Introduction

Munir was born in a village near Jhelum in Pakistan and migrated to Birmingham in 2010 after marrying his cousin Aisha, his maternal first cousin. When he arrived in Birmingham his father-in-law secured him a job at a local supermarket, stocking shelves and assisting customers with carrying their groceries to their vehicles. His father-in-law promptly collected Munir’s weekly salary from his boss, around £150 in total, leaving him with little or no access to finances save for the £20 Munir’s father-in-law gave him from his pay packet. Munir’s father-in-law also confiscated his passport and visa documents. During one of our conversations he told me:

Within a month of arriving in the United Kingdom, Munir’s father-in-law had assumed control over Munir’s freedom of movement and legal documents, and removed any possibility of independently sending remittances to his family in Pakistan. Munir found himself in a rigid power dynamic after his marriage migration that trapped him in an inferior status against his father-in-law, who quickly asserted control over Munir’s life decisions, both major and daily ones. Under the shadow of his uncle, who was now his father-in-law, his ability to establish himself as a transnational patriarch was made more difficult. Rather, it was the father-in-law’s transnational patriarch identity that was reinforced in and through his control of Munir’s newfound status as a new migrant and wage earner, in the shared household.

Munir went on:

Serving his father-in-law at dinnertime became a regular chore for Munir, which often led to outbursts of verbal and physical abuse if certain standards were not met. Such abuse worsened Munir’s mental health and well-being, leaving him feeling isolated and unable to cope with mounting pressures in an alien environment. It soon became clear to him that his lived experience of marriage migration differed greatly from the aspirations and dreams he had held prior to leaving Pakistan. He had not expected to be subjected to his father-in-law’s dominance and violence, feeling vulnerable and inferior, and having no control over his finances or legal documents. He told me he felt stuck when he first arrived, questioning whether marriage migration was worth the heavy sacrifices he had had no choice but to make in exchange for a new life in Birmingham.

The migration and masculinity scholarship: a critical response

The conventional push/pull model of migration assumes (Collins 2018: 965) that, once migrants arrive at their country of destination, they no longer struggle or experience hardships, as these experiences were ‘left behind’ in their countries of origin. Eurocentric and Enlightenment-era-inspired views can often trap narratives of migration within a binary framework, leaving the ‘bad’ behind and embracing the good ‘ahead’ (El-Tayeb 2011). Within this approach, the West is often fashioned as a place where freedom and liberal principles are achieved, pitted against the ‘East’, which is cast as a primitive and underdeveloped place (Said 1990). This false binary mutes the diverse range of experiences migrants can have upon arrival and settlement, as they can be lost, ignored, or misunderstood in and among integration narratives, or those of successful migrant stories. In an increasingly precarious and vulnerable world for migrants who are opting to embark on dangerous journeys across the ocean in order to flee oppressive conditions in their home countries, the case study of migrant husbands diversifies the documentation of migrant experiences.

The growing body of literature on men and masculinity studies has helped to keep the door open for the documentation of migrant men’s experiences in a range of social and cultural settings around the world. This includes the ways in which migrant men inscribe into their new environments past memories of their personhood, status, and identity to carve their place within the changed social dynamics of the migrant community, within which they do not feel as though they belong (Jansen 2008). For example, in his ethnographic work Jansen traces how Somali Muslim migrant men experienced low self-esteem when they felt their role as breadwinners and providers for their families was overshadowed by the state’s provision of welfare benefits (Jansen 2008; see also Este and Tachble 2009). In Gallo’s (2006) ethnography, south Indian men who migrated after marriage to Italy felt secondary to their wives as they acquired spousal citizenship status and employment rights. They felt they were seen as only hard-working, reliable men due to the precedent their wives had set prior to their own migration (Gallo 2006).

These rich ethnographies demonstrate that men also undergo continual processes of renegotiation through the immigration and settlement process, exposing them to a range of vulnerabilities. Some are like the vulnerabilities experienced by women, and some may be specific to men precisely because of their gender, and gender-related roles (Espiritu 1997: 75; Luu 1989: 68). They also speak to the broader study of masculinity as a field of sociology, within which scholars have developed significant theories, including ‘hegemonic masculinity’ (Connell 2005), which proposes a hierarchy among multiple forms of masculinity, with a hegemonic version at its peak that subordinates both women and marginalised men (Connell 2013: 303). Interviews with migrant men such as Munir demonstrate that their dreams and aspirations evolve through personal and public renegotiation due to power figures, such as fathers-in-law, who ascribe to more hegemonic forms of masculinity within the diverse spectrum of masculine identities (see also Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera 2008).

One of the most prominent developments in the field has been proposed by Marcia Inhorn (2012; Inhorn et al. 2009; Inhorn and Naguib 2018), who has recognised the ‘emergence’ of masculinities. Inhorn’s concept of ‘emerging masculinities’ attempts to identify and capture the formation of different kinds of masculinity in their interaction with new forms of technology within the Arab world (Inhorn 2018). The concept speaks to processes of social change as they relate to expressions of masculinity, as men navigate and adapt to their social worlds across time and life stages, and respond to shifts in evolving social histories (Inhorn 2013: 60). Although concepts such as ‘emergence’ and ‘multiplicity’ retain their usefulness as tools of analysis in the field, it is important to note that the ‘processes’ that occur during and while ‘emergence’ or ‘multiplicity’ are described are little accounted for. Moreover, the ‘emergence’ of masculinity carries overtones of a new masculinity breaking through (and rightly so for some ethnographic cases), including the case of migrant husbands in the British Pakistani and Kashmiri community. My own ethnographic work with migrant husbands in the British Pakistani and Kashmiri community points towards a unique set of social circumstances that gives rise to an ‘in-between’ masculinity, which speaks to multiplicity and hybridity, while also documenting the drivers and processes behind what I call ‘liminal masculinity’.

The personal narratives of migrant husbands that I document in this book demonstrate a process of waithood (see also Singerman 2007; Honwana 2012) that takes place after the marriage ceremony, but before the act of physical migration to their new adopted country to join the wife. In the context of Britain, this period of waithood is caused mainly by tightened immigration rules, which require a higher threshold of an annual salary of £18,500 to sponsor a spouse from another country (increased to £29,000 in 2024), and for migrant spouses to pass English tests, for which a certificate is presented as part of the application to the UK Home Office. Such bureaucratic obstacles, as well as points of transacting visas and migratory routes, have been designed to deter disadvantaged and non-English-speaking migrants as they aspire to migration rights through marriage. From the outset, British state policies have aspired to forge a migrant middle class, one that is well educated, capable of skilled labour, and thus more likely to integrate into British society.¹ These policies contribute significantly to the onset of protracted waithood periods after marriage, delaying not just migration but, in many cases, the family reunion of migrant husbands and their wives and children. For the post-migration stage, the Home Office has imposed policies such as the ten-year rule to acquire settlement status (called indefinite leave to remain, or ILR, in the United Kingdom), with evidence being provided to the Home Office after two years, five years, and ten years of marriage, as well as a citizenship test at the ten-year mark to demonstrate that the migrant spouse has fully assimilated into British society. The citizenship test, which all migrants regardless of their migration route to Britain are required to take, has been widely criticized, as it is composed of questions that even ordinary British citizens do not know the answers to. The waithood period to attain British citizenship therefore extends over a decade, which gives rise to heightened vulnerability and precarity for the migrant husband. There exist, then, heavy and burdensome transactional levies one must exchange with the state in order to gain access to marriage migration and settlement.

Waithood impacts migrant husbands beyond the process of acquiring British citizenship, however, and extends to disempowering subjectivity and shaping masculinity in new and unpredictable ways. It is precisely this (re)shaping of masculinity that the current chapter aims to map, with the next chapter tracing the ways in which migrant husbands navigate their newly shaped masculinities. In this chapter I focus more closely on migrant husband experiences upon marriage and migration to the United Kingdom, and consider how, during this period, the experience of being a migrant husband unfolds. In doing so, I hope first to provide deeper insight into the dissonance experienced by Pakistani and Kashmiri migrant husbands before and after their marriage migration journeys. Second, I aim to explore the impact of marriage experiences in relation to the social and cultural norms associated with gender and marriage within the British Pakistani and Kashmiri community. Finally, by bracketing this particular social time (upon marriage migration) and social space (post-migration settlement in the United Kingdom), I aim to trace the social dynamics and mechanisms at play that shape the marriage–masculinity–migration nexus for migrant husbands.

