This article was downloaded by: [KU Leuven University Library]

On: 25 February 2014, At: 23:57

Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered
office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies
Publication details, including instructions for authors and
subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjms20
Marriage, Migration, Multiculturalism:
Gendering The Bengal Diaspora
Claire Alexander
a
a
Sociology , University of Manchester
Published online: 26 Nov 2012.
To cite this article: Claire Alexander (2013) Marriage, Migration, Multiculturalism: Gendering
The Bengal Diaspora, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 39:3, 333-351, DOI:
10.1080/1369183X.2013.733857
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2013.733857
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the
Content) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,
our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to
the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions
and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,
and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content
should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources
of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,
proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever
or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or
arising out of the use of the Content.
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any
substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,
systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &
Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-
and-conditions
Marriage, Migration, Multiculturalism:
Gendering The Bengal Diaspora
Claire Alexander
Transnational marriage has been at the centre of controversies around migration control
and multiculturalism in Britain in the past decade, with South Asian Muslim women
placed at the heart of concerns around integration, segregation and parallel lives. Such
discourses perpetuate a pathologised and ahistorical account of gendered processes of
migration in which subcontinental marriages are viewed as posing barriers for
integration and belonging. Drawing on interviews with Bangladeshi Muslim brides,
this article challenges these dominant accounts and argues, instead, for viewing marriage
as a field of interaction and exchange, which is itself formed and transformed through
the process of migration. Using Levitt and Glick Schillers idea of transnational social
fields, the paper explores the complex levels of interaction and (ex)change, relations of
power and historical dynamics of transnational marriage amongst this community in
Britain.
Keywords: Marriage; Bangladeshi Muslims; Britain; Transnational Social Fields;
Migration
Introduction: The Problem of Marriage Migration
On 10 October 2011, Prime Minister David Cameron announced a range of new
measures to control immigration to Britain. Seen by many as an immigration
crackdown (Travis 2011a), the speech targeted four areas: work visas, bogus
international students, forced and sham marriages and illegal immigration.
Insisting that excessive immigration brings pressures, real pressures, on our
communities up and down the country, Cameron proposed a system that . . .
doesnt just sound tough, but is tough, monitoring the borders and, internally,
tightening up the requirements for citizenship to place British history and culture at
the heart of it (Cameron 2011).
Claire Alexander is Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester. Correspondence to: Prof.
C.E. Alexander, School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL,
UK. E-mail: claire.alexander@manchester.ac.uk.
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2013
Vol. 39, No. 3, 333351, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2013.733857
# 2013 Taylor & Francis
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

b
y

[
K
U

L
e
u
v
e
n

U
n
i
v
e
r
s
i
t
y

L
i
b
r
a
r
y
]

a
t

2
3
:
5
7

2
5

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
1
4

Camerons speech merged questions of immigration with social and cultural
cohesion, economic recession, and national security and crime. Encompassing
temporary and permanent migration, and key areas of employment, education and
family settlement, the proposed reform was explicitly focused on non-EU migration,
closing down the few remaining avenues for legitimate migration still available after
50 years of increasingly restrictive immigration control. The focus on family
settlement, in particular, reflects the ongoing targeting of permanent settlement
since the 1971 Immigration Act, which has seen the successive erosion of the rights of
migrants, settlers and their British-born descendents, and the continued criminalisa-
tion of family and marriage migration (Kofman et al. 2008). Perhaps not
coincidentally, family-related migration has remained the dominant legal mode of
settlement in Britain for the past four decades and has been at the heart of ongoing
debates around the prospects for, and failures of, social cohesion and integration, as
well as a target for increasingly intrusive state intervention and regulation in the UK
and across Europe (Kofman et al. 2008; Kraler 2010). Also not coincidentally, non-EU
family migration is dominated by the Indian sub-continent*in particular, Pakistan
and Bangladesh (Blinder 2011).
Although non-EU family migration has increased since the 1990s, it makes up a
comparatively small, and declining, proportion of net immigration*less than 20 per
cent in 2009*and one which many experts estimate will make only a relatively small
dent on overall net migration figures (Migration Observatory 2011). The ongoing
and renewed focus on family migration is thus at once significant and puzzling,
indicating a broader ideological rather than a practical agenda. The Migration
Observatory notes that Family migration is particularly important to the net
migration debates because . . . the people who come in this way tend to stay (2011). It
is here that Camerons concerns around cohesion, English-language acquisition and
British culture assume a particular, and problematic, resonance (Alexander et al.
2007)*the more so because of the disproportionate impact of these proposed
measures on Britains South Asian and Muslim communities. Indeed, the proposed
measures*including the raising of the age of marriage to foreign spouses from 18 to
21, increasing the English-language requirements prior to entry, reintroducing by
default the Primary Purpose Rule,
1
imposing a cash bond on individuals sponsoring
family members for settlement, and extending the probationary period before
spouses can get leave to remain from two to five years*have attracted severe
criticism from the liberal press (Gupta 2011), from migrants rights organisations
(Migrants Rights Network 2011) and even from the Supreme Court, which ruled
that the ban on migrant spouses aged under 21 breached the right to family life under
the Human Rights Act (Travis 2011b).
The targeting of family migration, and particularly the migration of women from
the Indian subcontinent to Britain, has a long and fraught history (Levine 2006;
Parmar 1982). In May 2011, the Guardian reported on the practice of the virginity
testing of South Asian brides coming to Britain in the late 1970s, which Home Office
files had recently revealed to be more extensive than had been previously acknowledged,
334 C. Alexander
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

b
y

[
K
U

L
e
u
v
e
n

U
n
i
v
e
r
s
i
t
y

L
i
b
r
a
r
y
]

