Introduction

Introduction

The interdisciplinary field of migration studies sometimes appears to lag behind developments in the social sciences and humanities, something which has been particularly apparent in the field of gender. As late as the turn of the twenty-first century, Gabriella Lazaridis lamented the “sexist myopia” of migration theories (2000, 53), while others remarked on the enduring neglect of women in scholarship on international migration (DeLeat 1999; Kofman 1999). As this suggests, initial moves toward gendering understandings of migration, as in the academy more broadly, took the form of increased attention to the experiences of women, leading Boyd and Grieco (2003) to warn of the danger that in the effort to address the “invisibility” of women, researchers may “over-emphasize the migration experiences of women, paying less attention to those of men. This would inadvertently undermine the gendered view of migration that helps explain the experiences of both males and females” (cf. Hibbins and Pease 2009). Over the last decade or so, a small body of social science research has belatedly emerged, which applies a gendered lens to the study of male migration (e.g., Batnitzky, McDowell, and Dyer 2008, 2009; Charsley 2005; Charsley and Liversage 2012; Donaldson et al. 2009; Gallo 2006; George 2005; McDuie-Ra 2012; Osella and Osella 2000; Pease 2006; Sarti and Scrinzi 2010; Walter, Bourgois, and Loinaz 2004). As we set out subsequently, this work has drawn attention to the complex interrelations between masculinities and processes of migration. Such understandings have yet, however, to filter through into the field of immigration law and policy. With a few notable exceptions (e.g., de Hart 2009, 2015), masculinity has been absent from scholarship on the regulation of migration. Governments often rely on simplistic gendered stereotypes of migrant men to rationalize policy, and these can be difficult to dislodge given the well-established reluctance of courts to interfere with immigration policy (Griffiths 1997; Legomsky 1987; Wray 2013, 2015).

In popular governmental and legal discourse, migrant men are often cast in a negative and homogenizing light ¹ —as patriarchs abusing power or criminal evaders of immigration regimes (de Hart 2009; Wray 2009)—portrayals that conceal their vulnerabilities and emotional attachments. In this sense, men as people with affective lives remain largely invisible. The literature on law and gender, while it is wide-ranging, has not paid attention to the position of migrant men who do not easily fit within the major paradigms of that scholarship (see Collier 2010, chap. 1). Some migration and law literature has been critical of the construction of Muslim family life in debate on the control of forced marriage (e.g., Razack 2004), and critiques of the regulation of spousal migration have often pointed to the gender stereotyping which has, in the past, permitted severe restrictions on family migrants (Juss 1997; Wray 2011), but more nuanced analysis is needed. As the articles in this collection will show, the reduction of men to “two-dimensional ciphers” (Chopra, Osella, and Osella 2004) continues and is critical to the construction of policy discourses and legal controls but has the effect of marginalizing the complexity and centrality of their emotional lives and needs.

The contributions to this special issue bring together legal and social contexts, which interpenetrate in the lives of migrant men, creating and compounding vulnerabilities. The articles deal with European contexts and focus on family migration and asylum, areas where the absence of research on men’s experiences is particularly acute. In this introduction, we take the opportunity to delineate several key themes in the emerging literatures relevant to this project. We start with the scholarship on masculinity and migration, where nuanced accounts of the experiences of migrant men have begun to emerge, before considering the lack of such development in the arena of legal studies. An overview of a field in its infancy can be useful in itself, as a foundation for future development, but here it also allows us to introduce and set into context the contributions to this volume.

