Abstract
The chapter presents the main characteristics of transnational marriage practices of Indian Punjabis living in the provinces of Mantua and Reggio Emilia, Northern Italy, focusing on ‘arranged marriages’. Since there is a growing political control over the migrant family, these reproductive customs are under particular scrutiny and are often considered instrumental strategies to elude immigration laws and migration restrictions, or as instruments of oppression and denial of personal freedoms.
My paper is a sociological and ethnographic analysis based on three family stories. It highlights the complex interplay between migrants’ agency (in a gender perspective) and structural constraints determined by laws and by membership of transnational social networks, showing how the initiative of migrants may be influenced by the structural levels, but may also, in turn, exploit or circumvent them. I refer to the analytical framework of ‘civic stratification’ and to the concepts of ‘agency’ and ‘social capital’ to illustrate the meaning that a transnational arranged marriage can assume for the parental network and the individuals involved, in terms of social prestige and personal honour, of redefinition of kin networks, power-relations among the spouses and gender identity within the newly-born family.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
This expression has been literally translated from the diary of Nittu, to indicate the close proximity between the two people concerned.
- 3.
Many Indian Punjabis living in Emilia Romagna and Lombardy are employed as milkers in stables of the supply chain of Parmigiano Reggiano (Bertolani 2015).
Bibliography
Ballard, R. (1982). South Asian families. In R. Rapoport, M. Fogarty, & R. Rapoport (Eds.), Families in Britain (pp. 179–204). London: Routledge.
Ballard, R. (1990). Migration and kinship: The differential effect of marriage rules on the processes of Punjabi migration to Britain. In C. Larke, C. Peach, & S. Vertovec (Eds.), South Asians overseas: Migration and ethnicity (pp. 219–249). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bertolani, B. (2011a). Le famiglie indiane. In M. Tognetti Bordogna (Ed.), Famiglie ricongiunte. Esperienze di ricongiungimento di famiglie del Marocco, Pakistan e India (pp. 183–222). Torino: UTET Editore.
Bertolani, B. (2011b). Le famiglie pachistane. In M. Tognetti Bordogna (Ed.), Famiglie ricongiunte. Esperienze di ricongiungimento di famiglie del Marocco, Pakistan e India (pp. 141–182). UTET Editore: Torino.
Bertolani, B. (2011c). Networking, transnazionalismo e famiglia. In M. Tognetti Bordogna (Ed.), Famiglie ricongiunte. Esperienze di ricongiungimento di famiglie del Marocco, Pakistan e India (pp. 41–62). UTET Editore: Torino.
Bertolani, B. (2012). Transnational Sikh marriages in Italy. In K. Myrvold & K. Jacobsen (Eds.), Sikhs across borders: Transnational practices of European Sikhs (pp. 68–83). London: Bloomsbury.
Bertolani, B. (2013). The Sikhs in Italy: a growing heterogeneous and plural presence. In G. Giordan & W. H. Swatos (Eds.), Testing pluralism. Globalizing belief, localizing Gods (pp. 75–93). Brill: Leiden.
Bertolani, B. (2015). Punjabis in Italy: The role of ethnic and family networks in immigration and social integration. In S. Irudaya Rajan, V. J. Varghese, & A. K. Nanda (Eds.), Migrations, mobility and multiple affiliations: Punjabis in a transnational world (pp. 319–337). Cambridge: University Press.
Bertolani, B., & Perocco, F. (2013). Religious belonging and new ways of being “Italian” in the self-perception of second-generation immigrants in Italy. In R. Blanes & J. Mapril (Eds.), Sites and politics of religious diversity in Southern Europe. The best of all Gods (pp. 93–114). Leiden: Brill.
Bertolani, B., Rinaldini, M., & Tognetti Bordogna, M. (2014). Combining civic stratification and transnational approaches for reunited families: The case of Moroccans, Indians and Pakistanis in Reggio Emilia. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 40(9), 1470–1487.
Bourdieu, P. (1990). The logic of practice. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Charsley, K., & Shaw, A. (2006). South Asian transnational marriages in comparative perspective. Global Networks, 6(4), 331–344.
Evans, M. (2013). The meaning of agency. In S. Madhok, A. Phillips, & K. Wilson (Eds.), Gender, agency, and coercion (pp. 47–63). New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Fix, M., & Zimmerman, W. (2001). All under one roof: Mixed status families in an era of reform. International Migration Review, 35(2), 297–419.
Gardner, K. (1995). Global migrants, local lives: Travel and transformation in rural Bangladesh. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Kofman, E. (2004). Gendered global migration. Diversity and stratification. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 6(4), 643–665.
