50 research outputs found

    'For her protection and benefit': the regulation of marriage-related migration to the UK

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    This paper argues that a two-tier system has evolved dividing intra-UK/EU marriages from extra-UK/EU marriages. For the former, marriage is a contract between two individuals overseen by a facilitating state. For the latter, marriage has become more of a legal status defined and controlled by an intrusive and obstructive state. I argue that this divergence in legislating regulation is steeped in an ethnicized imagining of ‘Britishness’ whereby the more noticeably ‘other’ migrants (by skin colour or religion) are perceived as a threat to the national character. The conceptualization of women as legally ‘disabled’ citizens (1870 Naturalisation Act) for whom a state must act as responsible patriarch, is a fundamental part of this imagining of the nation. The paper therefore examines the social (gendered and ethnicized) assumptions and political aims embedded within the legislation

    Displaying genuineness: cultural translation in the drafting of marriage narratives for immigration applications and appeals

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    This article uses Finch's (2007) idea of 'display' to analyse the process in which autobiographical statements for family immigration applications and appeals are drafted in the United Kingdom. I argue that legal representatives play a key role in 'translating culture' (Good, 2011) in relation to both content and form, a process that is driven primarily by the need to demonstrate compatibility with the cultural assumptions of ethnocentrically conceived Immigration Rules. These rules act as 'moral gatekeepers' (Wray, 2006) to set limits on the conceptual structure of 'family' and to outline what a 'genuine' marital relationship looks like, thereby excluding cultural Others. The findings show that legal representatives translate the experiences, norms and values of their clients' relationships using authorial devices to make the account ring true within a commonsense understanding of British culture. I suggest that legal representatives thus contribute to a successful outcome for those lacking in cultural capital

    An "effectively comprehensive"analysis?

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    Ethnopoetics and Narrative Analysis

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    We acknowledge and concur with Catherine Kohler Riessman's insistence on the necessity of sustained and formal analysis of narratives. We thus distance ourselves from qualitative researchers who aim to celebrate personal narratives rather than undertaking that analytic work. In doing so, we also draw on the work of Dell Hymes, whose approach to ethnopoetics informs our own. The discussion is developed and illustrated with materials from Natasha Carver's research with informants of Somali heritage that display the relevance of ethnopoetic transcription and analysis
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