Masculinity and Migration

While an explicit focus on masculinity and migration did not emerge until recent years, it is possible to reread earlier studies of immigrant communities through a gendered lens, exposing themes of masculinity in, for example, accounts of izzat (honor) among Pakistani migrants (Jeffery 1976), or the Italian American “corner boys” and “college boys” of Whyte’s (1943) classic Street Corner Society. Key topics in the literature on women’s migration have clearly provided inspiration for some more recent research on migrant men. A focus on feminized migrant labor market niches (the paradigmatic example being domestic work—Anderson 2000; Ehrenreich and Hochschild 2003; Lutz 2002; Parreñas 2001) finds echoes in studies of male migrant workers in the construction industry (Walter, Bourgois, and Loinaz 2004) and the “handyman” sector (Perrons, Plomien, and Kilkey 2010), and conversely, of the experience of male migrants in feminized sectors such as nursing and care work (McGregor 2007; Batnitzky, McDowell, and Dyer 2009). Intersectionality and gendered encounters with the state are also themes shared by the study of both migrant men and women. Elsewhere, however, novel tropes have emerged such as the suggestion that migration may function as a masculine rite of passage (Deborah Cohen 2005), or familiar themes have gained new facets, as when discussions around the impact of migration on gender relations (Hondagneu-Sotelo 1992; Kofman 1999) are viewed from the perspective of challenges to masculine identity (Pasura 2008).

The Making of a Man? Rites of Passage and Hegemonic Masculinities

Migration can provide gendered opportunities to acquire new statuses or identities and as such may be interpreted as a rite of passage. Thus, Cohen (2005) describes the public inspection undergone by men hoping to migrate under the Bracero program providing Mexican agricultural workers to the United States (1942–64). To be chosen, in addition to knowledge of agriculture, they had to fulfill various criteria of ideal manhood: to be married with children (i.e., head of a household); to have no recent scars, disease, or other sign of weakness; and to have manly hands (calloused, showing evidence of work). In this selection process, which both judges and produces a certain type of masculinity, peasant men are reborn as ideal masculine representatives of the Mexican state.

Migration itself may be seen as a rite of passage, a liminal phase before the acquisition of a new status. In the South Indian state of Kerala, for example, money is an important source of masculine potency. Through migration to the Gulf, young men may acquire the finances necessary for transition from the status of payyan (immature youth) to the adult patron householder role. As transitional gulfan on visits home, they prepare for this eventual mature status and married life by accumulating goods that are stored in his parental home (Osella and Osella 2000). In the Nepali hills meanwhile, some young men effect a parallel transition, but without familial approval, covertly migrating to Delhi in search of both employment and adventure, returning clad in fashionable clothes to display their newfound worldliness and independence as well as the cash in their pockets (Sharma 2012).

The rite of passage model most often involves male migrants traveling alone. Even so, enhanced status is not assured. The Keralan returnees described above must tread a balance in how they spend and save to avoid being judged to be kallan—a self-interested maximizer disengaged from social obligations—or pavam—an overgenerous innocent who squanders his resources (Osella and Osella 2000). Financial gains which have been anticipated and invested against may not materialize (Hondagneu-Sotelo 1992). For those aspiring to—or attempting to maintain—a breadwinner role, disappointing returns can be a severe blow. Walter, Bourgois, and Loinaz (2004) report that the shame experienced by some Mexican construction workers in the United States who are injured and so no longer able to earn and remit money can contribute to depression and substance abuse (cf. Quayson 2005). At a more mundane level, the type of employment migrants are able to obtain may challenge their models of masculine success, as migrant employment niches are often in feminized and/or low-status sectors. Individuals may vary in their willingness to be flexible with their gendered identities in light of the perceived gains of migration (Batnitzky, McDowell, and Dyer 2009). These potential pitfalls have been exacerbated as movement for work, particularly through legal channels into developed countries, has become more difficult. Irregular migration motivated by masculine aspirations often leads to precarious and subordinate positions. “Desire,” as Ali Nobil Ahmad comments of Pakistani irregular migrants to Europe, “makes bad decisions” (2011, 27).

Representations of male migrants have become more devious and sinister, as states sought to justify policies of closure but also reflecting changed modes of entry. Men may pursue routes to legal migration which are in themselves less compatible with ideals of masculine independence or authority, that is, as refugees, as dependents of migrant women, or as migrant husbands in transnational marriages. The majority of marriage migrants globally are probably women, but significant numbers of men also migrate as spouses, and husbands even form the majority in a few contexts, such as Filipino spousal migration to the United Kingdom (Charsley et al. 2012). Studies of South Asian migration have exposed the gendered tensions that sometimes arise when this movement, often against virilocal norms, leaves such men reliant on wives (and sometimes in-laws), upturning conventional gendered domestic relations of power (Charsley 2005; Gallo 2006; George 2005). The challenges such men face do not simply arise from the inversion of a male head of household/breadwinner model. For the husbands of Keralan migrant domestic workers in Italy, for example, a two-income family in which the wife is able to gain employment abroad is compatible with men’s ideals of modern couplehood, but the loss of domestic authority, or the ridicule encountered as they wait for their wife to sponsor their immigration, may nevertheless be uncomfortable (Gallo 2006).

