of migration studies still lack the analytical insight and vocabulary to translate ­these very complex relations that involve both interest and money but also more conflicted feelings and emotions like love and philanthropic duty that can exist, coincide, and cohere in



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nonlinear fashions. Approaching migration with understandings of security, affect, and emotion in mind can yield a complicated, richer analy­sis of why individuals move and how they are affected by formal immigration pro­cesses beyond categorical “push” and “pull” f­ actors (Groes 2018). NOTES

1. All names used in this chapter have been changed to re­ spect the participants’ anonymity. 2. I should note that the term used to discuss marriage fraud in Vietnam, đám cưới giả, does not directly translate as “fraudulent marriage.” Rather, when broken down, the term directly translates as “fake wedding.” I suggest that this difference in phrasing is not trivial; ­there is no direct translation for “fake” or “fraudulent” marriage that is commonly used in Vietnam, despite the Viet­nam­ese word kết hôn, which translates directly as “marriage” in En­glish. Salient usage of the phrase đám cưới giả suggests that emphasis be placed on the performative aspect of a “genuine” relationship through the organ­ization and execution of a wedding, rather than on the actualization, quality, or content of the relationship itself at the heart of the wedding ceremony. 3. Nicholas Keung, “Immigration Guide for Detecting Marriage Fraud Called ‘Racist and Offensive,’ ” Toronto Star, May 19, 2015. 4. Peter O’Neil, “Federal Report Warns ‘Marriages of Con­ve­nience’ a Threat to Immigration System,” Vancouver Sun, April 8, 2015. 5. A China-­based messaging application commonly used throughout Asia, similar to WhatsApp or GroupMe, WeChat enables users to exchange messages and conduct video calls with each other for f­ ree, using cellular phone data or Wi-­Fi.

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Andrikopoulos, A. 2021. “Love, Money and Papers in the Affective Cir­cuits of Cross-­B order Marriages: Beyond the ‘Sham’/‘Genuine’ Dichotomy.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 47 (2): 343–360. Charsley, K. 2018. Foreword to Intimate Mobilities: Sexual Economies, Marriage and Migration in a Disparate World, edited by C. Groes and N. T. Fernandez, vii–ix. New York: Berghahn Books. Chetrit, S. L. 2012. “Surviving an Immigration Marriage Fraud Investigation: All You Need Is Love, Luck, and Tight Privacy Controls.” Brooklyn Law Review 77 (2): 709–743. Constable, N. 2005. Cross-­B order Marriages: Gender and Mobility in Transnational Asia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. D’Aoust, A.-­M. 2013. “In the Name of Love: Marriage Migration, Governmentality, and Technologies of Love.” International Po­liti­cal Sociology 7 (3): 258–274. Dua, E. 2007. “Exclusion through Inclusion: Female Asian Migration in the Making of Canada as a White Settler Nation.” Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 14 (4): 445–466. Eggebø, H. 2013. “A Real Marriage? Applying for Marriage Migration to Norway.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 39 (5): 773–789. Enriquez, L. E. 2020. Of Love and Papers. Oakland: University of California Press. Friedman, S. L. 2015. Exceptional States: Chinese Immigrants and Taiwanese Sovereignty. Oakland: University of California Press.

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Gaucher, M. 2014. “Attack of the Marriage Fraudsters! An Examination of the Harper Government’s Antimarriage Fraud Campaign.” International Journal of Canadian Studies 50 (1): 187–205. —­—­—. 2018. A ­Family ­Matter: Citizenship, Conjugal Relationships, and Canadian Immigration Policy. Vancouver: UBC Press. Groes, C. 2018. “Mobility through Sexual Economy: Exchanging Sexual Capital for Respectability in Mozambican ­Women’s Marriage Migration to Eu­rope.” In Intimate Mobilities: Sexual Economies, Marriage and Migration in a Disparate World, edited by C. Groes and N. T. Fernandez, 122–142. New York: Berghahn Books. Hochschild, A. R. 1983. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of H ­ uman Feeling. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hollifield, J. F. 2004. “The Emerging Migration State.” International Migration Review 38 (3): 885–912. Hyndman, J., and A. Mountz. 2006. “Feminist Approaches to the Global Intimate.” ­Women’s Studies Quarterly 34 (1): 446–461. Immigration and Citizenship Canada. 2020. “Protect Yourself from Marriage Fraud.” Immigration and Citizenship Canada, Government of Canada. Accessed October 21, 2020. https://­w ww​.­canada​.­ca​/­en​/­immigration​-r­ efugees​-­citizenship​/­services​/­protect​ -­f raud​/m ­ arriage​-­f raud​.h ­ tml. Lindquist, J., B. Xiang, and B. S. A. Yeoh. 2012. “Opening the Black Box of Migration: Brokers, the Organ­i zation of Transnational Mobility and the Changing Po­liti­cal Economy in Asia.” Pacific Affairs 85 (1): 7–19. Luibhéid, E. 2008. “Sexuality, Migration, and the Shifting Line between ­Legal and Illegal Status.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 14 (2–3): 289–315. Maskens, M. 2018. “Screening for Romance and Compatibility in the Brussels Civil Registrar Office: Practical Norms of Bureaucratic Feminism.” In Intimate Mobilities: Sexual Economies, Marriage and Migration in a Disparate World, edited by C. Groes and N. T. Fernandez, 74–100. New York: Berghahn Books Menjívar, C., and S. M. Lakhani. 2016. “Transformative Effects of Immigration Law: Immigrants’ Personal and Social Metamorphoses through Regularization.” American Journal of Sociology 121 (6): 1818–1855. Parreñas, R. S., H. C. Thai, and R. Silvey. 2016. “Guest Editors’ Introduction: Intimate Industries: Restructuring (Im)material L ­ abor in Asia.” Positions 24 (1): 1–15. Sadiq, K. 2009. Paper Citizens: How Illegal Immigrants Acquire Citizenship in Developing Countries. New York: Oxford University Press. Thai, H. C. 2008. For Better or for Worse: Viet­nam­ese International Marriages in the New Global Economy. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Torpey, J. 2000. The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship and the State. New York: Cambridge University Press. Tran, G. 2021. “ ‘What’s Love Got to Do with It?’: Per­for­mances and Regulations of Love and Intimacy in Cross-­B order Marriages.” PhD diss., University of Toronto. Walters, W. 2010. “Migration and Security.” In The Routledge Handbook of New Security Studies, edited by J. P. Burgess, 217–228. London: Routledge. Wray, H. 2015. “The ‘Pure’ Relationship, Sham Marriages and Immigration Control.” In Marriage Rites and Rights, edited by J. Miles, P. Mody, and R. Probert, 141–165. Oxford, UK: Hart Publishing.

6 Moral Economies of ­Family Reunification in the Trump Era Translating Natu­ral Affiliation, Autonomy, and Stability Arguments into Constitutional Rights K E R RY A B R A M S A N D DA N I E L P H A M

Family reunification has always been a central organ­izing princi­ple of U.S. immigration law. Indeed, the vast majority of immigrants who acquire permanent residency in the United States each year do so not ­because of skills or ­labor market demands or refugee status but b ­ ecause of f­ amily ties (Abrams and Piacenti 2014). The presidency of Donald J. Trump upended this ­family primacy, exposing the lack of a central organ­izing theory of why governments should privilege f­ amily reunification. Although Joseph R. Biden’s administration is already undoing many of the Trump administration’s f­ amily separation policies, it is worth reflecting on the question of why it was so easy for a single president to dismantle a policy of f­ amily unity so quickly, as such a dismantling could easily happen again. During his four years in office, President Trump pushed an aggressive anti-­ immigration agenda. Perhaps the most infamous manifestation of this agenda was his Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) practice of separating parents from c ­ hildren at the U.S.-­Mexico border and housing them separately in detention facilities. DHS conducted this mass separation of families pursuant to the Trump administration’s “zero-­tolerance policy,” u ­ nder which the Department of Justice prosecuted all adult aliens apprehended while crossing the border illegally and transferred their minor ­children to the custody of the Department of Health and H ­ uman Ser­v ices (DHHS) during the pendency of their criminal proceedings (Kandel 2021). The number of families affected by this policy is still uncertain. Initial reports estimated that DHS had separated over two thousand ­children from their parents during the spring of 2018, and ­later reports by DHHS investigators suggest that thousands more may have been separated before the zero-­tolerance policy had been officially announced.1 125

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The separation of mi­ grant families caused massive public outcry and inspired a series of demonstrations protesting the policy, united u ­ nder the slogan Families Belong Together. The Families Belong Together protests reached their zenith on June 30, 2018, when a co­ali­tion of groups—­including MoveOn, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the National Domestic Workers Alliance, and dozens more—­sponsored a “nationwide day of action” to protest ­family separations by the Trump administration (Andone 2018). The co­ali­tion or­ga­nized a march in Washington, D.C, as well as hundreds of s­ ister rallies in other U.S. cities (Kirby and Stewart 2018). Across the United States, “families belong together” and phrases like it appeared on protest signs, in speeches, and in chants. Social media posts of the events used the tag #familiesbelongtogether (MoveOn 2018). The Families Belong Together protests are an example of the con­temporary moralization of responses to ­family migration policies, as the vast majority of protesters relied on moral, rather than ­legal, arguments to oppose the zero-­tolerance policy. Protesters appealed to notions of humanity, the harm done to ­children, and the love that ­family members feel for each other. Similar campaigns employing similar strategies can be found outside the United States, such as the Love Knows No Borders campaign in France (Amoureux au ban public 2017) and the Love Letters to the Home Office (2014) campaign in the United Kingdom. The separation of parents from ­children at the border was far from the only Trump administration policy to affect f­ amily migration and f­ amily reunification. Early on, the president issued an executive order banning travel to the United States by individuals from specific countries (popularly known as the “travel ban” or “Muslim ban”).2 He also called for an end to birthright citizenship, increased the evidentiary burden for demonstrating birthright citizenship (Pérez 2018), and decreased approvals of family-­based visas (Rosenberg 2018).3 As with the separation of parents from their ­children at the border, each of ­these policies generated significant re­sis­tance, and much of this re­sis­tance was couched in moral, rather than l­egal, terms. In response, the Trump administration frequently appealed to national security to defend its policies, arguing that too much deference to ­family reunification would lead to decreased border security and increased criminality (U.S. Department of Justice 2018). President Biden reversed course on many of the Trump administration’s most high-­profile anti-­immigration policies in the first months of his presidency; already his administration has repealed the travel ban, ended the zero-­tolerance policy, established a task force for reunifying separated families, and instituted restrictions and enforcement priorities for deportations.4 However, the Trump administration’s policies and rhe­toric demonstrated the vulnerability of f­ amily reunification rights and the lack of a coherent theory for articulating ­those rights in U.S. law. T ­ hose who opposed the Trump administration’s immigration



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policies faced an uphill ­legal b ­ attle and would likely face similar difficulties if a ­f uture administration pursued similar policies. Most opportunities for ­family reunification in U.S. immigration law are contained within statutes or regulations, rather than U.S. constitutional law, meaning that the availability of f­ amily reunification exists largely at the whim of each Congress and presidential administration. Given the U.S. Congress’s failure to enact immigration reform legislation and the Trump administration’s hostile stance ­toward immigration, immigrant families and their advocates w ­ ere often left with constitutional litigation as their last resort in arguing for f­ amily reunification rights. U.S. constitutional law itself has a relatively thin notion of ­family rights, and t­ hese rights are particularly circumscribed in the immigration context, where national security and foreign affairs interests often supersede individual interests in ­family unity. Despite ­these challenges, the moral arguments made by commentators, journalists, individual citizens, and o ­ thers at protests, in op-­eds, and on social media w ­ ere beginning to be translated into ­legal arguments in complaints, briefs, and court opinions. This chapter excavates and categorizes the primary moral arguments promoting f­ amily unity that emerged in response to the Trump administration’s anti-­immigration policies. B ­ ecause the Trump administration’s policies affected all forms of familial relations and brought heightened focus on ­family reunification beyond c ­ ouples, this chapter ­will focus not only on marriage and partner migration but also on the right of parents to be re­united with their ­children. A survey of mainstream media, alternative media, and social media outlets reveals a seemingly extraordinary range of responses to the Trump administration’s escalation of immigration enforcement and rhe­toric.5 Most of ­these moral arguments, however, can be divided into three broad categories: a natu­ral affiliation argument, an autonomy argument, and a social stability argument. Furthermore, each of t­ hese arguments draws from its own history, tradition, and internal theory on the purpose and nature of the f­amily. Each of the arguments also exists in contradiction—or at least in tension—­w ith the ­others. Although the Biden administration has undone many of the policies against which ­these arguments w ­ ere levied, the arguments themselves deserve closer inspection, as they touch on the theoretical under­pinnings of a right to ­family reunification, a right that is not yet widely recognized in U.S. courts. Understanding the theory b ­ ehind this right can better equip advocates to translate t­ hese moral arguments into ­legal arguments in ­f uture litigation. The utility of ­these arguments in constitutional litigation w ­ ill depend on the ability of advocates to adapt the arguments to relatively narrow jurisprudential frameworks. Fi­nally, a close examination of two cases de­cided by the U.S. Supreme Court, Obergefell v. ­ ill help illustrate the difficulties that advocates face Hodges and Kerry v. Din, w when invoking constitutional rights to challenge state action that keeps families apart.

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Natu­ral Affiliation: “Families Belong Together” By far the most common moral argument made against the Trump administration’s ­family immigration policies was a deceptively s­ imple one, the idea that families naturally belong together. This notion has made its way into debates about immigration policy in a variety of ways, from an unspoken assumption that f­ amily ties are naturally rooted in biology to the very literal phrase “families belong together” that has become popu­lar with pro-­immigrant activists. Activists first ­adopted the phrase “families belong together” as the central slogan for protests following reports that DHS had separated over two thousand ­children from their parents.6 During this period of public outcry, the natu­ral affiliation argument appeared in several versions. The simplest version of the natu­ral affiliation argument was an appeal to ­human empathy and decency. This version asserts that separating families is cruel, particularly ­toward the c ­ hildren affected, but does not offer further interrogation of the reasons—­biological, psychological, or cultural—­this might be true. Rather, this version of the argument relies on an implicit assumption that parents and c ­ hildren share a natu­ral or special connection, the severance of which is painful. Protesters advancing this version of the argument emphasized the emotional trauma that ­family separation inflicts on ­children and referred to Trump administration policies as “child abuse” (Hamilton 2018). Protesters carried signs bearing the slogans “Families belong together / Las familias merecen estar unidas,” “Separating families is cruel torture,” “Make Amer­i­ca humane again,” and countless more (see, e.g., Murdoch 2018; Families Belong Together 2018; AJ+ 2018a, 2018b). Other signs bore evocative imagery of cages, outstretched hands, and crying c ­ hildren, designed to convey the emotional gravity of f­amily separation. Protesters interviewed at the marches called for the Trump administration and its supporters to imagine the emotional distress inflicted on separated c ­ hildren (Lei 2018). Advocates have used this simplest version of the natu­ral affiliation argument to oppose the Trump administration’s other anti-­immigration policies. Similar appeals to empathy and emotion appeared in response to the “travel ban,” an executive order that restricted certain categories of ­people from entry into the United States if they came from Iran, Libya, North K ­ orea, Syria, Venezuela, Yemen, or Somalia. For instance, Mohamed Alahiri, a U.S. citizen waiting for a waiver for his Yemeni wife, told reporters that his eight-­year-­old d ­ aughter was “crying day and night”: “She wants her ­sisters and ­mother. She’s lost 10 pounds and bites her fingernails ­until the meat comes out” (Michaelson 2019). The argument has also been used to garner public support for “sanctuary” policies, wherein state and local governments decide as a ­matter of official policy to limit their cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Activists and state politicians have presented sanctuary policies as “another way



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to keep families together” (Washington 2018). For example, Sam Hammar, a Mas­ sa­chu­setts State Senate candidate, called for the passage of a Mas­sa­chu­setts sanctuary bill by juxtaposing “stories about babies being ripped from their ­mothers’ arms” at the border and “stories of families being torn apart right h ­ ere in Mas­sa­chu­setts.”  7 This version of the natu­ral affiliation argument has also been used to oppose the Trump administration’s policies regarding visas and citizenship rights for same-­sex partners and the c ­ hildren of same-­sex ­couples (on the difficulties that same-­sex ­couples face in the U.S. immigration system, see Luibhéid, this volume). ­Under the Trump administration, the Department of State’s policy treated the ­children of same-­sex, U.S. citizen c ­ ouples born through techniques such as surrogacy and in vitro fertilization as being “out of wedlock” and therefore subject to higher requirements for transmission of U.S. citizenship.8 The State Department also announced that it would require proof of marriage before issuing ­family visas to same-­sex domestic partners of foreign diplomats or employees of international organ­izations, a practice that made obtaining a visa more challenging for c ­ ouples native to countries that have not recognized same-­sex marriage (BBC News 2018). Critics of ­these policies have appealed not only to antidiscrimination princi­ples but also to the natu­ral affiliation argument, by focusing on the love that ­family members feel for each other and the cruelty of keeping ­family members separated.9 A second version of the natu­ral affiliation argument offers a religious explanation for why families share this natu­ral connection. For example, the Interfaith Immigration Coalition—­a partnership of faith-­based organ­izations—­issued a joint statement condemning f­ amily separations, using the hashtag #FamiliesBelongTogether. ­There, John McCullough, president of Church World Ser­v ices, stated, “­Human dignity is granted to us by our creator and strengthened by our familial bonds. The administration’s recent attacks against families are unconscionable and violate the sanctity of the f­ amily unit. . . . ​A s we honor our faiths, so too must we honor the ­family” (Tramonte 2018). Rebecca Linder Blachly, director of the Episcopal Church Office of Government Relations, expressed a similar sentiment, stating, “Separating c ­ hildren from their parents is both inhumane and in­effec­tive, and is at odds with the priority of families within the Christian tradition” (Tramonte 2018). Under­lying ­these statements is the belief that the ­family unit is not only natu­ral but also divinely ordained; conversely, the separation of that f­ amily unit is immoral—­even sinful.10 A third version of the natu­ral affiliation argument explic­itly invokes science as the basis for decrying ­family separation, particularly where young ­children are involved. This version of the argument posits that the natu­ral connection between ­family members is a product of h ­ uman psy­chol­ogy and casts the trauma of f­amily separation as a m ­ ental health or medical issue. During and a ­ fter the Trump administration’s zero-­tolerance policy, multiple health-­care professionals

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and researchers warned that f­amily separation inflicts “toxic stress” on separated c ­ hildren and that exposure to such stress over time inflicts lasting damage on a child’s development (Santhanam 2018; Rienzi 2018; Shonkoff 2019). ­A fter touring a “tender age shelter” in South Texas, Collen Kraft, president of the American Acad­emy of Pediatrics, remarked, “We know that separating parents from ­children is not a ­great idea, but science tells us this is actually child abuse, ­because ­we’re impacting the development of their brains” (Rienzi 2018). This scientific version of the natu­ral affiliation argument appeared prominently in the U.S. House of Representatives’ investigation into the zero-­tolerance policy’s implementation. As part of its oversight duties over DHHS, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce called Jack P. Shonkoff, director of the Harvard Center of the Developing Child, to testify about the effects of toxic stress; Shonkoff (2019) commented, “From a scientific perspective, the forcible separation of ­children from their parents is like setting a ­house on fire. Prolonging that separation is like preventing the first responders from d ­ oing their jobs.” A month ­later, the concept of toxic stress appeared again when the House Homeland Security Committee questioned the then secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen on the zero-­tolerance policy.11 Representative Lauren Underwood opened her questioning by saying, “I’m not a l­ awyer, I’m a nurse. Madam Secretary, I want to be very clear about what the f­amily separation policy is d ­ oing to c ­ hildren’s ­mental and physical health.” Underwood then proceeded to ask Nielsen if DHS was aware that f­amily separation c ­ auses toxic stress in c ­ hildren, to which the secretary responded that she was “not familiar with that term” (PBS 2019). The use of the natu­ral affiliation argument in advocacy echoes the arguments made by phi­los­o­phers and po­liti­cal theorists who study the moral under­ pinnings of ­family reunification. For example, Martha  C. Nussbaum names affiliation, including intimate f­ amily or personal relations, as one of the fundamental qualities that makes us h ­ uman. So, too, does the experience of having been an infant, or other experiences of “extreme de­pen­dency, need, and affection” (Nussbaum 1995, 78). Iseult Honohan (2009, 772) expands on this concept, positing that “the fundamental ­human interest in and need for affiliation” demonstrates itself through the giving and receiving of care. F ­ amily members, she argues, have “certain special obligations to one another by virtue of their relationship” (Honohan 2009, 772). Caleb Yong (2016, 72–73) argues in a slightly dif­ fer­ ent vein that it is ­ those who are dependent on ­ others—­ largely, but not exclusively, ­children—­who have the strongest claim for a ­human right in association with an individual on whom they have become dependent, for not only material but also “attitudinal” care. T ­ hese philosophical analyses supplement the basic affiliation argument in a dif­fer­ent way than the religious and scientific versions of the argument do, through a recognition that interdependent, caring relationships are a feature of humanity and need to be supported and recognized in both culture and law. The nearest advocacy arguments have come



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to articulating a care-­based justification for natu­ral affiliation has been in the context of breastfeeding m ­ others separated from ­children. ­There, the child is traumatized and endangered ­because of the sudden cessation of access to his or her m ­ other’s milk. But the ­mother suffers as well, both physically and psychologically, ­because she is unable to continue to fulfill the obligation of care that she has to her infant.12 The natu­ral affiliation argument has strong emotional appeal and significant religious and scientific theories to support it. But how useful ­w ill it be in challenging f­ amily separation policies as a ­matter of law? In considering how well it would translate into a l­egal right, we should evaluate several aspects of it. First, who would be the rights claimant? Or, put differently, which ­family members does the argument privilege? In most current iterations, although parents may have natu­ral “rights” in the natu­ral affiliation argument, the focus is squarely on the traumatized child who has been separated from his or her parents too early. Additional attention to the focus on caregiving as a necessary component of affiliation could strengthen rights claims by parents. ­Under this view, separation should be prevented not only to avoid trauma to the child but also to ensure that the parents are able to continue their “right to discharge special obligations” of care to their child (Honohan 2009, 772). Next, what are the argument’s politics? The natu­ral affiliation argument can have a progressive or conservative tenor depending on how it is deployed. Although the argument was a favorite of progressives opposing President Trump’s policies, it is easy to imagine it being used to oppose ­legal abortion, to punish criminally parents who abandon their c ­ hildren, or as an argument against tax subsidies or state sponsorship of childcare for working parents. Understanding the politics of the argument would be impor­tant for developing an advocacy strategy that could persuade conservative judges and also for thinking through the long-­ term policy implications of success in areas beyond the current dispute. Fi­nally, what is the argument’s relationship to citizenship and national sovereignty? The natu­ral affiliation argument in its purest form appears to be untethered to ­legal citizenship or geographic location. According to the inner logic of the argument, the citizenship or immigration status of the members of a ­family is irrelevant to the moral issue of ­whether its members can be separated, and the geographic location or ­legal jurisdiction also makes no difference.13 In real­ ity, of course, ­because the law is used to encourage and deter specific kinds of be­hav­ior, any l­egal application of the natu­ral affiliation theory would need to take into account vari­ous options available to the members of the ­family and the choices they have made. The remedy available to a f­ amily asserting a right to live together, for example, ­w ill be dif­fer­ent if ­there is only one country where that is pos­si­ble. The structure of U.S. immigration law, in addition, distinguishes between ­those who are inside and outside the border and ­those who are in

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vari­ ous states of citizenship, membership, or nonmembership; all of t­hese ­factors ­w ill m ­ atter in how the natu­ral affiliation argument could emerge in specific cases.

Autonomy: Individuals Have the Right to Choose Their Families Although natu­ral affiliation has been far and away the most popu­lar advocacy argument, a distinct argument that emerged in some of the debates surrounding the Trump immigration policies is quite dif­fer­ent. This second argument, one that focuses on autonomy, emphasizes the importance of individual choice in f­ amily formation. This argument expresses ­family separation not as a loss of connection but as a denial of the fundamental freedom of choice. The autonomy argument has been deployed in a variety of contexts where immigration enforcement prevents parents, ­children, and spouses from freely living together, especially where at least one ­family member is a U.S. citizen. For example, members of the Libertarian Party have leveled such arguments at the Trump administration’s decision not to renew temporary protected status (TPS) for immigrants from El Salvador, where nonrenewal ­will force nearly two hundred thousand American-­born U.S. citizen c ­ hildren with TPS-­recipient parents ­either to live without a parent or to leave the United States. T ­ hese critics characterized the decision to end the TPS program for Salvadorans as an impermissible government interference with individual ­family decisions (Libertarian Party 2018). Activists also leveled the autonomy argument against the travel ban. Sirine Shebaya, an attorney for the civil rights organ­ization Muslim Advocates, called the travel ban “a ban on families being reunified in the United States [and] a ban on families and communities being able to live normally and freely just like every­body ­else in the United States” (Yu 2018). Najib, a naturalized citizen of Syrian origin who gave only his first name, described the frustration he felt when the travel ban blocked his petition for a ­family visa for his ­mother, saying, “I feel like a citizen that literally has reduced rights—it ­doesn’t feel right” (Yu 2018). Shebaya’s and Najib’s comments use the autonomy argument to assert an associational right to live with one’s ­family. The autonomy argument has also appeared in response to a reported ICE practice of detaining spouses who appear at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Ser­v ices offices for marriage visa interviews. ­Under current immigration regulations, certain undocumented immigrants who marry a U.S. citizen may apply for a provisional unlawful presence waiver of inadmissibility, a mechanism designed to minimize the length of spousal separation during marriage visa pro­ cessing.14 However, ­under the Trump administration, immigration attorneys noticed “an unmistakable swell” of ICE detentions at marriage interviews, such that they could “no longer in good conscience encourage their clients to go to their marriage interviews” to pursue provisional waivers.15



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Lilian Calderon, one of many spouses caught in this bind, used the autonomy argument in response to her detention, remarking: I ­d idn’t understand. How could they do this to my f­amily when I was just following regulations? Why was I being taken to an undisclosed location? . . . [A year ­after being released], my life is in limbo. . . . ​I am grateful to not be in detainment. But our laws are so broken that a Rhode Islander like myself c ­ an’t love or live. Plainly, I’m not allowed to live up to my potential as a h ­ uman being or citizen and as I write this I d ­ on’t know if I w ­ ill ever be.16

Calderon and her ­family certainly experienced emotional distress while she was detained, enough that she could make a natu­ral affiliation argument that her “­family belongs together.” This part of her statement, however, makes a broader normative claim that immigration law should not interfere with her ability to love and live with whom she wishes. Like the natu­ral affiliation argument, the autonomy argument is not new. It is in fact quite firmly grounded in liberal po­liti­cal theory.17 Matthew Lister (2010, 721), for example, considers f­amily reunification as a subspecies of “the fundamental right to form intimate relationships of one’s choosing,” a right he understands as essential “in the development and exercise of what [John] Rawls calls ‘the moral powers.’ ” Lister argues that this right, in turn, flows from a more general right to freedom of association, where intimate association deserves especially impor­tant status (Lister 2010, 733).18 Just as we considered how the natu­ral affiliation argument would translate into ­legal language, we can evaluate the autonomy argument along the same axes. First, who are the rights claimants? Like the natu­ral affiliation argument, the autonomy argument has been used in defense of the parent-­child relationship. However, while the natu­ral affiliation argument focused on ­children as rights claimants, the autonomy argument focuses primarily on parents’ claims to a right to reunification. Only the parents have obtained the ability to exercise their autonomy as ­free adults. When applied to the spousal relationship, the argument confers autonomy interests on men and ­women, although historically, the argument has been one of husbands’ rights to exercise citizenship by choosing and taking responsibility for their wives (Calvo 1991). Although the focus in the current debates has been on immediate ­family relationships, t­ here is nothing inherent to the autonomy argument that would prevent it from being applied to extended f­amily relationships. The exercise of autonomy, however, requires one to have ­legal status (e.g., adulthood) that allows one to make autonomous choices. Like the natu­ral affiliation argument, the autonomy argument is po­liti­cally flexible. It is also the argument most appealing to libertarians and has been embraced by libertarian phi­los­o­phers and advocates (Van der Vossen and Brennan 2018; Babcock 2014).

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Fi­nally, unlike the natu­ral affiliation argument, the autonomy argument is very much tethered to citizenship. Consider again Najib’s claim that “I feel like a citizen that literally has reduced rights—it ­doesn’t feel right.” This tying of autonomy to the exercise of citizenship does not necessarily mean that the person exercising citizenship is someone who has l­egal citizenship status. The autonomy argument has been raised by individuals who lack l­egal citizenship but nevertheless consider themselves members of their communities. Consider Lilian Calderon’s identification of herself as a “Rhode Islander” who “­can’t love or live” and is “not allowed to live up to [her] potential as a ­human being or citizen.” Unlike other regimes, such as Eu­ro­pean h ­ uman rights law, however, U.S. law has more explic­itly tied the exercise of autonomy to t­ hose with formal status. This exercise of citizenship through f­amily choice has been at the core of American identity from the conquest and settlement of the United States, to the creation of the ­family property systems that supported slavery in the American South, to the integration of former slaves into the polity following the Civil War (Cott 2002; Rana 2014).19 As a result, successful translations of the autonomy argument into constitutional claims ­w ill be easier when a citizen or someone with durable ­legal status is the claimant.

Stability: Families Promote a Well-­Functioning Society A third argument levied against the Trump ­family policies is one that emphasizes the good of the community. This argument contends that the f­amily unit promotes social stability. As such, the government should foster healthy marriages and strong parent-­child relationships and encourage families to live together. Conversely, if the government enacts policies that threaten ­family unity or make it harder for families to thrive, then society w ­ ill become less stable and less safe. (This argument, as Saskia Bonjour and Massilia Ourabah’s chapter in this volume makes clear, can also be used to exclude or denigrate f­ amily structures believed to be contrary to social stability, such as polygamy.) ­Because of its focus on the benefits to American society, the stability argument has appeared most frequently where immigration policy threatens immigrant and mixed-­status families—­where some members are undocumented, while ­others are citizens or have lawful immigration status—­who are already living within the United States. Two versions of the stability argument have emerged. The first understands families as good for society b ­ ecause the love and support of the f­ amily structure helps ­people succeed in life. As the historian Carly Goodman argued in an op-ed, “Reuniting families through the immigration system is not only humane—­recognizing that for many p ­ eople, families are a source of love and support—­but also contributes to stability, prosperity and stronger communities: Having support networks increases the odds of ­people 20 succeeding and contributing to their communities.”  In other words, the



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natu­ral affiliation argument is not wrong, but ­there is also a societal interest in strong families. Conversely, so the argument goes, disrupting the ­family structure makes it more difficult for ­people to succeed and contribute to society. In another op-ed, Janet Murguía gives examples of how disrupting the familial support network is bad for the country, noting that c ­ hildren in disrupted families are less likely to succeed. Pointing ­toward toxic stress, school absenteeism, and financial hardship resulting from f­ amily separations, she asserts that the Trump administration’s policies “could disrupt an entire generation of American c ­ hildren” by “chipping away at what makes this country g ­ reat: the American ­family.” 21 B ecause the Trump policies attacked the parent-­ ­ child relationship so directly, many of the narratives and images focused on by activists involved ­children. But the Trump administration also curtailed many forms of ­family reunification, including not only for spouses but also for grandparents and siblings. One of the objections to the travel ban, for example, was that it prevented U.S. citizens from being with extended families for impor­tant life events, such as weddings, graduations, and funerals, and litigants successfully challenged the administration’s exclusion of “grandparents, grandchildren, brothers-­in-­law, sisters-­in-­law, aunts, ­uncles, nieces, nephews, and cousins” as ­people with a “bona fide relationship” to a person in the United States.22 Additionally, the number of family-­sponsored visas granted during the Trump presidency declined precipitously, from over 238,000 in 2016 to fewer than 20,000 in 2021; family-­ sponsored visas in the United States include visas for minor and adult c ­ hildren of permanent residents, as well as adult ­children and siblings of U.S. citizens (Anderson 2020). Extended families are often touted as one of the more stabilizing forces for immigrants, as they help one another to acculturate and provide financial stability (Abrams 2013b). The second version of the stability argument posits that the fear of f­amily separation can prevent families from thriving, thereby undercutting the benefit to society that the ­family unit would normally provide. This version of the argument is distinct but logically related to the first. ­Under this version of the argument, the threat of ­family separation disincentivizes families from living openly in society and availing themselves of societal benefits, even where they have not been physically separated. As a result, ­those families may strug­ gle, and the benefits of familial love and support that the first version of the argument highlights are undone. This version of the stability argument is notably one of the rationales ­behind the “sanctuary jurisdiction” movement. Advocates for sanctuary policies have argued that the cooperation of local police with ICE discourages undocumented immigrants and their ­family members from availing themselves of two key benefits of society: the protection of local police and access to the justice system. As a result, the ­family members affected become more vulnerable and less likely

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to be productive members of society. For example, in promoting the Mas­sa­chu­ setts Safe Communities Act, the Mas­sa­chu­setts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Co­a li­tion argued: “Many immigrants fear that calling 911 or speaking to police ­will lead to separation from ­family members—­especially ­children—­making them more vulnerable to domestic abuse, wage theft and other crimes. Barring state and local law enforcement and court personnel from asking ­people about their immigration status would send a strong message that in our Commonwealth, police protect us all” (MIRA Co­ali­tion 2019). In support of a similar sanctuary bill in California, governor Jerry Brown asserted that reducing cooperation with ICE would bring comfort to families living in fear and promote safer communities (Adler 2017).23 Thus, sanctuary policies may be understood as seeking not only to reduce the number of families separated by ICE but also to allow immigrant and mixed-­status families to stop living in fear and avail themselves of society’s protection. Similar arguments have been made concerning other societal benefits such as school attendance and access to health care (Artiga, Damico, and Garfield 2018).24 Advocates have noted that the threat of ­family separation by ICE has disincentivized mixed families from accessing health care, education, and public benefits such as Medicaid and SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). Maria Hernandez, director of a Texas nonprofit serving c ­ hildren with special needs, spoke to parents who “feel like they ­can’t risk any attention from the government, even if that means losing badly-­needed benefits for their kids” (Lopez 2018). She remarked that t­ hose parents w ­ ere opting out of public benefits “out of fear of deportation . . . ​out of fear of having their ­children being penalized in some way and potentially losing a parent” (Lopez 2018). Once again, the implications of this fear effect is that affected ­family members, especially ­children, ­w ill go without social benefits and be less likely to become thriving members of society. Like the autonomy argument, the stability argument is fundamentally grounded in po­liti­cal theory. Undergirding this social stability argument is a deep-­ seated belief that the f­amily unit is a good way to or­ga­nize society. Jean-­Jacques Rousseau (1979) famously argued that the ­family is a microcosm of the state, in which ­children learn to love and become loyal to the state.25 Con­temporary theorists understand the f­ amily as impor­tant to stability b ­ ecause the ­family is our culture’s method of addressing “the fact of de­pen­dency” (Eichner 2010, 48). How ­w ill the social stability argument translate into l­egal claims? Unlike the other two arguments, this argument focuses on society at large rather than on individual rights claimants. As such, it is less useful as the basis of a ­legal claim and more useful as supporting evidence for why the state should care. However, a version of the natu­ral affiliation argument focused on the importance of caretaking relationships could be supplemented by arguments about how ­those relationships promote social stability.



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Like the other arguments, the politics of the social stability argument are potentially wide-­ranging (for a discussion of f­ amily migration and its perceived connection to the “national ­legal order, gender order, and identity order” in French po­liti­cal history, see Bonjour and Ourabah, this volume, 59). Social stability could have g ­ reat appeal to conservatives who want to preserve the traditional ­family b ­ ecause they believe it supports a moral and or­ga­nized society. It could also be appealing to progressives who believe that the state should supplement the caregiving families provide for each other through subsidies and other means. Fi­nally, the social stability argument does not have a clear connection to citizenship status. With regard to already existing families, it acknowledges their presence and argues that it is good for society that they remain intact. With regard to families that do not yet exist, it would encourage the formation of families. B ­ ecause the social stability argument operates as evidence for the positive outcomes of recognizing rights u ­ nder the other two arguments but not as a rights claim on its own, its tie to citizenship ­will rely in part on which of the other arguments it supports.

Translation of Moral Arguments into Constitutional Arguments How do ­these three moral arguments translate into constitutional claims? Although U.S. law has long privileged ­family unity to an extent rarely seen in other countries, this privileging of the ­family has taken place outside the context of constitutional law, so rights claims to ­family unity are very difficult to make. Despite this difficulty, litigants and courts began to articulate the moral claims made in response to Trump immigration policies in constitutional terms.

Statutory ­Family Rights To understand the context in which t­ hese constitutional claims arose, one must understand the two major mechanisms through which U.S. law has fostered ­family unity, both of which are extra-­constitutional. The first is reflected through the common law of the f­ amily, which was reflected early on in state case law and ­later through state statutes. This body of law set up a hierarchical system where ­fathers, husbands, and masters possessed ­legal responsibility and control over ­children, m ­ others, and servants (or, in slave states, enslaved p ­ eople). Volumes have been written on the history of the common law of the f­ amily, and in par­ tic­u­lar on the law of coverture, whereby married ­women “perform[ed] every­ thing” ­under the “wing, protection, and cover” of their husbands (Blackstone 2016, 442). For our purposes, the impor­tant princi­ple emanating from coverture was one of marital unity. Husbands had a ­legal and financial responsibility to their wives, and wives had a responsibility to serve their husbands. ­These mutual responsibilities required a shared domicile, the right of the husband to

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establish the location of the f­amily residence and the obligation of the wife to follow (Abrams 2013a). Thus, coverture and similar doctrines concerning parent-­child and master-­ servant relationships embodied a version of the autonomy argument that used hierarchical status categories, reified traditional gender roles, and supported white supremacy. But this version of the autonomy argument came not in the form of a federal constitutional right to ­family unity but instead a network of state case law, statutes, and state constitutional provisions that structured the relationships between ­family members in their everyday lives. In other words, husbands had the right to live with their wives not b ­ ecause the U.S. Constitution said so, but ­because it was the way that they fulfilled their ­legal obligation to provide and take moral responsibility for their wives; wives had no “right” to be with their husbands at all, but had a ­legal responsibility to serve them (Abrams 2013a).26 The second vehicle for ­family reunification in U.S. law comes through federal immigration statutes. Early immigration to the United States was largely unrestricted, but when Congress began to enact quotas in the early twentieth ­century, it included preferences for f­amily members.27 ­These preferences w ­ ere amended and codified in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) in 1952 and retained in the Immigration Act of 1965, which did away with national origin quotas and instituted labor-­based visas (Abrams 2013b).28 Like e ­ arlier common law and state statutory mechanisms for fostering ­family unity, the federal statutory approach implicitly endorses the autonomy argument for ­family reunification. The statute permits individuals who already have status, ­either ­legal citizenship or permanent residence, to exercise their freedom to choose with whom they ­w ill live by sponsoring ­family members to join them in the United States.29 ­There is no corresponding right of a noncitizen or nonresident to join a U.S. citizen or resident ­family members. The statute makes no moral distinction between f­ amily reunification and f­ amily formation; U.S. citizens can sponsor their spouses for a visa the day a ­ fter they marry or fifty years ­later. ­These features and ­others have led scholars to observe that modern immigration law reflects the e ­ arlier structures of coverture in U.S. common law (Calvo 1991; Balgamwalla 2014). Just as ­under the doctrine of coverture a wife’s ­legal identity was subsumed by her husband’s, ­under con­temporary immigration statutes the primary beneficiary makes the decision ­whether to sponsor his or her spouse; the spouse has no claim ­unless the primary visa holder chooses to sponsor his or her application.

Constitutional F ­ amily Rights Although U.S. law treats the ­family as a central organ­i zing princi­ple in common law and privileges f­ amily unity over most other f­ actors in its immigration statutes, ­family unity has not received broad protection in constitutional law. One impor­tant reason why is that the U.S. Constitution is fairly short and terse, and



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the Supreme Court has often shied away from reading rights into it that are not textually pre­sent. To be sure, when the court has read the Constitution expansively, the rights in question have often involved the f­ amily. ­These instances, however, have been fairly infrequent, and the resulting opinions have been written in ways that curtail the scope of the right in question (Meyer 2000). They have also been framed almost exclusively using an autonomy model of the ­family: ­these are cases about the rights of individuals to make decisions about choices such as w ­ hether to use contraception, ­whether to obtain an abortion, how to educate a child, w ­ hether a child’s grandparents can visit, or w ­ hether to marry. ­These have not been cases about the rights of a f­ amily as a unit (Lau 2006). Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court had two occasions to consider ­family rights in a constitutional context. In Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court heard the cases of several same-­sex c ­ ouples who challenged vari­ous restrictions on same-­ sex marriage ­under state law in Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, and Tennessee; in a landmark opinion, the court established a constitutional right to marry.30 In Kerry v. Din, Fauzia Din, a U.S. citizen, challenged the U.S. government’s denial of the visa application of her husband, Kanishka Berashk; Din and Berashk had filed a petition for a spousal visa, but the U.S. embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, denied Berashk’s visa application, informing him only that he was inadmissible to enter the United States ­under section 212(a)(3)(B) of the INA, the section of the statute that covers terrorist activities. The court established that a U.S. citizen has a due pro­cess liberty interest in his or her marriage to a noncitizen, although the court determined that Din’s due pro­cess interest was not v ­ iolated when the United States refused her husband a visa with very l­ ittle explanation.31 Both cases illustrate the perils of asserting a constitutional claim to ­family unity ­under U.S. law. Obergefell is instructive ­because the justifications the majority opinion uses to support a constitutional right to marry loosely track the moral arguments identified above. In Obergefell, the majority opinion identified four “princi­ples” and “traditions” that “demonstrate that the reasons marriage is fundamental ­under the Constitution apply with equal force to same-­sex c ­ ouples.” 32 The majority opinion leads with the autonomy argument: “A first premise of the Court’s relevant pre­ce­dents is that the right to personal choice regarding marriage is inherent in the concept of individual autonomy.” 33 This notion of autonomy emphasizes choice and self-­definition. “Choices about marriage shape an individual’s destiny,” the court explained. It then cites to the Supreme Judicial Court of Mas­sa­chu­setts’s opinion in Goodridge v. Dep’t of Pub. Health, which held that ­because marriage “fulfils yearnings for security, safe haven, and connection that express our common humanity, [it] is an esteemed institution, and the decision ­whether and whom to marry is among life’s momentous acts of self-­definition.” 34 The next Obergefell princi­ple is a marriage-­focused version of the natu­ral affiliation argument. “The right to marry,” the court explained “is fundamental

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­because it supports a two-­person u ­ nion unlike any other in its importance to the committed individuals.” 35 This argument appears somewhat tautological (“marriage is marriage b ­ ecause it is [insert definition of marriage]”), but a close look reveals that it has a similar basis to the biological, psychological, and religious bases that support other uses of the natu­ral affiliation argument. The opinion cites to Griswold v. Connecticut, noting that the court in that opinion described marriage as “older than the Bill of Rights.” 36 The idea is that marriage is pre-­legal, a natu­ral coming together that the law should not impede, recognized by law precisely ­because it precedes it. The social stability argument also shows its face in Obergefell, in another princi­ple identified by the opinion: “this Court’s cases and the Nation’s traditions make clear that marriage is a keystone of our social order.” 37 H ­ ere, the court quotes from Maynard v. Hill, describing marriage as “the foundation of the ­family and of society, without which t­ here would be neither civilization nor pro­gress.” 38 Curiously, the Obergefell majority relies on social stability as a justification for the right to marry, not as a justification for state regulation of marriage as has been more typical in constitutional litigation.39 Fi­nally, Obergefell included an additional princi­ple supporting the right to marry: marriage “safeguards ­children and families and thus draws meaning from related rights of childrearing, procreation, and education.” 40 The implication ­here is that childrearing, procreation, and education are also protected constitutionally, perhaps for the same reasons marriage is. Thus, in Obergefell, we see the three moral arguments made by activists effectively translated into a constitutional right to marry for same-­sex ­couples. Despite the apparently broad reach of this right, it is of more ­limited use than might initially appear, especially in the context of immigrant families. The right is most useful in challenging laws that prohibit par­tic­u­lar classes of ­people from marrying or that deny recognition of ­those marriages. It is less useful in challenging state action that keeps families apart. To understand that difficultly, Kerry v. Din is instructive. This case, de­cided just days before Obergefell, addressed squarely an issue of f­amily reunification. ­There, a U.S. citizen ­woman sought to sponsor her husband for an immigrant visa and the government denied the petition on grounds of counterterrorism. The government, however, gave Din almost no information about its reasons for denying the visa, ­either by specifying with more particularity the statutory grounds or by sharing purported facts about her husband’s activities. In contrast to Obergefell, in Din the court was untroubled by the denial of f­ amily rights. Four members of the court (dissenting) asserted that Din had a constitutional liberty interest in her spouse’s visa application. Three justices (Justice Antonin Scalia, authoring a plurality opinion joined by two ­others), asserted that she had no such interest. Two justices (Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, authoring a concurrence joined by one other), held that even assuming Din had such an interest, her due



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pro­cess rights had not been v ­ iolated, largely b ­ ecause of the government’s interest in preventing terrorism.41 The Din opinions highlight the tension between recognizing a constitutional right to ­family reunification and deference to the executive branch where national security concerns are raised. In summary, although six justices entertained the idea that Din had a constitutional right to ­family reunification, the majority of justices voted that the government’s denial of her husband’s visa on national security grounds, with l­ ittle to no explanation, did not violate what­ever rights she might have had. The open question ­after Din is ­whether the court could recognize a constitutional liberty interest in f­ amily reunification absent the facts suggesting terrorist activity; claims of terrorist activity or threats to national security have long been mobilized to upend ­family unity (Abrams 2017). ­There are hints in Justice Kennedy’s concurrence that the court might be more expansive in cases where terrorism is not an issue. Much of the opinion focuses on the importance of the state’s interest in combating terrorism and the care with which Congress crafted the relevant section of the INA; it is only in the context of alleged terrorism that Congress is not required to provide an alien denied a visa with the “specific provision ­under which the alien is admissible.” 42 The opinion suggests that the constitutional liberty interests of U.S. citizens in living with their families must be balanced against federal interests and that in the counterterrorism context (“this sensitive area”), Congress “evaluated the benefits and burdens of notice in this sensitive area and assigned discretion to the Executive to decide when more detailed disclosure is appropriate.” 43 The implicit suggestion is that in other, less sensitive, areas, lodging all discretion to carry out this balancing in the executive might be inappropriate. The composition of the court, however, has shifted substantially since Obergefell and Din. Justice Kennedy, author of the Obergefell majority and controlling Din concurrence, has retired, and Justice Scalia, author of the Din plurality, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who joined the dissent, have passed away. It is doubtful but not impossible that their replacements, Justices Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett would have a more expansive view of ­family reunification rights than ­those of their pre­de­ces­sors. Assuming for the moment that the court would recognize a constitutional liberty interest in f­ amily reunification in cases that do not involve allegations of terrorism, what would this right look like? Given previous case law, it is quite likely that it would be an autonomy right. Most U.S. constitutional cases have involved autonomy—­ parental decision-­ making about c ­hildren’s education, decisions about w ­ hether to use contraception or undergo an abortion, and decisions about whom to marry. Obergefell opens up this space a bit, by introducing the natu­ral affiliation and social stability arguments side by side with autonomy. Without the autonomy argument, however, t­ hese other arguments are likely to flounder. In Din, the only reason that the court appeared to take seriously the

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claim of a constitutional liberty interest was Din’s status as a U.S. citizen. And when the Trump administration curtailed its initial travel ban, it was to remove application of the ban to individuals with permanent residency—­individuals who, in other words, had already been granted a certain level of membership in the polity that guaranteed them some autonomy.

Conclusion U.S. constitutional law has historically not been a space for the flourishing of ­family rights. The Supreme Court has identified and enforced constitutional ­family rights sparingly, and most ­family rights arise instead from state common and statutory law or federal statutory law. Nevertheless, t­ here is some room to make claims for f­amily reunification. The moral arguments made by activists and litigants—­natu­ral affiliation, autonomy, and social stability—­all have pre­ ce­dents in constitutional f­ amily law. In order to mobilize t­ hese arguments in the new context of f­amily reunification, litigants w ­ ill need to find ways to couch ­these arguments in autonomy terms, even where the autonomy argument may not be the most natu­ral fit. The proliferation of ­these moral arguments, however, may indicate that change is around the corner. The American ­people have transformed the meaning of their Constitution multiple times, not through amendments but through what Bruce Ackerman (1993) has termed “constitutional moments,” periods in history in which Americans are actively involved in the construction of the meaning of the Constitution. One cannot know with certainty if one is “in” a constitutional moment, but it is fair to say that the United States (and much of the world) is currently a state where many of our po­liti­cal norms—­including a commitment to some form of welfare state, an openness to authorized immigration, and an understanding of the United States as having a leadership role internationally—­are actively contested. With the end of the Trump presidency, this moment might initially seem less urgent. Many of the Trump administration’s anti-­immigration policies have already been repealed, and, as a result, much of the litigation—­a nd the arguments we have highlighted in this chapter—­ around t­hose policies ­ w ill not reach the Supreme Court. However, at the time of this writing, many of the families separated by policies like the travel ban and zero tolerance remain separated b ­ ecause of Trump-­era COVID-19 restrictions on certain family-­based visas, and some separated ­family members simply have not yet been located.44 Furthermore, it is impor­tant to remember that Biden was able to reverse much of the Trump administration’s immigration agenda so quickly b ­ ecause he could replace Trump’s executive ­orders with his own, without the need for congressional action. Although the Biden administration and Demo­crats in the House of Representatives have proposed a series of immigration reforms, including eliminating some barriers in the family-­based immigration system, it is quite pos­si­ble



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that the U.S. immigration system w ­ ill remain subject to sweeping change by executive action for the foreseeable f­ uture, and even statutes can be undone.45 This inherent instability underscores the relative lack of constitutional pre­ce­ dents supporting a right to f­amily reunification in U.S. immigration law, a gap that advocates and litigants ­w ill have to bridge in the absence of statutory rights and shifting enforcement priorities. In other words, even if the end of the Trump presidency means that the immediate threats to f­amily reunification have abated, the unstable nature of U.S. immigration law means that t­ hese arguments ­w ill be deployed in the near ­f uture with another series of executive ­orders. If, indeed, a ­f uture administration forces the issue, then we w ­ ill be, as we ­were during Reconstruction and the New Deal, in a moment where our fundamental understanding of our Constitution could undergo radical change. NOTES

1. Philip Bump, “The ­Children Separated from Their Parents, by the Numbers,” Washington Post, July 9, 2018, https://­w ww​.­washingtonpost​.­com​/­news​/­politics​/­w p​/­2018​/­07​ /­0 9​/­t he​-­c hildren​-­s eparated​-­f rom​-­t heir​-­p arents​-­b y​-­t he​-­n umbers​/­​ ? ­n oredirect​ =­on&utm​_­term​=­​.­264c5480e393; Miriam Jordan, “­Family Separation May Have Hit Thousands More Mi­grant C ­ hildren than Reported,” New York Times, January 17, 2019, https://­w ww​.­nytimes​.­c om​/­2019​/­01​/­1 7​/­u s​/­f amily​-­separation​-­t rump​-­administration​ -­m igrants​.h ­ tml. 2. “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States,” 82 Fed. Reg. 13209 (March  9, 2017), https://­w ww​.­federalregister​.g ­ ov​/­documents​/­2017​/­03​/­09​/­2017​ -­04837​/­protecting​-­the​-­nation​-­from​-­foreign​-­terrorist​-­entry​-­into​-­the​-­united​-­states. 3. On Trump’s call to end birthright citizenship, see Julie Hirschfeld Davis, “President Wants to Use Executive Order to End Birthright Citizenship,” New York Times, October 30, 2018, https://­w ww​.n ­ ytimes​.­com​/­2018​/1­ 0​/­30​/­us​/p ­ olitics​/­trump​-­birthright​-­citizenship​ .­html. 4. “Proclamation on Ending Discriminatory Bans on Entry to the United States,” White House, January 20, 2021, https://­w ww​.­whitehouse​.­gov​/b ­ riefing​-r­ oom​/p ­ residential​-­actions​ /­2021​/0 ­ 1​/2 ­ 0​/­proclamation​-­ending​-­discriminatory​-­bans​-­on​-­entry​-­to​-t­ he​-­united​-s­ tates​/­; “Memorandum to Prosecutors: Rescinding the Zero-­Tolerance Policy for Offenses u ­ nder 8 U.S.C. § 1325(a),” Office of the Attorney General, January 26, 2021, https://­w ww​.­justice​ .­gov​/a ­ g​/p ­ age​/­file​/­1360706​/­download; “Executive Order on the Establishment of Interagency Task Force on the Reunification of Families,” White House, February  2, 2021, https://­w ww​.­whitehouse​.­gov​/­briefing​-­room​/­presidential​-­actions​/­2021​/­02​/­02​/­executive​ -­order​-­the​-­establishment​-­of​-­interagency​-­task​-­force​-­on​-­the​-­reunification​-­of​-­families; “Memorandum: Interim Guidance: Civil Immigration Enforcement and Removal Priorities,” U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, February 18 2021, https://­w ww​.­ice​.­gov​ /­doclib​/­news​/­releases​/­2021​/­021821​_­civil​-­immigration​-­enforcement​_i­ nterim​-g ­ uidance​ .­pdf. 5. To be sure, not all responses have been negative ones. ­There have been many responses that applaud the Trump administration’s approach. What is notable h ­ ere, however, is the new emergence of moral arguments for an expanded right to ­family unity, which is why we focus on the negative responses to the administration’s approach. 6. Bump, “­Children Separated from Their Parents.”

