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Court decisions over marriagemigration in Finland: a problem withtransnational family tiesJohanna Leinonen & Saara PellanderPublished online: 23 Oct 2013.

To cite this article: Johanna Leinonen & Saara Pellander (2014) Court decisions over marriagemigration in Finland: a problem with transnational family ties, Journal of Ethnic and MigrationStudies, 40:9, 1488-1506, DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.2013.846825

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Court decisions over marriage migrationin Finland: a problem with transnationalfamily tiesJohanna Leinonen and Saara Pellander

Within the growing amount of scholarship on transnational families and familyreunification policies in Europe, studies that consider both transnational familyconstellations and the regulation of marriage and family migration rarely intersect. Thisarticle considers both migrants’ transnational family ties and nation-states’ efforts torestrict border-crossing family formation by showing how migrants’ transnationalfamilies can be used as the grounds for being refused entry by immigration authorities.Through the case study on Finland, we analyse the processes at work whentransnational family ties meet the legal norms as interpreted by immigration authoritiesand courts. Our research leads to three main conclusions. First, our study illustrateshow nation-states fail to recognise the existence and importance of multi-sited familyties when regulating marriage migration. Second, we show how marriage migration ofcertain groups such as the elderly is poorly understood both by immigration authoritiesand scholars, and thus argue for the importance of an intersectional approach whenstudying the regulation of marriage migration. Third, our analysis shows how legalanalyses on the regulation of marriage migration can and should pay attention to theagency of transnational couples when they try to get their marriage recognised byimmigration authorities.

Keywords: Transnational Families; Marriage Migration; Court Appeals; IntersectionalApproach; Elderly Migrants

Johanna Leinonen holds a Ph.D. Degree in History from the University of Minnesota and is a Post-doctoralResearcher at the Turku Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Turku, Finland. Correspondence to: JohannaLeinonen, Turku Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Turku, Kaivokatu 12, 20014 Turku, Finland. E-mail:johlei@utu.fi. Saara Pellander holds her Master’s Degree in Political History from the University of Turku, Finlandand is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Political and Economic Studies at the University of Helsinki.Correspondence to: Saara Pellander, Department of Political and Economic Studies, University of Helsinki,Helsinki, Finland. E-mail: saara.pellander@helsinki.fi

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2014Vol. 40, No. 9, 1488–1506, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2013.846825

© 2013 Taylor & Francis

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Introduction

Marriages that cross national borders are increasingly being evaluated by Europeanpolicy-makers, immigration officials, and national and international courts. Author-ities regulating marriage migration typically focus on assessing whether the marriagein question can be considered as ‘real’ or ‘genuine’ (Charsley and Benson 2012;Eggebø 2013); they try to estimate whether migrants’ marital ties qualify as family lifethat should be legally protected. When migrants seek family reunification with theirchildren, parents, or other family members, authorities focus not so much on loveand intimacy but on relationships that can be verified either by proving biological tiesor through existing care dependencies (La Spina 2012). At the same time, authoritiesfail to take into account migrants’ multiple roles in a family: while migrants mayapply for a residence permit on the basis of marriage, for example, they are not onlyspouses but often also someone’s daughters, sons, mothers, or fathers. Despitethe fact that migration regulations contain somewhat different criteria for estimatingthe validity of relationship between spouses and other relatives, family ties beyond themarital relationship can play an important role when authorities assess marriagemigrants’ applications. This is the point that this article will discuss.

Migration scholarship has increasingly paid attention to the diversity of migrantfamily life, which is reflected by a growing body of literature on transnational families(Baldassar and Merla 2013; de Bruine et al. 2013; Gouldbourne et al. 2013). Thesestudies offer important insights into the ways people create and maintain transna-tional family ties despite the tightening migration regulations. Most European nation-states try to limit or even prevent certain forms of transnational family formation, inparticular arranged (Bredal 2005; Schmidt 2011) and forced (Ballard 2006; Phillipsand Dustin 2004) marriages. Policy makers in Europe see transnational family ties asan ‘easy’ migration route for migrants originating from the Global South, andtherefore have called for the restrictions on family reunification. A growing amountof migration scholarship explores how the regulation of family migration intersectswith gender roles and expectations (Bonjour and de Hart 2013; de Hart 2006; vanWalsum 2008).

Until recently, studies on transnational family constellations and the regulation ofmarriage migration have rarely intersected (see, however, Charsley 2012; Grillo 2008;Kraler et al. 2012). This is true in particular in scholarship that looks at marriagesbetween migrants and citizens of a certain country (who themselves have nomigratory background). To contribute to this understudied intersection of researchareas, our article considers both migrant spouses’ transnational family ties andnation-states’ efforts to restrict border-crossing family formation by showing howmigrants’ transnational family ties can be used as the grounds for being refused entry,even when the sponsoring spouse is a citizen. In contrast to most of the literature onlaws and regulations targeting family migrants (see, however, Eggebø 2013), we stressmigrants’ own agency in defending their cases in court. We analyse, through the case

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study on Finland, the processes at work when transnational family ties meet the legalnorms as interpreted by immigration authorities and courts.

Finland offers a Nordic case study on the study of regulation of marriagemigration. Marriage migration is a central theme in immigration debates in theNordic countries. Norway and Denmark in particular are known for their restrictivepolicies for family migrants. While being considered part of the Nordic community insocioeconomic and cultural terms, Finland’s migration history bears more resemb-lance to migration patterns in eastern and southern Europe than those found in theother Nordic countries. This ‘borderline’ position makes Finland a particularlyinteresting case in both the Nordic and the European context.

