Relationships at risk: Family migration, regulation and communication

Agusita, Emma

Abstract

This paper reflects on the findings of a research study investigating the communications practices of partners and families geographically separated due to restrictive UK immigration controls. The study examined the nature and effects of cross-border separation for partners and families, focusing on ways in which people engage in transnational communication in order to maintain emotional connections when apart. The stories and accounts of affected partners and families as well as accounts from family immigration caseworkers and advocates reveal particular narratives of risk associated with people’s struggles to be together and to remain together. Under the spectre of hostile immigration control and within the context of increasing migrant datafication, visa applicants are required to provide evidenced accounts of the subsistence and substance of their personal relationships as part of satisfying a raft of complex visa regulations. These accounts are expected to conform to ‘normative display of genuineness’ (Carver, 2014) and to compliment the fulfilment of other mandates such as financial requirements which demand applicants meet a minimum income threshold. Failure to conform risks rejection and ultimately separation. The study found that families and partners are continuously faced with navigating risks and threats to their relationships associated with the imposition of these measures, which disproportionately impact ethnic minorities, women and young people in particular. For example, arising from financial imperatives or the pressure to conform to and demonstrate ideal relationship types. Consequently, affected partners and families, without exception, reported adverse impacts on their physical and mental well-being. This paper explores how visa applicants, their partners and families and migration advisors consider the enaction, performance and presentation of familial relationships through a lens of risk primarily constituted through these state processes of social sorting and movement regulation.

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: Risky Relationships: Navigating Immigration Regulation in Family and Intimate Relationships
• Start Date: Mar 27, 2019
• End Date: Mar 28, 2019
• Deposit Date: Dec 2, 2022
• Keywords: Migration, Immigration, Family Separation, Communication
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/10198368