The book has explored marriage and masculinities in motion among migrant husbands in Birmingham’s British Pakistani community, positing three overarching questions. The first question explored the ways that migrant husbands have experienced marriage migration to the United Kingdom. In order to answer this question, sub-questions focused on tracing the potential shifts in the anticipated versus lived social reality upon marriage and migration to the United Kingdom; how these compared to the expected shifts prior to marriage and migration; and how migrant husbands experienced these shifts based on intersectional identity markers such as social class, citizenship status, and religion. The second research question aimed to explore the ways in which migrant husbands perceived the relationship between marriage, migration, and masculinity, which was further broken down into sub-questions that focused on perceptions of how marriage migration should be experienced, perceptions of being a man, perceptions of changes in gender dynamics, and perceptions of their relationship with the state, which is largely gated by wives and in-laws. The third research question asked: how do migrant husbands perceive and negotiate their positions in their wives’ and/or in-laws’ households? This also consisted of sub-questions, including: how do migrant husbands think they should experience the wives’ and/or in-laws’ household, how do they negotiate their relationship with members of the household, how do they perceive the relationship in relation to the household, do they develop any relations outside their wives’ and/or in-laws’ household, and, if so, how is support made available, and in what forms, to migrant husbands?

One of the primary objectives pursued throughout this book has been to show that gender divisions between men and women may not be as significant as once imagined in the individual and intimate practices of pain, suffering, and sabr. The long shadow of colonial histories and the persistent, ever-evolving politics of racism shape these experiences, influencing the expression of masculine identities and experiences, even what is submerged or invisible. In tracing the migrant husbands’ experiences, temporal points defined by the migration journey were rendered insignificant and, instead, the locus of aspirations for migration became the cursor to understanding migrant husband experiences, prior to the boarding of a plane. Through the lens of aspirations, I was able to learn of the colonial lineage that continues to breathe life into transnational uxorilocal marriage, whereby some men continued to migrate through marriage to the United Kingdom despite the risks associated with this form of migration and settlement. Symbols of colonial power were potent in local towns and villages, piercing the skylines in the form of elaborate mansions built with remittances sent by prior generations of migrant husbands, transacting the aspirations of migrant men of future generations.

This leads me to posit the theory of ‘social migration’ as a contribution to migration theory. Unlike social mobility, which I view as the migration of people in and through the labour market and/or their becoming less or more profitable and profited bodies within a capitalist system, social migration involves (a) the migration of spaces and places as well as people, (b) the migration of people and the ways in which they affect space and place throughout different stages of the migratory journey, and (c) the ways in which the former two interact to create new sub-spaces, such as ‘Sufi-scapes’. Social migration also captures the way in which intersectional markers such as gender and generation experiences impact and are impacted in and through transnational migration, as they too experience social migration. Although the field of migration focuses primarily on the migration of people, social migration theory can enable a more and a nuanced understanding of the drivers of people-based migration and the ways in which space and place, and embodied experiences, can also experience migration. The pertinent example of lavish mansions built through the sending of remittances by successful pioneer generations of migrant husbands demonstrates that the space and place of the United Kingdom migrates to and settles in Pakistan and Kashmir as part of its geographical landscapes. Thereby, it also migrates in the landscapes of social imaginaries of Pakistani and Kashmiri citizens, wherein the aspirations and desire to migrate are invoked. The aspiration for migration through marriage, then, is, essentially, an aspiration to power, over both people and place. As Fischer (1991) states, the ultimate form of izzat is to control men from the extended kin network.

In a similar way to British colonial rule in India, becoming the transnational patriarch by having a successful marriage, demonstrated by a family, and a successful business, demonstrated through remittances, would enable migrant husbands to provide for families both in Britain and in Pakistan. It is the intimate and often violent and disruptive journeys that migrant husbands make through marriage and migration that not only deviate from these aspirations but also reawaken colonial forms of power, refashioned and transacted in and through the immigration system. The settlement process, which includes seeking and acquiring employment, is an additional domain in which migrant husbands experience disruption and violence. In showing the different forms of precarity, vulnerability, and ‘stuckness’ that migrant husbands experience, the book furthers the anthropological theory of liminality. I have shown that migrant husbands’ masculinity is framed by processes of liminality, which pushes the concept further than its original application to transitional social periods. Liminality, I argue, can be applied to social experiences such as migration, as well as persons such as migrant husbands, who could embody the liminality as a state due to their precarious and vulnerable situations. Such embodiment of liminality then helped conceive migration as not only a process but also as a series of waithoods, or liminal phases. This finding opens the door to yet another contribution to the literature: that gender is not performed, as Butler (1990) puts it, but, rather, that gender is performed on, through power and control. Migrant husbands are shown to be travelling towards a position from which they can then perform their ideal masculine form of the transnational patriarch. Performativity, then, also comprises migration and migrations of the self. The position from where gender can be performed is not always arrived at, however, as the changes brought about through migration and marriage have lasting impacts.

