Born and raised in a village outside Dadyal in Azad Kashmir, Imran arrived in Birmingham on a temporary student visa in January 2018. He explained to me that his uncle facilitated his visa application after repeated unsuccessful attempts to find him a suitable British wife. Despite approaching several families within their biraaderi (extended kin network) with Imran’s marriage proposal for their daughters, his uncle grew frustrated with the mounting number of rejections. The problem, it turned out, was Imran’s mother, who, to her son’s regret, had upset several relatives in their village. Prospective brides were wary about a marriage that would be overshadowed by a controlling and verbally abusive mother-in-law. Adding to his disappointment was that some potential brides were reluctant to marry Pakistani men from ‘back home’, due to perceived cultural differences with British-born matches in the diaspora, lower levels of education, and the lack of English fluency – all factors that could spell irregular employment or volatility for the marriage. Contemporary British Pakistani Muslim women, many with university degrees and career track jobs, enjoy more autonomy relative to previous generations of women and are more selective in their choice of mate. Imran explained how these women rejected ‘freshies’ (i.e. those ‘fresh off the boat’), or recently arrived new migrants, as undesirable candidates for marriage. The term carries racist undertones that rise to the level of eugenic sentiment, and has a basis in British citizenship status as a condition of superiority.

Imran told me:

For Imran, his uncles’ and brothers’ aspiration and desire to facilitate his migration translated into modifying his physical appearance to match that of what a ‘normal’ British-born Pakistani man would look like. These modifications, I argue, form a series of sub-transactions that lead to the becoming of a migrant husband. When I asked Imran to elaborate on why his uncle and brothers urged him to migrate in the first place, he said:

The metaphor of ‘being their arms’ is particularly striking. The image resonates with the idea that strength lies in numbers, reinforcing the significance of the patriarchal representation of the family, to have an anchored branch in England that was forged and sustained by close-knit male relatives. The sub-transactions involving bodily modifications, then, result in Imran being transacted by his uncle and brothers in the United Kingdom to acquire greater social capital (Bourdieu 2011).

Narratives such as Imran’s provide insight into a complex web of aspirations that are imagined and played out in and through migration journeys. This chapter takes up the question: what does the image of British masculine identity held by migrant husbands and their families signify? How is this image woven into their aspirations of marriage and migration, and masculine performance? Often, individual aspirations of migration cannot be disentangled from those of the kin network and community (Carling and Schewel 2018: 958), as the family can animate and impose ideas about the potential wellspring of opportunities that migration can bring (Collins 2018). Certainly, in the literature on Pakistani migration to the United Kingdom, the role of the family is shown to be pivotal in arranging marriages that can facilitate migration for the next generation of sons and daughters (Werbner 1990; Shaw 2000, 2006). Imran’s experience is testament to how familial involvement can be crucial to making migration a reality. What Imran’s narrative also sheds new light on, however, is the way in which such aspirations do not take a linear form and can face interruptions and revisions. What implications does such volatility hold for migrant husbands, their aspirations, and the broader British Pakistani diaspora community?

It is thought that each year approximately equal numbers of male and female spouses from the Indian subcontinent are granted settlement in the United Kingdom (Charsley 2012).¹ The literature documenting the experiences of migrant spouses focuses predominantly on the vulnerabilities specific to migrant women. This has created a lag in research that takes a close look at men who migrate through marriage to their wives’ or in-laws’ households, described within south Asian communities as ghar dhamad (house son-in-law), a denigratory label that implies disempowerment of the migrant husband (Jeffery, Jeffery, and Lyon 1989: 37). Some studies have noted that migrant husbands experience anxiety or unhappiness due to close proximity and dependence on their in-laws’ resources (Charsley 2005). More recently research has turned to the neglected subject of migrant husbands and their unique experiences (Charsley and Liversage 2015). But, beyond a few notable exceptions, there remains a dearth of understanding about the nature of the Muslim Pakistani migrant husbands’ experience in the United Kingdom.

Scholarly contributions within the field of migration studies from Datta et al. (2009: 864), Carling and Schewel (2018), Scheibelhofer (2018: 1003), and Bakewell and Jónsson (2013) have encouraged me to explore the ways in which migrant husbands set goals for their futures prior to embarking on marriage migration. The prelude to transnational marriage migration – the planning, organization, and sacrifices involved – has very rarely been explored, as scholarship in the field has mainly focused on the aftermath of migration into the country of destination. But this is a worrying oversight, as scholarship in population studies suggests that parental investment in male children in south Asia more broadly is greater than that of female children (Das Gupta 1987; D’Souza and Chen 1980; Chen, Emdadul, and D’Souza 1981; Sen and Sengupta 1983; Dyson and Moore 1983), indicating that migration may involve early gendered investments, which privilege males over females. For instance, Das Gupta (1987) demonstrates that male children in India were given better medical treatment, greater fat content in their food intake, milk, and other commodity food items compared to female children. In line with traditional gender roles, males are deemed worthy of a greater share of the family’s resources, as they are expected to become breadwinners and care for their parents during their old age. Borrowing from and extending this literature, we can explore whether migrant husbands are moulded into becoming a migrant husband from an early age, focusing on the emergence of different masculinities and gendered life goals.

Against the backdrop of migration from Pakistan and Azad Kashmir to Britain, which has spanned seven decades (Shaw 2000), in this chapter I trace the diversity of experiences of migrant husbands prior to their marriage migration to explore how they are ‘made’ as both an immigrant category and aspiration, and the performative aspects of their pre-departure preparations. In doing so, I explore the social trajectory travelled by migrant husbands by situating them within their own family history (Nail 2015: 4), and in the myriad social, cultural, and emotion-laden power relations (Pratt and Yeoh 2003; Silvey 2004, 2006) in which they are embedded. I thus steer away from viewing migration as a singular, insulated decision made in a single point in time, and, rather, view migration as a process, and an ongoing series of negotiations that involve multiple actors.

The rishta process

From a historical perspective, the rishta (proposal) process within the British Pakistani community has been shaped by the settlement patterns of the diaspora community. In the 1960s and 1970s men, usually between the ages of 18 and 60, arrived from Pakistan and Azad Kashmir and settled in industrial towns in Britain where they could find work. This first wave of migration was in response to the shortage of workers in the period after the Second World War (Ballard 1994), which can be interpreted as a transaction between the state and citizens of previous colonies. It is important to note the significance of the historical context of this era. The close proximity of the end of the Second World War (1945) and the Partition of India (1947) created a demand for migrant labourers to rebuild Britain, which was fulfilled by migrants from the newly divided nations within the Indian subcontinent, now no longer under British colonial rule. Although this may characterise migrants from Pakistan and Azad Kashmir to Britain during this time, as hailing from a newly postcolonial era, my position, and the position of this book, is that colonial legacies remain at the centre of postcolonialism, a heartbeat that has endured decades, and is part of the social fabric of the British Pakistani and Kashmiri diaspora community today (see also Kalra 2009). The tightly woven threads as part of this social fabric are shown later to form the foundations of in-group power relations in a transnational setting.