While debates in the other Nordic countries tend to focus on families formed bymigrants themselves, in Finland, the focus has been (until recently, see Horsti andPellander 2012; Lippert and Pyykkönen 2012) on marriages formed by Finnishcitizens and their spouses from the Global South. Our study also focuses on cases inwhich one spouse is a Finnish citizen (with no migrant background) and the other anon-European Union (EU)/European Economic Area (EEA) citizen. By looking atthe implementation of Finland’s Aliens Acts of 1991 and 2004 by the HelsinkiAdministrative Court in 2000 and 2005, we analyse the disjuncture between legaldefinitions of ‘acceptable’ married life and the reality of transnational familyrelations. Our research leads to three main conclusions. First, our study illustrateshow nation-states fail to recognise the existence and importance of transnationalfamily relationships and multi-sited family ties when regulating marriage migration.Second, we show how marriage migration of certain groups such as the elderly ispoorly understood both by immigration authorities and by migration scholars, andthus argue for the importance of an intersectional approach when studying theregulation of marriage migration. Third, our analysis shows how scholars examiningthe regulation of marriage migration through legal documents can and should payattention to the agency of transnational couples when they try to get their marriagerecognised by immigration authorities.

The article is divided into three analytical parts. In the first part, we focus ontransnational family ties of marriage migrants to Finland. While one could assumethat an applicant who already has family members living in Finland would havebetter chances of gaining residency, we found that this was often not the case. On thecontrary, the existence of family ties in Finland beyond the marriage to a Finnishcitizen could work against the foreign citizen’s application. In the second part, weextend our analysis by showing how transnational family ties worked against theappellant also in cases in which the migrant had family members in the country oforigin. In other words, the existing transnational family ties of the migrant spousecould jeopardise her or his residence permit application, regardless of the geograph-ical location of these family ties. In the third part, we highlight the agency of migrantsas they formulate their appeals to the Court together with their lawyers. We foundthat the appellants often appealed to shifting understandings of gender rolesdepending on what they thought the Court expected. In some cases, they appealed

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to traditional gender roles in the family, in which the man was the provider, while inothers, they highlighted the husband’s more ‘modern’ role as a caring father andhusband. In addition, they sometimes appropriated popular cultural stereotypesregarding the migrant spouse’s country of origin, if that seemed to benefit their case.Thus, common understandings of gender roles and family life in Finland and in‘non-Western’ countries intersected in the appellants’ responses to the immigrationofficials. In other words, the argumentation used by the appellants formed a kind of atransnational space in which notions regarding Finnish and ‘non-Western societies’and traditional and modern gender roles came together in ways that the appellantsthought would satisfy the authorities.

Sources and Methods

The main body of source material is composed of court cases from 2000 and 20051

involving non-EU/EEA citizens whose residence permit application based onmarriage to a Finnish citizen was refused by the Finnish Immigration Service (FIS),and who then appealed to the Helsinki Administrative Court.2 If a foreign citizenreceives a negative decision on her or his residence permit application from the FIS,she or he may appeal to an administrative court. There are eight administrative courtsin Finland. However, the majority (around 70–80%) of cases within the category of‘alien affairs’ (ulkomaalaisasiat) were processed in the Helsinki Administrative Courtin the 2000s. The rejection rate in the Helsinki Administrative Court of appeals tofamily reunification cases fluctuated between 50% and 68% between 2001 and 2010(Statistics Finland 2011a). After rejection, the foreign citizen may still appeal to theSupreme Administrative Court. If the Administrative Court overturns the Service’sdecision, the case is sent back to the FIS for new processing.

The cases were identified by an information specialist at the archives of theAdministrative Court using the keywords ‘residence permit’, ‘marriage’, and‘Finnish citizen’. There were 87 appeals containing those combined search wordsin 2000 and 130 in 2005. In both years, there were more foreign men among theappellants: in 2000, about 63% and in 2005 about 75% of the appeals were submittedby a foreign man (or on behalf of a foreign man). The nationality groups thatappeared most often among the appellants were Russians, Turks, and Nigerians in2000 and Turks, Moroccans, and Russians in 2005. While the appealing parties fromTurkey, Nigeria, and Morocco were predominantly male, a majority of Russianappellants were women. These differences in the gender distribution reflect thegeneral patterns of marriage migration to Finland, as presented in the next section. Ofthese groups, Turkish and Nigerian men had lower acceptance rates that the averagemale applicant, while Moroccan men and Russian women had higher than averageacceptance rates (see Table 1). Documents included in the court files were varied:most often the file contained only the Court’s decision, with summaries of theappellants’ plea and the earlier decision of the FIS or, in some cases, the JurisdictionalDistrict of the Helsinki Police Department. Sometimes the file also included other

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materials, such as the original FIS decision, supporting documents provided by theappellant(s), and so on.

In our analysis, we entered the information retrieved from the court material into atable, in which we had created separate columns for arguments used by the appellantand the Court and/or immigration officials. We paid special attention to thestatements made by the appellants and the officials about gender roles, familymembers, and ideas regarding ‘acceptable’ family life. This table was used to drawconclusions about which notions of family life and gender roles appeared in thematerial most commonly. The analytical questions that we followed throughout ourdata (see Moran-Ellis et al. 2006, 54) focused on the existence of family ties andarticulations regarding husband’s and wife’s roles in societies of departure anddestination, as they stood out as the ones that were often implicitly activated whenthe appellants and immigration officials made statements about the ‘validity’ of themarriage in question. Finally, we analysed single cases in detail to produce examplesof the most common ways of using transnational family ties and transnationalunderstandings of gender roles both by the appellants and by the officials.