a
t

2
3
:
5
7

2
5

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
1
4

involving at least 80 women (Travis 2011c). Researchers studying the cases noted that
immigration officers justified the use of the tests on the stereotype of South Asian
women as submissive, meek and tradition bound and on the absurd general-
isation that they were always virgins before they married (Travis 2011c). Hina
Majid, policy director of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants,
commented Whilst this is a practice of the past, it is demonstrative of a wider
and indeed ongoing tendency to sideline women in immigration policy making . . .
many migrant women continue to be denied equal treatment and the full enjoyment
of their human rights (Travis 2011c).
As Majid suggests, the gendering of immigration policies, and the intersection of
racist, culturalist and sexist constructions of the position of migrant women within
these policies, remains of significance in the current legislation around marriage
migration. The pathologisation of South Asian cultural practices, such as the
representation of arranged marriage as forced or sham, can be traced almost
continuously in the intervening 30 years (Kofman et al. 2008), while South Asian
women are consistently portrayed both as passive victims of such practices and as the
receptacles and transmitters of foreign and anachronistic cultural practices which
pose a barrier to integration and cohesion (Alexander 2010; Kraler 2010). Such
representations, and their implementation in policy and practice, draw upon and
reinscribe ideas of raced and gendered marginality, victimhood and powerlessness in
ways which deny the role of women migrants as active agents in their own lives
(Kandyoti 1988; Parmar 1982) and as participants in the formation and transforma-
tion of cultures, communities and nations at both ends of the migration process*
effectively writing South Asian women migrants out of the national story or, indeed,
setting them in opposition to it.
It is against this contemporary policy and political backdrop, and in opposition to
the historical erasure of South Asian (and Muslim) women migrant pioneers, that
this paper positions itself and claims its significance. Drawing on original research on
the experiences of Bangladeshi Muslim migrants, the article explores the biographical
narratives of migrant brides to the United Kingdom, and the processes of social,
historical and individual change that are integral to this neglected and misunderstood
form of migration. This material powerfully captures the often-hidden stories of
womens marriage migration, and explores the complex dynamics of movement,
settlement, cultural continuity and change inherent in this phenomenon. Challenging
the essentialising and pathologising accounts enshrined in policy and political
rhetoric around immigration*and family migration in particular*the paper argues
instead for viewing marriage as a field of social, cultural and economic interaction
and exchange which is itself formed and transformed through the process of
migration. Using Levitt and Glick Schillers (2004) idea of transnational social fields
the paper explores the complex levels of interaction and (ex)change, relations of
power and historical dynamics of transnational marriage amongst the Bangladeshi
community in Britain through four different, but interconnected, levels: the
transnational, the national (UK), the community and the individual. The paper
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 335
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

b
y

[
K
U

L
e
u
v
e
n

U
n
i
v
e
r
s
i
t
y

L
i
b
r
a
r
y
]

a
t

2
3
:
5
7

2
5

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
1
4

contends that it is only through understanding these layers, and their intersection
with a fifth dimension of temporality, that a more nuanced account of gendered
migration can emerge.
Framing Transnational Marriage: Gendering Migration and Multiculturalism
Non-EU family migration to the UK increased from an average of 35,000 per year in
the 1990s to 51,000 in 2009 (18 per cent of total non-EU migration in that year),
reaching a peak in 2004 and again in 2006 of 74,000 people in each year (Blinder 2011).
The largest (but historically diminishing) proportion came from the Indian sub-
continent*comprising 41 per cent of family migration in 2008 (Charsley et al. 2011)
and 37 per cent in 2009 (Blinder 2011)*and is over-represented in application refusal
rates (Kofman et al. 2008). Of the 33,270 family migrants admitted in 2008, 97 per cent
entered as spouses*women constituting 68 per cent of those admitted as spouses or
fiance(e)s, and making up at least 60 per cent of these figures every year since 1997.
2
Nevertheless, family migration comprises a smaller component of overall migration
and, indeed, was declining in the latter years of the 2000s (Blinder 2011), a decrease
traced to the tightening of marriage migration regulations after the 2001 riots.
Charsley et al. (2011: 7) note that Some British immigration regulations seem to have
been particularly aimed at South Asian spouses, or have had particular impacts on this
group. The concerns around South Asian marriage migration have been disproportio-
nately focused on British Pakistani Muslim communities, for whom marriage has been
a key route for migration, and where an estimated 5070 per cent of marriages are to
Pakistani nationals. Similar patterns are assumed for the less-researched British
Bangladeshi community which, until 2009, constituted the third-largest group in
marriage-related settlement, after India and Pakistan (Charsley et al. 2011: 910).
Following the 2001 riots in the northern milltowns of England, transnational
marriages have been cast as promoting segregation and the failure of integration
(Charsley et al. 2011)*what Bradford MP Ann Cryer referred to as importing
poverty (Alexander 2010). With the retrenchment from idea(l)s of multiculturalism
in the past decade, and the reassertion of ideologies of integration, the notion of
pathological and problematic communities has gained increased policy and political
traction, particularly focused on the Muslim community in defining the limits of
who belongs to the nation, who does not and, indeed, who cannot. The Home Office
consultation on family migration (Home Office 2011) states baldly that if British
citizens and settlers want to establish their family life in the UK. . . those they bring
to the UK through marriage or partnership must integrate into British society and not
be a burden on the taxpayer (2011: 1.8, my emphasis). Furthermore, the consultation
document insists, Family ties and support are important but they are not enough to
allow new arrivals to the UK to thrive. All those who come to the UK with the
intention of settling . . . need to speak English well enough to communicate and forge
links with people in the UK. . . [and] have an understanding of the values and
principles underlying British society (2011: 1.10). The patterns of marriage
336 C. Alexander
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

b
y

[
K
U

L
e
u
v
e
n

U
n
i
v
e
r
s
i
t
y

L
i
b
r
a
r
y
]