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7. Sam Hammar, “Families Belong Together,” Patch (Malden, MA), June 18, 2018, https://­ patch​.c ­ om​/­massachusetts​/­malden​/f­ amilies​-­belong​-­together. 8. Sarah Mervosh, “Demo­crats Urge Pompeo to End Policy Used to Deny Citizenship to ­Children of Gay ­Couples,” New York Times, June 6, 2019, https://­w ww​.­nytimes​.­com​/­2019​ /­06​/0 ­ 6​/u ­ s​/­citizenship​-i­ mmigrants​-­lgbtq​.­html; Sarah Mervosh, “Gay  U.S. ­Couple Sues State Dept. for Denying Their Baby Citizenship,” New York Times, July 23, 2019, https://­ www​.­nytimes​.­com​/­2019​/­07​/­23​/­us​/­state​-­department​-­assisted​-­reproductive​-­citizenship​ .­html. 9. Mervosh, “Gay U.S. C ­ ouple Sues.” 10. Kurtis Lee, “Religious Groups and Leaders Call Trump’s ‘Zero Tolerance’ Immigration Policy Sad, Sinful and Immoral,” Los Angeles Times, June 15, 2018, https://­w ww​.­latimes​ .­com​/­nation​/­la​-n ­ a​-­trump​-­family​-­separation​-­religion​-­20180615​-­story​.­html. 11. Alan Gomez et  al., “Demo­crats Attack Trump Immigration Policy; Kirstjen Nielsen Grilled over ­Family Separations,” USA ­Today, March  6, 2019, https://­w ww​.­usatoday​ .­c om ​ /­s tor y​ /­n ews​ /­p olitics​ /­2 019​ /­0 3​ /­0 6​ /­t rump​ -­i mmigration​ -­p olicy​ -­u nder​ -­a ttack​ -­democrats​-­hearings​-­k irstjen​-­nielsen​-­daca​-­tps​/­3074583002​/­. 12. Rachel Brown and Georgia Travers, “The Muslim Ban Expands the Cruel Policy of F ­ amily Separation,” Washington Post, July  3, 2018, https://­w ww​.­washingtonpost​.c ­ om​ /­news​/­global​-­opinions​/­w p​/­2018​/­07​/­03​/­the​-­muslim​-­ban​-­expands​-­the​-­cruel​-­policy​-­of​ -­family​-­separation​/­. 13. Who “counts” as a member of a ­family, however, is of course very much tethered to national identity, values, and law. 14. See “Waiver of Certain Grounds of Inadmissibility,” 8 C.F.R. 212.7(e) (2019); U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Ser­ v ices, Department of Homeland Security, Final Rule, “Expansion of Provisional Unlawful Presence Waivers of Inadmissibility,” 81 Fed. Reg. 50243 (July  29, 2016), https://­w ww​.­federalregister​.­gov​/­documents​/­2016​/­07​/­29​/­2016​ -­17934​/­expansion​-­of​-­provisional​-­unlawful​-­presence​-­waivers​-­of​-­inadmissibility; U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Ser­v ices, Department of Homeland Security, Final Rule, “Provisional Unlawful Presence Waivers of Inadmissibility for Certain Immediate Relatives,” 78 Fed. Reg. 536 (January 3, 2013), https://­w ww​.­federalregister​.­gov​/­documents​ /­2013​/0 ­ 1​/­03​/­2012​-3 ­ 1268​/­provisional​-­unlawful​-­presence​-­waivers​-­of​-­inadmissibility​-­for​ -­certain​-­immediate​-­relatives. 15. Vivian Yee, “A Marriage Used to Prevent Deportation; Not Anymore,” New York Times, April  19, 2018, https://­w ww​.­nytimes​.­com​/­2018​/­04​/­19​/­us​/­immigration​-­marriage​-­green​ -­card​.­html. 16. Lilian Calderon, “My Turn: Lilian Calderon: A Year of Fear ­under Immigration Law,” Providence (RI) Journal, February 13, 2019, https://­w ww​.­providencejournal​.­com​/­opinion​ /­20190213​/­my​-­turn​-­lilian​-­calderon​-­year​-o ­ f​-­fear​-­under​-i­ mmigration​-­law. 17. See Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent in Troxel v. Granville, arguing that “a right of parents to direct the upbringing of their ­children is among the ‘unalienable Rights’ with which the Declaration of In­de­pen­dence proclaims ‘all men . . . ​are endowed by their Creator.’ ” 530 U.S. 57, 91 (2001) (Scalia, J., dissenting). As this quotation suggests, like the natu­ral affiliation argument, the autonomy argument can also be grounded in religious ideology. See vari­ous biblical pronouncements regarding wives’ duties to husbands and ­children’s duties to parents. 18. Lister insists that “in a conflict between the largely anonymous association of the state and the highly intimate association of the f­ amily, the more intimate association deserves the greater deference” (2010, 733).



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19. Nancy  F. Cott (2002) discusses connections between citizenship, ­family structure, and slave owner­ship; Aziz Rana (2014, 163) shows how men gained “in­de­ pen­dence and self-­r ule through homesteading and craft production” and that “marriage and the husband’s status as head of a ­house­hold established civic attachment.” 20. Carly Goodman, “For 50  Years, Keeping Families Together Has Been Central to U.S. Immigration Policy; Now Trump Wants to Tear Them Apart,” Washington Post, December 17, 2017, https://­w ww​.­washingtonpost​.­com​/n ­ ews​/­made​-­by​-h ­ istory​/­w p​/2 ­ 017​/­12​/­17​/­for​ -­50​-­years​-­keeping​-­families​-­together​-­has​-­been​-­central​-­to​-u ­ ​-s­ ​-­immigration​-­policy​-­now​ -­trump​-w ­ ants​-­to​-­tear​-­them​-­apart​/­. 21. Janet Murguía, “The American ­Family Makes This Country ­Great, and It’s in Danger,” New York Times, May  2, 2019, https://­w ww​.­nytimes​.­com​/­2019​/­05​/0 ­ 2​/­opinion​/t­ rump​ -­immigration​-f­ amilies​.­html. 22. Hawai‘i v. Trump, 871 F.3d. 646, 654–655 (2017). 23. “ ‘­These are uncertain times for undocumented Californians and their families,’ [Governor Brown] said. . . . ​‘This bill strikes a balance that w ­ ill protect public safety while bringing a mea­sure of comfort to t­ hose families who are now living in fear e ­ very day’ ” (Adler 2017). 24. A 15–35 ­percent disenrollment rate was estimated for citizen c ­ hildren in mixed-­status families should the public charge rule take effect, resulting in 875,000 to 2 million citizen ­children dropping from Medicaid / CHIP (­Children’s Health Insurance Program) coverage, as well as negative effects on “the health of ­children and their families’ financial stability” (Artiga, Damico, and Garfield 2018). 25. It is “by means of the small fatherland which is the f­ amily that the heart attaches itself to the large one” (Rousseau 1979, 363). 26. The one arguable exception to the lack of a right for wives occurred in divorce statutes that allowed a wife to sue for divorce on the basis of desertion or abandonment (see Abrams 2013a). 27. Emergency Quota Act, ch. 8, § 2, 42 Stat. 5, 5–6 (1921) (repealed 1952); Immigration Act of 1924 (“National Origins Act”), Pub. L. No. 68-139, ch. 190, 43 Stat. 153. 28. Immigration and Nationality Act, Pub. L. No. 82-414, ch. 477, 66 Stat. 163, codified as amended at 8 U.S.C. § 1101 et seq.; Immigration Act of 1965, Pub. L. No. 89-236, 79 Stat. 911, amending INA § 201 et seq, codified as amended 8 U.S.C.§ 1151 et seq. For a discussion of some of Congress’s reasons for retaining family-­based immigration categories, see Abrams (2013b). 29. INA § 201 et seq. 30. Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584 (2015). 31. Kerry v. Din, 135 S. Ct. 2128, 2133 (2015). 32. Obergefell, 135 S. Ct. at 2599. 33. Obergefell, 135 S. Ct. at 2599. 34. Obergefell, 135 S. Ct. at 2599 (citing Goodridge v. Dep’t of Pub. Health, 440 Mass. 309, 322, 798 N.E.2d 941, 955 (2003)). 35. Obergefell, 135 S.Ct. at 2599. 36. Obergefell, 135 S.Ct. at 2599, citing Griswold v. Connecticut, 85 S.Ct. 1678, 1682 (1965). 37. Obergefell, 135 S.Ct. at 2601. 38. Obergefell, 135 S.Ct. at 2601, citing Maynard v. Hill, 8 S.Ct. 723, 729 (1888).

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39. Cf. Singer v. Ha­ra, 11 Wash. App. 247, 260 (1974) (upholding denial of marriage to same-­ sex ­couples based on the state’s interest in protecting marriage as a ­legal institution is based “primarily b ­ ecause of societal values associated withthe propagation of the ­human race”). 40. Obergefell, 135 S. Ct. at 2600. 41. Obergefell, 2128, 2139–2143 (Kennedy, J., concurring). 42. Obergefell, 2141. 43. Obergefell, 2141. For further discussion of the pos­si­ble application of Din to ­family reunification cases, see Abrams (2018). 4 4. Sarah Parvini, “Biden Ended Travel Ban on Muslim-­Majority Nations; But Separated Families Remain in Limbo,” Los Angeles Times, February 10, 2021, https://­w ww​.­latimes​ .­com​/­california​/­story​/­2021​-­02​-­10​/­biden​-­ended​-­muslim​-­travel​-­ban​-­us​-­families​-­remain​ -­limbo. 45. “Fact Sheet: President Biden Sends Immigration Bill to Congress as Part of His Commitment to Modernize Our Immigration System,” White House, January 20, 2021, https://­ w w w​.­w hitehouse​ .­gov​ / ­briefing​ -­r oom ​ /­s tatements​ -­r eleases​ /­2021​ /­01​ /­20​ /­f act​ -­s heet​ -­president​-­biden​-­sends​-­i mmigration​-­bill​-­t o​-­c ongress​-­a s​-­part​-­of​-­h is​-­c ommitment​ -­to​-­modernize​-­our​-­immigration​-­system​/­; Michael  D. Shear, “Demo­cratic Lawmakers Introduce Biden’s Immigration Overhaul in House,” New York Times, February 18, 2021, https://­w ww​.n ­ ytimes​.­com​/­2021​/­02​/1­ 8​/­us​/p ­ olitics​/­house​-­democrats​-­biden​-i­ mmigration​ .­html. REFERENCES

Abrams, K. 2013a. “Citizen Spouse.” California Law Review 101 (2): 407–444. —­—­—. 2013b. “What Makes the F ­ amily Special?” University of Chicago Law Review 80 (1): 7–28. —­—­—. 2017. “­Family Reunification and the Security State.” Constitutional Commentary 32 (2): 247–280. —­—­—. 2018. “The Rights of Marriage: Obergefell, Din, and the F ­ uture of Constitutional ­Family Law.” Cornell Law Review 103 (3): 501–564. Abrams, K., and R. K. Piacenti. 2014. “Immigration’s F ­ amily Values.” ­Virginia Law Review 100 (4): 629–709. Ackerman, B. 1993. We the P ­ eople. Vol. 1, Foundations. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Adler, B. 2017. “California Governor Signs ‘Sanctuary State’ Bill.” NPR, October  5, 2017. https://­w ww​.­npr​.o ­ rg​/­sections​/­thetwo​-­way​/­2017​/1­ 0​/­05​/­555920658​/­california​-­governor​ -­signs​-­sanctuary​-­state​-­bill. AJ+ (@ajplus). 2018a. “#FamiliesBelongTogether Protests Are Still G ­ oing in Countless Cities.” Twitter, June 30, 2018, 3:02 P.M. https://­t witter​.c ­ om​/a ­ jplus​/­status​/­1013135730535641088. —­—— ­ . 2018b. “­People H ­ ere in Austin Gathered Together T ­ oday ­Because of ­These 3 Words. Families Belong Together.” Twitter, June 30, 2018, 4:59 P.M.. https://­t witter​.c ­ om​/­smrtgrls​ /­status​/1­ 013165103745622016. Amoureux au ban public. 2017. “Se mobiliser pour ses droits.” October 24, 2017. http://­w ww​ .­amoureuxauban​.­net​/­se​-­mobiliser​-­pour​-­ses​-­droits. Anderson, Stuart. 2020. “Trump Cuts ­Legal Immigrants by Half and He’s Not Done Yet.” Forbes, July 21, 2020. https://­w ww​.­forbes​.­com​/­sites​/s­ tuartanderson​/­2020​/­07​/­21​/­trump​ -­cuts​-l­ egal​-­immigrants​-­by​-­half​-­and​-­hes​-­not​-d ­ one​-­yet​/­​?­sh​= 6 ­ 30be656168e.



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Andone, D. 2018. “What You Should Know about This Weekend’s Immigration Protests.” CNN, June  29, 2018. https://­w ww​.­cnn​.­com ​/­2018​/­06​/­29​/­us​/­families​-­belong​-­together​ -­what​-y­ ou​-­should​-­k now​/­index​.h ­ tml. Artiga, S., A. Damico, and R. Garfield. 2018. “Potential Effects of Public Charge Changes on Health Coverage for Citizen ­Children.” Henry J. Kaiser F ­ amily Foundation. Accessed July  22, 2021. https://­w ww​.­k ff​.­org​/­d isparities​-­policy​/­issue​-­brief​/­potential​-­effects​-­of​ -­public​-­charge​-­changes​-­on​-­health​-­coverage​-­for​-­citizen​-­children. Babcock, G. 2014. “The Libertarian Argument for Open Borders.” Libertarianism​.­org. Accessed July 22, 2021. https://­w ww​.­libertarianism​.o ­ rg​/­columns​/­libertarian​-­argument​ -­open​-b ­ orders. Balgamwalla, S. 2014. “Bride and Prejudice: How U.S. Immigration Law Discriminates against Spousal Visa Holders.” Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law and Justice 29 (1): 25–71. BBC News. 2018. “U.S. Ends Diplomatic Visas for UN Same-­Sex Partners.” October 2, 2018. https://­w ww​.­bbc​.­com​/­news​/­world​-­us​-­canada​-­45722400. Blackstone, W. 2016. Commentaries on the Laws of ­England. New York: Oxford University Press. Calvo, J. M. 1991. “Spouse-­B ased Immigration Laws: The Legacies of Coverture.” San Diego Law Review 28 (3): 593–644. Cott, N. F. 2002. Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Eichner, M. 2010. The Supportive State: Families, Government, and Amer­i­ca’s Po­liti­cal Ideals. New York: Oxford University Press. Families Belong Together (@fams2gether). 2018. “THANK YOU. ­Today You Raised Your Voice to Send a Clear Message: #FamiliesBelongTogether.” Twitter, June 30, 2018, 4:46

P.M.

https://­t witter​.­com​/f­ ams2gether​/­status​/­1013161946907070470. Hamilton, J. 2018. “Families Belong Together.” BK Reader, June  20, 2018. https://­w ww​ .­bkreader​.c ­ om​/­2018​/­06​/­20​/­families​-­belong​-­together​/.­ Honohan, I. 2009. “Reconsidering the Claim to F ­ amily Reunification in Migration.” Po­liti­ cal Studies 57 (4): 768–787. Kandel, W. A. 2021. “The Trump Administration’s ‘Zero Tolerance’ Immigration Enforcement Policy.” Congressional Research Report (CRC) for Congress. February 2, 2021. Washington, DC: CRC. https://­fas​.­org​/­sgp​/­crs​/­homesec​/­R 45266​.­pdf. Kirby, J., and E. Stewart. 2018. “Families Belong Together Protest Underway in More than 700 Cities.” Vox, June 30, 2018. https://­w ww​.­vox​.­com​/2 ­ 018​/­6​/­18​/­17477376​/f­ amilies​-b ­ elong​ -­together​-m ­ arch​-­june​-­30. Lau, H. 2006. “Transcending the Individualist Paradigm in Sexual Orientation Antidiscrimination Law.” California Law Review 94 (4): 1271–1322. Lei, C. 2018. “For ­Women at D.C.’s ‘Families Belong Together,’ the Protest Was Personal.” NPR, July 1, 2018. https://­w ww​.­npr​.­org​/­2018​/­07​/0 ­ 1​/­625009018​/­for​-­women​-­at​-­d​-c ­ ​-s­ ​-f­ amilies​ -­belong​-­together​-­the​-­protest​-­was​-­more​-­personal. Libertarian Party. 2018. “Libertarian Party Platform.” July  2018. https://­w ww​.­lp​.­org​/­w p​ -­content​/u ­ ploads​/­2018​/­09​/L ­ ibertarian​-­Party​-­Platform​-­2018​.­pdf. Lister, M. 2010. “Immigration, Association, and the ­Family.” Law and Philosophy 29 (6): 717–745. Lopez, A. 2018. “Fearing Deportation, Some Immigrants Opt Out of Health Benefits for Their Kids.” Houston Public Media, June  22, 2018. https://­w ww​.­houstonpublicmedia​.­org​ /­a rticles​/­news​/­2018​/­06​/­22​/­292488​/f­ earing​-­deportation​-­some​-­immigrants​-o ­ pt​-­out​-o ­ f​ -­health​-b ­ enefits​-­for​-­their​-­k ids​/­. Love Letters to the Home Office. 2014. London: Conscience Media.

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Meyer, D. D. 2000. “The Paradox of F ­ amily Privacy.” Vanderbilt Law Review 53: 527–598. Michaelson, J. 2019. “Trump’s Muslim Ban Is Destroying ­These Americans’ Lives, Two Years On.” Daily Beast, January 28, 2019. https://­w ww​.­thedailybeast​.­com​/t­ rumps​-­muslim​-b ­ an​ -­is​-d ­ estroying​-­these​-­americans​-­lives​-­t wo​-­years​-­on. MIRA Co­a li­tion (Mas­sa­chu­setts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Co­a li­tion). 2019. “Support Safe Communities!” Accessed November 17, 2019. http://­m iracoalition​.­org​/­safe​ -­communities. MoveOn (@MoveOn). 2018. “One nation. One voice. One message. One mission with hundreds of thousands of ­people all across Amer­i­ca supporting it!” Twitter, June 30, 2018, 5:59 P.M. https://­t witter​.­com​/­MoveOn​/­status​/­1013180197250707456. Murdock, S. 2018. “­Here Are the Best ‘Families Belong Together’ March Signs.” Huffington Post, June 30, 2018. https://­w ww​.­huffingtonpost​.­com​/­entry​/­here​-­are​-­the​-b ­ est​-­families​ -­belong​-­together​-­march​-­signs​_­us​_ ­5b379dc2e4b007aa2f807852. Nussbaum, M. C. 1995. “­Human Capabilities, Female H ­ uman Beings.” In ­Women, Culture, and Development: A Study of H ­ uman Capabilities, edited by M. C. Nussbaum and J. Glover, 61–104. New York: Oxford University Press. PBS. 2019. “Nielsen ‘Not Familiar’ with How Toxic Stress Harms Separated Families.” NewsHour, March 16, 2019. https://­w ww​.­youtube​.­com​/­watch​? ­v​=1­ LNgT1​_ ­8WP4. Pérez, M. Z. 2018. “Latinos Born Outside Hospitals Face Scrutiny over Citizenship—­a nd L awyers Say Tactics Are Escalating ­ ­ u nder Trump.” Rewire News Group, October  30, 2018. https://­rewirenewsgroup​.­com​/­a rticle​/­2018​/­10​/­30​/­latinos​-b ­ orn​-o ­ utside​ -­hospitals​-­f ace​-­s crutiny​-­o ver​-­c itizenship​-­a nd​-­l aw yers​-­s ay​-­t actics​-­a re​-­e scalating​ -­under​-­trump. Rana, A. 2014. The Two F ­ aces of American Freedom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rienzi, G. 2018. “Separated: Toxic Stress and Child Development ­u nder ‘Zero-­Tolerance’ Immigration Policies.” Hub (Johns Hopkins University), September 18, 2018. https://­ hub​.­jhu​.­edu​/­2018​/­09​/­18​/­family​-s­ eparation​-­child​-d ­ evelopment. Rosenberg, M. 2018. “Fewer F ­ amily Visas Approved as Trump Toughens Vetting of Immigrants.” ­Reuters, January  4, 2018. https://­w ww​.r­ euters​.­com​/­article​/­us​-t­ rump​-e ­ ffect​ -­immigration​/­fewer​-­family​-­v isas​-­approved​-­as​-­trump​-t­ oughens​-­vetting​-­of​-­immigrants​ -­reuters​-­review​-­idUSKBN1ET15I. Rousseau, J.-­J. 1979. Emile: Or, On Education. New York: Basic Books. Santhanam, L. 2018. “How the Toxic Stress of ­Family Separation Can Harm a Child.” NewsHour, PBS, June 18, 2018. https://­w ww​.­pbs​.­org​/n ­ ewshour​/h ­ ealth​/­how​-­the​-­toxic​-­stress​-­of​ -­family​-­separation​-­can​-­harm​-­a​-­child. Shonkoff, J.  P.  2019. “Mi­g rant F ­ amily Separation Congressional Testimony: Dr.  Jack  P. Shonkoff.” February 7, 2019. https://­developingchild​.­harvard​.­e du​/­about​/­press​/­m ig​ rant​-­f amily​-­separation​-­c ongressional​-­t estimony​-­d r​-­jack​-­p​-­shonkoff​/ ­​? ­utm ​_ ­s ource​ =­bulletin&utm ​_ ­medium​= ­email&utm ​_­c ampaign​= ­c ongressional​_­testimony. Tramonte, Lynn. 2018. “#FamiliesBelongTogether: Faith Leaders Decry ­ Family Sepa­ ration, Urge National Leaders to Protect ­Family Unity.” Interfaith Immigration Co­a li­ tion, June  1, 2018. https://­w ww​.­i nterfaithimmigration​.­org ​/­2018​/­06​/­01​/­f amilies​be​ longtogether​ -­f aith​ -­l eaders​ -­d ecr y​ -­f amily​ -­s eparation​ -­u rge​ -­n ational​ -­l eaders​ -­t o​ -­protect​-­f amily​-­u nity​/­. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs. 2018. “Attorney General Sessions Addresses Recent Criticisms of Zero Tolerance by Church Leaders.” June  14, 2018. https://­w ww​.­j ustice​ .­gov​/­opa ​ /­s peech ​ /­attorney​ -­general​ -­s essions​ -­a ddresses​ -­r ecent​ -­criticisms​-z­ ero​-­tolerance​-­church​-­leaders.



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Van der Vossen, B., and J. Brennan. 2018. In Defense of Openness: Why Global Freedom Is the Humane Solution to Global Poverty. New York: Oxford University Press. Washington, John. 2018. “Another Way to Keep Families Together: Join the New Sanctuary Movement.” Nation, June  28, 2018. https://­w ww​.­thenation​.­com​/­a rticle​/­a nother​-­way​ -­keep​-­families​-­together​-­join​-­new​-­sanctuary​-­movement​/.­ Yong, C. 2016. “Caring Relationships and ­Family Migration Schemes.” In The Ethics and Politics of Immigration, edited by A. Sager, 61–83. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Yu, E. 2018. “ ‘It D ­ oesn’t Feel Right’: How The Travel Ban Is Playing Out for One D.C.-­A rea ­Family.” WAMU 88.5, American University Radio, July 19, 2018. https://­wamu​.­org​/­story​ /­18​/­07​/1­ 9​/­doesnt​-­feel​-­right​-­travel​-­ban​-­playing​-­one​-d ­ ​-­c-​ ­area​-­family.

7 Negotiating Trust and Suspicion ­L awyers as Actors in the Moral Po­liti­cal Economy of Marriage Migration Management in Canada A NN E-­M A R I E D’AO U S T

Suicidal thoughts, heartbreak, shattered self-­esteem, financial precarity, and unsurmountable debts, ­these are only some of the dramatic consequences of marriage fraud for Canadian citizens that the 2013 campaign launched by Citizenship and Immigration Canada—­now known as Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC)—­aimed to highlight. The campaign was the result of the Conservative government’s decision in 2011 to put marriage and partner migration ­under public scrutiny. It notably emphasized its emotional and financial toll on “naive” Canadians (for an analy­sis of the campaign, see Gaucher 2016). Following suit, much publicity was made in 2015 around the finding that the internal migration training manual on marriage fraud had contained at least since 2007 a list of “specific clues officers should look for in assessing a spousal sponsorship application.” Red flags included “­couples who are not depicted kissing on the lips in their wedding photos,” “university-­educated Chinese nationals who marry non-­Chinese,” “­couples who d ­ on’t take a honeymoon trip,” “photos of activities together taken in Niagara Falls,” and “a small wedding reception in a restaurant.” 1 Even more, an access to information request revealed the same year that the Canadian Border Ser­v ices Agency intelligence indicators had specifically identified China, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Cambodia, Nigeria, Ghana, Ethiopia, Guyana, and Haiti as high-­risk countries for marriages of con­ve­nience.2 The 2013 campaign, along with the identification and circulation of a list of specific indicators of suspicious activities that could allow for the effective identification of marriages of con­ve­nience, highlights how illégalisme (illegalism) management results from “a constant interaction between bureaucrats who apply the law, the populations that must submit to their power and control, and intermediary actors who can intervene in the relation of domination that plays out between them” (Fischer and Spire 2009, 19; my translation). This 1 53

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management involves l­egal dispositions, but also subjective individual assessments that rely on a specific reading and understanding of p ­ eople, documents, and pictures, to assess their emotional value considering what a “true marriage” consists of. Didier Fassin’s concept of moral economy appears especially useful in understanding how marriage and partner migration gets to be framed as a prob­lem and how dif­fer­ent emotional judgments made at the individual level contribute to it. His theoretical take, initially developed in the field of migration studies to study refugees and asylum seekers (Fassin 2005, 2009, 2011a, 2011b), enables us to understand how evaluation pro­cesses done by ­lawyers, among other actors, result in a distribution of trust and suspicion aimed at regulating a potential illegalism: marriages of con­ve­nience.3 Drawing on interviews conducted with immigration ­ lawyers who have helped ­couples complete a ­family reunification pro­cess in the Montreal area, I examine in this chapter how ­lawyers partake in a moral po­liti­cal economy centered around the distribution of trust and suspicion when it comes to spousal and partner reunification pro­cesses. Close examination of the ­lawyers’ evaluation pro­cesses shows that even though they are contingent on each interviewee’s experience and practice, they rely on an assumed securitized understanding of migration management practices. In other words, individual assessments and decisions involved in the distribution of trust and risk make sense inside the broader po­liti­cal and bureaucratic environment in which they take place, and which tends to frame immigration as a security issue. I start by briefly laying out the theoretical grounds of what a moral economy consists of, and I explain the relevancy of considering ­lawyers to be po­liti­ cal actors, even when they would not see themselves as such. From t­here, I illustrate the construction of a moral economy of trust and suspicion in the case of f­ amily reunification pro­cesses by giving voice to l­ awyers who help spouses and partners to that end. Attention is given to the strategies they have developed to make their cases successful and to their perceptions of what would generate trust or suspicion when submitting a file. While several practices and narratives could be unpacked, I chose to narrow the discussion to three dimensions that I see emerging from ­these strategies aimed at securing a reunification: a tension between professionalism and po­liti­cal activism embedded in the elaboration of a successful file, the art of picture se­lection, and the moral gatekeeping practices that emerge from an intersectional reading of stories of “love at first sight.”

A Moral Po­liti­cal Economy of Trust and Suspicion The focus on marriages of con­ve­nience as a potential prob­lem for the state to tackle should be apprehended as part of a pro­cess in which specific relations and their expected emotional manifestations become qualitative grounds for



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po­liti­cal participation, control, and exclusion. All ­these aspects are central to the notion of governmentality that Michel Foucault (2007) initially developed and which has become a key theoretical concept to apprehend immigration issues (see, e.g., Walters 2015; Nyers 2010; Inda 2006; Bigo 2002). “Governmentality,” summarizes Fassin, “includes the institutions, procedures, actions, and reflections that have populations as object. It exceeds the issue of sovereignty and complicates the question of control. It relates to the power and administration of the state to the subjugation and subjectivation of individuals. It relies on po­liti­cal economy and policing technologies” (2011a, 214). This last component entails that governmentality is closely linked to security apparatuses (Foucault 2007, 110) and concerns: Who should be controlled, who should be made the object of surveillance to enable some forms of mobility, and who should constrain o ­ thers? In other words, the issue becomes who raises suspicion about potential security dangers—­and what can be done about it.

­Lawyers as Po­liti­cal Actors The role of emotions and morality inside bureaucratic structures has led to intense debates and rich scholarship, especially in orga­nizational studies pertaining to civil servants involved at dif­fer­ent stages of immigration policies and pro­cesses (see, e.g., Mascia 2021; Infantino 2021; Maskens 2015; Eggebø 2013; Kringelbach 2013; Lavanchy 2013). Several ethnographic works on marriage and partner migration have focused on street-­level bureaucrats (Lipsky [1980] 2010) and on immigration officers and their interactions with, as well as assessment of, the c ­ ouples whose application they evaluate (Scheel and Gutekunst 2019; Alpes and Spire 2014; Infantino 2014). The role romantic love plays as an implicit norm in this evaluation pro­cess has been notably much documented (D’Aoust 2013, 2018; Scheel 2017; Maskens 2015; Eggebø 2013; Muller Myrdahl 2010). However, focusing on bureaucratic interactions taking place between a ­couple and a bureaucratic officer should not lead us to think that the security apparatus being deployed in relation to f­amily reunifications pro­cesses works in a dyadic way. But as we know, even on strict bureaucratic terms, the reunification pro­cess with a spouse or partner is complex and involves dif­fer­ent bureaucracies evolving at the municipal, state, or interstate levels, with vari­ous steps taken inside two dif­fer­ent countries (see Vandenbroucke, this volume; Scheel and Gutekunst 2019). ­Family reunification has also not been made the focus of the lit­er­a­ture on the migration industry e ­ ither, reinforcing even more the false dichotomy of it being a “private” form of migration unconnected to the security state, distinct from the “public” form of l­abor migration. Yet, security borderwork expands inward and outward (Parker and Vaughan-­Williams 2014), mobilizing actors over a long period of time and across spaces (e.g., Moffette 2014) beyond national territories. Border controls as risk management practices

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integral to the security state apparatus require us to consider the pro­cesses through which suspicion, but also trust, arises at dif­fer­ent points. The encounter with a security state seeking to control migration certainly occurs before a first formal bureaucratic meeting point, if only in the gathering of necessary documents needed to submit an application. Sponsored mi­grants and their spouses also rely on extended networks at home, abroad, and online (see, e.g., Andrikopoulos and Duyvendak 2020) to gather knowledge about interview preparation and settlement abroad. The immigration system alone is far from being a one-­person structure. Victor Satzewich’s (2015) key study of immigration officers posted abroad is a major contribution in helping us understand how they view their role in the Canadian immigration system. As a Canadian immigration officer explained to my research assistants and me, even if one specific immigration officer has the final say on a file, the file has gone through several hands, and dif­fer­ent persons might have picked dif­fer­ent ele­ments flagged as suspicious or trustworthy (interview, July 30, 2017). It is thus difficult even to trace with precision the exact bureaucratic channels through which one file might go for security clearance, for instance. Fi­nally, we must consider that this evaluation system goes beyond each individual file: it also hangs on bureaucrats’ and policy makers’ ideals of families and conjugality (Gaucher 2018). To speak of a differentiated distribution of trust and suspicion in the moral economy surrounding f­amily reunification pro­cesses is not to endorse a clear-­ cut opposition between specific actors; rather, it requires an analy­sis of the social conditions that make each disposition (suspicion and trust) pos­si­ble at all at dif­ fer­ent points. At the very least, this entails that judgment formation regarding the distribution of trust and suspicion on marriage and partner mi­grants does not fall squarely on the shoulders of immigration officers. In helping to prepare the application files for f­ amily reunification, l­awyers, I argue, play a key understudied role in the social conditioning of trust or suspicion regarding marriage and partner mi­grants.4 Whereas several l­egal scholars do work on marriage and partner migration and have made several contributions to the field of migration studies overall, ­lawyers as po­liti­cal actors remain curiously absent from the lit­er­a­ture (but see Tomkinson 2019). To be sure, in Canada, ­lawyers are not always pre­sent in a ­couple’s f­amily reunification pro­cess; sponsors can choose to complete all the necessary documents for their application’s evaluation without l­egal counsel. ­Lawyers can be called to pick up a case at dif­fer­ent points in time: they can be involved from the start, but they can also become involved only when an application is denied and the applicant wants to appeal the decision. For this research, I was interested in ­lawyers being confronted with the po­liti­cally intended, and sometimes unintended, consequences of choosing some procedures over o ­ thers, of giving some kind of advice rather than another. Whereas ­lawyers can see their advice and choices of procedures as simply part of their day-­to-­day job to ensure



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they defend their client’s best interest, “in mobilizing l­egal rules and in negotiating their practical implementation, t­ hese actors constantly reinstitute the line between tolerated practices and ­those that w ­ ill be sanctioned” (Fischer and Spire 2009, 17; my translation) or seen as suspicious. For this proj­ect, my research assistants and I interviewed seventeen l­ awyers in Montreal, all of whom specialized in immigration law.5 All of them had been contacted through the Association québécoise des avocats et avocates en droit de l’immigration, an association “founded in 1991 to regroup Quebec l­awyers actively working in the field of immigration and to help them make better use of the ser­v ices provided by the Quebec Bar” (AQAADI 2014). All interviews followed a semi-­structured format and lasted between forty-­five minutes and three hours. Our interviewees included three men and fourteen ­women. Our pool of pos­si­ble interviewees confirmed that immigration law seemed dominated by ­women. The most experienced ­lawyer had been practicing immigration law for twenty-­five years, as opposed to four years for the least experienced one. Immigration l­awyers are not necessarily all working in prestigious firms. Some of our interviewees ­were partners in wealthy firms, whereas ­others worked alone in a small, overcrowded office. Some specialized in ­family reunification cases involving Canadian citizens, whereas o ­ thers represented undocumented mi­grants. Still, in all cases, l­ awyers helped clients navigate a system that, in some cases, may have been initially set up against them. Identifying l­ awyers as po­liti­cal agents makes sense h ­ ere as we consider that ­there is no outside to social relations of power. This is not to say that l­ awyers did not consider their work to be neutral ­toward the law or, by opposition, that they ­were actively engaged in po­liti­cal work in their daily tasks. The ­lawyers we met ­were all animated by a desire to represent their clients to the best of their abilities and to make them succeed with their application. In that sense, they certainly did not perceive their work as being po­liti­cal; instead, they saw it as being professional. Undoubtedly, ­there are clear intersections and clashes between the moral economy of professionalism for immigration l­ awyers and the moral economy of trust and suspicion central to the immigration system.6 On the one hand, this distinction between being “po­liti­cally motivated” and being “professional” helped ­lawyers justify and make sense of certain practices as acceptable or not when helping a client. On the other hand, “professionalism” also involves the ­lawyer as an individual person: it becomes an indicator of success. This tension was notably vis­i­ble when we discussed appeals, for instance. Four of our respondents told us that they could not enlighten us much on this pro­cess ­because, well, they ­were successful; they could tell us only what they had heard from other colleagues. So merely speaking about the system inside which ­lawyers evolve proved to be challenging for some respondents, as it appeared to reflect on their professionalism or lack thereof. At the end of our research, it seemed clear to us that tensions and meeting points between both should be the focus of a distinct

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research proj­ect. Although that cannot be done fully ­here, parts of this chapter gesture in this direction and suggest profound tensions that have to be negotiated on a daily basis. I am aware that critically examining the role of ­lawyers can come across to some as counterproductive, as criticizing the very ­people who help ­those in need of precious guidance to secure their cross-­border f­ amily life. My goal is certainly not to demonize l­awyers or their work or to question their usefulness; most of them are ­doing impor­tant, crucial work in helping mi­grants, and that cannot be overstated enough. My point is that many of the issues raised during the interviews might appear to most readers as being technical (strategies to reduce delays, documents to include in the application file, the decision to go to a full hearing or an alternative dispute resolution mechanism when considering appealing a decision, e ­ tc.) rather than po­liti­cal. As a result, we could conclude that ­lawyers are indeed in the best position to resolve ­these issues as technicalities: they are the ones who possess the know-­how to do so. But by accepting that ­lawyers are not simply technocrats who “apply the law,” but po­liti­cal agents partaking in a complex po­liti­cal economy, we suddenly get to understand t­ hese so-­called technicalities as po­liti­cal pro­cesses too: they could have been other­ wise. The conditions of possibilities of how, when, and w ­ hether t­ hings can be other­w ise is what is at stake h ­ ere.

Making a Case on Paper Considering ­lawyers as po­liti­cal actors enables us to appreciate the strange relation between applicants, spouses, ­lawyers, and the Canadian immigration system: whereas h ­ uman interactions are rare, if not totally absent in some cases of ­family reunification involving spouses and partners, the very humanity of the immigration officer and the ­couple involved is what makes the case successful. This opposition came out starkly in several interviews: the goal is, as one ­lawyer put it, “to avoid an interview as much as pos­si­ble” (­lawyer 4). The fewer the interactions, the fewer the possibilities of questioning a file, and raising suspicion. In other words, the goal is to make the relationship as convincing as pos­si­ble on paper, so that interviews and other face-­to-­face meetings are not solicited and the visa gets granted on the basis of the submitted written application file only. And yet, to avoid this direct, h ­ uman contact, you need “a love story” (­lawyer 7). You need to make the immigration officer “tear up” (­lawyer 5). You need a colorful scrapbook, a “book of love” (­lawyer 1) to show love concretely and effectively through your material. The humanity of the immigration officer (­imagined as “an angry commuter stuck in traffic in Vancouver” [­lawyer 4]) has to be touched or moved, and several tactics have to be deployed to that end. This humanity increasingly has to be projected and i­ magined, and the file’s construction has depended more and more on this ­ mental projection, as



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bureaucratic changes in the past years have l­imited contacts between l­awyers and government representatives: ­Lawyer 5: Love, you have to express it, it must . . . ​generally, my goal when I meet clients is: tell yourself that the person at the other end who ­w ill read the file, he sees a hundred, he sees five hundred, he sees a thousand, two thousand [files] each year. What ­w ill make your file stand out, what ­w ill make you be able to bring a tear [to the eye] to the officer who ­w ill read [your file], this is what w ­ ill be in the paper. [NB: in French, l­awyer 5 used the expression “arracher une larme,” which conveys the idea of bringing out tears in a context where tears come out against one’s w ­ ill.]

Several l­ awyers mentioned that the tricky issue for them was that they could not contact anyone at the IRCC. Several identified this shift around 2011, u ­ nder the Conservative government. It is impossible, they lamented, to speak to someone over the phone in order to look inside a specific file; it is impossible to speak to or even identify the agent who reviewed a client’s file and made a decision (reports are all initialized with a number); and no numbers are ever provided to contact someone by email, fax, or phone. The IRCC and l­ awyers thus appear to revolve in distinct spheres that only meet at “dramatic” crossroads, like the appeals court or the alternative dispute resolution mechanism through the Immigration Appeal Division.

Channeling Trust and Suspicion This strict division of ­labor and the lack of access to bureaucrats strongly influence l­ awyers’ strategies; they must rely on their experience, but also imagine and proj­ect what immigration officers ­will be looking for when evaluating a file. Such strategies do not emerge in a vacuum. Which strategy l­ awyers adopt when building their case is based on experience acquired over time, but also on ­others’ experiences shared through Listservs and online forums. This ­mental projection of what is expected remains a crucial component in elaborating one’s file; they can end up crystallizing sexual and cultural ste­reo­t ypes, while feeding expectations of performativity on the ­couple’s part. ­Lawyer 15, for instance, noted the fact that an implicitly devalued homosexual identity in general meant that cases of fraud for same-­sex c ­ ouples w ­ ere unlikely and that she herself found them less suspicious from the start: ­Lawyer 15: T ­ hese [files involving nonheterosexual relationships] are my favorite files. ­There are very few fake relationships. . . . ​B ut relationships seldom last. That’s sad, but of all the files I completed involving a  homosexual relationship, only one lasted long. They w ­ ere all sincere relationships at the time I completed the file, but I d ­ on’t know why they

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­don’t last long. ­There was one ­couple that lasted, a Moroccan man with a Quebecois, and, in that case, you could tell ­there was a lot of attachment. . . . ​A nd also, you ­don’t pretend to be a homosexual [on ne s’invente pas homosexuel] in Morocco, that’s dangerous. Research assistant: I guess the question for me was to know w ­ hether you anticipated a dif­fer­ent reaction on the immigration officer’s part. ­Lawyer 15: No, and I would say, I complete ­these files with less suspicion. And, eh . . . ​no. I still try to ­favor restraint [sobriété] though, ­because ­there are gay c ­ ouples who are r­eally extravagant, so we keep it within the bounds of restraint, ­because ­there are agents who ­don’t like that.

This surprising trend in identifying same-­sex ­couples as less suspicious than other ­couples is seen elsewhere (Andrikopoulos 2021, 344), but such distribution of trust is also bound to specific par­ameters. It hangs on a very ste­reo­t ypical projection of the “gay ­couple” or “gay figure” (Fassin and Salcedo 2015), a normative projection that ends up affecting queer ­couples seeking ­family reunification (White 2014) and queer asylum seekers as well (Nighoskar 2020; Raj 2017; Topel 2017).

Tensions between Professionalism and Successful File Elaboration The l­ awyers we met internalized at dif­fer­ent degrees the security and risk management discourse targeting marriage and partner mi­grants as potential fraudsters who could be involved in a marriage of con­ve­nience. This does not mean that ­lawyers agreed with this logic. It means, rather, that they assumed that this logic was the one driving bureaucratic reasoning in evaluating the application’s evaluation pro­cess. Yet, t­ here is nothing natu­ral or inevitable about this securitizing logic being the dominant one. Work conducted by Federica Infantino (2014) inside dif­fer­ent Eu­ro­pean consulates, for instance, shows that bureaucrats can sometimes see themselves torn between their role in ensuring that the right to marry is respected and that every­one is granted fair treatment and the perception that they are responsible for securing the borders at a distance through file evaluation. This internalization of risk management discourses puts ­lawyers in a unique position. As professionals, they want to win their cases and do every­thing in their power to ensure that their clients can succeed in sponsoring their partner or spouse. To beat the system, one has to play by the system’s rules. It is ­here that the moral economy of trust and suspicion projected onto immigration officers intersects with a moral economy of professionalism. Beyond deontological codes of conduct, what “being professional” entails for ­lawyers is by no means



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fixed, but is a dynamic, evolving pro­cess. Needing to find new clients abroad to ensure a firm’s economic growth or overproviding ser­vices, for instance, can now define what being a “professional ­lawyer” is, as opposed to taking difficult cases that would help improve public access to justice. Pierre Bourdieu, in his sociology of the l­egal profession, sees the juridical fields as highly dependent on the po­liti­cal field: “Given the determinant role it plays in social reproduction, the juridical field has a smaller degree of autonomy than other fields, like the artistic or literary or even the scientific fields, that also contribute to the maintenance of the symbolic order and, thereby, to that of the social order itself” (1987, 850). Therefore, while ­lawyers are not the ones who put forward a logic of security and risk management in the first place when it comes to marriage migration, it comes as no surprise that they still end up contributing to it through professional activities, as the securitization of migration and access to citizenship have become integral to the symbolic social order. The same way that consular staff act as border agents who reproduce the securitizing mechanisms of immigration controls through “systematic delay and initial denial of . . . ​partners’ visa applications” (Scheel 2017, 403), ­lawyers consider that acting on their own suspicion is a sign of their professionalism. In both cases, they see their actions as proof that they protect vulnerable citizens, as l­ awyer 15 demonstrated: “­There’s a lot of psy­chol­ogy involved in our job. . . . ​It’s easy to say, ‘Yes, you pay me, I fill out forms for you.’ But when you consider the consequences for [applicants], sometimes it’s better to [say no] and tell them. . . . ​One time, I had a seventy-­year-­old w ­ oman who wanted to sponsor a thirty-­t wo-­year-­old man. [I told her,] ‘Go spend a year in Algeria and if the relationship lasts a ­ fter that, it’ll be worth trying for a f­ amily reunification.’ ” In our research, some ­lawyers admitted to not even bother­ing with some cases and even discouraging their clients from attempting a ­family reunification pro­cess at all if they felt that the clients’ case would be deemed too suspicious from the start: ­Lawyer 6: The ­woman outside the country who does not work, who lives with her parent, who is married, who has no resources, who has no reason to go back home . . . ​[she] w ­ ill generally not be granted a visa, . . . ​[and] I ­w ill tell ­people who want to make such a sponsorship, “You are wasting your time and your money, you ­w ill be frustrated by such a pro­cess.” I see it less with men. ­Lawyer 15: T ­ here are files that I simply refuse to take. And my colleague says, “Listen, M., they have the same rights as o ­ thers, even though [as spouses] they might be very dif­fer­ent from each other. . . . ​Who are you to judge the sincerity of one’s relationship?” And [parroting her colleague], “Ah, you have prejudices, M., that’s not good!”

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Making sure clients adopt certain be­hav­iors or submit specific items to include in the file, despite criticizing immigration officers for even expecting ­these in the first place, then becomes a strategy for ensuring that the case is successful. Anne-­Marie D’Aoust: You mentioned a lack of cultural sensitivity [on the immigration officer’s part]. Being aware of this, I assume, . . . ​affects a bit how you prepare your client’s file. ­Lawyer 3: Absolutely! In my case, I even insulted clients by explic­itly telling them: “We are not ­going to include this proof [of your relationship].” D’Aoust: Okay. ­Lawyer 3: ­Because: “It makes you look as though . . . ​as someone who is buying his wife.” . . . ​Therefore I wanted to take that conversation out of the file and my client was insulted. . . . ​Me, I’m simply ­here to ensure that [his] file is not questioned PERIOD, and I believe he did not take that well. ­L awyer 5: W ­ ill I take a picture of two persons in front of city hall? The answer is no. Why? ­Because that could be a staged picture. I could always have a staged picture with fifty ­people, but it is more difficult to con fifty ­people than two! So pictures, for them to be worthwhile, in my view, must always be group pictures.

But what to include, or not, to fit the “skillful displays of the etiquette and ‘feeling rules’ of the Western script of romantic love” (Scheel 2017, 399) to avoid suspicion is not a straightforward pro­cess. For some l­awyers, the pos­si­ble conflict between presenting the file in the most compelling way and facing a deontological issue was real. The group interview we did with l­awyers 7 and 8 was revealing in that regard, as both debated about how displays of conflict, as opposed to romantic affection, should be treated. ­Lawyer 8 was especially preoccupied about walking a fine line between representing the ­couple’s situation well and possibly editing the material to convince the immigration officer that the relationship was a real one: ­Lawyer 8: This too, we have to be careful, ­because t­ here’s a deontological question ­here. . . . ​So now, when we prepared the Skype [transcripts], I said, “You w ­ ill read them,” and he said, “I can take some [pages] off.” I said, “No, we w ­ ill not start to deceive!” . . . ​[H]e could provide me eight hundred pages. I said, we ­w ill select, so you ­w ill select the pages where ­there are the most “I love yous” and t­ hose that have the fewest fights. ­Lawyer 7: But it’s not a real relation [if] they never fight!



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. . . ­Lawyer 8: It was the same with a client who had sent me a lot of Facebook [transcripts]. . . . ​I would wake up at five in the morning, I would pour myself a coffee and read ­these Facebook transcripts. My boyfriend said, “What are you ­doing?” I would take pages out, [but] I thought maybe this would lead me to . . . ​­because you see how they [immigration] think? When they say, “You do not smile” . . . ? So at one point, we are forced to. . . . ​It’s not an issue for us. If it w ­ ere up to me, I would have put in pictures of ­people who ­don’t smile, I would have included fights!

The slippage between convincing the officer that the relationship is a loving, lasting one, rather than simply bona fide, was even noticed by l­awyer 7, as ­lawyer 8 tried to explain how difficult choosing the right material to include in a file could be: ­Lawyer 7: Ah, you see, from my perspective, the fact that they fight, if it’s a fraudulent marriage, you do not bother to fight. ­L awyer 8: But for them [spouses], it was ­because the relationship was starting. . . . ​A nd fights already, it means that ­things are not ­going that well, so that it might not work out. ­Lawyer 7: That’s the criterion? ­Lawyer 8: Well, that’s what the immigration officer thinks, so . . . D’Aoust: So I understand that it requires a lot of projection on your part? You have to try to put yourself in an agent’s shoes, then try to adapt . . . ? ­Lawyer 8: You have to put yourself in the mind of the worst agent t­ here could be. ­Lawyer 7: Exactly!

The Art of Picture Se­lection Acknowledging the high constraints immigration officers work u ­ nder, notably the need to meet their daily file quotas, several ­lawyers presumed that agents simply did not have time to read the material they submitted, such as conversation transcripts. Pictures thus become central to the file. They can convey convincing, emotional involvement on the c ­ ouple’s part, but ­lawyers also presumed that they are the potential “real” story line the immigration agent w ­ ill read, rather than the mandatory written narrative. In this context, they are narratives of their own, and they have to be told “right.”

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­Lawyer 8: Among all proofs, they [pictures] are the easiest ones for them. I figure that they . . . ​how much do they spend on a file? An hour, an hour and a half, two hours max? So it’s clear that t­ here are [pictures] when we send the file. ­Lawyer 7: Yes, but now, it’s starting to scare us! ­Lawyer 8: With several documents, it is likely that he [the immigration officer] does not ­really look at them one by one. But for pictures, it’s easy, you browse them quickly and you see if pictures cover a period of time, in winter, in summer with a mom and dad, with a friend, on a boat, camping, in all sorts of situations. So see, just ­there, the agent has an idea . . . ​ eh. . . . ​So this, he looks at them, we know he looks at them.

The logic under­lying the art of picture se­lection varied from one ­lawyer to another, but each one was rationalized in terms of a moral economy of trust and suspicion: which material could generate trust and not be deemed suspicious. ­There is of course nothing natu­ral about which material leads to one or the other. “A look of love” on pictures, especially on the men’s part, was mentioned, though ­lawyers could not exactly pinpoint what it was: like pornography, you would know it when you see it. According to ­lawyer 16, “On pictures, we see the man’s expression, we see w ­ hether the guy is ­really in love or w ­ hether he’s waiting for this to pass.” Most ­lawyers mentioned that they had ­adopted specific strategies based on the result of personal experiences, but older ­lawyers mentioned having received some clues from immigration officers themselves. Some also mentioned ele­ments coming from the publicization of “risk ­factors” established in 2007 in the immigration officers’ training guide, mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. ­Lawyer 7: [The immigration officer’s note] says, “Your wedding pictures do not show that you ­were happy on that day.” D’Aoust: Okay . . . ! ­Lawyer 8: This . . . ! This . . . ! D’Aoust: This, is this an exceptional comment? ­L awyer 7: No. . . . ​[Continues reading the file]: “X does not seem happy in most of her wedding pictures, [she] mentions communicating with her husband e ­ very day, but she cannot tell us what her plans are when she lands in Canada.” ­Lawyer 8: Duh, live with her husband, that’s what she was telling us [what her plan was]! . . .



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D’Aoust: So, in any case, this means that photos are often mentioned in the comments? ­Lawyer 7: Well, yes, now it means that we tell our clients, “Smile!” [Laughs.]