The second wave of migration, which unfolded during the 1970s and 1980s, involved migrant men inviting their wives and children to settle with them in the United Kingdom (Kalra 2009). From the 1980s onwards the children of these recently settled families had reached marriageable age, and rishtas were forged, often with kin back home, after which spouses would arrive and settle in the country (Kalra 2009; Shaw 2000). Shaw (2000, 2006) has described the rishta process as being a family decision informed by transnational factors, such as the desire to provide new economic and social opportunities for the extended family, and raise levels of prosperity and standards of living. Often parents of marriageable-age adolescent children would consider the offspring of their siblings in the home country as potential spouses for their children. One of the benefits of such marriages has been cited by members of the community as ensuring that commodities and resources such as property, land, and gold stay within the family, as opposed to being inherited by non-kin. As a result, transnational marriage arrangements were transactional in nature, which is supported by broader anthropological literature on marriage (Bossen 1988; Schlegel and Eloul 1988; Harrell and Dickey 1985; Singer 1973; Anderson 2007; Sinke 1999) and marriage migration (Cole 2010; Faier 2007; Kaur 2012; Jackson 2002, 2007; Kojima 2001; Constable 2003; Gardner 1995; Shaw 2001; Pande 2014; Selby 2009; Mooney 2006; Gallo 2006; Charsley 2005).

In more recent literature, young people and their families also cite social values as a consideration when searching for spouses, with kin relations seen as more trustworthy spouses (Shaw and Charsley 2006). Hence, consanguineous (cousin) marriages between British-born Pakistanis and Pakistani nationals were common during the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. Women within the diaspora community cite transnational marriage as favourable since their in-laws remain in Pakistan, while they enjoy proximity to their maternal homes and to support systems in Britain (Shaw and Charsley 2006).

In more recent years marrying outside the family to non-kin co-ethnics has increasingly become the norm among British-born Pakistani Muslims, particularly those who have completed their university education, acquired professional skill sets, and enjoy stable employment. Often young couples meet at university and decide the terms of their engagement independently from family elders. Such ‘rogue’ arrangements were historically (and in many cases still are) a source of shame or embarrassment for the family. Factors such as the lack of parental involvement in the decision-making, the proposal being a ‘love’ match, and different castes between partners and families can prevent marriages from taking place, and come at the cost of family disownment. Having been born and raised in Birmingham, I personally know of a plethora of such stories within the community. When families distribute wedding invitations, for example, I have heard relatives and neighbours whisper ‘Baaru kithis’ (‘He/she has found the rishta from outside the kin network’) or ‘Apni marzi kithis’ (‘He/she made their own choice [in selecting their spouse]’. Although such marriages are still frowned upon by elders, who favour customary scripts when it comes to marital relationships that are seen to shape the future family tree, they have become more common over successive generations in the British Pakistani and Kashmiri diasporas.

More recently it has been documented that British Pakistani, Kashmiri, and/or Muslim communities are experiencing higher divorce rates (Qureshi, Charsley, and Shaw 2014; Ogilvie 1996). At the same time, there is a crisis of marriageable-age men and women who fail to secure rishtas due to changing social and cultural expectations about what constitutes a desirable spouse, or the material terms of a marital arrangement. This crisis is mainly born out of a widening gap between the increasing educational achievements of women, as a result of which they seek comparably educated partners, and working professional spouses, who share their values and aspirations about gender roles both inside and outside the home. As British Pakistani men do somewhat less well in the education and labour market within the community, women are faced with the prospect of incompatible rishtas, or settling for less or sacrificing their dreams of marriage and children. Elsewhere, similar trends have been reported by Singerman (2007), who has shown that young people in the Middle East experience unwanted premarital waithood, as it has become increasingly difficult for men to secure profitable jobs, save for and purchase a home, and finance a wedding, all of which are factors required when making an offer of marriage to a woman’s family. Finding themselves in a similar predicament, many British-born Pakistani men are opting to search in Pakistan for a wife, who are possibly more likely to be content with their husband’s existing earnings and achievements, rather than wait an undefined period for the possibility of a match in Britain. This is also true of some women within the community who are unable to find a suitable rishta in Britain and seek a match in Pakistan. Overall, although transnational marriage remains a valid means to obtain a partner and start a family, rising personal autonomy and factors such as socio-economic status, education, skills, property ownership, and – in some cases – health or disability can limit the possibility of transnational unions for some. This contrasts with previous decades, during which a key motivation of transnational marriage was to strengthen kin relations. One of my interviewees, Sajid, a 35-year-old migrant husband from Birmingham, told me:

Sajid’s experience demonstrates that women who may face limited options within the British Pakistani community were able to marry and fulfil their desire to have children with men from Pakistan, whose families were less likely to object on the basis of family history or criminal record, as long as their son would have the coveted opportunity to migrate to the United Kingdom. Although financial reasons are often the motivation for some families in Pakistan to accept a proposal from a British Pakistani woman and/or her family, it is the prospect of citizenship that is seen as a highly desirable status symbol for the family. Since the rishta in this instance may well be seen as tainted due to the jail time the bride-to-be had completed, her successful marriage irrespective of her criminal record, and Sajid’s secured migration to the United Kingdom, carry the hallmarks of a transaction from which both parties benefit.

Migrant husbands such as Sajid often do not have the option to reject marriage proposals from the United Kingdom, which demonstrates a lack of choice and agency inherent to the soon-to-be migrant husband, at the outset of the marriage migration process. It is uncommon to protest or refuse such a rishta as the prospect of migration signifies a ‘return’ to the ‘White man’s land’ decades after the end of colonial rule in India (then also Pakistan), which is idealised by many in Pakistan as the ultimate form of reclaiming power and social status. Much of the literature in migration and diaspora studies focusing on the British Pakistani community misses this critical link to the colonial roots of outward migration aspirations, which has been entrenched within the social imaginaries and lives of Pakistani nationals and their families and passed down through the generations. This is also echoed by Kalra (2009: 118), who argues that we must understand not only the lives of racialised minorities within local race-relation paradigms but also the British colonial context from which the experiences of racialised minorities emerge. Muneeb, a 38-year-old resident in Birmingham who had migrated from Jhelum in Pakistan, told me:

Whiteness and racialised conceptions of power and identity are intricately linked with the desire for British citizenship and social status for Pakistani migrant men, which has roots within the colonial era, the legacy of British colonial rule in India, and the history of Partition (see also Dumont 1980; Kalra 2009). At this point it is necessary to question the significance of disadvantaged ‘brown’ men and their families, seeking honour by migrating to the ‘White’ country of their former colonisers. Although, at first glance, it may be seen as disempowering, on closer inspection of the interviews with participants I note that there was little reference, if at all, to Britain’s colonial rule in the subcontinent. Instead, in their narratives, migrant husbands viewed Britain akin to the way in which the United States is hailed through the lens of the ‘American Dream’, despite Britain bearing some responsibility for the current ills of their country of birth. Clearly, there is a social and moral contradiction here, and one that is not exceptional to the case of Pakistani and Azad Kashmiri migrants. For my interlocutors, however, this contradiction did not exist, partly due to a lack of education, but mostly due to the power and status that could be achieved by migrating, and eventually becoming a British citizen. The colonial legacy of the powerful and respected White man, coupled with the power of whiteness and the privileges associated with it, continue to influence Pakistani migration to Britain.

