Faisal arrived in Birmingham, a city that lies a few hours north-west of London, in 2000, after his now ex-wife visited Pakistan on a family trip and told her mother that she wanted to marry him. His parents were delighted that a British woman within the family kinship network had selected their handsome son as her spouse and responded with an immediate ‘Yes’ to the match. Faisal had little choice but to be thrilled with his bride-to-be and the prospect of a new life in Britain – a chance to improve his family’s economic and social status. Eight months after the marriage ceremony, a jubilant affair in Faisal’s village in Pakistan, Faisal’s spousal visa application with the United Kingdom’s Home Office was approved. Neighbours, friends, and cousins celebrated news of his imminent residence in Britain by lighting fireworks and distributing freshly made mithai (Pakistani sweets). At the same time, however, his family silently mourned the little time that he had left with them before waving goodbye for the Pardes, a foreign land, an unknown and uncertain space, but one that would surely change their lives for the better.

After his marriage migration, Faisal settled into his wife’s family home in Birmingham, a three-bedroom terraced house, where he quickly became trapped under the watchful eye of his father-in-law (also his maternal uncle), who oversaw his employment, clocked his hours, and took his wages. Faisal’s new status not only involved the embodied act of migrating to Britain, a country he had dreamed of inhabiting since he was a little boy, but also catapulted him into an invisible but deeply palpable web of power relations. This complex, criss-crossing web was woven by multiple actors that suddenly had a say over Faisal’s life: the state, his wife, in-laws, and employers. On the journey home from the airport, Faisal’s father-in-law demanded that he hand over his passport, which remained in his possession for several arduous years to come. Although his father-in-law assisted Faisal in obtaining work as a bricklayer (an occupation in which he had no prior experience), and later a string of low-paid jobs in local supermarkets and butchers, he routinely confiscated his earnings by using his personal relationship with employers who were also his friends. Every week Faisal’s boss would simply hand over his wages directly to his father-in-law. Faisal was allowed to keep only £20 of the nearly £150 that he earnt each week, which he would spend on pay-as-you-go credit on a finicky Nokia mobile phone to speak to his parents back home.

Over time, Faisal’s relationship with his wife deteriorated, arguments between the couple escalated, and he was met with aggression and violence from his father-in-law, who believed he was unnecessarily upsetting his daughter. The violence perpetuated by the father-in-law inspired further physical violence from his brothers-in-law and verbal abuse from his mother-in-law. One morning, after a heated argument with his wife after he had found a packet of condoms in her handbag, which Faisal insisted could not be his as the couple had not engaged in intercourse for over four months, his father-in-law physically beat him so severely that he lost control of his bladder and fell unconscious. After he had lain in urine and blood for a day his brother-in-law finally took him to hospital, where he was treated for broken ribs, a broken nose, and internal bruising. After his recovery Faisal ran away from the hospital and slept in parks across the city for days before seeking help from a relative who shared a similar marriage migration journey. His relative enjoyed the revered status that came with being a known businessman in the community. Through his support, Faisal was able to secure a divorce and eventually gain British citizenship, and was thereby allowed to remain in the United Kingdom indefinitely. The severe physical violence he had endured was seen by the British Pakistani community as a moral wrongdoing perpetuated by Faisal’s in-laws. The social stigma by their peers shamed the in-laws into helping Faisal obtain a type of residency immigration status known as indefinite leave to remain (ILR), and his freedom from the abusive marriage, which had lasted for six years. There took place between Faisal and his in-laws a transaction negotiated by his relative, which secured Faisal’s citizenship, while at the same time allowing his in-laws to recover some of their tainted honour.

Is this how Faisal imagined his marriage and migration experience would unfold when he first set out on his journey from a village in Azad Kashmir to Birmingham? How does this jarring experience contradict with his pre-departure expectations? Against his wishes, and with a loose grip on his own agency, Faisal was subjected to his father-in-law’s controlling behaviour within and outside the home, which echoes Michael Fischer’s (1991: 103–104) argument that the highest form of izzat (honour), which is usually seen to be associated with the female body, in fact seeks to regulate the bodies of men. As Faisal’s personal narrative demonstrates, such unchecked control can erode human dignity, extending its shadow beyond the intimate spaces of household and community into the workplace, and the realms of the state’s immigration and citizenship laws. In Faisal’s case, and for many other Pakistani migrant husbands revealed in this book, the intimidating figure of the father-in-law embodies not only the levers of patriarchy but also the state itself.

Sufyan is another migrant husband from Pakistan who I was introduced to by one of my interlocutors during my ethnographic research for this book. At the time of my ethnographic research he was living in Pakistan. He was married to his cousin, with whom he shared two children, but he struggled to join them in Britain because his wife was unemployed. Since 2012 British immigration laws have required applicants to demonstrate a minimum annual income of £18,500 to legally sponsor a spouse, which has been increased to £29,000 at present (May, Geiger, and Seddon 2023). Since Sufyan’s wife had left school with no qualifications and had never been employed, she could not meet the necessary minimum threshold to sponsor his visa application. Eight years after their marriage Sufyan was practising being a husband and father in a transnational context, working at a petrol station on the outskirts of Islamabad, through which he earnt a living. During our remote interview via Skype he told me, ‘I never thought I would be a father or a husband in this way … I fear my children will forget me or think I’m a bad father when they grow up. I feel so stuck.’ Sufyan’s experience can also be seen as a series of failed transactions between the state and his wife, as the income requirement threshold was not met, resulting in his being stuck and having to practise fatherhood across borders.

Other stories trace arduous tales with similar beginnings originating in hometowns, villages, and cities across Pakistan and Azad Kashmir, where men undertook migratory paths despite being mired in struggle and emotional turmoil, and often ended up in situations of domestic violence in their new households. Armaan’s family had initially selected his uncle’s daughter as a suitable wife for him, but she rejected the prospect of marrying a ‘freshie’ from ‘back home’. Armaan and his family were heartbroken, as they had ‘fixed’ his rishta (marriage proposal) when his cousin Sarish had been born and had done their utmost to raise Armaan as a suitable Britain-bound husband, fussing over his diet, clothing, and education, so as to appeal to Sarish. Armaan was dressed in attire such as stifling sweaters that ‘looked’ English, a choice that was often a poor fit for the sweltering heat in his hometown, and asked his barber to mimic the latest ‘British’ hairstyles. Despite their limited financial means, his parents took care to include meat, dairy, and protein in his diet, in the hope that he would present as physically fit and able-bodied – all to raise a desirable groom for a British Pakistani bride. In spite of their efforts, Sarish refused to marry Armaan, which caused great distress for Armaan’s family. Eventually, through much searching for a British rishta to save face from the shame caused by Sarish’s rejection, Armaan married the daughter of his mother’s sister in the United Kingdom, thus fulfilling the family aspirations of marriage migration.