This chapter is comprised of three sections: ‘Migrant husbands and waithood’, ‘Domestic violence’, and ‘Reworking of gender power’. The first section considers the precarious lives that migrant husband can often lead upon marriage and migration to the United Kingdom, which is largely informed by their waithood, and often results in their emasculation. Waithood is a concept I borrow from Diane Singerman (2007), who first used the term (see Honwana 2012: 3), which has since been developed by social scientists to study experiences of youth in different contexts across the world as they make the transition into adulthood (Dhillon, Dyer, and Yousef 2009; Hage 2009; Honwana 2012, 2013; McEvoy-Levy 2014; Inhorn 2018; Janeja and Bandak 2018). Singerman (2007) employs the term to describe the experience of ‘stuck’ youth in the Middle East, who, due to socio-political-economic circumstances, experience prolonged waithood before marriage, perceived as a significant threshold into adult life. Although there have been studies exploring the experiences of waiting in camps and detention centres as refugees and asylum seekers (Agier, Nice, and Wacquant 2002; Whyte 2011; Turner 2012; Andersson 2014; Rotter 2016), these have carried the assumption that the temporal act of waiting is somehow finite. It is being increasingly recognised, however, that prolonged waithood is becoming a permanent state that is gradually replacing conventional markers of adulthood (Honwana 2012). I therefore want to push the concept of waithood further by applying it in the context of Pakistani and Kashmiri migrant husbands in Britain, and in this chapter do so by examining the impact of waithood arising as a result of (a) strict immigration rules and regulations, (b) in-laws practising state-like and subordinating power, and (c) the roots of such power in legacies of racism and colonialism (see also Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera 2008: 121; Kalra 2009: 118) perpetuated in and through both the state (see also Bi 2023) and extended family, such as in-laws. During waithood, then, I show that migrant husbands become increasingly transacted upon by both the in-laws and the state.

In the second section of the chapter I consider the subordinate position of migrant husbands in the marriage household (see also Charsley 2005) and demonstrate how this can at times lead to forms of domestic violence against the migrant husband, rendering him silent and invisible in diverse social and political fields. I devise a model to frame the experiences of migrant husbands by drawing on theories of domestic violence from Evan Stark (2007, 2010), Nughmana Mirza (2017), and Sylvia Walby and Judith Towers (2018). I interweave migrant husbands’ life history narratives within the text to demonstrate the complexities and nuances of the abuse they can experience, and thereby the dynamics of the power complexes they are situated in and try to navigate in different ways. The final section considers the changing nature of gender and family dynamics, bringing into question our understandings of honour, patriarchy, and the state. More broadly, this chapter destabilises our current understandings of gender dynamics within Muslim communities and, more specifically, the British Pakistani community, as it demonstrates that men can also be victims of oppression and abuse. Drawing on Turner’s work on liminality, the crux of my argument in this chapter is that, due to experiences of precarity and waithood, migrant husbands experience a liminal masculinity that exposes them to being transacted. The chapter concludes with some thoughts on how the insights gained through the case of British Pakistani migrants can apply to other transnational marriage migration journeys elsewhere, in Europe or North America.

The difference in experiences of migrant husbands before marriage and migration and after marriage and/or migration speaks to Turner’s idea of liminality (1967), as the migration process bracketed here relates to a transitory period. During this transitory period between the two social positions, ‘betwixt and between’ (Turner 1967) structures, the individual’s social status and role in society are socially and structurally ambiguous. In a similar vein, migrant husbands are ‘betwixt and between’ from the outset of transnational marriage, which suspends them from their identity as Pakistani citizens through the migration process, during which they are also suspended between two countries (Pakistan and the United Kingdom). During the settlement period migrant husbands continue to experience ‘in-betweenness’ through their unresolved citizenship status and frequently violent and fraught marital and family dynamics, both at home and across borders, all of which, I argue, lead to an ‘in-between’ or – better put – liminal masculinity. Although their ‘betwixtness’ and ‘in-betweenness’ are translated in a number of ways, the crux of their experience lies between their status as a migrant husband, a weak ghar dhamad/ghar jawai² (house husband) (see Chopra 2013; Charsley 2005), and the idealised prototype of the transnational patriarch. Of course, multiple and complex factors determine the course of events, which result in the progression of liminal masculinity. For instance, some migrant husbands – such as Asad, introduced later in the chapter – experienced divorce prior to migrating to the United Kingdom, which holds a different set of consequences for the migrant husband. It is for this reason, I believe, that the concept of liminal masculinity captures the process that masculine identity undergoes as a result of the migration and settlement process.

The case study of Muslim migrant husbands in the British Pakistani and Kashmiri communities not only demonstrates that masculinity is more complex than simply a hegemonic masculine ideal that is aspired to, and therefore supports the notions of multiple and complex masculinities (see also Connell 2005), but also shows that there are new patterns of masculinity that might be emerging in transnational spaces (see also Connell 1987). This ethnography of migrant husbands demonstrates that, with migration and social experiences such as marriage, masculinity becomes more fluid and mobile. It is precisely this continued mobility through space, place, social circumstances, and embodied experience – which can often be characterised as precarious and give rise to waithood, during which migrant husbands can experience powerlessness – that can be seen to take on a permanent or protracted form. These reflections further support the utility of liminal masculinity as a contribution to the emergent field of masculinity studies. A key limitation of liminality theory, however, is that it characterises a ‘transitionary state’ and does not specifically apply to the individual person within the time, space, and place in which they are situated. I attempt to remedy and rectify this through modifying the concept to expand its productive use over the course of this book. Furthermore, key questions to consider are these: when and/or where does liminal masculinity stop and/or start and/or interrupt and/or return for migrant husbands? Subsequent chapters address these questions and weaknesses in liminality theory in order to better explain the liminal experience of migrant husbands.

Migrant husbands and waithood

Globally, scholars have discussed the irregular and unstable nature of employment and labour rights (Neilson and Rossiter 2008; Standing 2010), which many view as a major factor in inspiring the surge of uprisings in 2011 that spread from Tunisia to Yemen as the so-called Arab Spring (Singerman 2007; Inhorn 2018; Khosravi 2017). Irregularity and instability of employment are thought to be key features of a significant demographic shift in marital norms, to which Singerman’s (2007) concept of waithood is central. She argues that rising unemployment has led to precarious financial conditions, making it difficult for young people to acquire socially acceptable forms of bride wealth required for marriage (2007), causing young people to marry later in life (see also Sommers 2012). Although this earlier use of the term carries connotations of hope and perseverance, which may eventually lead to overcoming the period of waithood and triumphing (Hage 2009), Honwana (2012, 2013) has recognised that waithood is becoming increasingly permanent in nature, replacing conventional forms of adulthood (2012: 6). In the migration literature, scholars have explored the impacts of waiting in liminal spaces such as detention centres and refugee camps (Agier, Nice, and Wacquant 2002; Whyte 2011; Turner 2012; Andersson 2014; Rotter 2016). A flourishing body of work demonstrates the tension between different forms of waiting, which is often imposed by states to slow down movement towards Europe and/or keep out refugees and migrants by making them linger and await decisions (Lucht 2012; Andersson 2014; Janeja and Bandak 2018), often in inhumane and unlawful transitional spaces. As a result of these structurally and institutionally imposed forms of waiting, displaced people can experience precarious conditions (Bayart 2007; Paret and Gleeson 2016: 281). Waithood and precarity in migration can be seen to be interconnected, widening the spaces of disempowerment and thereby increasing the likelihood of being the site of transaction(s).

Similar to the concept of waithood, precariousness (or precarity) has also been afforded exploration within the social sciences in recent years. The concept can be traced back to Pierre Bourdieu’s study of Algeria, in which he employs it to differentiate casual workers from permanent workers (Waite 2009: 414), and has since been prevalently used to focus on employment and the labour market, linking precarity to economic insecurity. Standing (2010) argues that the ‘precariat’ is a new global class in the making, which is comprised of workers who lack basic securities such as social mobility employment, union representation, and income security (see also Paret and Gleeson 2016: 279). Khosravi (2017) develops the notion further through his examination of the experiences of Iranians in a politically charged climate both domestically within Iran, and in relation to foreign relations with international actors such as the United States, which created conditions of instability and insecurity, resulting in millions of Iranians leading precarious lives.

