Binational Marriages

In a global context characterized as much by its flows of information, ideas, people and goods as by the increasing impermeability of national borders, what are the dynamics at play in the development of intimacies and conjugal projects between Canadian women and men from the Global South? This anthropological study explores the lived experience of the romantic encounter, the development of intimacy during periods of physical co-presence and periods of separateness, marriage and the Canadian spousal reunification process from the perspective of Canadian women involved in transnational relationships with men from the Global South. It draws on the women’s narratives of their conjugal and mobility trajectories, on eighteen months of participant observation in two online support group designed for women in binational relationships, as well as on interviews with other key actors.

First, this thesis examines the romantic encounter and at the development of intimacy. It appears that for the women, the dynamics of conjugality, mobility and dwelling are all interconnected. However, they differ depending on whether the women lived in the country of her partner or the relationship developed mainly at a distance, such as when the romantic encounter occurred on the Internet or during a vacation trip. In the first case, the choice of destination and the conjugal trajectory of the women are generally the continuation of a familiarization with alterity that started early in their lives. In the second case, the women’s transnational intimacy generates a form of romantic hyper-mobility fueled by the intensity and the frequency of the visits to their husband, and by an extensive use of communication technologies. However, in both cases, the man’s mobility constraints rapidly become a limitation to the development of the relationship.

Second, this thesis explores the lived experience of the Canadian spousal reunification process. This bureaucratic process represents such a great investment on the part of the women that it becomes emotionally loaded and acquires great symbolic value, which, in turn, contributes to the reification of the women’s conjugal project. However, the legitimacy of the relationship is constantly questioned throughout the process—in forms to fill out and in interviews with immigration agents. Hence, the difficulties encountered in the reunification procedures are experienced as a set of administrative trials imposed on their relationship. Because of their first hand experience of this “economy of suspicion”, the women sponsors develop increased reflexivity about their couple relationship and form support networks where information and experiences are shared and discussed and where they question, redefine and reproduce conjugal norms.

Finally, this study demonstrates how trajectories of mobility, dwelling and conjugality are intimately connected. Canadian women’s matrimonial projects with men from the Global South propel their geographical and virtual mobility and thus reinforce their transnational habitus. However, the spousal reunification process acts as a national and a moral border. It contributes to augment the vulnerability of the women, and questions their ability (and their right) to make a legitimate matrimonial choice.

Cet article explore l’expérience vécue de la relation amoureuse transnationale chez des femmes canadiennes en couple avec un homme non-occidental. Les périodes de co-présence physique et de séparation géographique avec l’amoureux ont été contrastées. Il en émerge une polarisation entre l’être-en-couple ensemble, temps associé aux émotions positives, euphoriques ; et l’être-en-couple séparé, temps associé aux émotions négatives. Ainsi, pour ces femmes, une vie commune avec leur partenaire, sous un même toit, dans un même pays, devient l’objectif ultime de leur relation amoureuse transnationale. Cependant, vu les contraintes à la mobilité de leur conjoint, cette vie commune ne peut se réaliser qu’à travers le processus laborieux de « parrainage » de l’immigration de leur conjoint au Canada.

Mots-clés : amour, couple mixte, Canada, immigration, autoethnographie.

This article explores the lived experience of Canadian women in transnational love relationships with a non-Western partner. Periods of physical co-presence and geographical separation were contrasted. It emerges that the Canadian women divide their relationship into two main phases: times of togetherness, which are associated with positive, even euphoric, emotional states; and times of separateness, which are mainly associated with toxic emotions. Hence, for the women, a conjugal life with their partner under the same roof, in the same country, becomes an ultimate goal. However, due to the mobility constraints their non-Western partner often faces, their goal can only be achieved through the « sponsorship » of their spouse’s immigration to Canada, a cumbersome and time consuming process.

Keywords: love, mixed couples, Canada, immigration, autoethnography.

The article discusses family practices and gender relations in the interethnic couples of Polish women having foreign partners. While the theoretical framework engages with conceptualizations of family practice, binational coupledom, cultural diffusion and gender orders, the mix-methods methodological approach combines cases from three qualitative and thematically-linked research projects on Polish migration across three EU destination countries. We argue that spousal attitudes to gender orders shape the degree of cultural diffusion in interethnic couples formed by Polish women in Western Europe. In addition, we propose that gender orders of the spouses must not align with the ethnic belonging, but rather illuminate the pre-existing preferences for a traditional or egalitarian model. More broadly, we observe that women remain the key agents of sustaining or rejecting the Polish heritage and practices in the everyday life. In other words, the women determine the degree and shape of the intra-family cultural diffusion.

Ce livre apporte une contribution innovante à la connaissance de la mixité sociale à partir d’histoires de couples formés entre des citoyens européens et des partenaires « arabes ». Contrairement aux idées reçues, les difficultés que ces couples rencontrent peuvent générer des formes de résistance innovantes. Leur force réside dans le processus de « migration conjointe » effectuée par les deux partenaires et dont les enfants bénéficieront dans leur construction identitaire vers l’âge adulte.

Avec une préface de Gabrielle Varro.

