Forced Marriage vs. Family Reunification: Nationality, Gender and Ethnicity in German Migration Policy

Abstract

It is a widely recognised European phenomenon that practices associated with minority populations provoke political actors, who have previously not related to gender equality, to participate in debates – apparently on the behalf of women. This tendency can be observed in the policy debate on the German New Immigration Act (2007): restrictive regulations on family reunification are said to protect migrant young women from forced marriage. This paper argues that discursive processes of ethno-gendering and class-gendering (intersectional hyper-visibility) are mobilised at the expense of (women's) citizenship status (intersectional invisibility). Such constructions of ‘the other’ as unworthy of equal treatment have to be understood against the backdrop of an ethno-cultural citizenship regime, which restrictive migration policies seek to maintain. The contribution of this paper to citizenship studies is not only empirical, but also methodological: it introduces a model of Intersectional Discursive Policy Analysis that helps to understand discursive constructions of citizenship.