For Love or for Papers? Sham Marriages among Turkish (Potential) Migrants and Gender Implications
For Love or for Papers? Sham Marriages among Turkish (Potential) Migrants and Gender Implications

Author(s): Işık Kulu-Glasgow, Roel Jennisen, Monika Smit
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, Social Sciences, Gender Studies, Geography, Regional studies, Migration Studies
Published by: Transnational Press London
Keywords: gender; migration; marriage; Turkish; Netherlands;
Summary/Abstract: Under the impact of globalization and continuing migration flows to the European countries, marriage migration became an important way of immigration to these countries. The countries of the European Union (EU) apply restrictive marriage migration policies towards non-EU citizens. In addition to the implementation of stricter requirements transnational couples have to fulfill (e.g., regarding income and pre-integration of the immigrating partner even before migration), there has been increasing political attention to combat sham marriages. At the request of several European countries, the European Commission recently provided a Handbook with common guidelines to identify and combat sham marriages (COM/2014/284). According to the Handbook and the EU-directive that describes the rights of EU-citizens and their family members regarding their free movement within the EU (2004/38/EG), a marriage is considered to be sham if its sole purpose is to gain a residence permit for the potential immigrant partner.

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