Moral Gatekeeping Fi­nally, a striking feature of our interviews was that almost all the l­ awyers used the same example to speak of a potentially fraudulent relationship: an older ­woman marrying a younger man who is neither American nor Eu­ro­pean. We found it striking ­because other prominent cultural and ste­reo­t ypical figures of fraud, such as the so-­called mail-­order bride from Eastern Eu­rope, ­were never mentioned. Save for l­ awyers 7 and 8, no mention was made of the categories identified in the 2007 immigration officers’ training guide, such as Chinese gradu­ ate students. Cuban and Dominican men w ­ ere explic­itly mentioned by several ­lawyers (more than seven) as being involved in “typical cases of fraud,” along with the broad category of “men from the Maghreb.” T ­ hese assumptions might be explained by the ­lawyers’ specific clientele in Montreal and the prevalence of ­these communities in the metropole. Gendered and racialized emotional expectations in cross-­border marriages (Andrikopoulos 2021; Pellander 2015; Bonjour and de Hart 2013) obviously partake in the distribution of trust and suspicion on the l­awyers’ part. L ­ awyers expressed ­little sympathy with w ­ omen sponsoring younger husbands in general, and they often engaged in the “moral gatekeeping” practices that Helena Wray (2006) has identified. L ­ awyer 10 told us off the rec­ord that she found the system deeply gendered and skewed against ­women. She saw cases, she mentioned, of very sick men sponsoring wives twenty to twenty-­five years younger than they ­were a ­ fter a whirlwind courtship. She suspected the husbands ­were in fact looking for a would-be nurse, but she mentioned that she never saw t­hose cases questioned and that they all ended up being approved. W ­ omen with much younger husbands, by contrast, w ­ ere always seen as suspicious, and she felt that she had to address the issue directly in the file, sometimes by mentioning that the man was sure he would not want kids, thus giving credibility to the belief that an older w ­ oman would be an acceptable choice for him. This suggests that trust in the relationship can be established only when a rationale could be found for the man’s desire for the ­woman, e ­ ither from the immigration officer’s or the l­awyer’s point of view. When relationships involved a much older man with a younger ­woman, ­lawyers, like immigration offers, tended to be more lenient; issues of “attachment” and “affection” seemed sufficient to deem the relationship beyond suspicion, and the w ­ oman’s desire for the man was never mentioned. By contrast, “passionate love” or credible “love at first sight” seemed to be the emotional

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benchmark for ­women to meet for their relationship to be perceived as credible. L ­ awyer 16 was very open about the implicit love ideal that guided her: “Well, we recently had a case where ­there was a big age difference [between the man and the w ­ oman], . . . ​almost a thirty-­year age gap. We ­were sure that the relationship was a real one ­because they had been living together for a while in the Dominican Republic. For sure, we could not say that it was a ‘love as passion’ relationship, but t­ here was still tenderness and affection, and even though it was not the ideal c ­ ouple, we could still feel that ­there was an involvement, and the sponsorship request worked.” This example came t­ oward the end of the interview with l­ awyer 16, whereas ­earlier she had mentioned how impor­tant her own gut feeling was to deciding ­whether to take a case or not: “So the ­couples who openly share that they are involved in a sham marriage, of course, no, I ­don’t take them. But for some, I can feel it. . . . ​I had a Canadian w ­ oman who originally came from Latin Amer­ i­ca and who had met a Moroccan ­father of five on the bus. . . . ​This is sad to say, but . . . ​she was not the kind of ­woman with the kind of body that leads to love at first sight [coup de foudre] and for whom ­you’re ready to dump your wife and five kids to get married.” Some even mentioned that if you need to go abroad to find someone, you should already tell yourself “that something is wrong.” ­Women’s physical appearance was mentioned over and over again as a key dimension that would raise suspicion about a relationship. ­L awyer 1 deplored that ­women would not ask themselves questions when they “end[ed] up with the Brad Pitt or the Angelina Jolie of the place,” when they have had l­ittle success in securing relationships, even purely sexual ones, at home. ­Lawyer 8: Well, you know, when you say that t­ here are ­people who abuse ­people in Canada . . . ​we talk about that too ­because sometimes, when ­people come and see us . . . ​I once said to ­women: “Are you sure about his intentions?” . . . ​You know, when you have a fifty-­five-­year-­old ­woman with a young twenty-­t wo-­year-­old Algerian . . . ​you know, it raises doubts. . . . ​ And she [says], “Well, he loves me and he finds me beautiful.” And I once said to a w ­ oman: “He does not find you attractive, this is not true.” [Laughs.] ­Lawyer 7: Yes, she is a bit more cruder than me. ­Lawyer 15: The first ­thing [I look at], is the physical appearance. If it does not match, if one is young and handsome, and the w ­ oman who sponsors him is 20 year older and 20 twenty pounds heavier, for sure that’s off to a bad start. T ­ here’s that. Already, on the exterior . . . ​that’s sad to say, but that’s real­ity. . . . ​A lready, you have a hurdle to overcome. Your file must be hyper-­convincing to make it through.



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Conclusion This chapter has examined how ­lawyers should be considered po­liti­cal actors, rather than mere technocrats who possess technical expertise and know-­how, in the moral economy of trust and suspicion involving spouses and partners seeking reunification with a Canadian citizen. Interview excerpts with immigration l­awyers who help c ­ ouples complete a f­ amily reunification pro­cess in Montreal show that ­lawyers stand in a privileged and difficult position. On the one hand, their priority is to ensure that their client’s application is successful and that ­family reunification takes place. To do so, ­lawyers must know the immigration system well and anticipate reasons for refusal. They must develop through intuition, experience, and discussions with colleagues, among other ­things, a knowledge of what raises flags for immigration officers. In other words, they must anticipate, and know, the moral economy of trust and suspicion that permeates ­family reunification pro­cesses. Partaking in this moral economy is thus central to their success, even if they can be extremely critical of it at times. Lack of contacts between immigration officers and ­lawyers also means that projection is central to the l­awyers’ file preparation: What would an immigration officer think? We saw that their projections are based on an securitized logic of border controls, where “true relationships” must be distinguished from “fake ones.” This projection guides which material is included in the application and how it is presented. Yet, as Laura Odasso and Manuela Salcedo Robledo underscore in their contribution in this volume, learning how to better play the game inside the system can take one so far. Whereas in the short run this might help ­couples secure a coveted visa, ultimately, this strategy appears to diminish the importance given to the defense and re­spect of individual rights. It also reinforces the normative role the romantic Western love narrative plays as a technique of government in the securitization of immigration. Even more, as Grace K. Tran’s chapter in this volume illustrates, it can also crystallize perceptions of what “real marriages” that are bona fide but do not correspond to the expected Western love narrative (e.g., arranged marriages) should look like. It leaves unchallenged the gendered and racialized foundations of a moral economy of trust and suspicion that thousands of cross-­border ­couples may be paying for, year a ­ fter year.

NOTES

1. N. Keung, “Immigration Guide for Detecting Marriage Fraud Called ‘Racist and Offensive,’ ” Toronto Star, May  19, 2015, https://­w ww​.­thestar​.­com​/­news​/­immigration​ /­2 015​ /­0 5​ /­19​ /­i mmigration​ -­guide​ -­f or​-­detecting​ -­m arriage​ -­f raud​ -­c alled​ -­r acist​ -­a nd​ -­offensive​.h ­ tml. 2. P. O’Neil, “Federal Report Warns ‘Marriages of Con­ve­nience’ a Threat to Immigration System,” Vancouver (BC) Sun, August  4, 2015, https://­vancouversun​.­com​/­news​/m ­ etro​ /­federal​-r­ eport​-­warns​-m ­ arriages​-­of​-­convenience​-­a​-­threat​-t­ o​-­immigration​-­system.

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3. In Canada, marriage of con­ve­nience refers to “a marriage or common-­law relationship whose sole purpose is to let the sponsored spouse or partner immigrate to Canada” (Government of Canada 2020). Dif­fer­ent countries use dif­fer­ent terms to refer to marriages of con­ve­nience, such as sham marriages (the United Kingdom) and mariages blancs and mariages gris (France and Belgium). Each term has its own historical and po­liti­cal development, and all do not have the same po­liti­cal and ­legal impacts and ramifications. Their emergence and variation should be noted, as they are also part of a broader constellation constructed around an implicitly assumed “real marriage.” The latter acts as a norm around which other terms make sense and get organized—­ not only marriages of con­ve­nience but also “forced marriages” and “arranged marriages,” for instance. 4. For an analy­sis of how websites can play a similar role, see Scheel and Gutekunst (2019), and on how ser­v ice providers’ ways of knowing about domestic vio­lence can reproduce securitizing practices about “deserving” and “deportable” marriage and partner mi­grants, see Bhuyan and Bragg (2019). 5. All the interviews took place in French. The excerpts used ­here are En­glish translations, but I chose to keep the hesitations and grammatical errors that ­were also pre­ sent in French (e.g., writing “Me, I” to reflect the incorrect use of “Moi, je . . .” in French), to do justice to our interviewees’ voice as much as pos­si­ble. 6. I want to thank Audrey Macklin for raising this key point.

REFERENCES

Alpes, M. J., and A. Spire. 2014. “Dealing with Law in Migration Control: The Powers of Street-­ Level Bureaucrats at French Consulates.” Social and L ­ egal Studies 23 (2): 261–274. Andrikopoulos, A. 2021. “Love, Money and Papers in the Affective Cir­cuits of Cross-­B order Marriages: Beyond the ‘Sham’/‘Genuine’ Dichotomy.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 47 (2): 343–360. Andrikopoulos, A., and J. W. Duyvendak. 2020. “Migration, Mobility and the Dynamics of Kinship: New Barriers, New Assemblages.” Ethnography 21 (3): 299–318. AQAADI (Association québécoise des avocats et avocates en droit de l’immigration). 2014. “Accueil.” http://­w ww​.a ­ qaadi​.­com​/­. Bhuyan, R., and B. Bragg. 2019. “Epistemologies of Bordering: Domestic Vio­lence Advocacy with Marriage Mi­grants in the Shadow of Deportation.” Migration Studies, June 10, 2019. https://­doi​.o ­ rg​/1­ 0​.­1093​/­migration​/­mnz025. Bigo, D. 2002. “Security and Immigration: ­Toward a Critique of the Governmentality of Unease.” Alternatives: Global, Local, Po­liti­cal 27 (S1): S63–92. Bonjour, S., and B. de Hart. 2013. “A Proper Wife, a Proper Marriage: Constructions of ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ in Dutch F ­ amily Migration Policy.” Eu­ro­pean Journal of ­Women’s Studies 20 (1): 61–76. Bourdieu, P. 1987. “The Force of Law: ­Toward a Sociology of the Juridical Field.” Translated by Richard Terdiman. Hastings Law Journal 38 (5): 814–853. D’Aoust, A.-­M. 2013. “In the Name of Love: Marriage Migration, Governmentality, and Technologies of Love.” International Po­liti­cal Sociology 7 (3): 258–274. —­—­—. 2018. “A Moral Economy of Suspicion: Love and Marriage Migration Management Practices in the United Kingdom.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 36 (1): 40–59.



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Eggebø, H. 2013. “A Real Marriage? Applying for Marriage Migration to Norway.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 39 (5): 773–789. Fassin, D. 2005. “Compassion and Repression: The Moral Economy of Immigration Policies in France.” Cultural Anthropology 20 (3): 362–387. —­—— ­ . 2009. “Les économies morales revisitées.” Annales: Histoire, sciences sociales 64 (6): 1237–1266. —­—— ­ . 2011a. “Policing Borders, Producing Bound­aries. The Governmentality of Immigration in Dark Times.” Annual Review of Anthropology 40: 213–226. —­—­—. 2011b. “The Trace: Vio­lence, Truth, and the Politics of the Body.” Social Research 78 (2): 281–298. Fassin, E., and M. Salcedo. 2015. “Becoming Gay? Immigration Policies and the Truth of Sexual Identity.” Archives of Sexual Be­hav­ior 44 (5): 1117–1125. Fischer, N., and A. Spire. 2009. “L’état face aux illégalismes.” Politix 87 (3): 7–20. Foucault, M. 2007. Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977–1978. Translated by G. Burchell. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Gaucher, M. 2016. “Monogamous Canadian Citizenship, Constructing Foreignness, and the Limits of Harm Discourse.” Canadian Journal of Po­liti­cal Science 49 (3): 519–538. —­—­—. 2018. A ­Family ­Matter: Citizenship, Conjugal Relationships, and Canadian Immigration Policy. Vancouver: UBC Press. Government of Canada. 2020. “Protect Yourself from Marriage Fraud.” http://­w ww​.­cic​.­gc​.­ca​ /­english​/­information​/­protection​/­f raud​/­marriage​.­asp. Inda, J.  X. 2006. Targeting Immigrants: Government, Technology, and Ethics. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Infantino, F. 2014. “Bordering ‘Fake’ Marriages? The Everyday Practices of Control at the Consulates of Belgium, France, and Italy in Casablanca.” Etnografia e ricerca qualitativa 1 (1): 27–48. —­—— ­ . 2021. “How Does Policy Change at the Street Level? Local Knowledge, a Community of Practice and EU Visa Policy Implementation in Morocco.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 47 (5): 1028–1046. Kringelbach, H. N. 2013. “Mixed Marriage, Citizenship, and the Policing of Intimacy in France.” IMI Working Papers Series 77. International Migration Institute, University of Oxford. http://­w ww​.­imi​.­ox​.­ac​.­uk​/­publications​/­working​-­papers​/­w p​-­7 7​-­2013. Lavanchy, A. 2013. “Dissonant Alignments: The Ethics and Politics of Researching State Institutions.” Current Sociology 61 (5–6): 677–692. Lipsky, M. (1980) 2010. Street-­Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Ser­vices. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Mascia, C. 2021. “How Bureaucracies Shape Access to Rights: The Implementation of ­Family Reunification in Belgium.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 47 (9): 2127–2143. Maskens, M. 2015. “Bordering Intimacy: The Fight against Marriages of Con­ve­n ience in Brussels.” Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 33 (2): 42–58. Moffette, D. 2014. “Governing Immigration through Probation: The Displacement of Borderwork and the Assessment of Desirability in Spain.” Security Dialogue 45 (3): 262–278. Muller Myrdahl, E. 2010. “Legislating Love: Norwegian F ­ amily Reunification Law as a Racial Proj­ect.” Social and Cultural Geography 11 (2): 103–116. Nighoskar, D. 2020. “Sexualisation, Ste­reo­t ypes, Statistics: LGBTQI+ Asylum Seekers in the UK.” SOAS Blog, January 28, 2020. https://­w ww​.­soas​.­ac​.­u k ​/­blogs​/­study​/­lgbtqi​-­a sylum​ -­seekers​-­uk ​/­.

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Nyers, P. 2010. “No One Is Illegal between City and Nation.” Studies in Social Justice 4 (2): 127–143. Parker, N., and N. Vaughan-­Williams, eds. 2014. Critical Border Studies: Broadening and Deepening the ‘Lines in the Sand’ Agenda. London: Routledge. Pellander, S. 2015. “ ‘An Acceptable Marriage’: Marriage Migration and Moral Gatekeeping in Finland.” Journal of ­Family Issues 36 (11): 1472–1489. Raj, S. 2017. “A/Effective Adjudications: Queer Refugees and the Law.” Journal of Intercultural Studies 38 (4): 453–468. Satzewich, V. 2015. Points of Entry: How Canada’s Immigration Officers Decide Who Gets In. Vancouver: UBC Press. Scheel, S. 2017. “Appropriating Mobility and Bordering Eu­rope through Romantic Love: Unearthing the Intricate Intertwinement of Border Regimes and Migratory Practices.” Migration Studies 5 (3): 389–408. Scheel, S., and M. Gutekunst. 2019. “Studying Marriage Migration to Eu­rope from Below: Informal Practices of Government, Border Strug­gles and Multiple Entanglements.” Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 26 (6): 847–867. Tomkinson, S. 2019. “Trois nuances de l’expertise stratégique: Le rôle des avocats dans la procédure d’asile.” Politique et sociétés 38 (1): 99–128. Topel, K. D. 2017. “ ‘So, What Should I Ask Him to Prove That He’s Gay?’: How Sincerity, and Not Ste­reo­t ype, Should Dictate the Outcome of an LGB Asylum Claim in the United States.” Iowa Law Review 102 (5): 2357–2384. Walters, W. 2015. “Reflections on Migration and Governmentality.” Movements: Journal for Critical Migration and Border Regime Studies 1 (1). http://­movements​-j­ ournal​.­org​/­issues​ /­01​.­grenzregime​/­04​.­walters​-­​-­migration​.­governmentality​.­html. White, M. A. 2014. “Archives of Intimacy and Trauma: Queer Migration Documents as Technologies of Affect.” Radical History Review 120: 75–93. Wray, H. 2006. “An Ideal Husband? Marriages of Con­ve­n ience, Moral Gate-­Keeping and Immigration to the UK.” Eu­ro­pean Journal of Migration and Law 8 (3–4): 303–320.

8 Intimacy Brokers The Fragile Bound­aries of Activism for Heterosexual and Same-­Sex Binational ­Couples in France L AU R A O DA S S O A N D M A N U E L A S A LC E D O RO B L E D O

“We should stop answering directly, and maintain an order of discussion around the t­ able, so we can find ideas. . . . . Putting all our resources together, successes, failures, so that it helps ­others,” says Sandrine (sixty-­t wo years old, French, white, retired) to Marie (forty-­five years old, French, white, currently unemployed with a rec­ord of odd jobs), both taking part in the Amoureux au ban public (Public Benches Lovers), or ABP, weekly meeting.1 “Yes, yes . . . ​, but you know, we need to keep moving forward! ­There are too many ­people, and we always stay ­later than the expected time, we often stay ­until 10

P.M.,”

points out

Marie, already too tired. Every­one attending this collective ­legal aid meeting sits together around a ­table. Nevertheless, most of them want to meet with Marie, as she seems to hold the keys to unlocking even the most complicated cases, since she is always up-­to-­date on local administrative procedures. Her attitude is reassuring for the ­couples who attend ­these meetings. However, Sandrine spends more time listening to them. Marie now gives the floor to a Franco-­ Cameroonian c ­ ouple, whose turn it is to share their story: “So, what about you?” The forty-­something man is French, and he calmly explains that his partner has received a summons to pre­sent herself to the police in two days’ time. They have been living together for the past six months in an open partnership and wish to stabilize their situation. She is currently residing illegally in France, since her last residence permit was not renewed. He does not wish her to remain in this situation of illegality and asserts that he is ready to get married to make t­ hings ­legal. Marie tries to make sense of all this information in order to understand the who, what, and when of it. She then asks to see the administrative documents they have brought, especially the summons. In the end, Marie suggests that the best ­thing to do in this situation is to not appear the day of the summons and to hold off from ­ doing so ­ until the ­ couple has entered into a civil ­ union

17 1

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partnership (Pacte civil de solidarité, or PACS). She recommends that the ­woman pretend she is ill and visit a doctor whom she trusts in order to obtain a medical certificate.2 ­These eve­nings of exchanging practical and administrative information, of sharing of experiences, anx­i­eties, and hopes, far from being extraordinary, have become the norm for the associations providing assistance to binational ­couples in France. Immigration policies have restricted ­family migration over the course of the past thirty years, but the restrictions intensified during 2001–2012, when the po­liti­cal discourse on so-­called selected migration (immigration choisie, referring to high-­skilled and seasonal mi­grants) and endured migration (immigration subie, referring to the asylum seekers and mi­grants legalizing their status through ­family reunification) reshaped migration governmentality. Highly qualified professionals, seasonal mi­grants, and caregivers, useful to the economy, are still welcome, while f­amily mi­grants—­together with asylum seekers—­a re treated with more and more suspicion. Among ­family mi­grants, non-­European partners of French citizens have attracted the attention of legislators. This migration, often referred to as marriage migration, is presented as a breach that mi­grants exploit in order to enter the French nation, a form of simplified administrative regularization for irregular mi­grants already on the territory, a source of intercommunitarian closure—­due to binational but endogamous unions—­and a burden for social security. This kind of migration has turned out to be a highly symbolic field in migration regimes, as it includes the control over citizens’ intimate and emotional life. In fact, by governing binational ­unions and by securing the risk that the entrance of some “mi­grant partners” may inflict on the nation, the French state imposes l­egal requirements not only on foreigners but also on its citizens. In such configurations, owing to the characteristics of their emotional and affective commitment, French citizens are thus intimately concerned by migration law and dealing with heavy consequences for their personal and ­family lives (Odasso 2016; Salcedo Robledo 2011), as well as for how they feel about their state and citizenship (Odasso 2021). The ­f uture of the nation is still closely linked to the citizenry and its matrimonial norms, ­family organ­ ization, and sexual practices; thus, the intimate choices of citizens ­matter and are made into public po­liti­cal issues (Turner 2008). In France, legislative updates have redefined the criteria for starting a binational ­family and ensuring its administrative recognition, while administrative officers test ­family members daily to select who ­w ill be allowed to claim their rights. This se­lection is based on appraising the authenticity of their private relationships. T ­ hese administrative practices, both discretionary and moralistic (Maskens 2015) as well as paternalistic (Odasso 2018a), have created a policing of intimacy to deter ­these binational relationships and keep control over an unlikely national sameness (Muller Myrdahl 2010). Some of ­t hese ­c ouples,



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affected by this system, look for help from l­awyers and associative nongovernmental actors to overcome cumbersome administrative procedures. In the lit­er­a­ture on marriage migration, l­ittle attention has been given to these associative actors (Odasso 2017, 2018a, 2021; Salcedo Robledo 2013; ­ Woesthoff 2013), even though their work is central to the relationship between the c ­ ouples and the state. This contribution to the volume enters this debate and shows how the French po­liti­cal and ­legal dominant discourse on binational ­unions management affects the l­ abor of two associations, the ABP and the Association pour la reconnaissance des droits des personnes homosexuelles et transsexuelles à l’immigration et au séjour (Ardhis), which provide ­legal ser­vices ­free of charge to facilitate binational c ­ ouples’ access to immigration procedures. In return, both associations encourage the c ­ ouples’ participation in the collective fight for ­family rights. Building on long-­term ethnographic (2009–2018) and biographical interviews with ­couples and volunteers operating in ­these associations, our chapter shows the fragile bound­aries between activism and l­ egal brokerage in a context of suspicion t­oward binational u ­ nions.3 In the beginning, both associations aimed to create a movement intent on dismantling the administrative procedures blocking immigration. However, the regular work of welcoming and counseling created a routine that slowly voided this militant spirit through the bureaucratization of l­ egal aid. T ­ hese associations are caught between their desire to change the existing immigration administrative system and their daily actions, which seek to operate effectively within it. This ambivalence results from a “professionalization” of activism due to the “hyperlegalization” and complexity of administrative-­legal procedures related to migration in general and marriage migration in par­tic­u­lar. Encapsulating this ambivalence, the study of micro-­interactions between ­couples and volunteers suggests that the associations have become “intimacy brokers.” With this concept, we wish to emphasize a specific dynamic involving volunteers. Their ­legal work focuses on the affective private relationships of the ­couples and is bolstered by the specific symbolic recognition they personally gain in return for their work. Such an intimate migration brokerage is embedded within the marriage migration apparatus in France and affected by ongoing transformations of associative l­abor. To better illustrate this point, we first review the relevant lit­er­a­ture on intermediaries and brokers in order to frame our lexical choice and to clarify the ambivalence that is found within the associations. Then, ­after ­going over the history and aims of t­ hese associations, we detail how the associations concretely act as “intimacy brokers,” molding ­couples’ expectations regarding rights claims through affective interactions and specific power relations.

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Associations Face-­to-­Face with Binational Intimacies: Militants or Brokers? As migration policies deliberately leave “holes” in the bureaucratic and administrative apparatus, states generate the need for brokers (Faist 2014, 43), expecting intermediaries to fill in the gaps in order to ensure that the mechanisms of immigration policy run smoothly. Mobility is or­ga­n ized at the international, regional, and local scales through the work of intermediate actors (transnational matrimonial agencies, visa ser­vices, e ­ tc.) (Lindquist, Xiang, and Yeoh 2012). Some of ­these actors are involved in commercial agencies that offer their paid ser­vices (e.g., for job searches, documentation, and procedures) to p ­ eople wishing to migrate, such as low-­skilled mi­grant workers (Molland 2012), potential spouses (Wang and Chang 2002; Yeoh, Chee, and Baey 2017), or students (Sidhu 2002). Other intermediaries are employed by or volunteer in international organ­ izations, associations, and law firms, working at vari­ous levels—­w ithout asking for compensation or without requiring direct payment from the mi­grants—in the name of defending ­human rights (Faist 2014). Mi­grants themselves sometimes hold this intermediary position as they work to help recent mi­grants (Tuckett 2018). Depending on their position within an organ­i zation and their own disposition, some of t­ hese intermediaries are viewed as morally ambiguous figures (Lindquist 2015), while ­others are categorized as activists resisting the obscure side of migratory regimes. Their work is often understood through dichotomies: moral/immoral, legal/illegal, altruistic/profit-­oriented; instead, through our case studies, we would like to nuance such binary appraisals to stress the coexistence of several, in some ways contradictory, attitudes among such actors. This heterogeneous group of actors come together u ­ nder several terminologies, namely, ­legal intermediaries (Talesh and Pelisse 2019), translators (Lewis and Mosse 2006), facilitators, mediators (Muller 1990; Moore 2004), or brokers.4 This last term appears to be more suitable for our analy­sis: b ­ ecause not only do “brokers” mediate or connect dif­fer­ent parties (Boissevain 1974)—­here ­couples, immigration administrations and jurisdictions, and other organ­izations—­but while helping increase the beneficiaries’ capacities, they also partake in “complex relations of de­pen­dency and power asymmetries between the parties involved” (Faist 2014, 45). Hence, conceiving of the associations studied as “brokers” helps us to understand the shift of focus between l­ egal help and advocacy and to stress the importance of studying the power relations revealed through the interaction between c ­ ouples and volunteers. The brokers may be “dealing in expectations—­f uture pos­si­ble services—­ rather than dead certainties” (Boissevain 1974, 159). In the field of international migrations, intermediaries are considered as “dealers in hopes” who help manage state border crossings and envisage migration routes and options (Alpes 2017,



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316). In the case studies analyzed in this chapter, the bound­aries ­couples need help crossing are administrative ones (most ­couples are often already together in France, though some are sometimes separated while the mi­grant partner waits for a visa), and volunteers propose their ­legal knowledge to offer the ­couples the hope of a stable ­family life. Both Ardhis and the ABP have made “defending the right to a private ­family life” their main cause. Hence, they not only offer ­legal aid, as many other migration brokers do, but they also navigate a multifaceted affective economy of intimacy brought by the ­couples’ stories and experiences. This economy is created during ­legal encounters between ­couples and volunteers and is sustained in the social environment by certain po­liti­cal and media discourses on binational u ­ nions. Nevertheless, as volunteers have l­ imited room to maneuver b ­ ecause of l­ egal dispositions and administrative categories, conditions, and practices, they also experience the ambivalence of f­ amily migration politics. While helping c ­ ouples, they waver between support, suspicion, and control (D’Halluin 2012). By following the activities of members of the associations, we realized that they act as “involved parties” while d ­ oing “partisan arbitration” (Faist 2014, 45). They remind us of one of the broker types that Thomas Faist (2014) identified that function with solidarity, funneling the gains of power­ful actors ­toward less power­ful actors, especially through ­legal tools.5 If this mechanism is meant to produce equality, however, unexpected effects can arise, especially owing to the intrinsic se­lection of aid recipients. The volunteers we interviewed hold on to ideals of solidarity with mi­grants and their French partners, but they have accepted a tacit compromise with the state without being able to overcome the state categories and norms that or­ga­nize the se­lection of who is worthy of having the right to stay. They go back and forth between defending a po­liti­cal cause before the state and the daily l­ egal aid activity that occupies most of their energy (D’Aoust, this volume). They juggle between a “grammar of activist support and a grammar of realistic expectations” (Chappe 2010, 543; our translation) and “enact alternative readings of the law, which hold a strong subversive meaning while also still staying within the bound­aries of the institution” (Bouagga 2010; our translation). In France, associations have become huge players in the fine-­tuning of public policy (Hély and Simonet 2013). “As organ­izations, and what­ever their degree of institutionalization, they work with individuals and are worked by ­these individuals” (Sawicki and Siméant 2009, 115; our translation). At the management level of the associations, power dynamics shape relations between leaders, the board, and rank-­and-­file members (Odasso 2018b), but power dynamics are also pre­sent in the everyday interactions and social relations at play between volunteers and beneficiaries. In this chapter, we focus on t­ hese interactions to show that brokerage is all but unidirectional. It is built on a “double intimacy” highlighting constellations of rights, identity changes, emotions, and

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agency/empowerment. Volunteers “join the association u ­ nder the impulse of goodwill and . . . ​do not receive any financial compensation in exchange,” but their work “participates in the gratification of bigger demands . . . ​[and takes part] in an affiliation and reaffiliation pro­cess as well as identity building” (Vermeersch 2004, 682; our translation). Volunteers receive ­legal training related to mi­grants’ rights during their studies, as part of their professional c ­ areers, or on the ground, through their volunteering activities. They all profess to act in the name of defending binational ­couples’ rights, but they also seek individual recognition in certain cases. Some of them become pivotal figures in the migration stories of ­couples, ­because they ­were able to suggest ways to navigate the multiplicity of law (Coutin 2000) and offer an understanding of local unofficial readings of the law. It is thus impor­tant to investigate further their actions in the wider frame of associative ­labor.

The Associations’ Genesis Despite a complex history marked by a desire to control migratory flows and binational u ­ nions (Slama 2015; Guerry 2013; Bonjour and Ourabah, this volume), binational u ­ nions ­really became a public priority of French immigration policy in the mid-1990s, when they ­were associated with the strug­gles of undocumented mi­grants (Salcedo Robledo 2015).6 The strug­gle of undocumented mi­grants was initially framed as a work issue (Siméant 1998) and only l­ ater, in 2001–2012, came to be seen as an issue of private and ­family life (Fogel 2019). But a new tightening in the policing of binational u ­ nions started in 2003, when several successive laws and administrative circulars burdened the daily lives of ­these ­couples. The year 2006 was pivotal, with the passing of two laws that precisely reinforced the administrative means to identify and stop marriages qualified as “non-­ genuine.” 7 The implementation of t­hese vari­ous laws meant that c ­ ouples suddenly needed the help of specialists to “translate” ­these complex texts and to understand what they concretely meant for them regarding which procedures to follow. ­A fter the 2012 presidential elections, some ele­ments of po­liti­cal discourses changed, with a lesser focus on binational ­couples. Still, certain practices of suspicion and control subsided, having taken root and entered the French immigration bureaucratic routine (Salcedo Robledo 2018).

The Amoureux au ban public The ABP was born in 2007, at the same time the Ministry for Immigration was created by the French government. Initiated by a ­lawyer, the ABP is a movement within a national association defending mi­grant rights, the Cimade. The movement fights in ­favor of “the right to lead a normal ­family life,” referring to the right to marry and to live with the person of your choosing.8 To do so, it helps French-­ foreign heterosexual binational c ­ouples overcome administrative roadblocks,



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campaigns for re­sis­tance against the laws hampering the marriage pro­cess and the daily lives of binational ­couples, and encourages c ­ ouples to mobilize and collectively defend their rights. As highlighted in an internal activity report, the movement aims to offer a particularly in­ter­est­ing experimental space for mi­grants, as well as French citizens, in the tradition of public education movements. The movement’s name refers to a 1953 song by George Brassens, called “Les amoureux des bancs publics” (The public benches lovers). The title’s wordplay on the French ­ ouples love each words banc (bench) and ban (ban) highlights how binational c other and still face the state’s rejection (or ban) of this love. Furthermore, in the Amoureux au ban public name t­ here is also a reference to the “banns” (bans) read in city hall before each wedding ceremony. T ­ hose c ­ ouples who “snog on public benches,” as Brassens sings, are now being banned by the state from the moment they try to publish their banns. The ABP became an in­de­pen­dent association in 2010. It comprises local groups  or chapters (thirty at the beginning, now reduced to seven) consisting of volunteers and members of binational ­couples who offer monthly or weekly free-­ of-­charge ­legal advice. They also raise awareness in the public sphere with regularly or­ga­nized actions, such as cele­brations on Valentine’s Day (February 14), the official day of romantic love, and on Loving Day (June 12), the day of interracial ­couples.9 Besides local activities, Paris-­based employees—­a proj­ect man­ag­er and a ­lawyer (­until 2018)—­coordinate national advocacy efforts, review ­couples’ cases to identify t­ hose that could be used to bolster and support proposals for law amendments, write reports, and campaign about the realities binational c ­ ouples face. For example, they sent many appeals and letters to government offices, and even offered ­legal repre­sen­ta­tion for certain cases, while also organ­i zing public events, from handing out coffee and pastries to ­couples waiting in line at the prefecture to participating in protests and arranging dances and parties.10

Ardhis Ardhis was created in France in 1998 ­under the name Collectif des homos sans papiers (Homosexuals without Papers Action Group), at the intersection of demands for the rights of same-­sex binational c ­ ouples to live together and the strug­gles of undocumented mi­grants. Early attempts in the 1990s to include gay rights in the global movement of support for undocumented mi­grants did not succeed, and so the Collectif des homos sans papiers turned to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) activist space instead to find its place. During the public debate on civil u ­ nions (PACS), homosexuals who ­were in relationships with foreigners denounced the tensions and constraints inhibiting their private lives. Same-­sex ­couples’ mobilization preceded that of binational ­couples, and Ardhis played a pioneering role in the fight for some ­couples’ rights. Their mobilization took place long before the l­egal recognition of civil u ­ nions and same-­ sex c ­ ouples’ partnerships and marriage, this in order to allow some c ­ ouples to

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benefit from the rights of mi­grant partners (Fassin 2009, 380–381). At the very beginning, administrative victories ­were won on a case-­by-­case basis, with residency permits granted without clear l­egal or administrative grounds. In 1999, PACS ­were institutionalized, but this did not appear to be seen as sufficient grounds for a private and ­family life residency permit. PACS ­were not viewed as equal to a civil marriage, and same-­sex ­couples w ­ ere treated as “second-­rank partners.” B ­ ecause of this disparity in treatment, Ardhis members actively publicized their fight for equal treatment and against discrimination based on sexual orientation, and soon their networking with high-­ranking civil servants started to reap rewards. It took a year of discussions with the minister of the interior for Ardhis to achieve a precious step forward. Near the end of Lionel Jospin’s government, in April 2002, the “Vaillant tele­gram” was sent. It was a dispatch regarding the easing of binding deadlines for the mi­grant partner in a PACS ­union with a French national, sent by the Interior Ministry’s cabinet to the president of Ardhis. Its content was ­later confirmed by a 2004 circular note (Villepin 2004). ­Because of the importance of such documents, the association invested in ensuring their publicization. Since immigration agents are not always made aware of ­these administrative circulars, volunteers also checked the new rules for mi­grant partners’ claims for residency to make sure they w ­ ere respected. In so d ­ oing, volunteers improved their strategy of standardizing the submission of ­couples’ administrative files and checking administrative responses.11 Before same-­sex marriage was legalized, the circular remained for nine years (2004–2013) the only ­legal tool available to French-­foreigner same-­sex ­couples seeking l­egal stability. Nevertheless, according to Ardhis, binational c ­ ouples needed to have better access to ­legal information and explanations regarding administrative procedures. Thus, volunteers si­mul­ta­neously helped c ­ ouples and ensured that all administrative offices and consulates acknowledged and implemented this text. To accomplish t­hese missions, volunteers had to become experts (Salcedo Robledo 2015) and to train ­others to successfully ­handle cases, to the point that in 2000–2010, the Ardhis volunteers concentrated their work on expert training, public awareness work, and the dissemination of ­legal information. In that de­cade of heightened suspicion and control of immigration, Ardhis and the ABP worked with c ­ ouples to explain l­egal changes and contexts as well as to offer personal support, from sharing experiences to encouraging c ­ ouples’ bureaucratic fights against the administration. As an unexpected consequence of their “intermediate work,” they facilitated the efforts of street-­level bureaucrats working in immigration affairs, if only by overseeing the submission of well-­prepared files. “It’s not the same ­thing to pro­cess a clean, well-­organized, and proofread file as it is a messy illegible one,” we often heard during the ­legal aid meetings. Over time, they acted in a “continuum” (Kalir and Wissink 2016)



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with the administrative immigration apparatus, resulting in volunteers progressively starting to use the very po­liti­cal categories they would have been critical of, for instance, by mentioning the authenticity of love or discussing fraudulent love: “Patrick is way too old for Mario. We ­w ill help them, of course, but they ­don’t seem an au­then­tic ­couple, a ­couple that can last longer than a visa or a summer.” 12 As volunteers have become ­legal experts over time, their expertise is recognized by ­couples, which affects the aid relation while creating hierarchies of power. In the next sections, we analyze the tension between emotional ­labor and efficiency in the light of the affective economy that characterizes the volunteers-­ couples care interactions and then discuss the symbolic intimate recognition and the transactions at stake in such interactions. As we look at the two associations, we wish to highlight that impor­tant nuances subside despite the perceived similarities between them, notably if we take into account both the sex of the volunteers—­mainly French ­women in the ABP groups (Odasso 2018a; Salcedo Robledo 2015) and mostly French gay men in Ardhis (Salcedo Robledo 2015)—­and the pattern of the c ­ ouples they help.13 ­These differences should be taken into account in ­f uture analytical work.

Associative L ­ abor: Between Efficiency and Emotions The specificity of the ABP’s and Ardhis’s work—­which takes place in a safe and friendly atmosphere, in a context where interpersonal interactions and attention to emotional experiences are essential—­comes from close dealing with the intimate or with intimacy. That is to say, volunteers become privy to the private lives of ­people who are asking for help in establishing a l­egal romantic partnership or ensuring the administrative recognition of their ­union. In order to test and attest to this solidity, the ABP and Ardhis must work on emotions at play in each administrative step ­couples undertake. They know that the state also seeks to control emotions, as bureaucrats (municipality agents and immigration agents at the prefecture) attempt to check the intentions of the families and the authenticity of their emotions, d ­ oing so in order to pro­cess their marriage and, with it, the claims for the mi­grant partner’s rights when he or she requests a residence permit based on it. Furthermore, associative ­labor is characterized by a personalized follow-up of ­every ­couple’s trajectory, thanks to face-­to-­face encounters where volunteers become acquainted with the ­couple’s history and their administrative documentation. At the same time, with a view to efficiency, associations also have at their disposal a series of preformatted tools. ­These include a starter kit for administrative practices (how to marry, to enter into a partnership, and to apply for a residence permit) and l­egal ones, such as appeals. Associative work is, on the one hand, “humanized” ­because of its focus on understanding the ­couple’s

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trajectory and its specificities. On the other hand, it is “standardized and routinized” ­because volunteers seek to help a large number of c ­ ouples within the restrictive time frame established by the state. L ­ egal aid and the provision of information follow conventional procedures that, while giving small tools to simplify and explain procedures, reproduce t­ hose of the state (e.g., checking documents for authenticity and the list of documents needed for a procedure). Certain specific legal/human cases have led to broader advocacy; however, since most cases are quite similar, volunteers mainly operate within the institutional framework when engaging in l­egal aid. For c ­ ouples who feel stuck in an administrative dead-­end, volunteers are the only ones capable of offering clear solutions. Their ­legal support is much appreciated by the partners who often lack necessary resources to successfully navigate the administrative pro­cesses within immigration bureaucracy. However, given the centrality and urgency of tackling administrative and ­legal obstacles, ­these routine activities mobilize all the volunteers’ time, and more po­liti­cally engaged activities take a backseat. Such activities by volunteers would include time dedicated to the po­liti­cal contestation of current practices and norms, in order to demand changes in policies dealing with marriage and partner migration, as well as encouraging beneficiaries to join this fight, a goal both associations clearly defended in their early days. We suggest that an uneasy coexistence between bureaucratic efficiency and humanity, fundamental to the attitudes and modalities of associative work, and the decline of activism in ­favor of routine ­legal work make ­these associations emerge as brokers.

Recognition and Transactions in Associative L ­ abor Intimacy and emotions infuse the work of t­ hese associations and play a key role in their survival. Volunteers often find motivation for their commitment to the association through their own intimate relationships: they are, or have been, in a romantic partnership with an undocumented mi­grant. Moreover, as we see below in the profiles of two volunteers, voluntarism inside the ABP and Ardhis is not ­free of charge. Volunteers have an emotional investment (emotional ­labor) that requires recognition. Through their ­legal assistance work, which is increasingly professional ­because of the expertise acquired in the field, volunteers try to empower the c ­ ouple, and, at the same time, they gain in their own empowerment and identity building.

Joëlle: The Documentation Wizard When Joëlle joined Ardhis, she was already invested in activism for the defense of mi­grant rights. When we met this French w ­ oman, she was in her fifties and unemployed. Her academic and professional ­careers are not very clear, but Joëlle mentions courses in psy­chol­ogy, social work, and economics.



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­Every day, Joëlle smokes one or two packs of cigarettes. She often wears short skirts and high boots, paired with cashmere sweaters that show off her tall, slim figure. Her scent is a mix of perfume and cigarettes, and she appears as a Pa­ri­ sian bourgeoise living in financial ease. Joëlle is a perfectionist, but she is also very disor­ga­nized. Not a morning person, she schedules most of her meetings with ­couples in the after­noon, in her Pa­ri­sian apartment belonging to the city of Paris. She has been living ­there alone, ever since her divorce a number of years ago. Her two grown ­children are currently studying at university. From time to time, she hosts undocumented mi­grants who have no place to go. The apartment is seldom tidy: on most surfaces, cigarette butts accumulate, as do coffee cups. In the entrance vestibule, a massive wooden cabinet holds a mountain of clothes, a sight one would expect in a vintage clothing shop. When someone arrives at her home, she often answers the door eating or speaking on the phone. She makes a point of answering the phone abruptly: “What do you want?” or “Yes? Tell me.” She is always busy, always on the go: this is her daily per­for­mance. Shy, and in search of recognition, Joëlle carefully constructs her per­for­mance with each of her visitors. ­People who come to her for counsel sometimes find her frightening when they meet for the first time. She speaks of “her” cases, even though each ­couple file is managed by a small team of three volunteers. Joëlle was the volunteer who thought of a strategy that helped a number of ­couples considered “lost ­causes” obtain a “private and ­family life” residency permit—­and she ­w ill not let ­others forget it. Though she never studied law, her activism in the French left-­w ing po­liti­cal party, Parti de gauche, and within a network for education without borders (Réseau d’éducation sans frontieres [RESF]), where she focused on mi­grant rights, has helped her accumulate a wealth of l­ egal knowledge. This experience has led her to create original and complex strategies for the c ­ ouples she helps and who aim to obtain a resident permit for an undocumented mi­grant partner. For instance, she sends letters to high-­ranking administrative officials, announcing the date and time she plans to visit their offices, and she quotes with extreme precision all the l­egal texts she w ­ ill use in her arguments. With this strategy, she has forced officials working in the prefecture to produce a receipt showing that they did, in fact, receive her letter. Every­ one in the association knows how efficient she is: to have one’s file taken over by Joëlle is often a sign that ­there w ­ ill be a resident permit in one’s ­f uture. Not only does she bring good news about administrative procedures, but Joëlle often throws in an extra “treat” for good mea­sure: an invitation to eat patisserie in a Pa­ri­sian high-­end h ­ otel or some discrete funding for a cab r­ ide.14

Marie: A Twenty-­Four-­Hour Lover Joëlle is quite similar to Marie, a long-­term volunteer with an ABP group in the South of France, whom we introduced at the start of this chapter. Marie joined the movement in its infancy, and she deeply believes in its goals. She calls

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herself a “lover” (amoureuse), and all the ­people she meets within this movement are automatically categorized as “lovers” as well. Although many of t­ hose she has helped during her time as a volunteer support the ABP, the majority of them have not joined the group. Marie is of small stature, smokes, and wears hippie-­style clothes. She once was in a relationship with a Kurdish man, but they separated: “I still meet him in town. He’s also a lover. . . . ​Sometimes, he bothers me, since he would like to get back together, but for me, it’s out of the question. . . . ​A nd, he was a macho, and now he pretends he has changed.” Marie’s experience of a binational relationship ended, but none of the bitterness from the separation has found its way into her activism. She explains that she is able to distinguish her feelings from administrative documents. In fact, she is completely invested in her role as an intermediary between the immigration administration and the c ­ ouples. She keeps up on the social and po­liti­cal proj­ects in the city, and she has become a resource person for ­couples during group meetings as well as at the diverse events around town. Her phone is filled with the numbers of “lovers,” as she calls them. It has become such a part of her that she felt lost ­after losing the phone at a party. She went from worrying, “How ­w ill I ever get all ­those numbers back?,” to feeling relieved: “I guess nobody ­w ill bother me anymore.” She is known for keeping in touch with c ­ ouples, as well as being acquainted with many of the ­people involved in administrative and ­legal procedures. Marie is also a viveur, a true party animal: she is often downtown at night for some social event. She is most famous for always producing the knowledge that ­couples facing tremendous difficulties w ­ ill need to regularize their situation. Her personal network is her strength (Boissevain 1974). Marie is the d ­ aughter of a binational c ­ ouple, she is French, and she is white, attributes that also contribute to making her a credible expert in l­egal aid and counsel. C ­ ouples hope to benefit from her fluency and ease with the administrations, where she often pre­sents herself as a ­lawyer. She has developed intricate abilities, spread over dif­fer­ent arenas; in short, she has become “essential” to both the ­couples and the state, while remaining very friendly.15

Gaining Recognition ­These two volunteer profiles help us identify the advocacy vocabulary in each association. On the one hand, ­these volunteers are personally affected by the precarious situations c ­ ouples find themselves in. On the other hand, they retain enough stability to perform l­ egal advocacy; they quote “from memory” the migration and civil codes, and they deal with entry and stay of foreigners and asylum seekers, on top of the conditions of their application, at any given time. Nevertheless, Joëlle, at Ardhis, leaves aside any reference to love, or the right to love. She remains attached to princi­ples of law, while love is Marie’s (and the ABP’s) leitmotiv and her “secret weapon” when dealing with “her” ­couples. Their



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vocabularies also differ in their public campaigns, their po­liti­cal claims concerning binational ­couples, and even in their associative tools. The ABP logo consists of two hearts overlapping, whereas Ardhis’s logo is the association’s name colored as the LGBT flag, each letter imprinted with the shape of a continent. Beyond the log­os, which draw attention to the differences between the two associations’ members, both associations have integrated, in their own way, the state’s injunctions t­ oward binational conjugality. ­Those who need to be in love and follow a normative heterosexual path (monogamy, a long-­lasting relationship, parenthood) are most often straight c ­ ouples, whereas, with regard to the administration, by wanting to marry or enter into a civil partnership, same-­ sex ­couples have already proved their commitment (Salcedo Robledo 2015). They are not held to the same expectations. Emotional per­for­mance and veracity—­ whether emphasized or concealed—­are at the heart of the creation of both associations, which ­were born when emotional and moral economies infiltrated migration governmentality (D’Aoust 2014). The examples of Joëlle and Marie also help us highlight the ­careers of the self-­taught activists-­cum-­experts and their demands for symbolic recognition. Jeremy Boissevain writes, “A broker’s capital consists of his personal network of relations with ­people . . . ​­these are role relations. All role relations are governed by the notion of reciprocal recognition or transaction. Interaction must thus be seen as a strategic game with each party trying to gain value or at least break even. This value, I call tariff” (1974, 158). The symbolic recognition could be considered a “tariff” for ­these volunteers’ expertise and a key to how their identity merges with their full-­fledged c ­ areers as volunteers. T ­ hese two w ­ omen’s experiences illustrate how the associations, despite their focus on participation and their critique of hierarchical relationships between beneficiaries and volunteers, do in fact reproduce the very power dynamics they are critical of. The “helper” is the expert, and the “helped,” both ­couples and newer volunteers, are dependent on the knowledge the experts hold. This is the polarized dynamic of brokerage. The associations do not ask for any compensation for the counsel offered by volunteers, as is often the case with associations for mi­grants’ rights. According to Boissevain (1974, 159), brokerage is a business that operates at a loss. ­Couples who benefit from this counsel, and the volunteers’ expertise, amass a debt. In return, they must implicitly acknowledge the hours put in by the volunteer and affirm the importance and commitment of the association, especially for c ­ ouples who have been successfully helped. When the association members start losing the energy to keep encouraging c ­ ouples to commit to the association, they look for alternative strategies in order to gain recognition and ensure the association’s survival. While a membership fee of ten euros was already required at Ardhis in order to be counseled by volunteers, at the ABP the membership fee was for many years

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disconnected from the possibility of aid. But following a decrease in funding in 2017 and 2018, ABP volunteers discussed at a national meeting the possibility of asking for a “symbolic euro” ­after a ­legal aid meeting. By offering a symbolic and material commitment of “one euro,” c ­ ouples are expected to acknowledge that they are a part of the association. “Already, c ­ ouples come and ask how they can help,” explains one volunteer. A second remarks that one euro is “ridicu­lous,” while a third estimates that “if we get it for each ­couple, one euro, it ­will be a lot at the end of the month!” 16 At the end of the meeting, volunteers had de­cided that ­couples coming to the ­legal aid meetings should become members of the association and that the membership fee would be one euro. Although this decision has never r­ eally been implemented, the debate illustrates a significant shift within the association: it acknowledges the possibility of financial compensation—­ although still symbolic at this point—­for its l­egal counsel, or the option of proposing affiliation through paid membership to the association, rather than choosing volunteering as a matured decision, as a form of po­liti­cal empowerment. The brokerage has evolved and is now double-­sided, since it works within both the grammar of advocacy and the grammar of realistic expectations. T ­ hese expectations are neither solely ­legal nor based on negotiations with the state; they are also associative ones. Rather than being grounded in a desire to change the system, activism has now grounded itself in realism: volunteers have personally invested their advocacy work as the main goal and authorized for themselves a “fee” (or a “tariff”) for their knowledge. The association, in seeking to continue its advocacy and counseling activities, now invests in strategies that would have been highly unlikely at the time of the movement’s creation.

Conclusion This chapter has illustrated how two associations created out of the desire to defend the rights of binational c ­ ouples have transformed into operatives of routine l­egal work. Long-­term ethnography in t­ hese associations offers us a better sense of this evolution from activism to brokerage. As migration policies have strengthened controls of binational ­couples, the activist tone of ­these associations has slowly declined. Members took on a brokerage role that helped both the ­couples and the administrations engaging with them. The fight for binational ­couples became an impor­tant cause in a tense po­liti­cal climate—­starting in 1998 for Ardhis and 2007 for the ABP. But by placing this cause on the national agenda, the associations contributed to the transformation of their work. Identified as crucial spaces for l­ egal aid, they w ­ ere overcome with urgent requests for administrative counsel, and this did not leave enough time for the slow building of a joint fight with the c ­ ouples receiving this aid. The overall dynamics of volunteering in France have evolved as well (Fillieule 2001), contributing to the eroding of bound­aries between activism and brokerage. Associations such as Ardhis



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and the ABP have carved out a niche of ­legal activism, becoming recognized experts in the field of marriage migration. Their meetings retain a friendly feel, but they are truly the spaces of intimacy brokerage. We have shown how interactions between members of the associations, speaking from a place of “realistic expectations,” and the ­couples are grounded in the dynamics of proximity based on personal histories and volunteers’ motivations. Furthermore, volunteers’ work is not static, and the evolution ­toward l­egal aid or advocacy work depends on the association’s situation and the specific po­liti­cal context inside which it evolves. However, for the foreseeable ­f uture, it seems that associative work w ­ ill still reproduce the classic dynamics of exchange of ser­v ices, based on recognition and transaction.

Acknowl­edgments We would like to thank Anne-­Cécile Caseau for her amazing work helping us translate this chapter, Anne-­Marie D’Aoust for her valuable comments and advice, and all the book’s contributors for the inspiring suggestions during the workshop held in June 2019, as well as Victor Alexandre Reyes Bruneau for his support and kindness.

NOTES

1. The names of individuals have been changed to protect their anonymity. 2. Laura Odasso’s fieldwork notes, May 2017, ABP group, South of France. All quotations from our notes have been translated into En­glish for purposes of clarity. 3. We have chosen the term volunteer as a translation of the French term bénévoles, used to refer to the members of the associations studied. This term underlines their unpaid work. The term activist is not used by ­either of the associations, although their aim is to invite ­couples and potential volunteers to commit and participate in a shared cause. 4. Translators negotiate common meanings and definitions and the mutual enrollment and co-­optation of t­ hese into individual and collective objectives and activities. Following Bruno Latour, “chain of translation” refers to the work through which actors modify, displace, and translate their vari­ous and contradictory interests (Lewis and Mosse 2006, 14–15). 5. Faist provides a “typology with . . . ​three types of brokerage—­partisan arbitration, tertius gaudens and divide et impera [that] yields a c ­ouple of typical sub-­mechanisms which are operative in brokerage and relevant for the production of (in)equalities. Of the three types of brokerage discussed, partisan arbitration carries the highest potential for producing equalities instead of inequalities” (2014, 50). 6. The Pasqua law of 1993 introduced suspicion of fraud for all undocumented mi­grants entering a marriage with a French national. 7. The main laws aimed at marriage migration are ­those of November  26, 2003, and July  24, 2006 (called, respectively, Sarkozy Law I and Sarkozy Law II, named for the

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interior minister who promoted them, Nicolas Sarkozy), and of November  14, 2006 (Clément’s law). Two other laws came ­later, on November 20, 2007 (Hortefeux’s law), and June 16, 2011 (Besson’s law). 8. Before the ABP was created, the association Alliances sans frontières (Alliances without Borders), founded in 1994, sought to offer ­legal aid to binational c ­ ouples and to defend the richness that comes from mixing cultures. The last traces of its activities date back to 2004. This association was very critical of 1990s French immigration policies. See its contribution to Binational Families and ­Couples in Eu­rope (Verband binationaler Familien und Partnerschaften 2001). 9. Loving Day celebrates the anniversary of the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Loving v. ­Virginia, which invalidated the law prohibiting interracial marriages by authorizing marriage between an Afro-­A merican w ­ oman and a Caucasian man (Loving is the ­family’s surname). 10. The employees’ positions w ­ ere cut in 2018 ­because of lack of funds, and the association now runs on a voluntary basis, mainly through ongoing local activities. 11. Florence, interview by Michel Zumkir, ex–­A rdhis volunteer, 2008, Ardhis archives. 12. Manuela Salcedo Robledo’s fieldwork notes, February 2013. 13. We do not wish to minimize the involvement of mi­grant volunteers in both of ­these associations. However, it is impor­tant to highlight that t­ hose who occupy positions of power, as well as the majority of active volunteers, are all French citizens. 14. Salcedo Robledo’s fieldwork notes, 2013. 15. Odasso’s fieldwork notes, 2016. 16. Odasso’s fieldwork notes, 2018.