The experiences of Muslim migrant husbands such as Faisal, Sufyan, and Armaan – and others – who journey from Pakistan and Azad Kashmir, a self-governing region administered by Pakistan, are woven into this book. The focus is on marriages between a woman who is a British Pakistani national and a man who is a Pakistani national, the latter having migrated to the United Kingdom to join his wife and her family.

On many levels, these personal narratives collectively reveal the systemic problem of how Muslim migrant husbands experience and navigate multifarious structures of oppression, including the patriarchal demands and institutional and inherited racism built into the British immigration system, and racialization and criminalization processes against Muslim men. Through years of fieldwork and one-to-one interviews, I show the ways in which young Muslim migrant men experience the unfulfilled promise of marriage migration and the various forms of injustice – including racism, domestic violence, threats of deportation, insecure immigration status, and homelessness, to name but a few – that transpire in and through this process. I also show the ways in which they become the site of transactions between various social actors, as well as social actors and the state.

Such an approach to understanding the experiences of Muslim migrant men (and Muslim men more broadly) in Britain has largely been neglected in the literature on gender, migration, and diaspora studies. It has also been conspicuously absent from public debate on the subject. This is surprising, not least because each year approximately equal numbers of male and female spouses from the Indian subcontinent are granted the right to settle and work in the United Kingdom (Charsley et al. 2011). Existing scholarship has long been one-sided, focusing predominantly on the experiences and vulnerabilities of migrant women. There is thus a paucity of research into men who migrate through marriage to settle with their wife or her parents’ household, who have been described within south Asian communities as ghar dhamad (house son-in-law), a designation that undermines the male migrant’s agency and status as an equal partner to his wife (Jeffery, Jeffery, and Lyon 1989: 37). More recently, however, studies have begun to report that migrant husbands experience unhappiness due to their perceived inferiority relative to other members of the household (Charsley 2005). An apparent lack of authority, and the grievances that this breeds, in his new surroundings can be attributed to the traditional patriarchal conceptions of marriage or fatherhood that he probably perceived during his own upbringing, sometimes resulting in such men ultimately abandoning their wives and children because of the incongruence between his expectations and reality. Charsley and Liversage (2015) have described migrant husbands as being ‘silenced’, and, more recently, Charsley and Ersanilli (2018) demonstrate the ways that migrant husbands can feel trapped in and through marriage migration. This growing body of literature has yet to be connected and embedded into the wider landscape of men and masculinity studies, whereby scholars have argued for multiple masculinities (Connell 2005; Hopkins 2006: 349–350), plural masculinities (Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera 2008), and emergent masculinities (Inhorn 2012).

Anthropological literature has examined the transactional aspects of marriage (Bossen 1988; Schlegel and Eloul 1988; Harrell and Dickey 1985; Singer 1973; Anderson 2007), particularly exploring bride price and dowries in parts of sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian subcontinent. Within the transnational marriage literature, a number of studies can be interpreted as involving transactional elements, such as those that refer to the ‘international marriage market’ (Sinke 1999), a female deficit (Faier 2007; Kaur 2012), and mail-order brides (Jackson 2002, 2007; Kojima 2001; Constable 2003), and those that occur between diaspora communities and their home countries (Gardner 1995; Shaw 2001; Pande 2014; Selby 2009; Mooney 2006; Gallo 2006; Charsley 2005). I build on these works to showcase the ways in which transnational marriage involving migrant husbands entails transacting the migrant husband in relation to the in-laws’ desires, as well as the desires of the nation state.

A ‘problem community’

Today Britain is home to approximately 1 million British Pakistanis (Shaw 2006, 2009), two-thirds of whom are from the northern areas of Pakistan, and the remaining third from the Punjab region (Ballard 1994), with their migration having largely taken place in the post-war period. Geographical differences surrounding the home country have influenced settlement patterns in Britain: those from mainland Azad Kashmir from cities such as Mirpur and Dadyal and surrounding areas tend to cluster in cities such as Bradford and Birmingham, while those from mainland Pakistan from areas such as the Punjab predominate in Manchester and Glasgow (Shaw 1988, 2000; Werbner 1990). Just as there are discernible settlement patterns, migrant communities inevitably travel with their cultures and ideas about family and work (Clifford 1997), which are renegotiated and reworked over the course of their encounters and experiences in Britain.

For members of the British Pakistani community, the practice of arranged marriage is common, and has translated into arranged transnational marriages among the second and third generations. Such marriages across borders are instrumental in maintaining existing, and creating new links with relatives in Pakistan (Shaw 2006). A large proportion of these marriages are also consanguineous, as demonstrated in studies conducted by Shaw (2001), linking up with spatial organisation and settlement, as a number of married couples making up the extended family live in the same household (Shaw 2001; Ballard 1994). In instances when the household capacity cannot accommodate the growing joint family, families purchase houses on the same street, and one or two married couples move into the house next door (Ballard 1994). Such patterns of household formation within the British Pakistani and Kashmiri community correlate with the household formation trends of eastern European migrants described by Hajnal (1982; see also Werbner 1990; Ballard 1994; Shaw 2006), which can, in the case of migrant husbands, heighten their vulnerability. Although the data on household settlement trends among the British Pakistani and Kashmiri migrant community are not routinely updated, in general the surveys conducted in the 1990s and 2000s have continued to be a close approximation of prevailing trends.

Gender dynamics can be seen to play out in spaces outside the household within the British Pakistani community, with education being one notable example. The literature on educational opportunities and outcomes for young British Muslim women (Brah 1996; Haw 1998; Shain 2002) emphasises the gendered influences of parents and teachers on their aspirations. The increase in numbers of young women among this group attending higher education has repeatedly been noted (Dale et al. 2002; Hussain and Bagguley 2007) as an indication of changing cultural norms (Thapar-Bjokert and Sanghera 2010), as well as the aspirations of young girls, which is reflected in their outperforming of their male peers (Dwyer and Shah 2009). Rising divorce rates within the community are also interpreted as indicative of a change in gender ideologies, which have translated into greater support for girls’ educational attainment (Dwyer and Shah 2009). Increasingly, education has been seen as a kind of insurance policy against a possible failed marriage down the line, to ensure a woman’s financial stability as well as her emotional, physical, and psychological well-being.