Although the question of the impact of migration on gender equality has been widely debated (e.g., Gulati 1993; Gamburd 2000), one common assertion has been that migration may restructure gendered domestic relations of power (e.g., Gallo 2006; George 2005; Pease 2009). In Hondagneu-Sotelo’s (1992) work on Mexican migrants in the United States, although both men and women experienced class and ethnic disadvantage, the amount of domestic power they were able to exert moved in opposite directions: increasing for women and decreasing for men. “[C]lass position, racial-ethnic category, and often legal status further erode their ability to exert patriarchal privilege” (p. 412). Contributing to this volume, Charsley and Liversage explore narratives of marital failure and divorce recounted by former migrant husbands (from Pakistan and Turkey to the United Kingdom and Denmark) in which the weak position of an in-marrying man is compounded by insecure immigration status, and what they view as reliance on negative stereotypes of Muslim men by local organizations and institutions of state (a theme to which we will return subsequently). This combination of official suspicion and relatively weak social position may render men disempowered and vulnerable in hidden ways.

Refugee migration is a further area in which an emerging literature suggests gendered challenges for men (e.g., Rowe 2001). Examples of domestic conflict and frustration over inabilities to fulfill masculine role aspirations and loss of class status have been reported in relation to Eritrean, Ethiopian, Middle Eastern, and Cambodian refugee populations in the United States, Canada, Sweden, and Australia (Haggis and Schech 2009; Matsuoka and Sorenson 1999; McSpadden 1999; Ong 1996). Here women’s newly acquired sources of state support, and experience of fending for themselves while men fled a conflict zone, collide with the beleaguered self-esteem of husbands often unable to access employment to re-create the (classed and gendered) statuses lost in their forced migration. Men who are awaiting an asylum decision which may take months or years to be made are often forced into poverty, idleness, and dependency on state handouts or, if these are refused, destitution and illegal working. All of these reinforce existing negative and often gendered public perceptions and risk creating a cycle of stigmatization. Melanie Griffiths’ contribution to this special issue explores the gendered implications for men whose asylum cases have failed and who are detained, frequently for long periods, while appeals are made and exhausted, and removal—often delayed for reasons outside these men’s control—is organized.

The experience of migration as a dependent or for asylum can thus be undermining of masculine identity projects. The literature also, however, reveals ways in which migrant men may attempt to recoup or redefine a desirable masculine identity in the face of constraints or disappointments: Keralan husbands of migrant nurses in the United States seeking positions of authority in the Church (George 2005), husbands of migrant domestic workers in Italy contrasting their own respectable positions with the dangerous masculinity of undocumented Punjabi migrants (Gallo 2006), or middle-class Indians recasting their lowly service sector employment as part of a privileged gathering of cosmopolitan experience, rather than downward mobility (Batnitzky, McDowell, and Dyer 2008).

These situations are complicated by the fluidity of masculinity between cultures and over time, meaning that migrant men may find that the signifiers of masculinity in the new country contrast with those in their countries of origin. The Australian collection Migrant Men (Donaldson et al. 2009), the first to take migration and masculinity as its main focus, provides numerous illustrations of the encounters between varied migrant and non-migrant masculinities. Migration to Australia has come from diverse sources, and each new group of migrants has been subject to infantilization, feminization, and racial taunting, but a common theme of several of the case studies in the book is how “immigrant men renegotiate their gender identity as they relate their own cultural understandings of masculinity to the meanings and practices in the dominant culture” (p. 15). The volume also draws our attention, however, to the ways in which national identity is racialized, classed, and gendered, with implications for the inclusion or exclusion of immigrants. Masculinity is frequently narrated in relation to work. The white working-class “battler” may no longer be a privileged Australian identity (a loss that may be expressed as resentment toward incomers), but new assertive, materialist, entrepreneurial and neoliberal masculinities, which shift the focus from race to culture (Haggis and Schech 2009), have new exclusionary implications.

