Bartered Bridegrooms

Muslim men are often portrayed in academic and popular discourses as violent patriarchs and/or as terrorists. Against the backdrop of an increasingly hostile environment within the UK, the experiences of Muslim migrant husbands in the Pakistani and Kashmiri diaspora are explored. The uncertainties of migrant journeys tethered to cultural and religious marital norms intersect with gendered experiences of masculinity across space and time. In depth interviews with sixty-two migrant husbands shed light on the precarity and vulnerability migrant husbands experience. Their aspirational masculinities often stem in the home country with collective familial dreams of migration, but often turn sour through the exposure of domestic and employment power dynamics when in the UK. The ethnography highlights experiences of domestic violence experienced by migrant husbands. The development of in-between or liminal masculinity becomes a lived reality for these men on the move, ultimately resulting in novel ways in which reasserting masculinity is sought through religious Sufi and musical forms. The book weaves together transnational dynamics between people and place along the contours of colonial legacies, showing self and other power dynamics present within a single group identity. Violence is inflicted to incoming migrants by British-born or British citizen counterparts through the immigration system. The book shows how citizenship can be weaponised as a performance of whiteness, namely white power.