Between Care and Criminality: Marriage, Citizenship, and Family in Australian Social Welfare

Between Care and Criminality explores how social welfare encounters migration and marriage in Melbourne, Australia, in the context of intensified border control. It reveals how prevention efforts target Muslim migrant communities, making family relations and marital practices objects of policy knowledge. The book highlights how social welfare becomes the new frontier for the settler colonial state to judge good citizenship, challenging migrant conceptions of familial care and personhood.

Format: Hardback
Length: 224 pages
Publication date: 15 December 2023
Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Between Care and Criminality delves into the intricate interplay between social welfare and migration, particularly in the context of heightened border control in Melbourne, Australia. It provides a comprehensive ethnographic exploration of the efforts aimed at preventing forced marriages in the aftermath of a 2013 law that criminalized the practice. This law was disproportionately targeted at Muslim migrant communities, with the objective of gaining policy knowledge about family relations and marital practices within these communities. By examining the everyday practices of direct service providers, police, and advocates, the book uncovers how the realm of social welfare becomes a new front line in the battle for good citizenship. It sheds light on how the violence of displacement, borders, and conditional citizenship shapes migrant conceptions of familial care, personhood, and mutual obligation. Through this lens, the book prompts social welfare to critically reflect on its role in perpetuating or challenging these structures, ultimately striving to create more inclusive and equitable societies.

Weight: 454g
Dimension: 235 x 156 x 18 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781978829039