The boundaries of public action: arranged and forced marriages

Abstract

In this article I deal with the political and cultural dilemma of the distinction between arranged and forced or imposed marriages. After a review of the literature, interviews collected in 2009 in the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna are used to illustrate the views of the participants to the research.

With the help of the theoretical tool of cultural materialism, I argue that the question can be approached from two different points of view: on the one hand, the distinction is clear as it is based on the recognition (even a late one) of an imposition by physical or psychological violence on the part of the subject; on the other hand sociological analysis of the process of construction and of expression of consent reveals a vast gray area that is object of debate in the scientific literature as well as in everyday life.

Only the first definition of forced marriage, the subjective one, can justify the start of a concrete intervention by the public authorities - but this cannot stop the debate on the actual value of the consent given in many cases of marriages.