The practice of resistance to the oppression experienced at the hands of wives, in-laws, and the state is crucial in migrations of the self from where the ideal masculine form can be performed. Songs of sorrow were identified as a space that enables migrant husbands to practise agency and resistance. Although the language used often carries patriarchal overtones, patriarchy, or the once elevated position provided to migrant husbands, songs of sorrow are a form of escapism, bringing migrant husbands to pre-liminal gendered expectations and realities. A common language of marginality can be seen unfolding through these musical lamentations, which, in their public-facing nature, create the hope for accountability for migrant husbands’ plight. Other forms of agency and resistance are transacted through partaking in Sufi gatherings, in which migrant husbands are able to forge new friendships outside their marriages and marriage households, remember the stories of Prophets who came before them and who also experienced hardships, and emulate new masculinities rooted in the religious experience, which in some instances cross-transfer as social capital in the domestic spheres of migrant husbands. In all these spaces, multiple realms of masculinity are invoked simultaneously; from the aspirational masculinity, to liminal masculinity, to reassertive and spiritual masculinity. Migrant husbands constantly (re)visit these multiple forms of masculinity, often simultaneously, in order be able to perform in the ideal and aspired-to masculine form of the transnational patriarch.

A common thread in and through these multiple realms is the rethinking of intimacies and kin relations in light of the state’s tools, which include wives and in-laws as arms of the state. It is not only the state’s systems that produce the conditions for the embodiment of liminal masculinity; migrant husbands’ wives and in-laws also become a vehicle for the production of these less than ideal conditions. From verbal, psychological, and physical abuse, to derogatory comments targeted at skin colour and immigration status, such as kaalu (blackie) and ‘freshie’ (fresh off the boat), wives, in-laws, and British-born Pakistanis in the broader community have been complicit in perpetuating and reproducing harmful colonial, and racist, legacies. The concept of deportation was a technique through which migrant husbands were transacted. Often used as a threat, deportation for migrant husbands involved stigma and shame for returning to their home country as disgraced returnee migrants, rather than successful transnational patriarchs. The role of citizenship, therefore, has become a tool of oppression used by a relatively oppressed minority in the United Kingdom, due to their social positionality, against a more recent oppressed arrival into the country.

Race, racism, and colonialism are therefore important themes throughout the book, which at first glance may seem solely to aim to enlighten readers about men’s experiences of migration. Truth be told, ethnographic fieldwork often requires scholars to carefully carve out the parameters of research similar to a photographer’s lens and resultant frame. As all photographers tend to do at some point or another, however, the employment of the zoom function becomes crucial in highlighting particular elements of the frame. In this book, we learn that a zoomed-out lens and a zoomed-in lens both highlight the role of colonialism and race (re)production (see also Kalra 2009) in and through migration journeys. In fact, it is the performance of race, as I have argued, that becomes increasingly apparent when we study the role of wives and in-laws, who, through their British citizenship, exercise increasing transactional power through enacting violence against the migrant husband. Wives and in-laws often cited the honouring the state’s rules and regulations, as a justification for their behaviour. One of the book’s contributions, therefore, concerns the way in which the state immigration system can be employed as a tool of oppression by the kin of migrants.

Another area in which the ethnography makes significant contributions is that of men and masculinity studies. The research demonstrates that masculinity is indeed multiple and complex, as theorists such as Connell (2005) have established. The masculinity of migrant husbands emerges in light of the oppression perpetuated by the state – through immigration policies, for instance. As a result, I argue that the state embodies the ultimate hegemonic masculine ideal, which migrant husbands are in different ways, and in at different times and often in multiple and intersecting spaces, attempting to navigate and manoeuvre. This is supported by the sentiments expressed by migrant husbands, including the way in which the state provides women with welfare benefits and more rights (see also Jansen 2008; Este and Tachble 2009; Al-Sharmani 2010; Kleist 2010), and their feeling constantly belittled and powerless in the face of the state’s immigration rules and regulations. The construction of alternative social currencies, such as through songs of sorrow, Sufi-scapes, and performing finances, afforded migrant husbands with a greater degree of transacting power over the lives as migrant husbands and, by extension, their masculinities, through which they could transcend the state’s policies, and therefore compete with the masculinity of the state.

