Gendered Investments in Marriage Migration

2020 ◽  
pp. 116-140
Author(s):  
Chigusa Yamaura
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Women ◽  
Local Context ◽  
Marriage Migration ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
The Town

This chapter discusses how Chinese women in the town of Xinghai navigated their marriageability. In doing so, it offers a picture of cross-border matchmaking practices that, due to differences in the local context, is distinct in a number of ways from Dongyang. In a community where it was socially expected that one should go to Japan, marriage migration to Japan had become a strategy and gendered site of investment for women. By paying expensive brokerage fees, many women actively produced the circumstances of their marriageability and commodified their marriage. But despite their active efforts, their sense of subjectivity within these processes remained unstable. This was due to the unequal and dependent nature of the mobility they engaged in, namely, marriage.

Medina Gounass: Constructing Extra-National Space in a West African Borderland

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
David Newman Glovsky
Keyword(s):  
Islamic Law ◽  
West African ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
National Space ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
History Of ◽  
Postcolonial Africa ◽  
Postcolonial States ◽  
The Town

Abstract The historical autonomy of the religious community of Medina Gounass in Senegal represents an alternative geographic territory to that of colonial and postcolonial states. The borderland location of Medina Gounass allowed the town to detach itself from colonial and independent Senegal, creating parallel governmental structures and imposing a particular interpretation of Islamic law. While in certain facets this autonomy was limited, the community was able to distance itself through immigration, cross-border religious ties, and smuggling. Glovsky’s analysis of the history of Medina Gounass offers a case study for the multiplicity of geographical and territorial entities in colonial and postcolonial Africa.

The Passion of Port Talbot

2016 ◽  
pp. 170-187
Author(s):  
Carys Ruth Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Local Context ◽  
Passion Narrative ◽  
Transformative Power ◽  
The World ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Town

This chapter examines a dramatic reinterpretation of The Passion narrative which took place in Port Talbot in 2011. It explores the roots of the drama (within the medieval mystery tradition and the local context), its production, and the impact which the drama had upon the town, to consider how this reinterpretation, whilst primarily secular in conception and content, might nevertheless have opened a ‘religious space' for the community. The production of The Passion of Port Talbot is discussed in the light of an analogous ‘theo-dramatic' understanding of how God acts in the world. The chapter goes on to explore whether in the impact of The Passion, traces of the sacred might be discerned, embedded within the apparently secular, and that in the ‘religious space' opened up by this production, the transformative power of a community's spiritual and religious heritage might have been activated.

‘Transnational civil dis/obedience’ in the Danish family unification dispute

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rikke Wagner
Keyword(s):  
Eu Law ◽  
Individual Liberty ◽  
Marriage Migration ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Private Lives ◽  
International Couples ◽  
Political Character ◽  
Danish Family ◽  
Cross Border Movement

This article develops a concept of transnational civil dis/obedience. It provides a framework for interpreting and evaluating practices of cross-border movement by citizens and migrants, who mobilize international or supranational law to sidestep and challenge domestic rules deemed illegitimate. Such acts are made possible by, but also enact, complex, overlapping and competing legal orders in Europe and elsewhere. In contrast to analyses stressing the private and market-based nature of these actions, the conceptual lens introduced here draws out their potentially civic and political character. To construct and illustrate my argument, I engage with an in-depth case study of EU citizenship and cross-border movement in the area of marriage migration, where individual liberty and political membership are fiercely contested. The paper draws on narrative interviews with Danish-international couples who in response to Denmark’s restrictive family unification rules have used EU-law to protest against what they see as unjust interference in their private lives.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document