Family rights-claiming as act of citizenship: an intersectional perspective on the performance of intimate citizenship

ABSTRACT

Ethnographic and biographical research conducted with mixed-status couples and non-governmental organisations in France and Belgium provides insights into how the citizen partners of mixed-status relationships define and assert their family rights. In response to injustices suffered, from the state or from the migrant (non-citizen) partner, these citizens turned to organisations with contrasting discourses on marriage migration. These organisations encouraged them to participate in collective actions, and to give voice to their intimate experiences. Drawing on accounts of ‘intimate citizenship’, this article explores the citizenship-belonging nexus through lenses of performativity and intersectionality. Gender and ethnicity interact to influence interactions between citizen partners and the state, the tension between their virtual and actual social identities, and – ultimately – their assertions of citizenship, with personal status underpinning public claims. By speaking and acting in the name of their private lives and choices, these citizen partners affirm their (intimate) citizenship through its public performance.

KEYWORDS:

• Intimate citizenship
• intermarriages
• performativity
• rights claims
• intersectionality
• non-governmental organisations

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Saskia Bonjour and Betty de Hart for their guidance, the two anonymous reviewers and the editors who generously commented on this article, and Akin Ajayi for his proofreading. Special thanks are due to the many interviewees whose narratives and experiences informed this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Five for APB (across the fieldwork period), two for AVP, one for ANVI, and one for CP. The coordinators were white citizens, except CP’s, a Black Belgian. All except two (ANVI and the first ABP coordinator) were women.

2. Following the 2016 France reform, a plurennial residence permit is issued, at the discretion of the immigration services, after the second renewal. Immigration authorities are also permitted to perform random checks with utility providers to confirm evidence of ongoing family life.

3. 120% of ‘social integration income’ – € 1505.78 in 2018. Social welfare assistance is excluded from this calculation.

4. The term was previously employed by Marie-Annick Delaunay in her 2006 autobiographical novel, L’immigration par escroquerie sentimentale [Immigration by Sentimental Scam] (Paris: Tatamis).

5. Anniversary of the 1967 decision of the United States Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia, which invalidated laws prohibiting interracial marriages by authorising a marriage between an Afro-American woman and a white man. Loving being the plaintiff’s family name.

6. Proven domestic violence can open residence rights for the claimant even if the family life is broken-up before the statutory period of five years (Odasso 2019).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IEF Marie Curie Action, project Awareness and Migration : Organisations for bi-national family Rights Empowerment (AMORE) under grant [625364]; and by the French Collaborative Institute on Migration, coordinated by the CNRS under the reference [ANR-17-CONV-0001].