a
t

2
3
:
5
7

2
5

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
1
4

migration, along with the framing of the issue in terms of integration, (in)depen-
dence and values, clearly signals the intersection of race/ethnicity and gender in the
representation of, and policy practices around, marriage migration (Charsley et al.
2011; Kofman et al. 2008; Kraler 2010). As Kraler notes, in policy terms the migrant
family is increasingly seen as an obstacle to integration*as a site characterised by
patriarchal relationships and illiberal practices and traditions such as arranged and
forced marriages (2010: 6).
The role and status of women as the embodiment of the nation, the symbol of
culture and its borders, and the carriers and transmitters of cultural values have long
been recognised (Anthias 2010; Anthias and Yuval-Davis 1992; Levine 2006). When
inflected through the lens of race, ethnicity or religion, migrant or minority women
are ambiguously positioned as the personification of cultural difference, located
within and contained by the boundaries of community, and outside broader social
processes; at once its source of replication and, very often, its victims (Charsley and
Shaw 2006). This container view of culture has been subject to criticism for seeing
culture as static and inward-looking*reinforcing ideas of internal homogeneity and
external difference*and for ignoring the power dynamics within communities as
well as within the broader host society, marginalising the concerns of women and
erasing their struggles (Anthias and Yuval Davis 1992; Kandiyoti 1988; Parmar 1982).
This homogenising of culture has also erased the more complex experiences and
trajectories involved in family and marriage migration, and the impact of the process
of migration itself on the social, cultural and gendered identity of migrants (Kraler
2010). For brides, in particular, the intersection of culturalist definitions of religion,
ethnicity and race with gendered ideologies of dependence have overlooked the role
of both external constraints and internal contestations on the formation and
transformation of the experience of marriage migration. In their special issue of
Global Networks on South Asian transnational marriage, Charsley and Shaw argue
that marriage migration sheds light on transnationalism from below, asserting that
Marriage emerges as an important mechanism for the production and transforma-
tion of transnational networks, but marriage practices and affinal relationships are
themselves transformed in the process (2006: 332). Their collection emphasises
womens agency and processes of change at both ends of the migration routes arising
from marriage migration, impacting intra-national as well as transnational marriage
practices. They note that transnational marriage must be examined from a truly
bottom up perspective based on detailed qualitative research (2006: 339) and,
while this article remains true to this challenge, it argues further that this necessitates
a reckoning with the broader social, political and historical context within which
migration takes place. Accordingly, it asserts that marriage migration must be
necessarily placed within what Levitt and Glick Schiller have defined, influentially, as
a transnational social field*a set of multiple inter-locking networks of social
relationships through which ideas, practices and resources are unequally exchanged,
organised and transformed (2004: 1009). This places issues of power central to
analysis, but insists on the simultaneous, complex and unfinished intersection of the
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 337
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

b
y

[
K
U

L
e
u
v
e
n

U
n
i
v
e
r
s
i
t
y

L
i
b
r
a
r
y
]

a
t

2
3
:
5
7

2
5

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
1
4

transnational, national and local fields of interaction, played out through social
practices and relationships. Even the intimate personal lives of individuals must be
viewed through this broader and deeper lens, because migrants are often embedded
in multi-layered, multi-sited transnational social fields, encompassing those who
move and those who stay behind (2004: 1003). This recognises also the roles of
agency and of temporality, capturing the processual nature of migration and
settlement, historically and over an individual life-course.
Marriage migration provides a particularly fruitful lens into the multi-layered
complexities of transnational social fields because it stands at the intersection of the
public/private divide, offering a reappraisal of the role of gender and ethnicity in
migration, and challenging the ways in which women migrants are placed simply in
the family role (Charsley and Shaw 2006). The movement of spouses blurs the
categories of family and work, as well as the economic, social and cultural realms of
politics, policy and the everyday. Migrant marriage here constitutes a fluid space of
exchange, bringing together social, economic, cultural and political dimensions as a
field of encounter, negotiation and transformation, but with an eye to the unequal,
but not predetermined, power relationships involved.
The remainder of this article explores the contours of transnational marriage
through the lens of Bangladeshi Muslim women migrants to Britain. The data are
drawn from a recent research project*The Bengal Diaspora*which examined the
experience of Muslim migrants from the Indian state of Bengal in the period after
1947.
3
The research team collected the life histories of over 160 migrants based in
eight fieldsites in India, Bangladesh and Britain (www.banglastories.org). Our aim
was to explore the ways in which the lives of migrants were shaped by, and themselves
shaped, the flow of history, and to illuminate the personal (hi)stories of ordinary
people, particularly those whose experiences are too often overlooked, including
women. It is this subset of interviewees*women who migrated as brides or wives*
on which this paper is based. The interviews were all conducted in Bengali/Sylheti,
translated and transcribed by our researcher, Shahzad Firoz; all names are
pseudonyms. Examining the diverse experiences of Bangladeshi Muslim women
who migrated to the UK from Bangladesh at different times and to different
destinations, the article explores the parameters of marriage migration at four
levels*the transnational, the national, the community and the individual*
considered separately here for the purposes of analysis, but recognising their
inseparability in constituting a complex and shifting social field.
The Transnational Dimension
Where transnational approaches often focus on contemporary migrant trajectories
and linkages, the migration of brides from Bengal to Britain is inseparable from the
broader history and specificities of migration from the Asian subcontinent in the
postwar years which shape these later flows and gestures to a longer history of
imperial entanglements. While there is a long-established presence of South Asian
338 C. Alexander
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

b
y

[
K
U

L
e
u
v
e
n

U
n
i
v
e
r
s
i
t
y

L
i
b
r
a
r
y
]

a
t

2
3
:
5
7

2
5

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
1
4

women in the UK, as ayahs (maids) and as the wives of colonial officers (Visram
1986), the majority came to Britain as the wives and dependents of earlier male
migrants who arrived in significant numbers from the 1950s onwards (Adams 1987;
Gardner 2006). However, the process of family reunification amongst the Bangladeshi
community happened significantly later than amongst other South Asian commu-
nities. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, men left their wives and children at
home in East Pakistan (later Bangladesh), moving easily and without restriction
between Britain and South Asia. It was only after the Liberation War of 1971 in
Bangladesh and the tightening of immigration legislation in Britain that men began
to bring their families, swelling the numbers from 22,000 in 1971 to 163,000 by
1991*the majority of these being women and children (Alexander et al. 2010).
Migration patterns were shaped at both ends of the migration chain: in
Bangladesh, from the 1980s onwards, the government instituted a range of legislative
measures to prevent the migration of women as independent labour migrants
(Kabeer 2000; Redclift 2006). However, marriage migration remained outside these
restrictions, and the aftermath of war and the subsequent civil and political unrest
demonstrated a changing attitude from sending families in Bangladesh as well as
receiving families in Britain. Hannah Bradby (2000: 236) has argued that, for South
Asian women, womanhood [traditionally] implies travel (cited in Charsley et al.
2011: 7), particularly through marriage, but it is apparent that transnational
migration impacted the process and rituals of marriage in Bangladesh and across
national borders, blending the old and the new.
4
Laila Rahman, who arrived in
Britain in 1971, aged 16, to join her husband, recalled:
Our marriage took place over the telephone. My guardians*mother, uncles*were
present on one side of the phone and he was here on the other side of the
phone. . . . After going back home we organised a Muslim ceremony of marriage.
Because our marriage was on the phone, we needed to do that.
In Britain, fears around increasingly restrictive immigration policies precipitated a
move towards family reunification, and the arrival of wives and children initiated the
formation of more distinct religio-cultural communities, with the establishment of
mosques, schools and shops. Ishtiaq Ahmed told us:
When I came in 1965, I did not see any Asian women. . . . It was rare. . . . Earlier
Bengalis would go home to marry but they did not bring their wives and children
with them. . . because of the fear that they would be influenced by English culture.
We are following Islamic culture. There was a fear that this culture would be affected.
He noted that this attitude shifted because of the changing expectations of the
women at home as well as the migrant men:
The local mentality was changed.... At first one or two wives convinced their husbands,
and then other wives convinced their husbands. . . . Nowadays nobody keeps his wife
in Bangladesh. The mentality has been changed, the culture has changed.
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 339
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