It should be noted that there are many young persons within the diaspora community who reject the prospect of an arranged transnational marriage. Social media platforms such as Muzz (formerly Muzmatch) and Slaam have been launched in the United Kingdom in recent years, catering to the needs of young Muslims seeking marriage. Within Birmingham, several ‘community matchmakers’ have begun to gain traction in recent years, with the Birmingham Central Mosque also leading a popular matchmaking service, with over 300 members. I have often heard elders express the view that ‘rishte milna barra mushkil hai’ (‘to find a rishta is so difficult’), compelling families and young people to employ creative approaches to matchmaking. For example, one way to strike up a potential match is for men and women to attend singles events with a chaperone, often held in popular restaurants and hotel venues, designed to allow networking and socialising so as to signal their availability and interest to potential suitors. Social media sites such as Facebook and TikTok are also increasingly being employed to advertise rishtas in the community.

‘Making’ the migrant husband

A family effort

In the wider literature, the family unit has been acknowledged as being able to provide individuals with a form of collective identity of the wider kinship and community (Goulbourne and Solomos 2003: 332; Thapar-Bjokert and Sanghera 2010: 250–251). In particular, young people’s ambitions have been documented as developing in line with those of their parents (Thapar-Bjokert and Sanghera 2010: 251). This theme was echoed throughout my research, as migrant husbands who took part in my interviews were told by their families from a young age that they would marry a British girl and migrate to the United Kingdom, which led to them to ‘dream’ about migration long before they were of marrying age. Asim is a 32-year-old migrant husband from Jhelum, in the north of Punjab province in Pakistan, who arrived in the United Kingdom at the age of 26 and is educated to sixth-form level. During our conversation, he told me:

According to my interviewees, parental aspirations played a large role in their eventual marriage migration, which was often initiated by asking for the hands in marriage of suitable British girls within their kin and friendship networks. Armaan, a 29-year-old migrant husband from Kotli educated to degree level, arrived in the United Kingdom in 2019. His case was exemplary of how influential the aspirations of family members can be in shaping a man’s marriage migration journey. He told me:

When asked to elaborate on his mother’s reasons for choosing Sarish as a bride for him, Armaan said:

Some families decide to ask for the hands in marriage for their sons once they have reached a mature age and began to plan for the future. Suleman told me:

In Suleman’s case, his entering sixth form symbolised his ‘coming of age’, proximity to adulthood, and therefore marriage, which triggered hopes that he might cross the threshold as a migrant husband. Nevertheless, Hamza, a 30-year-old migrant husband from Islamabad, who arrived in the United Kingdom in 2017, told me:

The complex roles played by the families of migrant husbands in aspiring for transnational marriages and taking tangible steps to make them a reality are present during various life stages, underlining Carling and Schewel’s argument that individual hopes to migrate cannot be disentangled from those of kin and community (2018: 958; see also Thapar-Bjokert and Sanghera 2010: 251). It is possible to see how this materialises through the personal narratives of Arman, Suleman, and Hamza, whose families – albeit at different steps along their journey to manhood – worked to achieve their deep-rooted aspirations to have their sons marry a British national and migrate to England. Hamza’s case shows how young people of both genders are more mobile in towns and villages in Pakistan, interacting and socialising in ways that expand the range of their marital choices. The action(s) on the families’ part also show that migration is not a singular decision frozen in a particular moment in time, often shortly prior to departure, but, rather, involves long-term thought and planning (de Haas 2011). For many Pakistani men, the path to becoming a migrant husband involves collective familial effort over the span of several years.

Given the vast sacrifices that are often necessary to send a son as a migrant to Britain (see also Thapar-Bjokert and Sanghera 2010: 251), the meaning that migration holds for the families involved merits close attention. In some instances, transnational marriage is motivated by economic imperatives, placing sons in the traditional roles of breadwinner and caregiver for the extended family (see also Quaglia and Cobb 1996). Horváth (2008: 773) notes that migration can be seen as a necessary, even quasi-compulsory, social act for some populations, such as youth from rural areas of Romania. In this way, migration can acquire a symbolic function (Meyer 2018) and may not be about migration of people across borders per se, but more about the ideas that people share about the prospect of migration (Easthope and Gabriel 2008: 173). For the migrant husbands’ families discussed here, migration was seen as a means to higher social status and a badge of honour, strengthening foundations of support in older age and complementing dreams of stable economic futures. Their aspirations were connected to social mobilisation (Lowe and Krahn 2000), which raises questions about the conventional view that economic factors are the main drivers of migration. In many cases, honour and status can be seen to supplement, or even supersede, the economic benefits accrued by migration.

Health and well-being

Migrant husbands told me how their families would ensure they were physically healthy (see also Das Gupta 1987) to increase the likelihood of being able to marry a British national. Armaan told me:

Armaan’s narrative demonstrates how his parents’ aspiration for him to marry Sarish and migrate to the United Kingdom became embodied through the physical changes his parents wished to invoke in him. This further highlights the importance of the image of the ideal migrant husband. This is explored further in the next chapter, but it is important to consider here the kind of image that parents and families cultivated about what the migrant husband should look like, how he should behave, and the brand of masculinity he was expected to embody; these ideas and ideals shaped the ways in which he was schooled, fed, and dressed in anticipation for his marriage migration. Thus, the migrant husband can be seen as the sum of a series of transactions pertaining to body modifications, apparel, education, and social, cultural, and symbolic capital.

Some families recognised that good health was an integral part of successful marriage migration, and therefore concealed the health issue of their son from British wives and their families. Selina, a 24-year-old British Muslim woman of Pakistani heritage who had recently graduated from university with a double degree in sociology and criminology, told me that her sister’s first marriage was to a relative in their village in Pakistan. On the wedding night, however, Selina’s sister witnessed her new husband having a seizure, prompting her to rush out of their bedroom and call for help. She was told a short while later that her husband experienced seizures on a regular basis. Selina’s sister demanded to be taken back to her parents’ home, which was a few minutes away, that very night without consummating her marriage. Selina’s sister told her parents what had happened and demanded a divorce as the family had deceived her by concealing her husband’s serious ailment. Selina’s sister returned to the United Kingdom a few days later before filing for divorce. Similarly, Tahmeena, a 22-year-old British Muslim woman who self-identified as Kashmiri as her family roots were in Azad Kashmir, and was currently studying for a degree in psychology, told me that her sister had had a similar experience, as her husband’s learning disabilities were hidden by her in-laws prior to marriage. Tahmeena explained that, when her sister met with her husband prior to their marriage, she had not noticed suspicious signs that something might be wrong. Tahmeena’s sister filed for divorce, indicating the failed transactional elements involved in presenting her then husband as a suitable spouse. Five years later Tahmeena’s sister remarried her British-born first cousin, who also lived in Birmingham.