International Marriages in Finland

During the mid-1990s marriages between Finns and foreigners started to increasemore rapidly in Finland. There were 25,600 marriages and cohabiting unions betweenFinnish-born and foreign-born in 1994, and the number more than doubled to 61,100by 2010. The main reason for the increase in the number of international marriageslikely lies in the rising numbers of migrants arriving in Finland since the early 1990s,as well as in the growing global mobility of Finnish professionals, students, tourists,and so on. Emigration from Finland was larger than immigration to the country upuntil the 1980s. During the time when many western and northern European nationsaccepted large numbers of guest workers—from the 1950s to the 1970s—Finland still

Table 1. Decisions on residence permit applications based on marriage to a Finnishcitizen by foreign spouse’s citizenship and acceptance percentage (November 2010–

December 2011).

Wife’s citizenship N Accepted (%) Husband’s citizenship N Accepted (%)

Thailand 496 93.8 Turkey 130 83.1Russia 425 95.1 USA 98 99.0Philippines 94 96.8 Iraq 62 75.8Vietnam 86 66.3 Russia 61 96.7China 84 96.4 Kosovo 60 85.0Brazil 46 100.0 Nigeria 56 64.3USA 46 95.7 Gambia 55 81.8Japan 40 100.0 Egypt 51 94.1Ukraine 34 88.2 Morocco 38 89.5Turkey 30 90.0 Somalia 32 50.0All foreign women 1824 92.9 All foreign men 1263 86.9

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struggled with structural changes in the country’s economy. Starting in the 1980s,Finland became more fully integrated into global migration streams: the number offoreign citizens in the country first doubled from 13,000 in 1980 to about 26,000 in1990. By 2011, the number had multiplied to 183,000 (Statistics Finland 2012).

Foreign spouses of Finnish men and women originate from rather differentcountries, as Table 2 illustrates (Statistics Finland 2011b). While there are no studiesavailable that would explain these gendered patterns of international marriages inFinland, it is evident that they reflect partly changing forms of Finnish mobilityabroad. For example, the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Germanyhave been for decades the most popular destinations of Finnish students going abroad,and Finnish women study abroad more often than Finnish men (Koikkalainen 2009).These countries also number among the top 10 nations of origin of foreign husbandsof Finnish women. Furthermore, increasing tourism from Finland to countries such asThailand and Turkey plays an important role in the rising number of internationalmarriages. Finally, these marriage patterns found in Finland reflect broader trends inglobalising marriage markets—or ‘marriage-scapes’, as coined by Nicole Constable(2005). The marriage trends ‘reflect and are propelled by fantasies and imaginingsabout gender, sexuality, tradition, and modernity’ (Constable 2005, 7).

Despite the fact that a large portion of foreign spouses of Finns—in particularhusbands of Finnish women—originate from Western industrialised nations, theirmarriages are largely invisible in public discussions surrounding marriage migrants inFinland. For example, Finland’s largest daily, Helsingin Sanomat, regularly discussesissues such as the ‘mail-order bride’ industry, the connection between internationalmatch-making and sex trade, and the alleged increases in immigration marriage fraudcases. In these reports, there are certain groups of foreign spouses that appear muchmore regularly than others, namely Thai, Filipino, and Russian women or Turkish,African, and Middle Eastern men (Leinonen forthcoming). In other words, Finnishmedia depicts certain groups of foreign spouses as more problematic than others,depending on the foreign spouse’s gender and country of origin.

Table 2. Top-10 nationalities of Finnish men’s and women’s foreign spouses (married,cohabiting, or in a registered partnership) in 2010.

Wife’s nationality N Husband’s nationality N

Russia 3914 Sweden 2305Thailand 3062 Britain 1782Estonia 2446 Russia 1289Sweden 1314 Germany 1211China 677 Estonia 878Germany 557 Turkey 828The Philippines 422 USA 820USA 383 Italy 583Vietnam 383 The Netherlands 549Japan 314 France 459

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An interesting observation is that while the groups of foreign spouses that are most(negatively) visible in the media were women associated with commercially basedmarriages (Thai, Filipino, and Russian women), this media publicity does not seem toinfluence their chances of gaining residency in Finland. Statistics of residence permitapplications submitted on the basis of marriage to a Finnish citizen (processed by theFIS in 2010–2011) reveal that these three groups of foreign wives had a higher-than-average acceptance rate: over 93% of their applications were approved by the FIS(Table 1).3 While we had numerous cases involving Russian women in our court files,this simply reflects the fact that Finnish men’s foreign wives most often originatefrom Russia. The acceptance percentage for Russian women in 2010–2011 was about95%, higher than the average for all foreign wives (92.9%). The correspondingpercentage for foreign husbands of Finnish citizen women was several percentagepoints lower, 86.9%. Certain groups of foreign husbands, who are also visible in theFinnish media, had lower-than-average acceptance percentages. For example, 83.1%of Turkish men’s and 75.8% of Iraqi men’s applications were successful. Even loweracceptance percentages can be found among certain groups of African men: only64.3% of Nigerian men’s applications were approved. The percentage was the lowestfor men originating from Somalia. In contrast, the highest acceptance percentage canbe found among Americans, 99% (cf. Charsley and Benson 2012, 22–23).

