Dr Helena Wray's book is a timely contribution to what is a rapidly expanding field of research. Family migration, including marriage migration, is recognised as the most common form of migration globally (Kofman and Meeto, 2008) and is important not only because of the essential human need it represents but because, in an era of restricted migration, it remains one of the few avenues open to some individuals wishing to migrate. Individuals migrate to reunite families, to join family members and to form families. Migration with marriage as the main driver occurs in and between all countries of the world and leads people from industrialising countries to industrialised ones but also accounts for a great deal of movement within the less developed economies of the global south. In many countries (notably in East Asia but elsewhere too), marrying a citizen may be the only way resident migrants can gain the security of permanent settled status and the chance to bring relatives (such as their parents or children) to join them from their home country. Family reunification and formation is a human right enshrined in international human rights legislation (see Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)) but in practice, restrictions on who can enjoy this right are common in countries of settlement. In many countries, visas allowing family reunion and the settlement of spouses are subject to strict economic criteria and potential migrants are commonly tested for language skill and may be prevented from migrating to join partners because of their age (Williams, 2010).
Marriage migration may be closely connected to community and group identity and historical migration flows may be reflected in contemporary marriage migration especially when migration may be considered transnational. As the importance of transnational communities and networks has become better understood the crucial, and complex, role of marriage in maintaining and developing transnational connections has become clearer (see for example chapters in Charsley, forthcoming). Across the globe, marriages that involve migration may be more or less transnational and while a “typical” marriage migrant in the UK may belong to a family or a group with strong bonds connecting the individual or community across state boundaries, in other parts of the world a marriage migrant may be assumed to be someone with no prior knowledge or connection to the country she (and it usually is a she) is moving to. Such non‐transnational marriages are also common in the UK, but as Helena Wray's work shows, this type of marriage migrant has not been foremost in the mind of policymakers as regulations in the UK have developed from the 1960s to the present day.
A key strength of Helena Wray's work is her meticulous approach to policy and regulation. Her understanding of the law and of the sometimes conflicting agenda of the UK judiciary and its legislature provides a perspective that demonstrates how law comes to be made, revised and how it interacts with public opinion and wider social processes such as migration flows and changes in family structures. Her observations on how governments seek to control and manage migration are applicable to broader migration policy regimes both in the UK and elsewhere and she provides evidence of how, regardless of what government and the public opinion may want to achieve, the judiciary and international obligations may intervene. Many readers familiar with migration policy making will recognise the “over‐legislation” that Wray identifies in relation to marriage migration. She charts how governments have sought to legislate on matters they cannot realistically control and nowhere is this more evident than in the private sphere of family life. Controls and limitations on the choice of marriage partner reaches into the most intimate sphere of life and Wray shows how policy goals for controlling marriage migration in the UK and doubtless elsewhere, have been tempered by the claims on and the assertion of the values of the liberal state.
In this closely argued and detailed book, Dr Wray takes a specific time period as the basis of her study and focuses on the UK Government's regulation of marriage migration between 1962 and 2010. This period begins with the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act, a landmark in the UK immigration control as it formally distinguished between citizens of the UK and the colonies. Wray points out the racial bias that this statute created as the, mostly white, “old” commonwealth citizens retained their freedom to travel and settle while the mostly non‐white citizens of the independent “new” commonwealth such as India and Pakistan lost theirs. A mid‐point in Wray's analysis is the change of government in the UK, from Conservative to Labour, in 1997. She identifies a shift in the approach to marriage migration control from the previous era of more overt race‐based policy, epitomised by the “primary purpose rule” (in place from 1985 and which legislated against marriages deemed to be made for the primary purpose of gaining entry to the UK and which predominately affected marriages between the UK and the South Asian subcontinent) to a more human rights‐based approach under New Labour. Post‐1997, Wray argues, marriage control was focused on determining the nature of marriages, seeking to prevent those marriages labelled as bogus and latterly, those considered abusive. While embracing “modern” marriages between same‐sex partners and relationships based on co‐habitation, legislators worked to prevent access to the UK through the marriage migration route to asylum seekers, irregular migrants and others labelled as “unauthorised and non‐compliant” (p. 226). Wray's analysis ends in 2010 with the change of from a Labour government to a coalition of Conservative and Liberal Democrats. Throughout, Helena Wray's book sets out to be a record and an analysis of regulation, she makes no claim to reflect changes in immigration patterns into the UK, she points out, however, that policy has not evolved in response to actual changes in migration trends but to changing perceptions and attitudes to migration and migrants.
