Multiculturalism in Practice: Forced Marriage

Abstract

There are many examples of what can be termed ‘multiculturalism in practice’ that could be used to illustrate the actual impact of multicultural policies on people in the real world. Some of these are direct, such as the ban on trans-racial adoption which has resulted in thousands of ‘mixed-race’ (or ‘dual-heritage’) children in Britain and the US being condemned to a lifetime of institutional care (Simon, 1974; Simon and Alstein, 1987; Bartholet, 1991; 1993; 1994; Alstein and Melli, 1993; Aldridge, 1994; Gaber, 1994; Macey, 1995c; 1996; 1998). Some are indirect and involve the import through migration and settlement of practices that originate in different cultural contexts. These include sex-selective abortions, forced marriage, female genital mutilation and so-called ‘honour’-related violence, including murder. I use the term ‘indirect’ in these cases to indicate the fact that none of them is sanctioned by the state or, formally at least, by the cultural communities in which they are practised. On the contrary, FGM is illegal, as, of course, is murder — whether labelled ‘honour’ or otherwise. And that forced marriages are known to be wrong is, to some extent, indicated by the widespread denial of it by minority ethnic individuals (Samad and Eade, 2002; Phillips and Dustin, 2004; HAC, 2008; Khanum, 2008), though the belief that force only occurs when violence is involved needs to be noted here.

Some of the material in this chapter has previously been published in The Pakistan Journal of Women’s Studies, Alam-E-Niswan (Macey, 2008).