The notion of precarity is especially relevant to the field of migration studies, as migrant populations frequently experience vulnerability within and across borders due to legal regimes around illegality and deportability (De Genova 2010; Menjívar and Kanstroom 2013). Illegal or undocumented migration often goes hand in hand with precarious employment, which can push workers into grey or shadow areas of the economy, where wages are low and workplace protections are limited or non-existent (Paret 2014, 2015). Immigration controls as a result produce precarious migrants and particular types of labour (Anderson 2010), which can be multiplied and multifaceted if considered through intersectional identity markers (see also Nielson and Rossiter 2008). Since immigration controls impact different migrant populations in different ways, applying the concept of precarity more widely could generate a fruitful analysis of migrant experiences transnationally. As previously mentioned, transnational marriage migration subjects migrant husbands to immigration control and surveillance, which can heighten their precariousness both inside and outside the home. The exacerbation of informal immigration control through kinship networks and the domestic household and its impact on precarity has not previously been studied, however. Precarity in and through the state, and capitalist offsets such as the labour market, constitutes spaces within which experiences are currently explored. The rise of precarity through kin relations that can facilitate migration and labour, and exploit the migrant in exchange for his wages, is a particular nuance that this chapter explores in depth.

There is a vast literature on transnational marriages among British south Asians (Werbner 1990; Shaw 2000, 2006; Charsley 2005; Qureshi 2013). Espiritu (1997: 8) points out that, through the immigration and settlement process, patriarchal relations undergo continual renegotiation as women and men build their lives in a new country. As a result, both women’s and men’s sense of independence and well-being is under considerable pressure from shifting gender roles, leading to a higher incidence of abuse (Espiritu 1997: 75; Luu 1989: 68), and diverse forms of social precarity. Although female spouses are generally thought to be better prepared for married life due to the traditional virilocal practice of marriage common to south Asian communities (Charsley 2005), it is thought that male spouses may experience greater difficulty in adjusting to married life, as the move to their wives’ and in-laws’ house in a transnational marriage renders them weaker (Charsley 2005, 2012). Within south Asian communities, men who migrate to their wives’ or her parents’ household have been described as ghar dhamads.³ Social scientists have noted that the husband in this marital set-up becomes reduced in his capacity to retain control over his wife (Jeffery, Jeffery, and Lyon 1989: 37), which can be a source of unhappiness (Charsley 2005). In parts of the Middle East, such as Iran, the term for a man seen to be under the control of his wife is referred to as zanzalil, a social warranty for teasing and humiliation by fellow men (Khosravi 2017, 41). The unhappiness, weaker position, and possible humiliation may constitute precarious conditions for male migrant spouses. Nevertheless, when combined with immigration controls, which, as previously mentioned, can create protracted waithood(s), not only does precarity intersect with migration but precarity and waithood are both useful concepts for examining the experiences of male migrant spouses and the ways in which their masculinity is impacted by the state.

An underlying assumption behind the concept of waithood in the context of studies recounted earlier is its limited use to describe the period prior to marriage. Waithood can also occur after marriage is officiated, however, such as in the waithood phase for bearing children when experiencing fertility issues (Inhorn et al. 2009). Migrant husband narratives provide glimpses of waithood experienced at different stages of the marriage and migration process. For instance, after marriage, many migrant husbands entered a waithood period during which their immigration documents were prepared by their wives and in-laws, a process that could last from six months to five or more years. Hussain, a 28-year-old college-educated migrant husband from Azad Kashmir, told me:

During this time of post-marriage waithood Hussain told me that his life became insecure and he lost hope. He told me:

Poignantly, we can begin to identify the simultaneous actions of both the state and the in-laws in constructing Hussain’s experience of waithood. Documentation of the marriage and its ongoing nature was essential to prove to the Home Office that the marriage was genuine. The documentation, which included wedding photographs, the nikaah certificate, his wife’s plane tickets for the arrival in Pakistan for the wedding, her wage slips – to name a few examples – formed the transactional material upon which the success of his visa application rested. Arguments between the families often interrupted the visa application process, however. Going forward, it is important to recognise how the relationship between the state and the British Pakistani in-laws was a significant driver shaping the migrant husband’s experience.

For Asad, who married his cousin’s daughter in 2015, this insecure waithood period after his marriage was incredibly distressing. A year after the marriage tensions were widespread with his wife, who was at the time working as a waitress at a Pakistani restaurant in Birmingham. The distance between the couple grew as arguments and misunderstandings unfolded, eventually leading to his wife submitting a khulla, and subsequently entering into marriage with someone who she had met at her place of work. This was a source of great emotional turmoil and distress for Asad (see also Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera 2008: 127), as well as shame for both him and his family in the wider community. Not only had Asad’s aspirations to become British been ruined but he had lost his masculinity and social status in the process. He told me that he often heard taunts such as ‘You couldn’t handle a little girl; what kind of man are you?’, which also point to the patriarchal discourse that informs the interactions and views among aspiring migrants. For Asad, the waithood period felt as if it was completely out of his control. He was unable to communicate clearly with his wife due to the distance, as communication via mobile phone and text messages were largely a hindrance, resulting in a deteriorating rift between the newlyweds. Nonetheless, technology provided Asad a window of opportunity to express his views as much as possible, providing him with an agency that was not afforded by the family or the state. Asad told me he felt he was at the mercy of his wife and in-laws, who set out to paint him in a negative light prior to his application being submitted to the Home Office. In this way, then, Asad’s wife and in-laws were gate-keepers to the state, and therefore the migration mobility that can be offered in and through state institutions.

In another instance, the post-marriage waithood went on for eight years after the marriage due to the difficulty in meeting the minimum annual income threshold required for immigration. Sufyan, who I interviewed via Skype, told me:

In Sufyan’s case, the UK immigration rules and regulations became so burdensome that he believed they constituted an infringement on his right to family life under Article 8 of the Human Rights Act. He refrained from lodging a challenge, however, due to his limited financial means. He also considered the likelihood of the Home Office ultimately rejecting his application.

The role of the state in both facilitating and disrupting the lives of migrant men can be significant. Meeting the required income threshold can be seen as a methodology of the state to transact desired migrants, and, in the case of some migrant husbands, became a considerable barrier to submitting their visa application. In Sufyan’s case this was a significant barrier, as his wife had never been formally employed and, therefore, could not satisfy the income threshold. Such policies can be seen as part of a wider strategy by successive UK governments to prevent the migration of persons who they deem likely to rely on the resources of the welfare state. It also demonstrates state power to a greater degree, as it is only current citizens who are provided the opportunity to demonstrate their earning capacity, while incoming spouses are not scrutinised on this criterion. For example, Sufyan was employed full-time as a cashier at a petrol station in the town near his village, which could have demonstrated his ability to earn a sufficient income and therefore not rely on the welfare state. There is currently no such provision to measure spousal income in the sending country, as spouses are able to engage in employment, in a balanced way. The onus – and thus the privilege – of citizenship, and therefore employability and earning capacity, is, from the outset, on the British citizen sponsoring their spouse. The power dynamics between the migrant husband and his wife and in-laws are therefore constructed in and through immigration rules and regulations of the host country, echoing scholars who have argued that negotiations of identities are provisional and contextual (Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera 2008: 119), and constituted through social relations of power and inequality (Kalra 2009: 117–118; Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera 2008: 121). In this way, the British state maintains transactional control of migrants coming into the country, who are permitted entry upon economic conditions being satisfied, which include not relying on the state for welfare and their spouses being able to accommodate them economically, despite the grounds of their application pertaining to family reunification.

Sufyan’s account also highlights the extent to which being unable to perform his duties as a husband and a father were impacted by state policies, which led to Sufyan feeling emasculated.