A number of themes emerge from Wray's work and these include consideration of how the transnationalism of migrant communities has affected policy and regulation; how attitudes to traditional non‐Western culture have changed and impacted on policy; how unarticulated attitudes to gender, race and class shape the law and how notions of bogus, sham or fake marriages have been contrasted with ideal partnerships based on “romantic love”. Wray seeks to unearth the assumptions and beliefs that have underpinned the regulation of marriage migration in the UK and finds “an implicit hierarchy of acceptable marriages” (p. 10). This hierarchy, privileging some marriages over others, has changed over time but has produced, through official and unofficial means, a view of which marriages are desirable and which are less so. Wray shows that there has always been an acceptance on grounds of basic humanity that the families (and especially the spouses) of resident and settled migrants should live together but this right has been tempered with an equally pervasive view that non‐white immigration is problematic. An example of marriages placed near the bottom of the hierarchy of acceptability is reflected in discourses relating to arranged marriages which have been considered barely acceptable as marriages qualifying for the “privilege” of migration. Wray considers whether these marriages have been targeted because of their “strangeness” and otherness, set against Western norms, or whether they have been opposed because of their association with South Asian migration. Have the human rights and cultural objections raised to arranged marriage been made from genuine interest in the rights of individuals or as a rationalisation for a policy already decided? The acceptability of arranged marriages is clearly a contested area, however, and while Wray describes the “unacceptability” of such marriages, she also points out how they have become incorporated into the presumed knowledge‐base of the arbiters of “proper” marriages. Marriages arranged according to immigration officers' preconceptions of traditional marriage may be more likely to accept them as genuine than “atypical” marriages, such as marriages between men significantly younger than their wives or partners. Wray's work includes many such subtle arguments which give it complexity and authority.
This book demonstrates the use of perceived gender norms in marriage regulation and highlights the changing (but persistent) ways in which gendered, and specifically women's, roles in migration processes feed into policy. Regulation seeks to control women's choices of marriage partner in subtle ways and, Wray argues, may prescribe the sort of marriage partner a women may bring into the UK by opposing the continuing stay of unwanted immigrants or the migration of traditional, disabled, poor or poorly educated men. The effect is to impose the state's criteria on relationships, to disenfranchise women judged to have made a poor decision and force them choose between their country of settlement and their partner. Outdated gender assumptions, for example of the passive nature of women's migration as followers rather than initiators and of the primarily economic (rather than emotional) nature of men's migration, have led to the refusal of many male applicants. In addition to the often mistaken and simplistic assumptions of policy makers, Wray argues that policy has always had the goal of limiting marriage migration (along with most other forms of migration) except where an over‐riding human rights argument for unions to be allowed and for partners to live together in the UK can be made.
A further important contribution of the book is to chart the changing role of the judiciary in supporting and challenging an exclusionary legislature. Wray's research finds that the judiciary has advanced challenges to policy using the ECHR and, since 1998, the Human Rights Act. Legal challenges have altered policy, usually in favour of the rights of migrants, and have ameliorated some of the excesses of the restrictive instincts of government. While not over‐claiming for the role of the judiciary in this regard, legal challenges have thrown out policy preventing migrants without permanent (or regularised) status from marrying and, since the period studied in Wray's research, the Courts have obstructed age restrictions on marriages between citizens and non‐citizens. Wray argues that the judiciary is gaining confidence in challenging and resisting state power through the application of international law and discourse; this is not to claim that the judiciary is always on the side of the migrant but counters the often prevailing attitude amongst activists that the judiciary universally works in favour of tighter migration control.
Dr Wray's subject matter is specialist and she brings a legal precision to the analysis of a specific field of policy that may not appear, at first sight, to be relevant to readers working in the field of migration, health and social care. There is, however, much here to inform those researching and working to improve the life of migrants. An in‐depth and historically informed understanding of policy and the evolution of policy is always valuable and especially so in this case when the policy in question impacts directly on family and domestic arrangements. The regulation of marriage migration affects families living in the country of settlement and those who remain in countries of origin. This regulation, in its UK manifestation or by other jurisdictions, may affect local as well as transnational communities and the frustrations and complications of negotiating an often hostile regulatory environment has clear implications for the health and well being of those caught up in these processes. Beyond the direct value this book has for practitioners and researchers working with migrants, Helena Wray's incisive, methodical and longitudinal study of regulation and policy making has much to teach us about how policy develops, about the underlying motivations and intentions for policy change and also demonstrates how policy is formed, modified and applied.
The insights relating to marriage migration presented here are often directly comparable to the regulation of other forms of migration. Policies change in response to public opinion, to economic and other social changes as well as to the pressures of migration flows. The judiciary of many countries continue to be influenced by external factors and the claim for respect for family life on human rights grounds continues to be significant for individuals and communities seeking to be united through marriage. In this complexity of claim and counter claim marriage migration can be seen as a metaphor for migration control in general and, in the light of this contribution, Helena Wray's book deserves to be read by migration scholars working across the migration field.