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Sawicki, F., and J. Siméant. 2009. “Décloisonner la sociologie de l’engagement militant: Note critique sur quelques tendances récentes des travaux français.” Sociologie du travail 51 (1): 97–125. Sidhu, R. 2002. “Educational Brokers in Global Education Markets.” Journal of Studies in International Education 6 (1): 16–43. Siméant, J. 1998. La cause des sans-­papiers. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po. Slama, S. 2015. “Législation française: Le long dimanche de fiançailles des c ­ ouples mixtes.” Revue de l’Institut de sociologie 85. http://­journals​.­openedition​.­org​/­ris​/­288. Talesh, S. and J. Pélisse. 2019. “How ­Legal Intermediaries Facilitate or Inhibit Social Change.” Studies in Law, Politics and Society 79: 111–145. Tuckett, A. 2018. “Ethical Brokerage and Self-­Fashioning in Italian Immigration Bureaucracy.” Critique of Anthropology 38 (3): 245–264. Turner, B. S. 2008. “Citizenship, Reproduction and the State: International Marriage and ­Human Rights.” Citizenship Studies 12 (1): 45–54. Verband binationaler Familien und Partnerschaften, ed. 2001. Binational Families and ­Couples in Eu­rope. FABIENNE Eu­ro­pean Proj­ect report. Brussels-­Berlin : DG Employment and Research Eu­ro­pean Comission. Vermeersch, S. 2004. “Entre individualisation et participation: L’engagement associatif bénévole.” Revue française de sociologie 45 (4): 681–710. Villepin, D., de. 2004. Internal Circular No. NOR: INT/D/04/00134/C on Applications for PACS. [In French.] Paris: Ministry of the Interior, Internal Security, and Local Freedoms. https://­w ww​.­gisti​.­org​/­I MG​/­pdf​/­norintd0400134c​.­pdf. Wang, H., and S. Chang. 2002. “The Commodification of International Marriages: Cross-­ Border Marriage Business in Taiwan and Viet Nam.” International Migration 40 (6): 93–116. Woesthoff, J. 2013. “ ‘Foreigners and ­Women Have the Same Prob­lems’: Binational Marriages, ­Women’s Grassroots Organ­i zing, and the Quest for L ­ egal Equality in Post-1968 Germany.” Journal of ­Family History 38 (4): 422–442. Yeoh, B. S. A., H. L. Chee, and G. Baey. 2017. “Managing Risk, Making a Match: Brokers and the Management of Mobility in International Marriage.” Mobilities 12 (2): 227–242.

9 He Said, She Said The Complexity of Oral Relationship Narratives as Written Factual Evidence in Belgian Marriage Fraud Investigations M I E K E VA N D E N B RO U C K E

In this chapter, I examine how evidence is gathered in Belgian marriage fraud investigations by means of spoken interviews with the applicant ­couple during which specific questions about the relationship are posed and the answers given by the applicants are noted down in a written statement. While this pro­cess might at first seem straightforward and transparent, the discursive pro­cesses at play—­the interview interaction and its written reflection—­a re in fact fraught with complexity and bring about (unintended but harmful) obfuscation of the very ele­ments and signs of genuine affection and familiarity the investigation hopes to uncover. While one might assume language to be a neutral, rational tool for questioning marriage applicants and for objectively noting down their answers as evidence, I show in this chapter how even ­simple, seemingly straightforward, and factual questions can have detrimental effects. Such discursive pro­cesses form part of marriage fraud investigations, which in recent years have become commonplace in Belgium (Foblets and Vanheule 2006; Maskens 2015; Vandenbroucke 2020), as Belgian authorities have started to scrutinize the phenomenon of marriage migration as a threat to public policy and a potentially fraudulent way to obtain residency rights in the face of an allegedly high and increasing number of marriages of con­ve­nience contracted for the sole purpose of obtaining migration benefits for the non-­European spouse. This policy intensification in the fight against marriages of con­ve­nience in Belgium is evident in the number of circular guidelines and updates to the Civil Code ratified in 2014 and 2016 (Foblets and Vanheule 2006; Maskens 2015) and in the professionalization of civil registry units dedicated to the detection of sham relations (one of which is the marital ­union) (Foblets and Vanheule 2006). In t­ hese legal-­administrative guidelines, municipal councillors are attributed an active role in the detection of fake marriage applications by a Eu­ro­pean and non-­European spouse to their municipal civil registry office (Foblets and 189

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Marriage permit application • questionnaire • public record file

2. Interviews with civil servant • interview transcript • advice report

3. Interviews with police officer • interview transcript • advice report

4. Decision letter

FIGUR E 9.1  ​Typical chain of investigative stages (cf. Vandenbroucke 2020).

Vanheule 2006; Maskens 2015.). Practically, the guidelines include an outline of the procedural stages that councillors can implement, an overview of the roles played by dif­fer­ent administrative institutions, and a non-­exhaustive list of thirteen objective indicators that may characterize suspect, fraudulent marriage applications (Foblets and Vanheule 2006; Maskens 2015; Vandenbroucke 2020). ­These indicators include a large age difference; the lack of a common language for communication; lack of knowledge of the other party’s name, nationality, or workplace; discrepancies between statements about the circumstances of meeting; and the involvement of an intermediary person. The respective applicability of ­these characteristics to a par­tic­u­lar marriage application enables the councillor to classify the case as e ­ ither a genuine marriage or a suspicious, faked marriage of con­ve­nience. To determine which indicators apply to an application case, an investigation is typically conducted and can span multiple stages over the course of several months. Based on this overview as shown in figure 9.1, we see how information and evidence about an application case and the claim of genuine marital intent by a transnational ­couple is gathered through interviews and report drafting at vari­ ous stages of the investigation. The main focus of this chapter is on the role played by the discourse produced in the interviews and the reports in the investigation and how this is embedded within a broader moral economy of suspicion (D’Aoust 2018). As a result of this entrenched moral suspicion in the investigative pro­cess, any answer given by a marriage applicant runs the risk of becoming suspicious. Such suspicion, when it occurs in a pro­cess such as a marriage fraud investigation in which rights and potential access to citizenship are at stake, can have detrimental effects on the institutional officer’s decision on the case. I argue not only that evidence gathering in marriage fraud investigations by Belgian civil registry offices is to a large extent based on institutional talk and text but also that this is not always an objective-­rational pro­cess ­f ree from subjectivities and discursive influences (Vandenbroucke 2020). Indeed, comparing written repre­sen­ta­tions by civil servants of orally elicited facts and narratives from an interview about an individual’s subjective relationship reveals the limits and unexpected consequences of reduplicative validation as an investigative practice favored by institutions to determine potential cases of marriage fraud. In my conceptualization, reduplicative validation is understood to be the institutional practice of duplicating interviews with the applicant ­couple at



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dif­fer­ent stages in the investigation to allow for the comparison and validation of the details given in the ­couple’s consecutive statements. To illustrate the potential effects of reduplicative validation, I discuss the discursive filtering pro­cesses that can occur when the institutional officer conducts an interview with two marriage applications and, in this pro­cess, commits their spoken word to paper. In ­doing so, I zoom in on one small, seemingly irrelevant, and harmless question, which still becomes suspicious. I first trace how the answer is arrived at in both interviews, how it becomes codified in the respective reports, and, ultimately, how it is used in the decision on the case. What the “text trajectory” (Ehrlich 2012) of ­these interview excerpts illustrates is how a seemingly straightforward question can still lead to misunderstandings with consequences, when one takes into account the fundamentally dif­fer­ent nature of the interview encounters’ interactional real­ity. In the next section, I outline in more detail the role played by evidence that is linguistic-­discursive in nature in marriage fraud investigations in Belgium (see also Maskens 2015; Vandenbroucke 2020). This is followed by information about the linguistic ethnographic basis of my research and an empirical analy­sis of the discursive trajectory of the marriage applicants’ answers. I conclude with a reflection on how the institutional practice of reduplicative validation calls into question objective decision-­making based on discursive pro­cesses in marriage migration monitoring.

Role of Linguistic-­Discursive Evidence in Belgian Marriage Fraud Investigations Administrative decision-­making and classification of application cases typically involve bureaucratic face-­to-­face interactions and interviews (Sarangi and Roberts 1999; Trouillot 2001; Hall, Slembrouck, and Sarangi 2006). This is particularly the case for migration-­related institutional decision-­making, such as the asylum determination investigation and the marriage fraud investigation, of which the outcome results in certain rights, benefits, or entitlements to the applicant(s) (Maryns 2006; Vandenbroucke 2020). In the case of Belgian marriage fraud investigations, interview encounters are used to identify which indicators are applicable to the case, to gather as detailed as pos­si­ble an account of the relationship and shared life of the f­ uture spouses, and to uncover evidence that would point t­oward a faked intention to embark on a joint marital life (Maskens 2015). As such, the interview encounter is a site of control and screening, the outcome of which is tied to the allocation or the denial of a migration status that gives access to residency and citizenship rights. All marriage applications involving a non-­European spouse are scrutinized, and the prototypical marriage investigation involves at least one set of interviews with the ­couple (Maskens 2015; Foblets and Vanheule 2006): ­after the marriage

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permit application, as shown in figure 9.1, one applicant of the c ­ ouple is interviewed by a civil servant, ­a fter which the other applicant is subsequently interviewed by the same civil servant. If at this stage the civil servant is not convinced of the genuine intent of the applicant c ­ ouple and still deems the application suspicious, then the case file is sent to the public prosecutor, who in turn tasks the local police force with further investigation of the case. Additional, separate interrogations of each applicant are then typically carried out by a police officer. The interviews and interrogations are guided by a standardized list of questions, which also circulate on marriage migration forums on the Internet. They include factual questions such as When did you first meet? What are the names of his parents? Is she right-­or left-­handed? ­These questions are put in identical form and sequence to each of the applicants in their individual interview in order to enable a consistency check and assessment of the validity and veracity of their relationship claim. This format of separate yet identical interviewing is internationally also known as the Stokes interview.1 As such, information gathering in Belgian marriage fraud investigations is characterized by reduplicative validation: information is gathered by the duplication of the investigative interview—­two interviews at first, and pos­si­ble reduplication by a police officer—­and the answers provided by the applicants in the interviews are compared with each other to detect inconsistencies and lies. The role of discourse as evidence in marriage fraud investigations, however, does not pertain only to information elicited through spoken interviews. To facilitate the comparison of the applicants’ answers by the civil servant (and at a ­later stage to the police officer), written statements of the answers are drafted in situ by the interviewer. As neither of the interview encounters is audio or video recorded by the institution, ­these codified reports are the only remaining evidence that the interview encounter took place and, more crucially, form the evidentiary thrust on which the municipal councilor bases his or her final decision on the application case. As such, accurate repre­sen­ta­tions of what was said in the interview is of paramount importance, as it introduces spoken utterances by the applicant c ­ ouple into evidence as official statements, which constitute the basis of evaluating w ­ hether the marriage is real or fraudulent. The practice of committing the spoken statement to paper is known as (institutional) entextualization, that is, “the pro­cess by which circulable texts are produced by extracting discourse from its original context” (Bauman and Briggs 1990; Park and Bucholtz 2009, 485). The move from spoken word to written repre­sen­ta­tion involves both decontextualization by extracting the utterances from their original context of expression (the interview) and recontextualization as the utterances are inserted in a new discursive context (the interview report) (Bauman and Briggs 1990; Park and Bucholtz 2009). This report then becomes a document that can circulate within the institution, and ele­ments of it can be used and quoted as evidence in l­ater reports and in decision-­ making. Such



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entextualization has been shown extensively to be an essentially power-­ differentiated pro­cess: the institutional officer who commits the applicants’ spoken transient statement is almost in full control of how the information contained in the applicants’ utterances is interpreted, reor­ga­nized or modified, and committed to paper in a far more fixed and permanent manner on the public rec­ord (Park and Bucholtz 2009; Heffer, Rock, and Conley 2013). Vari­ous scholars (Trinch 2003; Maryns 2006; Codó 2008; Van Charldorp 2014; Andrus 2015) have examined the ways lay subjects’ words and statements are represented as ­legal evidence in institutional contexts and have identified the vari­ous transformative and filtering pro­cesses that go along with this speech-­ to-­w riting transmodality and how t­ hese inevitably affect the repre­sen­ta­tion of subjects in the institutional decision-­making pro­cess. Such transformations can be the result of the complex interactional nature of the institutional encounter in which the collaborative nature of co-­constructed knowledge through question-­ answer sequences can lead to vari­ous kinds of partial understandings and misunderstandings. For example, certain questions or answers might be misunderstood and a lack of follow-up questions or clarification can lead to faulty information being noted down. Cultural or ideological assumptions or prejudices can also come into play and steer the interviewer’s interpretations of applicants’ answers. Fi­nally, language differences and truncated multilingual speech repertoires can also play a hindering role in the entextualization pro­cess when the exact meaning of the words used to give a detailed answer are not understood in the same manner by the interlocutors. What may be constructed as X by a lay subject can thus be reinterpreted as Y by an institutional officer, and the final document produced ends up as a much more po­liti­cal pro­cess than mere retranscription from speech to writing (Trinch 2003; Maryns 2006; Eades 2010; Maryns 2012). In this chapter, I wish to illustrate the complexity involved in how evidence is gathered by means of interviewing, and I discuss the discursive pro­ cesses inherently at play when the institutional officer conducts such an interview with two marriage applicants and, in this pro­cess, commits their spoken word to paper. To illustrate this, I focus on a minor, seemingly straightforward question posed to both marriage applicants, which ultimately ends up being more crucial than one might think for the c ­ ouple involved. In my discussion, I trace how the answer is arrived at in both interviews, how it becomes codified in the respective reports, and how it is used in a reduplicative validation pro­ cess in the decision on the case.

Data and Methodology The examples presented and discussed in this chapter form part of a wider proj­ ect that examines language use, multilingualism, and interdiscursivity in

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marriage fraud investigations across Belgium. My approach is linguistic-­ ethnographic in nature, with a focus on language use as situated within an institutional context and on discourse analytic methods of data collection, analy­sis, and interpretation (Rampton 2006; Copland and Creese 2015). Such an approach entails close detailed attention to linguistic interaction as situated language use to explore how par­tic­u­lar communicative pro­cesses unfold and operate structurally within a par­tic­u­lar institutional context (Copland and Creese 2015). The fieldwork was conducted in the fall of 2016 in several municipal contexts to document how cross-­border marriage applications are evaluated by municipal officers and how linguistic diversity in proficiency is managed through linguistic mediation mea­sures. Data collection specifically entailed observing and audio-­ recording of interviews of applicants by civil servants, collecting photocopies of the transcripts and reports on the observed interviews, and conducting field interviews with civil servants. Data was collected with informed consent and anonymized. To illustrate how information about a potentially fraudulent marriage application is gathered by civil registry authorities through discursive technologies, I selected data excerpts from one application case. This case involves a middle-­ aged ­couple applying for a civil partnership (the equivalent of a civil marriage). The man was Belgian, and receiving unemployment benefits. The ­woman was Brazilian. At the time of this application, the w ­ oman had been living in Belgium for over a de­cade. She obtained permanent residency in Belgium through a previous marriage to a Belgian man, but she had since lost her residency rights as a result of long stays abroad. She was thus at the moment of application illegally in the country. She had also been deported once by the Belgian authorities, but she had returned to Belgium afterward. At the time of application, the man and ­woman w ­ ere living together in the same apartment and claimed to have been in a relationship for over a de­cade. During certain periods in that time frame, however, the w ­ oman was not registered as officially living at the same address as the man. As a consequence of a number of inconsistencies between their accounts, the precarious migration status of the w ­ oman, and the social situation of the man, their application was rejected by the municipal registry office. The ­couple then took this case rejection to the appellate court, where a judge did not nullify the e ­ arlier rejection and confirmed the municipal councilor’s decision. During my fieldwork, I observed the interviews of the c ­ ouple with the investigating civil servant assigned to their case, and I followed the further development of their case to the appellate court. In the next sections, I provide excerpts from the ­couple’s interviews to show how the discourse production and repre­sen­ta­tion of evidence as part of the investigation and broader moral economy of suspicion can make seemingly innocent questions and straightforward answers suspicious.



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From Co-­construction to Written Facts Co-­constructed Oral Encounters The first phase of evidence gathering in the marriage fraud investigation is typically an interview with a civil servant. Questions posed in this encounter range from the circumstances ­under which the c ­ ouple met and details about their everyday lives together to knowledge about their families and f­uture plans together. To illustrate the difference in dynamics of co-­construction by interlocutors about the same events and the same aspect of their lives, I selected an extract from the interviews where the man and ­woman answer the same question to the civil servant. In selecting a question and the way it is answered by both applicants, I opted for a seemingly trivial, innocuous question: What is the man’s favorite dish? At first sight, this answer appears to be a good question that can elicit a factual answer from the f­ uture spouse and can be indexical of their intimate and detailed knowledge about each other. Additionally, knowing one’s ­f uture spouse’s favorite dish might even be a sign of genuine affection and care. From the interview between the civil servant (C) and the man (M), with En­glish translation from Dutch in brackets 1 C

heb jij een lievelingsgerecht meneer

[do you have a favorite dish sir] 2 M  . . . ​r undstong in madeirasaus [beef tongue in madeira sauce] 3 C

rundstong in madeirasaus das ne klassieker he

[beef tongue in madeira sauce that’s a classic hey] 4 M das typisch he [that’s typical hey] As we see in this extract from the first interview, the man’s answer is straightforward a ­ fter a brief pause: his favorite dish is beef tongue with Madeira sauce. The interaction in itself is unproblematic—­both the civil servant and the man are native speakers of Dutch, and the interview is conducted in a dyadic manner, that is, they are each other’s sole interlocutors. A ­ fter the man’s answer, the civil servant comments that this is a “classic” dish (turn 3), which the man confirms as a “typical” choice for someone’s favorite dish (turn 4). Indeed, in Belgian cuisine, this par­tic­u­lar dish is well known as a classic meal for festive occasions and f­amily gatherings. A ­ fter this exchange, the civil servant continues the interview by asking the man what the ­woman’s favorite dish is. The interview interaction with the ­woman is more complex, as the ­woman’s ­mother tongue is Brazilian Portuguese. She does not speak Dutch fluently and has brought along an interpreter to mediate between her and the civil servant. The municipal authorities have stipulated that applicants should enlist a certified court interpreter to assist them in the interview and that the applicant

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­couple should pay for this ser­v ice. The reasoning b ­ ehind this municipal decision is tied to a potential appeal of a case rejection where faulty interpretation could be used to undermine the case (Vandenbroucke and Defrancq, 2021). Therefore, certified court interpreters are deployed. In the case of the ­woman’s interpreter, however, this is not an unbiased, neutral interpreter paid by the government, as is the normal modus operandi for court interpreting in Belgium. The interpreter is a close acquaintance of the w ­ oman and is from Portugal. As such, she speaks a dif­fer­ent regional variety of Portuguese than the Brazilian ­woman. According to the code of ethics for sworn interpreters in Belgium, this interpreter should in theory not have accepted this assignment. As the excerpt below illustrates, t­hese aspects certainly influence the dynamics of the triadic exchange between the civil servant, the ­woman, and her interpreter, as not all turns uttered by the primary participants—­the ­woman and the civil servant—­are rendered by the interpreter. Dyadic exchanges also develop between both the interpreter–­civil servant and the interpreter-­woman (see also Vandenbroucke and Defrancq, 2021). Moreover, the interpreter at times does not translate accurately, as we see in the following excerpt. The civil servant asks what the w ­ oman’s favorite dish is. It is misinterpreted in Portuguese as a question about the man’s favorite dish, and a ­whole discussion ensues from t­ here. From the interview between the civil servant (C), the w ­ oman (W), and the interpreter (I), with En­glish translation from Dutch and Portuguese in brackets, and with “xxx” indicating unintelligible utterances. 1 C

heb jij een lievelingsgerecht mevrouw

[do you have a favorite dish madam] 2 I

há alguma comida, ele tem alguma comida preferida

[is ­there a dish, does he have a favorite dish]) 3 W vixe, ele é, ele é de CITY ele é terrível com negó de comida, sabe por que? [oh gosh, he is, he is from the CITY he is horrible with food, do you know why?] 4 I

qual é a preferida dele

[what is his favorite dish] 5 W se não tiver, ele fica o dia todinho sem comer, é, eu não tô mentindo de jeito nenhum [if that is not ­there, he stays the ­whole day without food, yes, I am ­really not lying] 6 I

sim

[yes] 7 W ele só que comer, dia de sábado é o dia preferido, é o dia de sábado, é um tal dum steak com champi-­, é steak aqui, champignon, batata e spinazie, quando não é spinazie é só champignon ele tira o spinazie xxx a batata [he only wants to eat, Saturday is his favorite day, it is Saturday, it is a sort of steak with mush-­, it is steak h ­ ere, mushrooms, potatoes and spinach, if t­ here is no spinach then just mushrooms he takes the spinach xxx the potatoes]



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8 I

197

dus steak met

[so steak with] 9 W steak, é filé é filé, steak, carne [steak, is filet is filet, steak meat] 10 I

sim steak

[yes steak] 11 W ele gosta muito de carne [he ­really likes to eat meat] 12 I

met champignon [en spinazie en uhh aardappelen

[with mushrooms and spinach and uhh potatoes] 13 W é, steak met champignon e batata [yes, steak with mushrooms and potatoes] 14 W é só com champignon, steak e batata, pronto só isso, é o que ele, é a comida preferida dele dia de sábado, se não tiver [is just with mushrooms, steak and potatoes, done that’s it, it is what he, it is his favorite food on Saturday, if that is not t­ here] 15 C (typing) 16 I

zaterdag moet ie altijd hebben

[Saturday he always needs to have] 17 W é e domingo ele come, ele come outra coisa, domingo ele come outra coisa, ele é muito sistemático, é sistemático, ele é sistemático [yes and on Sunday he eats, he eats something ­else, Sunday he eats something ­else, he is very systematic, is systematic, he is systematic] 18 I

de spinazie is twijfel uh ni altijd maar champignon met steak

[the spinach is doubtful uh not always but mushrooms with steak] 19 W é, é champignon com steak e batata, pronto, champignon com steak e batata, steak é aquela carne grandona assim [yes, is mushrooms with steak and potatoes, done, mushrooms with steak and potatoes, steak that is that big piece of meat so] 20 I

sim toda gente sabe o que é steak

[yes every­body knows what steak is] 21 W é mas eu não não gosto de comer carne não, não gosto de comer [yes but me myself I d ­ on’t like to eat meat, I d ­ on’t like to eat that] 22 I

tá bem, não tem portância

[is okay, is not impor­tant] 23 W eu sou vegetariana, eu como outras coisas, verdura, macarrão, mas de vez em quando eu como carne xxx [I am vegetarian, I eat other ­things, vegetables, pasta, but sometimes I eat meat xxx] 24 C

heeft meneer een lievelingsgerecht

[does sir have a favorite dish] 25 W hm [hm]

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26 I

is da van hem

[it is his] 27 C

was da meneer zijn lievelingsgerecht=

[was that the favorite dish of sir 28 I

=da was (lacht)

[it was (laughs)] In the long back-­and-­forth turns between the interpreter and the ­woman, the ­woman relatively coherently conveys a number of informational points: the city the man is originally from; the man has moody inclinations; Saturday is the man’s favorite day; e ­ very Saturday he wants to have the same meal (steak with mushrooms, potatoes, and spinach); he ­really likes to eat meat; she is vegetarian. All of t­ hese informative utterances can be seen as indications of genuine partnership and knowledge about each other as a c ­ ouple. However, the interpreter renders the ­woman’s utterances only partially in Dutch to the civil servant as: steak with mushrooms, potatoes and spinach is the man’s favorite dish that he always wants to eat on Saturday (split among turns 8, 12, and 16). The interpreter h ­ ere (possibly inadvertently) thus masks the construal of genuine affective evidence. Moreover, the interpreter also initially mistranslated the question (turn 8) as “what is his favorite dish” instead of the original question “what is your favorite dish,” and it is only when the civil servant’s next question is posed about the man’s favorite dish that the interpreter realizes the ­mistake and clarifies while laughing in turn 28 that that was the man’s favorite dish (and not the ­woman’s), hereby seemingly transferring the cause of the confusion onto the w ­ oman instead of taking responsibility for the ­mistake herself. What this interaction also illustrates is how the seemingly straightforward question about someone’s favorite dish is not necessarily that s­ imple to answer. One’s favorite meal is not necessarily a meal one consumes on a weekly or semi-­ frequent basis. In the case of this c ­ ouple, the answer given by the w ­ oman—­the meal the man wishes to eat e ­ very Saturday—is not necessarily the same as his absolutely favorite dish that he would eat at festive occasions or order at restaurant venues. The par­tic­u­lar dish—­beef in Madeira sauce—­a lso takes several hours to prepare, and, as the ­woman is vegetarian (which the interpreter neglects to translate to the civil servant) it is not likely that they eat the dish frequently at home, making it a rare consumption and not the same “favorite dish” he wants to eat ­every week. What t­ hese interview fragments illustrate is how a seemingly straightforward question can still lead to misunderstandings if one takes into account the fundamentally dif­fer­ent nature of the encounters’ interactional real­ity. The layer of the interpreter and mistranslation of the question—as well as a misunderstanding of the question—­leads to two differing accounts being given to the interviewing civil



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servant, who is looking for exactly that: lack of knowledge and discrepancies in their stories. The end result of ­these lines of questioning and co-­construction of information is a severe se­lection of information put to the civil servant by the interpreter. As a result, the information arrived at is to some extent tainted by misunderstandings and subjective interpretations.

Entextualized Repre­sen­ta­tion of the Answers To illustrate the transformative nature of institutional entextualization pro­ cesses, I now draw a comparison between the recorded spoken interaction detailed above and the written report that resulted from it. During the interview, the civil servant types out both the questions posed and the answers given. In this specific case, given the truncated form of input and additional layer of complexity due to the interpreter’s presence, understandably deletion and filtering of information necessarily occurs. In this case, the man’s answer is noted down quite literally in the report: From interview transcript by the civil servant in the case file with the man Heb jij een lievelingsgerecht? Rundstong in Madeira saus [Do you have a favorite dish? Beef tongue in Madeira sauce] The interview transcript of the w ­ oman’s answer contains only the utterances mediated to Dutch by the interpreter, and in a slightly alternated form: the w ­ oman’s answer that the man always wants to eat this on Saturday has been changed, and it now reads that she always has to eat steak with mushrooms and spinach and potatoes, even though this was neither related by the w ­ oman nor interpreted to Dutch by the interpreter. This small error is thus introduced by the civil servant in the text. However, it is not corrected by the interpreter, who can follow the text on the computer screen in front of them as her answers in Dutch are si­mul­ta­neously typed out. Moreover, the ­woman had stated that she is also a vegetarian. Even though this was not translated by the interpreter and, as a result, remained an oblivious fact to the civil servant, the man could have introduced this fact in his interview with the civil servant. Had that occurred, it would have introduced an additional inconsistency in the report and might have raised (even more) suspicion: the ­woman is vegetarian, but the report states that she always has to eat steak on Saturday. From interview transcript by the civil servant in the case file with the w ­ oman—in En­glish translation Heb jij een lievelingsgerecht? Rijst met bonen En meneer? Steak met champignons met spinazie en aardappelen, zaterdag moet ik dat altijd eten, niet altijd spinazie, maar wel de steak en de champignons

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[Do you have a favorite dish? Rice with beans And sir? Steak with mushrooms and spinach and potatoes, Saturday I always have to eat that, not always spinach, but surely the steak and the mushrooms] A comparison between the spoken interaction and the written report illustrates the transformative nature of institutional entextualization pro­cesses. While to some extent this is inevitable, this is particularly troublesome in marriage fraud investigations, as only the answers in the written reports are compared and used as evidence. In this case, we thus see a discrepancy established in ­these reports regarding the man’s favorite dish that could potentially be interpreted as a sign that they do not live together and know each other as ­wholesomely as they proclaim or as one could expect from a genuine ­couple. What this reduplicated entextualization pro­cess illustrates is a referentialist ideology of language a ­ dopted by the institution and the enacting civil servant, that is, the idea that “language is primarily a way of referencing the world that is external to language, eliding or even obscuring the pragmatic and interactional aspects of language” (Andrus 2015, 2; Ehrlich 2012). The institutional assumption ­here is that language is a referential vehicle that can be straightforwardly put to use as a neutral medium to interview p ­ eople and to gather information through ­simple questions being asked and answers being given, to use as an interpreting device from language 1 to language 2, and to note down the information transparently on paper void of any interactional or pragmatic complexity (Andrus 2015; Ehrlich 2012). However, as the transcriptions of the spoken interactions show, the discursive technologies at work ­here and permeating the institutional practice transform the original meanings conveyed by the ­couple, to their detriment. As part of the technologies of love (D’Aoust 2013) used in the institutional governance of marriage migration in Belgium, such practices of reduplicative validation of evidence through institutional interviews and entextualization essentially erase not only some of the information uttered but also any paralinguistic evidence such as body language, tone of voice, or emotive or affective display, which can be relevant markers of genuine attachment and intent in a face-­to-­face encounter with a migration officer. Instead, this practice renders complex h ­ uman connections as conveyed during interviews to civil servants and police officers into objective facts committed to paper that are used as evidence to exclude marriage mi­grants.

Reduplicative Validation of Information ­A fter the interviews, the civil servant writes up a report outlining the ele­ments of suspicion regarding the genuineness of this ­couple. The items listed in the evaluation pertain to the ­couple’s inability to produce material evidence (photos,



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emails, ­etc.), the socially weak position of the man, deceitful declarations, lack of knowledge about facts, and discrepancies between their statements. As a result of the negative assessment of the c ­ ouple’s case, the civil servant forwarded the case to the public prosecutor, who ordered the local police force to conduct their own in­de­pen­dent investigation with a new set of interrogations for the man and ­woman. The police investigation comes to similar conclusions and adds to the list of ele­ments of suspicion: lack of common language for communication, lack of sustained contact with each other’s ­family members, the man’s social situation, and the quick development into a relationship. As part of the reduplicative validation of information, the answers given by the applicants to the same questions are also extensively compared. Moreover, ­because a professional, sworn interpreter mediated in the interview with the w ­ oman, this comparative exercise comes across as a straightforward practice of cross-­ checking the facts in the report. Throughout the final case decision report, numerous examples of this comparative exercise are cited as evidence from the interview transcripts and public rec­ords. One of the ele­ments pointing ­toward a lack of knowledge about their partner concerns the man’s favorite dish and the fact that the ­woman does not know it: From the police report and decision on the case Onwetendheden (. . .) Ze kent het lievelingsgerecht van meneer niet (. . .) [Lack of knowledge (. . .) She does not know the favorite dish of the man (. . .)] In spite of its innocuous nature, this question and the ways that the answer was arrived at do indeed play an identifiable role in the decision-­making on this par­tic­u­lar case. In the face of all the evidence gathered during this investigation, which raises suspicion, the ­couple’s application was rejected, and this was communicated to them by means of courier mail.

The L ­ egal Afterlife of Linguistic Evidence in Post-­Decision Appeals Typically, once such momentary, oral testimonials become codified in a report, the written word is accorded full authoritative values of objectivity, facticity, and coherence (Park and Bucholtz 2009; Heffer, Rock, and Conley 2003; Maryns 2006). Frequently, such entextualized statements also take on a l­egal “afterlife” of their own when they are used as evidence in legal-­administrative proceedings (Andrus 2015; Maryns 2013). In this case, this also happened when the ­couple lodged an appeal against the municipal councilor’s decision to reject their application and hired a l­awyer to plead their case in court. In the court briefings for their appeal, the ­couple plead that ­there are no reasons to doubt the genuine nature of their intentions:

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From the court briefings for the appeal Dat, in tegenstelling tot wat de ambtenaar van de burgerlijke stand beweert, er geen redenen zijn om te twijfelen aan de oprechtheid van de intenties van verzoekers met betrekking tot hun wettelijke samenwoning [That, in opposition to what the councillor claims, t­ here are no reasons to doubt the genuine nature of the intentions of the appealers regarding their ­legal cohabitation] In reply to this appeal, the councillor’s ­legal counsel files his conclusion on the facts of the case in preparation for the day in court. In this document, a detailed summary of the migration history of the ­woman (including the deportation details) and of the social situation of the man and all the alleged discrepancies, alleged lack of knowledge, and alleged deceitful statements by the ­couple are reiterated. Among t­ hese, the fact that the w ­ oman does not know the favorite dish of the man surfaces yet again as an ele­ment indicative of their lack of knowledge about each other: From the preparatory documents by the councillor’s ­legal counsel Onwetendheden: (. . .) kent het lievelingsgerecht van mijnheer niet (. . .) [Lack of knowledge: (. . .) does not know the favorite dish of sir (. . .)] Unlike in other appeal cases in marriage fraud investigations, the c ­ ouple did not submit a dissenting conclusion pleading their case and arguing with the conclusions by the councillor’s ­legal counsel. It might be the case that the high cost of l­ egal counsel prevented the low-­income c ­ ouple from having access to prolonged l­ egal repre­sen­ta­tion. In the ruling on the case by the judge, the partners’ “insufficient knowledge about each other’s personalia,” as attested through the interview transcripts and the reduplicative comparison of knowledge, was listed as one of the main reasons for the rejection of the appeal. In sum, what goes on rec­ord, stays on rec­ord.

Concluding Remarks The fate of this marriage applicant c ­ ouple did not solely depend on w ­ hether or not the w ­ oman knew the man’s favorite dish or on how this par­tic­u­lar ele­ment was noted down on paper. The par­tic­u­lar line of questioning was selected in this chapter to illustrate how even something as small as a favorite dish can be misunderstood and misrepresented and become mobilized in the discursive technologies of love and economy of moral suspicion at work (see D’Aoust, this volume) in Belgian marriage fraud investigations. As such, my analy­sis in this



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chapter uncovers the potentially problematic nature of institutional decision-­ making, which bases itself to some extent on evidence that is linguistic-­discursive in nature. While institutional decision-­making as the outcome of a bureaucratic investigation is generally proclaimed to adhere to values of strict objectivity and Weberian-­like rationality in its decision-­making (Jenkins 2000), the examples in this chapter have shown the complex discursive filtering pro­cesses of co-­ constructed and linguistically mediated information that transformative entextualization, face-­to-­face encounters, and report drafting involve. While asking about someone’s favorite dish is a seemingly straightforward question, complexity increases and reliability decreases, arguably even more, and with far bigger consequences, when it comes to questions concerning subjective opinions or events from years ago, which could have been distorted by the way ­human memory and recollection work. The small example given h ­ ere, where I compare the filtered residue of two fundamentally dif­fer­ent interactional encounters ­under the assumption of veracity and objectivity, highlights that reduplicative validation, as an investigative practice that compares written repre­sen­ta­tions of orally elicited facts and narratives about an individual’s subjective relationship, certainly remains a problematic practice. At the heart of ­these institutional linguistic-­discursive practices lies an ideological conviction that language can function as a neutral, objective tool to gather evidence in oral encounters and codify complex interactions’ outcomes on paper in a straightforward, exact, and fair manner. While institutional officers’ acts of investigating potentially fraudulent c ­ ouples’ relationships can be difficult and subjective, the frequently assumed transparent practice of evidence gathering through interviews, written entextualization, and reduplicative validation can inherently hinder fair assessment and decision-­making. More institutional awareness of the linguistic-­discursive complexities involved at the basic level of marriage migration gatekeeping is thus advisable, especially in light of the significant and far-­reaching consequences for the personal lives of applicant ­couples.

NOTE

1. Stokes v. U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Ser­v ice, 74 Civ. 1022 CLB (S.D.N.Y.) September 1, 1975, https://­w ww​.c ­ learinghouse​.­net​/d ­ etail​.­php​?­id​=1­ 0164.

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Andrus, J. 2015. Entextualizing Domestic Vio­lence: Language Ideology and Vio­lence against ­Women in the Anglo-­American Hearsay Princi­ple. Oxford Studies in Language and Law. New York: Oxford University Press. Bauman, R., and C. L. Briggs. 1990. “Poetics and Per­for­mance as Critical Perspectives on Language and Social Life.” Annual Review of Anthropology 19: 59–88.

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Codó, E. 2008. Immigration and Bureaucratic Control: Language Practices in Public Administration. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Copland, F., and A. Creese. 2015 Linguistic Ethnography: Collecting, Analysing and Presenting Data. London: Sage. D’Aoust, A.-­M. 2013. “In the Name of Love: Marriage Migration, Governmentality, and Technologies of Love.” International Po­liti­cal Sociology 7 (3): 258–274. —­—­—. 2018. “A Moral Economy of Suspicion: Love and Marriage Migration Management Practices in the United Kingdom.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 36 (1): 40–59. Eades, D. 2010. Sociolinguistics and the ­Legal Pro­cess. Bristol, UK: Multilingual ­Matters. Ehrlich, S. 2012. “Text Trajectories, ­Legal Discourse and Gendered Inequalities.” Applied Linguistics Review 3 (1): 47–73. Foblets, M.-­C., and D. Vanheule. 2006. “Marriages of Con­ve­nience in Belgium: The Punitive Approach Gains Ground in Migration Law.” Eu­ro­pean Journal of Migration and Law 8: 263–280. Hall, C., S. Slembrouck, and S. Sarangi. 2006. Language Practices in Social Work: Categorisation and Accountability in Child Welfare. London: Routledge. Heffer, C., F. Rock, and J. Conley. 2013. Legal-­Lay Communication: Textual Travels in the Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jenkins, R. 2000. “Categorization: Identity, Social Pro­cess and Epistemology.” Current Sociology 48 (3): 7–25. Maryns, K. 2006. The Asylum Speaker. Manchester, UK: St. Jerome Publishing. —­—— ­ . 2012. “Multilingualism in L ­ egal Settings.” In The Routledge Handbook of Multilingualism, edited by M. Martin-­ Jones, A. Blackedge, and A. Creese, 297–313. London: Routledge. —­—— ­ . 2013. “Procedures Without Borders: The Language-­Ideological Anchorage of Administrative Procedures in Translocal Institutional Settings.” Language in Society 42 (1): 71–92. —­—— ­ . 2015. “The Use of En­glish as Ad Hoc Institutional Standard in the Belgian Asylum Interview.” Applied Linguistics 38 (5): 737–758. Maskens, M. 2015. “Bordering Intimacy: The Fight against Marriages of Con­ve­n ience in Brussels.” Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 33 (2): 42–58. Park, J., and M. Bucholtz. 2009. “Public Transcripts.” Text and Talk 29 (5): 485–502. Rampton, B. 2006. Language in Late Modernity: Interaction in an Urban School. Studies in Interactional Sociolinguistics 22. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sarangi, S., and C. Roberts. 1999. Talk, Work and Institutional Order. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Trinch, S.  L. 2003. Latinas’ Narratives of Domestic Abuse: Discrepant Versions of Vio­lence. Impact: Studies in Language and Society 17. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Trouillot, M.-­R. 2001. “The Anthropology of the State in the Age of Globalization: Close Encounters of the Deceptive Kind.” Current Anthropology 42 (1): 125–138. Van Charldorp, T. 2014. “ ‘What Happened?’ From Talk to Text in Police Interrogations.” Language and Communication 36: 7–24. Vandenbroucke, M. 2020. “Legal-­Discursive Constructions of Genuine Cross-­B order Love in Belgian Marriage Fraud Investigations.” In “Approaches to Discourses of Marriage,” special issue, Critical Discourse Studies 17 (2): 175–192. Vandenbroucke, M., and B. Defrancq. 2021. “Professionally Unaligned Interpreting in Belgian Marriage Fraud Investigations and Its Consequences.” The Translator. https://­doi​ .­org​/­10​.­1080​/1­ 3556509​.­2021​.­1880309.

10 “I D ­ on’t Even Know Where My Heart Is Anymore” Mi­g rant Bachelors and Immigrant Wives Lost in Time, Space, and Im/mobility PA R D I S M A H DAV I

So, a lot of us did come, and when we first came it was easy. We came as students or workers, or, well, however we wanted. But then ­things changed, and they wanted us out. All of us I think. But we—or at least me and my friends—­didn’t want to leave. So, a lot of us married Japa­nese men. And, I guess you could say that now we are happy, and learning to live like Japa­nese. —­Golnaz, age thirty-­four, Ira­nian homemaker living in Tokyo, February 10, 2015

Life h ­ ere has been not easy. What am I saying? It has been hard. But a lot of us c­ an’t go home. And yet, home is not ­here ­because t­ hose of us ­here, we are living a life without home or ­family [bi-­khanevadegi]. And home is not Tehran b ­ ecause it’s not the Tehran we knew, and we ­don’t want to go back. Thus, we are h ­ ere. Are we living? I d ­ on’t know. I’m h ­ ere, but I’m tired [hastam, vali khasteam]. —­A mir, age forty-­nine, Ira­nian merchant living in Tokyo, March 1, 2015

Among the most power­ful messages I heard from Ira­nian mi­grants to Japan ­were honest expressions of love and loss. ­People like Golnaz and Amir, quoted above, talked about the disconnect between social or economic mobility and affective mobility—or vice versa. For several of my interlocutors, the intersections between temporality, mobility, and affect also birthed simultaneous feelings of mobility and immobility. 2 07

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In this chapter, I argue that following the journey of Ira­nian migration to Japan reveals the complexities of marital migration by adding dimensions of time, space, and affect into our analyses. While some studies of marital migration have focused on questions of romance and reunification (see the work of Sara L. Friedman [2010] or Brenda S. A. Yeoh [2013], for example), this proj­ect complicates the picture by adding the twisted lines of temporality. Friedman and Yeoh have delved deeply into questions of citizenship and the requirement to “prove” love as per­for­mance, and this analy­sis builds on their impor­tant work. As Nicole Constable (2018, 66–67) has argued, the assumption with marital migration is that c ­ ouples meet, fall in love, and then petition for reunification. However, this is often not the case. For most of my interlocutors, affect intersected with mobility at differing intervals. ­People like Golnaz, for example, found their heart and body moving in dif­fer­ent directions. She and ­others would experience a simultaneous socioeconomic mobility while feeling emotionally immobilized—­ and vice versa. The mind and heart can move in antithetical directions to physical and social mobilities—­made even more complex by the relationships mi­grants have to states and state regimes. Through the lived experiences of my interlocutors, I bring textured analy­sis to t­ hese tensions. I begin with a brief background section, followed by a discussion of my methodology and how I came to this proj­ect through previous fieldwork in Iran and subsequent research on gendered migration and ­labor migration in Japan. I also map briefly the history of Ira­nian migration to Japan over the past thirty-­ five years since the Ira­nian Revolution, highlighting par­tic­u­lar migratory and marital trends in both countries. I then detail migratory trajectories and experiences of Ira­nian men in Japan, noting patterns and variation, as well as the experiences of Ira­nian ­women. The two ethnographic sections draw on the narratives of a few of my interlocutors to highlight the bifurcated affects that my interlocutors experience and the contribution of ­these emotions to a sense of security in the midst of insecurity and vice versa. Fi­nally, I reflect on the implications of t­ hese gendered strategies of migration and subjectivity production for the ­f uture of Ira­nian im/migrants and other im/migrants in Japan.

Background During the years immediately following the Ira­nian Revolution of 1979, Ira­nian migration to Japan began increasing. Ira­ni­ans who w ­ ere fleeing postrevolutionary insecurity looked to Japan for its lax visa standards and the promise of security. By the mid-1980s, Japan had become a popu­lar destination country for skilled and unskilled Ira­ni­ans alike. The Ira­nian Revolution and the resulting downward spiral of the Ira­nian economy coincided with Japan’s sharp economic and po­liti­cal ascension on the global stage. Not surprisingly, Japan needed unskilled ­labor to staff the growing numbers of factories and the booming



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technological industry that had taken the world by storm. At the same time, many unskilled Ira­ni­ans needed employment owing to a lack of opportunities at home. In addition, increasing numbers of Ira­nian students w ­ ere also drawn to Japan during this period b ­ ecause of the country’s reputation as a global leader in technology and engineering. Some of t­ hese students chose to study in Japan ­because they ­were not able to gain entry into Ira­nian universities, while ­others did so ­because they felt that they would receive better training in Japan. On the Japa­nese end, universities found Ira­nian students highly attractive ­because of their strong academic rec­ords and their reputations for being innovators in the industries that the Japa­nese government was trying to grow (according to interviews with Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Migration officials in 2015). ­Because of this increase in both supply and demand for Ira­nian l­ abor and skills, and b ­ ecause Japan was one of the few countries in the 1980s to which Ira­ ni­ans could migrate without needing a visa, thousands of Ira­ni­ans officially migrated to Japan between 1980 and 1990, while thousands more came via informal or irregular migratory routes (Sakurai 2008). In 1992, the Japa­nese government, anxious about the “­bubble effect” of the economy and the pos­si­ble decline of Japan’s role in the global market for technological goods, de­cided to restrict the entry of all mi­grants—­“suspend[ing] its visa exemption agreements with Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Iran,” for example (Kuwahara 2005, 31)—in ­favor of providing jobs for Japa­nese citizens. Many unskilled laborers w ­ ere deported at this time, while other hopefuls ­were denied.1 The sweeping restrictions mirrored and ­were reinforced by conservative mea­ sures established de­cades before, following the Pacific War: “The postwar migration control system combined comprehensive controls with ­great discretionary power, which allowed authorities to deport anyone they considered ‘undesirable’ ” (Morris-­Suzuki 2006, 138). By the mid-1990s, however, thousands of Ira­ni­ ans (more than half of them ­women) ­were migrating as students in the hopes of staying in Japan. In 2001, in the wake of the events of September 11, anti-­Muslim mi­grant sentiment began to grow across the world (Tsuda, n.d..; Fletcher 2012; Flath 2005) (For more on trajectories of migration to Japan, see Allison 2013; Liu-­ Farrer 2011; Parreñas 2011). This coincided with the George W. Bush presidency and the initiation of the U.S. “war on terror” that fueled a larger discourse of Islamophobia worldwide. Muslim mi­grants in Japan suddenly felt marginalized and hypervisible at the same time (for a detailed exploration of the experiences of Muslim im/migrants in Japan, see Akiko 2008). The Japa­nese government implemented strict migration legislation, and t­hose without “proper” working papers ­were sent home, while o ­ thers’ contracts w ­ ere never renewed. Many Ira­ni­ ans w ­ ere deported, but thousands more stayed in Japan and remain ­there—­some documented, o ­ thers undocumented—to this day. What is particularly of note t­ oday is that many Ira­nian w ­ omen have stayed in Japan as permanent residents through marriage to Japa­nese men. Ira­n ian

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men, however, have largely stayed on through irregular means and have not married, thus producing a gendered pattern of migration of Ira­ni­ans in Japan featuring mi­grant bachelors and immigrant wives. This has resulted in a gendered bifurcated affect for Ira­nian mi­grants—­women and men feel both mobility and immobility at the same time—­for opposite reasons. Interestingly, ­these emotions are predicated on comparisons between the two genders. ­Women, overall, feel conflicted about their status being tethered to their husbands’. On the one hand, they appreciate having “official” residency. Si­mul­ta­neously, they feel that their presence in-­country is precarious. They are “too dependent” on their husbands, and this hurts marriages, as well as keeps ­women in unhappy marriages where they feel insecure. W ­ omen also feel guilty that their status is less precarious than that of their male counter­parts. Men, on the other hand, articulate a sense of pride at being in-­country through their own means. However, this affect is mixed with a sense of insecurity at the precarity of their irregular status, as well as feel­ omen mi­grants, howings of longing for khanevadegi (­family life). Like Ira­nian w ever, they feel guilt that their situations are in some ways better than their female counter­parts’ as they are not dependent on marital precarity. The question of home, security, and citizenship is tied closely with feelings of belonging (see de Hart, this volume). Ira­n ian w ­ omen articulate a sense of belonging through their status as ­mothers and wives, while Ira­nian mi­grant men narrate challenges with feeling that they belong anywhere—in Iran or Japan. This, of course, is not ­limited to experiences of Ira­ni­ans in Japan and is a larger issue faced by mi­grants experiencing liminality across the globe. But belonging features centrally in mi­grant imaginings of place, security, and citizenship. Drawing on seven months of fieldwork in Japan with im/migrants living in and around the Tokyo metropolitan area, this chapter seeks to chronicle the trajectories of Ira­nian im/migration to Japan a ­ fter the Ira­nian Revolution. Within the paradoxes of simultaneous mobility and immobility, I note that while Ira­ nian migration to Japan at some point promised security, facilitated by lax migration laws and the Japa­nese government’s interest in hosting large populations of Ira­ni­ans, t­ oday Ira­nian mi­grants, immigrants, and would-be mi­grants must employ what Christine  B.  N. Chin (2013) refers to as “creativity” and “adaptability” in making their migratory journeys more secure. ­These migratory strategies seem to follow a definitively gendered pattern in which w ­ omen migrate formally as wives and men most often occupy informal positions as workers. Both trajectories require creativity and flexibility, and both have equally insecure possibilities. Through interviews with Ira­nian im/migrants living in Japan, I emphasize that gendered strategies for im/migration are intimately linked to the production of gendered subjectivities in and through im/mobilities throughout the migratory journey and in the new host country. I have strug­gled with the uses of the terms migration, immigration, mobility, ­ ecause of the inadequacy of t­hese terms in describing the and immobility b



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messiness of lived experience. T ­ hese terms evoke dif­fer­ent spatial and temporal realities, and though they exist as multitudes, they ultimately draw geographic, po­liti­cal, and affective bound­aries that can restrict and generalize the lives of Ira­ni­ans, in my case. As I search for language and imagery that re­spects the stories of ­those moving across vari­ous bound­aries, I concur with Kerilyn Schewel that “to meaningfully incorporate immobility into migration research, immobility should be approached as a pro­cess with determinants of its own, which is to say as complex, dynamic, and, as [Anna] Hjälm argues, ‘diverse and ongoing a phenomenon as moving’ ” (Schewel 2020, 329; Hjälm 2014, 578–579). For this reason, I have chosen to deploy the tropes of im/mobility and im/migration. When I discuss mobilities and immobilities, I am referring to both physical and emotional restrictions and opportunities experienced by im/migrants and their loved ones. I use the concept of im/mobility to highlight the interconnections of mobilities and immobilities that are brought to the fore when looking at the intimate lives of laborers. In addition to laws and law enforcement, binds of love, fears of deportation, and other emotional mobilities and immobilities produce physical mobilities and immobilities—­and vice versa. The im/mobilities I write about are experienced on many levels and for many reasons. Theorizing im/ mobility, as a messy concept incorporating both emotional states and physical experiences, begins to address the messy but complex lives of im/migrants and ­those they love (for further theorization on ­these terms and their assorted articulations, see Pereira 2012; Niedomysl and Fransson 2014). Similarly, my use of the term im/migration attempts to contour the messy and liminal space in which many individuals find themselves while in a country where they do not have citizenship, ­legal status, or formal employment. Im/ migration recognizes the ambiguity pre­sent in artificially assigning statuses to individuals who live, reside, and in some cases w ­ ere born in countries where they are not recognized as citizens or permanent residents. The concept of im/migrations, like im/mobility, chronicles the movements of im/migrants’ consciousness across statuses and borders and locates where their emotional states collide with their ­legal status. Though many of my interlocutors aspire to official immigration, the path to immigration in ­legal or bureaucratic terms is fraught, long, and complicated. Many have lived and existed in the host country, between statuses, for many years. ­These individuals see Japan as their “home” and thus identify as immigrants but are not legally recognized as such. I use the term im/ migration to avoid falsely placing t­ hose who cross borders and their kin into artificial categories that may not reflect their lived realities. Using stark gendered divisions to describe migratory journeys runs the same risk of inaccurately placing im/migrants into fixed categories based on migratory status or employment. By focusing on ­women who become “immigrant wives” and men who remain in Japan as “mi­grant bachelors,” I do not mean to say that all men or ­women in Japan experience ­these trajectories. Certainly, some

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Ira­nian male im/migrants stayed on or migrated as spouses to Japa­nese w ­ omen, and some ­women migrated informally or migrated as students and ­were able to attain residency without marriage. However, a pattern with distinct gendered contours emerged from my small sample (thirty-­four total—­t wenty ­women, fourteen men), compounded with conversations with Ira­ni­ans who have lived in Japan for many years, as well as interviews with Ira­ni­ans who have returned to Iran seeking more security back home a ­ fter living in Japan for a de­cade or more.