The research also contributes to the anthropology of Islam and Muslim societies, as it shows that religiosity in terms of the Islamic faith can be practised in varying shades, depending on the context. It also echoes the arguments made by Joseph (1996), that patriarchy in Muslim societies can subjugate males, as well as females. Leading on from this, the research also adds to feminist anthropology, as it demonstrates nuances in female autonomy in a transnational context. From a feminist ethnographic perspective, as a researcher I have woven together intersectionality, positionality, and personal feminism. In doing so, I have demonstrated that, to practise feminist ethnography, we must distance ourselves from the prejudices embedded within and inherent in and to our positionalities, which can prevent us from viewing invisible and/or vulnerable and/or oppressed communities.

The ‘personal feminism’ approach that I have developed through this research is defined as one such that it enables the individual to exercise and practise it as a form of speaking truth to power, in spite of current or popular understanding of vulnerable groups and/or any personal negative experiences with individuals that self-identify within these groups. As a British Muslim woman of Kashmiri heritage, exploring subjectivity and hardship among Pakistani and Kashmiri Muslim migrant men who are at times viewed as powerful masculine authorities in patriarchal societies is perhaps unconventional. In doing so, I have interrogated and disrupted the power of patriarchy that can oppress both men and women, at times by positioning men and women against one another, which can cloak common experiences such as practising sabr, as explored in this investigation.

My positionality also extends to being born and raised in one of the poorest constituencies in the United Kingdom (Hodge Hill, Birmingham), and being subjected to intersectional, multiple, and complex forces of oppression at different stages of my life. A recent report by the United Nations confirms that parts of the United Kingdom in fact resemble developing countries due to the abject poverty (United Nations 2018) disadvantage people are experiencing. In line with Connell, who ‘notes that there are multiple souths in the world, including “souths” (and southern voices) within powerful metropoles, as well as multiple souths within multiple peripheries’ (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Daley 2019: 3), my background positions me as a woman not only of borders and margins (Dikotomis 2005: 7) but also as one who embodies the ‘South’ (as conventionally understood) in the ‘North’ (as conventionally understood) (see Connell 2014b). Although Connell and others have, admirably and rightly, made the case for a world-centred rather than a metropole-centred approach to the study of men and masculinity studies (Connell 2014c: 227), I push for the advancement of this through my positionality. In other words, the investigation furthers what is conventionally understood as ‘North–South’ research, in which the North and its academic institutions are privileged, as it embodies a form of ‘South–South’ research in the North. This is to say that, because of my positionality as a woman of colour born and raised in a working-class, socio-economically deprived area that resembles countries of the Global South (as documented recently by the United Nations 2018), researching the vulnerabilities of migrant husbands is an example of ‘South–South’ research in the ‘North’. By implication, then, this also interrogates and unhinges spatial geography (i.e. North versus South) from experienced geography (i.e. inequality and oppression of various and multiple forms) (see also Connell 2007; Comaroff and Comaroff 2012: 45–49; de Sousa Santos 2014; Davis and Boehmer 2019; Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Tafira 2019).

Both my positionality and the positionality of my interlocutors are further demonstrated in the institutional structures of the academy (see also Murrey 2019), as this research had not been funded through a UK Research Council or my then institution, University College London. The structures of the academy, which are rooted in coloniality (Murrey 2019: Patel 2019), determine which research is important, who decides it is important, and how the researcher, the research, and the researched are supported (see Smith 1999, also cited by Patel 2019). My research proposed to explore alternative and diverse sets of Muslim men’s experiences, which disrupted the White gaze (Patel 2019: 62) inherent in the academy, within which Muslim men are researched and read in a particular way. It is my position that, had my proposed research aimed to explore terrorism among Pakistani men, or reflected the already established grand narratives surrounding Muslim men, the doctorate study would have received funding. The conventional grand narratives maintained and perpetuated by the academy in the way it conducts itself, together with my researcher positionality and the broader literature on Muslim men, which largely vilifies them, have generated a particular reflection: this investigation has decolonised the experiences of Muslim men, who even in the ‘metropole’ are subjected to multiple, intersectional, and overlapping gazes that determine their position in society, and which go on to shaping their social experiences more broadly. Earlier, I argued that the decolonisation of Muslim men had been made possible as a result of (a) the embodiment of the ‘South’ by both the researcher and the researched, and (b) the resistance to the multiple and overlapping structural forms of oppression the researcher and the research (and thereby the researched) have been subjected to in and through the academy. This has not only resulted in the incorporation of the voices of subaltern and marginalised communities but also demonstrated the ‘doing’ of decolonial thought’ in practice and embodiment, while simultaneously subverting the gaze (see also Said 1978) towards the academy. In doing so, the research has reorientated Muslim men’s experiences within the academic spaces of knowledge production.