Some may protest against their loss of status and agency, the protest itself offering an opportunity for agency and the performance of a masculine identity (Rowe 2001). Aggressive or violent acts may also be understood in this light, as “unambiguously masculine though not socially endorsed” (Rowe 2001, 73). The 1999 hijacking of a Greek bus by an Albanian migrant man described by Palailias (2003) was understood from an Albanian perspective as contesting the emasculating exploitation endured by irregular migrants. For Greeks, on the other hand, the seizing of a form of transport associated with women and children had a very different gendered reading, reinforcing the stereotype of dangerous migrant masculinity. As Griffiths (2015) argues, migrant men are often associated with criminality and misogyny, and their conduct will be interpreted through that lens. “When agency and masculinity are compromised,” Rowe (2001, 91) observes, men may “wrestle with social impotency and psychological emasculation or they find ways to reaffirm their decisiveness and determination as men with voices.” The difficulty of finding an acceptable and effective way for men to express distress and a sense of powerlessness is not confined to migrant men, as demonstrated in the UK debates about fathers engaged in custody proceedings discussed below. Migrant men are, however, particularly disadvantaged in this respect when they lack access to means to articulate their frustration in other ways. Those whose behavior conforms most with norms of hegemonic masculinity are not necessarily those with the most social power (Messerschmidt 2012, 58; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005, 838–39), with the result that their conduct may be self-defeating, furnishing only new opportunities for misunderstanding and stigmatization.

Intersectionality: Not Just a Migrant Man

We do not mean to suggest that all migrant men are equally vulnerable. Under discussion here are groups of men whose plight may be concealed by the more powerful position held by other men and, sometimes, by their own gendered displays of protest. It is the combination of gender, migration status, ethnicity, age, class, and other factors, operating often at a fine-grained level, which produces sites of particular disadvantage. In other words, a complex intersectional understanding is needed to appreciate the position of individuals or different groups of migrant men.

Migration involves multiple cultural contexts, audiences and perspectives, and multiple constructions of masculinity, that is, those which migrants bring with them may differ from those of co-ethnics in the “country of settlement” ² and from dominant models in “host” societies (e.g., Hibbins 2005), and all parties may hold stereotypes of masculine “others” and others’ masculinities. Thus, new migrants from Pakistan may be viewed as part of a threatening masculine Islamic incursion by some ethnic majority audiences and derided as laughably incapable “freshies” by some British Pakistanis (Charsley and Liversage, 2015). In this way, migrant men may be regarded as unwelcome or inferior both by state institutions and within their own intimate lives and families, leaving them with few external resources with which to counter their vulnerability. This is not experienced only by family migrants; Martin F. Manalansan IV (2006, 236), writing about queer Filipino migrants to New York, notes that they are gendered and racialized by ethnic, gay, and majority audiences, experiencing migrant “discrimination and stigma from both their own communities as well as from mainstream culture.” ³

Intersections of gender with sexuality, race, religion, ethnicity, immigration status, and labor market position may all be relevant. In both de Hart’s and Charsley and Liversage’s articles in this volume, orientalist stereotypes of Muslim men play a key role. Particular ethnic or national stereotypes are also often strongly gendered (cf. Dyer, McDowell, and Batnitzky 2010, on employment segmentation between gendered nationality groups according to their perceived suitability for differing roles in a London hotel). Dealing with these perceptions from a position of weakness can require complex personal presentation. Hence, Walter, Bourgois, and Loinaz (2004) provide an evocative description of the stance Mexican irregular migrants adopt as they wait by the roadside to be picked up for casual work, emphasizing their physical strength and readiness for work but also seeking to downplay the stereotypical Latino machismo, to appear docile and untroublesome. Their weak intersectional position—as ethnic minorities, irregular migrants, and with insecure contracts—means that fulfilling the masculine role of provider by migrating for work entails sacrificing some day-to-day aspects of that hegemonic ideal.

