Strange(r) Families. Political Contestation over Family Migration Rights for Non-Normative Families

About the project

Migration and citizenship are among the most salient questions in contemporary politics. Family migration is the largest migration category by far, representing 40% of immigration to OECD countries between 2007 and 2015.  Thus, the question which relationships qualify as ‘family’ in migration policy is key to defining who gets to migrate to Europe. How do migration law and politics deal with different kinds of families asking to be allowed to live in Europe? Who decides what families belong here?

Families which include “strangers” – i.e. non-citizens – require state permission to live together in Europe. For families which are considered “strange” – deviant from the dominant norm – such state permission is not self-evident: queer/same-sex families or polygamous families are commonly denied family migration rights. Feminist students of nationalism and empire have shown that from colonial times to the present day, defining collective identities and boundaries – be they cultural, racial, or national – inevitably involves reference to proper roles of men and women, proper dress, proper parenting, proper loving, and proper sex. The politics of belonging are intrinsically connected to the politics of intimacy, as distinctions between ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ are most fundamentally drawn in the intimate sphere - between those who love, have sex, marry, and raise their children ‘properly’ (like ‘we’ do it) and those who do not.

Today, there are two ways in which families may be considered ‘strange’ in Europe. First, families may be seen as ‘queer’, i.e. as a modern, progressive break with traditional family forms, for instance same-sex families, polyamorous families, or families with transgender parents. Second, families may be seen as ‘culturally different’, i.e. a product of non-European tradition, for instance polygamous families, matrifocal families, or extended families where more than two generations live together. This project compares political contestation over family migration rights for ‘culturally different’ families on the one hand and ‘queer’ families on the other hand.

The overarching aim of this project is to provide insight in how gender and family norms intersect with conceptions of nationhood and belonging, and how these intersections shape migration politics.