Enright on Forced and Arranged Marriage

HRinI blogger Máiréad Enright (left) features today as a guest blogger on the excellent IntLawGrrls. In her guest post, Máiréad reflects on the phenomenon of forced and arranged marriage in the UK and the ways in which the UK law tries to counter-act these phenomena. Her guest post is substantively based on her recent article entitled “Choice, Culture and the Politics of Belonging: The Emerging Law of Forced and Arranged Marriage”, which was published in (2009) 72 Modern Law Review 331. Here is a taste of Máiréad’s post on IntLawGrrls, which can be read in full here:

The majority of reported victims of forced marriage in the United Kingdom are young women of South Asian Muslim origin. Because of this fact, the forced marriage project must be read critically against the background of a wider politics of British Muslim belonging, which is linked to the counter-terrorism and social cohesion agendas. This politics operates to exclude some British Muslims from full membership in the ‘we group’ of British citizens. The ground for exclusion is that of ‘excessive’ or ‘difficult’ culture. Those British Muslim who are presented as most bound up in cultural practice, I argue, have become the British citizen’s ‘other’, and are subject to law’s discipline on that basis.