In the context of intermarriage, mixedness can take different forms. Most often, it refers to a mix of class, religion, nationality, ethnicity or ‘race’ in a couple. In this article, I go beyond a separate analysis of categories, analyzing the interrelation of these factors. The article discusses how and under which circumstances mixed children become visible in Switzerland and Morocco using a comparative and intersectional approach to mixedness. Based on 23 biographical narrative interviews, I analyze three situations of stigmatization: racialization, language practices and othering due to religious affiliation. Stigmatization processes due to mixedness, it is argued, are a relational phenomenon depending not only on markers such as ‘race’, ethnicity and religion but also on their interplay with gender, class, language and biographical experiences. The results suggest that mixed individuals have found creative ways to navigate their visibility: they normalize their binational origin, look for alternative spaces of belonging, emphasize their ‘Swiss-ness’ or ‘Moroccan-ness’, use languages to influence their social positioning or acquire knowledge about their binational origin in order to confront stigmatizations. The study reveals further that processes of othering due to mixedness are not only an issue in ‘Western’ societies that look back on a long history of immigration and have pronounced migration discourses. Even in Morocco, a country where immigration has so far been a marginal phenomenon, the importance of social hierarchies for the positioning of people of binational origin is evident.

Résumé : Les couples de migrantes quadragénaires chinoises sans-papiers et d’hommes européens âgés offrent un nouvel aperçu de la diversité des arrangements matrimoniaux binationaux. Le questionnement est double : pourquoi ces femmes, dont le projet migratoire court n’inclut aucun projet matrimonial se remarient-elles en France ? Pourquoi ces unions, qui apparaissent comme des mariages « pour les papiers », perdurent-elles dans le temps ? Le croisement des observations et des témoignages des conjoints permet de mettre en cause la dichotomie entre mariages d’amour et mariages à visée instrumentale. L’analyse montre comment dans ces couples pensés sur le mode de l’échange entre partenaires, la logique de don et du contre don se déploie pour les lier dans le long terme mais sur la base de positions inégales. Elle souligne, à la suite de Zelizer, combien les ressources matérielles et symboliques échangées mettent en lien les questions conjugales, affectives et sexuelles avec les sphères statutaires, juridiques et économiques, envisagées à une échelle transnationale.

Mots clefs : couples binationaux, échanges intimes, dons contre dons, échanges économico-sexuels, migrants sans-papiers, mariages et divorces, couples franco-chinois, migrations chinoises.

Abstract: The couples formed by the middle-aged Chinese migrant women and European men give a new insight on binational couples in France. This article addresses a double paradox: why undocumented migrant women remarry abroad with European men while they left China for a short period without intention to remarry? Why those unions who look like marriages of convenience last over time? Observations and qualitative interviews with both spouses challenge the dichotomy between love and instrumental marriages. The analysis highlights that these couples are constructed as an exchange between partners. It examines how the logic of gift contributes to bind partners together in the long run but in unequal positions. Following Zelizer, it shows that the material and the symbolic resources exchanged between them circulate at the transnational level and contribute to link the conjugal, emotional, sexual, legal, economic and material spheres.

Keywords: binational couples, intimacy, gift economy, economico-sexual exchanges, undocumented migrants, marriages and divorces, Franco-Chinese couples, Chinese migrations

Die Dissertation betrachtet herkömmliche Untersuchungen zum Thema Sprachloyalität bzw. Spracherhalt kritisch und eröffnet neue Perspektiven auf damit zusammenhängende Fragestellungen. Anstelle des meist gewählten, exklusiven Fokus auf die Beziehung zur (einzigen) Muttersprache und deren intergenerationellen Weitergabe, wird hier vorgeschlagen, Sprachbeziehungen und Sprachweitergabe als Formen von Mehrsprachigkeit zu untersuchen. Es soll dabei den theoretischen und methodologischen Herausforderungen begegnet werden, Sprachbeziehungen und Sprachweitergabe als Prozesse in ihren zeitlichen, räumlichen und sozialen Dimensionen anzugehen und im Spannungsfeld gesellschaftlicher und individueller Vorstellungen und Praktiken einzubetten. In linguistisch-ethnographischer Herangehensweise werden dazu sprachbiografische Interviews und unterschiedliche Interaktionssituationen aus dem Alltag von binationalen, russisch-französischsprachigen Paaren und Familien in der französischsprachigen Schweiz im Hinblick auf Sprachideologien, narrative Identität und Sprachsozialisation analysiert. Der Fokus liegt dabei auf der Bedeutung der einzelnen Sprachen des individuellen Sprachenrepertoires für die russischsprachigen PartnerInnen (Sprachbeziehungen) und der Weitergabe des Russischen an die Kinder. Die Dissertation stellt somit auch eine der wenigen Arbeiten dar, welche das Thema des Spracherhalts in zweisprachig-binationalen Paaren/Familien in der Schweiz untersucht, und die erste, die sich dieser Frage in Bezug auf die Sprachkombination Russisch und Französisch annimmt.

Some researchers have pointed out to what extent intra-European binational families and their children embody the European motto “unity in diversity” (cf. Favell). Nevertheless, mixed families formed by a European Union citizens and a Third Country national are differently depicted by politicians, mass media and public opinion especially since the 1990s. Family migration restrictions, the economic crises, the growth of consent towards right wing parties contribute to feed suspicion towards these unions. The regard on them changes according to the national origin, religion and social class of the third country national, affecting the European partner too. These families question the meaning of “otherness” in Europe bringing the public debate about who is European inside the private sphere. Based on a number of mixed family récits de vie and on participant observations in some associations in Belgium, France and Italy, the paper investigates if and how individual and collective actions of (and on) binational families are a form of Europeanization from below. “Being European” in practice and in discourse will be discussed analysing: 1) the participation of family’s members in association of defence of binational family rights and 2) the in-between position of the children of these couples (legally European). The aim is to provoke a debate on the “meaning of Europe” considering the impact of its borders and boundaries on the members of binational families, both parents and children, and vice versa.