The arranged transnational cousin marriages of British Pakistanis: Critique, dissent and cultural continuity

Contemporary South Asia

Volumn 15, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 209-220

  Shaw, Alison ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CULTURAL HERITAGE; CULTURAL IDENTITY; CULTURAL TRADITION; MARRIAGE; MIGRATION;

EURASIA; EUROPE; UNITED KINGDOM; WESTERN EUROPE;

EID: 33750608897     PISSN: 09584935     EISSN: 1469364X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09584930600955317     Document Type: Article

References (77)

1. A. Shaw, 'The impact of genetic risk on U.K. Pakistani families', (http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/en/genome/geneticsandsociety/hg14f005.html), accessed December 2003. Approximately 6.5% of the population in the Wycombe district of Buckinghamshire is Muslim (making this, after Slough, in Berkshire, the second largest Muslim population in southeastern England), and 6% of the Wycombe district population is Pakistani.
2. See Census 2001, www.statistics.gov.uk, accessed 9 July 2004.
3. For the Oxford research, see A. Shaw, Kinship and Continuity: Pakistani Families in Britain (London/Amsterdam: Routledge/Harwood Academic, 2000).
4. Census 2001, ibid.
5. See, for instance, B. Dahya, 'Pakistanis in England', New Community, Vol 2, No 1, 1972-1973, pp 25-33;
6. B. Dahya, 'Pakistanis in Britain: Transients or settlers?', Race, Vol 13, No 3, 1973, pp 241-277;
7. B. Dahya, 'The nature of Pakistani ethnicity in cities in Britain', in A. Cohen (ed), Urban ethnicity (London: Tavistock, A.S.A. monographs 12, 1974), pp 77-118;
8. P. Jeffery, Migrants and Refugees: Muslim and Christian Pakistani families in Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976);
9. A. Shaw, A Pakistani Community in Britain (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988);
10. A. Shaw, 'The Pakistani Community in Oxford', in R. Ballard (ed), Desh Pardesh: The South Asian Presence in Britain (London: Hurst and Co., 1994); and
11. A. Shaw, op cit, Ref 1.
12. Shaw, 2000, op cit, Ref 2.
13. Ceri Peach, 'South Asian migration and settlement in Great Britain, 1951-2001', Contemporary South Asia, Vol 15, No 2, 2006, pp 133-146 (this issue).
14. Jeffery, op cit, Ref 3; and
15. Shaw, 2000, op cit, Ref 2.
16. Shaw, 2000, op cit, Ref 2; and
17. P. Werbner, The Migration Process: Capital, Gifts and Offerings among British Pakistanis (Oxford: Berg, 1990).
18. Open Society Institute, Muslims in the UK: Policies for Engaged Citizens (Hungary: Open Society Institute, 2002), p 2;
19. see also Philip Lewis, Islamic Britain: Religion, Politics and Identity among British Muslims (London, 1994).
20. Home Office, Control of Immigration: Statistics United Kingdom 2000 (London: The Stationery Office, 2001).
21. Home Office, ibid.
22. A.H. Bittles, Consanguineous Marriage: Current Global Incidence and its Relevance to Demographic Research (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Population Studies Centre, 1990), Research Report No. 90-186, August 1990.
23. For North Yorkshire, see A. Darr and B. Modell, 'The frequency of consanguineous marriage among British Pakistanis', Journal of Medical Genetics, Vol 25, 1988, pp 181-190.
24. For Oxford, see A. Shaw, 'Kinship, cultural preference and immigration: consanguineous marriage among British Pakistanis', Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.), Vol 7, No 2, 2001, pp 315-334.
25. T. Modood, R. Berthoud, J. Lakey, J. Nazroo, P. Smith, S. Virdee and S. Beishon, Ethnic Minorities in Britain: Diversity and Disadvantage (London: PSI, 1997), p 319.
26. Shaw, op cit, Ref 12.
27. See, for example, U. Wikan, Generous Betrayal (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2002).
28. See, for example, Home Office, A Choice by Right: Report of the Working Group on Forced Marriage (London: Home Office Publications, 2000); and
29. Y. Samad and J. Eade, Community Perceptions of Forced Marriage (London: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 2002).
30. See, for instance, the television film Yasmin (Simon Beaufoy, Yasmin, BBC Channel 4, 13 January 2005), and a report of an 'incompatible marriages project';
31. Alastair Jamieson, Forced marriages "may damage race relations", Scotsman, 24 March 2004, http://thescotsman.scotsman.com.index, accessed 5 December 2005.
