Policing Marriage and Migration

Borders of Intimacy Then and Now

Suspicious couples: marriage and migration control today

Marriages between Europeans and ‘third-country nationals’ (TCN) are (again) viewed with suspicion. The securitisation of migration (the intertwining of security and migration), which has gained a new quality in the past decades, has fuelled the conception of marriage as a loophole in European border control. Accordingly, governments have stepped up their efforts to prevent so-called ‘sham marriages’ which are commonly defined as marriages entered into for the purpose of obtaining migration benefits. Investigations into the implementation of contemporary anti-sham marriage laws have demonstrated how administrative procedures perpetuate prejudices against partnerships between European women and TCN, particularly if involving Muslim men. In the present administrative logic, marriages that tie partners not only across national borders, but ethnic, cultural or religious differences become suspicious and warrant investigations into the private lives of couples. Such state responses to marriage migration, and their underlying assumptions, are not recent phenomena. Placing them in a historical perspective sheds light on the place of marriage in border practices. The scholarship on gendered citizenship and the history of migration shows that current concerns about ‘sham marriages’ repeat historical patterns and tie in with older practices and discourses. The regulation of who can marry and where couples and families can live has long served to define who belongs and who remains foreign. Marriage was and remains central to the definition of national communities, and to the drawing of internal and external borders.

The British Empire’s “white wife problem”

Today, European migration policy is primarily concerned with the ‘misuse’ of marriage by men from outside Europe. In the first half of the 20th century, when European empires still ruled large parts of the world, it was the emigration of European women who wanted to join their extra-European husbands that led to the introduction of restrictions on marriage migration. At this time, most European women lost their premarital citizenship and assumed that of their husbands. Therefore, a woman’s marriage to a foreign national raised expectation of emigration, if not an obligation to do so.

Britain had long been a destination for Indian labourers and students who, as subjects of the British Empire, often arrived in Europe through intra-imperial migration. Since the outbreak of the First World War, an increasing number of Indian men were also present in continental Europe. They arrived in countries such as Germany, France and Switzerland as students, workers, sailors, soldiers and political activists, among others. Intensifying mobility was thus one reason why the interwar period saw a rise of the number of Indian men and European women seeking marriage. The British Foreign and India Offices took note of this development and deliberated on how to respond to it. Officials oftentimes had deep-seated concerns about these relationships, which were highly symbolic in nature and undermined the differences and hierarchies of colonial society that protected the ruling elite. Concerns about such unions were often grounded in stereotypical assumptions about interracial marriage, and additionally, were intensified by the uncertain legal status of women in the colony. Indian personal laws allowed Indian Hindu and Muslim men to turn to religious courts to annule their marriages and divorce their European wives, and they permitted polygamy. British officials considered it likely that Indian husbands would abandon these women, rendering them dependent on private welfare or forcing them to resort to prostitution to earn their livelihood.

While these concerns had developed over a longer period of time, the First World War and the threat of transnational anticolonialism exacerbated the definition of ‘undesirable migrants’, and also intensified state control over women’s emigration. European intelligence services, consulates and border agents now strongly collaborated to control cross-border mobility, while the category of undesirable migration was further developed. Against this backdrop – and in analogy to present debates – certain marriages were considered at odds with the effective management of mobility between (what was then) colony and metropole while others were normalised.

The genealogy of bordering practices

The administrative response to visa applications and marriage requests of European women and their Indian partners (or today’s third-country nationals) entailed the assessment of the ‘respectability’ of relationships and of the character of applicants. Bureaucratic procedures, such as interviewing applicants personally, demanding them to disclose intimate details of their relationship, and the use of surveillance techniques were part of the British Empire’s (still incoherent) management of marriage migration. British officials often presented the denial of travel documents to women who wished to join their partners in the colonies and the thwarting of their attempts to marry as chivalrous acts that served solely to protect women, but which denied them agency. In today’s debates, protecting women from their migrant partners is a key issue, and proponents of stricter migration policies often highlight the need to safeguard women against marriage fraud to justify state intrusion into citizens’ private lives. Conversely, critics of anti-sham marriage legislation argue that shielding EU borders does not justify what they see as states overstepping the mark in their citizens’ private lives.

The British Empire’s reactions to marriage migration offer another crucial starting point for examining the historical intertwining of legal and administrative regulations on marriage and migration – a phenomenon that remains highly topical. Such an analysis makes it possible to understand the extent to which current social perceptions of marriage migration reflect elements of colonial discourse. It also allows us to examine the development of administrative techniques and cooperation between surveillance and migration authorities, as well as the coping mechanisms of couples and families. Such a multidimensional perspective can help to critically examine today’s reactions to marriage migration and contextualise government regulation.

Further Literature

Anne Lavanchy: Glimpses into the Hearts of Whiteness: Institutions of Intimacy and the Desirable National, in: Harald Fischer-Tiné and Patricia Purtschert (Ed.): Colonial Switzerland: Rethinking Colonialism from the Margins, London, 2015, 278–295.

Betty de Hart: The Odd Couple. Gender, Securitization, Europeanization, and Marriages of Convenience in Dutch Family Migration Policies (1930-2020), in: Anne-Maries D’Aoust (Ed.): Transnational Marriage and Partner Migration: Constellations of Security, Citizenship, and Rights, New Brunswick, 2022, 31–48.

Carina E. Ray: “The white wife problem”: Sex, Race and the Contested Politics of Repatriation to Interwar British West Africa in: Gender & History, 21.3, 2009, 628–646.

Christoph Lorke: Liebe verwalten: “Ausländerehen” in Deutschland 1870–1945, Paderborn, 2020.

Hélène Neveu Kringelbach: “‘Mixed Marriage’, Citizenship and the Policing of Intimacy in Contemporary France, in: International Migration Institute Working Papers 77, 2013, 1–19.

Joe Turner: Bordering Intimacy: Postcolonial Governance and the Policing of Family, Manchester, 2020.

Laura Odasso: Negotiating Legitimacy: Binational Couples in the Face of Immigration Bureaucracy in Belgium and Italy, in: Anthropologica 63.1, 2021, 1–30.

Miriam Gutekunst: Grenzüberschreitungen – Migration, Heirat und staatliche Regulierung im Europäischen Grenzregime: Eine Ethnographie, Bielefeld, 2018.

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Cite as:
Simonow, Joanna, Policing Marriage and Migration: Borders of Intimacy Then and Now, EViR Blog, 23.02.2026, https://www.evir.uni-muenster.blog/httpshttps://www.evir.uni-muenster.blog/en/marriage-and-migration/

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