These cases demonstrate that health conditions were at times an obstacle for successful transnational marriages, and therefore were concealed from brides and their families in a bid to ensure the marriages went ahead. Understandably, brides and their families viewed the concealment of health conditions as betrayal and deception. As Tahmeena explained:

Tahmeena has provided significant insight into the shifting dynamics of the British Pakistani community, particularly in relation to female autonomy and self-determination around marital choice. Views regarding honour and shame associated with divorce can continue to shape the way in which transnational marriages are conducted, however, especially in circumstances in which migrant husbands suffer from health conditions. Tahmeena’s and Selina’s experiences demonstrate the existence of competing priorities and agency of different people involved in these relationships-in-becoming. Although some prospective migrant husbands were not aspiring to migrate, others clearly were. Some parents actively planned their son’s marriage from a young age, while others did so later in their life. Sometimes these plans did not come to fruition for different reasons, including because chosen marriage partners resisted and rejected partners who did not meet their ideas of a ‘good’, ‘able-bodied’, or ‘ideal’ husband. The brides’ implicit criteria for what counts as a suitable mate reveals certain prejudices around health issues and mental and physical disability that may be more pronounced or seen as permissible given the context of arranged marriages.

Grooming and appearance

Armaan spoke about the sudden and drastic changes his parents made to his wardrobe when Sarish, then 13 years old, arrived in Pakistan for a holiday with her parents in 2004:

Armaan’s outward appearance was carefully constructed by his family to align with what they believed was synonymous with the British masculine image, which they anticipated would lead Sarish to believe that Armaan was capable of adapting to life in a new country. The embodiment of aspiration for their son’s marriage and migration translated into seeking the approval of a child-age girl who was on holiday with her parents. Competition over British Pakistani girls and women can lead to premature steps to secure a rishta to confirm a future marriage migration arrangement, despite the potential bride and groom being under-age.

After a new haircut, and dressed in his best clothes, Imran told me he would pose for photographs against ‘natural backdrops’ such as flowers, or in front of his parents’ khoti (mansion) in Azad Kashmir, built using his uncle’s remittances. Once the images were captured, Imran would promptly share them via WhatsApp with his uncle and brothers in the United Kingdom.

It was anticipated that, by visually presenting Imran as ‘modern’, he would be seen as a potential groom no different from British-born and -raised co-ethnics, making him an eligible prospect for their daughters. Social media and new forms of technology have become critical conduits of matchmaking in the contemporary rishta process.

During fieldwork I was contacted by Aisha, a 26-year-old woman born in a village near Mirpur, Azad Kashmir, and living in Birmingham since 2015, who was trying to facilitate her brother Jameel’s marriage and migration to the United Kingdom. Aisha and her brother were interested in arranging a marriage with their uncle’s daughter, Amina, who had graduated and worked as a teacher. Aisha told me she would send money to her brother in Pakistan to ensure he looked his best, instructing him to purchase sunglasses and a silver chain to wear around his neck. She also sent him an iPhone so that he would be able to take high-quality images of himself. I asked Aisha whether I could interview her brother via Skype. Jameel told me how he was well equipped with social media, digital technology, and computing, as he had taken courses at college to become literate in this area to increase his chances of acquiring employment upon marriage and migration to the United Kingdom. He also told me:

Jameel’s narrative reveals the importance of social media as a persuasive tool to ‘market’ or ‘transact’ oneself, showcasing a kind of masculinity that may contribute to the achievement of marital and migration goals. Jameel told me that, by marrying Amina, he would strengthen the relationship between his father and Amina’s father, who were stepbrothers. He admired his uncle, who had successfully settled in the United Kingdom and established a profitable business. He saw that Amina was well respected in the wider family and community; she was well educated and worked as a teacher, and was a dedicated daughter, having looked after her father when he was ill in hospital. If he were to become Amina’s husband and his uncle’s son-in-law, Jameel would acquire higher social status and honour not just within his family and community in Pakistan but also within his family network in Birmingham. Jameel’s experience shows the inner workings of ‘aspiration-in-the-making’ for a ‘migrant husband-to-be’. His interview also shows the role played by family members beyond just the parents, in actively encouraging a particular performance of the self and the relationship between siblings in marriage negotiations. This points to the diverse identity markers and structures that frame people’s experiences and their respective abilities to have not only aspirations and desires but also different capacities to act and follow through with these aspirations. In what follows, I show how the image of migrant husbands communicated through various social media platforms is connected to the image of the ‘British man’, which is constantly reworked into the embodied experiences of migrant husbands.

The transnational patriarch

Although the majority of my informants had already married and migrated to the United Kingdom, as a result of which they shared with me their retrospective views about the image of what it meant to be a British man, I also spoke to a small number of migrant husbands-to-be, who were, at the time of the interview(s), still residing in Pakistan. Jameel, who wanted to marry his cousin Amina, spoke to me in detail about what it meant for him to become a migrant husband and subsequently become British:

For Jameel, whose family belong to the lower echelons of Pakistani society due to their socio-economic and caste status, migration to the United Kingdom symbolised power and higher socio-economic status, arming him with the credentials to defuse those who would belittle him or confiscate his father’s property. The risk of this was high, as Jameel and his family reside in the home of his mother’s sister, who migrated through marriage to live in the United Kingdom with her husband, and thus lack a family home of their own. Although they own a small portion of land, the family’s financial circumstances were such that they could not build a home. The empty land was then at risk of being taken over by members of higher castes, who asserted greater power in the region. To be able to act with such self-authority would garner respect and honour in the eyes of his family and community (see also Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera 2008: 130). In this way, migrating to the United Kingdom is symbolic of what one could become (Collins 2018: 974), and tethered to this symbolism of becoming were long-held aspirations and desires of what that would bring (Carling and Schewel 2018).

In turn, for Khalid, who had migrated to the United Kingdom in 2015 after marrying a distant relative two years previously, the idea of becoming a British man was similarly appealing:

For Khalid, migration to the United Kingdom had visibly transformed the physical and symbolic spaces surrounding him, exemplified through rows of lavish mansions, replete with fanciful columns, elaborate facades, and gold-painted ornaments looming over the neighbourhood behind tall iron gates. Khalid shared with me images of his uncle’s mansion on WhatsApp Messenger, explaining how his uncle’s father had owned a modest house with four rooms, a kitchen, and one bathroom. The newly erected mansions occupy a larger-than-life space in the migrants’ social imaginary, as an ongoing reminder of what could be obtained through transnational marriage migration. In this way, conceptions of masculinity have transformed over the years in response to the migratory trajectories and capital accumulation of pioneer generations, who had invested in improving their property, wealth, and family’s living standards in their home countries, all of which elevated social and symbolic capital (see also Bourdieu 2011). The symbolism attributed to migration in the early 1950s and 1960s for migrant men, women, and families no longer holds the same meaning for those who aspire to migrate today.

Figure 1.1 A mansion built by Khalid’s uncle in Azad Kashmir. Photo © the author.

Saleem, who migrated to the United Kingdom in 2005, told me:

Through these narratives, it becomes evident that migration holds high symbolic currency, enabling the emergence of a particular type of man who wields power in England as well as within his home and extended family networks in Pakistan. This image of the all-powerful British man merges and mingles with expectations around masculinity in Pakistan, producing a unique male identity that I term the transnational patriarch. The transnational patriarch is, as my interviewees explained, a migrant husband success story who obtained economic and financial success there, sending home remittances and a level of wealth that was hitherto unimaginable had he stayed in Pakistan. Related features of the image of the transnational patriarch depict him as a loyal family man and father figure. Success in these two geographic and imagined areas – the home country and the country of settlement – are seen to produce the highest form of respect and family honour (see also Skeggs 1997; Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera 2008: 130), which line up with pre-existing ideals of manhood and masculinity in the social and cultural worlds of Pakistan. The transnational patriarch represents the pinnacle of masculine identity that migrant husbands aspired to before, during, after, and throughout their experiences of marriage, migration, and settlement. To better understand the workings of this distinctive masculinity, in the following section of this chapter I identify three elements that together make up the building blocks of the transnational patriarch: businessman, family man, and respected man.