Kraler, A., Kofman, E., Kohli, M., & Schmoll, C. (Eds.). (2011). Gender, generation and the family in international migration. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Lockwood, D. (1996). Civic integration and class formation. British Journal of Sociology, 47(3), 531–550.
Madhok, S. (2005). Autonomy, political literacy and the “Social Woman”: Towards a politics of inclusion. In C. Bates & S. Basu (Eds.), Rethinking Indian political institutions (pp. 151–167). London: Anthem.
Madhok, S. (2007). Autonomy, gendered subordination and transcultural dialogue. Journal of Global Ethics, 3(3), 335–357.
Madhok, S. (2013). Action, agency, coercion: Reformatting agency for oppressive contexts. In S. Madhok, A. Phillips, & K. Wilson (Eds.), Gender, agency, and coercion (pp. 102–121). New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Madhok, S., Phillips, A., & Wilson, K. (Eds.). (2013). Gender, agency, and coercion. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Mand, K. (2002). Place, gender and power in transnational Sikh marriages. Global Networks, 2(3), 233–248.
Mand, K. (2006). Social capital and transnational South Asian families: Rituals, care and provision. London: Families and Social Capital ESRC Research Group, London South Bank University. Retrieved from: http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/9442/social-capital-transnational-asians-families-research-working-paper.pdf.
Menjivar, C., & Abrego, L. J. (2009). Parents and children across the borders: Legal instability and intergenerational relationship in Guatemalan and Salvadorian families. Mondi Migranti, 3(1), 7–34.
Mooney, N. (2006). Aspiration, reunification and gender transformation in Jat Sikh Marriages from India to Canada. Global Networks, 6(4), 389–403.
Morris, L. (2001). The ambiguous terrain of rights. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 25(3), 497–516.
Morris, L. (2002). Managing migration: Civic stratification and migrant rights. London: Routledge.
Morris, L. (2003). Managing contradiction. International Migration Review, 37(1), 74–100.
Pande, R. (2016). Becoming modern: British-Indian discourses of arranged marriages. Social & Cultural Geography, 17(3), 380–400.
Portes, A. (1995). Economic sociology of immigration: A conceptual overview. In A. Portes (Ed.), The economic sociology of immigration. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Portes, A. (1998). Social capital: Its origins and applications in modern sociology. Annual Review of Sociology, 1–24.
Qureshi, K. (2015). Shehri (city) brides between Indian Punjab and the UK: Transnational hypergamy, Sikh women’s agency and gendered geographies of power. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, (2015), 1–13.
Saifullah Khan, V. (1977). The Pakistanis: Mirpuri villagers at home and in Bradford. In J. L. Watson (Ed.), Between two cultures (pp. 57–89). Cambridge: Basil Blackwell.
Shaw, A. (1994). The Pakistani community in Oxford. In R. Ballard (Ed.), Desh Pardesh: The South Asian presence in Britain (pp. 35–57). London: Hurst and Co.
Shaw, A. (2000). Kinship and continuity. London: Routledge.
Shaw, A., & Charsley, K. (2006). Rishtas: Adding emotion to strategy in understanding British Pakistani transnational marriages. Global Networks, 6(4), 405–421.
Singh, B. (2015). Reflexivity: Language, power and capital when researching Sikhs. In K. Jacobsen & K. Myrvold (Eds.), Young Sikhs in a global world (pp. 261–273). Farnam: Ashgate.
Somerville, K. (2009). Facilitated transnational marriages among Indo–Canadian youth: The role of social networks in mate selection. In V. Chandra (Ed.), Growing up in a globalized world: An international reader (pp. 118–138). New Delhi: Macmillan Publishers.
Walton–Roberts, M. (2003). Transnational geographies: Indian immigration to Canada. Canadian Geographer, 47, 235–250.
Werbner, P. (1990). The migration process. New York: Berg.
Wilson, K. (2013). Agency as ‘Smart Economics’: Neoliberalism, gender and development. In S. Madhok, A. Phillips, & K. Wilson (Eds.), Gender, agency, and coercion (pp. 84–101). New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Wiltshire, R. (1992). Implications of transnational migration for nationalism: The caribbean example. In N. Schiller, L. Basch, & C. Szanton Blanc (Eds.), Towards a transnational perspective on migration (pp. 175–188). New York: New York Academy of Sciences.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bertolani, B. (2017). Structural Restrictions and Personal Desires: Arranged Marriages between Punjab and Italy. In: Decimo, F., Gribaldo, A. (eds) Boundaries within: Nation, Kinship and Identity among Migrants and Minorities. IMISCOE Research Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53331-5_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53331-5_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-53329-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-53331-5
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)