b
y

[
K
U

L
e
u
v
e
n

U
n
i
v
e
r
s
i
t
y

L
i
b
r
a
r
y
]

a
t

2
3
:
5
7

2
5

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
1
4

Morium Chowdhury, now a widow in her late 60s, arrived in Britain in 1989,
towards the end of the reunification process. Her marriage was arranged by her father
and grandfather, when she was 14 years old, to a man already settled in London, but
she spent most of her married life in Bangladesh with her six children. She told us:
He did not bring me. He was not interested to bring us. He thought it was better if
we stay in Bangladesh, particularly our children . . . if they come here, they might be
influenced by the environment here. . . . He would always say that good people do
not come to London.
Her husband was eventually persuaded by the elders to bring his family, though
Morium herself was reluctant to leave her extended family behind:
All the murubbi [elders] told him to take us. They said it will be good for us. By this
time the children were grown up so he probably thought now its good to bring
them here. It was his wish . . . I did not tell him to bring us to London . . . because I
had everyone*parents, relatives*all in Bangladesh.
Moriums story demonstrates the changing attitudes towards family migration
shaped by changing circumstances in both Bangladesh and Britain, and the
negotiation of decisions in a broader familial and cultural context that is changing
and adapting to circumstances at home and abroad.
5
It also reveals the ways in which
ideas of family, home and belonging are themselves transfigured in the process of
transnational movement. When Morium and her six children arrived in London, she
formed connections in her new home with new relatives and friends. When her
husband died in 1998, Morium chose not to return to Bangladesh because of her
family ties in the UK. She told us that she does not even like to return home for a
visit: The last four years I have not gone. My children and grandchildren are living
here. I do not like to go to Bangladesh, leaving them behind.
Migrant wives thus formed significant conduits for the transmission and establish-
ment of broader cultural institutions and values transnationally (Gardner 2006). This
served not only to cushion their own experiences of dislocation, but tangibly impacted
the conditions of the earlier male settlers, establishing the foundations for religious and
ethnic institutions and familial networks. Women thus constitute significant
transformative agents for transnational movement and settlement in ways which
have been largely overlooked and which can both reinscribe and unsettle traditional
gendered relationships at both ends of the migration process (Kabeer 2000; Lievens
1999)*blurring the distinction between home and abroad in productive ways.
The National Dimension
While the recognition of transnational links has been crucial in disrupting dominant
nationalist discourses and borders, emphasising the interdependence of sending and
receiving societies, and pointing to ongoing economic, social and cultural
340 C. Alexander
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

b
y

[
K
U

L
e
u
v
e
n

U
n
i
v
e
r
s
i
t
y

L
i
b
r
a
r
y
]

a
t

2
3
:
5
7

2
5

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
1
4

(ex)change, it is nevertheless crucial to recognise the role of the individual nation-
states, with their particularistic histories and regimes of power (Anthias 2010; Levitt
and Glick-Schiller 2004) in shaping*and fracturing*processes of movement and
settlement. Transnational migration thus needs to be placed in the context of national
borders and practices, in particular in the regulation of who can enter and stay within
a countrys borders, as well as a broader sense of who belongs and who does not. In
Britain, categories of citizenship and inclusion are too often marked through the lens
of culture, refracted by notions of racial, ethnic and religious difference, in which
gender is particularly significant and problematic, signifying the borders of the nation
and the realm of culture. Britains immigration legislation since 1962, in particular,
has long been viewed as racially structured and replete with gendered culturalist
stereotypes and exclusions (Anthias 2010).
The role of the nation-state, at its borders and internally, was central to the
experience of many of the migrant brides we interviewed, shaping the places they
lived and worked and the quality of the lives they were able to live. Jakia Chowdhury
came to London in 1987 with her husband and children to visit relatives and
overstayed the time limit on her visa. When her husband returned unexpectedly to
Bangladesh, taking the children with him, Jakia decided to stay but, she told us: I did
not have legal papers to stay here at this time. It took me 15 years to get permission to
stay in this country legally. She continued:
I did not know how to apply and what would be the best possible application to get
the permission to live here permanently. In 1993 they [the Home Office] refused
my application and asked me to leave the country. After getting the refusal letter, I
applied again . . . for political asylum. They refused my application for political
asylum as well. They tried to deport me five times.
Jakia spoke of the fear which accompanied her illegal status through different aspects
of her life*for example, the arrival of an official at her workplace:
On one occasion, an immigration officer came to arrest me . . . [he] went to the
office and asked the owner about me. . . . They showed my picture . . . I tried to leave
the premises with the excuse of buying milk, but I could not. The police stopped
me and started asking questions. They interviewed me for 30 minutes. I was very
tense and could not think properly. . . . Anyway, I think the immigration officer was
kind to me because he realised I was a woman who was just trying to survive. . . . He
left the place without taking me for deportation.
The fear affected where she lived and restricted her everyday movements and
activities:
I took shelter in an empty flat. . . . I did not go out during the daytime and at night I
used to stay in the dark. I was so frightened that I could not switch on the lights. . . .
I could not go out to buy shopping. . . . I could not even make a phone call from the
house because I thought if I called anyone they would be able to find out my hiding
place.
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 341
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

b
y

[
K
U

L
e
u
v
e
n

U
n
i
v
e
r
s
i
t
y

L
i
b
r
a
r
y
]