The businessman

Obtaining financial and economic success in Britain was highly valued by migrant husbands, as it meant sending remittances to their families in Pakistan as well as providing for their wives and children. Put differently, remittances were a form of transactions that indicated economic and business success, and enabled the migrant husband to provide for his family in the home country. As Ashraf told me:

Ali told me about his transformation from an employee to a businessman and what this meant for him:

Ali’s narrative demonstrates that owning a business becomes a springboard from which further social achievements can be transacted, such as being able to sponsor family visas to support their visits to England (see also Mooney 2006), which acquire greater social esteem in the eyes of the wider community.

For Rasheed, owning a business transformed the power dynamics in his tense relationship with his father-in-law. He told me:

Rasheed’s narrative shows that being a business owner facilitated his social maturity and coming into his own as a migrant, pushing him past his liminal status, and freed him from the powerful grip of his father-in-law. By starting his own business, he was able to ‘create a name for himself’ – as he put it – which brought him honour across his transnational family networks in Britain and in Pakistan. Importantly, Rasheed described his experience as escaping the ‘fist’ of his father-in-law and ceasing to be his ‘slave’, indicating a previously subordinate and derogatory relationship in the household. Central to this narrative is the belief that, if the migrant husband breaks away from the grip of the father-in-law, he can claim his autonomous self and grow his personal reputation – all transactions stemming from his business success. The alternative is failure: remaining within his father-in-law’s orbit, which only contributes to his image as a transnational patriarch rather than the migrant himself. More often than not, folded within this site of power struggle is the migrant husband’s determination to gain British citizenship, earn enough to acquire land and property for his family, secure sustainable employment, and achieve marital success – his izzat within the community – along with physical and mental health and well-being.

Although these excerpts from migrant husbands’ life history narratives to some extent speak to the conventional view of migration being driven by economic factors (Lee 1966; Harris and Todaro 1970), it is important to recognise that the economic gains for these migrant husbands were not the sole motivation for marriage migration. Rather, the economic gains served as stepping stones to acquiring increased honour and status within their family networks and communities, and, as a result, achieving the status of a successful transnational patriarch. It is not financial gain or migration per se that migrant husbands and their families aspired to; it is what they signify and the currency they convert and transact into – namely honour, respect, and status. In this way, then, migration is not an end but, rather, a means to an end (Carling 2014).

The family man

Migrant husbands spoke in detail about their sense of responsibility to their families both in the United Kingdom and in Pakistan. Rasheed, for instance, told me:

In turn, Ali, who had facilitated his father’s migration to England after he opened his own takeaway business, told me:

Ali’s father passed away shortly after returning to Pakistan from a visit to England. Ali recalled how grateful he was for being able to spend precious time together but that his father’s absence would always be a hole in his heart that could never be filled. Ali told me that his younger siblings were left without a father, which compelled him to step up to ensure that he looked after them and his mother. His youngest sibling was 13. He told me how he enrolled his brother at a reputable school in the city nearby, and later went on to fund both his college education and his wedding.

Ali’s life history narrative demonstrates the way in which migrant husbands can be caught between the different sets of responsibilities that arise from being a transnational patriarch, and the ways in which they can often conflict, leaving them to experience relationship breakdowns with members of their families on either side and/or both sides of the transnational field. In contrast, Saleem told me:

The provision of care for family members in both the United Kingdom and Pakistan is an important component of the identity of the transnational patriarch. If family members in both geographical locations were well looked after, and cared for, having benefited from migrant husbands’ remittances, it would be a testament to the migrant husbands’ loyalty and, thus, would transact increased respect and honour (see also Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera 2008: 130). Ali’s and Saleem’s narratives also begin to provide an insight into the emotional dimension of migration (see also Datta et al. 2009: 863; Meyer 2018: 1037), which offers nuance in better understanding migrant husbands’ experiences against the backdrop made up of dominant negative portrayals of Pakistani and/or Muslim men. The emotional aspect of their experiences are explored in detail in subsequent chapters.

The respected man

For a migrant husband to become a successful transnational patriarch, my interlocutors argued that it was important for their achievements to translate into respect and honour within the wider family network and community (see also Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera 2008), both in the United Kingdom and in Pakistan. The narratives presented thus far indicate that the construction of mansions, businesses, and expanded purchasing power are examples of how migrant husbands worked to make their achievements ‘seen’.

Having arrived in the UK in 1992 at the age of 20, Ali told me he felt it was time to build a khoti (mansion) in Pakistan:

Ali also told me about the importance of moving away from the village in Dadyal, Azad Kashmir, to Islamabad to send a message to his biraaderi that he was wealthy and held high social status. The process of double migration, not just from Pakistan to the United Kingdom but also from the village in Pakistan to the city, demonstrates dual upward social mobility within this transnational field. Migrant husbands such as Ali often seek to improve their social status and migrant identity in both sending and receiving states, which can amplify their financial and social burdens.

Hamza told me:

Hamza’s retelling of his father’s illness indicates the significance of travelling back to Pakistan to be at his father’s bedside. If he had not been seen to do so, Hamza would have been viewed as a disloyal son who had abandoned his father in his time of need, and therefore would not have qualified for the highest form of honour and respect. Anxious to avoid this, Hamza went to great lengths to put together funds to purchase a plane ticket to Pakistan, which involved borrowing money from his friends. The journey to achieve the aspirations and dreams of the transnational patriarchal identity can therefore be met with interruptions, pauses, detours, and starts and stops.

Just as the actions of the migrant husband can bestow him with a sense of honour, the behaviour of relatives can damage his carefully maintained reputation. During one of my many interviews with Zahid, he recounted his mother’s and sister’s actions, which had upset him greatly.

Zahid’s retelling of his mother’s and sister’s actions indicates the significance of family members being seen to benefit from the migrant husband’s marriage and migration to qualify for honour and status. There are constant reputation management exercises conducted by migrant husbands to ensure that their izzat is not harmed. Such careful and detailed attention to shaping and reshaping the intricacies of their honour demonstrates how deeply implicated honour and masculinity are, and that performance of the output identity of this dynamic is continuously monitored. We also learn about the extremely fragile nature of this connection between honour and masculinity and the image of the transnational patriarch, through which these are packaged.

Becoming British

Political and legal discourses employed within and around the subject of migration, such as visa categories, asylum or refugee status (‘illegal’ or ‘legal’), time restrictions imposed on certain visas, and requirements for lodging immigration applications, are determined by states and/or governments. The vocabulary and terms designating power or disempowerment determine the ways in which discourses acquire meaning (see Whorf 1956). This is significant for our understanding of migration, which has largely been produced by discourses of authority defined by states and their institutions. For example, conventional understandings of migration assume a linear journey demarcated by start and end points between two geographical points on a map corresponding to certain outcomes that can be statistically or qualitatively measured (see Carling and Schewel 2018). Not all migration experiences can be scrutinised according to pre-established frameworks and discourses, however. Migration journeys can involve unpredictability, instability, and precarity, causing migrants to feel vulnerable and leaving indelible marks on who they become over the course of their heterogeneous experiences. Indeed, more recently migration has been understood as a transformative process in which migrants’ place in the world, their ideas about themselves, and possibilities for the future are reworked (see also Castles and Miller 2009).

