Geetanjali Gangoli

Forced marriage in the UK: Religious, cultural, economic or state violence?

Our paper is based on a qualitative empirical study of forced marriage in the UK and offers a multidimensional view which challenges four key points that are currently central in the forced marriage debate. First, the study explores the problematic of current UK and European Union policies on preventing forced marriage which focus on raising the age of sponsorship and marriage age for non-EU nationals migrating to the UK. Second, current conceptualizations of forced marriage focus on consent at the entry point into marriage. In contrast, survivors of forced marriage, and women’s organizations experienced in providing services to this group, both attach equal importance to exiting (forced) marriages. Third, within the forced marriage debate, South Asian and Muslim communities are perceived as being largely responsible for forced marriages, whilst our research demonstrates that the range of communities in which forced marriage occurs is much wider. Fourth, forced marriage is often seen as a product of a ‘backward’ culture or religion in a pathologizing manner. The narratives in our study illustrate the interplay between culture, religion, poverty and state practices including immigration practices which points to the need for a more sophisticated and nuanced understanding of forced marriage. We end our paper by outlining measures that could be put into place to support women experiencing forced marriage.

Immorality, Hurt or Choice: How Indian Feminists Engage with Prostitution

Abstract This article examines key trends within Indian feminist analysis on prostitution, and is based on primary fieldwork around feminist organizations in India and on research conducted on prostitution in the states of Maharashtra, Delhi, West Bengal and Orissa. The article argues that there are at least three ways in which Indian feminists have addressed the issue of prostitution – as silence, as hurt and violence and as potential choice and liberation. I suggest that all these perspectives are limited in that they do not necessarily take in the wide range of experiences encountered by women in prostitution, and may well feed into mainstream patriarchal views on prostitution. The first trope looks at the ways in which ‘mainstream’ Indian feminists did not raise issues of sexuality, thereby relegating questions of prostitute rights to the margins. The second approach is based on radical feminist critiques of prostitution as violence and hurt, and legitimizes itself by drawing on the articulations of those sex workers and activists who draw on the experiences of hurt, anguish, violence and coercion that form a part of their lives. Finally, I look at prostitute rights organizations that seek to create an alternative to these analyses.

Criminalising forced marriage: Debates in the UK

The issue of forced marriage has recently become the focus of both national and international debate (Schmidt and Jakobsen, 2004; FCO and HO, 2005). Forced marriage is a human rights violation, and its impact has significant gendered consequences. In cases regarding minors, forced marriage also has to be considered as a child abuse issue (Gangoli et al., 2006). However, recent initiatives in the UK have been criticised for their emphasis on encouraging immigrants to adopt ‘British’ values and avoid marrying partners from their country of origin (Razack, 2004). Further, commentators have argued that some proposals are more geared to control immigration into the UK than to tackle forced marriages. Evidence for this is supported by the recent consultation on increasing the entry age on a marriage or fiance visa for sponsors and applicants from 18 years to 21 or 24 as a way to combat forced marriage. The assumption behind this proposal is that many cases of forced marriage take place across international borders, and involve young people, who lack educational and professional independence to effectively refuse a forced marriage. This article examines the debates around criminalisation of forced marriage in the UK by looking at existing legal provisions on forced marriage; the national consultation on criminalisation; and will conclude by analysing criminalisation as a strategy to combat forced marriage.

Criminalising forced marriage

The issue of forced marriage has recently become the focus of both national and international debate (Schmidt and Jakobsen, 2004; FCO and HO, 2005). Forced marriage is a human rights violation, and its impact has significant gendered consequences. In cases regarding minors, forced marriage also has to be considered as a child abuse issue (Gangoli et al., 2006). However, recent initiatives in the UK have been criticised for their emphasis on encouraging immigrants to adopt ‘British’ values and avoid marrying partners from their country of origin (Razack, 2004). Further, commentators have argued that some proposals are more geared to control immigration into the UK than to tackle forced marriages. Evidence for this is supported by the recent consultation on increasing the entry age on a marriage or fiance visa for sponsors and applicants from 18 years to 21 or 24 as a way to combat forced marriage. The assumption behind this proposal is that many cases of forced marriage take place across international borders, and involve young people, who lack educational and professional independence to effectively refuse a forced marriage. This article examines the debates around criminalisation of forced marriage in the UK by looking at existing legal provisions on forced marriage; the national consultation on criminalisation; and will conclude by analysing criminalisation as a strategy to combat forced marriage.

