Abstract
Despite the confident proclamations by political commentators concerning relationships between transnational marriage migration and integration, the evidence base to underpin such assertions is mixed, and complicated by differing foci, contexts and assumptions. In this chapter, we use the five part conceptualisation of integration set out in Chapter 2, to interrogate key arguments, evidence and assumptions in a systematic fashion, whilst drawing out the implications for analysis of marriage migration of broader debates in the social sciences literature, such as on ‘bonding’ and ‘bridging’ capital, on processes across the five domains. The conclusions undermine the homogenising political representation of transnational marriages as problematic for ‘integration’, demonstrating the need for empirical research, such as our study, to explore the complexity of the integration processes at play.
This chapter is based on Charsley, K., Bolognani, M., & Spencer, S. (2016). Marriage migration and integration: Interrogating assumptions in academic and policy debates. Ethnicitie, 17(4): 469–490.
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Charsley, K., Bolognani, M., Ersanilli, E., Spencer, S. (2020). Marriage Migration and Integration: Unpacking the Arguments and Evidence. In: Marriage Migration and Integration. Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40252-5_3
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