Finding Iran in Japan: Methods This chapter draws on ethnographic research from seven consecutive months of fieldwork in Japan from 2014 to 2015. Prior to 2014, I conducted my first research proj­ect between 2004 and 2008 in Iran with Ira­nian young ­people. Following that proj­ect, I conducted fieldwork in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), first with mi­grant workers from Iran and then with im/migrants from other parts of Asia and Africa who migrated to the UAE. Much of my work has looked at gendered experiences of im/migrants working in vari­ous types of intimate ­labor in West Asia, primarily in the Gulf Cooperation Countries (GCC) of the UAE and Kuwait.2 In 2010, I became aware of striking similarities between im/migration pro­cesses in the UAE and Japan through a conjunction of reading a series of newspaper articles and conversing with Japa­nese scholars and colleagues about h ­ uman trafficking. Several colleagues informed me that the same phenomenon I had written about in my book about trafficking in the UAE was taking place in Japan. In par­tic­u­lar, ­these academics and activists w ­ ere concerned with the pressures placed on the Japa­nese government in 2005 to ban l­egal visas allowing w ­ omen and men to migrate from the Philippines, Iran, Pakistan, and Indonesia. Thus, in 2013, I applied for and received a grant to relocate to Tokyo for a period of seven months in order to conduct fieldwork with policy makers and im/migrants in Japan in the wake of policies and responses intended to combat trafficking. On arriving in Japan, I immediately began to “feel” some of what my colleagues had warned me about—­namely, anti-­immigrant or mi­grant sentiment. As an Ira­nian American w ­ oman, I felt my outward appearance in par­tic­u­lar draw reactions from passengers on the train or passersby on the crowded streets of Tokyo, ranging from curiosity to confusion. Though I was in Japan to study gendered migration of all types, I was drawn immediately to the Ira­nian community, perhaps ­because of my own background as an Ira­nian American w ­ oman. In addition, my language skills in Japa­nese w ­ ere virtually non­ex­is­tent, and I, like many of my interlocutors, found getting around in Japan without a command of the language to be a very challenging and isolating experience. I was, like many of my interlocutors, relieved to meet p ­ eople with whom I could speak Persian. I reveled in my days at the Ira­nian grocery store, where my Japa­nese illiteracy did not bar me from buying products, or Ira­nian restaurants, where I could easily



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communicate my c ­ hildren’s eating particularities with the waiters and chefs. As more time passed, I became increasingly drawn to and dependent on the Ira­ni­ ans I met in Japan, and my interest in mapping their experiences and journeys intensified, reflexively, ­because of my own. During my time in Japan, I was able to interview twenty Ira­nian im/migrant ­women (eigh­teen of whom w ­ ere married to Japa­nese men and had one or more ­children and two of whom ­were divorcées), fourteen Ira­nian im/migrant men, three Japa­nese scholars of Iran at vari­ous universities in Tokyo, and two activists working at nongovernmental organ­i zations (NGOs) catering to Ira­nian and other Muslim im/migrants in Japan. Of the ­women I interviewed, all but two ­were homemakers and had immigrated through marriage to Japa­nese men. One ­woman had migrated through contacts she had made at a university who helped her secure a high-­skilled job in technology. The other w ­ oman had migrated informally, found employment through friends, and then found employment through her sponsor, who also managed to attain permanent residency for her in Japan. Of the men that I met, seven ­were merchants, working in industries such as the import and export of goods, foods, and textiles. The other seven worked as unskilled laborers in factories, junkyards, and construction. Ten of t­ hese men ­were living in Japan without documentation. The other four had been living in Japan since the early 1980s and utilized their contacts with Japa­nese colleagues to secure permanent residency. Throughout my fieldwork for this proj­ect, I conducted participant observation at the major Ira­nian grocery store in Tokyo, Ira­ nian restaurants, mosques, and NGO offices throughout the greater Tokyo area. I also visited the homes of five of my female interlocutors to meet their spouses and ­children. Below, I introduce a se­lection of Ira­nian mi­grants I met living in Japan whose stories illustrate the messy intersections of socioeconomic mobility, on the one hand, and affective immobility, on the other. Through journeying into their lives and hearts, we can see the complexities of how time can be orthogonal, the mobility of the heart moves at a dif­fer­ent speed than the mobility of the body, and the relation to self, other, and state is often contoured by ­ these im/ mobilities.

Mi­grant Bachelors “Ya Ali! Ba Dorood!” calls Amou Arjang as a welcoming greeting to customers walking through the front door of his small Ira­nian grocery store in the back alleys of central Tokyo’s Chuo ward. A tall man in his midfifties who wears dark glasses and sports a long white beard that gives him the appearance of a member of the band ZZ Top, Amou Arjang has been ­r unning his store in Tokyo since the first wave of Ira­n ian im/migrants came to the city in the 1980s. His shop started out as a stall in the large informal bazaar-­cum-­flea market-­cum-­black

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market that Ira­ni­ans in Tokyo had created in the ­middle of Yoyogi Park in the fash­ion­able Harajuku neighborhood. In the m ­ iddle of this lush park, Ira­ni­ans would gather once a week on the weekends and exchange goods ranging from basic foodstuffs to pots and pans to tele­v i­sion sets to illegal phone cards. To avoid the watchful eyes of local Japa­nese citizens, one Ira­nian im/migrant had cleverly devised a scheme to purchase a large number of exotic-­looking plants and bushes. T ­ hese w ­ ere planted all around a par­tic­u­lar area of the park, accompanied by signs—­written in Japanese—­warning Japa­nese citizens not to “disturb” the plants and to stay away from the area. Amazingly, this strategy worked, and law-­abiding Japa­nese did not approach the area. In the meantime, the Ira­ni­ans would walk through the bushes to the inner circle to buy and sell their goods. In the 1990s, as the numbers of Ira­nian im/migrants began to decline, this informal market dis­appeared and was replaced by a few individual shops such as Amou Arjang’s. As customers walk inside the small smoke-­filled shop, Amou Arjang rises from his seated position b ­ ehind a desk, pours each customer a glass of piping hot chai, and hands them a fresh date dusted with coconut powder. Amou literally translated from Persian means “­uncle.” The shop­keep­er’s insistence that every­one refer to him as “­Uncle Arjang” indicates his desire to create an atmosphere of familiarity and informality. “How is the ­family? And friends? What’s the news?” he asks each person in Persian. The store resembles a train station with customers coming and g ­ oing, some sitting on small chairs and stools in corners for hours at a time, o ­ thers standing next to Amou Arjang’s desk watching the Ira­nian satellite TV while they hear the news that their fellow countrymen bring to the store. In all my time visiting Amou Arjang’s store (roughly once a week for seven months), I never saw any Ira­nian w ­ omen customers. Rather, as I sat, observing heated debates and conversations between the Ira­n ian men, many of whom had the appearance of Ira­nian men I had seen in the working-­ class suburbs of Tehran with hairstyles that ­were slightly out-­of-­date, baggy jeans and pants, and oversize accessories, I would hear w ­ omen call Amou Arjang and place their ­orders over the phone, but none would ever walk inside the front door. ­Later, I would learn through female interlocutors that this was deliberate. One of my interviewees was stunned to hear that I visited the shop—­a nd alone at that! She warned me not to physically go to the store anymore and insisted that I let her place o ­ rders for me over the phone. Another female interviewee described Amou Arjang’s shop as “a stopping station for lonely men” and begged me not to return. Indeed, the layout of Amou Arjang’s shop is a testament to his primary customer base. Most of the products feature prepackaged and prepared Ira­nian meals like herb stew (ghormeh sabzi) or mince stew (khoresht gheimeh), two popu­ lar Ira­nian stews. Some men come in asking for advice on preparation of rice to accompany the prepackaged stews, which Amou happily provides. The ­actual



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ingredients for preparing food are all located in the back of the store, and Amou Arjang ventures back t­ here only if a female customer calls or if I ask for certain spices or goods. Some of the men come to the store bringing packages for other Ira­ni­ans and exchange them in a special corner of the shop Amou has created for this purpose. O ­ thers bring money that they owe ­either Amou himself or, more commonly, another member of the community. I observed many transactions take place at Amou Arjang’s shop, with ­people exchanging (often illegal) goods, money, and strategies for navigating life in Japan, including informal job possibilities and doubled-up housing availability. Amou Arjang himself often speaks in poetry, quoting famous Ira­ nian poets as he glances wistfully at the photo­graphs of Iran that surround his desk. One after­noon, a few weeks before Nowruz, the Ira­nian New Year, I visited Amou Arjang and found him feeling particularly low. “Our life ­here, our life, it’s just empty,” he told me looking at the empty shelves of his store. Despite having placed several large o ­ rders in anticipation of the New Year, over half of Amou Arjang’s shelves remained empty. When I asked him what happened, he stood up, becoming very animated. “What happened? It’s what always happens. All my ­ very single ­thing. goods [ jense] got stuck at customs [gomrok]; they are opening e The Japa­nese are distrustful as it is, let alone when they see something that has come from a place like Iran! Then, God only knows. For two months now my shipment has been stuck at customs, t­hese p ­ eople ­don’t trust us. The empty shelves, it’s a marker of our empty lives ­here, you know?” Amou’s experiences resonate with the many mi­grants I and ­others who have studied migration over the years have observed regarding the moral economies of climates of suspicion. Other contributors in this volume explore the surveillance of c ­ ouples (Anne-­ Marie D’Aoust, Laura Odasso and Manuela Salcedo Robledo, and Saskia Bonjour and Massilia Ourabah). In Amou’s case, the climate of fear instilled by the geopo­liti­cal context of the war on terror affects his interior life and lived experiences as an Ira­nian man in a non-­Iranian context. A customer walks in, a young man in his midthirties, looking lost. He shakes Amou Arjang’s hand and sits down. “What’s the news?” asks Amou Arjang. The young man is ­silent for a few moments before answering, “I’m feeling ­really lost ­these days.” Amou Arjang places a hand on the young man’s shoulder as he serves him tea and dates. “What can we do, we are without choice [bi-­chareh] ­here?” he says to the young man and me. A few minutes pass and the young man sips his tea. Fi­nally, he stands and asks Amou if he has any lavash bread. Amou sadly shakes his head. “No, lots of t­ hings we d ­ on’t have anymore. Back in the old days when the planes would come, then the ladies, the flight attendants, they would bring goods [ jense] but now, nothing,” he says. At this the young man’s ears perk up and a smile crosses his face. “Yes, I loved when t­ hose ladies brought the jense,” he says, this time using a play on the word jense, which means both “goods” and also “gender.” Both men laugh, as Amou turns to me. “You’ll have to forgive us,”

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he says, “our life in Japan, it’s a life devoid of f­ amily [bi-­k hanevadegi], and so we have become a bit like animals. No f­amily, no morals, so we talk in ways that are not appropriate, I’m sorry.” On several other occasions when I visited Amou Arjang’s store, we had conversations about ­family, his customers, and life in Japan. Though his business was thriving, and he had become an icon of sorts in the Ira­nian community in Japan, Amou Arjang often said that he felt “unsettled” and “unhappy” with his life in Japan. “It’s that most of us men h ­ ere, we are without f­amily. Our wives, ­sisters, m ­ others, the ­women that make our life beautiful, they ­aren’t h ­ ere, and so we have this empty-­like half-­life,” he said. When I asked him why he did not return to Iran, he was emphatic that he would have no economic opportunities “back home” and was unsure if he would be welcomed by his loved ones who had asked him not to go to Japan some thirty years ago. “But you know, if I was ­going to go back, do it from the beginning, maybe I ­wouldn’t choose this life. It ­doesn’t make sense though, ­here I’m successful, I have a good business, but my life, my heart, it’s ­there. Or in what Iran was. I ­don’t even know what it is anymore; I just live it through the food. Maybe I ­don’t even know where my heart is anymore,” Amou Arjang said. ­A fter this, he began reciting his favorite poetry by the poet Hafiz. Amou’s utterings, especially in this quotation, demonstrate the simultaneous mobility and immobility that mi­grants feel. He is a successful businessman by many accounts, and his body has experienced successful mobility. However, his heart remains in Iran. As a result, he feels a form of affective immobility. All of the Ira­nian men I interviewed during my time in Japan spoke of feeling homesick and missing loved ones back in Iran, even as they articulated their pride at being able to find creative ways to survive and find some amount of economic security in Japan. Several of my interlocutors also expressed concern at their precarious status in Japan as a result of living and working informally and sometimes in trades that would be considered illegal, but this concern was mixed always with a sense of gratitude that they had found some economic security that they felt was not available back “home.” But the bifurcated stream of emotions rocked them back and forth. While most w ­ ere grateful for the economic opportunities and high earning potential in Japan, many lamented the lifestyle, particularly the high-­stress, low-­support bachelor lifestyle that accompanied working in Japan. ­People spoke about feeling “emotionally para­lyzed,” a form of affective immobility. “I am making more now than I ever could in Iran, and I can send money home. That makes me feel—­I ­don’t know, feel something? Ever since I moved h ­ ere I ­can’t access my feelings anymore,” said Afshin, a recent Ira­n ian mi­grant to Tokyo who worked as a civil engineer. Like Amou Arjang and Afshin, a number of men articulated feelings of emotional paralysis, this affective immobility weighing on them despite the fluidity of their physical and economic mobility.



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At least four of my interviewees said that they felt they had “lost themselves” through living and working in Japan—­though they ­were unclear if this was ­because of the nature of their work or the circumstances of their intimate lives owing to their migratory trajectories. Several of my interviewees talked about their friends as their only lifelines when they felt they w ­ ere drowning in Japan. Visiting Amou Arjang’s store or dining at one of the three Ira­nian restaurants in Tokyo, I would often see groups of Ira­n ian men who would get together to reminisce. Notably absent from ­these gatherings ­were Ira­n ian (or any other) ­women, who ­were usually the subject of conversation. But despite ­these ups and downs, all of the men I spoke with w ­ ere emphatic that Japan, while challenging, presented a more secure ­f uture for them than returning to Iran in what felt like still uncertain and insecure times. Ira­nian w ­ omen also described feelings of affective liminality or emotional crossroads. But for them, place—­and love of place—­was a more central ­factor. Below I introduce a few interlocutors whose affective journeys intersect in complex ways with their physical and social mobility.

Immigrant Wives Nazanin, now thirty-­six, says that Japan is more her “home” than Iran ever was. She initially moved to Tokyo at the age of eigh­teen to study civil engineering at a Japa­nese university renowned for its engineering program. Though Nazanin had been accepted to a university in Shiraz (where she is from), she and her ­family de­cided that pursuing higher education in Japan would position her well to find employment, w ­ hether back in Iran or abroad. “Look [bebin], you have to remember that in t­ hose years [the 1990s], Japan was seen as this, this g ­ reat country. The ultimate,” Nazanin explains, switching to En­glish to emphasize her last word. “It was the leader, the best place to go to study technology or engineering. We all thought that if you study in Japan, you ­will for sure be successful. And also you have to not forget that Japan was seen as this clean, safe place. The opposite of Iran in many ways, so it was, it would be a dream to move to Japan,” she said. Nazanin applied and was accepted to a university in Tokyo; however, her first few years in Japan w ­ ere far from easy. She described her college years as very lonely but emphasized that she worked very hard to succeed. She went on to pursue a master’s in solar energy at the same university. A ­ fter finishing her master’s degree, she was offered a high-­paying job at a solar technology com­pany in Tokyo and de­cided to stay in Japan. Though she visited Iran each summer, she remembered feeling more and more disconnected from the “home” where she was born and raised. Unfortunately for Nazanin, just as she started to identify Japan as her “home,” the Japa­nese government was making plans to tighten borders to im/ migrants. Unbeknownst to her, she would lose her job just three weeks a ­ fter

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returning from her summer trip to Shiraz in 2010. When her boss told her that she was fired and would soon be deported, Nazanin said she felt “numb [bi-­heiss].” Distraught at the news of her impending deportation, Nazanin began calling friends and old schoolmates in Tokyo whom she had gotten to know over the years. One friend, Layla, also an Ira­nian young ­woman who had migrated to Japan at roughly the same time as Nazanin, had a suggestion that intrigued Nazanin. “I remember Layla saying that it ­wasn’t a prob­lem, that I could just marry a Japa­ nese guy and stay. That was what she had done and she was happy. I r­ eally ­hadn’t thought of it that way before, but it seemed to make sense,” Nazanin said. Nazanin had met Takahide through a work proj­ect on which they had collaborated when she first started her job. She said that she had always liked his smile, and she just somehow “knew that he was a good man.” A ­ fter Layla’s suggestion, Nazanin called Takahide and the two began a courtship. Hoping to turn their romance into marriage, Nazanin overstayed her visa, evading deportation. Reflecting on her trajectory, Nazanin said, “For me, Japan is where I found myself, like who I am. I would have never had the courage to call up a guy and say, ‘let’s do something,’ but I did it b ­ ecause I was determined to stay in Japan. And even the hard parts about life ­here, that’s what made me stronger. This place is the best t­ hing to ever happen to me.” Though Nazanin was happy with the decisions she had made and her course in life up to the pre­sent, she did express some concerns about the f­ uture. Her friend Layla, who had helped her decide to marry and remain in Japan, had experienced increasing challenges since her marriage. Her husband had become jealous and abusive in recent years, but ­because she could not find employment or a means to support herself, she could not move away from him. In addition, Layla had given birth to two ­little girls during the marriage, and she was fearful that her husband would get full custody of the c ­ hildren. As Nazanin relayed Layla’s story to me, she became wrought with worry. “A lot of times I think that could be me, you know? Takahide could turn on me, and then what do I do? I have been looking for a job for that reason, but nothing. My mom says I should think about moving back to Iran, but that ­doesn’t feel right to me ­either. And who knows? More could go wrong in Iran than ­here,” she said. For now, Nazanin emphasized, she was happy in Japan. Despite the vari­ous risks of her situation, she felt that her “heart was in Japan” and so she would remain with her heart, even if it meant exposing herself to geopo­liti­cal security threats. Farah, for her part, first moved to Japan in 1986 when she was four years old. She moved to join her ­father, who had been working outside Tokyo in a ­Toyota car factory since her birth. Her f­ ather had saved up enough money to rent his own living quarters and had managed to secure travel and reunification papers for his ­family. They stayed in Japan ­until Farah was eight years old, at which time, they returned to Iran b ­ ecause her ­father was unable to renew his contract. Farah said that her ­father often talked about missing Japan, and he



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“told stories ­every night about Japan as a dream land and place where every­thing ­w ill always turn out good.” To add to her ­father’s worsening emotional state and longing for Japan, he was unable to find employment in Iran, and the ­family’s finances ­were heavi­ly strained. Farah’s ­mother started working informally, first as a nanny, then as a domestic worker, and then as a seamstress for vari­ous families who lived in Tehran. ­Because Farah and her ­father lived in Kermanshah, located five hundred kilo­meters from Tehran, her ­mother would sometimes be in Tehran for months at a time. ­A fter eight years of financial trou­bles and marital prob­lems, Farah’s parents divorced when her ­father de­cided to return to Japan in 1995. A friend of his had written of informal job possibilities—­Farah was never clear about the details—­ and her ­father had jumped at the opportunity. Her ­father’s departure broke Farah’s heart. Before long, Farah de­cided that she would drop out of school and migrate to join her f­ ather in Japan. With the help of her f­ ather and some of his contacts, Farah was able to secure a tourist visa to migrate to Japan in 1999. She moved in with her f­ ather and began informal work at an emerging Internet technology com­pany. In 2003, Farah’s f­ ather was arrested for “illegal transactions,” though Farah said that she still does not understand the reasons for his arrest. He was held in a detention center just outside central Tokyo, while Farah tried desperately to seek l­ egal assistance for her ­father. During this time, Farah lost her job as a result of her long absences from work combined with the changing po­liti­cal situation ­toward immigrants. Her ­father fell ill while in detention and was hospitalized as he awaited trial. Farah’s ­father did not have the chance to stand trial or to be deported, ­because he died of an infection a week ­after being admitted to the hospital in Tokyo. Fortunately, the Japa­nese government financed a journey back to Iran for Farah and her ­father’s corpse, so that she might bury him in Iran. When she returned to Iran to bury her f­ather, Farah’s m ­ other, aunts, and ­uncles begged her to stay in Iran rather than return to Japan. “I remember they said to me that Japan was no good, that it killed my ­father. And that I ­shouldn’t go back. But that seemed wrong to me. Even though I ­didn’t have a job or l­egal papers, I felt I have to go back to Japan. Maybe ­because I had fallen in love with Japan, like my f­ ather had, and it seemed that I had to go back to live his dream, or my dream, or our dream?” said Farah. During the course of her f­ ather’s imprisonment, Farah had become close with one of the ­lawyers working on her ­father’s case, a Japa­nese man named Riku. ­A fter she returned to Iran, Riku frequently called her and sent many letters. In one of his letters, Riku professed his love for Farah and invited her to come back to Japan as his fiancée. “I was surprised, but excited. Was I in love with Riku? I ­don’t know if I was in love with him or Japan, but I accepted his offer,” Farah said. Like Nazanin, who described Japan as the home of her heart, Farah describes her relationship to the Japa­nese state as a m ­ atter of the heart, rather than in

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strictly rational calculations of migration as a strategy to advance socioeconomic mobility. This notion of wanting to be where the heart is and falling in love with the host country complicates our understanding of affect and mobility. H ­ ere, ­these ­women mobilize their emotions with regard to place. They talk about being in “love with Japan.” This adds a new dimension to the affect-­labor-­mobility nexus. Farah returned to Japan in 2004, and she and Riku ­were married in 2005. In 2006, Farah enrolled for the first time at a university to study economics. A ­ fter finishing her bachelor’s degree and master’s degree, she de­cided to enroll in a doctoral program, supported by her husband. When I met her in 2015, she was finishing her dissertation and excited about her job prospects. She was emphatic that living in Japan had changed her life: “You see, I’m now almost a doctor. A PhD! That never would have happened for me in Iran, in Kermanshah. I would have prob­ably gone on to clean ­houses or become a domestic worker/nanny (nan­ ill always be okay. Even though neh). But my dad was right, in Japan every­thing w I miss Iran, and I miss my f­ amily ­every day, I feel that something changed in me when I came ­here [Tokyo]. Maybe every­thing would have been okay in Iran too, but this life, it is more than okay,” she explained. Like Nazanin, Farah did express some concern that she would not find a job and be overly dependent on her husband. She, like o ­ thers I met, worried that the focus of Japa­nese policies on providing jobs first and foremost to citizens, combined with patriarchal attitudes ­toward ­women’s advancement, would box them out of many job possibilities. She also said that she worried that being Ira­nian and “looking Muslim or from the ­Middle East” would always make ­things harder for her in homogeneous Japan. “Sometimes I think I would just like to be somewhere where every­one ­else looks like me, talks like me, and is like me. But then I think, well, this country has given me so much, so it’s ­little to pay back,” Farah added. When I last spoke with her in 2015, Farah was worried about being a foreign w ­ oman in the Japa­nese acad­emy and wondered if her chances in Iran would be better. Though ambivalent about her f­ uture, she was emphatic that her time in Japan had ultimately made her more successful in many ways. Farah, Nazanin, and seven other Ira­n ian im/migrant wives with whom I spoke narrate a sense of “home” and “self” in and through im/migration to Japan. In contrast to their male counter­parts whose stories are introduced above and narrate feelings of being emotionally lost, t­ hese w ­ omen identify Japan as “home” more than Iran. This expressed affinity to Japan indicates that they have explored and experienced their subjectivities through their experiences in Japan in ways that would not have been pos­si­ble had they stayed in Iran, their natal “home.” Like many other im/migrants, they strug­gle with a sense of motion and mobility, even as they try to become rooted in a new “home.” For ­these ­women, as can be seen in the stories of Farah, Layla, and Nazanin, their migratory trajectories dramatically s­ haped their senses of self even as they moved through vari­ous



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­legal, economic, and social statuses. Their emotional mobility remained a major part of their experiences, even when they experienced challenges to their social or economic mobility. Ultimately, physical mobility to Japan enabled their emotional, social, and financial mobility in ways that they believe w ­ ere profound and life changing. Despite incongruities between their ­legal statuses and the movement of their emotional consciousness, ­these ­women’s gendered subjectivities emerged from their mobilities in their new “home.”

Intersections: Gender, Foreignness, Race, and the Im/migrant Experience The gendered differences in migratory experiences have led to varying gendered productions of subjectivity for my interlocutors. The ­women I spoke with feel overall more “settled” and view Japan as their “home,” a place where they feel they have more agency, and a space to explore their subjectivities. But this is not due to gender alone. For my interlocutors, as for many other non-­Japanese ­women, as foreign ­women they are allowed more freedom—of mobilities, social, economic, and physical—­than Japa­nese ­women. Foreign w ­ omen, like me, and like Korean ­women, are able to access spaces—­such as gradu­ate school—­and economic mobility where Japa­nese ­women feel restricted (for notes on Japa­nese ­women’s occupation and wage data, working conditions, and the ­human capital development system in Japan, see Brinton 1993).3 The privatization of Japan’s schools and the authority of other social agents have stressed that, for ­women, education is considered an attractive attribute for marriage rather than a requisite for the l­abor market (Brinton 1993). At all ages, social policy and cultural norms impede Japa­nese ­women’s search for jobs and systemically disrupt “on-­ the-­job training and job rotation experience,” pushing them to resign to domestic support for their husbands and sons (Brinton 1993, 223). Additionally, foreign ­women can often explore the physical environment with more ease and less judgment than their Japa­nese counter­parts b ­ ecause it is assumed that, as “foreign-­looking” w ­ omen, it is acceptable that they do not “know their proper place.” This unspoken freedom afforded my female interlocutors opportunities earned simply by their status as foreign ­women. The men adopt a dif­fer­ent tone when describing their experiences and emotions. They speak about feeling “lost” and liminal, feelings that then shape their subjectivities (Turner 1974). This builds on the notion of the complexities of dif­fer­ ent forms of im/mobility outside of socioeconomic mobility by bringing more focus on affect. Their experiences are compounded by the fact that foreign men, in contrast to their female counter­parts, are often a cause for suspicion for many Japa­nese citizens. Foreign men stand out substantially, and ­there exists an unspoken racialized hierarchy for t­ hese men. Foreign men occupy a second class to Japa­ nese men. Within this, white men—­ predominantly ­ those of Euro-­ A merican

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backgrounds—­have a higher status as foreigners than brown or black men. As “other” brown, Muslim men, Ira­nian men have a double second-­class status, making them among the most marginalized bodies in Japan. Fi­nally, it is impor­tant to note that Ira­nian im/migrant men and im/migrant ­women do not socialize across genders with any frequency, contributing to a lack of or­ga­nized community among the Ira­ni­ans living in Japan. All of the ­women with whom I spoke ­were emphatic that they did not wish to socialize with the Ira­nian men who lived in Japan, and four ­women specifically said they avoided ­these men at all costs. Two other w ­ omen said that the Ira­nian men in Japan ­were “of the merchant class [bazaari’s]” or ­were working-­class and considered themselves superior to the men owing to their education level and mode of migration. Among the men I interviewed, four said that they did wish to socialize with Ira­nian ­women in Japan but found them “intimidating,” “too busy,” “full of themselves,” or just not accessible b ­ ecause of their intermarriages with Japa­ nese men. Some of the men said they did not want to offend the Japa­nese spouses of the Ira­nian w ­ omen and thus kept their distance. Gender and class intersect to prevent the formation of Ira­nian communities abroad. However, this lack of socialization and community contributes to what made many of my interlocutors (particularly the men) feel “unsettled” or “homesick.” One interviewee compared Ira­ni­ans and Indians in Japan, noting the greater organ­ization and social capital among the Indian community, which helped Indian im/migrants feel more at “home” in Japan. Having a stronger community can enrich the mi­grant experience, but the gendered, classed, and marital fractures throughout the Ira­nian im/migrant population in Japan w ­ ill pose obstacles to community formation.

Conclusion Through the stories of Ira­nian mi­grants introduced ­here we can see the complexities of migration through the lens of individuals who feel a sense of affective immobility simultaneous to socioeconomic mobility and vice versa. For most of my interlocutors, affect intersected with mobility at differing intervals. P ­ eople like Amou Arjang or Nazanin, for example, found their heart and body moving in dif­fer­ent directions. The mind and heart can move in antithetical directions to physical and social mobilities—­made even more complex by the relationships mi­grants have to states and state regimes. Consider, for example, the feelings of love that the w ­ omen in this chapter articulated they felt for Japan. This love of place empowered one kind of affective mobility, while immobilizing them in other ways. Views of Iran and Ira­ni­ans in the Japa­nese imagination and views of Japan in the Ira­nian imagination have no doubt contributed and w ­ ill continue to contribute significantly to migratory routes, opportunities, and experiences for Ira­ ni­ans traveling to and from Japan, especially as ­these imaginings shape policies



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about migration that affect and challenge Ira­nian im/migrants. In turn, t­ hese migratory routes, opportunities, and experiences have s­ haped and w ­ ill continue to shape the production of subjectivities for Ira­ni­ans who migrate. The complex relationship between imaginaries, migration, and subjectivities demonstrates the importance of understanding how subjectivity is both s­ haped by and shapes the picture of migration. In par­tic­u­lar, gendered experiences and resulting productions of gendered subjectivities allow a more robust understanding of the contours of migration between t­ hese two countries as im/migrants move and re-­imagine their ideas of “home.”

NOTES

1. ­These deportations have persisted into the twenty-­first c ­ entury, as Yasuo Kuwahara reveals: “ ‘Settlement with no f­uture prospect’ has continued. More specifically, in 2003 [Japan’s Ministry of Justice] gave nearly 10,000 illegal foreign residents the l­egal status of ‘special permits of residence’ before, in practice, deporting them” (2005, 44). 2. For more on intimate l­ abor, see Boris and Parreñas (2010). 3. I am grateful to Ji-­Yeon Yuh for her insight on Korean w ­ omen and for her work on Koreans in Japan.

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Kuwahara, Y. 2005. “Mi­grant Workers in the Post-­War History of Japan.” Japan ­Labor Review 2 (4): 25–47. Liu-­Farrer, G. 2011. ­Labour Migration from China to Japan: International Students, Transnational Mi­g rants. Nissan Institute / Routledge Japa­nese Studies Series. London: Routledge. Morris-­Suzuki, T. 2006. “Invisible Immigrants: Undocumented Migration and Border Controls in Early Postwar Japan.” Journal of Japa­nese Studies 32 (1): 119–153. Niedomysl, T., and U. Fransson. 2014. “On Distance and the Spatial Dimension in the Definition of Internal Migration.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 104 (2): 357–372. Parreñas, R. S. 2011. Illicit Flirtations: ­Labor, Migration, and Sex Trafficking in Tokyo. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Pereira, S. 2012. “Immigrant Workers’ (Im)mobilities and Their Re-­emigration Strategies.” Employee Relations 34 (6): 642–657. Sakurai, K. 2008. “Muslims in Con­temporary Japan.” Asia Policy 5 (1): 69–87. Schewel, K. 2020. “Understanding Immobility: Moving beyond the Mobility Bias in Migration Studies.” International Migration Review 54 (2): 328–355. Tsuda, T. n.d. “Reluctant Hosts: The ­Future of Japan as a Country of Immigration.” Migration Dialogue (blog). Accessed June 15, 2013. https://­migration​.­ucdavis​.e ­ du​/­rs​/m ­ ore​.p ­ hp​ ?­id​=3 ­ 9. Turner, V. 1974. “Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow, and Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology.” Rice Institute Pamphlet—­Rice University Studies 60 (3): 53–92. Yeoh, B.S.A. 2013. “ ‘Upwards’ or ‘Sideways’ Cosmopolitanism? Talent/Labour/Marriage Migrations in the Globalising City-­State of Singapore.” Migration Studies 1 (1): 96–116.

11 Intimate Citizens Filipina Mi­g rant Hostesses in Japan R H AC E L S A L A Z A R PA R R E Ñ A S

In Japan, permanent residence is not accessible to most foreigners, as the country does not grant long-­term residency status to its non-­nikei-­jin foreign workers.1 ­Unless one is of Japa­nese descent, one would qualify for permanent residency only as a spouse or m ­ other of a Japa­nese citizen. This technically makes long-­ term residency for non-­nikei-­jin foreigners in Japan conditional on their intimacy with a Japa­nese citizen. This would make non-­nikei-­jin permanent residents of Japan intimate citizens, a term that not only underscores intimacy as a primary condition of their belonging but also acknowledges that their citizenship, by which I mean their terms of belonging in Japa­nese society, involves intimate relations with Japa­nese citizens. In this chapter, I describe the dif­fer­ent configurations of intimacy that Filipina mi­grants pursue with Japa­nese citizens in their quest to become permanent residents of Japan. I specifically focus on ­those who opted for marriage as an ave­nue for acquiring long-­term residency, thus excluding ­those who attained permanent residence via the birth of a child outside of marriage. As intimate citizens, the Filipina mi­grants I study are considered morally suspect by the state. This is b ­ ecause pragmatic gains, in this case of long-­term l­egal residence, are inherent in their marital partnerships. Yet, normative views dictate that motivations for marriage should be void of pragmatic concerns (Constable 2003). How do Filipina mi­grants navigate normative views of marriage? I establish that they reject it and instead insist on the ceaseless interplay of emotions and pragmatism in their marriages with Japa­nese citizens. In so d ­ oing, they unapologetically queer marriage and disrupt our normative views of love and romance. The interplay of emotions and pragmatism in the marriages of Filipina mi­grants with Japa­nese citizens disrupts essential notions of marriage. It dismantles the normative belief that marriage, as a “sacred” institution, should be void of rationalism. The premise of such an assumption is the notion that 225

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emotions and pragmatism, or love and money, inhabit separate spheres (Constable 2003; Zelizer 2005). Questioning the binary separation of emotions and pragmatism, they illustrate the ceaseless interplay of the two in the marriages pursued and maintained by Filipina mi­grants. In so d ­ oing, they, as this chapter establishes, seek to queer our understanding of marriage. They specifically disrupt normative understandings of love and contest dominant views on the intimate partnerships that constitute marriage (Kimport 2013). In other words, they question their dismissal as “marriages of con­ve­nience,” described in chapter 1 as morally suspicious and “odd” partnerships between nationals and their foreign partners (see de Hart, this volume). While queer theory focuses a ­great deal on questioning essentialized identities (see Luibhéid, this volume), this chapter focuses on the queering of an institution. It establishes how the marriage practices of Filipina hostesses contest the regulation of their membership to the state by exceeding culturally specific norms of love and romance (see Macklin, this volume). Marriage, it shows, is a social relationship constituted by the interplay of emotions and pragmatism, not just one or the other as assumed in the lit­er­a­ture as well as in our normative understanding of intimacy (Hochschild 2003). My discussion begins with a review of the lit­er­a­ture on love and marriage, establishing a long history of contestations by not only lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) individuals but also mi­grant w ­ omen of essentialized notions of acceptable romance. I then offer thick descriptions of the interplay of love and money, or emotions and pragmatism, in the intimate relationships pursued by Filipina hostesses to achieve long-­term residency in Japan. My discussion draws from interviews I conducted in 2010 and 2011 with fifty-­six Filipino hostesses in Japan, forty-­five of whom are cisgender and eleven transgender. I focus on hostesses, as they constitute the vast majority of Filipino ­labor mi­grants in Japan. They enter with six-­month entertainer visas, which allow them to work in clubs, where they sell drinks and not necessarily sex to a primarily male clientele.2

Marrying for Love or Money? Lit­er­a­ture Review and Theoretical Framework Viviana Zelizer (2005), in her seminal book The Purchase of Intimacy, explains the source of our discomfort over the intersection of love and money in vari­ous social contexts including, for instance, prostitution and the outsourcing of childcare. According to Zelizer, we are plagued by the “hostile worlds” view in which we see a moral clash between what is rational, that is, money, and what is sentimental, that is, love. The merging of the two wreaks havoc in the normative social order (Hochschild 2003). However, abiding by the “hostile worlds” view—­ according to Zelizer—­simplifies our understanding of relationships. As she



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argues, t­ here are nearly always economic dimensions in “legitimate” relations, such as marriage, and likewise ­there are affective ties among ­people in market settings including in the exchange of sex for money. She puts it best when she states, “Money cohabits regularly with intimacy, and even sustains it” (Zelizer 2005, 28). This chapter offers an illustration of vari­ous ways that the rational and sentimental, love and money, and emotions and pragmatism jointly constitute the intimate marriages pursued and maintained by Filipina hostesses to acquire long-­term residency in Japan. It shares varying interplays of love and money so as to contest their assumed separation in our intimate lives. Contrary to Zelizer, the “hostile worlds” view haunts most scholarly assessments on international marriages. In other studies, scholars assume a binary logic that places love and money in separate spheres. For them, ­people marry for love or money, never for both. Denise Brennan, in her study of sex workers in the Dominican Republic, for example, interrogates how love figures in marriages between sex workers and their foreign clients. Brennan found that sex workers are driven hardly ever by “emotion-­driven love” but instead by what she calls “strategy-­driven love.” Emotion-­driven love would refer to irrational feelings one holds outside of conscious thought, while strategy-­driven love would be motivated by one’s material wants and needs (Brennan 2004, 96).3 Likewise, Nobue Suzuki distinguishes “romantic love” from the economic motivations of ­women: “The discourse revolving around the cap­i­tal­ist logic often fails to take into consideration the fact that on a global scale, male-­female relations almost everywhere have developed not just around fetishized romantic love but around most ­women’s necessity to find economic means for survival, security, and mobility and men’s continuing advantage in the global ­labor and political-­economic arenas” (2003, 18). According to the anthropologist Nicole Constable, the instinct to view money and love as mutually exclusive is particularly salient in the West. As she describes, “This attempt to polarize love and pragmatics and to represent them as discontinuous represents a particularly western perspective and bias. Under­lying such a dichotomy is the idea that ‘true love’ is somehow selfless and ‘pure,’ and not only incompatible with but also diametrically opposed to pragmatic or practical concerns” (Constable 2003, 128). In Japan, the separation of emotions and pragmatism also directs analy­sis of the intimate relationships that constitute marriage. It is said that in Japan the convention of marriage is the opposite of what we see in the United States; individuals are said to marry for security more so than for romance. The ­legal scholar Mark West (2011) claims that in Japan the absence of love in marriages is pervasive. The leading feminist sociologist Chizuko Ueno makes a similar observation, claiming, “Japa­nese c ­ ouples get married for the institution and not out of romantic love. . . . ​They choose the institution of marriage ­because of the material advantages it offers them” (quoted in West 2011, 98). The understanding of emotions and pragmatism as inherently separate also shapes societal views on

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marriage. This is illustrated in a market survey with men and w ­ omen in Japan and the United States; both groups ­were asked if emotions should determine marital choices. While—­according to the 1990 corporate-­sponsored survey of Japa­nese and American consumers—87 ­percent of U.S. ­women and 84 ­percent of U.S. men believe that “being in love” is an impor­tant condition of marriage, only 68 ­percent of Japa­nese w ­ omen and 67 ­percent of Japa­nese men think so (West 2011, 99). Despite the dif­fer­ent conceptions of marriage in Japan and the United States, we should note that the normative view in both socie­ties is to distinguish marrying for pragmatism, that is, security, and marrying for emotions, that is, love. The assumption in academic studies as well as in society at large is that the two are distinct—­and not disentangled—­reasons for marriage. As directed by the Filipina mi­grants whom I met In Japan, I wish to dismantle the dominant urge to place love and money in separate spheres. I build on Zelizer’s insistence on the commingling of love and money in marriages and systematically describe the pro­cess of this commingling. The tendency to view love and money as opposites should actually surprise us. This is b ­ ecause scholars have long shown us that emotions do not exist in a vacuum, but instead their meanings are discursively produced and emerge from par­tic­u­lar social, cultural, and economic pro­cesses. Hence, love—it has been acknowledged—­does not emerge from a deep interiority. Meanings of love, for instance, have been noted by f­ amily and marriage historians such as Nancy F. Cott (2002), Stephanie Coontz (2005), and John D’Emilio and Estelle Freedman (1998) to be s­ haped by po­liti­cal economic conditions. Building on this idea, Anthony Giddens (1992) provides a telos of intimate relationships and calls attention to the recent transformation of marriages from the one-­and-­only nexus of “romantic love” to the active and contingent “confluent love”—as opposed to the perpetual commitment expected in romantic love it is based on the search for a pure relationship, which could be ended if one is no longer without self-­f ulfilling satisfaction.4 The emergence of “confluent love” is made pos­si­ble by, among other ­things, the financial in­de­ pen­dence achieved by ­women in the past forty years. The po­liti­cal economy of love, as described by Giddens (1992), manifests not only in its shifting ideological constitution but, as illustrated in this chapter, also in practice. Building from the well-­established assertion that ideologies of love emerge from par­tic­u­lar social pro­cesses, I wish to point out that the social practice of love takes shape from the par­tic­u­lar social locations of subjects in relations of race, class, gender, and nation. In Japan, as noted e ­ arlier, long-­term residency for foreigners who are not Japa­nese by blood is conditional on marriage or birth to a Japa­nese citizen. This means that long-­term residency is conditional on intimacy. This means that the provision of long-­term residency through marriage makes it impossible to disentangle pragmatic gains from the latter, thus making it impossible to accomplish the normative expectation of one marrying purely for



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love. Mi­grant Filipinas, as I establish, unapologetically reject normative notions of marital relations but instead queer them when they embrace the intertwining of pragmatism and emotions in their marriages.

Marriage: A Ceaseless Interplay of Emotions and Pragmatism In this section, I provide a thick description of the intersections of emotions and pragmatism motivating the marriages pursued by Filipina mi­grants in their quest to secure long-­term residency in Japan. Before I proceed, I wish to forewarn readers that the pragmatic motivations I describe w ­ ill likely push their moral bound­aries, as the rational motivations for marriage that w ­ ere shared by the Filipina mi­grants I met in Japan are admittedly extreme. To capture the ceaseless interplay of emotions and pragmatism in the marriages of Filipina hostesses, I describe vari­ous couplings of both cisgender and transgender hostesses. Together, they cumulatively question the binary separating pragmatic and emotional reasons for marriage (e.g., strategically driven or emotionally driven marriage), as they instead establish that the motivations of Filipina hostesses fall ­under a moral continuum of pragmatism and emotions or love and money.

Rowena Rowena, a h ­ ouse­w ife and m ­ other of two c ­ hildren in Tokyo, married one of the first customers she ever served as a hostess when she first arrived in Japan as a fifteen-­year-­old. Rowena was barely sixteen years old when she married her customer, a man who was nine years her se­nior. She did so with the consent of her ­father, who told her that “what­ever happened to [her] would be [her] responsibility.” When asked about her “love story,” the former hostess Rowena immediately responded, “It was love at first sight.” ­A fter which, she proceeded to enumerate the expenses the man incurred to demonstrate his love.5 First, she proudly shared with me the story of how her husband had released her from her ­labor contract by paying her middleman broker P150,000 (U.S.$3,000). Then, to further emphasize the weight of his love, she let me know that he frequently visited her at the club and spent a lot of money to see her. As she described: “For ­ very day. one and a half month[s], he would go to the o-­mise [small business] e Then he went home to the Philippines with me. He owed a lot. He put it all on his credit card. In one day, he would spend forty thousand yen.6 He spent a lot ­there e ­ very day. He even calculated it. [She laughs.] He spent two million [yen] in one and half months from ­going t­ here . . . ​he went ­every day from the start to the end [of my contract].” For Rowena, the monetary expense of her husband establishes the depth of his love and devotion to her. Moreover, it serves as proof that he also experienced “love at first sight,” for why ­else would he have visited her at the club so

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frequently and have spent so much money on her from the moment he first met her to the moment she had to return to the Philippines if he did not love her? I offer Rowena’s story, which, while brief, clearly illustrates the entanglement of emotional desires and pragmatic gains. Most intimate partnerships pursued by Filipina hostesses like Rowena fall in the ­middle of the moral continuum of emotions and pragmatism, so much so that one cannot disentangle the two. This is the case with Rowena, who mea­sures the emotions of her husband solely on the basis of the material exchange between them. For Filipina hostesses, demonstrations of desire are most effectively displayed with pragmatic mea­sures. This is b ­ ecause most—if not all—of their romantic prospects are with customers, and the affective ties that develop between hostesses and customers blossom in the context of the commercial exchange of flirtation at the club, resulting in the intertwining of love and money in the constitution of romance. Not surprisingly, hostesses describe the most “emotion-­driven love” in monetary terms.7 Hostesses mea­sure the enactments of love by lovers and husbands according to the weight of their financial provisions. How much a customer spends on you, how often someone visits you at the club, and the extent of monetary gifts he gives to you and your f­ amily in the Philippines would prove how much he loves you. Even tales of experiencing “love at first sight” are expressed via monetary calculations.

Minda If Rowena’s marriage sits in the clear m ­ iddle of the moral continuum of emotions and pragmatism, then Minda’s slides left ­toward a greater consideration of pragmatism. Couplings that clearly involve the mingling of love and money are not always so morally palatable as Rowena’s, in which her references to money do not discount the supposed authenticity of her feelings of love. We have on one end ­those whose marriages are unabashedly pragmatic. Many hostesses enter their marriages with Japa­nese men largely for pragmatic and material purposes. While they do so, we should realize that marrying for t­ hese reasons does not discount “emotionally driven love” as a f­actor that also determines their decision to pursue marriage. Indeed, the utmost generosity of a not very attractive husband—­even a smelly one—­could lead to emotionally charged sentiments of love. Minda, for instance, describes herself as “a practical ­woman,” who married her husband ­because of her “need to provide for her c ­ hildren” in the Philippines. She was not shy to admit to me that she felt comatose when having sex with her husband, physically repulsed by his old wrinkly body, during the first few years of their marriage. As she told me: “I am a practical person. I married my husband but I had no feelings for him. I remember just lying on the bed motionless while he had sex with me. I did not feel a response.” Yet, ­after seven years of spending ­every waking moment with him, she describes how her feelings of love eventually developed for him. This is a



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love that she does not hesitate to admit is engendered by her appreciation for his monthly remittance of U.S.$1,000 to her c ­ hildren in the Philippines. The case of Minda tells us that the dynamics of relationships, as Audrey Macklin (this volume) reminds us, change in time; feelings of love could fluctuate ­toward one end of the moral spectrum of emotionally charged and rationally calculated sentiments, a fact that questions our urge to distinguish the two.

Eden Let us move to the other end of the moral continuum, one that slides right t­ oward emotions. What if it is au­then­tic irrational love that motivates one’s decision to marry? This surely had been the case with thirty-­year-­old Eden, who married for love without any financial motivation. I can say this b ­ ecause Eden and her husband are among the poorest of the poor in the Philippines. Yet, while money did not at all play a f­ actor in the beginning of their relationship, it had become an issue in the maintenance of their ­family. I had met Eden in Japan. She told me that she had come to Japan to find a Japa­nese man whom she could marry for a visa. This was not a decision that she came to on her own. Instead, she and her husband in the Philippines jointly de­cided that she would go to Japan as a tourist, and, once ­there, she would find a Japa­nese man to marry as a means for them to obtain ­legal residency in Japan. To reach their goal as a ­couple, Eden and her husband collectively de­cided to put their marriage on hold for five years, or however long it would take for Eden to receive permanent residency. Their plan was for Eden then to divorce her second husband and remarry her first husband, who she would then petition to join her in Japan. According to Eden, this option is worth the sacrifice and is a much better one than staying in the Philippines, where her ­family would only face a downward spiral to starvation. In the Philippines, Eden and her husband had been members of the working poor. With both having completed only an elementary education, they had always lived in an informal settlement of Manila, where they had sporadic access to clean ­water and electricity. They also strug­gled to feed their ­children. The opportunity to visit Japan as a tourist came through the invitation of her s­ ister, who had once worked as a hostess with an entertainer visa, then had the opportunity to marry a customer and eventually attained permanent resident. Not wanting to stay in Japan only temporarily as a tourist, Eden looked for a potential husband immediately ­after arriving in Japan and met one during her first month in the country. The case of Eden gives us an example of what Brennan (2004) has identified as marriage as an “advancement strategy.” However, in this instance, it is not merely an individual but instead a ­family advancement strategy. Eden and her husband show us how the maintenance of the most deep-­seated emotionally charged love is not void of the most calculated decisions. Both marriages of Eden

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occupy what the historian Gail Hershatter describes as a “chaotic zone outside the reach of the state’s l­ egal and moral strictures” (1999, 381). It is marriages like ­those of Eden that states such as France and the United States recoil against and construe as contesting the normative notions of the ­family that embody the identity of the nation. As Macklin, in her epilogue of this volume, observes, it is marriages such as Eden’s that indicate the state’s jealousy of the f­amily. Loyalties between the two are considered either-or, resulting in the delimitation of ­family allegiances extended to mi­grant families. Eden’s marriage for a visa makes her morally suspect. As we see with the treatment of mail-­order brides, states usually view marriage for pragmatic motivations to be morally suspicious (Constable 2003). Likewise raising an eyebrow is the decision of Eden and her Filipino husband to have Eden marry a Japa­nese man as an advancement strategy for their f­amily. Yet, the decision of Eden to seek a second husband does not necessarily fall outside of dominant moral strictures.8 ­A fter all, most marriages are held together by a combination of pragmatism and emotions, and Eden’s actions, clearly dictated primarily by pragmatism, just fall on one end of this moral spectrum. The impulse to shun the decision of ­women such as Eden to engage in marriages without love or the urge to dismiss marriages that depend on the commercial sexual liaisons of w ­ omen as occupying a “chaotic zone” foreign to the norms of society lose sight of the fact that all marriages involve the intermingling of emotions and pragmatism, with certain relations falling on one or the other extreme of this moral spectrum. Eden and her Filipino husband remind us that pragmatism and emotions coexist in relationships that are seemingly held together only by emotion-­driven love. But what do we make of the relationship of Eden to her Japa­nese husband? Does she not have some moral accountability to him? To enter a marriage knowing of its finite period threatens the moral norms in both Japa­nese and Philippine society. Japa­nese courts do not recognize no-­fault divorces, while the Philippine state does not even recognize divorce. Thus, it is assumed in both socie­ties that individuals enter marriage with the intention of staying in the relationship u ­ ntil death. One could argue, then, that Eden and her husband are deceiving her Japa­nese husband. However, and this is what is in­ter­est­ing, Eden is merely applying the moral norms of hostess work to her marriage. Hostesses look at customers as temporary boyfriends who they shower with love and affection within a temporally ­limited period. In a club, customers usually know to expect nothing more than the erotic thrills and titillations they experience during their temporally l­imited period with hostesses. Likewise, Eden sees her seven years of marriage to a Japa­nese man as a temporally ­limited period in which she would shower her husband with affection. And like a customer in a hostess club, he should expect nothing more than the thrills he would receive from Eden’s affection during the temporally bound period of their marriage.