Meanwhile, for young men in the British Pakistani and Kashmiri communities, gender identity has been found to be a more complex matter. A range of different masculinities construct male-oriented aspirations and values in different ways, rendering the male experience a fluctuating and challenging one. For instance, Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera (2008) document particular attitudes towards education and work, which are influenced through factors such as peer group pressure, which weaken ties with families and encourages boys to participate in illegal activities, and gender ideologies, which reinforce traditional breadwinning roles for men through taking up business ventures (Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera 2008: 123). There is also considerable literature around the anxiety surrounding the criminalization of young Pakistani men in Britain and elsewhere (Modood and Werbner 1997: 147; see also Alexander 2004; Thapar-Bjokert and Sanghera 2010: 254; Hoque 2019: 5).

The representation of Pakistanis and Kashmiris in Britain has predominantly (mis)identified, and thus amalgamated, migrants from Azad Kashmir as Pakistani. Both communities are referred to under the umbrella identity of ‘Pakistani’, which is largely represented as a ‘problem community’ due to the perceived patriarchal predispositions of its members, further sharpened through the literature on forced marriages and domestic violence (Kalra 2009: 115; Thapar-Bjokert and Sanghera 2010: 254). Macey (1999) highlights how the involvement of young Pakistani men in organised gangs in the city of Bradford poses a threat to the entire community, but that young Asian women are its most common and frequent victims. Domestic violence remains a taboo subject, and women express frustration with the collusion of religious leaders with perpetrators in the community, especially since the former often advise them to behave as dutiful Muslim wives, rather than seek redress through the legal system (Macey 1999). The traditional views of many members of the Pakistani community towards female dress and behaviour are inextricably linked to concepts of honour and shame (Afshar 1994; Kassam 1997), dubbed as the ‘policing’ of women (Thapar-Bjokert and Sanghera 2010: 254). In their extreme forms, such views can translate into so-called honour-based violence, in the form of forced marriages and the murder of women (Gill 2009).

The stereotype that British Pakistanis constitute a ‘problem community’ that mobilises around patriarchal norms and gender roles that are out of step with greater British society (Thapar-Bjokert and Sanghera 2010: 254) has proved to be a resilient one. It has also narrowed our range of vision when it comes to a nuanced understanding of the contemporary British Pakistani community. Such stereotypes impose a binary structure through which to view gendered experiences, whereby men are often cast as the oppressors and women as the oppressed. The migration and transnationalism literature suggests quite the contrary, as shifting gender roles can lead to conflict and abuse for both migrant husbands and wives in their adopted homes (Espiritu 1997: 75; Luu 1989: 68). A number of examples show how the migration experience has altered inherited gender dynamics over time, with notable implications for the institution of marriage. Shaw (2006: 336), for example, reports that, due to the pioneer generation of British Pakistani women constructing their household dynamics in the absence of a dominating mother-in-law, younger generations of women now have different views on who wields power in the household in comparison to their migrant husbands (Shaw 2000). In addition, Charsley (2013) notes how some families reserve their right to delay the rukhsati (sending off of the bride) until the groom joins his wife in the United Kingdom upon obtaining his immigration status. Although it is customary for Pakistani brides to shed tears at their wedding ceremony to mark their exodus from the maternal home, some modern brides argue that it would be more fitting for their husbands to grieve, as they are the ones leaving their families behind – not the other way around (Charsley 2013). Thapar-Bjokert and Sanghera (2010: 252) note that Pakistani mothers were critical in transmitting socio-cultural values within their home, particularly with fathers engaged in labour over long periods of time. More recently Qureshi (2013: 13) has reported how middle-aged women use the notion of sabr (patience) to invoke guilt in husbands and children when they wish to achieve a particular outcome in family decision-making processes – another sign that household power dynamics have evolved through migration. Thapar-Bjokert and Sanghera (2010: 251) also document the ways in which Pakistani Muslim households are prone to ongoing negotiation and contestation of patriarchal norms. This is particularly underlined as a result of the conflicting and overlapping identities and allegiances common in Pakistani Muslim communities (Thapar-Bjokert and Sanghera 2010: 250). Migration can create the social dynamics in which these overlapping identities and allegiances can interact, a consequence of which is a widening of the spaces in which British Pakistani women can assert themselves. This is particularly seen within marriage (see also Qureshi, Charsley, and Shaw 2014; Mooney 2006), even at early stages of the life cycle. Prevailing norms, discourses, and dynamics circulating in the host society can also permeate the migrant community and further exacerbate the shift in gender roles, expanding the public and private spaces in which women can assert themselves (see also Alexander 2013: 342), such as developments in family planning and technological innovations, which have changed the nature of care and labour in the home (Greenwood, Seshadri, and Yorukoglu 2003; Popenoe 1993).

The impact of these shifting gender dynamics on sons, husbands, and fathers within the British Pakistani community has received little attention. By considering a range of case studies (Walsh 2011; Gallo 2006), it is possible to hypothesise that Muslim migrant husbands experience considerable social and emotional turbulence (see also Datta et al. 2009: 863; Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera 2008: 127) at different stages of their migration journey, which, arguably, does not end at the point at which they reach their final destination. The ways in which men manage this turbulent upending of their lives demands a rethink of the common stereotypes of Muslim men, particularly of Pakistani heritage, which often depict them as oppressive, all-powerful patriarchs, gang members, or sexual predators (Ali 1992; Alexander 2001; Hoque 2019: 2; Thapar-Bjokert and Sanghera 2010: 254). Prevailing attitudes of the British Pakistani community as a problem community are (mis)informed by its presumed patriarchal structures, despite many authors, such as Abu-Lughod (1986), having pointed out that patriarchy affects not only women but also men (see also Joseph 1996; Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera 2008: 127). In this book, I set out to unpack and dismantle harmful stereotypes surrounding this community by carefully considering the intersections of marriage, masculinity, and migration, and exploring how Muslim migrant husbands from Pakistan and Azad Kashmir navigate the shifts in gender dynamics upon marriage migration to Britain. This book maps the implications of migrant husbands’ experiences onto the concept and practice of embodied patriarchy and discusses the ways that patriarchal conventions have been disrupted, and how. From a conceptual perspective, I employ and expand upon Turner’s (1967) work on the idea of liminality to argue that Muslim migrant husbands experience a kind of liminal masculinity, which suspends patriarchy as we currently understand it.