a
t

2
3
:
5
7

2
5

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
1
4

Jakia eventually got permission to stay through contacts made during her
involvement in Bangladeshi and local British politics, and she now works to improve
the situation for women in the UK and in Bangladesh. She commented:
In London, many things are good, everyone has a good heart. . . . London is
homely. . . . I feel for Bangladesh . . . [but] I feel London is closer to my heart
because my mental maturity has taken shape in this country.
Jakias story, while not representative of the experience of Bengali womens
migration to the UK, nevertheless captures dramatically the role of the state in
shaping the experience of transnational movement and the process of settlement. As
well as determining her right to enter the country, Jakias status impacted on her
ability to work, to find housing, to establish links with both her own community
networks and wider society, and to feel like she belonged. The role of gender was also
significant in structuring her interactions with state agents, and perhaps influencing
the denial of her status either as an independent migrant or as a political refugee. At
the same time, however, Jakias story contests the dominant representation of South
Asian/Muslim women as passive victims, emphasising resilience and agency, as well as
her changing sense of self as a Bengali Muslim woman within a London and UK
context, and her engagement across social and cultural boundaries (Kabeer 2000).
British state intervention also worked to reshape family networks both transna-
tionally, in Bangladesh, and in the intimate spheres of women migrants lives in
Britain. Zebunnesa, a 67-year-old woman, arrived in Britain in 2001 to join her
husband, who had been living in Britain since the 1960s. She described how
immigration legislation meant that only one of her three children, her youngest
daughter, had been able to migrate with her: I have left my son and daughter behind.
Zebunnesas first child was a boy, who died; she later adopted a boy from her village:
His father and mother died. Mother died a couple of days after his birth and his
father died after a couple of years. When they took the [mothers] dead body to the
graveyard, the boys uncle brought the boy to me and since then I am his mother.
The boy had lived with Zebunnesa from when he was 21 days old and did not know
he was adopted. She had wanted to bring him to Britain, but permission was denied
because she could not prove the relationship:
People from the embassy went to our village and found that he is not my son. . . .
They asked me to submit papers that I have adopted him. I hope they will give him a
visa soon, as we have submitted all the required papers. . . . I cry every day for my son.
Zebunnesa was planning to bring her older daughter to the UK on a visit visa, and
to find her a British-based husband to enable her to stay; her younger British-based
daughter had recently married an illegal immigrant. These seemingly intimate choices
were, first and foremost, predicated on the demands of a migration regime external to
both her family and the broader Bengali community. At the same time, however,
342 C. Alexander
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

b
y

[
K
U

L
e
u
v
e
n

U
n
i
v
e
r
s
i
t
y

L
i
b
r
a
r
y
]

a
t

2
3
:
5
7

2
5

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
1
4

these regimes opened up space for empowerment for her British daughter within the
confines of the marriage pact. As Zebunnessa told us, the most important fact in their
choice of a groom was: Most of all, he is single. He does not have family here . . . as he
is alone in this country, we are his family . . . my daughter will have a smooth life.
6
These stories illustrate the ongoing role of the nation-state in shaping the processes
of migration and settlement, and the ways in which gendered and ethnicised
discourses and practices impact on the lives of women migrants, their families and
their communities, in both Bangladesh and the UK. Like the migration process, the
nation-state works to transform cultural practices around marriage and family
formation, while simultaneously positioning these cultural practices as being outside
of, and in contradistinction to, the modern nation. As Zebunnesas final comment
indicates, however, these processes also work to reshape internal community
expectations around marriage and family formation, and these changes have complex
outcomes for migrant brides and grooms, and for long-settled or British-born
Bengalis. It is to these I now turn.
The Community Dimension
The 2001 Census counted an estimated 283,000 people of Bangladeshi descent living
in Britain, of whom 154,000 were born in Bangladesh. The population is largely
drawn from Sylhet, in north-east Bangladesh (about 85 per cent), and over 90 per
cent are Muslim. Rates of marriage are high (74 per cent), with two-thirds of women
marrying between the ages of 20 and 24 years (Samad and Eade 2002). Rates of out-
marriage are very small, although figures suggest that sub-continental marriage is
declining, as is the practice of consanguineous marriage. The Bangladeshi community
is one of the poorest in the UK, with high levels of unemployment, poor educational
achievement, poor housing and high levels of household poverty (Alexander et al.
2010)*something which has particular significance for marriage migration because
of the requirements for sponsorship. The Home Office (2011) report on family
migration notes that, although 96 per cent of Bangladeshi sponsors were employed at
the time of application for their spouses, their median monthly earnings were a mere
875*the lowest by far for all recorded sponsors and a figure which would (probably
not accidentally) fall well below new proposals for sponsorship (Cavanagh 2011).
7
As argued above, the problem of South Asian marriage migration is often linked
to issues of integration and social cohesion, which are themselves inseparable from
essentialised ideas of ethnicity, culture and difference, encapsulated in the idea of
community, in which gendered practices become a defining marker. Such a view
belies the complex and changing nature of gendered relations within South Asian/
Muslim communities, which marriage practices clearly exemplify (Charsley 2005;
Gardner 2006). Studies of transnational marriage practices have shown that, rather
than reflecting anachronistic and static ideas of culture, marriage constitutes a
crucible for changes precipitated by and through migration, as a way of creating
status (Mand 2002), providing care (Mand 2006), negotiating risk (Charsley 2007)
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 343
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

b
y

[
K
U

L
e
u
v
e
n

U
n
i
v
e
r
s
i
t
y

L
i
b
r
a
r
y
]

a
t

2
3
:
5
7

2
5

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
1
4

and creating or challenging family obligations and social networks (Charsley 2005,
2006; Charsley and Shaw 2006). Although comparatively little is known about
Bangladeshi marriage migration to Britain, Katy Gardners (2006) study has
emphasised the agency of wives and the imperative of positioning the experience
of migration historically. Her work indicates the pivotal and transformative role that
Bangladeshi migrant wives have played in negotiating new family formations and
shaping the wider community historically.
The meaning of community is thus shaped and reshaped through marriage
migration and over time. As Zebunnesa suggests, in more recent years the position of
brides with British citizenship gives them an influence over their migrant husbands
that would not be possible in Bangladesh, in particular because marriage is
traditionally patrilocal (Gardner 2006; see also Charsley 2005). Laila Rahman, who
works for a community organisation for Asian women in the north of England,
described the changing gendered patterns of contemporary marriage within the
British Bangladeshi community:
They go home to find an educated girl from a good family background. So they
bring girls from home. But they try to find a groom for their daughter here. They
say that boys from home are not smart, girls do not like them.
While most girls wanted to marry British Bengalis, Laila echoed Zebunnesas belief
that there were some advantages for those who married in Bangladesh, because it
gave them power over their husbands:
8
The girls who bring boys from Bangladesh, these boys are from good families; they
are educated, polite, gentle. They are not rural boys originally. . . . Sometimes they
[the grooms] speak about their problems . . . they have to give all their income to
their wives, they are working in restaurants and are not getting proper jobs. It is a
kind of torture. . . . But the number is few.
The picture was very different for brides from Bangladesh marrying British Bengali
men, according to Laila, but again there were advantages:
The girls tolerate it. In many cases they are half educated. They are happy with their
lives, they are getting good meals, good clothes and good environment. It is far
better than their situation in Bangladesh.
However, there were also problems:
The main problem is domestic violence. . . . This is more common among the wives
who are coming from Bangladesh. They bring the girls, they dont know English. It
is not only the husbands, mothers-in-law are also involved in this . . . they keep the
girl at home to do housework. . . . They beat her very hard.
What emerge from Lailas professional view are the complex and shifting
contemporary patterns of gender relations and gendered power within this
344 C. Alexander
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