In some cases, when migrant husbands have already endured periods of waithood before migrating to the United Kingdom, they can find they face further uncertainly after arriving. Armaan explained:

The power of the state over citizenship rights, surveillance, and monitoring is frequently mimicked and embodied by the migrant husbands’ wives and in-laws, who often threaten them with revoking their sponsorship, which can lead to deportation. Migrant husbands such as Armaan told me they feared the sheer shame they and their families would face if they were to be deported. Apparatus such as deportation is employed as a form of leverage that performs as a constant threat, sometimes overtly and other times covertly, positioning these men as inferior and allowing for the exercise of control and subjugation. Collectively, these narratives indicate that, contrary to the initial concept of waithood (Singerman 2007; Dhillon and Yousef 2009; see also Hage 2009) – that waithood is experienced prior to marriage – waithoods (in multiple forms) can in fact occur at different stages of both the marriage and migration processes. In addition, the narratives demonstrate that waithood for the migrant husband is like the overflowing river that breaks its banks, changing boundaries, structures, and perceptions of space, place, and time between water and earth – the migrant husband and his social field. Multiple and intersecting waithoods, at different stages of the marriage and migration processes, can expose migrant husbands to increased vulnerability and precarity, involving processes of emasculation and subjugation.

Powerlessness and inferiority

Waiting, as Bourdieu (2000: 228) has put it, is a way of experiencing the effects of power, generating a feeling of powerlessness and vulnerability among the less powerful groups in society (Auyero 2012; Crapanzano 1985: 45) by actors such as the state (see also Agier, Nice, and Wacquant 2002; Bayat 2007; Whyte 2011; Lucht 2012; Andersson 2014; Rotter 2016; Janeja and Bandak 2018). To be kept waiting is to be the subject of an assertion that one’s own time, and therefore one’s own social worth, is less valuable than the time and worth of the actor imposing the wait (Schwartz 1974: 856). For migrant husbands, the waithood(s) they are subjected to is twofold: waiting imposed by the wife and/or in-laws; and waiting imposed by the state, through immigration laws. Both sources of waiting, when combined, cause an exacerbated sense of powerlessness, contributing to their leading precarious lives (Allison 2013; Khosravi 2017) and increasing their susceptibility to being transacted upon. Waithood, imbued with implications of power, indicates a broader geopolitical power dynamic, as it is Pakistani and Kashmiri nationals that are subject to such state power. The politics of Pakistani and Kashmiri migration to Britain can be viewed through this lens as an extension of the historical colonial legacy. Do we require the acquisition and conquering of lands in order for colonial power to be exerted? My ethnography demonstrates that colonial power continues through the control of bodies through migration and freedom to move freely, which is not afforded to Pakistani and Kashmiri migrant husbands. Interestingly, the involvement of in-laws in preventing the free movement of migrant husbands, who are often their kinsmen, demonstrates something much more sinister about colonial power and legacy: that it can, in fact, be practised by the very people it had once oppressed, as their aspirations to migrate and move to the United Kingdom are intertwined with aspiring to embody colonial power.

We can view this embodied relationship between in-laws and the state in Yasin’s narrative. For Yasin, a 32-year-old migrant husband from Azad Kashmir, the state became a great source of emotional distress.

He further explained:

Sufyan, who has been waiting eight years, told me he had lost all hope.

Sufyan’s powerlessness was exacerbated both by the state and his father-in-law, who, in Sufyan’s view was pursuing revenge from Sufyan’s father by preventing his son’s migration to the United Kingdom. Sufyan told me that he is ‘depressed’ as a result of the ‘pressures from all sides’ he has been experiencing for many years. He particularly stressed that ‘nobody cared about his children growing up in the absence of a father’, neither his father-in-law nor the state.

Amir, who arrived in the United Kingdom in 2014, told me how he felt powerless as a result of having no control over his life.

In turn, Armaan told me:

The degree of powerlessness and lack of control over one’s life was a common feature in the lives of the migrant husbands I interviewed. As Amraan indicated, the confiscation of his wages by his wife becomes the site of transaction: on the one hand, losing his hard-earnt wages to his wife and the aspirations associated with these, while, on the other hand, the transfer of funds and power to his wife. The term ‘freshie’ (from ‘fresh off the boat’) (Charsley and Bolognani 2017), which natural-born British Pakistanis use to refer to migrants, including migrant husbands, results in migrant husbands being constructed and positioned as inferior in the social hierarchy within the diaspora community. This speaks to the broader literature, in which scholars have noted that the construction of gender identities occurs through social relations of power and inequality (see Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera 2008: 121). The lack of control over one’s life trajectory and direction in both the immediate future and the long term caused migrant husbands to experience emotional turbulence (see also Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera 2008: 127), which impacted the way in which they saw themselves. Armaan told me:

Armaan’s words resonate with those of many migrants – both forced and voluntary – around the world, who experience ‘stuckness’ (Hage 2009) and a lack of power as a result of the interrelation and complexities that arise from systems, bureaucracies, governments, border control and immigration, anti-immigrant sentiments, racial profiling, racial and religious stereotypes, and more (see Castles and Miller 2009; Collins and Bilge 2016). Narratives of migrant husbands contribute to the burgeoning literature on power relations between the Global North and the Global South, whereby modern states benefit from growing inequalities to prevent the movement of people.

Migrant husbands also spoke about the very real effects of being a migrant, which included being made to feel and treated as inferior at the hands of their wives and in-laws and, more broadly, by the community. This is a radical departure from pre-existing norms of marriage and family dynamics in Pakistan, which involve wives moving into the husband’s and/or his parent’s household. Migrant husbands moving into wives’ and/or their parent’s households is engineered as a result of the relationship between British citizenship, generational difference, and the ‘giving’ of the daughter to the migrant husband. It is important to note that the direction of power is established through the ‘giving’ of the British daughter and the ‘taking’ of the migrant husband. A middle-aged female, Jamila, who had migrated after marriage in 1997, and whose niece had recently married and facilitated the migration of her husband to the United Kingdom, expressed this view to me:

Despite Jamila’s niece (sister’s daughter) being married to her other sister’s son, the role of citizenship, and the power dynamics associated with it, overshadowed the sisterly relationship. In other words, state power in the form of citizenship dominated even the closest of kinship ties. The migrant husband was given to the family of the bride, in some cases married into a bond of servitude. For example, Faisal who arrived in the United Kingdom in 2000, told me that his father-in-law and brothers-in-law would humiliate him in front of guests.

Haroon told me:

The threat of deportation was a very real threat issued by in-laws, who reminded migrant husbands that they could, according to immigration law, return them to Pakistan. This threat was made real by domestic violence laws and protection for women in marriages with abusive husbands. In-laws would rely on this aspect of the law to file a report of domestic abuse with the police, which would then trigger immigration laws pertaining to satisfying requirements at two years, five years, and ten years of the indefinite leave to remain process. Since the marital relationship would be demonstrated to have broken down, the leave to remain, or settlement right, would be retracted. The threat of deportation in this way heightened the inferiority and submission of migrant husbands, transacting their weakness and subjugation often prior to marriage migration, as well as their anxieties relating to marriage and migration.

Together, Armaan’s, Faisal’s, and Haroon’s narratives speak to Fischer’s argument that izzat (honour) is based upon control, and, although the most fundamental form of control is the control of women, control of other men of the biraaderi (patrilineage) – or, even better, outside the biraaderi – is the highest form of control (Fischer 1991: 108–109). Here, Fischer’s argument further cushions the notion of migrant husbands being subject to transaction, in exchange for greater honour. Fischer also argues that, if a daughter is married with honour, she is the primary means for her father to increase his izzat (104). This suggests that daughters are used to facilitate the migration of a male from the biraaderi through transnational marriage, in order for his control to become a symbol of the British Pakistani family’s ‘highest’ level of izzat, further testifying that control, in the form of abuse, may be exercised by some members of British Pakistani families to acquire greater izzat. A number of interlocutors from the community who participated in the research also testified to this. Jamila, a middle-aged woman originally from Pakistan but who migrated to the United Kingdom after marriage in 1988, told me:

For Jamila, the purana zamaana (previous times/olden days), when the daughter was put into a doli and sent to the in-laws’ home, were over. Times had changed, and now they had put the migrant husband in a doli and brought him home (to England), and therefore had greater authority and power over the son-in-law and, by extension, his family in Pakistan or Kashmir. In Jamila’s view, this meant that the husband’s parents were not entitled to speak rudely to her sister.

The workplace was another space in which migrant husbands told me about being made to feel inferior, and in which the precarity of their lives played out. Bashir told me how his inferiority as a migrant husband led his employer to take advantage of him.