32. S. Bundey and H. Alam, 'A five-year prospective study of the health of children in different ethnic groups, with particular reference to the effect of inbreeding', European Journal of Human Genetics, Vol 1, 1993, pp 206-219.
33. Janet Haslam, 'Harsh Troth', Guardian Society, Wednesday March 14, 2001.
34. Haslam, op cit, Ref 19.
35. The Khoja Shias are East African origin Muslims who have more attenuated links in South Asia than most British Pakistanis, and do not practice cousin marriage.
36. For a fuller discussion, see A. Shaw, Negotiating Risk: British Pakistani Experiences of Genetics (Oxford: Berghahn Books, forthcoming).
37. J. Rowlatt, 'The risks of cousin marriage', BBC Newsnight, 16 November 2005.
38. Ibid.
39. Shaw, op cit, Ref 1; and
40. A. Shaw, 'Attitudes to genetic diagnosis and to the use of medical technologies in pregnancy: Some British Pakistani perspectives', in M. Unnithan-Kumar (ed), Reproductive Agency, Medicine and the State: Cultural Transformations in Childbearing (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2004).
41. 27 September 2004, High Wycombe.
42. 10 August 2000, High Wycombe.
43. 11 June 2004, High Wycombe.
44. A. Shaw and K. Charsley, 'Rishtas: Adding emotion to strategy in understanding British Pakistani transnational marriages', Global Networks: Special Issue on South Asian Transnational Marriages, Vol 6, No 4, October 2006, pp 405-442.
45. Father of boy with learning difficulties, 26 September 2002, High Wycombe.
46. See Bundey and Alam, op cit, Ref 18; and
47. Shaw, op cit, Ref 1.
48. M. Douglas and A. Wildavsky, Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technological and Environmental Dangers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).
49. See also M. Ottenheimer, Forbidden Relatives: The American Myth of Cousin Marriage (Urbana and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1996). In 2003, the issue of forced marriage formed the basis of new immigration legislation in Denmark that prevents first-cousin marriages on the grounds that marriages between people who 'share a close family relationship' are not 'voluntary'.
50. See, 'new to denmark, dk', www.udlst.dk/english/Family-Reunification/ Spouses/forced_marriages/, accessed 5 December 2005.
51. E. Westermarck, A History of Human Marriage (London: Macmillan, 1891).
52. See, for instance, H. Donnan, 'The rules and rhetoric of marriage negotiations among the Dhund Abbasi of Northeast Pakistan', Ethnology, Vol 24, No 3, 1985, pp 183-196;
53. H. Donnan, Marriage among Muslims: Preference and Choice in Northern Pakistan (Delhi: Hindustan Publishing Corporation, 1988); and
54. M. Fischer and W. Lyon, 'Marriage strategies in Lahore: Projections of a model marriage on social practice', in M. Böck and A. Rao (eds), Culture, Creation and Procreation: Concepts of Kinship in South Asian Practice (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2000), pp 267-322.
55. Shaw, op cit, Ref 12, p 325.
56. See K. Charsley, 'Rishtas: Transnational Pakistani marriages' (Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2003); and
57. Shaw and Charsley, op cit, Ref 29.
58. K. Charsley, op cit, Ref 37.
59. See R. Ballard, 'The political economy of migration: Pakistan, Britain, and the Middle East', in J. Eades (ed), Migrants, Workers, and the Social Order (London: Tavistock, 1987), pp 17-41; and
60. Shaw, op cit, Ref 12.
61. Ballard, ibid, p 27.
62. Fieldnotes, undated, Oxford.
63. 23 March 2000, Oxford.
64. Fieldnotes, undated, Oxford.
65. K. Charsley, 'Unhappy husbands: Masculinity and migration in transnational Pakistani marriages', Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.), Vol 11, No 1, 2005, pp 85-105.
66. K. Charsley, 'Risk and ritual: The protection of British Pakistani women in transnational marriage', Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Vol 32, No 7, September 2006, pp 1169-1187.
67. Charsley, op cit, Ref 37.
68. 14 February 2005, High Wycombe.
69. 2 July 2002, Oxford.
70. Charsley, op cit, Ref 37.
71. Fischer and Lyon, op cit, Ref 35, p 309; and
72. Shaw, op cit, Ref 12, p 324.
73. M. Fischer, 'Marriage and power: Tradition and transition in an urban Punjabi community', in H. Donnan and P. Werbner (eds), Economy and Culture in Pakistan: Migrants and Cities in a Muslim Society (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991), pp 97-123, especially p 102.
74. August 2004, Oxford.
75. 2 July 2002, Oxford.
76. 10 August 2000, High Wycombe.
77. Undated, Autumn 2004, High Wycombe.