9 - Trading and contesting belonging in multicultural Britain

Summary

Introduction

Chapter 3 considered the impact of the UK’s global economic positioning on changes in gender relations as more aspects of social reproduction are met through the market. It set the demand context for the food and body work chains in some detail and introduced the ‘demand’ involved in the transnational marriage (TNM) chain. In the language of chains, there is a demand in the UK for overseas spouses with the supply drawn from families and kin in South Asian homelands. Chapter 8 considered the broad jurisdictional contexts for the ‘supply’ of family members. This chapter brings us back to the UK to consider the contexts in which the TNM chains operate, although it might be more appropriate to describe the situation under consideration as a ‘churn’ rather than a ‘chain’ because we will consider the position of young BrAsian women who move to South Asia to marry as well as young South Asian women who move to the UK as spouses. However, the aim is not to reproduce the dominant discourse that views these movements through a dyad of culture and rights perspectives, narrowly focusing on abusive power relations.