b
y

[
K
U

L
e
u
v
e
n

U
n
i
v
e
r
s
i
t
y

L
i
b
r
a
r
y
]

a
t

2
3
:
5
7

2
5

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
1
4

community created through the process of migration (Charsley 2005; Gardner 2006;
Kandiyoti 1988). This indicates, too, the significance of the (British) nation-state in
reshaping notions of community and culture as well as often generating tensions
within families located transnationally. Mehjabin, a divorcee in her early 30s, had
moved to Britain as a child to join her father. Later, her relatives in Bangladesh tried
to arrange her marriage to a cousin to enable him to migrate. She recalled:
It was my family which arranged the marriage . . . when I was 14 years old they
proposed it, but we fought for nine years whether I would marry him or not. My
father said No, there will be no marriage between relatives. One of my uncles . . .
told my father If you give marriage in Bangladesh, one of our families will benefit.
Their son will come to this country. . . . My father did not agree easily but, after so
much pressure from the family, my father said OK, do whatever you want to do.
By this time my grandmother also got involved and the marriage was arranged.
Mehjabin herself was sanguine about the marriage and about its eventual breakdown:
I had to marry someone, so I thought it would be better to marry someone known
rather than a stranger. . . . I did not think our mentality would be so different, like
sky and earth. Anyway, that is my fate.
It is worth remembering, however, that, even historically, the boundaries of
community around marriage were not so clear-cut. Korimunessa Begum, who came
to join her husband in 1975, told us that her father-in-law had an English wife, as well
as a wife in Bangladesh:
My father-in-law married an English woman, the brother of my father-in-law
married an English woman, two of my uncles-in-law married English women.
Those who came to this country by ship, almost everyone did this. . . . They were
single here, they would have to cook for themselves, it was a difficult life.
The father-in-laws Bengali wife later came to Britain and he maintained both
families, having three children with his English wife. Korimunessa recalled that the
English wife even helped bring the Bengali wife over to Britain, and she and her
children would attend family events:
When we were in Hull, she would come with her two sons and one daughter. They
used to come to our house, say if there was a party*Eid*they would come to
celebrate. Their father would bring them and told me to treat them well when they
were here . . . they would eat if I served them food.
Today, as Rimi told us, the boundaries of marriage for Bengalis in the UK are even
more porous, reflecting changing attitudes towards womens status, education and
religion:
Now girls are studying, they are not interested in marriage. Even we see some girls
[who] are over age, they are not married. Before, they got married early. There was
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 345
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

b
y

[
K
U

L
e
u
v
e
n

U
n
i
v
e
r
s
i
t
y

L
i
b
r
a
r
y
]

a
t

2
3
:
5
7

2
5

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
1
4

a reason, too*they [parents] were afraid that their girls might marry some other
people from another culture. . . . Nowadays Indian, Pakistani, Turkish are acceptable
as long as they are Muslims, because parents are more liberal.
As the above stories suggest, the boundaries of ethnic community in the UK, as
seen through the lens of marriage, are not only reinscribed through transnational
marriage, as dominant policy rhetoric suggests, but are also disrupted and
transformed. Moreover, what are often seen as unchanging or anachronistic cultural
practices are shown not only to be refracted through the act of migration*which
allows for a negotiation with gendered norms, or what Kandiyoti has termed
bargaining with patriarchy (1988)*but also to be shaped through the intervention
of the receiving state, and the specific local places and encounters within the UK.
Thus community itself must be placed as part of a field of social interaction and
(ex)change which looks both up and out at broader national and global contexts,
and down at the place of the family and, indeed, the individual migrant herself as an
agent of transformation (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004).
The Individual Dimension
The final dimension considered here, then, is that of the individual, who stands at the
heart of current discussions of integration and citizenship, and of the experience of
migration (Gardner 2006), yet is most usually invisible in the debates and policy
formation. Of course, the individual is always embedded in broader social, cultural
and historical contexts, and the discussion so far has traced some of these
entanglements, exploring the ways in which individuals are shaped by, and shape,
these broader, more abstract processes. Acknowledging processes of social change,
however, necessitates reckoning with its more personal dimensions, and the ways in
which individual biographies both capture and disrupt broader narratives. This final
section, then, focuses on one aspect which has been implicit in some of the
discussions above*that of time and social change; of the ways in which the personal
and subjective experience of marriage migration is located temporally and spatially.
For this, the paper compares the biographies of two brides who migrated at very
different times and, indeed, to very different Britains.
The first is Jahanara Lokman, who migrated to Britain in 1965, only months after
her marriage. Her husband owned one of the first Indian restaurants in Colchester,
Essex, an area with very few ethnic minorities, even today.
9
She told us:
After coming here I was very upset; I left my father and uncles . . . I left a big family
in Bangladesh. . . . When I came to this country, Yah Allah, the condition was bad, it
was silent, there was no-one. . . . On top of it, I could not speak English. . . . In the
first two years I struggled a lot, I cried all the time.
For Jahanara the loneliness was overwhelming, particularly because of the absence of
other Bengali women to speak to:
346 C. Alexander
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

b
y

[
K
U

L
e
u
v
e
n

U
n
i
v
e
r
s
i
t
y

L
i
b
r
a
r
y
]