Legal British citizenship is employed by many in the British Pakistani community to create a hierarchical social structure in which citizens are deemed superior and incoming migrants are inferior. A class division determined by citizenship is crucial to the Pakistani and/or Kashmiri Muslim community in Britain (see also Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera 2008). My interlocutors often told me, ‘We can never be fully accepted as British because they always call us “freshies”.’ The ‘us versus them’ narrative between the host society and migrants is often divided along racial and ethnic lines (see Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera 2008). In this instance, however, it is being operationalised by British-born Pakistanis or Kashmiris against co-ethnics who migrate. What does this tell us about racism and immigration? We learn that, although immigration and racism are intertwined, immigration is in fact racialised to distinguish the British-born Pakistanis and Kashmiris from the ‘freshies’ or the mangetars (fiancés)⁵ who have just arrived in the country. Such terminology allows British Pakistanis and Kashmiris to assert their authenticity and proximity to British state power, while migrants are placed within the seas surrounding Britain, which strikes resemblance with Gilroy’s (1991) theorization of the ‘Black’ Atlantic.

The difference in treatment between the home and the workplace speaks to Fischer’s argument that the control of men within the broader patrilineage network or community is the highest form of control (Fischer 1991: 108–109), and once more underlines the notion that the giving of the daughter establishes the direction of control. This is achieved through racial and colonial legacies adopted by British-born Pakistanis and Kashmiris. The workings of honour (izzat), and the power yielded from it, is tied to such trajectories. Tracing the genealogy of honour in this way demonstrates that, through the capillaries of state policies around migration, the control of movement of fellow co-ethnics in the home country is in fact a symbol of higher status and translates into the transnational patriarch identity. Even though this is something that is aspired to by migrant husbands, it is in fact a sinister form of masculinity, often embodied and practised by migrant men of pioneer generations who, after decades of being in Britain and accumulating social capital, are able to facilitate and control migration for younger men, transacting them for greater power within their kin network.

Migrants’ subordinate positions

One of the most important contributions in the literature was made by Katharine Charsley (2005), who argues that migrant husbands have weak positions within the household that they joined upon marriage and migration to the United Kingdom. This acknowledgement was made within the framework of the experiences of British Pakistani wives who, in Charsley’s ethnographic account, were left abandoned by migrant husbands after they received indefinite leave to remain in the country. This speaks to the broader literature on the British Pakistani diaspora, which portrays British Pakistani families as taken advantage of by kin in Pakistan (Ballard 1994) – something I have long disagreed with, as the direction of power due to British citizenship lies in the court of British Pakistani and Kashmiri families. Although the accounts of British Pakistani women who are involved in transnational marriages with migrant husbands are invariably valid, questions remain. Why and how are migrant husbands weak? What factors cause their weakness? What are the implications, if any, of their weakness on their experiences of marriage, migration, and masculinity? Exploring the inner workings of this position of weakness could also provide insights into the power dynamics involved in transnational marriages, particularly between both parties of the families involved in this transnational dynamic, and which can facilitate domestic abuse to take place.

In order to assess this, it is important to consider the perceptions of self-worth and masculinity in Pakistan and Kashmir before arriving in Britain. As a number of my interlocutors told me, their experiences in Pakistan and Kashmir were defined by son preference, labour and earning capabilities, ability to continue the family name, and qualifying for inheritance. Zafar told me:

Through Zafar’s experience, we learn that there is a high community value for sons, which drives educational investment choices for offspring on the part of their parents. The stark contrast of Zafar’s experience in Pakistan prior to marriage and migration with his experience upon arriving in the United Kingdom was shocking, leading to the crushing of his dreams. He went on to describe this as ‘feeling like a slave’ and ‘being owned by his in-laws’, as a result of which he felt he had been torn from his family, leaving them without any support. Thus, marriage migration in this instance shattered the previously held values associated with son preference, which led to positive self-worth and a hegemonic form of masculinity, as he was considered the primary breadwinner and provider. Marriage migration through this transnational uxorilocal form restructures this entirely.

We are able to assess the disintegration of the hegemonic form of masculinity further through the research findings relating to domestic violence. Of the 62 migrant husbands who participated in the research, all expressed feeling weak upon marriage and migration to the United Kingdom, both within the household and in relation to family dynamics, and in navigating the British system(s), in which they often felt disadvantaged due to their positionality as migrants from Pakistan or Kashmir. It is important to note that the broader perception of Pakistani and/or Muslim men and the ways in which both Muslims in the United Kingdom and the Muslim community of Birmingham are viewed, in both local and national discourses, is also important in the analysis of migrant husband experiences, particularly vis-à-vis approaching and accessing state support. Pakistani and/or Muslim men are often thought of as powerful patriarchs, wife beaters, gang members (Alexander 2000; Thapar-Bjokert and Sanghera 2010: 254; Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera 2008: 119), or terrorists (Abbas 2012). Moreover, the Muslim community in Birmingham are often seen as hardline Islamists (see Abbas 2018), and there is increasing discussion of Islamophobia in both public and academic circles within the United Kingdom (Bi 2022). These intersecting and overlapping social dynamics can intensify the experiences of migrant husbands. Although migrant husbands did at times talk about experiences of racism and discrimination, such as being called ‘Paki Muslims’ or ‘terrorists’ while working as chefs or waiters at takeaways or as taxi drivers, limited English proficiency and lack of knowledge as to how to navigate the British systems(s) were two significant factors that determined their positionality, from the outset. Faisal, a 29-year-old college-educated migrant husband from Islamabad, told me:

Faisal’s experience was common among migrant husbands who arrived between the 1990s and 2008, a period when immigration policies were more accommodating. It also demonstrates Robert Blood and Donald Wolfe’s (1968) resource theory, which, he suggests, underpins domestic violence, facilitating coercion and control (Stark 2007, 2010). Those who arrived within the last five to ten years had relatively good levels of speaking and reading proficiency in terms of the English language, however, as they were required to pass English tests as part of their spousal visa applications.⁶ Nonetheless, both groups of migrant husbands – those who arrived between the 1990s and 2008 and those who arrived in the last ten years – experienced abuse, as the structures of silence were maintained by family members as well as the broader community. As a result, much of my fieldwork required me to probe structures of silence.

Some 80 per cent of the migrant husbands who took part in the research had had arranged transnational marriages with a cousin (see also Shaw 2006), or a family relative. In about a half of the cases (45 per cent), my interlocutors informed me that the mistreatment and/or abuse had been directly linked with land in Pakistan, which had been tied to the marriage contract and/or verbal agreements between family members, which underlines the notion of transacting the migrant husband for land and property. This included the striking occurrence of the manipulation of the nikaah (Islamic marriage contract) by British families to implicate land as haq-mahr (dowry), thereby extending an otherwise religious covenant to additionally performing as an agreement to the transacting of assets linked with the marriage. Haider, a 26-year-old migrant husband from a village near Islamabad, explained his situation:

As demonstrated through Haider’s narrative, the giving of the daughter’s hand in marriage can prove to be a source of power and manipulation channelled and made possible through religious doctrine and items such as the nikaah documentation. This documentation, which carries religious significance and authority, locked the assets of migrant husbands and/or their families, which were transformed into material gains and/or financial awards for both guaranteeing the migrant husband’s passage to the United Kingdom and/or as a ‘security deposit’ in case of a marital breakup. In this way, then, the possibility of coercion and control was sealed within the nikaah document, facilitating the exercise of intra-family power. The religious authority of the document verifying the marriage between the husband and wife also enshrines the family members’ ability to employ the document as a legal contract governing the behaviour of the migrant husband. In the United Kingdom, however, this document has no legal bearing, as the state requires a civil marriage to provide rights to a husband and wife. Based on the nikaah contract, couples have the same rights as a cohabiting couple (Sherwood 2020).⁷

Saleem told me:

Such accounts provide an insight into the ways in which British Pakistani Muslim families can also take advantage of the families of migrant husbands (who are often their kin), which is contrary to what is understood in the current literature (see Ballard 1994; Chopra 2009, 2013; Charsley 2012; Malik 2016).