These figures suggest gendered and racialised limitations to transnational familyformation. While the number of foreign wives has exceeded the number of foreignhusbands since 1997, foreign men are more likely to be denied residency. Themajority of appellants in the Court were also foreign men both in 2000 and in 2005,as noted above. Thus, as Helena Wray (2011, 16–17) points out, while immigrationlaw is formally gender-neutral, ‘men, particularly non-white men, have frequentlybeen the victims of gender-based beliefs about marriage migration’. For example,men are more often than women assumed to have economic incentives for finding aspouse abroad (Charsley and Benson 2012, 24). Men originating from certain parts ofthe world—in particular from certain African and Middle Eastern countries—aremore susceptible to allegations of immigration marriage fraud—a stereotype that isbolstered by the Finnish media (see also de Hart 2009, 236, 246). Even though womenfrom Russia, Thailand, and the Philippines are often associated negatively withcommercially based marriages in public discussions, their marriage migration is stillless often denied by immigration officials. Thus, while both non-Western men andwomen may be associated with immigration marriage fraud, marriage migration of‘disadvantaged women’ can be ‘socially acceptable means (…) to achieve a measureof social and economic mobility’ (Palriwala and Uberoi 2008, 24).

Furthermore, the foreign spouse’s migration status, combined with gender andnational origin, may make certain groups of foreign spouses prone to suspicions ofimmigration marriage fraud. This is the case in particular if the applicant originallyarrived in the country to seek asylum. Betty de Hart (2009, 251) found that marriagescontracted during asylum procedures were often interpreted as ‘an evasion ofimmigration policies’. Our research also suggests that persons—usually men—who

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apply for a residence permit based on marriage after a negative asylum/residencepermit decision by the FIS, or who are subject to deportation proceedings, seem to beparticularly susceptible to suspicions of immigration fraud. In our data, the cases inwhich a foreign citizen had applied for an asylum before marrying a Finnish citizeninvolved most often men from Turkey and Nigeria. For example, in 2005, more thanhalf of the cases involving a foreign citizen who had first arrived in Finland as anasylum-seeker involved a man from these two countries. This partially explains thelow acceptance percentage of residence permit applications submitted by these twonationality groups in Table 1. Indeed, a Finnish immigration official admitted in anarticle published in Helsingin Sanomat on 1 December 2002 that ‘if deportationproceedings are under way, the marriage contracted during that time can be regardedas fraudulent. In those cases there are not such family ties that would require grantinga residence permit’.

The statistics on residence permit applications by spouses of Finnish citizensoriginating from so-called ‘third-countries’ suggest that gender, national origin, andmigration status of the foreign spouse play an important role in the outcome of thatapplication. In what follows, we analyse how family ties of the foreign spouse can alsoinfluence her or his residence permit application negatively, whether these family tiesare in Finland or in the migrant’s country of origin.

Family Members in Finland—Obstacles to Immigration?

Finland, as a member state of the Council of Europe, has ratified the EuropeanConvention on Human Rights (ECHR). In the analysed court cases, the applicantsoften appealed to the Article 8 of the ECHR, which provides a right to respect forone’s ‘private and family life’. Our analysis shows that Finnish immigrationauthorities often reduce this ‘family life’ protected by the Article 8 to the relationshipbetween husband and wife. Appellants with relatives residing in Finland mentionedthese relatives in their appeals as a proof of their already-existing ties to the country.However, our research indicates that the strength of the applicants’ familial affiliationto Finland beyond the marriage to a Finnish citizen is often irrelevant to theauthorities, or if relevant, the existing ties to family members other than the spousecan form an obstacle for gaining a residence permit. We show furthermore thattransnational family relations are subject to multiple intersecting axes of exclusion onthe basis of foreign spouse’s gender, age, class, and nationality.

To illustrate these points, we explore two cases of Russian women who applied fora residence permit in Finland based on marriage to a Finnish man. Overall, Russianapplicants were most likely to mention relatives living in Finland in their appeals—presumably because of the large number of Russian migrants living in Finland andthe geographical proximity between the countries. In these cases, ‘family life’ withfamily members other than the spouse in Finland influenced the Court’s decisionsnegatively. The cases in which the applicant and other family members residedtogether seem to have been most susceptible to suspicions of immigration fraud, as

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we discuss below. In addition, immigration officials and the Court suspected fraud ifthe address in Finland stated by the applicant at the border was not that of the spouse(e.g. HHO 05/0340/5) or if the invitation to Finland (which Russian citizens arerequired to have for a visitor’s visa) was made by another family member than thespouse (e.g. HHO 05/0117/3; HHO 05/0489/5).

In the case of ‘Jelena’, the fact that she lived with her daughter, a resident ofFinland, and not with her Finnish husband during her stays in the country formed anobstacle for getting a residence permit based on marriage (HHO 05/1088/05). Jelenahad visited her daughter in Finland numerous times starting in 1998. After marryingFinnish ‘Ari’ in 2003, Jelena still stayed with her daughter. Jelena and Ari pointed outin their appeal to the Court that Ari’s apartment was not in good condition and thusunsuitable for the elderly couple to live in. They were waiting for Ari to be granted abetter apartment by the municipality. They also explained that their poor financialsituation did not allow them to see each other more frequently, as Ari and Jelena’sdaughter did not live in the same town. Their appeal was rejected by the Court, whichhighlighted Jelena’s visits to her daughter before and after the marriage and claimedthat Jelena’s ‘alleged limited means’ could not be the reason for the married coupleseeing each other so rarely.

Also ‘Svetlana’, who married ‘Jorma’ in June 1999, lived in Finland with herdaughter and was rejected by the FIS on similar grounds as Jelena (HHO 00/1214/7).Svetlana and Jorma had met in Moscow in the mid-1990s, and the couple had seeneach other regularly during Svetlana’s visits to see her daughter in Finland. The FISsuspected marriage fraud because Svetlana and Jorma lived in the same address asSvetlana’s daughter and granddaughter. The appealing party stressed to the Courtthat it was not uncommon for different family members to live together, and thatthere were economic reasons for this living arrangement. Yet, the Court ruled thatSvetlana married Jorma only to obtain a residence permit to Finland.