The experience of interactional justice for victims of ‘honour’-based violence and abuse reporting to the police in England and Wales

ABSTRACT Interactional justice is concerned with how far victims feel (i) respected by justice officials (‘interpersonal justice’) and (ii) informed about the progress of their case and the justice process overall (‘informational justice’) [Laxminarayan, M., Henrichs, J., and Pemberton, A. (2012). Procedural and interactional justice: a comparative study of victims in the Netherlands and New South Wales. European journal of criminology, 9 (3), 260–275; Laxminarayan, M. (2013). Interactional justice, coping and the legal system: needs of vulnerable victims. International review of victimology, 19 (2), 145–158]. This paper explores the experience of interactional justice for victims of ‘honour’-based violence and abuse (HBVA) who report to the police in England and Wales. HBVA refers to abuse perpetrated with reference to ideas of ‘shame’ and ‘honour’. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 36 victims of HBVA across England. This paper documents their experience and extends the framework of interactional justice proposed by Laxminarayan et al. (2012). First, we identify intersectionality, in particular, the positions of gender, ethnicity and immigration status within the victim–officer encounter, as central to interpreting the interpersonal experiences of HBVA victims with police. Second, we find that how information is used and delivered can be as important as the content and timeliness of communication. Twenty of our sample of 36 participants were happy with the initial police response, but only 9 were happy with their reporting experience overall. We argue that focusing on HBVA victims’ interaction with justice actors could enable us to understand and improve HBVA victims’ experience of, and satisfaction with, the justice system overall.

Perception and barriers: reporting female genital mutilation

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the perceptions of and barriers to reporting female genital mutilation (FGM) by victims and survivors of FGM to the police in England and Wales. Design/methodology/approach The paper is based on 14 interviews conducted with adult survivors and victims of FGM. A combination of 1:1 and group interviews were used, based on the preference of the respondents. Respondents were recruited in collaboration with specialist non-governmental organisations and major stakeholders in the area of honour-based violence and black and minority ethnic communities. Findings A key finding in this research was that all victims/survivors the authors interviewed stated that they did not support the practice of FGM, and that they would not follow it for younger women in their own family. Second, the authors found that none of the respondents had reported their experience to the police. Third, they identified key barriers to reporting, which included: their belief that reporting their own experience would not serve any purpose because they had experienced FGM as children, and in another country; and that they did not feel able to report new incidents of FGM in the community because of a lack of trust in the police due to previous negative experiences. Finally, they believed that FGM could be prevented only by work within the community, and not through engagement with the criminal justice system. Originality/value This is, to our knowledge, one of the first papers that is based on victims and survivors’ perceptions that explores barriers to reporting cases of FGM to the police, and offers levers for change.

Muslim women and gender based violence in India and the UK

This article examines how the marginality of Muslim communities in India and the UK intersects with gender based violence (GBV) in Muslim communities. We briefly outline the socio-economic positioning of Muslims and then move on to (i) discuss communalism in India and radicalisation in the UK and (ii) consider personal laws in India and the call to Sharia law in the UK to elucidate the ways in which these wider policies, legislation and discourses impact on Muslim women experiencing GBV in both contexts. We conclude that there is a continuum between state responses and community responses, and personal and criminal law in entrenching GBV at a structural and interpersonal level in both India and the UK and that the current socio-political context further limits public spaces available to Muslim women to access support for GBV.