'A thing apart': controlling male family migration to the UK

While gender offers valuable perspectives for understanding migration law, masculinity has received little attention. In family migration, men are generally regarded as economic agents and family as marginal to their lives, a view that is difficult to dislodge because it serves the purposes of governments anxious to reduce unwanted immigration. In British immigration law, measures have often explicitly or implicitly relied on such gender-based assumptions.Recently, lawyers have utilised the gap between official and unofficial standards by promoting test cases involving either a woman or a vulnerable man but where the principles established will benefit all migrants. Gains may be short-lived however as new ways emerge of making distinctions. These arguments are demonstrated in this article through examination of British immigration control and judicial decisions. The article finds that, in this arena, new understandings of masculinity and fatherhood have yet to make much impact

Introduction: the invisible (migrant) man

Migration scholarship has often lagged behind developments in gender studies. The importance of gender has gained increasing recognition but this has predominantly meant a focus on women migrants; only recently has agendered lens been turned to the study of migrant men. Discourses surrounding migrationin law andgovernment, and in legal scholarship, remain characterised by neglect or dismissal of the gendered experiences of male migrants. Where they do appear, men are frequently cast as the oppressor of family members or as abusing legal channels of migration. Their vulnerabilities and affective ties and needs are rarely foregrounded. This negative representation may be instrumentalizedat a variety of levels, and for a variety of purposes, making it difficult for more nuanced critiques to gain purchase.This Special Issue seeks to extend the discussion of migration and gender by exploring the ways in which men’s gendered experiences of migration remain marginalised

A family resemblance? The regulation of marriage migration in Europe

This article analyses key aspects of the regulation of entry and stay of spousal migrants in EEA member states. It shows that there are differences of regulation, particularly between states in Eastern and Southern Europe and states in Northern and Western Europe but, in most cases, the amount of divergence is limited. The article connects this ‘family resemblance’ to a broad concept of Europeanisation. Even where there is no binding legal obligation, European legal norms and the practice in other European states largely circumscribe what is possible

A stranger in the home: Immigration to the UK through marriage from 1962.

This thesis is concerned with the British state's response to marriage immigration after 1962. Admission of foreign spouses places strangers at the symbolic heart of national life and their claims have often been denied. Meanwhile. British residents who enable such claims may be regarded as having thereby partially excluded themselves from national life. This has been particularly so for women for whom marriage is often considered a statement of public allegiance as well as a private act. The thesis establishes this argument through analysis of decision-making by the legislature, the judiciary and the entry clearance service. It argues that all decisionmakers exercise discretionary powers and will usually do so in accordance with their sense of their institutional function infonned by their understanding of the nature of the world. Where this understanding is shared across institutions, congruity in patterns of decision-making may emerge. This is argued to be largely the case for the period from 1962 to 1997. The thesis argues that, since 1997, perceptions of the threat posed by marriage immigration have become more complex and less uniform. Skin colour, gender and formal married status have become less significant. Obedience to state-erected hurdles, cultural conformity and social class have become more prominent although tempered by other competing priorities, particularly human rights values which the courts have recently begun to assert more vigorously. The conclusion places these arguments within the context of the continued desire of nation states to prevent unwanted immigration despite global movement and porous borders. Many British residents are now part of international diasporas or are themselves recent immigrants. It is even more difficult to use immigration control to reinforce the role of marriage and family in maintaining an idealised conception of national life even if recent indications are that efforts to do so will continue

International human rights frameworks in relation to national family reunification policy and administrative practice

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GWAS of Suicide Attempt in Psychiatric Disorders Identifies Association With Major Depression Polygenic Risk Scores

Objective: Over 90% of suicide attempters have a psychiatric diagnosis, however twin and family studies suggest that the genetic etiology of suicide attempt (SA) is partially distinct from that of the psychiatric disorders themselves. Here, we present the largest genome-wide association study (GWAS) on suicide attempt using major depressive disorder (MDD), bipolar disorder (BIP) and schizophrenia (SCZ) cohorts from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium. Method: Samples comprise 1622 suicide attempters and 8786 non-attempters with MDD, 3264 attempters and 5500 non-attempters with BIP and 1683 attempters and 2946 non-attempters with SCZ. SA GWAS were performed by comparing attempters to non-attempters in each disorder followed by meta-analyses across disorders. Polygenic risk scoring was used to investigate the genetic relationship between SA and the psychiatric disorders. Results: Three genome-wide significant loci for SA were found: one associated with SA in MDD, one in BIP, and one in the meta-analysis of SA in mood disorders. These associations were not replicated in independent mood disorder cohorts from the UK Biobank and iPSYCH. No significant associations were found in the meta-analysis of all three disorders. Polygenic risk scores for major depression were significantly associated with SA in MDD (R2=0.25%, P=0.0006), BIP (R2=0.24%, P=0.0002) and SCZ (R2=0.40%, P=0.0006). Conclusions: This study provides new information on genetic associations and demonstrates that genetic liability for major depression increases risk for suicide attempt across psychiatric disorders. Further collaborative efforts to increase sample size hold potential to robustly identify genetic associations and gain biological insights into the etiology of suicide attempt

Comparative genetic architectures of schizophrenia in East Asian and European populations

Schizophrenia is a debilitating psychiatric disorder with approximately 1% lifetime risk globally. Large-scale schizophrenia genetic studies have reported primarily on European ancestry samples, potentially missing important biological insights. Here, we report the largest study to date of East Asian participants (22,778 schizophrenia cases and 35,362 controls), identifying 21 genome-wide-significant associations in 19 genetic loci. Common genetic variants that confer risk for schizophrenia have highly similar effects between East Asian and European ancestries (genetic correlation = 0.98 ± 0.03), indicating that the genetic basis of schizophrenia and its biology are broadly shared across populations. A fixed-effect meta-analysis including individuals from East Asian and European ancestries identified 208 significant associations in 176 genetic loci (53 novel). Trans-ancestry fine-mapping reduced the sets of candidate causal variants in 44 loci. Polygenic risk scores had reduced performance when transferred across ancestries, highlighting the importance of including sufficient samples of major ancestral groups to ensure their generalizability across populations

Abstracts from the NIHR INVOLVE Conference 2017

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