Marriage Migration and Integration

配偶是英国移民定居的最大类别(2009年为40%)。在英国，和欧洲其他地方一样，人们越来越担心婚姻移民对融合的影响。在一些少数民族群体中，相当数量的前移民的子女和孙辈继续与来自他们祖籍家乡的伴侣结婚。这种婚姻被认为是特别有问题的。每一代人中的第一代配偶被认为阻碍了个人和群体的融合进程，阻碍了婚姻双方的社会经济参与和文化变革。因此，以促进融合为理由，可能会对这类群体产生特别影响的新的移民限制是合理的。然而，支持这一担忧的证据基础出人意料地有限。该项目的主要目的是加强对与婚姻有关的移徙与这些复杂的融合进程之间的关系的了解，为政策和学术辩论提供亟需的新基础。关于一体化的讨论的特点还包括对这一概念的不同理解，而且往往是片面理解，而这一概念是有争议和政治化的。在这个项目中，我们采用了一个多层次的融合概念：1.关于移民和东道国社会互动的过程：a.跨越几个领域(结构、社会、文化、公民、政治和身份)。它们可能是分开的，也可能是相互作用的。这是一个双向的过程，既受移徙者的行动和属性的影响，也受收容社会中可能促进或阻碍融合的因素的影响。但是，在定量研究中用来衡量融合的指标也可能被用作族裔不平等和文化差异的相关概念的指标，使对跨国婚姻融合影响的评估复杂化。为了将跨国婚姻的影响与与少数民族成员身份有关的影响区分开来，我们不仅需要调查研究，还需要通过定性方法提供更复杂的信息。该项目将聚焦于参与这类婚姻移民的两个最大的英国人口：巴基斯坦穆斯林和印度锡克教徒。为了反映这些人口和他们居住的地区的多样性，研究将集中在两个具有不同特征的地理区域：西约克郡和布里斯托尔。在该项目的第一阶段，我们将分析现有的量化数据，以创建跨国婚姻与各种融合指标之间的联系的背景图。然后，我们将对夫妇进行半结构化访谈，以生成新的定性数据，用来探索量化数据中确定的关联的潜在过程，并确定新的询问途径。为了突出跨国婚姻在这些过程中的作用，参与者将通过具有不同婚姻选择的兄弟姐妹对进行抽样，即其中一个兄弟姐妹的婚姻是跨国的，而另一个发生在英国的种族人口中。综合起来，这两个阶段的研究将使我们能够对这些重要人群中婚姻迁移和融合过程之间的关系产生微妙的理解。区域之间和族裔群体之间的比较将使我们能够确定某些情况下的特殊影响，以及所有情况下普遍存在的影响，因此也可能与其他移徙配偶及其伴侣有关。这些理解的改善不仅对于这一领域的学术研究是必要的，而且对于提供服务和协助制定更有针对性的政策干预措施也是必要的。

Spouses constitute the largest category of migrant settlement in the UK (40% in 2009). In Britain, as elsewhere in Europe, concern is increasingly expressed over the implications of marriage migration for integration. In some ethnic minority groups, significant numbers of children and grandchildren of former migrants to the UK continue to marry partners from their ancestral homelands. Such marriages are presented as particularly problematic. A 'first generation' of spouses in every generation is thought to inhibit processes of individual and group integration, impeding socio-economic participation and cultural change for both parties in the marriage. New immigration restrictions likely to impact particularly on such groups have thus been justified on the grounds of promoting integration. The evidence base to underpin this concern is, however, surprisingly limited. The principle aim of this project is to enhance understanding of the relationships between marriage-related migration and these complex processes of integration, providing much needed new grounding for both policy and academic debates. Discussion of integration is also characterized by differing and often partial understandings of the concept, which is contested and politicized. In this project, we adopt a multi-level conceptualization of integration as:1. Referring to processes of migrant and host society interaction:a. Spanning several domains (structural, social, cultural, civic, political and identity). These may be separate or interacting.b. A two-way process affected by both the actions and attributes of migrants, but also by factors in the receiving society which may facilitate or impede integration.2. Part of discourses of national belonging, which may themselves be perceived as exclusionary.Indicators used to measure integration in quantitative research may also however be used as indicators of related concepts of ethnic inequality and cultural difference, complicating assessments of the integration impact of transnational marriages. In order to disentangle the effects of transnational marriage from those related to ethnic minority membership, we need not just survey research, but the more complex information provided by qualitative methods. This project will focus on the two largest UK populations involved in this genre of marriage migration: Pakistani Muslims and Indian Sikhs. To reflect the diversity of these populations and localities in which they are settled, research will focus on two geographical areas with differing characteristics: West Yorkshire and Bristol. In the first stage of the project, we will analyse available quantitative data to create a background picture of the associations between transnational marriage and various indicators of integration. We will then carry out semi-structured interviews with 64 couples to generate a new body of qualitative data with which to explore processes underlying associations identified in the quantitative data, and identify new avenues for enquiry. In order to bring the role of transnational marriage in these processes to the fore, participants will be sampled through pairs of siblings with contrasting marriage choices, i.e. where one sibling's marriage is transnational, and one took place within the ethnic population in the UK. Together, these two stages of research will allow us to develop nuanced understandings of the relationships between marriage migration and processes of integration in these significant populations. The comparisons between regions, and between ethnic groups will allow us to identify impacts particular to certain contexts, and those which are common in all, and so may also have relevance for other migrant spouses and their partners. These improvements in understandings are necessary not only for scholarship in this area, but also to inform service provision and assist in developing more targeted policy interventions.