Forced marriage as a lived experience: Victims’ voices
| Date | 01 September 2020 |
| Published date | 01 September 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0269758019897145 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Forced marriage as a lived
experience: Victims’ voices
Carolina Villacampa
University of Lleida, Spain
Abstract
The official response to forced marriage in the majority of European countries has been to
criminalise the practice. Based on racial stereotypes and outdated Orientalist perspectives, this
overlooks the prior need for appropriate empirical analysis in order to better understand the
reality of the practice being regulated, and fails to provide victims with the means of protection
they need beyond the framework of criminal law. Devising a suitable and effective strategy to
address this form of victimisation instead requires an in-depth understanding of the effects that
victims of these practices endure, and of what the victims themselves would consider best practice
in terms of assistance and protection. In view of these primary objectives, after the existence of
forced marriages in Spain had been demonstrated by the corresponding quantitative research, a
qualitative research study followed, which was conducted through interviews with victims of
forced marriage. The results are presented here. The secondary aim of the study was to draw up
the basic guidelines for an integrated programme of action to address this process of victimisation.
Keywords
Forced marriage, victims’ experiences, effects of vict imisation, victim support received, victim
support intended
Introduction
Forced marriage is generally understood as a marriage that is held without the consent of one or
both parties (FRA, 2014). The most traditional definitions only recognise cases in which coercion
or agreement under duress is used to force one or both parties to marry, thus differentiating the
practice from arranged marriage (Anitha and Gill, 2011a; Home Office, 2000; HM Government,
2010; Igareda, 2017). However, it has increasingly become the norm to understand such cases
within a framework of gender-based violence (Bunting et al., 2016; Gill and Anitha, 2011a) and
Corresponding author:
Carolina Villacampa, Department of Public Law, University of Lleida, Campus de Cappont, C. de Jaume II, 73, 25001 Lleida,
Spain.
Email: cvillacampa@dpub.udl.cat
International Review of Victimology
2020, Vol. 26(3) 344–367
ªThe Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0269758019897145
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through an intersectional lens, according to which processes of power and subordination in post-
modern society are not only explained by the binary system of sex and gender, but by a multiplicity
of factors, such as race, class and gender (Crenshaw, 1989, 1991; Nixon and Humphreys, 2010;
Sokoloff and Dupont, 2005). Applying this approach to the phenomenon under analysis here
results in the adoption of a concept of forced marriage less attached to the binary conceptualisation
of coercion and consent (Anitha and Gill, 2011a) and, as a consequence, a more comprehensive
definition, thus blurring the distinction between this category and arranged marriage. According to
this more contemporary conceptualisation of forced marriage, also sustained here, it is accepted
that methods of force might not necessarily involve violence or the threat of violence, but could
also be carried out by means of coercive control (Anitha and Gill, 2009, 2011a). Moreover, as well
as being forced to enter into a marriage against their will, victims may continue to endure coercion
throughout its term, which could pre vent any potential termination (Gan goli et al., 2011). In
addition, if forced marriage is understood as a process – a pattern of behaviour more than an
event, among other possible consequences of the assumption of a broader concept of this phenom-
enon – it can also encompass cases in which women have not yet been forced into marriage but are
at risk of being so (Chantler and McCarry, 2019), as is shown in this article.
Various international bodies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have condemned the
practice of forced marriage on a global scale, particularly marriages in which one or both of the
parties are under age (UNICEF 2001, 2008, 2014). Eurocentric perspectives (based on Orientalist
ideas) on the patronising western representation of eastern societies as static and undeveloped
(Naber, 2010; Said, 1979) and on racial stereotypes have often led to an improper association of the
practice with cultural minorities. In recent years, however, studies conducted in western countries
have refuted such ideas to reveal that forced marriage is a reality that also occurs in western
societies as a form of gender-based violence (Anitha and Gill, 2011b; Chantler et al., 2009; Patton,
2018; Razack, 2004). In effect, a UNICEF report issued in 2014 indicated that, although uncom-
mon, forced marriage was indeed practised in western countries as well (UNICEF, 2014). In the
USA, although this question has only very recently received legal attention (Love et al., 2018;
Martin, 2018), an extensive research study was conducted by the Tahirih Justice Centre in 2011 in
which a total of 500 assistance organisations revealed that there had been as many as 3000 cases in
the country in the preceding two years (Tahirih Justice Centre, 2011). In Europe, th e Forced
Marriage Unit was created in 2005 as a victim support unit in the UK and has published annual
quantitative data on forced marriage in the country since 2012, claiming to have made between
1,200 and 1,400 annual interventions since then. In 2017, the number of cases assisted was 1,196,
with a high proportion involving victims under the age of 18 (29.7%), as well as women and girls
(77.8%); the countries of origin were also diverse (Home Office, 2018). Germany has also con-
ducted a national assessment of forced marriage (Mirbach et al., 2011), which revealed that in 2008
as many as 3,443 women and girls sought advice from various entities and organisations. Of these,
70%were under the age of 21, and 30%were under the age of 18. In Italy, a research study
conducted in 2009 by the organisation Associazione Trama di Terre detected 33 cases in the
Emilia-Romagna region (Trama di Terre, 2014), all except three of which involved women and
girls. A study conducted by Hamel in 2011 demonstrated the existence of the practice in France,
and showed that the proportion of non-consensual marriages was higher among immigrant women
aged between 51 and 60 than among those aged between 26 and 30, which led them to conclude
that the practice was in clear decline in France (Hamel, 2011). In Spain, data on the subject have
been very limited until very recently. Most have been sourced from police records in Catalonia,
although qualitative data were also obtained more recently from the MATRIFOR project, which
Villacampa 345
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