Future research initiatives should contribute to and continue to develop the line of enquiry with regard to decolonising Muslim men. An example of such research may include the exploration of Muslim men’s mental health experiences and access to services such as through the NHS or the police, which have often viewed migrant husbands as perpetrators and not victims of domestic violence. In recent years men’s mental health has received greater coverage and has been increasingly discussed through social media and news media and in popular culture. I have noted, however, that these conversations exclude Black and ethnic men, affording White men both the representation and support. For instance, in March 2019 a leading mental health charity in the United Kingdom, the Samaritans, tweeted: ‘Suicide is the biggest killer of men under 50, with men aged 20–59 at the biggest risk of suicide. Our new campaign shares real stories from men who’ve been through tough times, encouraging other men to seek help when they need it.’¹ The campaign video embedded within this tweet, however, featured only White Caucasian men talking about their mental health struggles; there were no Black and/or ethnic minority men included in this campaign video.² Similarly, in May 2019 The Guardian tweeted an article about two radio DJs (White Caucasian) claiming that they were changing the way men were talking about mental health (Hancox 2019).

Figure 6.1 Samaritans tweet regarding suicide levels among men, containing a link to their campaign video, which featured only White Caucasian men.

Figure 6.2 A tweet by The Guardian containing a link to an article about two White Caucasian DJs ‘changing the way men talk about mental health’.

As we know from social science research, positionality matters. By tweeting about mental health among men but featuring only White Caucasian men in doing so, these organisations with a large Twitter (now X) following, have in my view, created hierarchies in and between men along racial and ethnic lines, as to which men can and cannot talk about mental health, and to access mental health services. This further polarises men’s experiences, which will eventually manifest in varying – and hierarchical – societal behaviours and patterns in masculine performance.

A similar approach is undertaken in counter-extremism narratives, which intensify and fixate the gaze of the state on Muslim men, creating a one-dynamic and unnuanced narrative of Muslim men’s engagement with religion. As I explored in Chapter 4, the Sufi-scape of Birmingham suggests, however, that Muslim men engage in Islamic religious practice in new and creative ways, which gives rise to new masculinities among Muslim men. The implications of these new masculinities for marriage and family formation trends among British Muslims are currently unexplored, but they will hold valuable insights for demographic trends. Therefore, complementing my study on Muslim migrant men’s experiences in/through Britain, a study exploring aspirational, liminal, and spiritual masculinity among British-born Muslim men is necessary. Throughout my research I encountered and spoke with a number of British-born Muslim men, and found that there were parallels not only in their experiences with migrant husbands but also in the spaces they occupy. For instance, the Sufi-scape that many migrant husbands navigated was dominated by young British Muslim men. Although such encounters through my ethnographic fieldwork provide perhaps anecdotal evidence, my expertise within the field leads me to identify a positive correlation between low levels of educational attainment, disadvantaged residential area, high rates of unemployment, poverty, media representations of Muslim men, and crisis in masculinity, on the one hand, and the high numbers of young (18 to 30 years of age) British Muslim who had taken bayah with a Sufi brotherhood and attended weekly Sufi gatherings at one of the local zawiyas, on the other. Since these spaces are crucial in the construction of masculinity as demonstrated for Muslim migrant husbands, it is important to explore the way in which masculinity is constructed among British-born Muslim men in and through Sufi-scapes, and, furthermore, to explore the relationality of these British-born Muslim men with Muslim men born and raised elsewhere. A feminist ethnographic approach in which compassion is integral is crucial for this research; but it is equally important for this compassionate feminist ethnographic approach to be penalty-free within the structures of the academy for the researchers involved.