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The Sexual Citizenship of Transgender Hostesses How do the relationships pursued by transgender hostesses fit the moral continuum that I have just described? Membership in Japan mandates ascribing to nationalist ideologies of reproduction, as compulsory heterosexuality dictates the requirements for long-­term residency. For foreigners, membership in Japan is conditional on their participation in a heterosexual u ­ nion ­either via marriage or birth to a child. Same-­sex marriages are not recognized in Japan, potentially precluding long-­term residency for transgender hostesses. To gain l­ egal residency, transgender hostesses must manipulate the law and marry someone of the opposite sex, which they do. In so d ­ oing, they clearly do not insist on their sexual citizenship, which in this case would refer to their right to determine their intimate relations, as they do not insist on the acknowl­edgment of their sexual preference, which is to be with a masculine male, but instead they subvert the princi­ples of sexual citizenship in Japan via their marriage to masculine w ­ omen or to ­those they describe as “normal” ­women. While cis hostesses do not necessarily come to Japan to seek romance, most transgender hostesses do. Japan offers them opportunities for romance that are other­w ise closed to them in the Philippines. Bambi, a veteran hostess whose drug prob­lems have barred her from working in most transgender clubs in Tokyo, refuses to go back to the Philippines despite her precarious job situation. Keeping her in Tokyo are her relationships with men, whose financial support makes her feel, as she describes, “like a real ­woman.” Explaining her preference for Japa­ nese men over Filipino men, Bambi states: “I realize when I go back to the Philippines, I do not enjoy myself in the Philippines. It is dif­fer­ent ­here. ­Here we are ­women. H ­ ere we get courted. H ­ ere men do not scam you for money. Usually, it is men that give you money.” Bambi complains that sexual relations between the bakla in the Philippines, with bakla referring traditionally to transgender male to female, and their male partners do not fit traditional gender relations of male providers and female nurturers that bakla like her crave in order to validate their feelings of being “like real ­women.” In the Philippines, the bakla, instead of receiving, provides financial support to their sexual partners, a real­ity that reflects the sexual dynamics between the travesti studied by Don Kulick (1998) in Brazil and their masculine male lovers. Asked if being trans is an issue for potential male lovers and providers in Japan, Bambi says it is not. She instead claims: “They do not care as long as they are in love with you. Even if you have three breasts and two penises, they do not care. What ­matters for them is they love you. Even if you are crippled, if they love you, then they love you no ­matter what.” The opportunity for love is a central reason why transgender hostesses frequently claim that “ang Japan ay paraiso para sa mga bakla,” meaning “Japan is the paradise of gay men” or, as they likewise say in En­glish, “Japan is paradise

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for the gays.” However, arresting the long-­term consummation of that love is its disqualification by the state. This constraint does not necessarily deny intimate citizenship—­the contingency of intimacy for membership—in Japan, but leads to its variation. Transgender hostesses likewise queer marriages to gain permanent residence. In this case, they do so by first pursuing marriages without physical intimacy. Thus, they challenge normative views of marriage as a relationship that must be consummated. Second, they expand known variations of “families we choose” to extend beyond fictive kin ties of gays and lesbians, as described by Kath Weston (1997), and include biological heterosexual kin allies. As with their cisgender counter­parts, the subject position of transgender hostesses—­the prerequisite of heterosexual u ­ nions for long-­term membership during the time of my research in the early 2000s—­made it impossible for them not to consider pragmatic motivations when pursuing marriage. The question, then, is, is love a ­factor or not in ­these pragmatic ­unions? Perhaps we w ­ ill not find romantic or confluent love, but this does not mean that t­ hese marriages are void of love. Instead, we find intimate love as well as platonic love, dif­fer­ent configurations of affection that are not void of a deep commitment that we associate with marriage.

Bambi Let us take the case of Bambi, a transgender hostess who married a ­woman. Bambi de­cided to marry a w ­ oman who romantically pursued and courted her, she explains, to see if she could have a ­family with a husband, wife, and ­children. Yet, Bambi’s marriage could not last, as her desires for a ­family contradicted her gender and sexual identity of wanting to be “like a ­woman.” Bambi cannot explain her motives for suddenly wanting to raise a ­family. Perhaps it is her Catholic faith, she said, or perhaps it is also societal pressure in the Philippines to abide by normative standards of sexuality. Perhaps it is ­because she wanted a visa. Regardless of her reasons and regardless of her romantic sentiments of love, Bambi entered her marriage to a ­woman in good faith. As she explains, “At first, I ­really tried to make the marriage work. I wanted to have a f­ amily of my own.” Bambi even engaged in sexual relations with the w ­ oman but did not r­ eally enjoy it, as it only reinforced her sole preference for men. As she describes, “ I could not r­ eally enjoy it. I did not r­ eally feel it. She loves me. But me, I realize that I like her only as a f­ amily. That is what I wanted. Like she is an older s­ ister to me.” Penetrating the w ­ oman whom Bambi calls her “wife” also contradicted her identity of wanting to be “like a w ­ oman,” which at the end only reinforced her desire to be penetrated by men. The case of Bambi shows us that while pragmatic consideration was the primary motivation of her marriage, a motivation that remained stable, the emotional dynamic in her marriage fluctuated from one of attempted romantic love to one she has since accepted as a platonic love that involves her deep friendship with her spouse. The marriage of Bambi queers the



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telos of love mapped out by Giddens (1991), telling us that platonic love should be a legitimate basis of marriage. Bambi and her partner retain a queer asexual marriage that is not ­f ree of emotional bond.

May Hostesses not only engage in paper marriages with female-­to-­male transgender subjects, but they also pursue genuine romantic relations with them. May, for instance, married a female-­to-­male transgender who romantically pursued her. One of the three (out of eleven) interviewees who underwent an operation for a sex change, May had no intention of “falling in love” with a person whom she describes as a “­woman,” as she has always had a sexual preference for masculine men. One of the reasons she had her operation, for example, was in order to have sex with men without the pressure “to hide it.” She explains that her male partners usually know of her sexual identity but “lose interest” when they see “it.” Still, May fell in love with a “­woman.” Explaining the circumstances that led to her marriage to a “­woman,” May describes how feelings of love and affection developed between them while they worked together at a club. We used to work together. He applied to work at our club. I was the head of the talents. All applicants, including the Japa­nese, I interviewed. Then, I accepted him. But ­there was no love interest ­there. He is a tomboy, right? Before I knew it, he started pursuing me. . . . ​Then he eventually became my friend. It was the first time that he worked in a place with a showtime at night. I used to teach him the ropes in the club ­until he started courting me. . . . ​He did not formally court me. He did not follow traditional [Filipino] ritual and visit me at home. Since we ­were together at the club, ­every time he came to work he had something for me like a hamburger or what­ever he can think of for me. When we do showtime, he ­w ill wipe my back. I w ­ ill tell him that he does not have to do that. I saw him just as a friend. L ­ ittle did I know that he saw me differently.

Being an object of affection instilled feelings of being “like a real ­woman” for May. Further enforcing t­ hese sentiments had been the demonstration of ligaw, meaning traditional Filipino courtship, by her co-­worker. In the Philippines, the courtship ritual of a man visiting a ­woman at home and offering her gifts is the ultimate symbol of heteronormativity. May’s participation in this heteronormative courtship ritual could only reinforce her feelings of being “like a real ­woman,” thus fulfilling one of the reasons why she migrated to Japan. We could see in the case of May the achievement of two pragmatic motivations: a visa and the acknowl­edgment of her feminine gender. While “love” supposedly motivated her, the outcome of ­these two only strengthened this love, a fact that reinforces my assertion of the difficulty of disentangling emotions and pragmatism in marriage.

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Ana The last example I want to give is one that is perhaps the most complicated. It involves a multilayered mixing of love and money or emotions and pragmatism. One of the transgender hostesses who participated in my study was Ana. Ana is in a relationship with a masculine male, a highly successful stockbroker. Deeply in love with Ana, her boyfriend looks at Ana as a “real w ­ oman,” even g ­ oing to the Philippines to ask for her hand in marriage from her parents, to which her ­father replied, Ana shares with a giggle, “Young man, do you know what you are getting yourself into?” Most p ­ eople who see Ana would gawk at her, not b ­ ecause ­there is a gender ambiguity in her appearance that one would expect of transgender persons, but ­because of her flawless beauty, with her China-­doll face, porcelain skin with the natu­ral strawberry hue on her cheeks, and long, thick, black lashes that make her eyes look more prominent and alluring. To put it simply, Ana is stunningly beautiful. While Ana looks more of a ­woman than most ­women, Ana unfortunately cannot marry the “man of her dreams,” as they are both legally male. In Japan, foreigners obtain a marriage certificate by first getting a security clearance from their respective foreign embassy, ­after which they must register their marriage at city hall. Then, the c ­ ouple files for the l­egal residency of the foreigner at the immigration office. Surprisingly, neither May nor Bambi faced any gender-­related difficulty at ­either city hall or the immigration office, even though their gender appearances had not matched their sex of rec­ord. According to May, the per­for­ mance of gender does not ­factor into one’s eligibility for marriage in Japan. Regardless of gender, the state would recognize the partnership as long as the marital ­union involves two ­people with differently sexed bodies. Ana—­regardless of her sex transplant—­cannot marry her boyfriend. The historic exclusion of same-­sex marriage in Japan hinders the ­legal recognition of Ana’s partnership with her boyfriend. To circumvent the law and enable Ana to reside in Japan, the m ­ other of Ana’s boyfriend de­cided to marry her. In fact, his parents—­who are still in a relationship—­divorced for the sole purpose of allowing the ­mother to marry Ana. Now able to stay in Japan conditionally as a kekkon (marriage) visa holder and ­legal husband of an el­derly ­woman, Ana is able not only to pursue a romantic relationship with her boyfriend but also to perform her ultimate fantasy of becoming a wife. According to Ana, she and her in-­laws all live in one ­house­hold, as “one happy f­ amily.” Incorporated into her boyfriend’s extended kin, Ana fills the shoes of a traditional daughter-­in-­law, assisting her mother-­in-­law, who is technically her wife, with the ­r unning of the ­house­hold and duly accepting her responsibilities of caring for her in-­laws as they get older. Being with an only child has given Ana ­these responsibilities, which she embraces—­she tells me—­ because it reinforces her identity as a ­woman.



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We have multiple relationships ­going on in the case of Ana. We have the relationship of the m ­ other and ­father, one that we can assume for the sake of con­ve­nience is motivated by love. They divorce to meet the practical dilemma of needing a visa for their daughter-­in-­law. That is one mixing of emotions and pragmatism. Then t­ here is the relationship between Ana and her wife. Clearly, pragmatism brought them together, but then emotions—­ the love between ­mother and ­daughter—­keep them together. This relationship is surely entangled with the relationship each one of them has to the son, the boyfriend of Ana. Love—­one determined and displayed by the boyfriend’s recent purchase of a BMW for Ana—­brought them together and keeps them together. But the social structural location of Ana—­her marital citizenship and requirement of a visa to stay in Japan—­places pragmatic consideration center stage in their relationship.

Conclusion In this chapter, I attempted to situate the relationships of Filipina hostesses in a moral continuum of love and money. I wish to insist that both belong in the same moral spectrum. They jointly determine each other. Love is embedded in pragmatism and pragmatism is sustained by love. In this continuum, marrying for money or a visa would not be morally suspect, as emotions are not necessarily exclusive of such a rational motivation. Likewise, marrying for love is not without rational calculation. This view of love questions the distinction made of “strategy-­driven love” and “emotion-­driven love” in most writings on international marriages and the dismissal of “strategy-­driven love” as morally suspect. Our acknowl­edgment of the continuum of love and money queers marriages as it dismantles any unitary definition of love. State constructions of love ignore the variations of love that we see among hostesses. However, they show us that ­there is not just erotic love or romantic love but also platonic love and intimate love. Society, however, organizes itself via moral norms of love. Love is too often assumed to be an irrational, deep-­seated emotion, and this assumption is not merely abstract: it has significant material consequences as well. In Japan, for example, court cases reviewed by Mark West show that judges have assumed that love makes one irrational, to the point that it could justify and mitigate culpability in rape and sometimes murder. Love need not be irrational to be the basis of marital commitment. ­There is love based on a deep-­seated friendship and love based on an insatiable lust, and both could result in genuine marital partnerships. Embracing multiple notions of love, I would argue, is one way of “queering” marriage. It expands our vision of legitimate partnerships. Limiting our understanding of “queer” marriages to the recognition of sexual preferences does not ­f ree us of homogenizing love. It assumes and leaves unquestioned that (1) sex is a prerequisite for marriage and (2) erotic love or romantic love (irrational love) is to be expected in genuine

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marital partnerships. Platonic love should be recognized as a valid and genuine basis for marriage, as such a love is not necessarily void of deep commitment and genuine partnership. Likewise, marriages based on zero love are not necessarily ­free of the commitment one associates with long-­term partnerships. Minda and her commitment to her el­derly husband reminds us of this. The heterosexual ­woman Minda and ­others like her tell us that queering is not ­limited to sexual practices. Instead, the recognition of variances of love as a legitimate basis of marriage queers this institution. NOTES

1. Nikei-­jin refers to a person of Japa­ nese descent. Foreigners could obtain fourteen kinds of working visas. They include professor, artist, religious activities, journalist, investor/business man­ag­er, legal/accounting ser­v ices, medical ser­v ices, researcher, instructor, engineer, specialist in humanities/international ser­v ices, intracompany, entertainer, and skilled l­ abor visas. Filipinos mostly enter to work as “entertainers.” 2. While hostesses, specifically ­those from the Philippines, have been identified as sex-­ trafficking victims by the U.S. Department of State (2010), for the supposed reason that they are forced into prostitution in hostess clubs, sex with customers is notably not expected of them. In fact, engaging in sex is highly discouraged by most clubs, as it risks losing long-­time customers. This is ­because it is the thrill of the possibility of sex and not so much sex that keeps them coming to the bar. While Filipina hostesses in Japan are not prostitutes, they do perform sex work in the form of sexually titillating customers via commercial flirtation. Rather than reducing “sex work” to “prostitution,” I interpret it as encompassing a wide array of sexual provisions that include flirtation, stripping, escort ser­v ice, and prostitution. 3. As Brennan states, “Marriage in a tourist economy—­especially in an internationally known sex-­tourist destination—­often has nothing to do with emotion-­driven love or romance” (2004, 96–97). Seemingly devoid of emotions, sex workers according to Brennan “are hard at work selling romance” (98) and engage in the per­for­mance of being in love. They pursue marriage and act in love as an “advancement strategy” (Brennan 2004, 155–182). Notably, some hostesses admitted to me their pursuit of marriage as an “advancement strategy,” but they interestingly seem to extend Brennan’s formulation, marrying not as an individual-­based strategy but instead as a family-­based one. Some hostesses admitted to being married in the Philippines and having the consent of their Filipino husband to marry a Japa­nese man as a way of securing l­egal residency in Japan. The strategy of the ­family would require the husband and wife to temporarily separate, but still remain married, as divorce is illegal in the Philippines, and then have the wife marry a Japa­nese man with the intent of divorcing him a ­ fter she obtains permanent residency, which would take at least five years. Afterward, she w ­ ill then petition her husband in the Philippines to join her in  Japan. This long-­ term strategy of securing residency is not unheard of in the community. 4. “Confluent love” emerges from what Giddens refers to as “plastic sexuality,” the separation of sex from reproduction that comes not only from the rise of contraception but also from the sense of self that one could actively choose and cultivate. See Giddens (1991, 1992).



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5. Excerpts from this chapter ­were taken from Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, Illicit Flirtations: ­Labor, Migration and Sex Trafficking in Tokyo (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). 6. At the time, ¥40,000 was approximately U.S.$400. 7. Likewise, Sealing Cheng has observed that “money is proof of love” for Filipina entertainers in K ­ orea (2010, 145). 8. Mirroring the morals of Eden and her husband, husbands in New York and Shanghai have been known to manage the commercial sexual activities of their wives with other men (Clement 2006; Hershatter 1999). Some may even find ­these liaisons lucrative. REFERENCES

Brennan, D. 2004. What’s Love Got to Do with It? Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Cheng, S. 2010. On the Move for Love: Mi­g rant Entertainers and the U.S. Military in South K ­ orea. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Clement, E. 2006. Love for Sale: Courting, Treating, and Prostitution in New York City, 1900– 1945. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Constable, N. 2003. Romance on a Global Stage. Berkeley: University of California Press. Coontz, S. 2005. Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage. New York: Viking. Cott, N. F. 2002. Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. D’Emilio, J., and E. Freedman. 1998. Intimate M ­ atters: A History of Sexuality in Amer­i­ca. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Giddens, A. 1991. Modernity and Self-­Identity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. —­—­—. 1992. The Transformation of Intimacy. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Hershatter, G. 1999. Dangerous Pleasures: Prostitution and Modernity in Twentieth-­Century Shanghai. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hochschild, A. R. 2003. The Commercialization of Intimate Life: Notes from Home and Work. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kimport, K. 2013. Queering Marriage: Challenging F ­ amily Formation in the United States. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Kulick, D. 1998. Travesti: Sex, Gender, and Culture among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Suzuki, N. 2003. “Battlefields of Affection: Gender, Global Desires and the Politics of Intimacy in Filipina-­Japanese Transnational Marriages.” PhD diss., University of Hawai‘i, Manoa. U.S. Department of State. 2010. Trafficking in Persons Report. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. West, M. 2011. Lovesick Japan: Sex, Marriage, Romance, Law. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Weston, K. 1997. Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship. Boston: Beacon Press. Zelizer, V. 2005. The Purchase of Intimacy. Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press.

12 Same-­Sex Marriage against the Deportation State EITHNE LUIBHÉID

For Tom Swann and Guillermo Hernández, their first marriage. For Hank Kuiper, his first time performing a gay marriage inside a federal immigration center. For the United States, the first same-­sex marriage of someone in detention awaiting a deportation hearing. “This is the happiest day of my life,” said Swann, 58, shortly ­after he wed Hernández [21]. “Happier than the day I graduated boot camp in the Marine Corps.” . . . ​ Hernández’s next deportation hearing is March 23 [2016]. Swann hopes the marriage increases his husband’s likelihood of staying in the United States or coming back shortly a ­ fter he is deported. —­G. Solis, “Gay C ­ ouple Wedding a First in US Immigration Detention”

Since the early twentieth ­century, marriage has provided one of the most impor­ tant grounds for immigrant l­egal admission and residence. Yet, admission and residence ­were primarily available to ­those whose male/female marriages served sexual and gender norms that ­were inextricable from whiteness, patriarchy, settler colonialism, and capitalism (Luibhéid 2002). Scholarship has richly explored how t­ hese marriages offered routes for mi­grants’ incorporation into a stratified nation and citizenry. This chapter takes a dif­fer­ent approach by centering deportation rather than incorporation and exploring how marriage may offer a means to contest deportation depending on the ­couple’s positionality within the intersecting structural hierarchies that constitute dominant nationalism. This chapter critically analyzes same-­sex ­couples’ efforts to use marriage to contest deportation in t­ oday’s United States’ homeland security state. Same-­sex marriage as a route to l­ egal admission into the United States is relatively recent, dating only from 2013. Scholars face the challenge of writing about marriage migration in a manner that presumes neither that all married ­ couples are 24 0



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composed of gender-­normative male/female ­couples nor that the recognition of same-­sex marriage has erased marriage’s role in upholding structural inequalities. Queer theory offers useful tools for addressing ­these challenges ­because it focuses not on essentialized identities but on sexuality as an axis of power, domination, and normalization that every­one must negotiate (Somerville 2007). Marriage migration policies are thoroughly enmeshed in ­these dynamics. Queer of color theory, specifically, insists that the operationalization of power and normalization through sexuality is inextricable from the reproduction and contestation of racial, gender, economic, and geopo­liti­cal hierarchies (e.g., Ferguson 2004). A queer of color approach, furthermore, suggests that the strug­gles experienced by p ­ eople who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) are deeply connected to the strug­gles facing single m ­ others, sex workers, and ­others who are figured as having deviant, nonnormative, or dangerous sexualities, even while t­ hese strug­gles are not exactly the same (Cohen 2005). This approach suggests possibilities for addressing same-­sex and male/female marriage migration within a shared framework, while nonetheless acknowledging differences among the groups—­rather than ­either separating out or ­else altogether ignoring same-­sex ­couples, which is what most scholarship does. Using such a framework, this chapter centers the strug­gles of same-­sex marriage mi­grants (some of whom are transgender) who are facing deportation, while making clear that their strug­ gles connect to strug­ gles facing diverse groups of marriage mi­grants and to broad questions of citizenship, security, and rights.1 The first section provides contextual information about the expansion of deportation in recent de­cades. The second section briefly reviews how same-­sex marriage came to be recognized in the United States in 2013 as a basis for acquiring ­legal immigration status. This section also describes the limitations of available data about same-­sex marriage mi­grants and how I obtained information. The third section describes the major challenges that same-­sex c ­ ouples navigate when trying to establish the bona fides of their marriages on terms that are legible and credible to officials—­while trying to not be made deportable. The fourth section shows that possibilities for legalization through marriage significantly depend on ­whether one overstayed a visa or entered without inspection; in turn, ­these differences often map onto racial, economic, and (neo)colonial hierarchies. The fifth section extends the analy­sis by discussing when and how marriage to a citizen or ­legal resident may offer grounds to mitigate a deportation order. ­These pro­cesses are illuminated through two 2016 cases that received extensive media coverage: Nina Chaubal, a transgender Indian citizen married to U.S. citizen Greta Martela, and Guillermo Hernández, a gay-­identified Mexican citizen married to U.S. citizen Tom Swann. In both cases, the mi­grant partner became detained and was ordered deported, deeply affecting them and their citizen partners. The chapter concludes that centering same-­sex marriage migration strug­ gles against deportation makes clear that citizenship, security, and rights—­which

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are at stake in ­these strug­gles—­cannot be conceived within binary frameworks as statuses that p ­ eople e ­ ither have or do not have. Rather, multiple, intersecting, and relational inequalities undergird each of t­ hese terms and become challenged and reproduced through marriage migration strug­gles. In order to avoid analy­sis and activisms that provide gains for some while contributing to the oppression of ­others, ­these multiplicities and intersections must be addressed (Loyd, Mitchelson, and Burridge 2012, 9).

Deportation: The Context In recent de­cades, deportation has become one of the preeminent tools for producing state and national security, and the state’s capacity to round up, detain, and deport p ­ eople has reached unpre­ce­dented levels. As Tanya Golash-­B oza describes, “Between 1892 and 1997, t­ here ­were 2.1 million deportations from the USA. In the last fifteen years, t­ here have been nearly twice as many: the sum total of deportations between 1998 and 2012 is over 4.1 million” (2015, 1221). Expanding detention and deportation have been especially fueled by pro­cesses of “crimmigration,” which involves the increasing intertwinement of immigration control with crime control (Strumpf 2006). Detention and deportation have been further enabled by the ways that the federal government has poured funds into immigration enforcement while cutting funds from social, educational, and health programs. Moreover, the federal government’s capacity to use crimmigration against mi­grants exponentially increased as local and state police have become enrolled as partners in immigration control. The attacks of September 11, 2001, expanded ­these developments in ways that built on and further extended racialized, anti-­poor, and anti-­LGBTQ policing strategies that drastically affect citizenship, security, and rights for mi­grants and citizens alike (Escobar 2016; Sampaio 2015; Stanley and Smith 2011). Deportation has disproportionately targeted working-­class men from Mexico, Central Amer­i­ca, and the Ca­rib­bean (Golash-­Boza 2015), regions with which the United States has enduringly (neo)colonial relationships. Monisha Das Gupta suggests the men are targeted “precisely ­because they do not and cannot structurally live up to the prescribed gender and sexual arrangements” required by racialized, neo­co­lo­n ial nationalism (2014, 85). Unknown numbers of LGBTQ-­ identified ­people are among the deported; prior to deportation, many become detained. A 2011 lawsuit filed by the National Immigrant Justice Center described systemic abuse against detained lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) mi­grants, including “incidents of sexual assault, denial of adequate medical care, long-­term solitary confinement, discrimination and abuse, and in­effec­tive complaints and appeals pro­cesses” (Gruberg 2013, 4). The center’s complaint further documented “LGBT detainees being called names such as ‘faggot’ by guards and being told to ‘walk like a man, not a gay man’ and ‘act male.’ Furthermore,



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detainees are frequently ­housed with detainees of a gender with which they do not identify. This means that female transgender detainees are detained with men” (Gruberg 2013, 4). T ­ hese concerns about the conditions facing detained mi­grants who are awaiting deportation continue to be urgently raised (e.g., Gruberg 2018). Practically speaking, the state can never identify and round up every­one who fits the category of “deportable.” Nicholas De Genova (2002) introduced the concept of deportability to refer to consciousness that one could be deported at any time, which engenders exploitability and vulnerability. Deportation and deportability affect not just noncitizens who are rounded up and detained but also all t­hose who could be rounded up. T ­ hese are not just undocumented mi­grants but virtually any noncitizen. Citizen families and friends of mi­grants are also deeply affected by deportation. The effects of deportation and deportability are further exacerbated by the per­sis­tent failure to pass legislation that would provide a pathway to legalization for the undocumented; admission backlogs that in some cases stretch for de­cades; increasingly exclusionary admission criteria; and the steady rollback of possibilities for legalization as a refugee or asylum seeker.

Seeking L ­ egal Status through Marriage Marriage remains the most common basis for admission as a ­legal mi­grant. Mi­grants entering through marriage to a citizen or l­ egal resident (on whom this chapter focuses) are particularly privileged: they can enter outside of numerical quotas, which enormously speeds up admission; may receive waivers for certain requirements or grounds of inadmissibility; and are eligible to apply for citizenship within three, rather than five, years. Yet, precisely b ­ ecause of marriage’s favored status—­which stems from its history as a means to reproduce nationalism grounded in whiteness, patriarchy, heterosexuality, settler colonialism, and capitalism—­marriage migration is subject to ­great anx­i­eties. Politicians and pundits worry that it may provide the means through which terrorists enter the United States, conniving mi­grants game the system for l­egal status, or criminals traffic in h ­ umans. Thus, seeking legalization through marriage is increasingly a route through which the state may render one deportable rather than incorporable.2 In addressing ­these dynamics, I center on same-­sex ­couples, about whom relatively ­little has been published. Historically, even ­after same-­sex marriage became available in a ­limited number of countries, it did not provide a basis for ­legal immigration to the United States. The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which passed in 1996, shored up exclusion by defining marriage as a ­legal u ­ nion between one man and one w ­ oman (section 3). The fact that DOMA was a federal law meant that same-­sex marriage was not recognized u ­ nder immigration law,

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which is also federal law, even when the ­couple married in a jurisdiction that recognized same-­sex marriage. Efforts to secure recognition of same-­sex marriages for immigration purposes galvanized both strong support and trenchant criticism, the latter on grounds that ­those seeking same-­sex marriage ­were trying not to transform the multiple, intersecting inequalities that underpin marriage or the immigration control system, but rather to incorporate relatively privileged LGBT p ­ eople into the existing system, thereby sanctioning the dispossession of less privileged LGBTQ ­people (e.g., Duggan 2003; Haritaworn, Kuntsman, and Posocco 2014; Kandaswamy 2008). Neither supporters nor critics of same-­sex marriage particularly addressed deportation, even though this concern was implicitly threaded throughout discussions and exemplified the limits of liberal “recognition” strategies. On June 26, 2013, the United States v. Windsor Supreme Court decision struck down the section of DOMA that defined marriage as a relationship between one man and one w ­ oman. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Ser­v ices (USCIS) swiftly responded: on June 27, 2013, it announced that it would accept applications for green cards (i.e., ­legal residency) based on same-­sex marriage. Two years ­after Windsor, on June 26, 2015, in Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court struck down discriminatory marriage laws in all fifty states, making same-­sex marriage ­legal across the nation. Understanding how deportation and same-­sex marriage are interwoven is challenging b ­ ecause data remains ­limited. Gary J. Gates (2013) estimated that in 2011, 904,000 adult mi­grants in the United States identified as LGBT. He further estimated that 267,000 of t­ hese mi­grants w ­ ere undocumented, of which 71 ­percent w ­ ere Latino/a and 15 ­percent w ­ ere Asian or Pacific Islander; for documented LGBT mi­grants, he estimated 30 ­percent ­were Latino/a and 35 ­percent ­were Asian or Pacific Islander. USCIS does not provide data concerning same-­sex marriages. Instead, same-­ sex and male/female c ­ ouples are rolled together in official annual data. A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that I submitted in April 2017, inquiring about numbers of c ­ ouples who received or ­were denied green cards based on same-­sex marriage since 2013, received this response: “We have completed a search for rec­ords. No rec­ords responsive to your request ­were located. ­There is no method within our system to identify same sex ­couples without creating a rec­ord. FOIA does not allow for the creation of rec­ords.” 3 Given the lack of official data, I interviewed a half dozen researchers, advocates, and attorneys who address same-­sex marriage migration issues at a national level. I also conducted academic and law review searches, read the documents posted on the USCIS website, reviewed major newspaper coverage of same-­sex mi­grant c ­ ouples, and read the major reports on LGBTQ immigrants.



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“What Are My Chances?” Seeking l­ egal status based on marriage to a citizen enmeshes mi­grants and their partners in governmental relations that may lead to incorporation into neoliberal, security state logics—or to deportation for the mi­grant (see D’Aoust, de Hart, Odasso and Salcedo, and Vandenbroucke, this volume). Published scholarship and the ­people whom I interviewed described key difficulties that may arise for same-­sex c ­ ouples during this pro­cess.4 One difficulty is that to get a green card (i.e., l­ egal status) based on marriage, one must show that one is married and the marriage is recognized as l­egal in the jurisdiction where it was contracted. The requirement seems deeply obvious, but cannot be taken for granted where same-­sex c ­ ouples are concerned. ­Until the Supreme Court struck down section 3 of DOMA, same-­sex marriages ­were not recognized at the federal level; even a ­ fter the Supreme Court struck down section 3, same-­sex marriage was legally available only in some states u ­ ntil 2015. In cases where one partner is living in the United States while the other is in another country (where same-­sex marriage may not be l­egal), ­couples often face significant difficulties.5 In addition, mi­grants must show that they do not fall into one of the inadmissibility categories. As one law firm describes: “No m ­ atter how neatly you fit into a category of eligibility for a U.S. green card, you must also show that ­you’re not inadmissible to the United States—in other words, that you d ­ on’t pose a danger to U.S. society on financial, health, security, immigration violation, or criminal grounds” (All Law, n.d.). The current grounds of inadmissibility are mostly written in neutral language, but since they stem from a long history of using immigration controls to reproduce and affirm white, patriarchal, heterosexual, settler colonial, middle-­class domesticity, the grounds pre­sent obstacles that fall particularly hard on t­ hose who are already marginalized. Among the grounds of inadmissibility is a long-­standing ban on anyone deemed “liable to become a public charge,” or LPC. Since the 1990s, this has been operationalized as a requirement that ­those sponsoring a spouse or other ­family member for immigration must reach a minimum income threshold of being at or above 125 ­percent of the federal poverty level. Income thresholds pre­sent obvious economic barriers that often crosscut with inequalities grounded in racism and sexism for sponsoring spouses. Information on how this requirement crosscuts with sexual orientation or gender identity is contradictory; studies suggest that trans-­identified ­people experience significant poverty rates, while the economic data on gay-­and lesbian-­identified ­people is mixed (e.g., Hunter, McGovern, and Sutherland 2018; Allen 2017). Nonetheless, all same-­sex ­couples must navigate the income threshold, and some are unable to do so. U ­ nder certain conditions, USCIS allows for joint sponsorship whereby another U.S. citizen or l­egal resident can agree to assume shared financial responsibility for the mi­grant.

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­Under Donald J. Trump’s administration, LPC was operationalized in ever more exclusionary ways.6 In addition, the c ­ ouple must prove they have what is called a “bona fide” marriage. One of the challenges facing same-­sex c ­ ouples is USCIS officials’ expectation that if a marriage is bona fide, the ­couple ­w ill have met each other’s families and be known to other ­people as a ­couple. In some cases, ­couples have not met one another’s families, or if they have met, they have not disclosed that they are married. This may be for reasons such as safety for the ­couple or for families who may be targeted. Nonetheless, the idea that a ­couple may not have met, or may not have revealed their marriage to, each other’s families, raises doubts when officials are evaluating green card applications. Relatedly, officials expect that ­couples ­w ill be known as a ­couple to friends, co-­workers, neighbors, and ­others. Yet, in many states it remains ­legal to fire someone, deny housing, or refuse ser­v ice on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, so often ­people are not out, or out only in some domains of their lives.7 Officials also treat financial interdependence as a critical marker of the bona fides of a marriage. Conforming to this expectation is often challenging for low-­income ­couples who may not have joint credit cards, bank accounts, life insurance policies, or titles to a vehicle. An interviewee described that she sometimes helps c ­ ouples find other means to show interdependence in ways that satisfy USCIS: a not-­for-­profit organ­ization agreed to provide health-­care proxies and living w ­ ills f­ ree of charge for one low-­income ­couple with whom she worked. One member of the ­couple is HIV-­positive, and the doctor at a clinic wrote a letter saying that the ­couple attends most health appointments together and the husband is named on his partner’s paperwork as an emergency contact. But, she noted, this ­couple has the benefit of counsel (her), and she negotiated pro bono assistance from the nonprofit. Most ­couples do not have such assistance.8 Fi­nally, in evaluating the bona fides of a marriage, USCIS officials place significant weight on ­whether the ­couple lives together. This may pre­sent challenges for ­couples who have a homophobic landlord or rent or sublet month by month without a lease. ­Couples often undertake the pro­cess of seeking a marriage-­based green card for the mi­grant partner while understanding that success is not guaranteed; to some degree, it is a ­matter of “chance.” ­People with more resources have better chances for success, yet even for them, a green card is not guaranteed. Moreover, mi­grants are conscious that filing for a green card means they have opened themselves to the scrutiny of the state and provided details that can be used against them. Vivian Yee’s New York Times article from 2018 titled “A Marriage Used to Prevent Deportation; Not Anymore” makes clear that the fears are well founded (see also Abrams and Pham, this volume). Overall, the pro­cess for evaluating marriage bona fides ensures that ­those ­couples—­same-­sex and male-­female—­who can most closely approximate ideals



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of white domesticity, middle-­class status, depoliticized identity, responsibilized citizenship, and orientation ­toward consumption are most likely to secure a green card through marriage. This has generated impor­tant critiques within queer and ethnic studies scholarship and activism, highlighting that support of same-­sex marriage often affirms dominant norms and structural inequalities, the production of mi­grants who are deemed undesirable and deportable, and the naturalization of nation-­state immigration controls (e.g., Duggan 2003; Kandaswamy 2008). Yet, the critiques often focused primarily on questions of individual complicity or re­sis­tance to the dominant order. Melissa A. White (2013, 50–51), drawing on Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, helpfully reframes ­these debates by pointing out that l­egal status is something that most mi­grants “­can’t not want.” Her reframing moves us away from liberal models of individual agency, complicity, re­sis­tance, or victimhood ­toward considering larger structural contexts, including deportability, within which individuals maneuver. As we ­w ill see, avoiding or resisting deportation requires challenging intersecting inequalities, which diverse ­couples are variously able to do.

Undocumented Mi­grants and Marriage: Diverging Possibilities It is not just mi­grants seeking admission who turn to marriage as a means for ­legal admission; undocumented mi­grants living in the United States may also seek l­ egal status through marriage. The estimated eleven million undocumented ­people currently living in the United States are roughly split between t­ hose who “entered without inspection” (or EWI, which means that they crossed without ­going through a border checkpoint) and ­those who overstayed their visas. Marriage to a citizen or ­legal resident is commonly understood as a route out of undocumented status and deportability and into l­egal residency. Yet, possibilities for regularizing one’s status through marriage significantly diverge depending on w ­ hether one is EWI or a visa overstay. T ­ hose who overstayed their visas can remain in the United States to adjust their status (i.e., legalize) from ­there; ­those who are EWIs are required to leave the United States to adjust status, which not only adds expense and complications but, worse, triggers an automatic ten-­ year bar on reentry for most (American Immigration Council 2016). The distinction between EWIs and visa overstayers has its roots in racist, neo­co­lo­nial logics that have consistently singled out the U.S.-­Mexico border as the preeminent site for enforcement and Mexicans as paradigmatic “illegal immigrants” who supposedly threaten the nation (Ngai 2004). The requirement also recapitulates geopo­l iti­cal and economic hierarchies: “Most of the world’s wealthiest nations . . . ​a re part of the US Visa Waiver Program. . . . ​[Citizens of ­these nations] can enter lawfully and stay up to 90 days without a visa; this makes them very unlikely to ever be [EWIs]” (Gomberg-­Muñoz 2015, 2239). The distinction between EWIs and visa overstayers means that working-­class ­people

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from Mexico and Western Hemi­sphere countries are most likely to face the ten-­ year bar when seeking to regularize their status through marriage to a citizen or resident. Since 2013, mi­grants have been able to apply for a “provisional unlawful presence” waiver before leaving to adjust their status. This requires showing that the citizen spouse ­w ill experience extreme hardship if the mi­grant becomes barred for ten years. If the waiver is granted, they can expect to be readmitted ­a fter completing consular pro­cessing in their home countries—­though this requires navigating a minefield of other pos­si­ble grounds of inadmissibility. The disproportionate and racialized criminalization of Latino/as thoroughly affects their possibilities at ­every step (Gomberg-­Muñoz 2015). No scholarship has explored where and how same-­sex marriages fit into this history. But Goldberg and Conron’s (2021) estimate of undocumented LGBT-­ identified mi­grants in the United States suggested that 75.7 ­percent are Latino/a and predominantly male, so the distinction between EWIs and visa overstayers, which translates into deeply unequal opportunities to legalize through marriage, may especially affect married same-­sex ­couples that include a Latino/a mi­grant. Overall, for t­ hose who overstayed visas, marriage may reduce deportability by providing them with a route to ­legal status. EWIs, however, cannot expect such an outcome and, instead, get embroiled in an even more complex, uncertain, and expensive pro­cess. In sum, geopolitics, differential racialization, and economics, which intersect with gender and sexuality, significantly determine whose marriages offer a route to l­egal status for the undocumented.

Interrupting the Pipeline to Deportation through Marriage? It is not just the undocumented mi­grant, but any noncitizen, who is deportable on wide-­ranging grounds. This section explores when, ­whether, and how being married to a citizen or l­egal resident may offer grounds for mitigating a deportation order. Noncitizens find themselves channeled into deportation through multiple paths. The criminal justice system is the primary pipeline to deportation, which happens not just for serious crimes but also, since the 1990s, for minor incidents that may not have even led to a conviction. Growing cooperation between local and state police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) means that even a traffic stop for a broken taillight may result in detention and deportation. Racist, (hetero)sexist, and anti-­poor policing practices throughout the nation generate unevenly distributed risks of deportation that affect undocumented and documented p ­ eople, as well as subaltern citizens. Yet, it is not feasible to remove the millions who have been made deportable ­under the current system. Thus, the deportation priorities that w ­ ere in effect when President Barack Obama left office in 2016 focused on “(1) p ­ eople with



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certain criminal convictions (‘aggravated felony,’ felony, ‘significant misdemeanor,’ or three or more misdemeanors) and (2) ­people who had entered or re­entered the U.S. without permission ­after Jan.  1, 2014” (National Immigration Law Center 2017). ­Those who had U.S. citizen or resident spouses or ­children, combined with low or no criminal convictions, w ­ ere supposed to be de-­prioritized. “Although not always followed, the priorities created some limitations on ICE’s enforcement actions” (National Immigration Law Center 2017). President Trump’s January  25, 2017, executive order, “Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States,” abandoned ­these priorities. The order essentially made all undocumented mi­grants subject to immediate deportation without further consideration of their individual circumstances or pos­si­ble claims for clemency—­including their marriages to citizens and ­legal residents or the presence of U.S. citizen c ­ hildren. Documented mi­grants who had even minor brushes with authorities w ­ ere also targets.9 Once a mi­grant is caught up in the deportation pro­cess, marriage to a citizen/resident (or having citizen c ­ hildren) may become a f­ actor that ICE considers when deciding w ­ hether to detain or temporarily release someone who is facing deportation proceedings.10 However, ICE is strongly oriented ­toward detaining rather than releasing p ­ eople, given public rhe­toric about mi­grants as criminals and terrorists and administrative and financial arrangements that have incentivized deportation (Conlon and Hiemstra 2017). Sharita Gruberg (2016) found that even when ICE’s own assessment tool recommended release for LGBTQ mi­grants, ICE was overwhelmingly likely to detain them, including when they ­were seeking asylum. In ­these circumstances, marriage to a citizen or resident seemingly carries l­ ittle weight. Being married to a citizen or resident (or having citizen ­children or citizen/ resident parents) is a ­factor that immigration judges may consider when a mi­grant seeks a “cancellation of removal” (i.e., cancellation of deportation). If the mi­grant facing deportation is a l­egal resident, he or she must show that the deportation would cause “extreme hardship” to citizen/resident ­family members; if the mi­grant is not a ­legal resident, he or she must show that the deportation would cause “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship.” Many other f­ actors must also be weighed, and the pro­cess is highly discretionary. In some cases, mi­grants marry while in detention or removal proceedings; immigration authorities generally presume that such marriages are intended to overcome or prevent the deportation order (and therefore meet the definition of “sham”). Mi­grants and their partners may strive to overcome that presumption, including by showing they have a long-­standing relationship, have been living together for a long time, and perhaps have a child together. How ­these dynamics affect married same-­sex c ­ ouples is suggested by two cases that received unusual media attention in 2016 and 2017. The cases involved Nina Chaubal, a transgender Indian citizen married to U.S. citizen Greta

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Martela, and Guillermo Hernández, a Mexican citizen married to U.S. citizen Tom Swann. Their stories provide a glimpse of how seeking l­ egal status through marriage to a citizen interconnects with navigating the deportation regime.

Chaubal/Martela Nina Chaubal came to the United States from India in 2009 as a student and worked for Google ­after graduating. She left Google to co-­found Trans Lifeline, a crisis line by and for the transgender community, with her partner, U.S. citizen Greta Martela, forty-­seven, whom she married. While working for Google, Chaubal held an H1B visa, and she expected to acquire l­egal residency through marriage to Martela. However, Martela had been previously married, and although she divorced in 1990, her official divorce decree was lost in the transfer from paper to digital rec­ords. ­Until Martela could prove that the divorce occurred, Chaubal’s application for a green card through marriage could not be completed, which effectively left her undocumented. On December 28, 2016, Chaubal and Martela ­were driving with friends from California to Chicago when they w ­ ere s­ topped at an immigration checkpoint in Arizona. Officers asked if every­one was a citizen; when Martela answered honestly that Chaubal was from India, they asked for documents; when officials saw that her passport listed her as male, they took her into custody. Chaubal was initially detained at a holding fa­cil­i­t y and then transferred to the Eloy Detention Center. Martela and Chaubal feared that Chaubal faced deportation to India, which does not recognize same-­sex marriage and, at that time, criminalized same-­ gender sex.11 They w ­ ere also deeply concerned that she risked serious abuse while detained in Eloy. Eloy is notorious for housing transgender ­women with men, keeping them locked in solitary confinement for extended periods, and exposing them to rampant, unchecked sexual assault and harassment. Detained mi­grants have also died at Eloy. Chaubal told the New York Times that she wondered, “Is that what’s waiting for me?” 12 Martela also agonized about what might happen to Chaubal in detention. Martela managed to get Chaubal her medi­cations, and a note with the name and contact details of an attorney, before she was transferred to Eloy, but they w ­ ere unable to speak. Two days a ­ fter Chaubal’s detention, they ­were permitted a two-­minute phone call. ­After Chaubal was detained, “Ms. Martela . . . ​mobilized a small army of supporters through Facebook, tapping into the network she and Ms. Chaubal had built in the three years since they started Trans Lifeline, a crisis hotline for transgender individuals. The supporters raised more than $10,000 to help pay Ms. Chaubal’s $4,500 bond and for l­egal defense and urged one another to call Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency in charge of immigrants’ detention and deportation” 13 Over six thousand emails and calls ­were sent/made to ICE, urging the agency to release Chaubal. Chaubal was released on bond, and her case was transferred



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to Illinois. It was eventually resolved favorably, and her experiences became the subject of the first episode of Amer­i­ca in Transition, a documentary about transgender p ­ eople of color, which aired in 2019. “ ‘What would have happened if we ­hadn’t been able to mobilize so many ­people, get a l­awyer, raise money?’ Ms. Martela said. ‘What if we ­didn’t have the connections that we do?’ ” 14

Hernández/Swann In March 2016, U.S. citizen Tom Swann, fifty-­eight, married Mexican national Guillermo Hernández, twenty-­one, hoping to prevent Hernández’s deportation. They had met in May 2015, moved in together into Swann’s mobile home in Rancho Mirage, California, shortly ­after, and became engaged on December 24, 2015. Swann was a U.S. veteran with serious health issues, and Hernández was described as becoming his caretaker. Hernández was a young, undocumented, gay-­identified man from Mexico who had lived in the United States since he was seven years old. He received Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) status, which does not confer lawful presence but allows the holder to work and conduct everyday tasks without risk of deportation for several years. When Hernández went to renew his DACA status, he was denied b ­ ecause of what are described as relatively minor brushes with the criminal justice system. Specifically, he had been “arrested for underage trespassing at a casino when he was 20, and had some misdemeanor drug charges on his rec­ord” (Nolasco 2016). When he returned to the casino ­after turning twenty-­one, he ­violated a five-­year ban on entering the casino’s premises and thus ­v iolated his probation. When Hernández showed up for a mandated court hearing on January 25, 2016 (which demonstrates his effort at compliance with the law), he got picked up by ICE agents who w ­ ere trolling the court­house in search of undocumented immigrants, and they detained him.15 According to ICE guidelines in effect at that time, he should not have been a priority for deportation; that he was picked up underlines the consistent divergence between official guidelines and ­actual ICE deportation practices.16 Given that the immediate relatives of U.S. citizens who are not immediate threats to national security, public safety, or border security w ­ ere de-­prioritized for deportation, Swann sought to use marriage to try to prevent Hernández’s deportation. They ­were already engaged; Swann sought and received permission for them to marry in what became the first same-­sex wedding in a detention center. Judges generally presume that marriages ­under t­hese circumstances are primarily intended to gain immigration status (thus confirming the ste­reo­t ype of “sham”). In all media reports, Swann sought to preempt efforts to discredit his marriage in this way, which would foreclose possibilities for preventing deportation, by emphasizing his love for Hernández. Swann also strongly asserted that Hernández’s deportation would result in extreme and unusual hardship to Swann (given Swann’s medical situation). Swann was also aware of, and tried to

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leverage, hierarchies within the category of marriage; in 2013, the Obama administration de­cided to stop deporting immediate relatives of military veterans, and marriage made Hernández into such a relative.17 As of December  2018, Hernández was still in the United States with Swann and his ­family, u ­ nder the continuing supervision of ICE and local police.18

Discussion The cases illustrate some of the ways that mi­grants married to citizens may end up in the detention and deportation system: Chaubal ­because she was in a car whose driver de­cided to drive through Arizona to avoid a snow storm in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, which resulted in encountering an interior border checkpoint; Hernández b ­ ecause ICE trolls public places like court­houses in search of detainable mi­grants. Marriage entered into the two cases in dif­fer­ent ways. For Chaubal, who entered legally on a student visa and then transitioned to a short-­term work visa, a paperwork snafu meant that l­egal marriage to a U.S. citizen did not provide her with a route to permanent residence and, instead, left her between l­egal statuses and deportable. For Hernández, his husband deployed marriage in ­every way he could think of to leverage Hernández’s release from detention and create possibilities for more permanent status. The importance of resources, supports, and information for navigating and contesting detention emerges clearly. Chaubal and Martela’s work connected them to a vast social network that was mobilized to help get Chaubal out of detention and to raise funds for bond and an attorney. Swann, by contrast, is portrayed more as a one-­man army who explored e ­ very pos­si­ble a ­ ngle for getting Hernández out and challenged the immigration system for not following its own rules. Swann and Hernández also received support from the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and Centro ­Legal de la Raza in Oakland, California, as well as ­family and friends. The anguish of a partner being detained, and the abiding fear that the partner may be severely abused while in detention, is sharply conveyed by the case of Chaubal/Martela. News accounts (echoing scholarly and NGO research) make clear the challenges of knowing where a person is being detained, getting medi­ cation to them, speaking to them, or sharing information with them. Citizen partners may also face significant challenges knowing when the detained partner may have a hearing and raising bond funds if the judge allows for temporary release. The emotional impact of t­ hese material difficulties must be situated in reference to the U.S. government’s “attrition through enforcement” strategy that deliberately seeks to foster feelings of terror, isolation, and exhaustion among mi­grants in order to pressure them to leave “voluntarily” rather than require expenditure of state resources for their deportation (Kobach 2007).19 The costs



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and difficulties of fighting deportation, combined with the state’s lack of transparency and accountability concerning deportation pro­cesses, contribute to ­these feelings. The Trump administration ramped up the use of emotion to facilitate and legitimize mass deportation by deliberately fostering incendiary public perceptions of mi­grants as criminals, terrorists, invaders, and “­others” who can be abused with impunity (e.g., Speri 2017). The Chaubal/Martela and Hernández/Swann cases show that citizens, as well as mi­grants, are deeply affected by ­these strategies. Yet, the cases also show that mi­grants and citizens are not just frightened and cowed but also angry, resistant, and mobilized. T ­ hese responses reflect a history of contesting attrition through enforcement by fostering collective subjectivities that are “unafraid” (reflected in popu­lar slogans such as Undocumented and Unafraid).20 News articles and social media posts about ­these two cases, which are written from the perspective of citizen partners rather than the mi­grants, convey the fragilities and hierarchies within U.S. citizenship and the impact that enforcement directed at mi­grant partners also has on citizens. Citizens must muster resources and deploy their own citizenship status (marked by gender, race, class, sexuality, veteran status, and other f­ actors) in a bid to prevent partners’ deportations—­sometimes successfully but often not. Swann’s and Martela’s experiences echo that of millions whose relationships and families are steadily undermined and divided by immigration enforcement (e.g., Boehm 2012; Dreby 2015). They reveal how the rights, obligations, and securities that supposedly attach to the citizenship status of U.S. partners are not only unevenly distributed to begin with but are further reconfigured through deportation pro­cesses that affect their mi­grant spouses and other ­family, friends, and community (see Macklin, this volume).

Conclusion The framework of “homeland security” has authorized the massive expansion of mi­grant deportation and deportability. Expanding deportation is steadily reducing mi­grants’ possibilities for acquiring or keeping l­ egal status or seeking naturalized citizenship in the ­future. This shift has significant implications for mi­grants’ security or ability to claim rights. The redefinition of possibilities builds on and reconfigures long-­standing racial, gender, sexual, economic, and geopo­liti­cal inequalities. Expanding deportation implicates and redefines t­ hese inequalities among the citizenry, too, promising, although not necessarily delivering, “security” and rights for some while rendering other, marginalized citizens further suspect and disposable. ­Those seeking admission or legalization through marriage must navigate ­these dynamics. This chapter has explored some ways that marriage, a historically valued and privileged status, may be used to contest deportability, with

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decidedly mixed results depending on c ­ ouples’ positionality in relation to intersecting inequalities. I centered same-­sex rather than male/female ­couples in order to begin filling a gap in deportation scholarship and to challenge marriage migration scholars to acknowledge and theorize rather than overlook or cordon off same-­sex and transgender ­couples. The Chaubal/Martela and Hernández/Swann cases suggest that theorization and po­liti­cal activism must attend to the specific challenges and jeopardies facing specific c ­ ouples, depending on their positionality in regard to intersecting inequalities. The cases further suggest that regimes of citizenship, security, and rights have always depended not on binary distinctions between ­those who have and do not have ­these statuses but on multiple, intersecting inequalities. In order to avoid contributing to the advancement of some through the dispossession of ­others (Loyd, Mitchelson, and Burridge 2012, 9), theory and activism in the arena of marriage migration must attend to and substantively address ­these multiple intersections. Such an approach offers possibilities for coming to grips with and strengthening co­a li­tions that are working to dismantle what Audrey Macklin (this volume) describes as eugenic nation-­state immigration controls.

