Forced Marriage as a Harm in Domestic and International Law

Abstract

This article reports on our analysis of 120 refugee cases from Australia, Canada, and Britain where an actual or threatened forced marriage was part of the claim for protection.We found that forced marriage was rarely considered by refugee decision makers to be a harm in and of itself. This ¢nding contributes to understanding how gender and sexuality are analysed within refugee law, because the harm of forced marriage is experienced di¡erently by lesbians, gay men and heterosexual women.We contrast our ¢ndings in the refugee case law with domestic initiatives in Europe aimed at protecting nationals from forced marriages both within Europe and elsewhere. We pay particular attention to British initiatives because they are in many ways the most farreaching and innovative, and thus the contrast with the response of British refugee law is all the more stark.

Gender, Migration, and Exclusionary Citizenship Regimes: Conceptualizing Transnational Abandonment of Wives as a Form of Violence Against Women

“…This differentiation between men's and women's experiences of forced marriage does not simply rely on a "calculus of harm" that defines domestic violence as an incident-specific crime judged by injury or trauma-saying that the more severe and frequent the incidents of violence, the more serious the abuse (Stark, 2007(Stark, , p. 1510). These differences are on account of gender as well as sexuality, whereby in a patriarchal and heteronormative world, the harm from forced marriage is experienced differently by lesbians, gay men, heterosexual women, and heterosexual men, as Dauvergne and Millbank (2010) effectively unpack in their analysis of gender and sexuality within refugee law. Stark (2007) argues that the unrelenting nature of coercive control undermines the physical and psychological integrity of the victim, thereby creating conditions whereby women experience a narrowing of life and options, of agentic capacity and action.…”

Derecho penal y matrimonios forzados. ¿Es adecuada la actual política criminal?

“…14, pp. 386-405 [http://politcrim.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Vol15N29A14.pdf] Por lo que se refiere al primer grupo de medidas, algunos estados han adoptado medidas dirigidas a dificultar la obtención del permiso de residencia por reunificación familiar, en el sentido de incrementar la edad a partir de la cual es posible obtener un visado de este tipo 56 . Algunos países han aumentado la edad a partir de la cual es posible obtener el permiso de residencia por reunificación familiar, tal como hizo en su día el Reino Unido que elevó a los 21 años la edad necesaria para obtener el visado en los casos en que el contrayente que lo solicitaba no era nacional europeo.…”

Gendering Islamophobia to better understand immigration laws

“…The British trajectory was distinguished by strong involvement from grassroots feminist organisations, and a considered rejection of both immigration law reform and criminalisation options. Instead, innovative civil law reform included extending the reach of British law to provide for legal remedies for citizens and even permanent residents who are out of the country at the time that they are forced into marriage (Dauvergne and Millbank 2010). Britain later introduced criminal provisions targeting forced marriage in 2014, despite opposition from community and feminist advocates, as well as legal redundancy.…”