Language as a new instrument of border control: the regulation of marriage migration from Morocco to Germany

Abstract

In 2007, the German government introduced the requirement of a language certificate for citizens of 'third countries' who want to join their spouses in the Federal Republic. Thereby, Germany followed the example of the Netherlands, Austria, the UK and France. German policy-makers have justified this language certificate as a measure to facilitate integration before entering the country. Drawing on the Moroccan case, this paper challenges this dominant integration argument and shows the actual consequences of this new instrument of border control. This paper argues that the language certificate leads above all to the hierarchisation of marriage migrants and even to the exclusion of certain candidates, depending on their educational background and financial means. The history of marriage migration from Morocco to Germany shows that family migration, especially of spouses, has a long tradition and has always been the special target of restrictions and control. However, the required language certificate leads to a new level of control. While marriage migration is traditionally based on a private matter, namely the decision to marry someone and to share life together, the utilitarian logic of a neoliberal migration management has found its way into the control of this form of migration. This is also visible in the externalisation of the border regime in the sense of an out-sourcing of migration management, whereby institutions such as language schools have become an integrated part of Germany's border control system.

Studying marriage migration to Europe from below: informal practices of government, border struggles and multiple entanglements

“…These include the introduction of a minimum age (Muller Myrdahl 2010), minimum income-levels (Block andBonjour 2013, Eggebø 2013), pre-departure integration requirements such as language tests de Hart 2013, Gutekunst 2015) or, in Denmark, the requirement to prove that the couple's 'combined attachment' to Denmark is greater than that to any other country in the world (Wagner 2015). This literature offers important insights on how the regulation of marriage migration entails often invisibilized discriminations along lines of class, race and gender (Wray 2015, Block 2015, Gutekunst 2015 as well as tacit normative assumptions about family and gender relations (Pellander 2015) which playa crucial role in the production of collective (national) identities (Bonjour and de Hart 2013).…”

“…The first bias concerns the insufficient consideration of the gap between legal and policy frameworks and their actual implementation on the 'street-level'. Studies that rely on discourse and policy analysis clearly outnumber the small, albeit growing number of ethnographic studies that focus on the actual implementation of marriage migration related regulations (Infantino 2014, Gutekunst 2015, Pellander 2015, Maskens 2015, Scheel 2017, Carver 2013, Cole 2014.…”

Looking for the Best and Brightest? Deservingness Regimes in Italian Labour Migration Management

“…These include the regulation of those flows of migrants which, while admitted through other routes, have access to the labour market (such as family migrants, students, refugees) as well as the “back door” of ex‐post regularizations. On the one hand, studies have shown that employment‐based and human capital considerations have become pervasive in managing migrants’ membership across different policy fields, including the bigger role played by paid employment in (individual and mass) legalization programmes (Chauvin et al., ; Chauvin, Garcés‐Mascareñas, and Kraler, ), the regulation of “managed” family migration through increasingly selective economic or integration thresholds (Gutekunst, ; Kofman, Kraler, Kohli, and Schmoll, ; Sirriyeh, ; Staver, ), as well as the role played by students as (potential) future human capital (Khadria, ; Robertson, ; Ziguras and Law, ). On the other hand, even in countries adopting strict skill‐selective regimes, immigrant low‐skilled labour is still important, although it is provided by other categories of migrants, such as asylum seekers or European free movers.…”

Marriage Migration and National Boundary-Making: A Comparative Study of Marriage Migration in South Korea and Canada

“…This comparison is particularly timely because the regulation of marriage migration has been a notable trend over the last two decades not only in European countries (through the recent restrictive measures such as language and age requirements for marriage migrants [See Wemyss, Yuval-Davis, and Cassidy, 2018;Gutekunst, 2015;D'Aoust 2014;Wray 2006]), but also in some Asian countries that have recently emerged as receiving countries such as Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore (Jones and Shen, 2008).…”

“…Recently, the imposed language requirement has emerged as an instrumental tool to control flows of marriage migration at the nation-state borders of receiving countries (Gutekunst, 2015). Language institutions have become an integrated part of the border control system as a 'gatekeeper' in sending countries since marriage migrants wishing to apply for spousal visas have to pass through these institutions.…”