The cases of Jelena and Svetlana offer insights into the multiple dynamics at workwhen family relations are evaluated by legal authorities. First, the cases provideexamples of how gendered ideas regarding families’ care relations may haveimplications on family members seeking to be united. Women tend to do most ofthe care work for other family members (United Nations, Department of Economicand Social Affairs 2010) and in these cases, it was grandmothers who were potentialcare-givers for their grandchildren, and daughters who were potentially caring fortheir mothers. Thus, authorities did not perceive these elderly marriage migrants asindividuals who moved to Finland to join their husbands, but primarily as familymembers who were potentially providing and receiving care. Migrants in need of careare often stigmatised in public discussions as potential burdens for the welfare state(Horsti and Pellander 2012). Perhaps, as a response to the growing concerns aboutmigrants’ family members as potentially needing care (and about the cost that thecare-requiring migrants might cause for the welfare state), resident permit holders areno longer able to bring family members outside the ‘nuclear family’ (spouse andchildren under 18 years of age) to Finland; this privilege is reserved to Finnish (and

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other EU) citizens.4 In light of these growing concerns and restrictions regardingfamily migration, immigration authorities may have viewed cases such as those ofJelena and Svetlana as instances in which marriage is mainly motivated byintergenerational care-dependencies.

In addition to gendered care relations, the often neglected factor of age comes intoplay in these cases (Hearn 2011; see also Charsley 2012, 9). Marriage migration isusually framed as a phenomenon concerning young married couples only. Thesecases underline the need to further examine how immigration law limits familyformation of elderly migrants, as well as their family life with children andgrandchildren living in another country (King and Vullnetari 2009). Furthermore,the appellants’ age and gender cannot be viewed separately from their socio-economic status. Both Jelena and Svetlana mentioned their financial situation as areason for their living arrangement. Their cases illustrate how migrants who forfinancial reasons have to live in ‘unconventional’ ways are at a disadvantage whenauthorities process their applications. In the cases of Jelena and Svetlana, theintersection of age, gender, socio-economic status, and nationality influenced the wayimmigration officials and the Court perceived their transnational family ties.

Scholars have pointed out that transnational marriages are subject to stricterregulations and normative expectations than marriages between citizens of the samecountry (Eggebø 2013; van Walsum 2008). For example, both Denmark and Norwayrequire the sponsor to have a certain sized apartment if she or he wishes to bring aforeign spouse or other family member to the country. Finland’s Aliens Act does notcontain requirements for a certain standard of housing, but as these cases show, thepractice of the Act by immigration authorities still creates expectations of howcouples should live. While it is nowadays increasingly common that couples live apartat least part of time for reasons such as studying and employment—as literature onLiving Apart Together relationships evidences (e.g. Levin 2004)—these kinds of livingarrangements can be harmful for those in the process of applying for a residencepermit. Furthermore, while in today’s Finland adult children usually live indepen-dently from their parents, this has not always been the case: children had the legalobligation to take care of their parents and grandparents until 1970 (Väisänen 2011).Thus, these cases exemplify Finnish authorities’ a historical and ethnocentric ideasregarding responsibilities within the family and families’ living arrangements.

In sum, the cases discussed in this section reveal how the applicants often invokeda broader conception of a family, while the ‘family life’ that the authorities werelooking for had to be centred on the marital relationship with the Finnish spouse.This relates to an understanding that both marriage and marriage migration can haveonly one purpose and thus resonates with the British Primary Purpose Rule, in forcebetween 1980 and 1997. According to the Rule, entry to the UK could be denied ifthere were grounds to suspect that entering the country was the primary motivationfor the marriage (Sachdeva 1993). In the cases at hand, the primary purpose of themarriage and the application had to be the wish to continue family life with theFinnish spouse. If authorities had a reason to suspect other incentives, such as living

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with or caring for other family members than the spouse, the application was denied.The cases also underline the need to study the way nation-states regulate familyrelated migration from an intersectional perspective: Jelena’s and Svetlana’s casesillustrate how the applicants’ age, gender, national origin, and class intersect toproduce grounds for exclusion. The authorities seem to fail to recognise that aforeigner may wish to move both because of marriage and her or his wish to be closerto a family member. In the next section, we discuss situations in which the existenceof family members in the migrant’s country of origin also created grounds forauthorities to suspect immigration fraud.

Troubling Transnational Family Ties

In the analysed court files, it was common for the immigration officials and the Courtto base their decision on an estimation of the strength of the foreign spouse’s familyties to Finland as compared to her or his ties to the country of origin. In this regard,transnational family ties seemed to be harmful to the applicant either way. While theexistence of family members in Finland could jeopardise the foreign spouse’sapplication, having family members in the home country could also be the reason fornot being granted residency in Finland. We had several cases in which an applicantwas mentioned as having family members in both countries, and in which the Courtused these transnational family ties as grounds for denying the permit. In this section,we present a case involving a Thai wife and her Finnish husband and a case involvinga Turkish husband and a Finnish wife. While there is a sizeable difference in theoverall acceptance percentage for Thai women and Turkish men—94% and 83%(Table 1)—in both cases, the Court based its decision on the assumed strength offamily ties both to Finland and the applicant’s home country.