Disrupting conventional understandings around the ‘Muslim migrant man’

Over a period of two years I ethnographically tracked more than 62 Muslim Pakistani men in Birmingham who had journeyed to Britain as migrant husbands since the 1990s. My interviews were conducted in English, Urdu, and Pothwari. Although in the research planning stages I intended to conduct interviews in community centre meeting rooms, where both my safety and the interlocutors’ safety was ensured as per university ethics approval guidelines, during my fieldwork I found that male interlocutors much preferred to speak via mobile phone. This resolved a number of cultural obstacles that required careful manoeuvring around, including the risk of reputational damage for both me as the interviewer – a young, unmarried, woman – and the interlocutors, heightened by cultural and religious codes that impose taboo for a woman to be meeting alone with a ghair mahram (see also Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera 2008: 121; Thapar-Bjokert and Sanghera 2010: 259). Ghair mahram translates as ‘non-family member’ or ‘stranger’, with whom a nikaah (Islamic marriage contract) is permissible. Thus, whereas in academic contexts the relationship between interviewee and interlocutor can facilitate new forms knowledge, within this particular field site it could easily be (mis)interpreted as a romantic and/or sexual affair, and therefore unlawful on both religious and cultural grounds. I have employed throughout the manuscript the experiences of my interlocutors sensitively, in order to do justice not only to their participation but also to the broader circumstances in which they often found themselves (see also Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera 2008: 121).

A key finding that emerged from my ethnographic research is that Pakistani Muslim migrant men constitute a significant subaltern crisis of masculinity that is overlooked by dominant scholarly approaches. This subaltern crisis of masculinity is particularly enabled in and through experiences of liminality, which influences their embodied experience of masculinity. Such masculinity is one that is in flux, trapped between the dreams of young bridegrooms, leaving their homes for a fresh start, and the unsettling, often violent, new reality that confronts them in their role as migrant, not yet British, husbands, in Birmingham. The prolonged periods of waiting (Honwana 2012; Singerman 2007) experienced by Muslim migrant husbands, such as Sufyan, whose narrative was described earlier, is a key feature of what I term ‘liminal masculinity’. To counter this state of protracted and traumatic ‘waithood’, as I call it, I explore how migrant husbands employ different forms of constructive agency and resistance, such as lyrical music and video collages on social media. Second, I recount how these men develop and engage in novel forms of prophetic masculinity, participating in spiritual brotherhoods to help them make sense of and navigate their experiences of domestic and financial violence, and subordination in their households.

Through successive chapters, I argue that a ‘feminisation’ of marriage has occurred within the British Pakistani community. This term, in my view, captures how marriage as an institution has, in some instances, become more favourable to British (born and raised) Pakistani women. There are several contributing factors to this phenomenon, such as having kin in proximity (see also Shaw and Charsley 2006), and a widening political, social, and economic space within which women can exercise agency, choice, and preference (see also Thapar-Bjokert and Sanghera 2010). As a result, women often enjoy a superior position within the parameters of their marriages relative to their mothers and grandmothers. A significant factor that amplifies women’s power is their British citizenship, which becomes leverage against their husbands, who suffer a precarious state of being as a result of immigration limbo, sometimes even years after their arrival. Often a woman enjoys this feminisation with both direct and implicit support extended by her parents, who act as authoritative enablers with newfound control over their migrant son-in-law. Patriarchy in this instance operates not only along gendered lines but through the possession of British citizenship, as an instrument of power and subordination of the ‘weaker’ party. In this way, then, colonial legacies seem to be adopted through pioneer migrants and their acquisition of British citizenship, to subject new migrants to power and control. This is resonant with Kalra’s (2009: 121) article, wherein it is noted that effeminate masculinities within south Asian groups, such as Bengalis, are contrasted with Pathans and Punjabis, who were seen as the ‘real men’. Citizenship acquired through pioneer migration, then, has organised incoming migrant men as more effeminate and thus more vulnerable to subjugation.

The premise for this book is provided by the existing scholarship, which, although it has begun to document the experiences of migrant men, could do more to investigate appropriately and explain the personal, often overlooked, experiences of vulnerable Pakistani migrant husbands in Britain. More nuanced studies could have significant implications for the individuals and families who make up this community, as well as others who share a similar experience. This is particularly important because of what it reveals about the struggles of migrants from ethnic communities in British society, and because it relates to human rights issues; many of the men studied here experienced unlawful violence, confiscation of wages, and poor labour conditions (see also McDowell, Rootham, and Hardgrove 2015). In what follows, I set out to respond to the glaring discrepancies and unexplored grey areas within the literature, which neglects the stories of Muslim Pakistani migrant men in contemporary Britain. Many ethnographies that focus on migrant experiences tend to associate feelings of anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation with women migrants (Hoang and Yeoh 2011; Parreñas 2005a). Resistance and agency narratives within the Global South have also tended to focus on women’s experiences (Abu-Lughod 1986; Raheja and Gold 1994; Mahmood 2001). Research into Muslim men’s masculine experiences in the United Kingdom has begun to take place (Archer 2003; Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera 2008; Hopkins 2006; Kalra 2009; Hoque 2019; Thapar-Bjokert and Sanghera 2010: 254), yet there is more to be explored and documented, to account for the complex social mesh in which they exist across multiple transnational fronts, including but not limited to a transnational ethnic identity, a global(ised) Muslim identity, and a Western identity in which Britishness is key. Taking an intersectional approach that considers the postcolonial, state power, and transnational migration context as part of the social web, my own research over many years has shown that Muslim migrant men suffer similar experiences and emotions to the ones women have been documented as experiencing (see also Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera 2008: 127). With some exceptions, however, their diverse experiences are too often overlooked or trivialised. What can explain this oversight? Due to the Western ‘gaze’ (Said 1978) and the grand narratives that have been produced and reproduced in and through the power of coloniality (see also Kalra 2009: 118) in the academy (Murrey 2019), Muslim men are overwhelmingly perceived and portrayed through reductionist and highly negative terms such as terrorists, gang members, overbearing patriarchs, or wife beaters (see, for example, Alexander 2000; Archer 2003; Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera 2008; Hopkins 2006; Kalra 2009; Thapar-Bjokert and Sanghera 2010: 254). For decades this approach has gripped the academic literature within the social sciences, with the events of the 9/11 attacks and the ‘War on Terror’ intensifying patterns of Islamophobia and anti-migrant rhetoric further. Although critical theorists in the field of masculinity studies, such as Raewyn Connell (2005), have argued for the existence of multiple masculinities as opposed to one form of masculinity – hegemonic masculinity – in operation, it is only in some arenas that such theoretical luxuries have been afforded to the study of Muslim men born in Britain (Hopkins 2006; Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera 2008). One study that does afford multiple, fluid, and multifaceted masculinities to Muslim men is that of Hopkins (2006), who shows that markers of locality and social difference can impact masculinity among Muslim men of Pakistani heritage in Edinburgh and Glasgow, leading him to argue that multiple Muslim masculinities exist. Thapar-Bjokert and Sanghera’s (2010) work particularly highlights the nuances of the ethno-religious habitus in which Pakistani Muslim families exist, and thereby the way in which masculinity is shaped in relation to age, gender, and generation, but also familial ambitions. Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera (2008) also posit masculinities as relational to age, gender, ethnicity, class, religion, and place. They further contribute to the understanding of Pakistani Muslim masculinities as plural by identifying four masculine forms among their informants: religious masculinities, middle-class masculinities, rebellious masculinities, and ambivalent masculinities. Within the marriage migration literature, migrant men’s experiences have begun to be documented in the last decade or so, with Marcia Inhorn’s (2012) book The New Arab Man signalling perhaps a pivotal moment in the evolution of Muslim masculinity studies. Demonstrating the ways that Arab Muslim men support their wives to overcome infertility through assisted reproduction, Inhorn argues that new masculinities are emerging among Middle Eastern Muslim men, which have previously gone unnoticed under the myriad frames of vilifying, anti-Muslim rhetoric. My findings add to and further expand on Inhorn’s important contribution to the field of Muslim masculinities in a transnational context, as I uncover how such ‘emergent masculinities’ are formed in and through vulnerability and violence, and also document the different forms of masculinities that help migrant husbands navigate the uncertain social terrain in which they find themselves.