a
t

2
3
:
5
7

2
5

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
1
4

At that time, I would not even speak with the restaurant workers or my husbands
relatives. I could not speak to them because of my shyness. . . . When I would stay at
home alone, I would think that, if the wall of the room would speak with me, I
would have spoken with it.
She could not get desi food (food from home) and found the local British women
confusing and strange:
In our country you cannot go out to walk because of the men, but here it was all
women from every age group, elderly to young. I would see their culture. I would
see an old man and woman walking, holding each others hands, or young couples
would walk, holding each others hands. . . . I would think What am I seeing, where
have I come?.
Once her daughters were born, Jahanara made friends with her English neighbours:
Janice would come and talk to me, but I could not understand anything of what she
would say. My next-door neighbours name was Norma*I could understand her
way of talking, she was well educated. . . . Both of them loved me like their sister. I
would call their mothers Mum. They helped me a lot. I will not forget this.
Jahanaras story contrasts starkly with that of Aleya Parvin, who was one of the
most recently arrived brides we interviewed. Aleya arrived in Birmingham
10
in 2006
to join her husband who, like Jahanaras husband, owns a restaurant. Theirs was a
cousin marriage, arranged by her husbands father, but Aleya insisted that We also
liked each other. Aleyas family, unlike Jahanaras, are extremely mobile*she has
relatives in America and in the Middle East, as well as siblings in the UK*and, since
her parents deaths, she said Ive no desire to go to Bangladesh. She told us when she
came to Britain:
At first I felt very bad. I do not know whether it was for my country or for my
relatives. Gradually I recovered . . . I adjusted here. My brother came, my sister is
here before me. There are other relatives. So I liked this country.
Aleya learned to drive and travelled to visit relatives locally and in London. She spent
a lot of time in her husbands restaurant: I am an easy person, I can talk with other
people easily. In the restaurant, my husband is there and there are other people who
work there. I gossip with them. . . . I pass very good time. She had some Pakistani
friends, but mainly spent her time with local Bengalis; however, she commented
disparagingly on Bengalis in East London for making their local area too much like
back home: I do not like this scenario. I want London to be like London.
The 30 years between these two brides has seen the transformation of Britain, the
rise (and fall) of multiculturalism and the growth of established Bangladeshi Muslim
communities. These factors have helped to shape the experience of migration and
have led to differing encounters with the local communities and broader society. Yet
both women speak of loneliness and displacement, of making new families and new
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 347
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

b
y

[
K
U

L
e
u
v
e
n

U
n
i
v
e
r
s
i
t
y

L
i
b
r
a
r
y
]

a
t

2
3
:
5
7

2
5

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
1
4

homes, of changing cultural attitudes and of adaptation*of the turbulence of
migration and settlement. However, neither fit the dominant script of the alienated
and oppressed Muslim woman of broader political discourse; both are the subjects
and the authors of social and cultural formations and transformations within a
complex and shifting social field.
Conclusion
This article has critically explored the ways in which race/ethnicity, gender and
migration are configured in politics, policy and practice through the figure of the
South Asian bride. As the current government proposals demonstrate, migration has
been, and is, viewed as a problem to be legislated and regulated, and one which is
highly raced and gendered in nature. Immigration policies portray migrants*and
particularly migrant women*as shadowy figures, embodying notions of culture and
difference which are seen as a challenge to the idea(l)s of the nation and a threat to its
borders. Such constructions rely on static, essentialised and ahistorical under-
standings of race and ethnicity, which place migrant women as the neutral and
passive transmitters of alien cultural values and as contained by the boundaries of
ethnic minority community, rather than as active agents and participants in broader
processes of social and historical change.
As the above vignettes illustrate, such reductive and pathologising discourses are
challenged through an empirical engagement with the histories, experiences and
voices of migrant brides themselves. Exploring marriage migration from below
demonstrates that the movement of brides is integrally concerned with processes of
social and cultural change and transformation within and across borders, places and
times. Focusing on the largely hidden histories of migrant Bangladeshi women thus
serves to contest the racialised and culturalist accounts of minority ethnic identities
and place them centre-stage as social, cultural, political and historical agents.
Nevertheless, rather than simply insisting on the agentic role of migrant brides, the
article has sought to unpack the ways in which these encounters are shaped through a
range of layers and dimensions which structure, but do not fully determine, the
experience of movement and settlement. These four dimensions*the transnational,
the national, the community and the individual*intersect, transform and are
transformed by the movement of women brides in a mutual, if unequal, social,
cultural and political space. They encapsulate a transnational social field as a space
of transformation and exchange, but one which is importantly structured through
national, local and personal dynamics, boundaries and exclusions. The aim here has
been to explore the richness and texture of this sphere of encounter and exchange
while acknowledging its constraints and inequalities; to assert presence and
complexity in the face of erasure, simplification and stereotyping; and, perhaps
most importantly, to humanise the increasingly exclusionary and hostile discourses
and practices around migration to Britain and to offer a different embodied and lived
vision of the migration process.
348 C. Alexander
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

b
y

[
K
U

L
e
u
v
e
n

U
n
i
v
e
r
s
i
t
y

L
i
b
r
a
r
y
]