Thus far, we know that becoming a transnational patriarch through marriage and migration is a desirable masculine identity due to a range of symbolic meanings attached to migration, which speaks directly to recent understandings about migration entailing a transformative element for migrants (Castles and Miller 2009). The narratives shared have provided insights into the stages of migration, particularly those prior to embarking on the migratory journey. The first-hand interviews, relayed in the migrant husbands’ own words, offer glimpses into their experiences upon arriving in Birmingham. For instance, Rasheed’s narrative demonstrates that starting his own business was testament to his coming into his own as a mature migrant, rather than living in the shadow of his father-in-law. Both Rasheed’s and Ali’s narratives demonstrate a time lapse between their initial arrival and when they were able to start their own businesses, which speaks to the inherent transformation many men experience from newcomer to transnational patriarch. This time lapse, during which migrant husbands can encounter and experience a plethora of social circumstances, can impact their aspirations in different ways. It would be simplistic to assume a linear transformation process after which migrant husbands arrive at their aspired masculine ideal of the transnational patriarch, as there are many variables – such as citizenship, family and household dynamics, and employment experiences – that can affect the ways in which the status of transnational patriarch is achieved. I now focus on the experiences of migrant husbands after marriage and migration to better understand the shifts in the aspirations that migrant husbands held prior to marriage and migration, and, by extension, how their masculinity is shaped and performed in their lives.

Waiting to become ‘British’

Prior to their marriage migration, there seemed to be an expectation among many men and their families that the act of marriage would render them British citizens instantaneously. Khalid told me:

Khalid spoke to me in detail about the preparation required to submit a spousal visa application to the UK Home Office, which he had not expected prior to his marriage. As a result, he entered a period of waithood (Singerman 2007; Inhorn 2018) before being able to reunite with his wife in Britain and obtain his status – and the aspirations tied to this – as a migrant husband. This first encounter with the British state, embodied in bureaucratic rules and regulations, often leaves the migrant feeling powerless. The migrant husband can experience frailty, having lost control over the path of his aspirations – intimately linked with his perception of masculine identity – to a range of influential external actors, including state immigration institutions, his new wife, and his in-laws. In this way, the migrant husband can be seen as being the site of transactions by the state, through immigration rules and regulations.

For Asad, who married his cousin’s daughter in 2015, this insecure waithood period, which came after his marriage but prior to his migration, was incredibly stressful. A year after his marriage tensions were rife between him and his wife, who was at the time working as a waitress in an Indian restaurant in Birmingham, so that she could legally submit the spousal visa application to the Home Office. During our first Skype interview, Asad explained that, soon after his wife had acquired a new job at the restaurant, her attitude towards him changed. She would no longer telephone him, answer his calls, or take an interest in him. He attempted to speak to her parents, who consoled him by stating that his wife was simply too busy and exhausted to answer his calls, and that he should not worry. During this time Asad regularly communicated with his brothers-in-law through WhatsApp Messenger, who were younger than his wife. One day, at 11 p.m. UK time (4 a.m. Pakistan time), he asked his brother-in-law whether his sister had returned from work, to which he replied that she had not. His brother-in-law informed him that a fellow male colleague at her workplace would drop her off in his car on most nights, and there were also days when she did not return home. When Asad confronted his wife and her parents, his wife ceased all communication and proceeded to trigger the khulla (Islamic divorce issued by the wife).

Subsequently, the family intervened to persuade Asad’s wife to withdraw the khulla application, but their attempts proved unsuccessful. In January 2017 the Pakistani courts rejected the first khulla application and ruled in Asad’s favour. He detailed the allegations his wife had made against him, which included domestic and psychological violence, which he strongly rebutted in court on the basis that his wife had spent just two weeks with him after their marriage in January 2015, during which time he asserted no bodily or mental harm took place. He presented photos of the newlywed couple leisurely sightseeing in Lahore as part of his defence in court. Asad told me that, without the knowledge of either his or his wife’s parents, she resubmitted the khulla application to the courts in March 2017, which was accepted two months later. His wife did not inform her family that the khulla had been legally accepted, however, until the mandated three-month cooling-off period had passed, during which Islamic convention dictates that a husband and wife can still resolve their marriage, particularly if the wife is pregnant. Asad explained that he believed the divorce was invalid because the Islamic process had not been applied; nor was he invited to court to defend himself. He told me that the court was obligated to write to him three times, after which it can issue a verdict without the presence of the husband. In poignant terms, Asad told me how he felt powerless when the match with his wife was first arranged, and subsequently powerless during the divorce proceedings, over which he had no control. His family had advised him that the rishta was still valid even while his wife pursued the divorce independently, against his wishes. In Asad’s case, we gain insights into multiple state actors, including legal courts, across the transnational field that can become involved in transacting the materialisation of the migrant husband identity.

A few months later, in September 2017, Asad learnt that his now ex-wife had informed her parents that she intended to marry her colleague from the restaurant. During our interview in July 2018, Asad told me he had subsequently learnt that his ex-wife had secretly been married since November of the previous year. He explained that he had been ‘a dead person walking’ since the divorce, ashamed to meet his parents’ gaze, and had withdrawn himself from family meals and social interactions. He told me, ‘It is very shameful for me that my wife cheated on me with another man … I feel worthless … [W]‌hat was I lacking?’ He detailed how he was desperate to redeem his reputation: ‘No matter what it takes, I will find a way to get to England and show my wife and her new, illegitimate husband that I am still someone, still something … that she made a mistake in divorcing me.’ Asad’s narrative demonstrates the challenges that migrant hopefuls may encounter even after a marriage is officiated with a British Pakistani wife.

For Armaan – whose narrative was introduced earlier in the chapter – his bride to be, Sarish, refused to marry him despite his parents agreeing to delay the marriage until after she had completed university, in line with her wishes. After graduating she refused again, as a result of which Armaan’s parents’ asked for his aunt’s daughter’s hand in marriage instead, and she agreed to marry him in 2014.

Armaan arrived in the United Kingdom in August 2016 and now has a one-year-old son with his wife.

The experiences of Khalid, Asad, and Armaan intimately demonstrate that the act of becoming British is not achieved instantaneously once a marriage has been arranged or performed but, rather, involves a series of transactions entailing lengthy, bureaucratic processes hallmarked by frequent insecurity and intrusion by state regulations, as well as by extended family and in-laws. For Khalid, the protracted visa sponsorship process was anxiety-inducing, ambiguous, and difficult to navigate. For Asad, the entire post-marriage period, when he was physically separate from his wife, was mired with tensions and dispute, eventually leading to their divorce. For Armaan, the woman he thought he would marry since his adolescence repeatedly turned down his proposal, which resulted in a new marriage match with a different British-born cousin in order to save face and facilitate his migration. These narratives demonstrate that migration is not an easy task to achieve for migrant husbands and their families. Instead, it is riddled with uncertainty, leaving men and their families desolate or frail, attempting to manage the implications that a failed migration can have for their social status, honour, and respect in their kinship network and community.