Acknowl­edgments Warmest thanks to Anne-­Marie D’Aoust for convening and providing outstanding leadership to this working group; participants in the working group for valuable and encouraging feedback; Katharine Charsley for insightful suggestions on a dif­fer­ent version of this chapter; and t­ hose whom I interviewed (their listed affiliations reflect their positions when I interviewed them in 2016): Yesenia Acosta, attorney, Law Offices of Scott Warmuth; Pamela Denzer, director of client programs, Immigration Equality; Sharita Gruberg, assistant director, LGBT Research and Communications Proj­ect, Center for American Pro­gress; Jamila Hammami, executive director, Queer Detainee Empowerment Proj­ect; Jason Ortega, Equal Justice Works fellow, Los Angeles LGBT Center; and Marco Quiroga, director of public policy, True Colors Fund. NOTES

Epigraph: G. Solis, “Gay ­Couple Wedding a First in US Immigration Detention,” Desert Sun, March  14, 2016, https://­w ww​.­desertsun​.­com​/­story​/n ­ ews​/­nation​/­california​/2 ­ 016​/­03​/1­ 4​/g ­ ay​ -­couple​-w ­ edding​-fi ­ rst​-­us​-­immigration​-­detention​/8 ­ 1779296​/­. 1. Some but not all ­couples that included transgender partner(s) had their marriages recognized ­under immigration law since the 2005 Lovo-­Lara decision (23 I&N Dec. 746 [BIA 2005]; see also USCIS, interoffice memorandum, “Adjudication of Petitions and Applications Filed by or on Behalf of Transsexual Individuals,” January  14, 2009, https://­w w w​.­u scis​.­g ov​/­s ites​/­d efault​/­f iles​/­U SCIS​/­L aws%20and%20Regulations​ /­Memoranda​/­Petitions​_­Transsexual​.­pdf). Yet, Lovo-­Lara recognized only t­hose trans-



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gender ­people who had had gender-­reassignment surgery (transsexuals). Furthermore, the post-­surgery ­couple had to be legibly male/female, and the marriage had to be recognized as l­egal in the state where it took place. In the United States at that time, some states recognized such marriages, some did not, and some did not say ­either way. Some of the dilemmas and predicaments generated by this system ­were resolved when same-­sex marriage became recognized. See Josephson (2014). 2. Vivian Yee, “A Marriage Used to Prevent Deportation; Not Anymore,” New York Times, April  19, 2018, https://­w ww​.­nytimes​.­com​/­2018​/­04​/­19​/­us​/­immigration​-­marriage​-­green​ -­card​.­html. 3. The USCIS response, which I have on file, is dated June 2, 2017. 4. The quotation in the subhead is from Yesenia Acosta, interview by the author, May 11, 2017. 5. See, e.g., E. Wong and M. Schwirtz, “U.S. Bans Diplomatic Visas for Foreign Same-­Sex Domestic Partners,” New York Times, October 2, 2018, https://­w ww​.­nytimes​.c ­ om​/­2018​ /­10​/­02​/­us​/­politics​/­v isa​-­ban​-s­ ame​-­sex​-­partners​-d ­ iplomats​.­html. 6. Beginning in February 2020, officials ­were required to deny green cards not only to ­people who have ever used public benefits in the past but also to t­ hose who may use benefits in the f­ uture. The rule is expected to significantly skew ­legal immigration and green cards t­oward t­hose with wealth, English-­language skills, youth, and health—­ and to significantly lower l­egal immigration levels, especially among t­hose seeking family-­based status who are overwhelmingly from Asia and Latin Amer­i­ca. Lower levels ­w ill result not ­because of ­actual past benefit use but ­because of racist and discriminatory predictions about likely f­ uture use (Capps, Gelatt, and Greenberg 2020). In July 2020, a federal judge temporarily blocked the rule. 7. Pamela Denzer, interview by the author, March 17, 2016. 8. Denzer, interview. 9. For information about changes in immigration law, policy, and practice ­under the Trump administration, see Pierce and Bolter (2020). 10. Detention is mandatory for a wide range of convictions. In other cases, ICE has significant discretion over ­whether to detain someone or not. 11. Thus, Martela and Chaubal w ­ ere considering seeking asylum for Chaubal (though this was not in fact an option b ­ ecause one must seek asylum within one year of entering the United States). 12. F. Santos, “Transgender ­ Women Fear Abuse in Immigration Detention,” New York Times, January  10, 2017, https://­w ww​.n ­ ytimes​.­com​/­2017​/­01​/­10​/­us​/­transgender​-w ­ omen​ -­fear​-­abuse​-­in​-­immigration​-­detention​.­html. 13. Santos, “Transgender W ­ omen Fear Abuse.” 14. Santos, “Transgender W ­ omen Fear Abuse.” 15. G. Solis, “Immigration Arrest Moves Gay Wedding to Detention Center,” Desert Sun, March  4, 2016, http://­w ww​.­desertsun​.­com​/­story​/­news​/­nation​/­california​/2 ­ 016​/­03​/­04​ /­first​-­gay​-­wedding​-­approved​-­border​-­detention​-­center​/­81289156​/­. Information in this section is taken from T. Dart, “Same Sex Wedding Is First in Immigration Detention Fa­cil­it­ y,” Guardian, March 24, 2016, http://­w ww​.­theguardian​.­com​/u ­ s​-n ­ ews​/­2016​/­mar​/­24​ /­same​-­sex​-­wedding​-­immigration​-­detention​-­facility; Solis, “Immigration Arrest Moves Gay Wedding”; and Wright (2016). Warmest thanks to Sharita Gruberg for drawing my attention to this case.

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16. The deportation priorities in effect at the end of the Obama era are outlined in a memo by Jeh Johnson, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, November 20, 2014, accessed May 5, 2016, https://­w ww​.d ­ hs​.g ­ ov​/­sites​/­default​/­files​/p ­ ublications​ /­14​_1­ 120​_m ­ emo​_­prosecutorial​_­discretion​.­pdf. 17. The 1945 War Brides Act illustrates that military ser­v ice has often provided a basis for claiming exceptions and making changes to U.S. immigration law, especially when ­these changes cement interconnections between nation, militarism, and white heteropatriarchy. Military ser­v ice has often offered an expedited pathway to ­legal status and citizenship, too. In recent years, congressional proposals to provide a pathway to ­legal status and citizenship for undocumented youth generally suggest military ser­ vice (or higher education or occupational achievement) as justification for such a pathway. Thus, military ser­v ice has often been invoked as evidence of deservingness for immigration possibilities that are other­w ise unavailable, and Swann draws on that history, which seems problematic. Trump begun to unravel the linkages between military ser­v ice, constructs of deservingness, and expedited access to l­egal status or citizenship; in 2019, mi­grant veterans who applied for citizenship ­were rejected at higher rates than mi­grants who w ­ ere not veterans. 18. A.  M. Orteaga, “ICE libera a inmigrante que se casó en detención con su pareja del mismo sexo,” La opinion, December  26, 2018, https://­laopinion​.­com​/­2018​/­12​/­26​/­ice​ -­libera​-a ­ -​ i­ nmigrante​-­que​-s­ e​-­caso​-­en​-­detencion​-­con​-­su​-­pareja​-d ­ el​-­mismo​-­sexo. 19. Note that advocates of attrition through enforcement frame their strategy as involving rational choice, not affect. 20. Undocumented immigrant youth pioneered the slogan Undocumented and Unafraid in 2010; the framework has remained critical to organ­izing efforts and subject making ever since. The framework borrowed from and added impor­tant new dimensions to the LGBT movement’s strategy of coming out, since significant numbers of undocumented youth who “came out” as undocumented also identified as LGBTQ. For critical analy­sis, see Chávez (2013).

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Cohen, C. J. 2005. “Punks, Bulldaggers and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?” In Black Queer Studies, edited by E. P. Johnson and M. G. Henderson, 21–51. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Conlon, D., and N. Hiemstra, eds. 2017. Intimate Economies of Immigrant Detention. New York: Routledge. Das Gupta, M. 2014. “ ‘­Don’t Deport Our Daddies’: Gendering State Deportation Practices and Immigrant Organ­i zing.” Gender and Society 28 (1): 83–109. De Genova, N. 2002. “Mi­grant ‘Illegality’ and Deportability in Everyday Life.” Annual Review of Anthropology 31: 419–447. Dreby, J. 2015. Everyday Illegal: When Policies Undermine Immigrant Families. Berkeley: University of California Press. Duggan, L. 2003. The Twilight of Equality? Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy. Boston: Beacon Press. Escobar, M. 2016. Captivity beyond Prisons: Criminalization Experiences of Latina (Im)mi­g rants. Austin: University of Texas Press. Ferguson, R. 2004. Aberrations in Black. T ­ oward a Queer of Color Critique. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. Golash-­B oza, T. 2015. “Targeting Latino Men: Mass Deportation from the USA, 1998–2012.” Racial and Ethnic Studies 38 (8): 1221–1228. Goldberg, S. K., and K. Conron. 2021. “LGBT Adult Immigrants in the United States.” Williams Institute, University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law. https://­w illiamsinstitute​ .­law​.­ucla​.­edu​/­publications​/­lgbt​-­immigrants​-­in​-­the​-­us/ Gomberg-­Muñoz, R. 2015. “The Punishment / El Castigo: Undocumented Latinos and U.S. Immigration Pro­cessing.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 41 (14): 2235–2252. Gruberg, S. 2013. “Dignity Denied: LGBT Immigrants in U.S. Immigration Detention.” Washington, DC: Center for American Pro­gress. https://­w ww​.­americanprogress​.­org​/­issues​ /­i mmigration​ /­r eports​ /­2 013​ /­1 1​ /­25​ /­7 9987​ /­d ignity​ -­denied​ -­l gbt​ -­i mmigrants​ -­i n​ -­u​ -­s​ -­immigration​-­detention​/­. —­—­—. 2016. “ICE Officers Overwhelmingly Use Their Discretion to Detain LGBT Immigrants.” Washington, DC: Center for American Pro­gress. https://­w ww​.­american​prog​ ress​.o ­ rg​/i­ ssues​/­lgbt​/­reports​/­2016​/­10​/­26​/­291115​/i­ ce​-o ­ fficers​-o ­ verwhelmingly​-­use​-t­ heir​ -­discretion​-­to​-d ­ etain​-­lgbt​-­immigrants​/.­ —­—— ­ . 2018. “ICE’s Rejection of Its Own Rules Is Placing LGBT Immigrants at Severe Risk of Sexual Abuse.” Center for American Pro­gress, May 30, 2018. https://­w ww​.­american​ progress​.­org ​/­i ssues​/­lgbt​/­news​/­2018​/­05​/­30​/­451294​/­ices​-­rejection​-­r ules​-­placing​-­lgbt​ -­immigrants​-­severe​-­risk​-­sexual​-­abuse​/­. Haritaworn, J., A. Kuntsman, and S. Posocco, eds. 2014. Queer Necropolitics. New York: Routledge. Hunter, L. A., A. McGovern, and C. Sutherland, eds. 2018. Intersecting Injustice: A National Call to Action; Addressing LGBTQ Poverty and Economic Justice for All. New York: Social Justice Sexuality Proj­ect, Gradu­ate Center, City University of New York. https://­static1​ .­s quarespace​.­c om​/­s tatic​/­5 a00c5f2a803bbe2eb0ff14e​/­t​/­5 aca6f45758d46742a5b8f78​ /­1523216213447​/­FINAL+PovertyReport​_ H ­ ighRes​.­pdf. Josephson, T. 2014. “Trans Citizenship: Marriage, Immigration, and Neoliberal Recognition in the United States.” Law, Culture and the Humanities 12 (3): 647–668. Kandaswamy, P. 2008. “State Austerity and the Racial Politics of Same-­Sex Marriage in the US.” Sexualities 11 (6): 706–725. Kobach, K. 2007. “Attrition through Enforcement: A Rational Approach to Illegal Immigration.” Tulsa Journal of Comparative and International Law 15: 155–163.

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Loyd, J.  M., M. Mitchelson, and A. Burridge. 2012. “Introduction: Borders, Prisons, and Abolitionist Visions.” In Beyond Walls and Cages: Prisons, Borders, and Global Crisis, edited by J. M. Loyd, M. Mitchelson, and A. Burridge, 1–15. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Luibhéid, E. 2002. Entry Denied: Controlling Sexuality at the Border. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. National Immigration Law Center. 2017. “Understanding Trump’s Executive O ­ rders Affecting Deportations and ‘Sanctuary’ Cities.” February 24, 2017. https://­w ww​.n ­ ilc​.­org​/i­ ssues​ /­immigration​-­enforcement​/­exec​-­order​-­deportations​-­sanctuary​-­cities​/.­ Ngai, M. 2004. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern Amer­i­ca. Prince­ ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press. Nolasco, L. 2016. “What Tom and Guillermo’s Detention Center Reveals.” ACLU Southern California, April 1, 2016. https://­w ww​.­aclusocal​.­org​/­en​/­news​/w ­ hat​-t­ om​-­and​-­guillermos​ -­detention​-c ­ enter​-­wedding​-r­ eveals. Pierce, S., and J. Bolter. 2020. Dismantling and Reconstructing the U.S. Immigration System. Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute. Sampaio, A. 2015. Terrorizing Latina/o Immigrants: Race, Gender, and Immigration Politics in an Age of Security. Philadelphia: T ­ emple University Press. Somerville, S. 2007. “Queer.” In Keywords in American Cultural Studies, edited by B. Burgett and G. Hendler, 187–191. New York: New York University Press. Speri, A. 2017. “Top Trump Official John Kelly Ordered ICE to Portray Immigrants as Criminals to Justify Raids.” Intercept, October 16, 2017. https://­theintercept​.­com​/2 ­ 017​/­10​/­16​ /­t op​-­t rump​-­official​-­john​-­kelly​-­ordered​-­ice​-­t o​-­portray​-­i mmigrants​-­a s​-­criminals​-­t o​ -­justify​-­raids​/.­ Stanley, E., and N. Smith, eds. 2011. Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex. Oakland, CA: AK Press. Strumpf, J. 2006. “The Crimmigration Crisis: Immigrants, Crime and Sovereign Power.” American University Law Review 56: 367–423. White, M. A. 2013. “Ambivalent Homonationalisms: Transnational Queer Intimacies and Territorialized Belongings.” Interventions 15 (1): 37–54. Wright, J. 2016. “Longtime Gay Activist Is 1st to Marry at Immigration Detention Center, ­Can’t Afford Attorney for Husband.” Towleroad (blog), March  15, 2016. http://­w ww​ .­t owleroad​.­c om ​/­2016​/­03​/ ­longtime​-­gay​-­activist​-­1 st​-­m arry​-­i mmigration​-­detention​ -­center​-­cant​-a ­ fford​-­attorney​-­husband​/­.

13 Epilogue Love Triangle: Nation, Spouse, Citizen AU D R E Y M AC K L I N

We cling to our romantic illusions, even when harsh experience mocks our naïveté. We harbor expectations about intimate relationships that do not materialize, that partners may not share, and that sometimes lead to disappointment. The power­ful and illuminating chapters in this book expose a dif­fer­ent set of romantic ideals about another dyad, namely, the relationship between the ­family and the nation-­state. Popu­lar discourse and po­liti­cal theory celebrate the bond between ­family and state: the state supports families; the state depends on families; the state loves families. In the language of Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of ­Human Rights, drafted and endorsed by states, “The ­family is the natu­ral and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State” (United Nations 1948). The ­family is represented as primordial, prepo­liti­cal, and foundational. Politicians, academics, and judges alike reach for family when seeking a meta­ ­ phor for the nation, when claiming authority as parens patriae over c ­ hildren, or in appeals to the mother/father/homeland. The nineteenth-­century U.S. diplomat George Bancroft famously inveighed against dual citizenship with the avowal that nations should “as soon tolerate a man with two wives as a man with two countries” (Spiro 2010, 114). Although tolerance of multiple citizenship has weakened the force of the analogy, its force is not entirely spent. Fidelity is not merely a private commitment. It must be declared publicly in the presence of witnesses. Weddings and citizenship ceremonies share the distinction of requiring participants to publicly swear an oath of fidelity. This signifies a shared feature of marriage and citizenship as public institutions that demand an affirmation of loyalty, even if unenforceable. The contributors to this volume approach marriage migration via diverse disciplines, scales, sites, and methods, but each takes as a point of departure the ineluctable difference that bordering—­whether through geography or status—­ makes to the state’s posture t­oward marriage.1 The subjection of noncitizen or 2 59

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mixed-­status c ­ ouples to scrutiny, surveillance, and separation by immigration authorities is tacitly contrasted with re­spect for the autonomy and privacy of citizen c ­ ouples. This comparison lends itself to the claim that the state indeed values ­family, but only selectively. More particularly, the state values and protects families produced and reproduced within the state; even then, racialized, poor, or nonconforming families are not fully embraced. But families constituted transnationally are viewed categorically with wariness. This mistrust is not confined to the ubiquitous suspicion across jurisdictions (to which I return below) that a foreign partner’s motive for marriage is the acquisition of migration status. I contend that it runs deeper and taps into a reservoir of anxiety that filiation may be a more power­f ul bond than citizenship. Within and beyond the sphere of migration, p ­ eople take extraordinary risks, make sacrifices, and subordinate their self-­interest for the sake of ­family. ­These are the same be­hav­iors that the state desires and demands from citizens. But for some of the same reasons that the ­family is an attractive meta­phor for the state, the ­family is also a potential rival for the citizen’s affection and devotion. In this sense, the state’s love of ­family is mixed with envy. The citizen’s love of a foreigner—­entwining kinship and otherness—­competes with love of nation. This rivalry lies at the heart of the historical practice of stripping citizenship from ­women who married foreign men as punishment for their infidelity to the nation—­a practice that continued ­until the twentieth ­century in many states and persists in a few ­today (Irving 2016). It also underlies the state’s hostility ­toward that strand of maternal pacifism that led m ­ others to oppose conscription of their sons. The state’s anxiety is driven by an inchoate fear that if put to the test, ­people ­will betray nation for ­family. Indeed, the authors in this volume offer vivid examples of how ­people prioritize fidelity to ­family ahead of a duty to obey (migration) law. Rhacel Salazar Parreñas’s Japa­nese m ­ other marries her son’s transgender male-­to-­female partner in order to sponsor “him,” so that her son’s partner can remain in Japan. Grace K. Tran recounts the motivations of a young man who agrees to a sham marriage transaction so he can financially support his ailing f­ ather. This concern that the tug of personal commitment (love of foreigner) pulls against po­liti­cal commitment (love of nation) also underwrites the peculiarly Eu­ro­pean policy distinction between f­ amily reunification and f­ amily formation (IOM 2020). This terminology seems to be a legacy of the guest worker regimes of the 1970s. Long-­term mi­grant workers from Turkey, Morocco, Yugo­slavia, and southern Eu­ro­pean states eventually won the right from northern Eu­ro­pean host states to re­unite with spouses and c ­ hildren left b ­ ehind in the country of origin. Subsequently, some unmarried immigrants and their descendants also chose spouses from the country of origin and then sought to sponsor their immigration. The term ­family reunification was reserved for situations in which an immigrant sponsors existing ­family members. ­Family reunification is accepted

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as the product of a valid desire to maintain a familial relationship commenced prior to emigration. But when a member of a diasporic community weds a person from the country of origin (­family formation), the act is read as evidence of the sponsor’s “failure to integrate” ­because it signifies a preference for nationals of the country of origin over the country of residence. One detected a similar tone in Donald J. Trump’s administration’s disdain for noncitizen families. The most grotesque and cruel illustration remains the practice of apprehending and separating asylum-­seeking families crossing into the United States. As a deterrent mea­sure, it traded on the dehumanization of noncitizens (including c ­ hildren) to Americans, while si­mul­ta­neously leveraging the very ­human terror apprehended by parents facing separation from, and abuse of, their ­children. Despite the swift reversal of this policy by newly inaugurated president Joseph  R. Biden in early 2021, the emotional, physical, and social damage wrought by this practice is prob­ably incalculable. Outside the domain of asylum, Trump’s denigration of family-­based migration, which he derided with the label “chain migration,” trivialized the im­mense importance that individuals attach to permanent reunion with ­family members. Drawing on a mix of racism, hyperbole, and lies, Trump’s attack gained traction from the assumption that admission based on f­ amily ties does not serve the national interest, in contrast to migration based on employer preferences. In the 1990s, then French president Nicolas Sarkozy made this even plainer when he described kinship migration as “l’immigration subie” (imposed immigration), in contrast to “l’immigration choisie” (chosen immigration). The “pre-­integration” tests imposed by some Eu­ro­ pean Union (EU) member states on overseas spouses (excepting nationals of wealthy, white, and non-­Muslim countries) speaks to a similar disdain for f­amily migration, as Saskia Bonjour and Massilia Ourabah’s chapter shows. P ­ eople want to be with their kin, while the state resists admitting t­ hose kin into the national ­family. So, the state may love the f­amily in the abstract, but it displays considerable ambivalence t­ oward families in their embodied form. This equivocation about f­ amily not only offers a corrective to an unduly romantic portrait of relations between state and ­family; it also provides a point of departure for exploring questions and themes that the chapters in this book pose and expose.

What Is the State Regulating When It Regulates Marriage Migration? Marriage migration policies determine ­whether the state ­w ill recognize and re­spect the intimate relationship of two adults who wish to cohabit in that state. If the c ­ ouple intends to have ­children or already has ­children, marriage migration policy ­w ill also determine the ­f uture of the nuclear ­family. ­These m ­ atters are normally regulated by another l­ egal regime, namely, ­family law. Most national

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­family law regimes exclude marriages falling within prohibited degrees of consanguinity (siblings, first cousins, ­etc.) and restrict marriage to two adults. ­Family law’s main concerns arise upon ­family breakdown, where it intervenes to prevent any f­ amily member from becoming financially dependent on the state and to protect the best interests of c ­ hildren. But beyond that, f­ amily law no longer tells p ­ eople whom (not) to marry, w ­ hether they can (or must) cohabit, or ­whether to have ­children. Forcible sterilization is prohibited, same-­sex marriage is lawful in many states of the global North, and the United States’ notorious antimiscegenation laws have been unconstitutional for half a ­century. But where c ­ ouples differ in l­egal status and physical location in relation to national borders, migration law regulates f­ amily life (Abrams 2007). It is a testament to the normative force of ­family as institution that states—­however grudgingly—­ acknowledge the importance of spousal unification, at least for ­citizens and permanent residents. Historically, the proj­ect of nation building through immigration meant that the self-­interest of settler socie­ties, or what I have labeled elsewhere as normative countries of immigration, aligned with generous policies of f­ amily migration (Macklin 2017), and ­these w ­ ere sedimented in national immigration laws and policies. Settler socie­ties built themselves demographically, eco­nom­ically, and socially through immigration and settlement, and the migration of families was vital to the futurity of nation building. Eu­ro­pean states are, historically, nonnormative countries of immigration. Migration may be necessary, but it is not desired. For t­ hese “Old World” states, permanent migration endangers the integrity of the already-­constituted nation and was tolerated more than welcomed. Beginning in the 1970s, Eu­ro­pean states (nonnormative countries of immigration) w ­ ere pushed by po­liti­cal campaigns and ­legal advocacy into permitting wives and ­children of “guest workers” to rejoin their husbands and f­ athers. The result is that, somewhat ironically, f­ amily reunification is framed as a ­human right in states that historically resisted it but not in states that historically encouraged it. Article 8 of the Eu­ro­pean Convention on H ­ uman Rights enshrines protection of f­amily and private life, and this has been interpreted to protect (albeit with significant limits) mixed-­status families from separation through deportation (Thym 2014). Indeed, the application of Article 8 of the Eu­ro­pean Convention on H ­ uman Rights to the U.K. migration apparatus was a significant source of consternation among Brexit proponents. Neither the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms nor the U.S. Bill of Rights explic­itly protects the associational rights of f­amily; w ­ hether the general constitutional protection of freedom of association encompasses the ­family in the context of migration remains unaddressed by Canadian and U.S. apex courts. This means that ­actual laws and policies regarding ­family migration generally remain more restrictive in practice in Eu­ro­pean states (with re­spect to third-­country nationals) where ­family unity is protected as a right, than in settler socie­ties where it is not.

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When the state regulates migration, it controls access to territory, resources, and membership. From a statist perspective, the starting point is that the noncitizen has no legitimate claim on the state, and the state possesses unfettered discretion to decide w ­ hether a noncitizen can enter or remain. In this bilateral game, the noncitizen holds no cards. But marriage migration introduces a third party, the citizen (or permanent resident) of the receiving state, who—­unlike the foreigner—­can make claims on the state. And that citizen’s (or permanent resident’s) claim is that the right of citizens / permanent residents to marry and cohabit with whomever they wish should not be obstructed by the state, w ­ hether by antimiscegenation or by immigration laws. In con­temporary migration regimes, the claims of kinship are positioned as potentially inimical to the interests, welfare, and sheer authority of the state. The fact of migration control communicates that the individual’s intimate relationship with a foreign partner is subordinate to the state’s sovereign power over noncitizens. With each decision to accept or reject, states proj­ect and enact the supremacy of state over ­family and love of nation over love of the foreigner. Anne-­ Marie D’Aoust, Helena Wray, and Laura Odasso and Manuela Salcedo Robledo (this volume) elaborate on the securitization of marriage migration, which crystallizes this power play. I would add that its specificity also owes something to the state’s latent anxiety that if the nation had to compete with the ­family for the citizen’s loyalty, the nation may not win. Consider the famous quotation from the En­glish novelist E. M. Forster (1938), “If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.” The statement is provocative b ­ ecause the weight of expectation lies so heavi­ly in f­avor of patriotism over friendship. Substitute wife, ­sister, son, or ­father for “friend” and the ethical dilemma reads differently.

Who Is Regulating? Who Is Regulated? Plainly, migration law governs noncitizens, including foreign spouses. It demands from them conformity to a set of culturally specific practices and norms regarding romantic love and marriage. With the introduction of so-­ called pre-­ integration tests, marriage migration also demands evidence of ­labor market potential—­the criterion for economic migration—­and a certain “cultural fitness” that is racially, religiously, and ethnically coded. In many states, the post-­arrival ­legal status of a foreign spouse is linked to continuity of the marriage for some period of time. This means that separation or divorce may jeopardize the immigration status of the foreign spouse. This fact, alone or in combination with vari­ ous advantages (linguistic, social, economic) that a resident enjoys over a newcomer, can tilt the power dynamics of a relationship sharply in f­ avor of the sponsoring spouse for the duration of the sponsored spouse’s precarious status. The issue is particularly acute for w ­ omen b ­ ecause it intensifies their de­pen­dency

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on their husbands and their vulnerability to domination and abuse. In circumstances where w ­ omen fear or experience domestic vio­lence, w ­ omen may remain in the relationship ­because they (correctly) apprehend that leaving an abusive situation may cost them their immigration status (Briddick 2020). This does not mean that marriage migration policy necessarily or only empowers the spouse who sponsors. It also disciplines citizens and permanent residents. At the outset, it does so by creating financial and motivational hurdles to marrying a foreigner that would not apply to marriage of a co-­national. To the extent that ­these ­legal and bureaucratic requirements and impediments are perceived as arbitrary, gratuitous, or punitive, they convey a deterrent message: citizens who choose to marry a noncitizen must be prepared to assume a burden of expense, delay, surveillance, and intrusion. Unlike the past practice of withdrawing citizenship from ­women who marry foreign men, citizen sponsors do not risk their own status. But sponsoring spouses are tainted by their association with a foreigner, and they w ­ ill be scrutinized in ways they would never experience had they married a co-­national (Moret, Andrikopoulos, and Dahinden 2021). Their fitness as spouse is indexed to their capacity to reassure the state that their foreign partner w ­ ill not become a fiscal burden and to their willingness to acquiesce in the state’s intrusion into their relationship. Having allied themselves with the foreigner, citizen spouses enter a liminal space where their ­legal status remains unaltered, but they are confronted with the harsher, meaner, and less accountable exercise of state power that is normally reserved for noncitizens. In this sense, the pro­cess of marriage migration reconstitutes who is regulated by marriage migration by treating citizens more like noncitizens, thereby diminishing the substantive content of citizenship for t­ hose subject to it. Marriage migration often engages facilitators who may be paid or unpaid, licit or illicit. T ­ hese include f­ amily members, brokers, con­sul­tants, and l­awyers who may operate across jurisdictions. Governments and media sometimes denigrate ­these intermediaries as corrupt and unscrupulous, but their prevalence is attributable in some mea­sure to the ever-­increasing complexity and density of the ­legal and bureaucratic web designed to ensnare and then separate transborder ­couples ever more effectively. Whichever side of the law ­these intermediaries operate on, they participate in the state’s regulation by using their expert knowledge to inform, guide, and direct the parties through migration law’s obstacle course. Aiding or abetting breaches of immigration law is typically an offense ­under immigration statutes, and for ­lawyers (and some con­sul­tants) it also constitutes professional misconduct. As vari­ous commentators have observed, con­temporary bordering practices among wealthy states have deputized a variety of public and private actors to police borders from within. The United Kingdom’s “hostile environment” policy

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leads the way by requiring not only employers but also landlords, health-­care providers, educators, and ­others to demand proof of l­egal status as a precondition to ser­vice delivery (Yuval-­Davis, Wemyss, and Cassidy 2018). T ­ hese practices do not merely or mainly authorize p ­ eople to act as immigration enforcers; they also coerce them by penalizing failure or refusal to participate. As Wray (this volume) explains, marriage officiants and registrars are among t­ hose conscripted into ser­vice and regulated in the per­for­mance of their tasks. They are legally compelled to notify the Home Office of most proposed weddings or civil partnerships involving at least one third-­country national (non-­EU foreigner). The Home Office may order a delay of over two months, in order to investigate and determine ­whether the intended nuptial or civil partnership is a “sham marriage.” The discourse, law, policies, and practices surrounding marriage migration coalesce into a portrait of the right kind of marriage and the right kind of spouse. This idealized image transcends the migration context, but it is made vis­i­ble by the state’s ability to use migration law to exert control over marriage and cohabitation. In brief, and abstracting from the context of transnational migration, the ideal marriage is motivated by love between consenting and in­de­pen­dent adults and is untainted by ulterior motives or external actors. If heterosexual partners differ significantly in age, class, education, or beauty, the gradient should slope upward ­toward the man, except for beauty. Importantly, differences between partners that might be read as “progressive” or “transgressive” outside the migration context signal deviance and inauthenticity within it. Suspect ­couples include t­ hose who do not share the same religion, ethnicity, or racial classification, as well as u ­ nions between older ­women and younger men or between men and w ­ omen where one has a disability. Ideal parties to a marriage embody the responsibilized subjects of con­ temporary liberal governance. They are educated and employed or, in the case of a woman/mother, employable. They do not rely on state support. The general public may not ever think about how marriage migration policies are ­shaped by a normative vision of marriage. But campaigns to combat “sham” or “bogus” marriages broadcast a message to a wider public about the diminished moral status of (racialized) mi­grants and the citizens or residents who marry them. The requirement that a sponsoring spouse earn an annual salary that exceeds the income of over 40 ­percent of the working population in the United Kingdom feeds the febrile anxiety that foreign spouses cannot or ­w ill not contribute to ­family income and w ­ ill, instead, become permanent fiscal burdens (Wray 2017). But it also communicates to 40 ­percent of the U.K. adult population that the state regards them as underperforming citizens of lesser value than higher-­earning citizens. According to the U.K. government, marriage to a foreigner is a luxury good that four of ten adult, working U.K. citizens cannot afford and do not deserve. So much for romantic love.

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How Is Marriage Migration Regulated? The Primary Purpose of Regulation Many of this volume’s contributors write incisively ­here and elsewhere about the techniques mobilized to regulate marriage migration in North Amer­i­ca and Eu­ rope (Kerry Abrams, Saskia Bonjour, Anne-­ Marie D’Aoust, Betty de Hart, Eithne Luibhéid, and Helena Wray). The obsession with the inauthentic marriage—­defined as one where gaining migration status is the sole or dominant motive for the union—­places disqualification of “marriages of con­ve­nience” at the fore of technologies of exclusion. It has extended beyond nonrecognition of lawful marriages to actively prohibiting marriages between citizens and certain noncitizens, a regulatory instrument whose form echoes U.S. and Nazi-­era antimiscegenation laws. The subtext is a suspicion that the foreign spouse or the ­couple act in bad faith by claiming to marry for one purpose (love) while actually marrying for another (migration). But if bad faith consists of acting for improper motives, one might equally consider ­whether some states have crossed over into bad faith regulation of marriage migration. By this I mean that the primary purpose of the policies and practices that regulate migration on grounds of marriage are not actually—or even primarily—­about verifying the genuineness of the u ­ nion. They are about shrinking the size of a class of immigrants considered undesirable by the state—­ the ­family class. This is what Wray means when she concludes in her chapter that the regulation of marriage migration is a species of migration control. It is a testament to the normative heft of marriage (and f­ amily) that simply eliminating the category of spousal migration would be unthinkable and, among states bound by the Eu­ro­pean Convention on ­Human Rights, prob­ably unlawful. This constraint has the effect of motivating states to enact sham laws and policies whose primary purpose is concealed just below the surface of the text but exposed through implementation. This is a familiar gambit in migration law and virtually the norm in asylum and refugee policies among states of the global North. Focusing on marriages of con­ve­nience is (ironically) con­ve­nient ­because it deflects attention away from the state’s fundamental ambivalence about f­ amily. The official narrative is that the state re­spects the institution of marriage and values ­family unity. It does not oppose the migration of genuine spouses, only the migration of “marriage fraudsters.” Yet the stipulation that a genuine marriage is devoid of mixed motives is conceptually flawed and plainly belied by the practices within t­ hose socie­ties where pure, romantic, and unencumbered love supposedly reign supreme. Rhacel Salazar Parreñas’s ethnographic work with transgender hostesses who enter into marriage arrangements is an impor­tant contribution that reminds us of the necessity to not only queer marriage as an institution but also queer our understanding of love. Indeed, a judgment of the

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Federal Court of Canada in 2020 adds to this understanding by offering a rare and fascinating exception to the highly conventional depiction of “acceptable” intimate relationships in migration law. In AP v. Canada, a self-­identified gay man applied to sponsor a straight ­woman as his conjugal partner. The two ­were old friends in their country of origin and rekindled their friendship by meeting up abroad. The w ­ oman became pregnant by him, and they de­cided to enter into a committed relationship and raise the child as a f­ amily. The sponsorship application was rejected by the Immigration and Refugee Board, but the decision was set aside by the Federal Court as unreasonable on the ground that the tribunal “unreasonably narrowed the scope of a conjugal partner to sexually romantic relationships, to the exclusion of other evidence demonstrating a committed relationship of some permanence.” 2 ­Whether or not ­people claim to love their partner, few would deny that ­people also marry for wealth, for security, for status, to avoid stigma, to procreate, to raise c ­ hildren with another parent, and so on. Marriage for “unromantic” reasons is neither foreign nor relegated to the past in states that dedicate extensive resources to policing “sham marriages.” None would suggest that t­ hese ulterior or additional motives render domestic u ­ nions inauthentic, even assuming one could disentangle and discretely weigh the reasons why p ­ eople marry. The conclusion is not altered by adding migration into the mix. The only difference is that the state claims both an interest in and a power over migration that it cannot claim over marriage itself. I do not doubt that some individuals or ­couples enter into ­unions for the sole purpose of facilitating migration, and they may intend to end the relationship once immigration status is secured. Some of t­ hese arrangements involve financial or other compensation. Participants in all transborder marriages—­ whatever the motives—­are keenly aware of the need to align their be­hav­ior with the state’s version of a romantic relationship. This includes e ­ very c ­ ouple whose relationship is rendered suspicious by unequal migration status or, perhaps more accurately, unequal citizenships. State officials are not actually equipped to discern the authenticity of relationships; instead, they adjudicate the per­for­ mance of authenticity against a script composed of highly stylized, ritualized codes of be­hav­ior, as D’Aoust’s chapter documents. To the extent that the conception of an “au­then­tic” relationship is flawed, transnational c ­ ouples are handicapped from the start. Where this is compounded by punctilious evidentiary demands and pre-­and post-­admission surveillance, a pro­cess whose explicit rationale is the detection of inauthentic relationships shades into a pro­ cess designed to reduce spousal migration as such. This view may seem unduly jaundiced, but it is bolstered by more recent policies that unabashedly pit f­amily against nation in the context of marriage migration. Minimum income requirements and pre-­integration tests presume a genuine and subsisting relationship, yet they still block reunification in the

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name of superseding state interests. For example, in the United Kingdom, and elsewhere, annual salary, accommodation specifications, and health insurance requirements purport to reduce the risk that a ­couple ­w ill impose a fiscal burden on the state (Kofman 2018). In the Netherlands, pre-­integration tests claim to facilitate adaptation to a new country by demanding acquisition of language and “knowledge” about the country prior to arrival. Income and language skills speak to fiscal concerns and ideas about immigrant integration, not the authenticity of the relationship. But more significantly, the weight of the burdens imposed, and the fact that they are bars to entry, sustains the complaint that ­these mea­sures are disproportionate in form and effect to any legitimate state interest in fiscal impact or integration. Importantly, subordinating the entitlement of a ­couple to marry or cohabit to the advancement of state interests does not distinguish between au­then­tic and (putatively) inauthentic marriages. To this extent, state officially trumps ­family. The details of the policies and their implementation lend credence to the inference that the primary purpose of ­these policy instruments is to impede spousal migration as such. If this seems plausible in re­spect of the U.K. minimum income requirements, and the Netherlands’ pre-­arrival integration test,3 it is beyond peradventure in relation to U.S. president Trump’s two 2019 executive ­orders.4 The first granted broad discretion to deny immigrant visas (“green cards”) to immigrant applicants who may become a public charge (Capps et al. 2018). The second denies visas to applicants who cannot demonstrate that they can obtain unsubsidized private health insurance within thirty days of arrival in the United States or pay any medical expenses directly. The Migration Policy Institute estimates that the health insurance proclamation could affect up to 65 ­percent of green card applicants from abroad, most of whom are in the f­ amily class (Gelatt and Greenberg 2019). Not surprisingly, it also predicted that the restrictions would disproportionately affect Latinx immigrants. They remain in place as of early 2021. The fact that an extraterritorial, pre-­immigration civic integration requirement is an oxymoron should obviate the need to demonstrate that it is a pretext for reducing marriage migration by racialized and Muslim citizens of the global South more generally. This conclusion is reinforced by the additional observation that the Netherlands exempts foreign spouses who are nationals of Canada, the United States, Japan, Australia, or New Zealand from the Dutch language test (Dutch INS). More generally, and as Wray argues in her chapter, the imposition of language requirements on spouses as a condition of admission portends for spousal migration an encroachment of criteria for assessing prospective economic immigrants. It suggests a drift away from kinship as a basis of admission or­ga­n ized around certain relationships and ­toward admissibility that is or­ga­ nized around a tolerable deviation from the standards for admitting economic immigrants. In this model, the ideal ­future citizen is not the person that a

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citizen chooses for love, companionship, procreation, or other personal reasons; it is the person that the state would choose for itself, and that means an educated, professional, eco­nom­ically self-­sufficient, light-­skinned, culturally assimilable national of a global North state. In other words, the ideal spouse is the ideal economic immigrant, and the further the spouse departs from this norm, the greater the risk of exclusion.

Temporality as Regulatory Instrument Time plays a critical role in the regulation of marriage migration. The passage of time, the value of time, sequencing over time, the significance attached to timing—­each acquires or confers par­tic­u­lar meaning through its interaction with space and with l­egal status Time itself can be deployed as a tool of governance. Returning to the Eu­ro­pean distinction between ­family reunification and ­family formation, one notes how much the classification turns on the timing of marriage. Marriage in the country of origin prior to migration is a routine life-­ cycle event of no par­tic­u­lar moment. Post-­migration marriage to a partner in the country of origin, however, signifies a tenuous commitment to the country of immigration that in turn legitimates restrictions on entry. The narrative of romantic love that disciplines transnational ­couples contains a strict temporal sequence that o ­ rders affect and action: ­couples become acquainted, fall in love, then marry. They do not meet, get to know one another, marry, and then come to love one another, or other­w ise deviate from the script. This regimen is culturally coded, but it also trades on a thin phenomenological account of the relationship of emotion to action. Love is an emotional state into which one falls, and only ­after arriving at love does one move to the action of marriage. While love may evolve ­after marriage, it is critical that love exist prior to marriage. On this account, emotion precedes, and is in­de­pen­dent of, action. ­People feel their way into acting; they do not act their way into feeling.5 One suspects that the relationship of emotion (and the identification of emotion) to action is considerably more nuanced and complex than the clichéd chronology would suggest. Grace K. Tran’s example of the Viet­nam­ese bride who develops romantic feelings t­ oward the man who entered into a “sham marriage” with her should not be regarded as culturally determined or idiosyncratic. Relationships are necessarily diachronic. They transpire over time. But the ­legal characterization of the marriage is strictly synchronic: its character as “sham” or “genuine” is fixed and frozen in time at the moment of marriage, as if in the snap of a wedding photo. If immigration authorities consider one or both parties to be motivated by migration status at the time of marriage, it does not ­matter ­whether the relationship changes over time. It may not ­matter if the ­couple have and raise c ­ hildren together, b ­ ecause c ­ hildren born subsequent to a non-­genuine marriage do not alter the character of the marriage at the critical moment. Indeed, some decision makers have admonished foreign spouses for

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deliberately having ­children while their immigration status was unresolved, indicating that the enforcement of migration law is paramount over the ­family law’s commitment to maintaining parental presence in c ­ hildren’s lives. The move from this ranking of priorities to the spectacle of caged ­children is not as big a leap as it might seem. Beyond the specific interjection of Immigration Time into the evaluation of kinship relations, time itself becomes a regulatory device in the hands of under-­ resourced and inefficient immigration bureaucracies. Spousal reunification pro­cesses can and do stretch easily from months to years. Applicants must submit forms; resubmit forms that are lost or incomplete; gather supplementary evidence; find and sustain employment that meets the minimum income threshold; enroll and complete language courses; submit to examinations, interviews, and surveillance; possibly litigate; and pay substantial fees. Where c ­ ouples are separated (and even when they are not), the delay, uncertainty, and frustration experienced over a long and indeterminate waiting period inflicts extraordinary stress that can corrode the stability of the relationship. In effect, the pro­cess of spousal migration can become a trial by ordeal. Some ­couples do not survive. From a statist perspective, relationship breakdown ­after an extended period of separation only proves that the marriage was not genuine at the outset, b ­ ecause true love is eternally patient in the face of adversity.

Conclusion: ­Toward Immigration Eugenics At the turn of the twentieth ­century, the burgeoning pseudoscience of eugenics found fertile ground in immigration debates in settler socie­ties dependent on nation building through large-­scale immigration. The alleged ge­ne­tic inferiority of Blacks, Jews, Asians, Eastern and Southern Eu­ro­pe­ans, and the “criminal” and “lower classes” was propounded in the ser­vice of exclusion policies. Eugenics was not, of course, confined to the sphere of migration. Advocates directed it to reproduction of the domestic population and promoted policies that included marriage restrictions, segregation, institutionalization of “defective” ­people, and sterilization of “unfit” w ­ omen. At the core of the eugenics movement was not only a belief in a ge­ne­tic determinism that mapped onto race, class, ability, and moral capacity but also an equally fervent insistence on the power and duty of the state to engineer a superior population through command, control, and coercion. Eugenics as a po­liti­cal proj­ect reached its modern and hideous apotheosis with Nazism and fell into disgrace in its wake. States abandoned policies aimed at restricting the citizenry’s ability to reproduce, ­whether through forcible sterilization or marriage prohibitions (where marriage was accepted as a social prerequisite to reproduction). This did not happen as rapidly or uniformly as some might think. In Canada, for example, forcible sterilization of Indigenous ­women began in the 1930s (possibly ­earlier), and persisted into the 1970s and beyond,

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possibly including the past de­cade (Zingel 2019).6 Reports in 2020 exposed the forcible sterilization of an undisclosed number of mi­grant w ­ omen detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for at least a year (Flores 2020). Natalist campaigns resurface periodically, encouraging female citizens to bear ­children rather than let immigration respond to demographic needs. But my more provocative claim is that the core beliefs animating eugenics have not dis­appeared entirely in the global North; what has been thoroughly discredited is the entitlement of the state to use its authority and power to coercively prohibit the “wrong” kind of citizens from reproducing. The state does not get to choose who enters the polity through the birth canal. The state does, however, arrogate power to dictate who enters the polity through immigration, and the equation of border control with sovereignty has never been more raw or potent in popu­lar discourse. The difference between citizens and noncitizen lies less in the state’s preferences regarding who is a fit and desirable member of the polity than in perceptions of the legitimacy of using coercion to advance ­those preferences within the polity versus at its border. The regulation of marriage migration not only tells us something generalizable about the state’s definition of acceptable relationships and desirable citizens. It also tells us about what the state would do to citizens—­a nd to which citizens—if it could dictate who among the citizenry could marry and bear ­children. This is, in a sense, a reductionist view of marriage migration to the extent that it centers on reproduction. But ultimately, all immigration is about intergenerational continuity. ­Whether classified as workers, as kin, or as refugees, immigration regimes are in the business of obstructing or facilitating the admission of pre­sent and ­f uture parents. More than ever, the decline in birthrates in the global North means that immigration is vital to reproducing the nation. When the state regulates marriage migration with a view to restricting it to ­people deemed desirable by the state, just as when it prevents ­family reunification for certain (racialized) classes of mi­grant workers and refugees, it limits the freedom of individuals to choose their intimate partners and to create families with them. It claims authority superior to its own citizens in the judgment of who is fit to ­people the nation. This is the proj­ect of immigration eugenics.

NOTES

1. I use marriage to encompass the array of intimate partnerships between two adults that states variously recognize for migration purposes. 2. AP v. Canada (2020), F.C. 906, para. 30. 3. Minister van Buitenlandse Zaken v. K and A., CJEU, C153/14, 9 July  2015, https://­eur​-­lex​ .­europa​.e ­ u​/­legal​-­content​/­en​/­TXT​/­​? ­uri​= ­CELEX:62014CJ0153. 4. The  U.K. Supreme Court provided a detailed description of the minimum income requirement in MM v SSHD [2017] UKSC 10, which upheld the requirement with some qualification in re­spect of the impact on c ­ hildren. On Trump’s executive ­orders,

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see U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Ser­ vices, “Inadmissibility on Public Charge Grounds,” August  14, 2019, https://­w ww​.­federalregister​.­gov​/­documents​/­2019​/­08​/­1 4​ /­2019​-­17142​/i­ nad​missibility​-­on​-­public​-­charge​-­grounds; “Presidential Proclamation on the Suspension of Entry of Immigrants Who W ­ ill Financially Burden the United States Healthcare System,” October  4, 2019, White House, https://­w ww​.­whitehouse​.­gov​ /­presidential​-­actions​/­presidential​-­proclamation​-­suspension​-­entry​-i­ mmigrants​-­w ill​ -­financially​-b ­ urden​-­united​-­states​-h ­ ealthcare​-­system​/­. 5. Presumably, they do not age their way in to feeling, ­either. On this account, it is mere coincidence that the vast majority of p ­ eople happen to find their “soul mate” and fall in love roughly around the time they are primed to procreate. 6. This attempt at physical annihilation operated in tandem with a campaign of cultural annihilation through state apprehension of c ­ hildren and detention in inhumane conditions in Canadian residential schools. From the 1870s to 1997 (when the last school closed), an estimated 150,000 Indigenous ­children ­were abducted by state authorities and isolated from their families, communities, traditions, and language in residential schools operated by churches and funded by government. More than 4,000 w ­ ere known to have died due to malnutrition, disease, abuse, and neglect. The purpose of the residential school system was to suppress and eradicate Indigenous culture. REFERENCES

Abrams, K. 2007. “Immigration Law and the Regulation of Marriage.” Minnesota Law Review 91 (6): 1625–1709. Briddick, C. 2020. “Combatting or Enabling Domestic Vio­lence? Evaluating the Residence Rights of Mi­grant Victims of Domestic Vio­lence in Eu­rope.” International and Comparative Law Quarterly 69 (4): 1013–1034. Capps, R., M. Greenberg, M. Fix, and J. Zong. 2018. “Gauging the Impact of DHS’ Proposed Public Charge Rule of U.S. Immigration.” Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute. https://­w ww​.­m igrationpolicy​.o ­ rg​/­research​/­impact​-­d hs​-­public​-­charge​-r­ ule​ -­immigration. Flores, J. 2020. “ICE Detainees’ Alleged Hysterectomies Recall a Long History of Forced Sterilizations.” Conversation, September 28, 2020. Accessed March 11, 2021. https://­the​conversation​ .­c om ​ /­ice​ -­detainees​ -­a lleged​ -­h ysterectomies​ -­recall​ -­a​ -­long​ -­h istory​ -­of​ -­forced​ -­sterilizations​-1­ 46820. Forster, E. M. 1938. “What I Believe.” Accessed March 6, 2021. http://­w ww​.­skeptic​.­ca​/­E M​ _­Forster​_­What​_­I​_­Believe​.­htm. Gelatt, J., and M. Greenberg. 2019. “Health Insurance Test for Green-­Card Applicants Could Sharply Cut F ­ uture U.S. ­Legal Immigration.” Washington DC: Migration Policy Institute. https://­w ww​.­m igrationpolicy​.­org​/­news​/­health​-­insurance​-­test​-­green​-­card​-­appli​ cants​-­could​-­sharply​-­cut​-­f uture​-u ­ s​-­legal​-­immigration. IOM (International Organ­ization for Migration). 2020. Migration Data Portal. “­Family Migration.” August  28, 2020. https://­m igrationdataportal​.o ­ rg​/­themes​/­family​-­mig​ ration. Irving, H. 2016. Citizenship, Alienage and the Modern Constitutional State: A Gendered History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kofman, E. 2018. “­Family Migration as a Class ­Matter.” International Migration 56 (4): 33–46. Macklin, A. 2017. “From Settler Society to Warrior Nation and Back Again.” In Citizenship in Transnational Perspective: Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, edited by J. Mann, 285– 313. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Moret, J., A. Andrikopoulos, and J. Dahinden. 2021. “Contesting Categories: Cross-­B order Marriages from the Perspectives of the State, Spouses and Researchers.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 47 (2): 325–342. Spiro, P. 2010. “Dual Citizenship as ­Human Right.” International Journal of Constitutional Law 8 (1): 111–130. Thym, D. 2014. “Residence as De Facto Citizenship? Protection of Long-­Term Residence ­under Article 8 ECHR.” In ­Human Rights and Immigration, edited by R. Rubio-­Marín, 106–144. Oxford: Oxford University Press. United Nations. 1948. Universal Declaration of ­Human Rights. https://­w ww​.­un​.­org​/­en​/­about​ -­us​/­universal​-­declaration​-­of​-­human​-­rights. Wray, H. 2017. “The MM Case and the Public Interest: How Did the Government Make Its Case?” Journal of Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Law 31 (3): 227–243. Yuval-­Davis, N., G. Wemyss, and K. Cassidy. 2018. “Everyday Bordering, Belonging and the Re­orientation of British Immigration Legislation.” Sociology 52 (2): 228–244. Zingel, A. 2019. “Indigenous ­Women Come Forward with Accounts of Forced Sterilization, Says L ­ awyer.” CBC News, April 18, 2019. https://­w ww​.c ­ bc​.­ca​/­news​/­canada​/­north​/­forced​ -­sterilization​-l­ awsuit​-­could​-­expand​-­1​.­5102981.

AC K NOW L­E D GM EN T S

This proj­ect has been a true case of feminist, collective slow scholarship. It started from an ambitious, tightly crafted comparative proj­ect in 2012, to end up eight years l­ ater in an exciting, open-­ended conversation that went far beyond what I had first envisioned. The proj­ect benefited from unexpected disruptions, from the very personal to the geopo­liti­cal. I was blessed with two pregnancies in 2016 and 2018, followed by a maternity leave. Some initial contributors engaged in new c ­ areer paths outside of academia. One ghosted us. O ­ thers joined with ­great enthusiasm and brought unforeseen ideas and creativity. All the while, Brexit and Donald J. Trump’s presidency came about and led to increased levels of po­liti­cal uncertainty and distress. As this book fi­nally sees the light of day, the COVID-19 pandemic still challenges the neoliberal order we live in, leaving ­behind a trail of death and sickness. In the midst of it all, all collaborators tried to make every­thing hold together: our families, our work, our social relations. As we are still caught in the pandemic, the need to care for one another is deeply felt and experienced. More than ever, the spirit ­under which this proj­ect was carried inspires me: over the years, all contributors have showed incredible patience and kindness ­toward one another’s delays and disruptions. I want to thank all contributors for their commitment, their patience, and their support with this proj­ect. We held several meetings in Montreal to discuss dif­fer­ent versions of our contributions, but also to exchange on work that inspired us, to expose one another to ideas that excited us across disciplines. Established scholars who are stars in their own right have helped emerging ones; t­hose who would have benefited from quick, multiple publications showed a commitment to the long-­term, collective intellectual endeavor sought h ­ ere. In a context where the neoliberal university pushes us to always do more, publish more, and more quickly, one’s attitude of care and attentiveness ­toward one another needs to be lauded and underscored. I truly believe this helped in creating new possibilities, new ways of engaging with marriage, security, and citizenship that would other­w ise not have been pos­si­ble. I would also like to thank Péter Berta, editor of The Politics of Marriage and Gender: Global Issues in Local Contexts series at Rutgers University Press, for reaching out to me as early as 2015 to get this volume published. Our editor at 275

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Acknowl­edgments

Rutgers, Jasper Chang, supported our proj­ect as it unfolded. Thank you for your trust. My gratitude also extends to artist Laurence Finet, who kindly allowed us to use her beautiful work as our book cover. Thank you also to Nicole Sunday Grove and Mark Salter, who took the time to provide useful comments and feedback on this proj­ect while it was still in its infancy. I also would like to thank Katharine Charsley and V. Spike Peterson for their enthusiastic reviews of the final manuscript. This proj­ect would not have been pos­si­ble without the material and financial means to enact it. To that end, I would like to thank the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC, grant 435-2014-1794), whose financial support from 2014 to 2020 enabled us to hold regular workshop sessions and to create a long-­lasting multidisciplinary community across continents. Workshop organ­ization, data collection, and interview transcripts w ­ ere also made pos­si­ble thanks to the professional work of several students who have assisted me over the years: Camille Ranger, Olivier Grondin, Inès Sahmou, Sarah Benkirane, Alla Lebedeva, Andréanne Thibault, and Rainer Ricardo Sardinas. I am aware that I can do what I love and conduct my research ­because o ­ thers perform the care work my c ­ hildren need. I would also like to thank all the professional early childhood educators who have been taking such good care of my ­children, Victoria and Gabriel, since 2017. Knowing that they w ­ ere u ­ nder the skillful, nurturing, and creative care of Marie-­Hélène Rozon, Ruth Curiel, and Kathy and Michelle Garcia gave me the necessary peace of mind to pursue this long-­term research proj­ect. I would also like to thank my ­family and my in-­laws, who did not hesitate to step in when needed. A special and most heartfelt thanks to my close friend and collaborator Victor Alexandre Reyes Bruneau, who has provided me invaluable administrative and emotional support over the years. You are an amazing person; you make my work easier, and you enrich my life. Olivier Barsalou is one of the humblest yet smartest academics I know. My work has improved from your close reading and sharp comments, and your help and generosity for all t­hings work-­related during the COVID-19 confinement made all the difference. I feel very privileged to be your friend and to teach with you on a regular basis. I look forward to completing several upcoming academic proj­ects with you. Special thanks to Michael Orsini: your friendship and mentorship are precious, and they helped me get through the last steps of this proj­ect. You are an amazing, generous person and an inspiring scholar. Thank you for being ­there for me. I sincerely hope we ­w ill be able to work together soon. Fi­nally, none of this could have happened without the unstinting support of David Grondin, the most outstanding husband, friend, and intellectual peer I could imagine. Throughout the many years we have been together, you have been unflinchingly by my side, giving me the love, the support, the nurturing,



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and the space I needed to think, feel, and evolve to be where I want to be. You are a devoted, involved f­ ather, who always makes a point of equally sharing the work (and domestic chores) of parenthood with me. It is nothing short of amazing to see what we have achieved together. You make me a better person, thank you for every­thing. To Victoria and Gabriel: this is the start of a reflection about what your mom sees as especially impor­tant in this world—to have love and to be secure. I can only hope you ­w ill be blessed with both throughout your life.