Gendered Encounters with the State

The role of the state in gendered experiences of migration has already been mentioned but merits further exploration as an important frame for our discussion of migrant man in legal contexts. As we have noted, migrant men (particularly migrant husbands) may find themselves with diminished power at home and yet be regarded as patriarchs by state institutions. Such men may perceive state interventions to protect or promote women’s interests as further undermining their authority, so that in Ong’s (1996) US research with Cambodian refugee families, one research participant complained that “…in America, men feel they have lost value because they are no longer masters of their own families” (p. 743).

A further level of complexity is involved when migrant men interact with the immigration authorities. Here, the state may act instrumentally, using representations of men as potential abusers to rationalize broader policies of exclusion (Wray 2009). In addition, courts are usually unwilling to intervene with immigration policy out of respect for state sovereignty (although see Wray 2013 on the United Kingdom). In many Western European countries, a highly gendered discourse has explicitly or implicitly presented restrictive measures such as language tests or age limits for spousal immigrants as necessary for the protection of women or to promote gender equality. Even if such measures apply to men and women equally, the underlying assumption is that the root of the problem is patriarchal arrangements within non-European migrant communities (see e.g., Charsley 2012, 193–94; Wray 2009; Liversage and Rytter 2015).

This portrait of state institutions intervening on the basis of racialized normative assumptions about gender relations is a key insight. As Hearn and Howson (2009, 42) write, “not only is much policy and policy development constructed by and through assumptions about gender, but also, much policy and policy development can be understood as policy on and about gender relations. Gender constructs policy as policy constructs gender.” In this special issue, representations of gender in the legal sphere are an integral part of the context for understanding the experiences of migrant men. The recent social scientific developments in understanding of the variety and nuances of male migrant experience reviewed earlier, however, have not yet translated into parallel interests in the sphere of legal scholarship.

Migration, Masculinity, and Law

The Special Issue: The Invisible (Migrant) Man

This volume therefore aims to demonstrate some of the complexities and difficulties facing migrant men for whom masculinity may be simultaneously a trap and also a psychological resource both during and after their encounters with the legal system. The suggestion that male migrants’ affective lives should be given more attention is contentious in a field where the vulnerabilities of women, as victims of forced marriage, trafficking, or “patriarchal” immigrant cultures, on the one hand, and state neglect or discrimination on the other are more frequently stressed. Nonetheless, as Rowe has argued, while “arguments for viewing particular groups of women as especially vulnerable are sound and defensible, the emphasis not only reifies patriarchal notions of feminine weakness but neglects the often severe vulnerability of particular groups of men” (p. 19). Understanding neglected migrant masculinities and the ways in which masculinity is employed in official discourses surrounding migration, moreover, casts important light on the totality of processes affecting both men and women (as migrants themselves or in their relationships with migrant men) and their representation in policy and popular discourse. However, we would argue that an increased understanding of the disadvantages suffered by some groups of migrant men is valuable in its own right. A project that aims to understand human experience must operate at the micro as well as the macro level. As such, this volume represents a contribution to the project of incorporating gender, in its full relational meaning, into our understandings of migration.

The collection brings together social scientists and legal scholars to examine these issues from a number of angles. Analysis of legal and policy discourses, reflected in policy documents and court determinations, is complemented by qualitative research on the effect of these on individuals. While the former highlights problematic representations of migrant men, qualitative research provides evidence of the complexities concealed by these discourses, including the interaction of legal and social contexts, and the ways in which the gendered assumptions of law and policy impact on the lives of migrant men in contemporary Europe.

Helena Wray’s article “A Thing Apart” considers the position of men with family claims to immigration status in British immigration law. She shows how migrant men’s family ties and caring responsibilities are consistently marginalized and excluded from consideration. Exceptions exist, and lawyers have succeeded in setting some valuable precedents in the higher courts. These have been achieved either because clients have been established as particularly vulnerable and deserving of sympathy or, atypically, were female. While these successes should benefit all migrants (including men) in similar situations, in practice, women and vulnerable men with emotional lives deserving of protection have been regarded as a separate category, so the cases have not always succeeded in challenging dominant models of masculinity, which have been reinstated in subsequent judgments.