Challenges punctuated ongoing periods of waithood even after migrant husbands arrived in their new homes in Britain. For instance, Armaan told me:

In this excerpt, Armaan questions his parent’s decision for him to migrate given the hardship he experienced, working long hours for little pay and growing bills, leaving him with financial deficits that meant he could not ‘enjoy’ time as a ‘transnational patriarch’, as he had once imagined. In what follows, I explore in greater detail a set of factors that can destabilise the migrant husband’s experiences after migrating and settling in the United Kingdom.

New responsibilities

Upon migration to and settlement in the United Kingdom, many migrant husbands found that their responsibilities had multiplied in ways that they had not anticipated prior to marriage and migration. Ali told me:

Suleman similarly shared the overwhelming responsibilities he came to inherit:

Previously we learnt about Ayesha, a migrant wife in Birmingham, who was trying to arrange a marriage between her brother Jameel and cousin Aminah, a university graduate currently working as a teacher. Whereas for Ayesha the benefits included having her brother in close proximity, for a number of migrant husbands the pressure of arranging further marriages for their siblings was an additional source of stress and hardship (see also Mooney 2006). For example, Altaf told me:

As a result, Altaf felt burdened by the expectations of those around him, which he found difficult to manage. His parents, for instance, suggested he ask for a daughter from a particular family as a marriage prospect for his sibling, but his father-in-law did not approve, putting Altaf in an awkward position. To balance the interests and priorities of different members of his family, Altaf had to manoeuvre and manage multiple social fields, which added further layers of complexity to the already amassing challenges associated with the role of a migrant husband.

Many migrant husbands were faced with mounting responsibilities in the areas of finance, family, and work upon their marriage migration, for which they lacked the required skills or experience. These responsibilities also had transnational implications for the family’s symbolic capital, such as honour and social respect (see also Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera 2008: 130). The addition of such responsibilities – sometimes immediately after migrating to the United Kingdom – were sources of anxiety for migrant husbands, who were adjusting to a new country, and who had migrated with their own ideas of what they hoped to achieve and acquire through migration. Examples of these ideas include sending remittances back home to their family so their families would be better off; purchasing property; starting a businesses; gaining trust, authority, and power within the community; and taking on the role of head of household. It is easy to see how these interrelated aspirations are tied to the ideal of the transnational patriarch. To add to their distress, other actors placed their own aspirations and desires onto the social complex that made up the new lifeworld of migrant husbands – ones that they were expected to share and work towards achieving jointly. For instance, Suleman’s mother-in-law expected him to pay for the extension to her home. We therefore learn that migrant husbands cannot be disentangled from the social formation of their families, which they are simultaneously both a product of while contributing to their continuing evolution. In this way, then, we can begin to understand the multiplicity of ways in which the migrant husband can be transacted by various social actors, in order to achieve his personal desires and aspirations. These narratives also indicate the absence of a linear structure to the migration process. We begin to see a dissonance between the life envisaged by husbands and their families prior to marriage and the lived reality of migrant husbands struggling to make ends meet – and fulfil the multiple demands of life – in Britain.

Migrant labouring

Often within a few days of arriving in the United Kingdom the migrant husbands who took part in my research began working in jobs secured by their wives or in-laws. As noted by my interviewees, the nature of such employment was highly unregulated, insecure, and unstable, as it involved long working hours for far less than the minimum wage, reportedly as little as £1 an hour, and was devoid of contracts and – by extension – labour rights. Unsurprisingly, such dire circumstances placed migrant husbands in highly precarious social and financial circumstances. Khalid explained:

Nearly all the migrant husbands that I met with recounted poor working conditions (see also Datta et al. 2009: 865), low pay, and unfair treatment during their time working in restaurants or chip shops, as barbers, or butchers, or as supermarket fruit and vegetable stall assistants. Put differently, migrant husbands often became the site of transacting and securing cheap labour for their employers, in a bid to maximise profits. Aspirations to become a transnational patriarch, therefore, were forsaken, as even the bare minimum income required to sustain a basic quality of life in Britain was uncertain. As Faisal told me:

Zahid had worked for his employer, a middle-aged Pakistani man, for seven years and yet still experienced hardship. He told me:

Such horrifying injuries with little or no compensation were common among my migrant husband interviewees, who were in many ways positioned outside the formal employment system rules and regulations in the United Kingdom, due to the highly irregular nature of their employment. Businesses and employers set their own rules, pay scales, and working hours, which trapped migrant husbands in liminal and precarious circumstances, often alongside unstable housing, visa, and citizenship problems, and marital disputes. For Zahid, pursuing a formal complaint about health and safety concerns in his workplace was unthinkable because it could cost him his only means of livelihood. He felt he could not subject his boss to litigation because it could damage his izzat and the loss of social esteem in the community. With few or no formal means of redress available to him, Zahid preferred to resolve the matter informally and outside the remit of the state. Eventually his boss agreed to pay half his weekly wage for six months as financial compensation, which allowed him to remain afloat to pay household and family expenses. Zahid’s narrative reveals another dimension that complicates the experience of migrant husbands. The different ways in which migrant husbands are susceptible to being transacted by various social actors, including employers, also becomes increasingly evident. Elderly or middle-aged male business owners frequently exploit younger and inexperienced migrants for cheap labour, because these men lack the means or knowhow to assert their rights in the workplace.

Often these harsh working conditions motivated migrant husbands to start their own businesses. Ashraf told me:

Not every migrant husband, however, could save enough to start his own business, as a result of which most migrant husbands continued to work in poor conditions for long periods of time. Ali told me:

There seems to be a dissonance between the expectation of life in Britain prior to marriage and/or migration and following the fact. Sometimes it is possible to see glimpses of creative resistance and individual agency as migrant men try to break corrosive cycles of exploitation in the workplace or the home (which is further explored in Chapter 3). At other times migrant husbands choose to revise their aspirations (see also Scheibelhofer 2018: 1003). For example, Ashraf told me that difficult working conditions motivated him to open his own business, where he could be his own boss. Such narratives demonstrate that the migration process can impact the way in which migrants see themselves and take steps to align or realign themselves with their aspirations and goals, while at the same time maintaining a threshold of masculine identity. In Ashraf’s case, not being under anyone’s thumb was a crucial part of expressing his personal masculinity.

Citizenship struggles

The process of obtaining citizenship constitutes a legal and regulatory area of the state in which migrant husbands experienced unforeseen difficulties, for which they were ill prepared. For instance, Faisal told me:

Faisal’s narrative is discussed in more detail in Chapter 2; here, however, it is important to note that the subject of a citizenship can be a highly contentious site of struggle between the migrant husband and his wife and/or his wife’s family. Migrant husbands spoke in great detail about being stuck in a power dynamic characterised by a sense of ownership exhibited by their in-laws, who had sponsored the husband’s immigration, and now felt that he was in their debt. Faisal told me:

Many of my interlocutors shared similar narratives to Faisal’s, demonstrating the role of in-laws as well as the state in transacting migrant husbands. For instance, Ashraf told me:

The threat of deportation was a very real one for several migrant husbands, some of whom were aware of fellow migrant husbands who had been deported by their wives and in-laws due to family disputes. As a result, we begin to see that migration is not only an ongoing journey from one place to another but is a situation of precarity that can easily be disrupted by actors who assume authority over the migrant’s labour, livelihood, and life choices.

