B07 The Impact of the Border Regime on the Immigration of Spouses from Non-EU Countries into the European Union. The Case of Russian Marriage Migration to Germany

Principal Investigator

Prof. Dr. Irene Götz

Researcher

Alena Zelenskaia

Project Description

The subsequent immigration of spouses from Third World countries subject to visa requirements to the European Union takes place in an institutionally controlled space. The review of marriage migrants is carried out in a space caught between constitutional rights and migration management, so that before entry into the EU can be granted various administrative bodies have to survey and inspect the individual. Consulates are tasked with determining which marriages are "worthy of protection", in accordance with the German constitution, and which were merely registered for immigration purposes. Cultural norms play an important role (for example, unions of love versus marriages of convenience). As a marriage cannot really be proven to be "legitimate" one way or another, and the validity of a union is defined using culturally coded characteristics, administrative bodies use different strategies and practices to position couples on a scale stretching from "not suspicious" to "abusing the marriage migration system/fraudulent". The Goethe Institutes are also partly responsible for the testing of spousal immigrants.

The aim of the project is to highlight, using a multi-perspective approach, the cultural value system of all participants, as well as the practices used, within this closely monitored space. In order to do so, a keen focus will be on case studies relating to marriage migration from Russia to Germany and the project will investigate how the relevant institutions in Russia conduct checks into spouses wishing to immigrate to Germany and how couples cope with them.