Betty de Hart’s contribution on migrant “superdads” deals with the European Court of Human Rights, exploring both family law and immigration law cases involving migrant fathers. She posits a model of fatherhood against which applications for child custody and access, or residency claims, are judged. This model requires qualities of autonomy, economic capacity and intentionality (to start a family), and being a “hands-on” father. Once more, some migrant fathers’ cases do succeed, but others who live up to this model of the worthy father find that their status as migrants (particularly if they have violated immigration rules) works against the recognition of their bonds to their children. In this article, stereotypical constructs of Muslim men also emerge as important influences in the outcomes of cases, through connections made between Muslim fatherhood and the likelihood of child abduction, once more stressing the importance of an intersectional analysis. Crucially, these cases demonstrate that “the discourses on migrant fatherhood are not only institutional, but are employed by mothers and fathers, citizens and migrants alike in their struggle over their children. Hence, they are not only subject to, but also active agents of the gendered and racialized constructions of migrant masculinity.”

This point is elaborated in the remaining two articles, which expand the discussion from the evidence of judicial decisions to a more ethnographic appreciation of the ways in which men encounter these legal discourses as part of their migrant experiences. Melanie Griffith’s article, “Here man is nothing!” focuses on men in Britain whose claims to asylum have failed. Like the Muslim fathers in de Hart’s piece, powerful negative stereotypes exist of (male) failed asylum seekers, represented as deceptive, criminal, hypersexual, and dangerous. As in Wray’s contribution, these stereotypes affect their treatment and outcomes of the processes of asylum and detention, and once more, emotional needs and familial ties are marginalized. That is, as hypermasculine self-seeking strategizers, failed asylum seekers are expected to be able to cope with hardship and separation from their families. The experience of seeking and being denied asylum, by contrast, is emasculating and infantilizing. Unable to work legally, dependent on state decisions, charities, and friends, unable to establish families or maintain families already established, many feel humiliated as men.

The embodied manifestations of these tensions (sleeplessness, suicide attempts, and depression), as well as attempts to recoup some form of respectable masculine identity, find echo in the accounts of divorced Muslim migrant husbands in Charsley and Liversage’s article. In “Silenced Husbands,” the stereotypes of powerful and unfeeling Muslim patriarch once more contrast with vulnerabilities narrated by both Turkish men in Denmark and Pakistani men in Britain, suggesting structural similarities in their positions. Drawing together many themes of the preceding pieces, the article explores three often emotional accounts of the pressures of life as a migrant husband, the failure of marriages, and encounters with others’ stereotypes. For these Muslim family migrant men, the failure of their marriages can have consequences for access to children, and (at least in the early years of a marriage) for residency rights. Returning to the theme of intersectionality, in this concluding article we move beyond the more commonly employed elements of intersectional analysis to argue for the importance of context-specific identities in creating vulnerabilities that are invisible in dominant discourses. Interviewees’ complaints of institutional suspicion of them—as Muslim men and migrants—compound other legal, social, and familial vulnerabilities, and once more emphasize the importance of a holistic view of the interpenetration of the institutional and the social and of law and experience in the lives of migrant men.

The remarkable synergies and similarities between the contexts discussed in these pages, spanning national and European-level courts, and multiple ethnic groups and national contexts, suggest that this marginalization of migrant men as people with affective ties and vulnerabilities ⁷ —the “Invisible (Migrant) Man” of the title—is deserving of more widespread concern and scholarly attention. While important progress has been made in social science research on masculinities and migration, parallel developments have until now been absent in legal scholarship. Much therefore remains invisible. In laying the foundations for further investigation of the socio-legal positions and representations of migrant men, we hope that the value of interdisciplinary conversation is clear in exposing the important social, legal, and experiential consequences of constructions of migrant masculinity which, to use Melanie Griffith’s term, “flatten” complex identities and mask the nuances of life stories, relationships, and migration trajectories.