As British Pakistanis constitute one of the largest diaspora communities in the United Kingdom (Ballard 1994; Shaw 2000), literature in the field of transnational and diaspora studies have recognised them as being a vulnerable population, often taken advantage of by their kinship groups in Pakistan to exploit their British citizenship and improved economic status. Such narratives harm those in the Global South, however, by reproducing stereotypes that depict those back in the home country as manipulative agents motivated to climb out of abject poverty. This imagery constitutes the default position when describing sending countries in the Global South in relation to diaspora communities that ‘make it’ in the West or the Global North. Such narratives that indicate those ‘back home’ fail to take account of the reverse, however: that diaspora communities that actively maintain extended transnational kinship ties often benefit by sponsoring a migrant husband for their daughter in Britain. The benefits also extend to keeping land and property in the family, as many of these marriages occur between close kin, including first cousins (see Shaw 2006). Transactions involving symbolic exchanges involving brides, grooms, land, and property are therefore central to the transnational marriages taking place in British Pakistani and Kashmiri communities, thus suggesting benefits on both sides, which places the notion of those ‘back home’ exploiting members of the diaspora in jeopardy. In some instances, the transactional exchanges were not only symbolic but also carried legal support. For example, my interview with Ali reveals how, in exchange for paying for the nikaah ceremony, his in-laws negotiated a form of informal prenuptial agreement or insurance policy that would grant them the deed to his parents’ land in Pakistan in the event that the marriage failed. This made it impossible for Ali to leave the marriage even when he was faced with domestic violence, as this would guarantee the loss of his family’s ancestral land to his abusive father-in-law. Ali’s marriage involved a series of transactions, primarily the transaction of his family’s land as an insurance in case the marriage broke down. Moreover, the nikaah document doubled up as not just a religious covenant between the spouses but also a socio-cultural and economic document that recorded the transactional underbelly of the transnational marriage. By largely neglecting such experiences, the existing literature in many ways risks denying what Spivak (1988) has referred to as the subaltern’s ability to speak. This book dramatically shifts this skewed power relation within the field, unsettling the academic gaze as well as realigning the often invisible structures of fieldwork, ethnography, and the translation of ethnographic fieldwork, to allow the subaltern to speak within a postcolonial context, in which colonial legacies continue to thrive in multiple and diverse ways.

Much of the migration literature operates on the logic of ‘push/pull’ factors, with migrants deciding to leave their birth countries due to poverty, war, and violence, and being pulled into more affluent countries by the better prospects and economic opportunities available there (Lee 1966; Harris and Todaro 1970). Critics of this approach have argued that it ignores many centuries of exploitation, forced labour, and resource extraction by imperialism and colonial powers of poorer countries, resulting in long-standing structural inequalities that drive outward migration (Castles and Kosack 1973; Sassen 1988). In many ways, the push/pull factor approach can be seen as a series of transactions between nation states and citizens of former colonies. Even though the direction of power of these transactional migrations forms has remained with nation states, the granting of visas for the rebuilding of their economies after the Second World War, in exchange for housing, welfare, healthcare for migrants, and later for their families, can be mapped along transactional relations.

Although the transactional ‘push/pull’ factor approach may help explain the first and second waves of migration between 1960 and 1980 from Pakistan and Azad Kashmir to Britain (Ballard 1994), it does not adequately account for continued migration flows in spite of awareness of the hardships and increasingly difficult conditions for migrants and working-class people in Britain. Carling and Schewel (2018) posit a novel model, involving aspiration and desire, to account for migration patterns, which I have found in some ways to complement the experiences of Muslim migrant husbands. As this book shows in Chapter 1, however, my findings depart from Carling and Schewel’s (2018) model, as aspirations and the desire to migrate (see also Datta et al. 2009: 864) are at times curated over long periods of time by the family of migrant husbands. In Armaan’s case, for example, his diet, clothing, and hair style were constantly shaped to ensure that he would fit the ‘look’ of a British national, and therefore appeal to the family’s desired bride choice for him. This book builds on Carling and Schewel’s work while at the same time acknowledging and exploring the role of the wider family network on both sides of the transnational field, and how their needs, aspirations, and desires influence the migration journey. Since the site of aspiration making often begins with, and most certainly includes, the social imaginary (see also Appadurai 1990) particularly exercised through dreaming (see also Datta et al. 2009: 864), I argue that migration journeys should also include the landscape of the imagination in addition to the geographical countries or locations that migrants travel through and between.