It became increasingly apparent from my interviews with migrant husbands that they believed that a significant source of their weakness was the kinship bonds upon which these marriages were socially positioned. In-laws of migrant husbands were often the siblings or cousins of parents, which made it difficult to speak against control but which also, in some cases, added to the shock experienced by migrant husbands, as they had believed that their marriage and migration would be easier solely due to being ‘married in the family’. Migrant husbands and their families placed a great deal of trust in their family relatives, which later created difficult conditions for migrant husbands. The transacting of migrant husbands, then, frequently trumped kinship relations, which are often held in high esteem in the community’s culture and history.

Joint family household structures, which are common to many south Asian communities in Britain (Werbner 1990), also played a role in increasing the migrant husbands’ vulnerability, as migrant husbands would usually move into the joint household headed by the wives’ parents. Yassir described in detail the 18 months he had spent in his in-law’s house when he first arrived in the United Kingdom:

As a result of close proximity, the level of control exerted upon migrant husbands also increased in instances when migrant husbands and their wives were able to eventually move out of the in-law’s household. Asif told me:

Migrant husband participants detailed the degree to which they felt the influence of mothers-in-law was a devastating factor for their marriages. Arslaan explained:

In some instances, mothers-in-law were unhappy with their daughter having married into their husband’s side of the family, and as a result, according to migrant husbands, were actively sabotaging the marriage. Migrant husbands, in their narratives, often described at great length how mothers-in-law would ‘brainwash’ or ‘ear-fill’ (see Mirza 2017) their daughters to think that they were being used by their husbands as ‘baby-making machines’, or as ‘a passport to England’, often transferring their own marital scars and plights in order to turn them against their husbands. Mirza (2017) suggests that this is a form of indirect domestic abuse, perpetrated at high frequency by mothers-in-law. Salma, a 31-year-old married woman with three children who worked as a receptionist at a GP surgery, took part in the research as one of my community member interlocutors. Salma told me about how her next-door neighbour’s mother would instruct her grandchildren, who were three and five years old, to abuse their father (a migrant husband) physically by scratching him and/or pulling his hair. Salma told me she had visited her neighbour to share food from the hatam (a form of commemorative prayer) she had held in her home in honour of the third anniversary of her father’s passing. She was horrified that the mother-in-law was ‘training’ her grandchildren to treat their father in such a way. The shock of witnessing such an incident caused Salma to drop the plate of rice she was holding, spilling the rice on the neighbour’s living room floor.

Cultural differences between migrant husbands and their wives were also a determining factor in creating marital instability and exacerbating their weak positions. Such differences were embedded within views about finances, regarding family planning in terms of long-term settlement, and between the intimate and private space within a marriage, such as the preference for particular sexual acts. Rehan shared with me that his wife expected oral sex (husband-to-wife) to be part of their physical relationship, saying: ‘I did not want to leave my faith or my principles to meet her demands. It is simply wrong to commit such acts …’ Similarly, Faiza’s sister was married to Arshad, her mother’s sister’s son (maternal cousin or cousin on her mother’s side), from their village in Azad Kashmir. She explained how her sister’s attitude to sex was a particular source of contention in the marriage:

Faiza explained that, despite Arshad’s resistance to performing oral sex, he was not in a position to continue to refuse, as Faiza’s sister said she would divorce Arshad. She had been informed by one of her more ‘religiously educated’ friends that sexual dissatisfaction was legitimate grounds for divorce. Although, in the broader literature, there is little reference to British Pakistani Muslim attitudes to sex, in Thapar-Bjokert and Sanghera’s work we gain a small but unique early insight into a young British Pakistani Muslim student being aware of oral sex (2010: 257). Faiza’s interview helped to unpick the tightly sewn stitches of sex as a taboo subject within a community that is faced with multiple and often contradictory identity forms, illustrating how, in a globalised, hyper-technological era of information, intimate transactions – including that of oral sex – can be seen by British Pakistani and/or Kashmiri wives as integral to their transnational marriage arrangement.

A number of intersecting factors, then, create a social complex within which migrant husbands feel weak, or weaker than they felt prior to marriage and migration, demonstrating a significant dissonance between the aspirations before marriage and migration and the lived social realities upon marriage and migration. The way in which this weakness translates resonates with Stark’s (2007, 2010) coercive control model, which can often lead to indirect forms of abuse (see Mirza 2017). The ethnographic insights discussed here also demonstrate that factors such as lower levels of education, transnational marriages with kinship groups, matriarchal power as well as patriarchal power, and cultural differences can place migrant husbands in weaker positions. It is important to highlight that, although I have thus far presented the how and the why behind migrant husbands becoming weak, which can be framed in line with Stark’s (2007, 2010) coercive control model and Mirza’s (2017) indirect forms of abuse, it is also necessary to consider any physical manifestations of this weakness for migrant husbands, or what Mirza (2017) refers to as ‘direct’ forms of abuse.

Domestic violence and silent suffering

Exertion of control by in-laws over migrant husbands extends beyond the immigration and citizenship processes and translates into material structures, and implications within the household. Men moving to women’s households upon marriage is known as uxorilocal marriage (Murdock 1949; Leach 1955; Maybury-Lewis 1967; Turner 1979), and can also involve isolation and the severing of ties with the husband’s family. There are a number of geographical ethnographies conducted by anthropologists documenting this marital form. In Amazonian societies, the young husband postpones uxorilocal residence as much as he can so that he does not have to assume the passive position of the son-in-law and be dominated by his father-in-law (Maybury-Lewis 1967). In order to successfully dominate the son-in-law, he is ‘integrated’ into his wife’s household and isolated, namely by the severing of his natal family ties (Turner 1979).

Elsewhere, in China, families have sought uxorilocal marriage as a means of solving problems of elderly care, labour demand, and continuity of the male family line in sonless families (Zhang 2008: 114). Since the 1950s the government has encouraged the practice in an attempt to counter the problem of unbalanced gender ratios caused by female abortion, infanticide, and abandonment (Wolf 1985). Among the Nayar community in south India, it has been debated whether uxorilocally married men have rights over their children (Leach 1955; Gough 1959). In Taiwan, recent studies suggest that uxorilocal marriages are a strategy to continue family lineage as well as ensuring labour engagement and, therefore, earning capital for households (Li et al. 2019). Inheritance rights were not afforded to the live-in husbands in Taiwan, however, whereas, in Japan, live-in sons-in-law were able to inherit property and wealth (Kurosu and Ochiai 1995). Importantly, in uxorilocal marriages across societies, parents and kin are crucial in negotiating the terms of the live-in arrangement, whether bridal names are adopted by the son-in-law, whether he has rights over children, and whether he is entitled to inherit property, to name a few examples (see Li et al. 2019). This involvement on the part of senior kin is also present in the case of migrant husbands from Pakistan.

It is important to mention that studies of uxorilocal marriages cited thus far are all rooted in a particular geographical area. In recent years a growing academic focus has shifted to transnational uxorilocal marriage (see Chopra 2009, 2013; Malik 2016). The migrant husbands at the centre of my research are, in my view, involved in transnational uxorilocal marriages, as they move to their wives’ and/or parents-in-laws’ household, contrary to the virilocal marital norms (Turner 1979) common to south Asian communities. Often virilocal marital forms entail bride price or dowries, which adds a transactional dynamic to the marriages observed across sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and south Asia (see Schlegel and Eloul 1988; Bossen 1988; Anderson 2007; Harrell and Dickey 1985; Singer 1973). Husbands who take up matrilocal residence through uxorilocal marriage are often referred to as ghar dhamads (house husbands) (Charsley 2005, 2012; Chopra 2013). The framing of this phenomenon as uxorilocal marriage can lend support to the analysis of this form of marriage migration, as the ‘direction of power’ is disrupted in and through marriage migration.

This inverse direction of power dislocates the conventional understanding of domestic violence and/or intimate partner violence, which is rooted in feminist discourse and which frames domestic violence strictly as a gender-asymmetrical phenomenon, whereby only men perpetuate violence against women. Male violence against females has been documented and explored widely in both developed and developing regions across the world (Ali and Naylor 2013; Sokoloff and Dupont 2005; Conway et al. 2013; Walby 1990: 29; Dobash and Dobash 1998; Dobash et al. 1999; Stark 2007, 2010). The feminist discourse that has determined the definition of domestic violence has been criticised on a number of accounts, including the failure to account for a diverse range of women, such as south Asian women, who may be subjected to abuse by a number of family members due to the complex nature of the extended family network (Mirza 2017; Gangoli and Rew 2011), and the role of women who can perpetrate domestic violence (Strauss and Gelles 1986, 1990; George 1994, 2007; Ogilvie 1996; Anderson 2002; Archer 2000; Brown 2004; Capaldi and Owen 2001; Capaldi and Kim 2007; Hamberger and Potente 1994; Fiebert 1997; Mirza 2017; Kumar 2012). Indeed, Thapar-Bjokert and Sanghera (2010: 261) argue that south Asian women are not always victims of oppressive cultures, and that women can take up powerful positions within households (252), supporting the contention that south Asian women and families are not homogeneous.

