Abstract
The chapter presents the main characteristics of transnational marriage practices of Indian Punjabis living in the provinces of Mantua and Reggio Emilia, Northern Italy, focusing on ‘arranged marriages’. Since there is a growing political control over the migrant family, these reproductive customs are under particular scrutiny and are often considered instrumental strategies to elude immigration laws and migration restrictions, or as instruments of oppression and denial of personal freedoms.
My paper is a sociological and ethnographic analysis based on three family stories. It highlights the complex interplay between migrants’ agency (in a gender perspective) and structural constraints determined by laws and by membership of transnational social networks, showing how the initiative of migrants may be influenced by the structural levels, but may also, in turn, exploit or circumvent them. I refer to the analytical framework of ‘civic stratification’ and to the concepts of ‘agency’ and ‘social capital’ to illustrate the meaning that a transnational arranged marriage can assume for the parental network and the individuals involved, in terms of social prestige and personal honour, of redefinition of kin networks, power-relations among the spouses and gender identity within the newly-born family.
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Notes
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This expression has been literally translated from the diary of Nittu, to indicate the close proximity between the two people concerned.
- 3.
Many Indian Punjabis living in Emilia Romagna and Lombardy are employed as milkers in stables of the supply chain of Parmigiano Reggiano (Bertolani 2015).
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Bertolani, B. (2017). Structural Restrictions and Personal Desires: Arranged Marriages between Punjab and Italy. In: Decimo, F., Gribaldo, A. (eds) Boundaries within: Nation, Kinship and Identity among Migrants and Minorities. IMISCOE Research Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53331-5_9
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