In the winter and spring of 2003, a Thai woman named ‘Lalana’ visited Finlandtwo times, invited by the Finnish husband of her mother (HHO 05/0117/3). Duringher second visit to Finland, in May 2003, Lalana was introduced to a man named‘Heikki’ by her mother, and the couple got married a month after their first meeting.In June 2003, Lalana had to return to Thailand to apply for a residence permit. Thecouple stayed in touch via phone calls and letters—Lalana’s mother acted as aninterpreter as Lalana knew only little Finnish—and Heikki sent money to Thailand tosupport Lalana and her four children. In the interview held in the Finnish embassy inBangkok in December 2003, Lalana told that she knew that she would be introducedto Heikki in Finland. Lalana also mentioned that she wanted to live in Finland and becloser to her mother. She added that she would like to bring her four children toFinland, and that it was also her mother’s wish to have the grandchildren in thecountry.

Heikki’s and Lalana’s case contains several elements that seem to raise flags amongauthorities when they consider residence permit applications. Immigration officialsand the Court often referred to the Resolution of the Council of the European Uniontitled ‘Measures to Be Adopted on the Combating of Marriages of Convenience’

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(4 December 1997; 97/C 382/01). The resolution provides a list of factors that areargued to characterise fraud marriages, including the lack of common language,the presence of a mediator who introduces the spouses to each other, and the fact thatthe spouses have known each other only for a short time before the marriage. Whilethese factors were mentioned in the Court’s decision when they rejected Heikki’s andLalana’s appeal, both the FIS and the Court paid special attention to Lalana’s familyties to Finland and Thailand in their negative decisions. The statements Lalana madeabout her family relations led the officials to conclude that she married Heikki only toobtain a residence permit and that she and her children were better to stay inThailand, as their family ties were stronger there than in Finland.

Similarly, in a case involving Finnish ‘Tiina’ and Turkish ‘Abdul’, the existence offamily members both in the foreign spouse’s home country and in Finland proved tobe problematic (HHO 051020/3). Tiina and Abdul met each other in Finland in April2003, when Abdul’s application for asylum was pending in the FIS. The couple gotengaged in August 2003 and in December of the same year they got married. Abdul’sasylum application was rejected in early 2004, after which he was deported fromFinland. He submitted a new residence permit application based on his marriage toTiina, which the FIS turned down in October 2004. In the decision, the FISmentioned Abdul’s negative asylum decision, and pointed out that in their view, ‘theapplicant came to Finland on purpose, as his two brothers lived in Finland’. Inaddition, the FIS noted that Abdul had a son in Turkey from his previousrelationship. They wrote, ‘It is evident, taking into account the special characteristicsof Turkish culture, that the applicant has a family in Turkey, even though he is notofficially married to the mother of his child.’

It remains unclear what exactly the ‘special characteristics of Turkish culture’ arethat the FIS refers to in its decision. Nevertheless, it was Abdul’s earlier applicationfor an asylum and the existence of family members in Finland and Turkey that‘proved’ to the FIS that his marriage was not ‘real’. In their appeal to the Court,Abdul’s lawyer also paid attention to the emphasis on family ties in the FIS’sdecision. She wrote, ‘In my view, relatives living in Finland are a positive, not anegative thing for the applicant. They will on their part help the applicant integrate inFinland.’ The lawyer also pointed out that the applicant had not lived with his sonand ex-partner in a long time, and therefore ‘did not have a family in Turkey’. Thus,authorities force the applicants to ‘choose’ between their family members in thehome country and in Finland, at least in the level of arguments presented in court. Atthe same time, the applicants used ties between Tiina’s and Abdul’s families to showthat their marriage was real: they pointed out that Tiina had visited Abdul in Turkeyfour times in 2004–2005, once with her father and uncle. She had also visited Abdul’sparents, and Abdul’s father had travelled to Finland to visit Tiina’s family. Thesefacts, in addition to detailed descriptions of the intensity and regularity of thecouple’s contact, led the Court to overrule the FIS’s decision in August 2005.

The striking part of our findings is that family ties both to Finland and to abroadcould interfere with the possibility to be united with a spouse in Finland. It seems that

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in order to gain residency in Finland, Lalana and Abdul should have severed theirrelationships to the family members in the home country. At the same time, certainkinds of transnational family connections could be beneficial too, as Tiina’s andAbdul’s case illustrate: the fact that their families had visited each other was one ofthe factors that convinced the Court about the ‘genuineness’ of their marriage. Thus,the applicants have to be rather strategic when deciding what they disclose abouttheir family relationships to authorities. Applicants do, therefore, also possess acertain amount of agency when they seek residency in another country. This is thepoint that we discuss in the next section.

Providers and Nurturers

Scholars studying marriage migration from the perspective of immigration law havepointed out that while nation-states hold a considerable amount of power overmigrants’ and their families’ lives, it is also important to remember that migrants arenot simply ‘passive victims of government machinations’ (Wray 2011, 9). As our dataare composed of court files, we traced the agency of the applicants through thearguments they presented in the Court. These arguments were formed together withthe applicants’ lawyer, who had experience in what kinds of arguments could helptheir case. As recent study by Natasha Carver (2013) reveals, legal representatives canplay a significant role in molding migrants’ narratives into a form that will resonatewith the immigration authorities’ conceptions about ‘acceptable’ marriage and familylife. In our cases, the applicants and their lawyer invoked notions and stereotypesregarding Finnish society and migrants’ home societies, particularly ideas related togender roles. In a way, the applicants created a transnational space where ideasregarding modern Finnish society, traditional gender roles, and ‘patriarchal’ ‘non-Western’ cultures intersected with each other.