a
t

2
3
:
5
7

2
5

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
1
4

Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the anonymous JEMS reviewers for their insightful comments on an
earlier version of this paper, to Shahzad Firoz for his collection of the material on
which the paper is based, and to Suki Ali, Wendy Bottero, Joya Chatterji, Caroline
Knowles and Victoria Redclift for their expertise and intellectual generosity.
Notes
[1] The Primary Purpose Rule required applicants to prove that marriage was not primarily
motivated by the desire to migrate*something that the new legislation seeks to reimpose
through the focus on genuine marriage (Home Ofce 2011).
[2] In 2010, 58 per cent of Pakistani, 66 per cent of Indian and 61 per cent of Bangladeshi
applicants were women (Home Ofce 2011).
[3] The Bengal Diaspora: Bengali Settlers in South Asia and Britain (Award No: AH/E501540/1).
[4] It is important to recognise that marriage and gender relations are also constantly
transforming within the country of origin, and that women are active agents in bargaining
with traditional patriarchal structures (Kandiyoti 1988; Lievens 1998).
[5] Gardner (2006) has noted that, while the older Bangladeshi women in her study spoke of
their migration in passive terms, as Morium does here, this should be contextualised in
terms of their central facilitating role in the process of transnational migration, managing
the family home in Bangladesh and maintaining links between places.
[6] See Charsley (2005) and Lievens (1999) for a discussion of minority ethnic womens choice
of transnational marriage as a source of empowerment and security.
[7] It was reported at the time of writing that the government plans to introduce an income
threshold of either 18,500 or 25,700 per year for spouses; it is estimated that this will
disqualify 45 and 64 per cent of applicants respectively (Cavanagh 2011).
[8] Charsley (2005) has noted the difculties faced by Pakistani migrant husbands for whom
migration may entail downward mobility and restructured gendered household relations of
power (see also Lievens 1999).
[9] The 2001 census counts only 1 per cent of Asian origin in Colchester.
[10] In 2001, there were about 21,000 Bangladeshis in Birmingham (2.1 per cent of
the population). One-fth of the population of Aston Ward, where Aleya lives, are
Bangladeshi.
References
Adams, C. (1987) Across Seven Seas and Thirteen Rivers: Life Stories of Pioneer Sylheti Settlers in
Britain. London: Thap.
Alexander, C. (2010) Culturing poverty? Ethnicity, religion, gender and social disadvantage
amongst South Asian communities in the UK, in Chant, S. (ed.) International Handbook of
Gender and Poverty. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2727.
Alexander, C., Edwards, R. and Temple, B. (2007) Contesting cultural communities: language,
ethnicity and citizenship, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 33(5): 783800.
Alexander, C., Firoz, S. and Rashid, N. (2010) The Bengal Diaspora in Britain: A Review of the
Literature. See www.banglastories.org.
Anthias, F. (2010) Nation and post-nation: nationalism, transnationalism and intersections of
belonging, in Hill Collins, P. and Solomos, J. (eds) Handbook of Race and Ethnic Studies.
London: Sage, 22148.
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 349
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

b
y

[
K
U

L
e
u
v
e
n

U
n
i
v
e
r
s
i
t
y

L
i
b
r
a
r
y
]

a
t

2
3
:
5
7

2
5

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
1
4

Anthias, F. and Yuval Davis, N. (1992) Racialised Boundaries. London: Routledge.
Blinder, S. (2011) Non-European Migration to the UK: Family and Dependents. Oxford: University of
Oxford, Migration Observatory, see www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk.
Cameron, D. (2011) Prime Ministers Speech on Immigration, 10 October, www.number10.gov.uk/
news/prime-ministers-speech-on-immigration.
Cavanagh, M. (2011) Immigration: a policy distorted by targets, Guardian, 17 November.
Charsley, K. (2005) Unhappy husbands: masculinity and migration in transnational Pakistani
marriages, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 11(1): 85105.
Charsley, K. (2006) Risk and ritual: the protection of British Pakistani women in transnational
marriage, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 32(7): 116987.
Charsley, K. (2007) Risk, trust, gender and transnational cousin marriage among British Pakistanis,
Ethnic and Racial Studies, 30(6): 111731.
Charsley, K. and Shaw, A. (2006) South Asian marriages in comparative perspective, Global
Networks, 6(4): 33144.
Charsley, K., Van Hear, N., Benson, M. and Storer-Church, B. (2011) Marriage-Related Migration to
the UK. London: HMSO.
Gardner, K. (2006) The transnational work of kinship and caring: British-Bengali marriages in
historical perspective, Global Networks, 6(4): 37387.
Gupta, R. (2011) Where is the outcry at this attack on migrant families?, Guardian, 19 July.
Home Ofce (2011) Family Migration: Evidence and Analysis. London: HMSO.
Kabeer, N. (2000) The Power to Choose: Bangladeshi Women and the Labour Market in London and
Dhaka. London: Verso.
Kandiyoti, D. (1988) Bargaining with patriarchy, Gender and Society, 2(3): 27490.
Kofman, E., Lukes, S., Meetoo, V. and Aaron, P. (2008) Family Migration to the United Kingdom:
Trends, Statistics and Policy. London: Middlesex University, International Centre for
Migration Policy Development.
Kraler, A. (2010) Civic Stratication, Gender and Family Migration Policies in Europe. Vienna:
International Centre for Migration Policy Development.
Levine, P. (2006) Sexuality and empire, in Hall, C. and Rose, S. (eds) At Home with the Empire:
Metropolitan Culture and the Imperial World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
12242.
Levitt, P. and Glick-Schiller, N. (2004) Conceptualising simultaneity: a transnational social eld
perspective, International Migration Review, 38(3): 100239.
Lievens, J. (1999) Family forming migration from Turkey and Morocco to Belgium: the demand
for marriage partners from the countries of origin, International Migration Review, 33(3):
71744.
Mand, K. (2002) Place, gender and power in transnational Sikh marriages, Global Networks, 2(3):
23348.
Mand, K. (2006) Social Capital and Transnational South Asian Families: Rituals, Care and
Provision. London: London South Bank University, Families and Social Capital ESRC
Research Group.
Migration Observatory (2011) Family fortunes: how far can reforms go towards reducing net
migration?. See www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk, 17 February.
Migrants Rights Network (2011) Lost in the balance: trading womens human rights for
immigration control?. See www.migrantsrights.org.uk.
Parmar, P. (1982) Gender, race and class: Asian women in resistance, in Centre for Contemporary
Cultural Studies (ed.) The Empire Strikes Back. London: Routledge, 23675.
Redclift, V. (2006) Changes in Family Reunion Migration from Bangladesh to the UK 19852004:
Policy, Gender and Social Ties. London: LSE, unpublished MSc dissertation.
Samad, Y. and Eade, J. (2002) Community Perceptions of Forced Marriage. London: Foreign and
Commonwealth Ofce.
350 C. Alexander
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

b
y

[
K
U

L
e
u
v
e
n

U
n
i
v
e
r
s
i
t
y

L
i
b
r
a
r
y
]

a
t

2
3
:
5
7

2
5

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
1
4

Travis, A. (2011a) David Cameron launches immigration crackdown, Guardian, 10 October.
Travis, A. (2011b) Government attacks judges for rejecting marriage visa ban, Guardian, 12 October.
Travis, A. (2011c) Virginity tests for immigrants reected dark age prejudices of 1970s Britain,
Guardian, 8 May.
Visram, R. (1986) Ayahs, Lascars, and Princes: Indians in Britain 17001947. London: Pluto Press.
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 351
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

b
y

[
K
U

L
e
u
v
e
n

U
n
i
v
e
r
s
i
t
y

L
i
b
r
a
r
y
]

a
t

2
3
:
5
7

2
5

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
1
4