Generally speaking, the conventional approach assumes that the migration journey is a linear one, with clearly demarcated start and stopping points, and a temporal beginning and ending (Collins 2018: 972). In contrast, the goal here is to dismantle suggestions that migration is a one-way, one-stop journey. In following the journeys of Muslim migrant husbands, this book shows that migrant journeys include starts, sudden stops, pauses, interruptions, blockages, and diversions as a result of the different ways in which a number of factors – citizenship; ideas around honour and shame; power; race and gender; restrictive immigrations laws; poverty; and education – come to intersect, all of which can render the migrant husband vulnerable. Much of this vulnerability is entangled with increasing waithood periods, during which the migrant husband faces precarious working and immigration conditions, an architectural product of the British state’s labyrinthine immigration laws. Although some have no choice but to endure waithood in Pakistan due to criteria around spousal immigration, such as the financial salary threshold of £18,500 per annum (Sufyan is an example here), which was raised to £20,000 in 2024, others experience long probationary periods on their arrival, when, in pursuit of elusive British citizenship, they are vulnerable to domestic and workplace violence (see also Datta et al. 2009: 865–866). Others, such as Amir, are threatened with deportation by their in-laws or wives should they step out of line, and some, such as Faisal, face temporary homelessness. It is fair to say that the aspirations and desires that lead to marriage migration are subject to seismic shifts over time and negotiated through multiple transactions, a central concern traced throughout this book.

The waithood and precarity Muslim migrant husbands experience upon marriage migration speak to a body of anthropological literature on the ‘in between’. Roger Ballard (1994) coined the term ‘code-switching’ to describe the ways in which youth in the British Pakistani diaspora navigated between the home, where cultural values were forefront, and the school, where more Western values were centre stage. For migrants, this in-betweenness has been explored in the form of refugee camps as being a liminal phase (Turner 1999). As Victor Turner initially posited (1967), however, liminality is temporary and enables the becoming, or coming into being, into the next stage of one’s life. But what happens if the liminal phase is indefinitely extended? What if the liminal phase is when life, the act of living from day to day, occurs? What if the liminal phase morphs into an ongoing, inescapable process? Employing migrant husband experiences, this book develops the concept of liminality further by demonstrating how migration is the ultimate form of liminality. This is extended further still to the asking of difficult but necessary questions, such as: what is the impact of living in permanent liminality on the gendered experiences of migrants? I argue that Muslim migrant husbands experience liminal masculinity, whereby the crisis of liminality is experienced at an embodied level.

My identification of the concept of waithood to describe the situation of migrant husbands is closely connected to my own experiences of waithood at the time I embarked on this research. I was embroiled in an employment tribunal case that spanned the duration of my PhD and long thereafter (even including the time of writing this book). My positionality as a woman of the margins, as I self-identify, and an ‘insider anthropologist’ (Crehan 2002; Abu-Lughod 1986) has been crucial in my fieldwork and, subsequently, the writing of this ethnography. Throughout this book I highlight how the structures of the academy, which were oppressive towards me during my time as a PhD student, also require decolonisation, thus extending the decolonisation of the curriculum to both the construction of the classroom and the academy. Perhaps if my research had focused on the ways in which Muslim migrant husbands may be adopting extremist ideologies, pose a threat to national security, or engage in ‘sham’ marital arrangements upon their migration journeys, I would have been more likely to receive funding from research councils, grant-giving institutions, and universities. But, since my research explored the vulnerabilities of Muslim migrant husbands, this broke away from the mainstream political and legal discourses deeply intertwined with the Western academic gaze, forcing me to the peripheries of academic orthodoxy. I also consider the implications of binary constructions such as the Global South and Global North, which, even though they have been erected as more politically correct terminology to respect those in the Global South, are nonetheless still problematic. Through my own positionality as a Muslim, ethnic, female, working-class anthropologist and human geographer, I disturb the geographical boundaries of the Global South and Global North, arguing instead that I am a Global South scholar researching communities of the Global South in the Global North. The book therefore also draws on and speaks to the decolonisation discourse, as well as discourses around reflexive anthropology and feminist geography.

The book in outline

This book sets out to address a number of pressing questions. How do migrant husbands experience marriage migration to Britain? How do migrant husbands perceive the relationship between marriage, migration, and masculinity? In what ways do migrant husbands perceive and negotiate their positions in their wives’ and/or in-laws’ households? Such research questions aim to gather detailed and nuanced insights into the experiences of migrant husbands and their own conceptualisations of their changing position in the transnational landscapes they have navigated, often since childhood, as their families developed aspirations for them to migrate through marriage. Given this aim and my interest in exploring marriage migration from the perspective of migrant husbands within the context of their local (and transnational) context, the research methodology adopted was ethnographic in nature, including semi-structured interviews, life history narratives, and participant observation. Employing these methods, between February 2017 and August 2018 I conducted fieldwork with 62 migrant husband interlocutors and 43 community member interlocutors (family members, friends, neighbours of migrant husbands) and participant observation of a spiritual Sufi healer, who provided some migrant husbands with talismans and wazifas (Islamic supplications) to perform in order to alleviate their hardships.

The book is structured thematically around the key findings arising throughout my research, exploring, in turn, the three forms of masculinity that I identify as having been experienced by the migrant husbands who participated in my study: transnational masculinity; liminal masculinity; and spiritual masculinity.

Transnational masculinity

Through the vectors of aspiration and desire, Muslim migrant husbands and their families begin their migrant journeys long before they physically embark on their voyage away from what is familiar to them. The culmination of such aspiration and desire is the emergence of transnational masculinity, embodied mainly through the image of the transnational patriarch, which shapes migrant husbands’ expectations prior to their marriage migration. Nevertheless, their own experience usually departs from the ideal type representation of the successful economic migrant during or after the marriage migration occurs. Chapter 1 therefore traces the way in which these aspirations change before, during, and after the marriage ceremony and subsequent migration to Britain. In the first section, I draw on life history interviews to demonstrate that the aspiration to migrate is often planted, nurtured, and facilitated by family members, sometimes from early childhood, and can include the making of the migrant husband – and his sense of masculinity – through fashioning the appearance of a desirable bridegroom, and marketing him through the use of digital technology and social media as a suitable spouse for a British Pakistani woman, and gain the approval of her family.