Scholars have pointed out that the dual-breadwinner model, according to whichboth mothers and fathers participate in providing for the family, is often seen as atypical characteristic of Nordic welfare societies (e.g. Eggebø 2010; Skevik 2006). Itseems, however, that the gender roles propagated by the appellants often revivedmore traditional ideas concerning the relationship between husband and wife. Inparticular, numerous appellants found it necessary to underline the foreign husbands’ability to support themselves and their family financially. For example, in a caseinvolving an Estonian man and a Finnish woman, the husband underlined in aninterview with a police officer in Finland (the case file includes, exceptionally, thetranscripts of appellants’ interviews) his eagerness to start working as soon as he wasallowed to (HHO 00/0601/7). He stated, ‘I am ready to provide for [my wife] and herchild as soon as I get a job.’ Correspondingly, the foreign husband’s lack of financialcontribution to the household income could be used against his case. For example, aGhanaian husband of a Finnish woman was described as ‘not participating in theliving expenses in any other way than paying his own food expenses’ (HHO 05/1643/1). Instead, he sent money to his family in Ghana. In the appeal, the husband said

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that he ‘participated in the family’s purchases as much as he could’, but his appealwas nevertheless refused by the Court.

Similarly, it was common for Finnish husbands to point out that they took care oftheir foreign wife’s financial well-being—even though there is no minimum incomerequirement for Finnish citizens who want to bring their spouse to Finland. In a caseinvolving a Finnish husband and a wife from the Dominican Republic, the husbandemphasised in the appeal that he ‘was completely able to take care of [his wife’s]livelihood’ (HHO 05/0405/3). Correspondingly, the woman’s role as the nurturer ofthe family was also accentuated. For example, a Finnish man pointed out in hisappeal on behalf of his Vietnamese wife that she was giving ‘love and affection’ to hischild, unlike the child’s Finnish mother (HHO 05/1261/3). The husband’s role as thefinancial provider often extended to the foreign wife’s country of origin. This was thecase when Finnish ‘Aamir’ applied for a residence permit for his wife ‘Isma’ wholived in Morocco (HHO 05/1225/3). Aamir and Isma had commenced correspondingwith each other in 2001. In January 2002, Aamir started supporting Isma financiallyby sending money to Morocco every month, about 100–250 euros at a time. Aamiralso converted to Islam and changed his Finnish name to a Muslim one. In thesummer of 2003, the couple got married in Morocco. In March 2004, the FIS releasedits negative decision. In their appeal, Aamir pointed out how he considered as hisresponsibility to take care of Isma’s financial well-being, and how this fact—combined with his conversion to Islam—proved that their marriage was real.

Thus, in cases like that of Aamir and Isma, the applicants appealed to gender rolesthat were more traditional than what is usually considered as ideal in Finnish society.At the same time, the foreign man’s role as a caring father and/or husband was alsosometimes highlighted, as befits the Nordic ideal of an ‘equal’ marriage. In a caseinvolving an American husband of a Finnish woman, the couple highlighted the man’srole as a father figure to the woman’s children in their emotional appeal to the Court(this was one of the few self-written appeals that we had in our data; HHO 05/0711/3).The husband wrote, ‘I care and love her daughters, as I do and would my own.’ Thewife also emphasised in her appeal how her children considered the husband as a‘father figure’. In addition, they stressed the care that he provided for his wife, whosuffered from a long-term illness. Similarly, in a case involving a Nigerian man and hisFinnish wife, the couple mentioned that the wife had a child from her previousrelationship ‘whom the applicant takes care of full time’ (HHO 00/0275/7). Also in thiscase, the applicants underlined how the husband was a ‘father figure’ to the child whosebiological father did not live in Finland. Their appeal was approved by the Court.

These cases exemplify the gender roles which the couples expected the Finnishofficials to consider as ideal for married life. They illustrate how the couples appealedto both traditional ideas of men as the providers of the family as well as to men’s roleas a father and caring husband. Women’s role was to be taken care of by theirhusband—there were no cases in which the (Finnish or foreign) wife would haveclaimed as her responsibility to take care of her husband, financially or any other way.Furthermore, the appellants combined these ideas regarding gender roles with

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perceptions or stereotypes of married life in the societies of origin. Thus, in theirappeals, the couples created a transnational set of understandings in which theyactivated gendered notions of married life both in Finland and in the home countryof the foreign spouse.

Finnish immigration discussions tend to portray migrants as an undifferentiatedmass, originating from non-Western parts of the world and associated with ‘pre-modern’ gender and family systems (e.g. Huttunen 2004, 135). Couples who appealedto the Court about their residence permit decisions activated these kinds of ideasregarding countries of origin as well. This line of argument was present, for example,in the case of Pakistani ‘Aafia’ and Finnish ‘Toivo’, who met each other through anInternet dating site in June 2003 (HHO 05/1319/1). After writing to each other for ayear, the couple got married in June 2004, when Toivo visited Aafia in Pakistan. Thecouple noted in their appeal that they married so quickly because in Pakistani culturewomen were not allowed to live together with a man until marrying him. In addition,they pointed out that as a married woman without her husband present, she was in a‘societally dangerous situation’ in Pakistan. Nevertheless, the Court rejected theircase. Aamir’s and Isma’s case provides another example. The FIS had stated in itsnegative decision in March 2004 that Isma had appeared nervous when telling abouther relationship with her husband in the interview held at the Finnish Embassyin Morocco. The FIS claimed that she had told about the times they had met eachother in Morocco in an inconsistent way. In their appeal, the couple pointed out thatin Moroccan culture, a woman was allowed to meet her fiancé only with thepermission of her father, and the future spouses could not have any physical contactbefore the wedding. Isma had avoided talking about their pre-marital relationsbecause she was afraid of ‘possible consequences’. These justifications convinced theCourt to conclude that the inconsistencies in the wife’s interview did not render thecase suspect of immigration marriage fraud.