A number of theories attempt to explain domestic violence. Johnson (2008) proposes a dualism model that distinguishes two types of domestic violence: situated couple violence and intimate terrorism. Intimate terrorism is defined as serious, frequent, and controlling violence that can escalate over time and as gendered male violence against women. Situated couple violence is less serious, less frequent, and not coercive or controlling (see also Walby and Towers 2018). A second theory that attempts to explain domestic violence is Stark’s coercive control model (2007, 2010), which describes coercive and controlling behaviour as not always involving physical violence, but as always harmful and gendered male control over female intimate partners. A third theory presented by Walby and Towers (2018) is ‘domestic violent crime’ theory, which suggests that domestic violence at all severities and of all frequencies comprises coercion and control. Although Walby and Towers (2018) also argue that domestic violence is gender-asymmetrical, they suggest, importantly, that the economic resilience of the victim is more important than the gendered motivation of the perpetrator in determining the frequency of the violence, which resonates with Blood and Wolfe’s (1960) resource theory, which suggests that, in marital or intimate relationships, the person who is more resourceful in terms of income, occupational status, and education status may have more say and power in the relationship.

The case of the migrant husband then speaks to these theories and conceptualisations of domestic violence in a number of ways. First, the gender power dynamic is no longer asymmetrical when men are more powerful but, rather, as revealed in my research, when men were weaker, had fewer material resources, and were dependent on their wives and in-laws. Second, the narratives of migrant husbands thus far demonstrate that women can be involved in either direct or indirect violence and/or control and coercion (see Mirza 2017) of migrant husbands, suggesting that the discourse on domestic violence may need to reconsider the role of women in domestic abuse (see also Rew, Gangoli, and Gill 2013). Third, the social context within which migrant husbands are located, including the complex transnational family network, is not currently accounted for in the theorisations of domestic violence, thereby limiting domestic violence as an act that can be perpetrated only by partners and not members of the family (see also Mirza 2017; Rew, Gangoli, and Gill 2013). Fourth, as a result, power can be seen as not linear and one-directional but as located everywhere, as per Michel Foucault’s (1991) scholarship, which places a spotlight on the role of the family in perpetrating domestic violence. Finally, given that, in the case of migrant husbands, obtaining British citizenship is a significant currency held by the wife and in-laws, motivations underpinning domestic violence can be further interrogated. In particular, I interrogate these reflections against theories of domestic violence in the migration context and liminality context. The migrant husband experience is framed in line with Stark’s (2007, 2010) coercive control model and Walby and Towers’ (2018) domestic violence crime theory, which I posit can be divided into ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ forms of abuse as per Mirza’s (2017) conceptualisation.

Here, I build upon my previous findings that migrant husbands experience precarious lives as a result of three factors: the waithood(s) they encounter at different stages of the migration process; powerlessness at the hands of the state, wives, and in-laws; and inferiority in relation to British-born Pakistanis and Kashmiris and senior men in the family and/or community, who are often counted as the pioneer generation of migrant men and/or migrant husbands. Together, these factors widen the spaces within which migrant husbands can be transacted. Although not all acts of abuse against migrant husbands include physical violence, emotional and economic violence is harmful nonetheless, and constitutes coercion and control. In fact, all my migrant husbands interlocutors had experienced indirect coercion and control in some shape or form, whether in the form of the retention of their passports and/or salary, the frequency with which they were able to call and/or remit money to their family in Pakistan, the ways in which they could socialise outside employment and family relations, or their obligations towards their wives and/or in-laws. The way that this chapter distinguishes and advances the aforementioned theories is that British citizenship determines the direction of control and, thereby, the establishing of the coercive control model. Moreover, the argument that wives, mothers, and fathers-in-law can perpetrate coercion and control, and in some cases abuse, pushes the theoretical conceptualisations of domestic violence further by demonstrating that it can be perpetrated by women, including non-intimate partners.

Of the 62 migrant husbands who participated in the research, all told me of instances when they had experienced indirect forms of domestic violence at the hands of their wives and in-laws, and 18 told me they had experienced direct physical forms of abuse. My interlocutors described a range of forms of violence they were being subjected to, which included verbal abuse, physical abuse, psychological abuse, sexual abuse, and financial abuse. Of the community-based interlocutors who took part in the research, 38 of the 43 shared cases they were aware of were when migrant husbands had experienced domestic violence (both direct and indirect). The total numbers of cases of abuse reported per abuse type is given in Table 2.1 for migrant husbands, together with the numbers of cases of migrant husbands reported by community member interlocutors.

Although the types of abuse had the same meanings for migrant husbands and community member subjects, I noticed a difference in the interpretation of ‘psychological’ abuse. Migrant husbands were more reluctant to identify psychological abuse, as they interpreted this to mean causing a defect to their mind, which they were adamant had not occurred. For instance, Zahid told me: ‘Their words hurt, their slaps and punches also hurt, but they cannot hurt my mind. I am strong like that; I have to be. I cannot lose my mind.’ Participants who were community-based interlocutors, on the other hand, were more likely to identify migrant husbands as having experienced psychological abuse, often as a result of long-standing abuse and/or the combination of a number of types of abuse.

I collected detailed stories during my fieldwork, which provided me an important insight into the experiences of migrant husbands – experiences that were closed off from the world as a result of voluntary silence and invisibility, while what was involuntary silence and invisibility was often created by gendered stereotypes that are still prevalent in society today. Among the interlocutor experiences shared with me, I was particularly struck by the severity of the violence. Munir arrived in the United Kingdom in 2010 after marrying his mother’s brother’s daughter Aisha. He told me that the abuse started a few days after he had arrived, as outlined in this extended extract from his interview:

The taking of salaries by fathers-in-law was a common complaint expressed by migrant husbands during the fieldwork, correlating with scholarship on coercive control. Migrant husbands said that such control pierced their ideas about becoming a migrant husband, which I previously termed the transnational patriarch form of masculinity. Munir’s narrative demonstrates the erosion of his expectations that he held prior to marrying and migrating to the United Kingdom. Munir went on to explain that he had told his wife that her father had taken his wage, which led her to question her father. The following day, before leaving for work, his father-in-law told him he was not a man as he had ‘complained’ to his wife, and justified taking his wage as he had given his daughter to him thereby, enabling his migration. Munir’s narrative also provides an insight into the generational differences regarding the idea of masculinity and manhood, as the father-in-law perceived Munir’s sharing of information relating to earnings with his wife as constituting ‘not being a man’. For Munir, it was also important to spend a proportion of his first salary towards expressing gratitude and love towards his wife, which demonstrates the interconnectedness between the businessman and family man components of the transnational patriarch. We learn that these expressions of love are not so straightforward to perform, however, as the migrant husband is situated within a complex social web in which social actors, such as the in-laws, have a significant role to play in the choices and decisions migrant husbands can, and cannot, make, and –overall – in transacting the migrant husband.

Munir went on to explain:

It was Munir’s father-in-law’s transnational patriarch identity that was being reinforced through the control of Munir’s employment, and ability to remit funds to his family in Pakistan. Despite their son having migrated through marriage to the United Kingdom, Munir’s family remained dependent on his father-in-law.