In the second section of this chapter, I highlight the differences between the imagined and lived experiences of migration and marriage, introducing the concept of the transnational patriarch as a masculine ideal that migrant husbands aspire(d) to, both while resident in Pakistan and after arriving in Birmingham. The image of the transnational patriarch conveys ideals of power within the family and community, and financial success; a man who commands considerable control over his affairs both in Britain and in Pakistan, a feat achieved through the act of marriage migration. The transnational patriarch is seen to possess a profitable business and a stable family that he heads as a respected husband and father, and to act as guardian of collective honour within the community. The chapter demonstrates the way in which these three elements are intricately linked, enabling the migrant husband to maintain his image as a successful migrant. As an ideal, he represents how successful migration acts as a currency that determines social standing, respect, and honour at individual and communal levels (see also Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera 2008: 130), echoing the notion of ‘desire’ being created outside a nation, yet being recognizable within the nation (Rafael 1997: 271).

The third section focuses on the experiences of migrant husbands after marriage and migration, which aids us in understanding how aspirations evolve, dissolve, or adapt over the course of migration. Building on the literature vis-à-vis waithood (Singerman 2007; Honwana 2012), I argue that migrant husbands enter a period of waithood after marriage, a product of the restrictive immigration rules and regulations set out by the UK Home Office to combat sham or false marriages. For some migrant husbands, the waithood period increases anxiety, emotional distress, and marital instabilities as they are separated from their new bride. Those who overcome this initial waithood period and successfully migrate to the United Kingdom face stiff responsibilities tied to being a migrant husband, including in the worlds of labour and citizenship acquisition. This chapter provides insights into the ways in which different actors within the various transnational spaces – such as the in-laws in terms of the wife’s household, state institutions through immigration laws, employers in the workplace – exert influence, pressure, and power over the migrant husband. Such factors create dissonance between migrant husbands’ imagined and lived realities, both before and after marriage migration.

Furthermore, I show that aspirations also undergo a kind of migration themselves, in the sense that they move, shift, and become unsettled, revealing a deeply interwoven relationship between migrant husbands, their social imaginaries, and their lived realities, echoing Borden’s (2001) argument that space and the body are internalised within one another. In order to negotiate these social imaginaries and lived realities, multiple transactions are constructed, conducted, and enacted. Aspiration making is identified as beginning in the social imaginary (see also Appadurai 1990). Several photographs of elaborate and expansive mansions shared with me by interlocutors are discussed in this chapter to show the ways in which physical translations of remittances help shape the image of the transnational patriarch within the social imaginary of Pakistani migrant men. My analysis of transnational masculinity thus demonstrates that the social imaginary is a significant location that migrant husbands inhabit, and to which they revert in times of self-doubt or crisis. It also holds significance for the ways in which social events unfold for migrant husbands within diverse spaces such as the home, workplace, and community, both within and across borders.

Liminal masculinity

Chapter 2, ‘Liminal masculinity’, focuses more closely on the experiences of migrant husbands after marriage and migration to the United Kingdom, and, in doing so, provides a nuanced insight into the dissonance between the experiences of migrant husbands at different times in their life histories. I trace the intersections of postcolonial government structures, which still subject former colonies through immigration laws, the ideas of migration and social mobility held by young men, and the role of globalisation and consider the impact on Muslim men’s experiences of masculinity. In the first section, I show that migrant husbands can lead precarious lives due to entering prolonged periods of waithood, powerlessness, and inferiority before, during, and upon marriage and migration in relation to their wives, in-laws, and the British state. This lays the foundations for understanding migrant husband masculinities as liminal, as migrant husbands are increasingly ‘in between’ their identity as transnational patriarchs, which they had once envisaged, and their current status, as low-wage-earning unskilled labourers (see also Datta et al. 2009; McDowell, Rootham, and Hardgrove 2015), or hostage to the whims and desires of his wife, in-laws and employers. I show that asserting control over their ‘imported’ sons-in-law animates and enables an almost mythical identity as a transnational patriarch by the pioneer generation of migrant men. This is not only congruent with Fischer’s (1991: 103–104) argument that ideas around honour, usually associated with women in Muslim societies, are also closely linked with the surveillance and regulation of male bodies but, additionally, pregnant with colonial power forms (see also Bi 2023). The migrant husband is, I argue, the site of transactions between multiple social actors, as well as between these social actors and the state.

The second part of this chapter explores the diverse manifestations of migrant husbands’ weak positions, providing insights into a little-researched area: how men cope with and navigate the changes brought about by what is conventionally known as uxorilocal marriage in a transnational setting. Uxorilocal marriages are forms of marriage common to South America whereby men migrate to settle in their wives’ households upon marriage. Migration and settlement into a diaspora community, coupled with the direction of power away from the male through the uxorilocal nature of the marriage, can increase his vulnerability. Uxorilocal forms of marriage have not been explored in a transnational and/or migratory setting by scholars. It is found that factors such as lower levels of education and consanguineous or close kin marriages are likely to exacerbate the weak positions of husbands.

Of the total 62 migrant husbands who participated in the study, all reported having experienced verbal abuse, and 47 had experienced physical abuse at the hands of their wives and/or in-laws and/or employers. The high levels of abuse indicate migrant husbands’ silence and invisibility, which juxtaposes with the broader narrative wherein Pakistani men are often depicted as powerful patriarchs. The findings also demonstrate that migrant husbands can occupy liminal states over long periods of time, and that, by extension, the migrant male body can then be viewed as a critical space and social location, within which the past, present, and future unfold simultaneously and upon which migration takes place. Given the paucity of research vis-à-vis the vulnerable positions of migrant husbands, and their experiences as survivors of domestic violence, the ethnography makes a valuable contribution to the field of men and masculinity studies.

In the third part of the chapter, I consider the implications of domestic violence against migrant husbands for power dynamics within the British Pakistani community. In essence, my research shows that there are multiple patriarchies that exist in the British Pakistani and/or Muslim community, some of which are oppressive to both men and women (see also Joseph 1996). I also demonstrate that the transnational dynamic in which citizenship status is a key factor determines relations between and across genders. In some ways, then, British citizenship acts as a symbolic currency that transcends the patriarchal system that is conventionally seen to operate within the British Pakistani Muslim community. Traditional notions of honour and shame, therefore, take on different meanings within this transnational context involving migrant husbands. Specifically, I posit that honour and shame are currencies underpinning the transacting of migrant husbands in this transnational marriage migration arrangement, which result in the subverting of migrant husbands and their masculinities. Overall, this chapter demonstrates that migration, including social migration within marriage, can place masculinity in constant motion.

