Book launch: Transnational Marriage and Partner Migration

The book offers a multidisciplinary perspective on the ways in which marriage and partner migration processes have become the object of state scrutiny, and the site of sustained political interventions in several states around the world. Covering cases as varied as the United States, Canada, Japan, Iran, France, Belgium or the Netherlands, among others, the contributors reveal how marriage and partner migration have become battlegrounds for political participation, control, and exclusion. The book was published on 11 February 2022. For more information on the book, please visit.

The launch was in April 2022. During the roundtable, the participants listed below discussed the book’s findings:

• Anne-Marie D’Aoust (editor): Associate Professor in Political Science at the Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada.
• Anne Balke Staver (discussant): Researcher at Oslo Metropolitan University. She holds a PhD in Political Science with a specialization in comparative public policy, focusing on comparing immigration policies in Northern European states.
• Saskia Bonjour (contributor and organizer): Associate Professor in Political Science at the University of Amsterdam and co-author of Chapter 2, ‘“A Necessary Evil”? The Problematization of Family Migration in French Parliamentary Debates on Family Migration, 1974–1993’.
• Mieke Vandenbroucke (contributor): Research Professor in Linguistics at the University of Antwerp and author of Chapter 9, ‘He Said, She Said: The Complexity of Oral Relationship Narratives as Written Factual Evidence in Belgian Marriage Fraud Investigations’.
• Betty de Hart (contributor and organizer): Professor of Transnational Families and Migration Law at VU University Amsterdam and author of Chapter 1, ‘The Odd Couple: Gender, Securitization, Europeanization, and Marriages of Convenience in Dutch Family Migration Policies (1930–2020)’.
• Laura Odasso (contributor): Researcher in Sociology at the Chaire Migrations et Sociétés, Collège de France, Paris, and co-author of Chapter 8, ‘Intimacy Brokers: The Fragile Boundaries of Activism for Heterosexual and Same-Sex Binational Couples in France’.
• Massilia Ourabah (contributor): PhD Researcher in Sociology at the University of Ghent and co-author of Chapter 2, ‘“A Necessary Evil”? The Problematization of Family Migration in French Parliamentary Debates on Family Migration, 1974–1993’.
• Helena Wray (contributor): Associate Professor in Migration Law and Director of Research for the University of Exeter Law School, and author of Chapter 4, ‘What Do States Regulate When They Regulate Spousal Migration? A Study of France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Denmark’.