Faisal, who came to the United Kingdom in 2000 after marrying a relative who had travelled to Pakistan and, upon seeing him, told her parents she wished to marry him, was granted his spousal visa eight months after their marriage, after which he migrated. Prior to Faisal, four other men from his village had migrated to the United Kingdom. Upon arrival in the country he moved into his father-in-law’s household, where his wife was already residing. He told me there were regular arguments with his wife, particularly around her refusing to share details about where she was going, resulting in her name-calling, shouting, and swearing. Such encounters were embarrassing for Faisal, as living in a join household resulted in his in-laws being privy to the marital tensions. The lack of privacy caused Faisal to experience shame, as the personal and intimate dynamics of his marital relations could be heard by his in-laws, indicating his weaker position in relation to his wife, and therefore his weaker position within the household. He went on to explain how this became interconnected to his relationship with his in-laws:

Faisal’s narrative demonstrates the degree of physical violence he experienced upon marriage and migration to the United Kingdom, which compromised his ability to lead a healthy and happy lifestyle. He went on to tell me the effects of the abuse on his ability to carry out tasks such as feeding himself, as he was severely bruised. He also developed mental health difficulties as a result of the ongoing tensions and violence. Due to his worsening health and drastic weight and hair loss, relatives became concerned and started to speculate about the marital tensions. News soon reached his parents in Pakistan, who requested his father-in-law to send him back to Pakistan. This destabilised the direction of power Faisal’s in-laws maintained, as Faisal’s family prioritised his safety over their kin relations, and his becoming a British citizen despite the reputational damage this would entail. This removed the ability of his in-laws to capitalise on the aspirations of Faisal’s kin in Pakistan, who no longer were invested in his migration. Upon receiving the call from his father, Faisal’s father-in-law returned from work and subjected him to extreme violence, which led him to lose control of his bladder. When speaking to me about this ordeal, Faisal was visibly very upset. We paused the interview for 15 minutes, after which he told me he was happy to continue to talk to me. When we resumed the interview, Faisal told me that he could not recall how long he lay on the floor soaked in his urine, and sore from the bruises. When he regained consciousness, he packed, took the few belongings he had from the hospital bed, and left.

We gain a glimpse as to the degree of vulnerability, precarity, and instability migrant husbands can experience, as Faisal was homeless during this period. He told me he was unsure as to who to approach within the authorities to seek help, which indicated the way in which migrant husbands can be found at the margins of society when experiencing such difficult circumstances. Despite this, the role Uncle Ali played in supporting Faisal was critical, as he helped to negotiate with his in-laws to process his indefinite leave to remain in the country. In exchange, Faisal divorced his wife. This was the best resolution, agreed at the community meeting involving senior men within the extended kinship network, held regarding the situation. The fact that the matter had become public knowledge within the community placed pressure on Faisal’s in-laws and prevented them from deporting him, as they no longer had control over the narrative. I particularly learnt the significance that a senior migrant husband who was established as a successful transnational patriarch can have for a relatively new migrant husband such as Faisal. Unfortunately, soon after both sides of the bargain had been satisfied, Faisal found that his home, which had been given to him by the council, was set alight in the middle of the night. He narrowly escaped through the bedroom window. He later heard rumours within the community that his in-laws had instructed someone to pour petrol through his letterbox and set his house alight, due to the extreme shame they had experienced. As a result of this incident, Faisal moved to the outskirts of Birmingham, keeping both his home and employment address secret from his community.

For Asif, when his wife showed him support and worked in partnership with him to foster a positive marital bond, both Asif and his wife became subjected to increasing control at the hands of his mother-in-law. He told me:

In a similar way to Munir’s narrative, Asif’s narrative also demonstrates the different ways in which he was trying to establish himself as a successful transnational patriarch by being a family man, while also having plans to become a businessman. These plans were compromised, however, as a result of the way in which his mother-in-law envisaged his role as a son-in-law. She also constantly taunted Asif for not being able to have children, despite there being no medical evidence to suggest he was infertile. This led to regular confrontations, which at times involved his mother -in-law throwing dinnerware in his direction, as well as physically abusing him. Through Asif’s narrative, we learn about a powerful matriarch who was oppressive towards her daughter and son-in-law, which speaks to Joseph’s (1996) notion that patriarchy can be hierarchised through both gender and age. In this instance, it was a senior woman who was able to exert a significant amount of control and subject younger men and women to oppression. Conventional ideas of the role of women in Muslim societies, particularly within the domestic sphere, are also disrupted, as we learn that women can also be powerful heads of households (see also Thapar-Bjokert and Sanghera 2010: 252; Rew, Gangoli, and Gill 2013; Mirza 2017).

These in-depth narratives of three migrant husbands – Munir, Faisal, and Asif – show that domestic violence (both direct and indirect forms of coercive control and/or abuse) against migrant husbands can occur, and can also be severe. Such narratives are powerful insights into the workings of marriage and power dynamics within a transnational setting, which can create heightened levels of vulnerability for migrant husbands. They also show that not all Pakistani men are powerful patriarchs as conventionally understood and/or portrayed within popular media and academic understandings.

Silent suffering

Although physical bruises were discussed at length within interviews, invisible scars or silent suffering also constituted an important aspect of emasculation. In the broader literature, silent suffering has been shown to manifest in a number of ways. For instance, Turner (1999) documents the experience of male refugees in Burundian refugee camps, who experienced their social roles as breadwinners taken up by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). This resulted in women saying that the UNHCR is a better husband (Turner 1999: 2), subjecting male refugees in the camp to humiliation. Este and Tachble (2009) demonstrate that Sudanese refugee men in Canada experienced difficulty in performing in their role as fathers, as a result of unemployment, social isolation, and changing roles within the family. There were internal factors that led to their emasculation, such as the drop in social status by performing jobs they were overqualified for, and external factors, such as disciplining their children, for which they became visible in the eyes of the law. For migrant husbands, then, the dissonance between their social worlds prior to marriage and migration, and the lived social realities upon marriage and migration, constructs precarious lives for migrant husbands, in which they experience heightened levels of vulnerability, and even domestic violence.

Contrary to some of the narratives, such as that of Faisal, whose experience became public knowledge within the community, many migrant husbands described their suffering as silent and invisible, which directly speaks to Turner’s theory of liminality, as he also refers to liminal individuals as invisible (1967: 108). In my interviews, migrant used terms such as ‘I remained patient’, ‘I would keep quiet’, ‘I felt depressed and down’, ‘I did not want to say anything’, or ‘There was no point in telling anyone’ to describe their suffering. The dominant masculine ideal of the transnational patriarch operating in the British Pakistani or Kashmiri community created the ideal conditions wherein any masculine experience that deviated from the ideal was a source of humiliation and shame. Faisal told me:

Faisal believed that, if he were to voice his suffering, which included physical abuse, it would bring about shame for his family on both sides of the transnational dynamic. He told me that had his uncle, Ali, not helped him, he would have been ostracised, shamed, and isolated. Thapar-Bjokert and Sanghera (2010: 258) have stressed the importance of co-ethnic peer support between men as a form of social capital, which calibrates here with the transactional role Uncle Ali played for Faisal, namely transacting the divorce in exchange for his British citizenship. Having the support of a pioneer migrant husband provided Faisal with greater agency when his marital situation became a public matter within the community. His narrative was confirmed by Uncle Ali, as someone who was indeed mistreated. Without this validation, Faisal was certain he would have been seen as the culprit, as his father would have utilised his authority and position in the community to ensure that his version of the ‘story’ was the dominant narrative.

The broader narrative of gender dynamics present in British society, particularly those that portray Pakistani men as powerful patriarchs who oppress women, as violent gang members (Alexander 2000), as home-grown terrorists, or as sexual exploiters of young White girls (Kalra 2009; Archer 2003; Hopkins 2006), also work to silence the suffering of migrant husbands. For instance, Kamraan told me:

Kamraan told me that he was not believed because the law in this country supported women, not men (see also Hopkins 2006: 342). As a result, Kamraan felt that his experience was not seen as being real or true because ‘the police were trained to see only abuse that men perpetrate towards women’. In this way, then, government agencies such as the police and social services, in the ways they operated, also silenced the experiences of migrant husbands.

Hoping for their silent sufferings to be at least visible to God despite being invisible to those around them, migrant husbands sometimes transformed their waithoods into spiritual and/or religious waiting (sabr). Some interlocutors explained that, when they experienced testing times, they began to conceptualise masculine identity as requiring patience and forbearance, which they hoped would be recognised and rewarded in both this world and the hereafter, in line with Islamic teachings. The spiritual and/or religious space became a solace, a mental and emotional strategy from which migrant husbands drew strength. These aspects of migrant husband experiences are explored in greater detail in the following chapters.