Bartered bridegrooms

Abstract

Muslim men are often portrayed in academic and popular discourses as violent patriarchs and/or as terrorists. Against the backdrop of an increasingly hostile environment within the United Kingdom, this book explores the experiences of Muslim migrant husbands in the Pakistani and Kashmiri diaspora. The uncertainties of migrant journeys tethered to cultural and religious marital norms intersect with gendered experiences of masculinity across space and time. In-depth interviews with 62 migrant husbands shed light on the precarity and vulnerability they experience. Their aspirational masculinities often start in the home country with collective familial dreams of migration, but can turn sour through the exposure of domestic and employment power dynamics upon arriving in the United Kingdom. The ethnography highlights experiences of domestic violence experienced by migrant husbands, which supports the notion of an in-between or liminal masculinity becoming a lived reality for these men on the move, ultimately resulting in novel ways in which a reassertion of masculinity is sought through religious Sufi traditions and musical lamentations. The book weaves together transnational dynamics between people and place along the contours of colonial legacies, showing the self and other power dynamics present within a single group identity. Violence is inflicted on incoming migrants by British-born or British citizen counterparts, through the immigration system. The book shows how citizenship can be weaponised as a performance of whiteness, namely White power, resulting in the notion that gender is performed on.