NOT E S ON C ON T R I BU TO R S

KERRY ABRAMS is the James B. Duke and Benjamin N. Duke Dean and Profes-

sor of Law at the Duke University School of Law in Durham, North Carolina. Before becoming dean of the Duke Law School in 2018, she was the Albert Clark Tate, Jr., Research Professor of Law at the University of V ­ irginia School of Law, where she also served as vice provost for faculty affairs university-­wide. A scholar of immigration, citizenship, ­family, and constitutional law, Abrams is well known for her scholarly writing on family-­based migration, the ­legal regulation of immigrant families, and the history of immigration law in the United States. SASKIA BONJOUR is associate professor in po­liti­cal science at the University

of Amsterdam. She studies the politics of migration and citizenship in Eu­rope, with a par­tic­u­lar interest in the role of gender and ­family norms. She has published on the politics of f­ amily migration and civic integration, as well as on the role of the judiciary in policy making and on the impact of Eu­ro­pean Union policies on domestic politics. Bonjour is se­nior editor of the journal Migration Politics. Recent publications include The Routledge Handbook of the Politics of Migration in Eu­rope, co-­edited with Agnieszka Weinar and Lyubov Zhyznomirska, and the Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power special issue “Citizenship, Membership and Belonging in Mixed-­Status Families,” co-­edited with Betty de Hart. For further details and publications, see https://­w ww​.­uva​.­nl​/­profile​/­s​.­a​.­bonjour. ANNE-­M ARIE D’AOUST is an associate professor in the Department of Po­liti­

cal Science at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), Canada. Situated at the crossroads of critical security studies, international po­liti­cal sociology, and feminist and gender studies, her main research proj­ects center on the connections between love, governmentality, and security. Empirically, she investigates the development of a moral economy of trust and suspicion governing marriage and partner migration management. Theoretically, she aims to explore how love functions as a technology of government and what it means for subject making and po­liti­cal pro­cesses to say that love is a technology rather than a s­ imple emotion. Her work has been featured in the journals Champ pénal / Penal Field, International Po­liti­cal Sociology, and Environment and Planning D: Society and Space.

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For further details and publications, see https://­politique​.u ­ qam​.­ca​/­le​-­departement​ /­professeurs​-r­ eguliers​/­professeur​/­daoust​.­anne​-m ­ arie​/­. BETTY DE HART is a professor of transnational families and migration law at

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She conducts l­egal, empirical, and historical research on the national, Eu­ro­pean, and international rules that transnational families encounter, the views ­behind ­these rules, and the rules’ impact on the everyday lives of transnational families. Such research ­w ill provide new insights into the meaning of nationality, citizenship, and belonging. De Hart received a 2016 Eu­ro­pean Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant to establish an in­de­ pen­dent research team for her research proj­ect EUROMIX: Regulating Mixed Intimacies in Eu­rope. The proj­ect addresses the question of ­whether, how, and why “mixed” relationships are regulated in Eu­rope, how “mixed” c ­ ouples respond to regulation, and the role that law and ­lawyers play in the way that thinking about “race” has developed in Eu­rope. In 2007, she received a Vidi grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) for her research proj­ ect Transnational Families between Dutch and Islamic F ­ amily Law. De Hart has participated in several international research proj­ects and has published widely on (dual) citizenship, ­family reunification, gender and migration, mixed (status) families, race, and law. EITHNE LUIBHÉID is professor of gender and w ­ omen’s studies at the Univer-

sity of Arizona. Her research focuses on the connections among queer lives, racialization pro­cesses, state migration controls, and justice strug­gles. She is the author of Pregnant on Arrival: Making the Illegal Immigrant and Entry Denied: Controlling Sexuality at the Border. Luibhéid is the co-­editor of Queer and Trans Migrations: Dynamics of Illegalization, Detention, and Deportation, A Global History of Sexuality: The Modern Era, and Queer Migrations: Sexuality, U.S. Citizenship, and Border Crossings and editor of “Mi­grant and Refugee Lesbians: Lives That Resist Telling,” a special issue of Journal of Lesbian Studies, and “Queer Migrations,” a special issue of GLQ. AUDREY MACKLIN is professor of law, Rebecca Cook Chair in ­Human Rights

Law, and director of the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies at the University of Toronto. She teaches, researches, and publishes in migration, refugee, and citizenship law, business and ­human rights, and administrative law. From 2004 to 2006, she was a member of the Refugee Protection Division of the Immigration and Refugee Board. Her current research examines Canada’s private refugee sponsorship program. She is a 2017 Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation fellow and a Canadian Institute for Advanced Research fellow in the Bound­aries, Membership and Belonging Program. PARDIS MAHDAVI is currently dean of Social Sciences and director of the

School for Social Transformation at Arizona State University. Before coming to



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Arizona, she was acting dean of the Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver (2017–2019), ­after spending eleven years at Pomona College (2006–2017), where she most recently served as professor and chair of anthropology and director of the Pacific Basin Institute as well as dean of ­women. Her research interests include gendered ­labor, ­human trafficking, migration, sexuality, ­human rights, transnational feminism, and public health in the context of changing global and po­liti­cal structures. She has published four single-­authored books and one edited volume in addition to numerous journal and news articles. She has been a fellow at the Social Sciences Research Council, the American Council on Learned Socie­ties, Google Ideas, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. In 2018, she was appointed by Governor John Hickenlooper, Colorado, and reappointed by Governor Jared Polis to serve on the Colorado Commission on Higher Education. LAURA ODASSO is a researcher at the Chaire Migrations et Sociétés of the

Collège de France and a Collaborative Institute on Migrations fellow in Paris. She was the recipient of the Eu­ro­pean Marie Skłodowska Curie grant; hosted by the Group for Research on Ethnic Relations, Migrations and Equality, Université libre de Brussels (Belgium), between 2014 and 2016, she conducted the proj­ect AMORE—­Awareness and Migration: Organisations for bi-­national ­family Rights Empowerment. Characterized by a comparative and qualitative intersectional approach, her research is situated at the crossroads of sociology of f­ amily migration, l­egal sociology, and racial studies. Currently, she explores the intersection between migration policies and exiles’ intimacy u ­ nder the perspective of documentality. She is co-­editor, with A. Fillod-­Chabaud, of Faire et défaire les liens familiaux: Usages et pratiques du droit en contexte migratoire. For additional information, see https://­w ww​.­college​-­de​-­f rance​.­f r​/­site​/­f rancois​-­heran​/­quipe​.­htm. MASSILIA OURABAH is a PhD researcher at Ghent University in Belgium. She

is conducting a doctoral thesis on gender and eco-­friendly reproductive ­labor. Her main research focus is gender and forms of civic participation. She is the author of The Social Life of a Herstory Textbook: Bridging Institutionalism and Actor-­ Network Theory, a monograph that studies feminist academic activism in education through the articulation of two antagonistic so­cio­log­i­cal trends: inhabited institutionalism and actor-­network theory. RHACEL SALAZAR PARREÑAS is professor of sociology and gender and sexu-

ality studies at the University of Southern California. She writes on ­labor and migration with a par­tic­u­lar focus on the Philippines. She is the author of Servants of Globalization: Migration and Domestic Work. DANIEL PHAM is a practicing attorney based in Houston, Texas. A ­ fter graduat-

ing from the Duke University School of Law, where he was director of the Duke Immigrant and Refugee Proj­ect, he received an Equal Justice Works Fellowship

282

N otes on Contributors

and began his c ­ areer in public interest law. He currently works for the Equal Justice Center, a nonprofit that specializes in l­abor and employment law repre­sen­ ta­tion for low-­wage workers, regardless of their immigration status. He has successfully litigated a variety of l­abor and employment law claims, including wage theft, minimum wage and overtime, employment discrimination, and forced l­ abor and h ­ uman trafficking. MANUELA SALCEDO ROBLEDO received her doctorate in sociology and

po­liti­cal science from the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris. Her dissertation examined binational ­couples and their experiences with French immigration policies. Her research focuses on French and Eu­ro­pean ­family migration policies, gender and sexuality studies, and, recently, rumors and misinformation about gender and migration issues in Eu­rope. She is an associated researcher at the Laboratoire d’études de genre et de sexualité (LEGS, CNRS). GRACE K. TRAN is a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University’s Migrations

Initiative. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies, and was a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) doctoral fellow. Her advocacy, writing, and research interests stem from her experience working at an immigration law and consulting firm and at the nexus of disruption, resettlement, opportunity, and overwhelm that s­haped her parents’ own diasporic journey as Viet­nam­ese “boat ­people” refugees. Tran’s dissertation examines the ­legal regulation of transnational marriages and how intimacy, sexuality, marriage, and affect are transformed and negotiated along and past state borders. Her work has been published in the journal Ethnic and Racial Studies. MIEKE VANDENBROUCKE is tenure-­ track research professor in linguistic

pragmatics at the University of Antwerp. She was a Fulbright scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2016–2017. Her research interests lie at the intersection of sociolinguistics, pragmatics, and urban studies with an empirical focus on urban multilingualism, institutional encounters, and migration policy. She is the adjunct secretary general of the International Pragmatics Association. Her work has been published widely, including in the  Journal of Sociolinguistics, Language in Society, and Critical Discourse Studies. HELENA WRAY is associate professor in migration law at the University of

Exeter. Her research focuses on the regulation of f­amily, on which she has published widely. She led teams that provided expert evidence in test cases heard in the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court on pre-­entry language testing for spouses and on the financial conditions to be met by the sponsors of mi­grant spouses and partners. In 2015, she was the lead author of a major report on the financial requirements in the ­family migration rules and their impact on



N otes on Contributors

283

­children, commissioned by the ­Children’s Commissioner for E ­ ngland from Middlesex University and the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants and launched in Parliament. Since 2011, she has been editor of the Journal of Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Law. JI-­Y EON YUH is associate professor of history and a founding member of the

Asian American Studies Program at Northwestern University. Her current proj­ ects include a history of Koreans in China, Japan, and the United States; a study of reunification and K ­ orea peace activism in the Korean diaspora; an oral history of Asian Americans in the U.S. Midwest; and the Asian Diaspora Oral History Repository. She teaches courses on Asian American ­women’s history, war and migration, comparative race and gender, Asian diasporas, the Pacific World, legacies of the Korean War, and oral history theory and method. Yuh is the Midwest coordinator for the ­Korea Peace Now Grassroots Network and a core member of the Ending the Korean War Teaching Collective, and she has been a historical con­sul­tant for public history proj­ects such as Still Pre­sents Pasts, an exhibit on Korean Americans and the Korean War, and “Crossing East,” a radio documentary on Asian Americans.

IN D E X

Abrams, Kerry, 12 Ackerman, Bruce, 142 advancement strategies, 231–232, 238n3. See also money and pragmatism affiliation, 127, 128–132, 130, 136, 139–140, 142 agency, 67, 68, 72–73, 82n9–10. See also autonomy Aliens Circular (1975, Netherlands), 42 Alpes, M. J., 174–175 Amoureux au ban public (ABP), 13, 171, 173, 175, 176–177, 178–180, 181–185, 186n10 Andrus, J., 200 anti-­immigration, 125–127, 126, 142 AP v. Canada, 267. See also LGBTQ mi­grants and marriages Arjang, Amou, 213–216, 217, 222 assimilation, 96, 99 Association pour la reconnaissance des droits des personnes homosexuelles et transsexuelles a l’immigration et au séjour (Ardhis), 13, 173, 175, 177–181, 182–185 Association québécoise des avocats et avocates en droit de l’immigration (AQAADI), 157 associations and associative ­labour, 173, 175–176, 179–185. See also bureaucratic structures asylum seekers. See refugees and asylum seekers attrition through enforcement, 252, 253, 256n19 autonomy, 78–80, 127, 132–134, 138, 139, 141, 142, 144n17 Bancroft, George, 259 Barrett, Amy Coney, 141 Bauman, R., 192 Belgium, 13–14, 189–203 belonging: and f­ amily migration (France), 61–62; and ­family migration, constructions of, 49–51; and Ira­n ian mi­grants (Japan), 210, 213; and marriages of con­ve­n ience, 32; and migration, marriage and partner, 7, 17; and migration, regulation of, 3, 9–11, 12, 15, 101. See also identity Benjamin, Walter, 6 Berashk, Kanishka, 139 Biden administration, 18, 125, 126, 127, 142, 261

birthright citizenship, 126. See also citizenship Blachly, Rebecca Linder, 129 bodies and embodiment, 8–9, 13, 14 Bogus Marriages Prevention Act (Netherlands, 1994), 36, 41, 42 Boissevain, Jeremy, 174, 183 Bonjour, Saskia, 11, 61, 134, 261 borders and bound­a ries, 3, 18, 125–126, 155–156, 211, 259, 264 Bouagga, Y., 175 Bourdieu, Pierre, 160 Brassens, George, 177 Bray, I., 95 breastfeeding, 131 Brennan, Denise, 227, 231, 238n3 Brexit, 18, 262 brides. See Korean marriage mi­grants Briggs, C. L., 192 brokers, marriage: ABP, 176–177; Ardhis, 177–179; and dam cuoi gia, 111–117, 120; and efficiency vs. emotions, 179–180; overview and context, 13, 172–173, 174–179; personal stories of, 180–182; recognition and transaction of, 183–184, 185; types of, 185n5. See also bureaucratic structures Brown, Jerry, 136, 145n23 Bucholtz, M., 192 bureaucratic structures: and language use, 194, 200, 203; and marriage brokerage, 172–184; and marriage files, construction of, 158–159; and marriage migration, state regulation of, 12–14, 264, 265, 270; and marriages of con­ve­nience, 42–43, 110, 120, 153–158, 160, 189–190, 193, 200–203 Bush, George W., 209 Calderon, Lilian, 133, 134 Canada: and deportation, 262; forced sterilization in, 270–271, 272n6; ­lawyers and moral economy of suspicion in, 13, 153–168; marriage and land access in, 4; permanent residency in, 19n9; and Vietnamese-­Canadian fake weddings, 12, 106–123 care economies, 14–15 Carver, Natasha, 3 Chai, Alice Y., 73, 79

2 85

286 INDEX

chain migration, 15, 261. See also Trump administration Chappe, V.-­A., 175 Charsley, Katherine, 121, 254 Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Canada), 262 Chaubal, Nina, 241, 249–251, 252, 253, 254 Chetrit, S. L., 95 childcare, 18, 226 ­children: and deportation (U.S.), 251; and ­family law, 262; and f­ amily reunification (France), 51, 56, 57, 61, 93; and ­f amily reunification (U.S.), 18, 125, 126, 128–131, 132, 133, 135, 136; of Korean mi­grants (U.S.), 70, 79–80; and marriage migration (Netherlands), 41–42; and marriage migration, state regulation of, 16, 101, 261, 269–270, 271; and Obergefell v. Hodges, 140; and residential schools, 272n6; and statutory f­ amily rights (U.S.), 137, 138 Chin, Christine B. N., 210 Chirac, Jacques, 57 Church World Ser­v ice, 129 citizenship: and deportation (U.S.), 243, 249, 253; and f­ amily and marriage migration (France), 62, 172; and f­ amily migration, constructions of, 50–51; and f­ amily reunification (U.S.), 131–132, 134, 137; of Filipina hostesses (Japan), 233–237; and gender, 33; and intimacy in Japan, 225; and Ira­nian mi­grants (Japan), 210; and Korean mi­grants (U.S.), 67; and LGBTQ marriage against deportation, 241–242; and marriage migration, state regulation of, 87, 98–101, 107, 109, 264, 271; and marriages of con­ve­nience, 32, 35, 41, 42, 43, 191; meanings and methodology, 5–8; and migration, marriage and partner, 3, 15–16, 17; and military ser­v ice, 256n17; and performativity, 120, 208; and prostitution, 38; and security and rights, 4, 9–12; and state and f­ amily, relationship of, 259–260, 263; and statutory ­family rights (U.S.), 138; and Trump administration, 126, 129, 132 civil ­unions (PACS), 177–178 class and socioeconomic status: and dam cuoi gia, 110–111, 113, 118, 119; and deportation (U.S.), 248, 253–254; and ­family migration (France), 53; and Filipina mi­grants (Japan), 231; and Ira­nian mi­grants (Japan), 222; and marriage migration, state regulation of, 7, 89, 91–92, 96, 98–99, 265, 267–268, 270; and marriages of con­ve­nience, 32, 33, 34, 38, 39, 40, 44; and migration policies (U.S.), 245–247, 255n6; and state and f­ amily, relationship of, 260; and undocumented mi­grants (U.S.), 247–248 Cold War, 1, 3 colonialism, 3–4, 60, 63, 77, 242, 262 Commission on ­Human Rights (U.N.), 1. See also rights complicity, networks of, 110, 122. See also bureaucratic structures confluent love, 228, 238n4. See also love and intimacy

Conron, K., 248 Constable, Nicole, 208, 227 constellations (theoretical term), 5–7, 8, 16 constitutional laws and rights, 12, 88, 90, 127, 137–143. See also rights con­ve­nience, marriages of. See marriages of con­ve­nience Coontz, Stephanie, 228 Cott, Nancy F., 228 courtship rituals, 235. See also love and intimacy coverture, 137–138. See also laws and policies COVID-19 pandemic, 18, 142 crimmigration, 242 dam cuoi gia (DCG): and authenticity, 120; definition, 123n2; impacts of, 120–121; and masculinity, 119–120; moral justifications for, 122–123; and networks of complicity, 110, 118; oral stories of, 110–119; overview, 12, 106–108. See also marriages of con­ve­nience D’Aoust, Anne-­Marie, 13, 110, 254, 263, 267 Das Gupta, Monisha, 242 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA, U.S.), 243–244, 245 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA, U.S.), 251 De Genova, Nicolas, 243 de Hart, Betty, 10–11, 51, 61, 92 D’Emilio, John, 228 Denmark, 87–89, 91, 94, 95, 96–98 Department of Health and H ­ uman Ser­v ices (DHHS. U.S.), 125, 130 Department of Homeland Security (DHS, U.S.), 125, 130 deportation: and Eu­ro­pean Convention on ­Human Rights, 262; in France, 57, 61; and Ira­nian mi­grants (Japan), 209, 218, 223n1; and marriages of con­ve­nience, 43; same­sex marriage and re­sis­tance to, 240–242, 244, 248–254; in U.S., 15, 90, 126, 242–243 detention: in Japan, 219; and LGBTQ mi­grants, 240, 242–243, 249, 250, 251; and marriages of con­ve­nience, 93; and migration control (U.S.), 18, 132–133, 241, 242, 249, 252, 255n10; and Trump administration, 125, 132 deviance: and governmentality, 12; and LGBTQ individuals, 241; and marriages of con­ve­n ience, 32, 40; and migration, marriage and partner, 54, 61–62, 265, 269; and normative controls, 57 Dijoud, Paul, 49, 52 Din, Fauzia, 139, 140–141, 142 divorce, 232, 236–237, 263 Dua, E., 120 dual citizenship, 259. See also citizenship Dutch Nationality Act (1985), 42 economic crises, 34, 36–37, 51 education, 136, 221 efficiency, 179–180 Ehrlich, S., 191 Eichner, M., 136 Ellermann, Antje, 99

I N D E X 287

Eloy Detention Center (U.S.), 250 Emirbayer, M., 6 emotion or affect: and bureaucratic structures, 12–13; and dam cuoi gia, 111–115, 116–117, 118–119, 120–122; definitions, 8, 20n12; and deportation, 253; and f­ amily separation, re­sis­tance to, 128–129, 131, 133; and Filipina hostesses (Japan), 15, 225–226, 229–232, 234–238; and Ira­n ian mi­grants (Japan), 207–208, 210–211, 213, 215–222; and linguistic-­d iscursive evidence, 198, 200; and marriage brokerage, 173, 175, 179, 180, 182–183; and marriage migration, control of, 14, 87, 172, 269; and marriages of con­ve­nience, 12, 107, 108, 155, 165–166; vs. pragmatism, 226–229; and security-­ citizenship-­rights, 8–9 endured migration, 49, 172 entered without inspection (EWI), 247–248 entextualization, 192–193, 199–200, 201, 203 eugenics, 270–271 Eu­rope: and ­family norms, 58, 63; ­family reunification in, 89, 260, 269; and marriage and f­ amily migration, control of, 10, 11, 31, 49, 50, 88, 262; and migration, gendered discourses of, 56, 60. See also specific countries Eu­ro­pean Convention on ­Human Rights, 43, 90, 93, 262, 266 Eu­ro­pe­anization, 31–32, 33, 34, 37, 41, 43–44 Eu­ro­pean Union (EU), 9, 32, 34, 37, 44, 90–91, 261. See also specific countries extended families, 135. See also ­family Faist, Thomas, 175, 185n5 fake weddings. See marriages of con­ve­nience Families Belong Together protests, 126 ­family: and advancements strategies, 228, 231–232, 238n3; and Ira­n ian mi­grants (Japan), 210, 216; and marriages of con­ve­ nience, 32; and normative controls, 11–12, 49–51, 53–54, 56–63, 87, 89, 94–97, 156, 179, 246; of picture brides, 68, 77, 78; and sinse taryeong, 71, 73, 74, 76–77, 79; and state, relationship of, 3, 4, 33, 259–262, 266; and transgender hostesses (Japan), 234, 236 ­family reunification and migration: Dutch policies of, 31–32, 37, 41–42, 43; in EU, 45n7, 87, 89, 90, 91, 99, 101; and ­family, constructions of, 51, 94, 95–96; vs. ­family formation, 260–261, 269; in France, 49–65, 52, 55, 56, 90, 92, 176; and ­human rights, 34, 44, 93, 262; in ­Korea, 69; and marriages of con­ve­n ience, 31, 32, 39, 41, 43; moral arguments for (U.S.), 128–137; overview, 3, 9–11, 17–18; and security, 5, 33; and statutory and constitutional rights (U.S.), 137–142; in U.S., 4, 12, 88, 90, 95, 125, 126, 127 ­Family Reunification Directive (EU), 34, 90, 91, 92 Fassin, Didier, 8, 50, 154, 155, 160 fate, 72–73, 82n10 feminism, 8, 9, 10, 38, 50, 70, 111

fertility, 53. See also reproduction, sexual First Nations. See Indigenous p ­ eoples First World War, 34 Fischer, N., 153, 157 folk m ­ usic, 70–71 Forster, E. M., 263 Foucault, Michel, 19n11, 155 France: and f­ amily migration, parliamentary debates, 49–65; and f­ amily unity, constitutional, 90, 92; Love Knows No Borders campaign, 126; marriage brokerage in, 13, 171–186; and marriages of con­ve­nience, 92–93; and spousal migration, regulation of, 11, 87–88, 89, 91, 92–93, 99–100 fraud. See marriages of con­ve­nience Freedman, Estelle, 228 freedom of movement, 1–2, 9, 11, 34, 45n7, 90, 91, 102n3 Friedman, Sara L., 208 Front National (FN), 57, 63 gatekeeping, moral, 165 Gates, Gary J., 244 gaze, embodied, 6–7 gender: and dam cuoi gia, 113, 118, 119–120; and deportation (U.S.), 242–243, 253; and ­family migration (France), 49, 50, 52–54, 56, 57, 59, 60–63; and Filipina hostesses (Japan), 233, 235–236; and intimacy, control of, 94; and Ira­nian mi­grants (Japan), 208, 209–210, 211–212, 214, 217, 220–222, 223; and Korean mi­grants (U.S.), 67, 69–70, 78–79, 80; and l­ abor vs. spousal migration, 89; and love vs. money, 227–229; and marriage migration, state regulation of, 98, 245, 265; and marriages of con­ve­nience, 32–33, 34, 38–39, 40, 41–42, 43–44, 92, 165–166; and migration, marriage and partner, 7, 14, 33; and state and f­ amily, relationship of, 260; and statutory f­ amily rights (U.S.), 137–138 Germany, 10, 16, 35 Giddens, Anthony, 228, 235, 238n4 Giscard d’Estaing, Valéry, 51 globalization, 39, 89 Golash-­B oza, Tanya, 242 Goldberg, S. K., 248 Gomberg-­Muñoz, R., 247 Goodman, Carly, 134 Goodridge v. Dep’t of Pub. Health, 139, 141 Gorsuch, Neil M., 141 governmentality, 4, 7–8, 9, 12–14, 154–155, 172, 183. See also security ­Great Britain. See United Kingdom Griswold v. Connecticut, 140 Groes, C., 123 Gruberg, Sharita, 242–243, 249, 254, 255n15 Hammar, Sam, 129 han, 71, 82n5 Harper, Stephen, 109 Hawai‘i, 68, 69, 73, 77 health care, 36, 136, 246 Hernández, Guillermo, 240, 241, 250, 251–252, 253, 254

288 INDEX

Hernandez, Maria, 136 Hershatter, Gail, 232 Hitler, Adolf, 35 Hjälm, Anna, 211 Holland. See Netherlands Honohan, Iseult, 130, 131 hostesses, mi­grant: and citizenship, 233–237; and emotion vs. pragmatism, intersection of, 226–229, 229–232; and marriage migration, overview, 225–226; personal stories of, 229–232; and residency strategies, 238n3; and sex work, 238n2 hostile environment policy, 264–265. See also United Kingdom; zero-­tolerance policy humanitarian marriages, 10. See also deportation ­human rights. See rights Hyndman, J., 120 identity: and citizenship, 134; and dam cuoi gia, 112–113, 119, 121; and ­family migration (France), 55, 57, 58–59, 61–63; and Ira­nian mi­grants (Japan), 208, 210, 220–221, 223; and Korean mi­grants (U.S.), 78–79, 80–81; and marriage, 98; and marriage brokerage (France), 175–176, 183; and marriage fraud, 109; and spousal migration, control of, 94, 98–99; and state and f­ amily, relationship of, 50; and transgender hostesses (Japan), 234, 235, 236; of U.S., immigration and, 101. See also belonging illegalism, 153–154. See also suspicion and trust immigration. See migration, marriage and partner Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), 153, 159 Immigration Act (1965, U.S.), 138 Immigration Act (2014, U.K.), 94 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE): and Chaubal/Martela case, 250; and deportation, 136, 248–249; and detention, 132, 249, 255n10; and Hernández/Swann case, 251–252; and sanctuary policies, 128, 135–136; and sterilization, illegal, 18, 271 Immigration and Nationality Act (INA, U.S.), 138, 139, 141 Immigration and Naturalization Ser­v ice (IND, Netherlands), 43 immobility, 207–208, 210–211, 213, 215–218, 219–222. See also detention imperialism, 15, 88. See also colonialism income thresholds, 245. See also class and socioeconomic status Indigenous ­peoples (North Amer­i­ca), 4, 270–271 Infantino, Federica, 160 Interfaith Immigration Co­a li­tion, 129 interpreters, 195–199 intersection and intersectionality: and deportation, 240, 247; and Ira­nian mi­grants (Japan), 221–222; and l­ awyers as po­liti­cal actors, 157, 160; of love and money, 226, 229; and marriages of con­ve­n ience, 32,

38, 108–110, 113, 122; and migration, marriage and partner, 7, 11–12, 13, 14, 18; and mobility and immobility, 207, 208, 213, 217; and same-­sex marriages, 244, 248, 254; and security-­citizenship-­rights, 50–51, 242–243 intimacy. See love and intimacy Ira­n ian mi­grants (Japan): and affect and mobility, 216–217, 219–221; bachelors, stories of, 213–216; history of, 208–209; methodology for study of, 212–213; security and subjectivity of, 210; terminology, 210–212; wives, stories of, 217–220 Ira­nian Revolution, 208, 210 Isin, Engin F., 10 Islamophobia, 55, 57, 96–97, 100, 209. See also racism and racial discourses; travel ban Japan: Filipina mi­grant hostesses in, 15, 225–239; Ira­nian mi­grants in, 14, 208–223; and Korean marriage mi­grants, 67; and Korean picture brides, 68; military brides from, 4; same-­sex marriages in, 109, 233, 236 Jewish migration, 10, 35 Jospin, Lionel, 178 Kavanaugh, Brett, 141 Ke-­Man, Lee, 73–75, 77–78 Kennedy, Anthony M., 140, 141 Kerry v. Din, 127, 139, 140–142 Kobelinsky, C., 8 Kofman, Eleonore, 99 Korean marriage mi­grants: and autonomy, 78–80; oral stories of, 73–75; overview, 67–68; as picture and military brides, 68–70; and sinse taryeong, 70–73, 80–81; and ste­reo­t ypes, challenges to, 75–77 Kraft, Collen, 130 Kulick, Don, 233 ­labor migration: and ­family migration, 11–12; in France, 49, 51, 52; of Ira­ni­ans to Japan, 208–210; and Korean marriage mi­grants, 70; to Netherlands, 36; and spousal migration, 89, 91 Lakhani, S. M., 121 land access, 4 language, 91–92, 99–100, 189, 190–203, 210–211, 268 Latour, Bruno, 185n4 laws and policies: and associations (France), 175–176; constitutional ­family rights (U.S.), 138–143; and deportation (U.S.), 242–243, 248–249, 251; and ­family and marriage migration (France), 51–52, 54–61, 63, 172, 176, 185nn6–7; and ­family reunification (U.S.), 127–128, 131–132, 133, 134–137; and ­family reunification vs. formation, 260–261; identity and transformative effects of, 121; and l­ abor migration, 36; and marriage migration, state regulation of, 10–12, 88–101, 261–262, 264–268; and marriages of con­ve­n ience, 31, 33–34, 37, 41–43, 44,

I N D E X 289

107, 108–109, 189; and migration to Japan, 209, 217–218; and military ser­v ice, 256n17; and permanent residency (Japan), 225, 233; and same-­sex ­u nions, 177, 233, 236, 243–244, 245–246; of sanctuary, 128–129; and statutory f­ amily rights (U.S.), 137–138; and Trump administration, 125–126; and undocumented mi­grants (U.S.), 247–248 ­lawyers: and marriage files, construction of, 158–160, 162–165; and marriage migration, state regulation of, 264; and marriages of con­ve­nience, 155–158; and moral po­liti­cal economy of suspicion, 13, 153–154, 160–163, 165–167. See also bureaucratic structures Le Pen, Jean-­Marie, 57 LGBTQ mi­grants and marriages: challenges for, 17–18, 245–247; and deportation (U.S.), 240–243, 244, 248–254; and Filipina hostesses (Japan), 226, 229, 233–237; in Japan, 109, 233, 236; and ­legal status (U.S.), 243–244, 247–248; and marriage brokerage associations, 177–179, 183; and moral po­liti­cal economy of suspicion, 159–160; in Netherlands, 32; in U.S., 94, 129, 139–140 liable to become public charge (LPC), 245–246. See also class and socioeconomic status Liem, Ramsay, 72 Lister, Matthew, 133, 144n18 love and intimacy: and dam cuoi gia, 107, 108, 113–115, 116–117, 120, 121, 122; and ­f amily migration (France), 50, 54, 59–60, 61; and ­family reunification (U.S.), 126, 129; and Filipina hostesses (Japan), 15, 225–226, 229–238; and Korean marriage mi­grants (Japan), 75, 76–77, 78; and marriage brokerage (France), 172, 173, 175, 179, 180, 183, 185; and marriage file construction (Canada), 158–160, 162–165, 163–164; and marriage migration, state regulation of, 87, 90, 91, 94–97, 101, 265–267, 269, 270; and marriages of con­ve­nience, 31, 40, 109–110, 155, 189; migration and policing of, 12–14, 208; and money, intersection of, 15, 226–229; and moral po­liti­cal economy of suspicion, 154, 165–166, 167; and state and f­ amily, relationship of, 260, 261, 263, 268–269 Loving Day, 177, 186n9 Luibhéid, Eithne, 15, 120 Macklin, Audrey, 15–16, 18, 90, 168n6, 231, 254 Mahdavi, Pardis, 10, 14–15, 81 marriage brokers. See brokers, marriage marriages of con­ve­nience: Canadian regulation of, 12, 108–110, 153, 153–155, 168n3; and deportation (U.S.), 249, 251; Dutch regulation of, 10–11, 34–43; in Eu­ro­pean context, 33–34, 43–44; and Filipina hostesses (Japan), 226; French regulation of, 11, 58–59, 92–94; and ­lawyers as po­liti­cal actors, 155–158, 160; and linguistic-­ discursive evidence (Belgium), 189–203; and moral po­liti­cal economy of suspicion, 154–155, 165, 190, 191; overview and theoretical context, 31–33, 108–110; state

regulation of, 266, 267; U.K. regulation of, 265; U.S. regulation of, 88, 95, 96 “Marriage Used to Prevent Deportation, A” (Yee), 246 Martela, Greta, 241, 249–251, 252, 253, 254 masculinity, 50, 119, 233. See also gender Maskens, Maité, 10 Mauroy, Pierre, 55 Maynard v. Hill, 140 McCullough, John, 129 memory, 67, 68, 69, 81, 203 men: and citizenship, 133; and deportation (U.S.), 242; and f­ amily migration (France), 53, 59; and identity, 145n19; Ira­nian mi­grants (Japan), 210, 211–212, 213–217, 220, 221–222; and marriages of con­ve­n ience, 38–39, 41–42, 44; and statutory f­ amily rights (U.S.), 137 Menjívar, C., 121 Messinger, Irene, 35 methodologies, 4–7, 8–9, 16–18, 19n10, 193–194, 212–213, 244 migration, marriage and partner: and bureaucratic structures, 12–14; and care economies, 14–15; definitions and methodology, 19n10; and Filipina hostesses (Japan), 15, 225–239; and French parliamentary debates, 11, 49–65; histories and legacies of, 10–11; and intimacy brokers (France), 13, 171–186; and Ira­n ian mi­grants, im/ mobility of (Japan), 14–15, 207–223; and Korean marriage mi­grants, 11, 67–83; ­lawyers and moral economy of (Canada), 13, 153–168; and LGBTQ marriage against deportation, 15, 240–256; and marriages of con­ve­nience (Netherlands), 10–11, 31–46; and oral narratives and fraud (Belgium), 13–14, 189–203; and rights, stratification of, 11–12; and security-­citizenship-­rights, 1–10, 16–18; and state and f­ amily, relationship of, 259–272, 266; state regulation of, 10, 11–12, 15–16, 87–103, 261–266, 267–269, 270–271; and temporality, regulation through, 269–270; in Trump era, moral economies of, 12, 125–146; and Vietnamese-­C anadian fake weddings, 12, 106–123 migration studies, 67, 72, 81n1, 82n9, 121–122 military brides, Korean: and autonomy, 78–80; demographics, 73; history and overview, 68–70; and sinse taryeong, 11, 70, 72–73, 75, 80–81; and ste­reo­t ypes, challenges to, 75–77, 78 military ser­v ice, 252, 256n17 Mitterrand, François, 55, 57 mobility and immobility, 207–208, 210–211, 213, 215–218, 219–222 modernity, 31, 96 money and pragmatism: and Filipina mi­grants (Japan), 15, 225–232, 234, 235–237, 266–267; and Vietnamese-­Canadian fake weddings, 12, 107, 108, 111, 114, 116, 119–121 monogamy, 4, 49, 99, 183. See also normative controls

290 INDEX

morality: and constitutional rights (U.S.), 137–142; and dam cuoi gia, 111, 112–113, 116, 118, 119–120, 122; and f­ amily reunification (U.S.), 12, 126, 127, 128–137, 142; and Filipina hostesses (Japan), 225, 229–230, 232, 237; and love vs. money, 226; and marriage, conceptions of, 15; and marriage migration (France), 172, 174; and marriages of con­ve­nience, 31, 32, 34–36; and migration, marriage and partner, 12–13 moral po­l iti­cal economy of suspicion. See suspicion and trust motherhood, 79–80. See also parents and parenthood Mountz, A., 120 Murguía, Janet, 135 Muslim ban (U.S.), 126, 128, 132, 135, 142. See also Islamophobia Native Americans. See Indigenous p ­ eoples natu­ral affiliation, 127, 128–132, 136, 139–140, 142 naturalization, 42, 92, 100, 107, 119, 253 Nazism, 270 neoliberalism, 14, 99, 100 Netherlands, 10–11, 16, 32, 34–35, 35–44, 45n7, 268 New Deal (U.S.), 143 Nielsen, Kirstjen, 130 Nolasco, L., 251 normative controls: and dam cuoi gia, 107, 113, 115, 118, 120, 122; and ­family and marriage migration (France), 50, 54, 56–63, 172; and immigration eugenics, 270–271; and ­lawyers as po­liti­cal actors, 157; and LGBTQ ­couples, 160, 246–247; and marriage brokerage (France), 175, 179, 183; and marriage files, construction of (Canada), 159–160, 162–165; and marriage migration, state regulation of, 12, 16, 87, 91, 94–101, 263, 265–266, 267, 269; and marriages of con­ve­nience, 33, 43–44, 92–93, 109, 153–154, 155, 156, 190; and moral po­liti­cal economy of suspicion, 164, 165–166, 167; and statutory f­ amily rights (U.S.), 137–138 Nussbaum, Martha C., 130 Obama administration, 248, 252, 256n16 Obergefell v. Hodges, 127, 139–140, 141, 244 Odasso, Laura, 13, 51, 167, 263 odd ­couple trope, 32, 33, 40, 41, 44 oral evidence and interviews, 189–203 oral histories, 67, 70, 71–75, 81 ordered circulation, 5, 9. See also security Ourabah, Massilia, 11, 134, 261 Pacific War, 209 pansori, 71 parents and parenthood: and ­f amily reunification (U.S.), 125, 127, 128–129, 131, 133, 134–135, 136, 261; and marriages of con­ve­ nience, 32, 49; migration and conceptions of, 50, 56, 57, 58, 61; and state regulation, 16, 18 Park, J., 192

Park, Kyeyoung, 72 Parreñas, Rhacel Salazar, 10, 15, 109, 260, 266 Pasqua, Charles, 57 Pavlov, Aleksei P., 1 performativity: and citizenship, 208; and dam cuoi gia, 12, 106, 110–113, 115, 117–118, 120; and marriage migration, state regulation of, 267; and sex work, 238n3 Pham, Daniel, 12 photo­graphs, 43, 110, 111–112, 113, 117–118, 162, 163–165 picture brides, Korean: and autonomy, 78–80; demographics, 73; history and overview, 68–70; and rebellion, 75, 77–78, 79; and sinse taryeong, 11, 70, 72–75, 80–81 police, 35, 42, 57, 135–136, 192, 201, 242, 248. See also Immigration and Customs Enforcement polygamy, 54, 56, 58, 59–61, 62, 100 pragmatism. See money and pragmatism pre-­integration tests, 261, 263, 267–268 presumption, rule of (Denmark), 97 primary purpose rule (U.K.), 11 professionalism, 154, 157, 160–161, 173 prostitution, 35, 36, 38, 42, 226, 238n2 Purchase of Intimacy (Zelizer), 226 queering and queer theory: and citizenship, 9, 10; and deportation, 15; and emotions or affect, 8; and Filipina hostesses (Japan), 15, 225–226, 229, 233–238; and marriage migration, state regulation of, 266–267; and migration studies, 16, 18, 241. See also LGBTQ mi­grants and marriages quota system (U.S.), 88, 138 racism and racial discourses: and Asian communities, 4, 82n15, 83n18; and dam cuoi gia, 120; and deportation (U.S.), 248, 253; and f­ amily migration (Eu­rope), 50; and ­family migration (France), 53–54, 55, 57, 60–61, 62, 63; and immigration eugenics, 270–271; and intimacy, control of, 94; and Ira­nian mi­grants (Japan), 220, 221–222; and Korean marriage mi­grants, 67, 68–70, 76–77; and LGBTQ mi­grant marriages, 241; and marriage brokerage (France), 182; and marriage migration, state regulation of, 91, 95, 96–97, 98, 100, 263, 265, 268–269; and marriages of con­ve­nience, 32–35, 38, 39–40, 43–44, 92, 109, 153, 165; and migration, marriage and partner, 4, 7, 13, 261; and migration control (U.S.), 126, 128, 132, 243, 245, 246–248; and residency in Japan, 228; and sexuality, policing of, 10; and state and f­ amily, relationship of, 260 rationality, 14, 203, 225, 226 reduplicative validation, 190–191, 192, 200–201, 203 refugees and asylum seekers: and deportation, 243; and l­ abor migration, 89; LGBTQ, 160, 249; and migration agency, 72; and moral

I N D E X 291

economies, 154; state regulation of, 35, 172, 191, 266; and Trump administration, 261 religious ideology, 129, 144n17 reproduction, sexual, 33, 53–54, 129, 233, 238n4, 270–271 residential schools, 272n6 re­sis­tance: and citizenship, 10; and dam cuoi gia, 106; to ­family reunification policies (U.S.), 126, 128–131, 132, 135–136; and Korean marriage mi­grants, 79; and LGBTQ marriage against deportation, 240–241, 247, 248–254; and sanctuary policies, 128–129, 135–136; and sinse taryeong, 75, 77–78 reunification. See ­family reunification and migration rights: of ­children, 130–131; and citizenship, 9–11; and deportation (U.S.), 253–254; and ­family and marriage migration (France), 49–52, 54–55, 56, 57–58, 62, 172; and f­ amily reunification (EU), 34, 262; and ­family reunification (U.S.), 127, 130, 131–132, 133–134, 137–143, 262; and freedom of movement, 1–3, 45n7, 90; and LGBTQ marriage, 109, 129, 233, 236; and LGBTQ marriage against deportation, 241–242; and marriage brokerage (France), 175–176, 179; and marriage migration, state regulation of, 87, 88, 90–91, 93, 97, 101; and marriages of con­ve­nience, 42, 43, 44, 191; meanings and methodology, 5–8; and migration, marriage and partner, 11–12, 15; and security, 4–5; stratification of, 11–12 risk management: and dam cuoi gia, 108, 116; and French citizens, 172; and immigration requirements, 268; and ­lawyers as po­liti­cal actors, 13, 160–162, 164; and marriages of con­ve­nience, 43, 110, 153, 154, 155–156; and security, 4–5, 17; and separation policies, 136, 251 Roo­se­velt, Eleanor, 1 Rousseau, Jean-­Jacques, 136, 145n25 Sadiq, K., 110, 122 Sahraoui, N., 6 Salcedo Robledo, Manuela, 13, 51, 160, 167, 263 same-­sex marriages. See LGBTQ mi­grants and marriages sanctuary movement, 128–129, 135–136 Sarkozy, Nicolas, 49, 53, 261 Satzewich, Victor, 156 Sauter, C., 6 Sawicki, F., 175 Scalia, Antonin, 140, 141 Scheel, S., 161, 162 Schewel, Kerilyn, 211 Schmidt, Garbi, 98 Schweitzer, R., 9 Second World War, 35 security: and affect, 208; and bureaucratic structures, 12–13; and citizenship, 9–10; and dam cuoi gia, 122; and deportation

(U.S.), 242–243, 253–254; and f­ amily and marriage migration (France), 50–51, 52, 55, 56, 57, 59, 62–63, 172; and f­ amily reunification (U.S.), 126, 127, 141; and gender, 33; and governmentality, 7–8, 155; and immigration control, 88; and Ira­nian mi­grants (Japan), 210, 216–217, 218–219, 220; and Korean marriage migration, 67; and l­ awyers as po­liti­cal actors, 160–161; and LGBTQ marriage against deportation, 241–242; and marriage in Japan, 227–228; and marriage migration, state regulation of, 3, 4–5, 90, 91–94, 101, 245; and marriages of con­ve­nience, 31–32, 33–34, 41, 43–44, 109, 110, 120; meanings and methodology, 4, 5–8, 19n10; and migration, marriage and partner, 5, 15–16, 17; and moral economy of suspicion, 154, 167; and normative controls, 12, 94; and state and f­ amily, relationship of, 263; and undocumented mi­grants (U.S.), 247 selected migration, 172 separation policies, 15, 125–126, 128–130, 132–134, 134–137, 142, 261 sex and sexuality: and citizenship, 10, 172; and dam cuoi gia, 113; and deportation, 253; and love in marriage, 230, 237, 267; and marriage migration, state regulation of, 9, 33, 38, 49, 50, 89, 159, 241; and marriages of con­ve­n ience, 31, 32, 43, 95; and prostitution, 35; vs. reproduction, 238n4; and transgender hostesses (Japan), 233–236. See also LGBTQ mi­grants and marriages sex work, 226, 227, 238n2, 238n3 shamanism, 70–71 sham marriages. See marriages of con­ve­nience Shebaya, Sirine, 132 Shonkoff, Jack P., 130 Siméant, J., 175 sinse taryeong: agency in, 72–73; history and description, 70–71; and lamentations of brides, 73–75; as narrative mode and motif, 71–72, 80–81, 82n7; overview, 11, 67, 68; rebellion in, 77–78; and ste­reo­t ypes, challenges to, 75–77 Sjoberg, Laura, 33 slavery, 134, 137 Solis, G., 240 Soviet Union, 1–3, 18n1 Spire, A., 153, 157 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, 60, 247 sponsors, 39–41, 107–108, 121, 122, 138, 156, 245, 263–264 spousal migration. See migration, marriage and partner stability, social, 127, 134–137, 140, 141, 142 state: bureaucratic structures of, 12–14; and deportation (U.S.), 252–253; and emotions, control of, 179, 208; and families, relationship of, 3, 136, 259–261, 262, 266; and f­ amily and marriage migration (France), 50–51, 54, 55,

292 INDEX

state (continued) 58–59, 61–63, 172; and ­family reunification (U.S.), 127, 141, 243, 245; and Filipina hostesses (Japan), 226, 232; and marriage brokerage (France), 180; and marriage migration (Canada), 106–107, 155–156; and marriage migration, state regulation of, 4, 10, 14–16, 89–91, 96–101, 261–266, 267–271; and marriages of con­ve­n ience, 31–34, 36–38, 42, 44, 109–110, 114–115, 120, 122, 154; and statutory ­family rights (U.S.), 138; and terminology, 19n10 sterilization, forced, 18, 270–271, 272n6 Stoler, Ann Laura, 3, 50 suffering, 71, 72, 73–75, 80, 82n5 Sunoo, Sonia Shinn, 73, 82n11 supranational law, 88, 89, 90, 91, 101. See also laws and policies suspicion and trust: and Filipina hostesses (Japan), 232; and Ira­nian mi­grants (Japan), 215, 221; and l­ awyers as po­liti­cal actors, 156–167; and marriage brokerage (France), 175, 176; and marriage migration, state regulation of, 92, 243, 266; and marriages of con­ve­n ience (Belgium), 190, 191, 192, 194, 199, 200–203; and marriages of con­ve­n ience (Canada), 153–154, 155–156, 157, 165–166, 167; and marriages of con­ve­n ience (Netherlands), 40, 42–43, 44; and migration, marriage and partner, 12–14; and migration control (France), 59, 172; moral po­liti­cal economy of, 13, 154–155; and transnational families, 260 Suzuki, Nobue, 227 Swann, Tom, 240, 241, 250, 251–252, 253, 254, 256n17 targeong, 70–71. See also sinse taryeong temporality, 207–208, 269–270 temporary protection status (TPS), 132 terrorism, 139, 141, 209 Thai, H. C., 120 toxic stress, 130, 135 trafficking, h ­ uman, 35, 38, 39, 42, 212 Tran, Grace K., 12, 80, 167, 260, 269 transcription, 192–193, 198, 199, 200 transgender mi­grants: and deportation (U.S.), 241, 242–243, 249–251; Filipina hostesses (Japan), 10, 15, 109, 226, 229, 233–237, 260; and marriage brokerage associations, 177; and performativity, 17; and U.S. immigration laws, 94, 254n1 translators, 13–14, 174, 185n4 trauma, 129–131 travel ban (U.S.), 126, 128, 132, 135, 142 Trudeau, Justin, 109 Trump administration: and deportation, 249, 253; and f­ amily reunification, 12, 88, 96, 125–127, 137–143; and l­egal status of military, 256n17; and LPC policies, 246, 255n6; and marriage migration, state regulation of, 268; moral arguments on migration

policies of, 128–137; and state and f­ amily, relationship of, 261 trust. See suspicion and trust Ueno, Chizuko, 227 Underwood, Lauren, 130 undocumented mi­grants, 247–248, 249, 251, 253 Union Citizens Directive (EU), 34, 41 United Kingdom (U.K.): and deportation, 262; domestic courts of, 90; Love Letters to the Home Office, 126; and marriage migration, state regulation of, 3, 87–89, 91–94, 98–99, 100, 264–265, 268, 271n4; and marriages of con­ve­nience, 93–94; primary purpose rule, 11; and Rus­sian wives, 1–2, 18n1 United Nations (U.N.), 1–2, 4 United States (U.S.): and Asian migration, 4, 82n15; and deportation, 15, 242–243, 248–249, 261, 262; and EU, 102n3; and ­family reunification, moral economies of, 12, 125–146; forced sterilization in, 271; and freedom of movement, 1–2; Japa­nese marriage norms, compared, 227–228; and Korean marriage mi­grants, 68–69, 74–76; and LGBTQ marriage against deportation, 240–256; marriage migration, regulation of, 3, 4, 87–88, 89, 90, 91, 95–96, 101, 268; and queer immigration laws, 94; undocumented mi­grants in, 247–248 United States v. Windsor, 244 Universal Declaration of ­Human Rights (UDHR), 1, 259. See also rights U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Ser­v ices (USCIS), 244, 245, 246 Vandenbroucke, Mieke, 13–14 Vermeersch, S., 176 visa overstayers, 218, 247–248 visas: and Canadian immigration ­lawyers, 158, 161, 167; and Chaubal/Martela case, 250, 252; and f­ amily and marriage migration (France), 51, 99; and federal immigration statutes (U.S.), 138; and Filipina hostesses (Japan), 226, 231, 232, 235, 236–237, 238n1; and Ira­nian mi­grants (Japan), 208, 209, 212, 219; and Kerry v. Din, 139, 140–141; and legalization through marriage, 241, 247–248; and military brides, 76; Soviet Union and exit, 1, 18n1; and Trump administration, 126, 129, 132, 135, 142, 268 volunteering, 184. See also brokers, marriage Walters, W., 109 war brides. See military brides, Korean War Brides Act (1945, U.S.), 256n17 war on terror, 209, 215 welfare state, 5, 12, 36, 142 West, Mark, 227, 237 Weston, Kath, 234 White, Melissa A., 247

I N D E X 293

­women: and citizenship, 133; and ­f amily migration (France), 50, 52–53, 56, 59, 60–63; forced sterilization of, 18, 270–271; Ira­n ian mi­grants (Japan), 210, 211–212, 213, 214, 217–222; in Japan, 221; marriage and privacy of, 31, 33; and marriage migration, state regulation of, 3, 263–264; and marriages of con­ve­nience, 36–37, 38, 39, 41–42, 43–44; and moral po­liti­cal economy of suspicion, 165–166; and Soviet Union, 2; and state and f­ amily, relationship of, 260; and statutory f­ amily rights (U.S.), 137. See also Korean marriage mi­grants

World Wars, 4, 34 Wray, Helena, 11–12, 31, 43–44, 165, 263, 265, 266, 268 Yee, Vivian, 246 Yeoh, Brenda S. A., 208 Yong, Caleb, 130 Yoo, Chul-­In, 72 Yuh, Ji-­Yeon, 11 Zelizer, Viviana, 226–227, 228 zero-­tolerance policy, 125–126, 129–130, 142, 261