Spiritual masculinity

The third chapter of the book explores spiritual masculinity. I begin by contemplating the mobility of masculine identity caused by marriage and migration, the ways that masculinity becomes unsettled, shifts, or is suspended in motion. To counter their perceived weaknesses, I demonstrate that migrant husbands can practise resistive agency (see Holland et al. 1998), by engaging with lyrical music and videos such as ‘songs of sorrow’, a poetic song form coupled with traditional Pakistani musical instruments, such as the sitar. Though similar to Qawwali in terms of poetic pace, repetition, and the types of musical instruments, ‘songs of sorrow’ differ from Qawwali in that they comprise one or sometimes two male singers. This musical compilation, uploaded and shared on YouTube, Facebook, and WhatsApp group chats, allows migrant husbands to express intimate emotions, experience solidarity, and build a virtual, co-ethnic community. The lyrics of the songs invoke gender dynamics, which establish or reinstate social truths that resonate with the migrant men’s pre-existing patriarchal gendered ideals. These songs provide a safe space for migrant husbands to express themselves, similar to scholars who have shown resistance and agency through musical forms for women in different parts of the world (see Raheja and Gold 1994; Abu-Lughod 1990).

The second section of this chapter shows the significance of religiosity in acquiring important forms of religio-social capital, such as trust and solidarity. Focusing on a close reading of the cases of my interviewees, I show that some migrant husbands practise what I refer to as ‘spiritual masculinity’ in order to rebuild or reinstate their masculinity, by aligning themselves with the holy and/or sacred, within religious Sufi-scapes, which, in turn, are also a product of the transnational movement of ideas and faith traditions. I present a map of Birmingham that shows the Sufi hubs where migrant husbands and British Muslim men gathered weekly to perform prayer, undertake zikr (a form of Islamic meditation in which phrases or prayers are repeatedly chanted), and celebrate mawlids (celebrations of the birth of the Prophet Muhammad), but also offer one another brotherly support (see also Morrow 2001: 51; Thapar-Bjokert and Sanghera 2010: 258). Many of my migrant husband interlocutors cited these hubs and the religious clothing they wear – often brightly coloured turbans or scarves – as providing them with a reconstituting identity, which not only helped them integrate into the community but in some cases also became a symbol of their loyalty to their wives and in-laws. Their religious affiliations were seen as legitimizing them in their community, conveying to their British Pakistani wives and in-laws that they were pious, calm, and respected, and possibly rescuing them from being targets of invasive control and physical harm as a result. In this way, engagement in religious spaces can be seen as transacting resistance and agency.

The final section in this chapter goes on to demonstrate the ways in which some migrant husbands perform certain financial tasks to keep up the appearance of being successful transnational patriarchs, which they see as an extension of spiritual masculinity. Financial stability is seen as an indicator of virility, competence, and the ability to perform charitable actions for the benefit of their families and wider community. A key finding emerging throughout the research pertains to the ways in which the wives, sisters, and daughters of migrant husbands gained individual purchasing power as a result of their British citizenship, education, and economic empowerment, which – in the cases I discuss – they actively chose to draw on in order to help alleviate the hardships of migrant husbands, as their honour and social standing in the community are intricately interwoven with those of their male kin. This finding leads me to argue that honour is not one-dimensional in form or practice within the British Pakistani community. Instead, honour, it seems, is context-dependent, as it works differently within a single household compared to within a community of many households, as well as between married couples compared to a group of people. Further, I argue that the performance of finances demonstrates how both men and women within the British Pakistani community can fall victim to and at the same time employ the guise of patriarchy to further their social stance within the community.

Together, the three overarching forms of masculinity that structure the findings trace the journey of migration that migrant husbands undergo through marriage, but also the journey of migration that their masculine identity, social lives, and marital lives undergo. Therefore, the research provides a nuanced account of the impact of the migration–marriage–masculinity nexus: that they are intricately interwoven, and that migration through space, place, and time simultaneously invokes migration operating in and through the space and place of the body. Ultimately, the approach taken here is one in which the aspirations of migrant husbands are seen as independent entities, which inform the imagined ideals of the transnational patriarch, and through their marriage and migration journeys the book uncovers the meandering nature that their aspirations take, and whether or not they become fulfilled or become something else entirely. Such an approach differs from the current literature, as it takes its starting point the social imaginary and does not assume the linearity of the migration journey between two places.

The findings laid out in this book collectively contribute to men and masculinity studies, migration and diaspora studies, and the anthropology of Islamic and Muslim societies. The overarching outcome of the research, which is discussed further in the Conclusion, is that the research contributes to and paves a way forward for the ‘decolonisation of Muslim men’. In doing so, I draw on a vibrant body of literature that explores South–South relations (Connell 2007; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Daley 2019), particularly within academic spaces that risk perpetuating the colonial legacy in and through ongoing knowledge production (Kalra 2009; Murrey 2019). By reflecting on my positionality within the academy, wherein, in my view, I have been subjected to discriminatory policies that have attempted to render me mute and marginalised, I find that my positionality is interconnected with that of my interlocutors; therefore, their ability, like mine, to be ‘seen’ and ‘heard’ has been compromised, constituting a form of injustice that demands remedy. For too long the structures of the academy have failed to accommodate positionalities and viewpoints that may disrupt the hardened ‘Eurocentric’ narrative (see El-Tayeb 2011; Patel 2019; Murrey 2019).

Amid the multiple Souths and Southern voices in the metropole (see also Connell 2007, 2014a; de Sousa Santos 2014), I see myself as an embodiment of the South researching a subaltern community that also embodies, reflects, and extends the South. In many ways, I am ‘doing’ the work of decolonial thought (see also Smith 1999). This is to say that this book represents both a practice and an embodiment of decolonial thought in a postcolonial setting imbued with colonial legacies. My voice and the voices of my interlocutors are all brought to the fore despite the various and multiple forms of structural oppressions faced in and through the course of my doctoral research. As a result, Muslim men at the centre of this research are reoriented within the space of academic knowledge production, as agents with diverse experiences that include vulnerability, instability, and precarity. The goal is to transcend the negative grand narratives through which Muslim men are often depicted by mainstream legal, political, and security-oriented discourses, which silence the lived experiences of Muslim migrant husbands and cast them to a precarious waithood – constantly in between migrant and citizen, patriarch and victim. This book aims to explore these liminal reference points, representations, and states of mind and body, contributing in the process to telling the untold stories of an overlooked, but frequently vilified, migrant community in modern Britain.