The cases show how the couples—advised by their lawyers—actively tried toinfluence how their marriages were perceived by the authorities. In their appeals, theyactivated shifting ideas of gender roles in marriage as well as common stereotypes ofmigrants’ countries of origin. While our analysis reveals the ethnocentric nature ofthe criteria that the immigration officials followed, the ethnocentric ideas could alsobe used by the appellants to their advantage. In the case of Aamir and Isma, theCourt showed an understanding of conceptions regarding men’s and women’s rolesin Moroccan society. While this was beneficial for Aamir and Isma, it neverthelessshows how notions of patriarchal non-Western societies are reproduced in court bothby the appellants and by the authorities.

Conclusion

The legal discourses surrounding international marriages in Finland are in manyways similar to discourses found elsewhere in Europe. The criteria used foridentifying ‘genuine’ marriages by Finnish immigration authorities correspond with

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findings made by other scholars studying marriage migration (e.g. Charsley andBenson 2012; Wray 2011). It is a wide-spread practice for immigration officials tobase their decision on the assumed strength of family ties to a certain country. Forexample, according to Danish immigration regulations, the couple must be able toshow that their ‘combined attachment’ to Denmark is stronger than to any othercountry. Thus, strong transnational family ties to Denmark increase the likelihood ofbeing granted residency. In Finland, contrastingly, transnational family relationshipscould be problematic, regardless of the geographical location of the family members.While family ties in migrants’ countries of origin were seen as proof of their familylife being centred outside Finland, this did not work the other way: family membersin Finland did not prove the strength of migrants’ ties to Finland. The exclusivenessof the matrimony as the most central part of family life stood out as the ideal againstwhich international marriages were assessed.

Transnational couples need to navigate the expectations and norms that immig-ration authorities hold about family life and care relations within the family. Ouranalysis shows that the couples are not merely objects of authorities’ evaluations butactively create and appropriate ideas regarding family life in Finland and the origincountries according to the assumed expectations of authorities. This was mostapparent in the way the shifting ideas regarding gender roles in marriage wereactivated in the migrants’ appeals. What is fascinating about this finding is thedisjuncture between the Nordic ideal of a dual-breadwinner family and the focus onmen’s role as the family’s provider. Rather than contesting the stereotypical ideas of‘migrant cultures’ as more traditional and patriarchal than modern Finnish society,the appellants often reproduced this idea and tried to use it to their advantage.

Our research also highlights the importance of the intersectional approach whenanalysing the regulation of marriage migration. While there are cases in whichtransnational family ties to Finland may be beneficial for a residence permit applicant—most obviously in cases in which the applicant can show Finnish ancestry and istherefore considered a ‘returnee’—in the case of marriages between Finns andforeigners, factors such as the foreign spouse’s age, gender, national origin, class, andmigration status may make these marriages susceptible to allegations of immigrationfraud. For example, we found that migrant men who had applied for asylum inFinland or who were under deportation proceedings were particularly susceptible tosuspicions of fraud. In addition, our research suggests that elderly migrants with adultchildren in Finland form a group that may also become suspects of immigrationfraud. Scholars have analysed migrations of elderly persons mostly through the nexusof transnational care. Our study accentuates the importance to consider elderlymigrants not simply as ‘grandparents’ but as marriageable migrants who want to beunited with their partner. The interplay of parental, grandparental, and matrimonialrelations has not been sufficiently explored by migration scholars.

Scholars have suggested that exclusionary family reunification policies can createan incentive for migrants to use marriage to a citizen as a means of gaining entry to acountry (e.g. Beck-Gernsheim 2011). Our goal was not, however, to estimate what

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kinds of incentives the foreign spouses might have had to apply for residency inFinland. Instead, the cases analysed in this article illustrate how the exclusionaryimmigration policies can create situations in which certain groups of applicants maybecome susceptible to allegations of immigration fraud. Because of Finland’s highlyexclusionary family reunification policy, migrants with family members already livingin the country can be suspected of using marriage as a way to be united with theirfamilies.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Keith Banting, Donna Gabaccia, and Johanna Kantola for their invaluablecomments on this article. We are also grateful to Pauli Kettunen and the participants of the NordWel-seminar at the University of Helsinki and Suvi Keskinen and the participants of the seminar‘Multicultural and Postcolonial Intersections’ at the University of Turku for their comments onearlier drafts. Finally, we would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestionsto improve the article.

Notes

[1] We chose these two years to capture possible changes in ways immigration authorities dealtwith marriage migration cases before and after the passage of the Aliens Act of 2004, whichallowed the foreign spouse to apply for a residence permit in Finland (before the applicationhad to be submitted in the origin country). Before the Act was passed, politicians feared thatit would greatly increase immigration fraud cases. However, we did not detect any significantchanges in the way the court processed marriage migration cases in 2000 and 2005, apartfrom the fact that applications were no longer turned down if they were submitted inFinland.

[2] EU/EEA citizens are not required to obtain a residence permit for Finland.[3] The FIS did not distinguish between applications submitted by or on behalf of spouses of

Finnish and foreign citizens in their statistics before November 2010. As we focus onmarriages between Finnish and non-EU/EEA citizens, we are presenting only statisticsstarting from November 2010. However, our analysis of applications processed between2005–2010 shows that the acceptance percentage for the largest groups of foreign spouseshas remained relatively stable over the years.

[4] Family members that a resident permit holder can bring to Finland include a spouse,registered (i.e. same-sex) partner, cohabiting partner, guardian of a child under 18 years ofage, or child under the age of 18. In the Aliens Act of 2004, residence permit holders werestill able to sponsor family members outside the ‘nuclear family’, if they were able to showthat the family member was ‘fully dependent’ on the person living in Finland.

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