WE ARE FROM DIFFERENT WORLDS: TRANSNATIONAL MIGRATION AND MIXED MARRIAGE

Abstract

Even when immigration and marriage are assessed separately, it is seen that they affect women's lives profoundly and in many cases bring some negative factors to their lives. In the case of women migrating abroad alone, although they are stronger than married or engaged women in terms of education and economic circumstances, it is not possible to say that they can escape violence completely. Especially, when an immigrant women marries to a man from a different national, many of them experience verbal, psychological and economical violence, contrary to their expectations. Mixed marriage brings two complicated processes together, and both immigration and marriage form a basis for the violence which emerges from the disadvantaged position of women. Marriages after immigration, deepen the loneliness, alienation of the women, finally cause xenophobia at significant level, and bring the sociological context and construction of the violence into the agenda. This study focuses on violence against women in mixed marriages, together with the cultural tensions. The research was designed according to the qualitative/feminist approach in terms of methodological orientation, and aims to visualize the phenomenon with female experiences. The data obtained from the deep interviews and observations made between January and June of 2016 with 15 women who had been emigrated from Turkey to London. After qualitative analysis of interviews, it is understood that women with Turkish origins and with mixed marriages, experience violence in many ways, contrary to their expectation of the marriage, and the xenophobic tendencies are more intensely present in British husbands and their families compare to the husbands from other nations