In 2012 the number of years of residency required prior to obtaining citizenship was changed from two to five years under British law, which has since impacted migrant husbands who arrived after this point in time. In other words, the British government demanded longer periods of loyalty in order to transact the British citizenship. In his experience of prolonged hardship in relation to obtaining British citizenship, Armaan told me:

Armaan’s waithood for British citizenship will extend over five years or more, and fold together his past, his present, and his future, within which his identity, aspirations, and masculinity are tightly interwoven. Changing power dynamics related to Armaan’s identity as a young Pakistani man, not only within his community and kin network but also the British state and British nation, are processed through an already highly racialised and unequal system of obtaining citizenship. Across the different facets of the process, Armaan, and other migrant husbands like him, occupy weak positions, especially in relation to their wives and in-laws, with whom control of the entire application resides, and therefore are unable to gain power over the multiple transactional processes at play. The outcome of this wait will determine whether, and how, he can become a transnational patriarch. This tells us that migration, replete with challenges and consequences, constitutes the vehicle through which migrant husbands’ masculinity is constructed.

Armaan’s narrative shows how migrant husbands often modify their behaviour and speech in order to overcome the waithood period, and achieve aspirations of becoming British. Ikram, a migrant husband who arrived in the United Kingdom in 2004, experienced a volatile relationship with his wife, who was verbally and physically abusive towards him. After an incident that left Ikram hospitalised with a stab wound (which is discussed in more detail in Chapter 2 of the book) Ikram’s sister, who had arrived in the United Kingdom as a migrant wife some 15 years previously, announced that this was the final straw and that the marriage was over.

Ikram’s case is testament that the starts and stops, blockages, and diversions that migration can entail can have severe consequences, and can even place the migrant husband’s life at risk. Not all migrant husbands were successful, however, after experiencing the vulnerabilities associated with being a migrant husband. Farhan, a 35-year-old IT technician, told me:

Farhan’s cousin was taken back to his parents in Pakistan by his in-laws and did not gain British citizenship. Farhan told me that his cousin was able to remarry in Pakistan, however, and is now the father of twin boys. In the case of Farhan’s cousin, then, the aspirations to become British ended entirely, with his in-laws exercising their power as British citizens to ‘return’ their son-in-law as though he was a purchased product they were no longer happy with. However, his ability to remarry a Pakistani national and have children punctured the narrative in the community that Farhan’s in-laws had constructed, as it was a testament to his ability to sustain a marriage and start a family, despite failing as a ‘transnational patriarch’. Together, these narratives demonstrate the rhizomatic (Deleuze and Guattari 1988) nature of migration journeys, as they spread and grow in all directions, like the roots of a tree.

Conclusion

In this first chapter of the book I traced the experiences of migrant husbands in the preliminary stages of their marriage migration journeys, as they struggled to balance sometimes lifelong yearnings to live and work in Britain with the constraints of finding a suitable British spouse. Often the migration journey begins long before the moment of departure itself, which speaks directly to scholars who have similarly argued that migration is an ongoing process (McCormack and Schwanen 2011; Collins 2018). The chapter also demonstrates that individual aspirations for migration are often entangled with the desires and needs of close kin and community, rendering migration a collective undertaking (Carling and Schewel 2018: 958; see also Thapar-Bjokert and Sanghera 2010: 251). For many migrant husbands, aspirations to migrate are planted early by their families, forging dreams of eventually settling abroad with opportunities unavailable in their hometowns or villages. Such aspirations took on an embodied form, as these men’s physical appearances, body weight, height, haircut, and clothing were carefully planned to secure a rishta that will take them to Britain. This styling of the migrant-husband-to-be can be interpreted as sub-transactions mimicking features perceived to represent ‘whiteness’, and what it means to fit into Britain, which are deeply rooted in colonial histories and a global culture of visuality that projects Western, White men as personifying desirability. Social media has emerged over the last 20 years or so as an invaluable tool to ‘market’ the suitability of potential migrant husbands to the families of British Pakistani women, making them appear modern, well-read, and attractive matches for British daughters in Birmingham and elsewhere. In tracing the making of the migrant husband since childhood, we gain crucial insights into the beginnings of the migration process as involving transactions that result in the summation of the migrant husband. It also demonstrates the sheer collective investment made on behalf of migrant husbands by families to achieve the desired outcome of marriage migration, and the sacrifices, both symbolic and financial, that this entails.

The chapter also explored how migrant husbands aspired towards an ideal masculine form that entailed being a double breadwinner for their families in the United Kingdom and in Pakistan. I term this ideal masculine form the ‘transnational patriarch’, comprised of three interrelated elements: the business man, the family man, and the respected man (see also Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera 2008: 130). A significant finding that emerges from this chapter is the way in which the special imagining of the homeland itself has ‘migrated’, or been transported, due to the pioneer generations of migrants, who returned and/or remitted funds to build the impressive mansions that now dominate the skyline of local towns and cities in Pakistan. These serve as symbolic and physical reminders of the potential status, honour, and respect a man can achieve by becoming a successful migrant husband in Britain. In other words, migration carried symbolic capital within the homeland, and the meaning attributed to this shaped present and future aspirations, showing that migration, masculinity, and marriage are intricately connected.

The narratives of the migrant husbands described throughout this chapter provide a glimpse of the potential dissonance between the aspirations of migrant husbands prior to marriage migration and their lived realities after migration. The path to ‘becoming British’, variously described through the personal narratives of my interviewees, demonstrates a troubling period of waithood following the marriage ceremony but before the migration takes place, due mainly to lengthy immigration rules and regulations, which showcases the way in which migrant husbands can be transacted both by in-laws and by the state. In turn, this was followed by often unstable and insecure conditions upon settlement in the United Kingdom, made more burdensome with new responsibilities, hazardous or unfair conditions in the workplace, and an arduous bureaucracy that complicated the hope of British citizenship. Combined, these factors obfuscated and blurred the original aspirations migrant husbands held prior to marriage migration. Although the presentation of the findings perhaps indicates temporal linearity as ‘before, during, and after’ marriage migration, it is important to recognise that the stages of migration cannot be neatly divided into insular categories. Considering the phases of migration through a non-linear perspective makes it possible to see how migration is shaped by the social complex in which the multiple frames of the migrant husband, as an autonomous agent, as proxy, as labourer, as father and son, are produced and reproduced over time and space.

Emerging through this chapter is a recognition of the sharp changes that aspirations undergo within both the social imaginaries and lived social realities of migrant husbands. Migration through time, place, and space influences not only a migration of social identity but also the socially embodied experience of migrant husbands, which is very rarely documented. In the next chapter I study the implications of waithood, insecurity, and instability, especially in and through the state and citizenship, for migrant husbands’ masculinity. I demonstrate how wives and in-laws in particular become agents of the state, (re-)enacting colonial state violence in and through immigration and citizenship rules.