UK Initiatives on Forced Marriage: Regulation, Dialogue and Exit
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2004.00494.x |
| Published date | 01 October 2004 |
| Date | 01 October 2004 |
| Author | Moira Dustin,Anne Phillips |
| Subject Matter | Article |
UK Initiatives on Forced Marriage:
Regulation, Dialogue and Exit
Anne Phillips and Moira Dustin
London School of Economics
The literature on feminism and multiculturalism has identified potential conflicts between the
recognition of cultural diversity and securing women’s equality. Three broad approaches to this
dilemma have emerged in the practices of contemporary states: regulation, working with the com-
munities, and exit. Each of these is apparent in current initiatives regarding forced marriage, but
the overwhelming emphasis in the UK has been on enabling individuals to exit from the threat
or reality of a forced marriage. In assessing these initiatives, this paper highlights the limitations
of exit and the danger of moving towards immigration regulation as the preferred solution.
Although the multicultural nature of European societies is increasingly acknowl-
edged, the policy implications are more contested. When cultural diversity is
ignored or denied, there is a danger that public policy will write in the practices
and assumptions of majority groups as unquestioned norms. Members of minor-
ity groups may then find themselves less protected than others in their cultural or
religious practices; they may even be coerced into replicating majority behaviour
in order to conform with the law. But moving from an arrogant assimilationism to
a hands-off toleration also carries risks, and especially so when what is represented
as the ‘tradition’ of a minority cultural group turns out to bear more heavily on
some members than on others. As a growing feminist literature on multicultural-
ism argues (see, for example, Okin, 1998; Shachar, 2001), this is particularly likely
to happen when the traditions in question order the relations of women to men
or of young people to old. In such circumstances, a ‘live and let live’ approach to
cultural difference can undermine the rights of young people and women.
In the theoretical literature and practices of contemporary states, three broad solu-
tions have emerged; we roughly categorise these as regulation, dialogue and exit.
The first is relatively unselfconscious about the epistemological or ethical problems
associated with cultural difference. It presumes, without too much question, that
particular principles of behaviour are right, and either overlooks or dismisses the
possibility that what are conceived of as universal principles of rectitude might be
more parochial reflections of a particular history. It therefore sees little reason to
worry about the power relations involved in requiring all cultural groups to abide
by the same norms of conduct. More precisely, it may recognise certain difficulties
in imposing norms of behaviour, but it usually considers these in practical rather
than ethical terms. It may be, for example, that criminalising a practice can have
the unwelcome effect of driving it underground; or that intervening against what
are deemed the unacceptable practices of a minority group can end up reinforcing
ethno-cultural stereotypes, demonising cultural minorities, and encouraging racist
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2004 VOL 52, 531–551
© Political Studies Association, 2004.
Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
532 ANNE PHILLIPS AND MOIRA DUSTIN
attacks. For these and other reasons, it may be necessary to exercise considerable
tolerance of difference. But even when adopting policies of non-intervention,
adherents of this first approach are largely untroubled by doubts about which prin-
ciples are right.
The second approach is more willing to recognise that values are formed within
particular cultural contexts. It favours a dialogic encounter between majority and
minority communities in order to arrive at generally acceptable norms of conduct
(see, for example, Deveaux, 2000; Benhabib, 2002). One leading UK proponent is
Bhikhu Parekh, who argues that it is possible to arrive at a body of universally
valid values, but that these are ‘too thin and few to cover all important areas of
life’ (2000, p. 266). Once fleshed out into a more substantial body of prescriptions,
values inevitably embody partial and historically specific conceptions of the good
life. Although Parekh considers it entirely legitimate that the ‘operative public
values’ of a society should serve as the starting point for a debate on minority
practices, these should not be taken as ‘a crude and non-negotiable standard’ for
evaluating other ways of life (p. 270). When there are deep moral and cultural dis-
agreements, it is not appropriate to treat the values of one group as ‘trumping’ the
values of another. The priority, rather, is for inter-cultural dialogue in which each
group has to justify – and reflect on – its own concerns. The outcome may still be
public intervention against particular practices, but any such initiative should be
preceded by open-ended discussion that allows for revision on all sides.
This usefully avoids a pre-emptive appeal to prevailing principles, but it also risks
representing cultural communities as more internally homogeneous than they are.
As activist groups have long argued, it is usually the more powerful members of
the minority community who are called on to act as ‘gatekeepers’ between major-
ity and minority communities, and it is their version of a community’s practices
that then figures most prominently in inter-cultural debate (see, for example,
Southall Black Sisters, 2001). Where this is the case, the multicultural resolution
of disputed practices can lead to particularly conservative codifications of group
norms. So although the dialogue approach – or what, in policy terms, is better
described as ‘working with the communities’ – more successfully curtails the
epistemological arrogance of the majority or dominant group, it may not be so
effective in protecting less powerful members of a minority group.
The third approach is by far the least interventionist. Refraining from direct action
that would regulate or criminalise the practices of a minority cultural group, it
stresses the right of individuals to exit from their group if they are dissatisfied with
their treatment. In his classic statement of this position, Chandran Kukathas (1992,
2003) argues that the right to freedom of association must include the right to live
by the norms of one’s cultural association, and that governments are not justified
in intervening in the management of these associations, even when their practices
go against what have been thought fundamental principles of justice. The corol-
lary of the freedom to associate is the freedom to disassociate, and it is this, rather
than paternalistic state intervention, that should be viewed as the primary protec-
tion against cultural pressures. When public authorities set out to ‘protect’ indi-
viduals from their cultural group, their actions have often been highly damaging
– one notable illustration being the post-war Australian policy of removing lighter-
To continue reading
Request your trial